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Translated articles of Erik Weijers
The English domain of my website contains translated articles and essays of my own hand. I write essays about what I love and about what I detest. For examples of the first, see the below section Literature. For examples of the latter, see Polemic.
Some Dutch writers deserve to be well-known abroad:
- Reve's Raleigh: Gerard Reve (1923-2006) is a Dutch writer, whom admirers of Céline, for example, would be delighted to get to know. I singled out a particularly great episode for quotation and review.
- Vasalis (1909-1998) wrote beautiful poems. I translated one: Brass band.
- Tim Krabbé's random word: Dutch writer Tim Krabbé wrote probably the best book ever about the experience of a cycling stage. In it, he considers the possibility of inventing a random word.
- The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind: Julian Jaynes's mind-blowing work, regards consciousness as an acquired set of skills - a 'mental tool box' largely based on metaphor - rather than an innate quality of the human mind. The important transition phase towards subjective consciousness supposedly took place between 1000-500 B.C., thereby replacing the former mentality. This old mental make-up was what Jaynes calls the bicameral mind.
- Theo van Gogh's polemic prose: Van Gogh was the king of controversy of Dutch media. He wrote vile columns in a style that encompassed the entire range from the understatement to the hyperbole.
- The Dawkins disillusionment: It is a painful experience to have a hero disappoint you. I have admired Richard Dawkins from the time I read The selfish gene, at the age of twenty. It was one of the most important reading experiences of my life. Since then, I have read all his books with great interest. Until this one: The God delusion.
- My delusions of grandeur: Erik Weijers turned down his publisher's request to write an autobiographical piece about his talents as a writer. ‘You may send someone for an interview’, was his reply.
- My melancholy CV: When I was a toddler, in the year 1979, my parents, who are cousins and descend from an ancient line of lower, non-acknowledged Russian nobility, had a house built in a suburb of the village of W. This village lies in the Land of Maas and Waal, a region where traditionally the temperaments of the north and the south of the Netherlands meet and merge.
