Pieter Nicolaas/Nicolaus van Eyck (

Breukelen Breukelen () is a town and former municipality in the Netherlands, in the province of Utrecht. It is situated to the north west of Utrecht, along the river Vecht and close to the lakes of the Loosdrechtse Plassen, an area of natural and tourist ...

, 1 October 1887 –

Wassenaar Wassenaar (; population: in ) is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and Dorp (town), town located in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, on the western coast of the Netherlands. An affluent suburb of The ...

, 28 April 1954) He was born Pieter Nicolaas van Eijk and changed his name to van Eyck around 1907. He worked as a foreign correspondent for the Dutch newspaper NRC in Rome and London, but also a

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

, critic,

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

and philosopher from the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. Awarded the

Constantijn Huygens Prize The Constantijn Huygens Prize (Dutch: ''Constantijn Huygens-prijs'') is a Dutch literary award.Gymnasium Haganum The Gymnasium Haganum is one of the oldest public schools in the Netherlands, located in the city of The Hague. First mentioned in 1327, the school is currently housed in a monumental Renaissance Revival architecture building, built in 1907. It ...

before studying law. After

Albert Verwey Albert Verwey (May 15, 1865 – March 8, 1937) was a Dutch poet belonging to the " Movement of Eighty". As a translator, staffer, and literary historian he played an important role in the literary life of The Netherlands in the late 19th and ...

resigned from the university of Leiden in 1935, van Eyck took on the professorship for Dutch language and literature there, a position which he held until his death. He was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946.

Family

He married on 28 April 1914 Nelly Estelle Benjamins ( Suriname, 17 August 1891 -

, South Holland, 1971), a woman of Sephardic origin born and raised in Suriname. They moved to

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

in 1919. They were the parents of: * Robert Floris van Eyck or van Eijk, a

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, artist and

art restorer The conservation and restoration of cultural property focuses on protection and care of cultural property (tangible cultural heritage), including artworks, architecture, archaeology, and museum collections. Conservation activities include prev ...

, husband of Princess Christina of Hesse *

Aldo van Eyck Aldo van Eyck (; 16 March 1918 – 14 January 1999) was a Dutch architect. He was one of the most influential protagonists of the architectural movement Structuralism. Family He was born in Driebergen, Utrecht, a son of poet, critic, essay ...

or van Eijk,

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Works

His most famous poem "Death and the Gardener" (1926)Erts. Letterkundige Almanak, Year 1 (1926)
/ref> is a theme taken from

Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...

’s novel "Le grand écart". In his turn, Cocteau took the story from Rumi. Another version is in the Babylonian

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

. The Van Eyck poem was translated in English by David Colmer in 2007. Colmer's translation received the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize and was printed by the Bucheliuspers in Utrecht.

External links

DBNL overview

DBNL biography

References

1887 births 1954 deaths Constantijn Huygens Prize winners Dutch male poets People from Breukelen Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of Teylers Tweede Genootschap 20th-century Dutch poets 20th-century Dutch male writers 20th-century Dutch philosophers {{netherlands-poet-stub

Family

Works

See also

External links

References