Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Anna Blaman (Johanna Petronella Vrugt)

b. January 31, 1905
d.  July 13, 1960


Anna Blaman, pen name for Johanna Petronella Vrugt (1905-1960), not only was the most important lesbian writer in the 1950s, but also Holland's major woman author of the era. As an intellectual, a public figure, and an independent woman who did not conceal her homosexuality, she was of great importance to Dutch lesbian emancipation.


In her work, however, she expressed a pessimistic view of life, which partially was influenced by French Existentialism. Blaman's protagonists, including the lesbian Berthe in her best-known novel Eenzaam Avontuur (Lonely Adventure [1948]), experience the futility of human existence, an inadequacy in making contact and in knowing and understanding their partners. This existential loneliness is, in Blaman's view, typical of both heterosexual and homosexual individuals."



Enhanced by Zemanta

No comments:

Post a Comment