Herman Gorter

Herman Gorter (born Nov. 26, 1864, Wormerveer, Neth.—died Sept. 15, 1927, Brussels, Belg.) was an outstanding Dutch poet of the 1880 literary revival, a movement nourished by aesthetic and “art for art’s sake” ideals. Gorter’s early poetry, with its sensuous imagery and alluring air of spontaneity, embodies and often transcends the aesthetic ideals of the movement.

In 1889 Gorter contributed to the movement’s periodical De nieuwe gids (“The New Guide”) with his first and most important poem, “Mei” (“May”). In describing with Impressionist imagery the beauty of the Dutch spring landscape on the arrival of the personified May, her joy and subsequent disillusion, Gorter symbolized his own spiritual development: from orgiastic abandonment in nature to a quieter, metaphysical longing for peace within humanity.

In his Verzen of 1890 he moved from the retrospection of “Mei” to a direct communication of immediate spiritual and sensuous experience, producing some of the most remarkable poetry in the language.

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Famous Poets and Poetic Form

Later Gorter rejected the individualism of the 1880 movement, turning to communist ideals; his Marxist-inspired Pan (1916) looks to a new utopia, but his involvement is of a visionary rather than of a practical nature.