Willem Kloos

Willem Kloos (born May 6, 1859, Amsterdam, Netherlands—died March 31, 1938, The Hague) was a Dutch poet and critic who was the driving intellectual force of the 1880 Dutch literary revival and cofounder and mainstay of its periodical, De nieuwe gids (“The New Guide”). A ruthless critic of the rhetorical, passionless nature of traditional Dutch writing, Kloos continually championed the idea of beauty as the highest value in art and life. In 1882 he published...