On March 16, 2024, the Dutch writer, Slavic literature scholar, essayist and translator Kees Verheul, who made a huge contribution to Russian-Dutch literary contacts, passed away. As a researcher and translator of works by Russian poets and prose writers (Brodsky, Annensky, Akhmatova, Platonov, Mandelstam, etc.) and as a teacher of Russian literature at the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Groningen, he sought to bring Russian literature closer to Dutch readers. As a participant in the Nijhoff Readings and other Dutch literature events in Russia, as well as the editor and co-author of the three-volume history of Dutch literature From “Reynard the Fox” to “Dream of the Gods” (2013–2015), he has helped our compatriots to understand the world of his native culture. As a member of the jury of the prestigious Martinus Nijhoff Vertaalprijs Translation Award and head of a number of large translation projects, he has done much to raise the standard of translations from Russian into Dutch and from Dutch into Russian. The article dedicated to his memory focuses on the origins of his work: based on new data, it describes Verheul’s first steps as a grammar school student in the literary field, his first acquaintance with Russian letters, and traces the connection between the underlying ideas of his books and his life philosophy, which also manifested itself in his everyday relationships with people. In addition, the author of the article — translator of K. Verheul’s works into Russian — shares the lessons of literary translation that Verheul taught her. The article concludes with a fragment of a poem written by Verheul in his grammar school years.
Michajlova I. IN MEMORIAM KEES VERHEUL (FEBRUARY 9, 1940 — MARCH 16, 2024)