Greshoff, Jan

Born Dec. 15, 1888, in Nieuw-Helvoet. Dutch poet and critic.

Greshoffs verses written before World War I celebrate solitude and death (“The Neglected Pond,” 1910). He created a symbolic image of the truth-seeker in the narrative poem Icarus Converted. The theme of social inequality is developed in the collections Stones Instead of Bread (1939), Secrets of the Factory (1941), and The Muse, My Friend (1943). His postwar poems sound individualistic notes (the collection About Recent Things, 1958). Greshoff marked the decline of bourgeois culture in his critical articles.