Thank you very much to the publisher for sending the second instalment of the ‘Essential Gorter’ series. You can find the first instalment ‘May’’s review up on my blog. 

Herman Gorter’s poems discuss humanity, politics, love, lust, and an idyllic view of nature, all fitting themes for the 1880s literary revival in which they were written around. This revival focused on the aesthetics of art, whether to its downfall or rise is down to the reader. I enjoy work from this movement, and Gorter is no exception. 

I did not enjoy this collection more than I enjoyed ‘May’, but I think that is down to my varying opinions on the different poems presented. Whilst ‘May’ is a continuous epic, this collection is, well, a collection of various poems, some short, some long, some amazing, some less-so. I felt as if a few of these poems were repetitive, souring my final thoughts of the collection.

However, that is not to say that this book does not have it’s merits. I throughly enjoyed reading this, and loved the continuation of Gorter’s mythological references. In ‘May’, we read of the Norse gods, and in this collection, the Ancient Greek god Pan is discussed. This excited me as both a classicist and a consumer of poetry. Continuation of themes makes delving into a poet’s work even more enjoyable.  

Another theme heavily discussed within this collection was love and desire, however, while many of poems and verse presented discussing desire felt simplistic and overly cliché, one thing that must be taken into account is the literary differences at the time they were written. From what I know of Gorter, however little it may be, I have gathered that his work was very influential, which suggests that these descriptors which he frequently uses weren’t necessarily used in a traditionally cliché way, and instead, appear to be so through the eyes of a modern reader, whose exposure to those metaphors are frequently through modern-day poetic clichés.

The last of his poems is political in nature. Towards the end of the collection, Gorter, who was a heavily political figure himself), mourns the famous murders of communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. As I am not particularly knowledgeable on the situation surroundings their lives and deaths, I cannot critique the latter poem and verses with enough context, but I will be further researching the political figures and revisiting the poems when I have gathered sufficient context, as to be able to throughly understand them.

Overall, this collection of poems was enjoyable, and I am curious to see if another instalment of Gorter’s work is to be translated in the series, as I would be interested in reading it.