Blaman, Anna

Blaman, Anna 

(pseudonym of Johanna Petronella Vrugt). Born Jan. 31, 1905, inRotterdam; died there July 13, 1960. Dutch writer.

Blaman began her literary career with lyrical poems. She revealed the subjectivistic interpretation of reality in the diseased psyches of the heroes in her first novel, A Woman and Her Friend (1942). A feeling of hopelessness and despair permeates the novel An Isolated Life (1948), the hero of which seeks escape in a world of fiction and fantasy. Fear in the face of reality, the attenuation of feelings, involuntary submission to fate, and erotic motifs make up the content of Blaman’s last books—the novel Not in Life But in Death (1954), the collections Ram Horna and Other Stories (1951) and Daytime and Other Stories (1957), and the novel The Failures (1960, unfinished). The influence of J. P. Sartre and A. Camus is noticeable in Blaman’s work.

WORKS

Anna Blaman over zichzelfen anderen. Amsterdam, 1963.

REFERENCES

Knuvelder, G. Handboek tot de moderne nederlandse letterkunde.’s Hertogenbosch, 1954.
Dinaux, C. J. E. Gegist bestek, vol. 1. The Hague, 1958.
Oomes, P. Compendium van de geschiedenis der nederlandse letterkunde, 10th ed. Purmerend, 1966.

S. A. MIRONOV