biography
| name: |
Reve, Gerard (Kornelis van het)
|
pronunciation:
[rayvuh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1923– )
|
| biography:
| Novelist and poet, born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Together with Mulisch and Hermans, he is one of the most influential writers in Dutch post-war literature. His first work De ondergang van de familie Boslowits (1946, The Decline of the Boslowits) remained unnoticed, but with its successor, De avonden (1947, The Evenings), he instantly made his mark on the literary map, and further confirmed his status as a writer with the novel Werther Nieland (1949). Although literary theory places him in a Modernist and existentialist tradition, he prefers to refer to his writing as Romantic, being a representation of his discontent with petty bourgeois society and its values, and his romantic yearning for mysticism. His extensive body of work is characterized by great stylistic skill, sharp observation, and the ironic ambiguity resulting from a mixture of the profane and the sacred. In his epistolary novels, including Op weg naar het einde (1962, On the Way to the End) and Nader tot U (1966, Closer to Thee), he addresses controversial themes such as his homosexuality and conversion to Catholicism. For a passage in the latter novel in which he describes God as an ass subjected to anal intercourse, Reve had to stand trial for blasphemy. He conducted his own defence and was acquitted. After 1978 his work becomes less controversial and more contemplative in style, but still addresses the same themes of homosexuality, the divine, and loneliness. In 1968 he was awarded the P C Hooft-prijs. |
|
|
