Joost van den Vondel

Joost van den Vondel (or Joost van Vondel) (Cologne, November 17, 1587 – Amsterdam, February 5, 1679) was a Dutch dramatist and poet who produced some of the greatest works of Dutch literature.

Biography

Vondel was the second child of Baptist parents who had moved from Antwerp, then in the Southern Netherlands, to Cologne in 1582, apparently for religious reasons. Between 1594 and 1597 they went on to live in Utrecht, where young Joost attended school and learnt reading and writing. The family are next found in Amsterdam in 1597, since in that year Joost’s father bought the rights to citizenship of that town. He set up a shop in silks and stockings. Joost was brought up to follow in his father’s footsteps, and is not known to have had any additional formal schooling.

Around 1605, he was a member of one of the Amsterdam chambers of rhetoric — clubs of pre-Renaissance poets who, heavily influenced by French examples, concentrated on ingenious versification and exotic vocabulary rather than on subtlety of rhythm or on depth of feeling.

In 1610, two years after his father’s death, Joost acquired a one-third share in the shop, and in the same year he married. His wife took care of business, largely leaving Joost free to write his poetry.

A devoutly religious man all his life, between 1616 and 1620 Vondel was a deacon of the Baptist chapel. He must have become familiar with the French language, since his imitations and translations of French poets date from this period (Du Bartas, Garnier). Familiarity with Torquato Tasso suggests that he knew Italian as well, and between 1613 and 1620 het took formal instruction in Latin.

Vondel resigned as a Baptist deacon in 1620, at a time when he suffered from depression, possibly brought on by a fundamental re-orientation in his views. By 1626, when a final relapse into depression occurred, he had apparently distanced himself from his Baptist leanings. His political engagement, by contrast, had intensified, and in 1625 had had to go into hiding because of his Palamedes (see below), a thinly-veiled attack on the de facto Head of State, Prince Maurits of Orange. Although the Prince had died by then, his orthodox-Protestant faction demanded Vondel’s extradition to The Hague, which might have resulted in a death sentence. Vondel went into hiding, but was saved by a battle of competency between the authorities in The Hague and those in Amsterdam. The latter city refused to deliver him, and instead he got off with a fine: “whipped with a fox’s tail”, as a contemporary, a liberal preacher, commented with relief. Henceforth, Vondel felt relatively free to voice his political comments openly.

Sources Used

• Calis 2008

Piet Calis, Vondel. Het verhaal van zijn leven (1587–1679). Amsterdam 2008

• Collected edition 1986

Mieke B. Smits-Veldt en Marijke Spies, eds, Vondel. Volledige dichtwerken en oorspronkelijk proza. Verzorgd door Albert Verwey, Amsterdam 1986.

• Leendertz 1918

[P.] Leendertz [jr.], “Vondel, Joost van den”, in: P.C. Molhuysen en P.J. Blok (red.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, Deel 4. Leiden 1918:1397-1409 (online version [1] accessed Mar. 4, 2010)

• Romein 1946

Jan en Annie Romein, “Joost van den Vondel. De Prins der Poëten”, in: Erflaters van onze beschaving. Nederlandse gestalten uit zes eeuwen. II, zeventiende eeuw. Amsterdam 1946:136-62 [1938-1940]

• Smits-Veldt and Spies 1986

Mieke B. Smits-Veldt en Marijke Spies, “Inleiding”, in: Collected edition 1986:ix-xlii