Willem Kloos

Willem Kloos
Willem Kloos in ca. 1890
Born	6 May 1859 Amsterdam
Died	31 March 1938 (aged 78) The Hague
Occupation	Poet, literary critic

Willem Johannes Theodorus Kloos (Dutch pronunciation: [kloːs]; 6 May 1859 in Amsterdam – 31 March 1938 in The Hague) was a nineteenth-century Dutch poet and literary critic. He was one of the prominent figures of the Movement of Eighty and became editor in chief of De Nieuwe Gids after the editorial fracture in 1893. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.

Kloos 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.

The Tachtigers' primary literary vehicle was a journal co-founded by Kloos called De Nieuwe Gids (The New Guide), first published in October 1885. The title was intended as a sarcastic anti-tribute to the prevailing literary journal in Amsterdam, De Gids (The Guide), which had usually rejected submissions by Kloos and other Tachtigers. Many pieces by Kloos and others that are still very highly regarded first appeared in the early editions of De Nieuwe Gids, including most of Kloos's sonnets, his most important idiom. However, the Tachtigers had one falling out after another, until Kloos was left in 1893 as the only remaining editor from among the original five editors of De Nieuwe Gids.