Willem Kloos (1859 - 1938)

Willem Johannes Theodorus (Willem) Kloos (6 May 1859, Amsterdam – 31 March 1938, The Hague) was a Dutch poet and literary critic, and is widely considered one of the great writers of the Dutch language. Biography Kloos (Dutch pronunciation: [kloːs]) was one of the leaders, along with the poet Herman Gorter, the critic Lodewijk van Deyssel, and the prolific writer and psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden, of the influential group of Dutch writers known as the Movement of Eighty (Beweging van Tachtig), otherwise known simply as the Tachtigers, who interacted and worked with each other in Amsterdam in the 1880s. As part of this movement, Kloos criticized mainstream literary style as bookish and overly wrought, and instead sought to write poetry in which the form matched the content, so that intimate experiences should be conveyed with a natural intimacy of expression. Kloos also rejected art that sought to express widely shared experiences or emotions. Instead, he demanded that art must be "the most individualistic expression of the most individualistic emotion" ("de allerindividueelste expressie van de allerindividueelste emotie"). Along with the other Tachtigers, Kloos took inspiration in this effort both from Shakespeare and from the then recent Impressionist painters and Naturalist writers.