biography
| name: |
Eeden, Frederik Willem van
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pronunciation:
[van ayden]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1860–1932)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born in Haarlem, W Netherlands. He studied medicine in Amsterdam, studied psychiatry in Paris, became a doctor, and founded a psychiatric clinic in Amsterdam in 1887. When still a student he had met Willem Kloos, Frank van der Goes, Lodewijk van Deyssel, and Albert Verwey. He published poetry under the name of Cornelis Paradijs and a symbolic fairy tale De kleine Johannes (The Little Johannes) in the magazine De Nieuwe Gids. An article full of self-criticism which he wrote under a pseudonym led to a break with Willem Kloos, the editor of De Nieuwe Gids. An idealist and reformer, van Eeden founded the Communist production co-operation Walden in 1898, a project that finally failed in 1907. He travelled to the USA and other places, and had contact with people such as Sigmund Freud, Stefan Zweig, and Rabindranath Tagore. He became a disillusioned man, disappointed with the political reality in the first quarter of the century and felt neglected as a writer and reformer. |
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