I was born in Maasdam, a village on one of the islands in the river delta of the Maas near the west coast of Holland. My memory starts with an event that caused so much hubbub that it instantly awakened me to my immediate world: the Flood of 1953. My parents and I survived the disaster; my sister and brother had not been born yet. It took the lives of the chickens and a pig. We will never forget.

In accordance with my own wishes, I attended grammar school in Dordrecht and subsequently studied English at the University of Utrecht. In Utrecht I particularly enjoyed the lectures on the Metaphysical Poets, Shakespeare and the Old English texts. For about one year I also attended classes in the Sanskrit Institute. I found Sanskrit very hard, but Gonda’s classes made an indelible impression on me.

A teacher I never wanted to be, but a translator. Together with a colleague and partner I settled in Culemborg. From that time onwards, I have lived and worked with the feeling that what I’m doing is precisely the right thing. I still remember how glad I was my parents – albeit tacitly - accepted my decided choice of profession – for it meant that I would set out into an uncertain future. As a present, they gave me a nice clock.

 

There are advantages and disadvantages connected with a liberal profession. You are strictly bound to time, but not tied to one place. For this reason translators chose to live in France, which was fashionable in those days. I wanted to live in the East of our own country and found – by a coincidence that heralded a kind fate – a house with two hectare of nature in Wilsum, just across the border in the county of Bentheim in Germany. In this our little rural ‘estate’ we lived and worked for years and translated many books. My field was mainly philosophy and children’s books. I assisted my partner in his project and opened myself up to the culture around me.

 

Germany. I encountered a new world, different in some respects from the prejudices I had learned, having grown up after the war. In the course of time, our house-library in Wilsum was extended with a bookcase of German literature that took up a whole wall. We still worked exclusively from the English, occasionally we also worked together on the same project – it was a happy time. Together we made a series of programmes for the Belgian Radio BRT about German literature in the Ardennes. I translated several very nice children’s books, among them one from German. Under the influence of the great writers from the GDR of those days – no, their translator I was not, but lest they be forgotten, I shall mention their names here: Christa Wolf and Irmtraud Morgner.

Gradually I developed the wish to have a perfect command of German.

It was the end of the seventies. In his private life, the partner developed the air of Sartre and one fine day, he did not even shrink from violence. Consequently and quite unexpectedly, my life took on a wholly different turn. In a positive sense, this gave me the impetus to study German in Amsterdam. At first, I divided my time between Amsterdam and Wilsum. The best of two worlds. The German Institute was small, the atmosphere stimulating. With the consent of the Institute, I spent the winter of 1981/82 in Berlin. During that winter term, I studied Hegel and theory of the novel at the Free University (FU) and made the contacts that were to be the basis of my future career in Berlin – but now I am ahead of events.

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On returning home in Wilsum, the afore mentioned air of my partner appeared to have put on a permanent form. Safely say: I had become a rival. With this, of course, an era came to an end that had lasted 12 years. We parted as good friends, as the saying goes. Time now also became a healer.

 

Meanwhile, in Amsterdam along with my studies, I worked in the Erasmus Antiquarian Bookshop, that still existed then, established at the Spui. It specialised in first editions of German Literature, incunables and judaica and was directed by the renowned antiquarian bookseller Abraham Horodisch, who was in his eighties when I worked for him and was still running the bookshop himself. We prepared the production of the Festschrift, that was published by the in-house-publishing company on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the bookshop in 1983. Not long afterwards Horodisch died.

 

During this time, I had to choose a place of residence for myself. Amsterdam or Berlin? I admit that I cannot really explain, why I never had a doubt I would go to Berlin. It was something in the idealistic sphere, not anything personal, and was therefore a truly free choice. In spring 1984, I moved to Berlin. Through a friend, I found a sunny apartment in the Zwinglistrasse, Moabit, not far from the Spree. Shortly after, I was invited to become a member of the Neue Gesellschaft für Literatur (New Society for Literature) by virtue of a few modest texts I had written, one of which was published in an anthology of the  NGL (Aufenthalt, Berlin 1988 ). I was offered office work in the bilbiophile publishing company the Friedenauer Presse.  In the year I worked there the poems of the Dutch poet Judith Herzberg were published and a short story of Puškin. During this time, an NGL-colleague invited me and a third person to produce together (as a trio) an anthology. This book was to become a project that a radio commentator would call the “Book of the Century”. Title of the book: I beg the Lord not to hear, subtitle: Literary Response to Violence. Our trio consisted of: Deborah Fahrend, an American poet from California, who also financed the project, myself, and Wanjiru Kinyanjui, a young filmmaker and poet from Kenya, who studied at the film academy of West-Berlin.

Half of the poets whose work we took on lived in Berlin. The others came from all over the world and sent in work on our invitation. All texts were printed both in the original and in German translation. I also published some poems of Ankie Peypers, who was still alive, then. On the proposal of Deborah and Wanjiru and for reasons that had to do with African politics of the day, only my name appeared as editor on the title page. Michael Stone, columnist of “Der Tagesspiegel”, wrote the preface. The book appeared in January 1989, simultaneously with the opening of a large exhibition of the same name in Berlin-Wedding, in which the texts were presented to the public together with illustrations by Berlin and foreign artists. During the events on the occasion of the presentation of I beg the Lord…, that lasted a week, some of our foreign writers came to Berlin for the occasion and the press was present. The publication of this book was the highlight of my time in Berlin.

While I compiled I beg the Lord ...., I received the assignment by the Senat of Berlin to organise evenings for foreign writers living in Berlin to present their work to the Berlin public. This was a new initiative by the Senat, and I was the first to receive a (forward) contract in this function; the civil servants involved, were themselves very happy about this initiative. It was very interesting work, which moreover allowed me to accept other projects along with it. In the spring of 1989 the NGL ask me to conduct and coordinate a new production: Paβ:partout, Sammlung internationaler Literatur und Graphik, a printing project of art and literature in portfolio-format that was printed in the MariannenPresse Berlin. Paβ:partout I appeared in October 1989. That same summer, I contributed as a translator to a little booklet with literature from, Malet, not knowing yet that this was to usher me into a complete new phase of my life.

 

While the Maltese authors of Malet, in October 1989, were in Berlin for a week to read from their work, the first reports started to trickle in about mass protests and mass movements in the East, behind the Iron Curtain. Two months later the Wall came down. For us in West Berlin it was an incredible event. We were plunged into an almost ecstatic joy on both sides and we witnessed the speed with which the Wall was pulled down and the power in the East collapsed. There was a reverse side to this, too. The queues in front of the shops were so long, that after a few weeks the shelves of most supermarkets became empty. The supplies to West Berlin were not up to the fresh run-up of consumer goods. It was pure chaos, not only at the breaches in the Wall, but all over the city. There were crowds everywhere, dragging plastic bags, as if they had been starved for ages. This lasted for some time, ebbed away and had died down already, when the souvenir hunters from Western Europe still came to snatch the last pieces of stone from the Wall.

 

January 1990. I wanted to get away from it for a while after this intensive year. A colleague offered me his house in Malta, a friend looked after my apartment in Berlin and I left the city for seven weeks. Relieved actually.

 

I had never been in a Mediterranean country before. I was picked up from the airport of Malta by one of the authors, who received me every Sunday thereafter and showed me the island.  “Do you like Malta?”, was a question that everybody  – be it a bit timid –  put to me, in which the affirmative answer was already built in. But of course. Had I ever seen this before: little boats in a bay so colourful that one wonders just how it can be. People that not only greet each other, but also me. To be able to sit in the sun on a roof terrace in the middle of winter, to eat vegetables that still have a taste, pick oranges from the tree, walk along endless rows of light-coloured buildings and more buildings as far as the eye can see, where people live as if there is no end to life, cars, vehicles on the road that have seen the last war, unabashed noise everywhere and everywhere the sea.

I had gone to Malta to start writing a novel and during these weeks I was able to put the beginning of it to paper. Half a kilometre up the hill from where I stayed was the university with its excellent and freely accessible library. I even received a library pass – was there anything left to be desired? I got to know my Maltese partner.

 

I was not the only one that left Berlin. Many of my friends and acquaintances went to West Germany, either temporarily or permanently. This is not the place to go into detail about the changes in Germany after the fall of the Wall. It is well enough known, I think. There was one thing, though, that affected me directly: I, being non-German, could not wholeheartedly take part in the national joy about the unification. I observed this with interest but uninvolved. And that’s why in this one respect I estranged a bit from my German friends.

 

In April 1990, in consultation with my Maltese partner, I moved to Malta, yet without giving up my apartment – my “suitcase in Berlin”. At first we stayed in the family house in Birkirkara, later on, I had my own apartment in Sliema, close to the sea and close to my work. In Malta, I learnt finesse of the commercial side of life. During my first summer I gave German conversation lessons in the German-Maltese Circle of Valletta, a Maltese variant of the Goethe-Institute. Thereafter, I had a dynamic job in tourism as an interpreter, mainly for German and English, and even my Dutch was already required. I was even given a working permit – a precious document in those days when Malta strictly kept away foreign employees.

 

I lived and worked in Malta for seven years. Apart from the personal connection to the island, that still exists to this very day, I developed an interest in the Maltese Stone-Age, of which I may call myself a connoisseur.

 

Since the autumn of 1996, I have returned to The Netherlands, settled in Eibergen in Oost-Gelderland and established my translation agency. In June 2004, I was sworn in by the Court of Zutphen for the German language. Ever since, I act both as a court interpreter and translator, specialising in juridical texts and business translations.  Since 2000, I also organise trips to Malta for groups and individuals with a special interest in the Maltese Stone-Age. This year’s journey is scheduled for 2 - 9 November 2008. Please feel free to contact me for more details.