The fourth edition, published by Nijgh & Van Ditmar in The Hague in 1986, contained the Dutch originals for those poems translated into French by Slauerhoff, and translations of his original French poems by Hans van Straten.

[1] Seven of the original French poems with translations by van Straten were published in 1986 in the Dutch literary magazine De Tweede Ronde.

Marais cites a study by Van der Paardt, who argues that Slauerhoff has a profound distaste of visible, rationally comprehensible reality and attempts to seek the more absolute, ideal reality behind the visible one: Slauerhoff attempts to escape earthly limitations of time and space, and to develop a symbolic poetic which expresses the inexpressible.

[5] A recurring theme in Slauerhoff's work is Macau; it is the setting of his 1931 novel Het verboden rijk, in which Luís de Camões was one of the two protagonists.

Oost-Azië's Macao section is dedicated to Constâncio José da Silva, an important Macanese newspaper editor.