Gerrit Achterberg

In the same year, he made his literary debut together with Arie Dekkers, who had encouraged him to write, together publishing De Zangen van Twee Twintigers (English: The Songs of Two Twenty-Somethings).

Achterberg published his collection "Afvaart" in 1931, in which his famous theme, of a love irrevocably lost, was already strongly present.

In 1946 he married his childhood friend Cathrien van Baak, with whom he lived in Leusden until he died from a heart attack in 1962.

Coetzee included this sonnet sequence in an anthology of his English translations of Dutch poetry entitled Landscape with Rowers (2004).

[2] Earlier in his career, Coetzee also wrote an essay on this sonnet sequence, titled: 'Achterberg's "Ballade van de gasfitter": The Mystery of I and You' (1977),[3] Media related to Gerrit Achterberg at Wikimedia Commons