Poetry
May
Mei
Herman Gorter · 1889
Opening lines
Een nieuwe lente en een nieuw geluid:
Ik wil dat dit lied klinkt als het gefluit,
Dat ik vaak hoorde voor een zomernacht
In een oud stadje, langs de watergracht -
A new spring and a new sound:
I want this song to ring like the whistling
That I often heard before a summer night
In an old town, along the canal,
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from dbnl.org
Synopsis
A poet announces a new song and sets out to tell the life of Mei, the young girl he loves. Mei reaches a shore on the very night when her sister April, who has died, is carried away, and spring opens at her passing: the sea, the meadows, the old towns beside the canals. She wanders with the poet, looks, listens, recognises in him something of another. For she has fallen in love with Balder, a blind god who lives only for the music of his soul, and she wants to go all the way to him.
Context
The poem was written from August 1886 to November 1888; on 15 November, its author announced to his friend Alphons Diepenbrock that “the thing” was finished. The first of the three cantos appeared in February 1889 in De Nieuwe Gids, the journal of the Tachtigers, and the whole in book form in March from W. Versluys, in Amsterdam. It made a strong impression at once and has never ceased to be reprinted; it is still read in public from beginning to end, in relays. Two English translations appeared in 2021, and Nicolas Ouwehand translated it into French.
Who it is for
A poem of 4,381 rhymed iambic lines, in three cantos. The narrative is thin and everything comes through sensation; English and French translations make it possible to follow.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the summit of the poetry of the movement of 1880, and its first line as the most famous in the language; thirteenth in 2002, forty-fourth in 2022.