Perron, Edgar du

▪ Dutch writer and critic

born Nov. 2, 1899, Meester Cornelis, Java

died May 14, 1940, Bergen, Neth.

      writer and critic, cofounder with Menno ter Braak (Braak, Menno ter) of the influential Dutch literary journal Forum (1932–35), which aimed to replace superficial elegance of literary style with greater sincerity of literary content. The Forum writers resisted National Socialism and the German occupation of The Netherlands.

      The son of a Dutch East Indian planter, du Perron went to Europe in 1921 and lived on the Left Bank in Paris, an experience that provided the background of his novel Een voorbereiding (1927; “A Preparation”). Cosmopolitan in outlook, he did much to counteract Dutch provincialism by publicizing the works of the French writers André Gide and André Malraux. He translated into Dutch Malraux's La Condition humaine, which had been dedicated to him. His collected essays, De smalle mens (1934), deal with the precarious position of the individual in the face of the collective attitudes of left and right. His poems, collected in Parlando (1941), are characterized by everyday words and a conversational tone. Shortly before World War II, du Perron spent a few more years in the Dutch East Indies collecting materials for De man van Lebak (1937), a critical biography of the great Dutch novelist Multatuli.

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