top of page

Shiny Mystery

Screenshot 2020-04-23 at 21.56.03.png

Spotlight

Spotlight


Paperback with flaps, 48 pages.

hand tied
€ 15.00

ISBN 9789083018379 

Anthology of the poems of PC Boutens compiled by Simon Mulder with a foreword by Dr. Marco Gold.

PC (Pieter Cornelis) Boutens (1870-1943) grew up in Middelburg, in a strict Protestant family. After a career as a teacher of classical languages at the boys' boarding school Noorthey in Voorschoten, he settled in The Hague. There he was able to focus more on literature with private lessons and the support of friends and admirers. His work bears witness to Plato's philosophy: the soul tends beyond earthly life, towards a higher world.  Besides this seership there is also a silence in his work:  this higher can only be approximated in words - and besides that he also had to keep silent about his homosexuality. In his poems he celebrates the beauty of  nature, his sense of God and the sublime love that transcends life and death.  Boutens's poetry shows an affinity with that of Herman Gorter and JH Leopold, but finds its own way in his later collections, in a rich, glossy style, which reveals deep secrets for the attentive reader.

PCB

Spotlight

Spotlight

Fragment from Groningen

1.

Groningen was the start

of the world, the pure

jumping sea came here

calm down, the first

islands, to cold fire

of the surf, the high

land, seven days wide;

everything speaks the secret language

of the truth, there is

space emergence and future,

everything belongs together.

Add the women in it,

the ancestral mothers of men;

like a seed crop fertile

let men be there too,

children of the light

who propagate love

who invent peace

along the human path.

Then the city is built,

well and good, then living

death and life together

within walls of time.

are living stones

graced with one voice:

A-houses, A-church they are called,

erected high.

Grunnen

 

1.

Grunning was started

of world, pure

jumping sea came here

tou bedoaren, first

aailanden, tou cold fire

of crushers, t high

land, zeuven doag weed;

ales speaks sharky toal

from woarhaid, there is

glory arose and future,

ales heurt bie mekoar.

Voug vraauwlu doarien,

tribesmen of people;

as a crop fruiting boar

loat also manlu doar orphans,

kid of the light

give thigh laifde door

thigh peace oetvienden

as people doun.

Den is city baauwd,

gold and give, the dwelling

dead and alive with nkander

within walls of tied.

Leventege staining inside

blessed with one voice:

A-hoes, A-church haiten zai,

towering one.

bottom of page