Hendrik Jan Marsman (14 January 1937 – 29 October 2012), better known by his pen name, J. Bernlef, was a Dutch writer, poet, novelist and translator, much of whose work centres on mental perception of reality and its expression.

1958 was a key year in Bernlef's life, during which he spent some time in Sweden, enabling him years later to translate Swedish writers; he also co-edited the English language A pulp magazine for the dead generation (under the name Henk Marsman) with the Beat poet Gregory Corso, published from Paris by Piero Heliczer’s The Dead Language Press.

[1] Together with two other poets, K. Schippers and G. Brands, he went on to visit the Dada exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum and inspired by that launched with them the seminal magazine Barbarber (1958-71).

He was an industrious writer and shortly before his death a photo showed the pile of his works as equaling him in height.

In the late 1980s, he had taken over as director of The PEN Emergency Fund, a lifeline to writers and their families whose lives had been blighted by prison, threats, torture and censorship, and worked untiringly for their relief.

[6] Barbarber, the magazine set up by Bernlef and his friends in 1958, originally came out in an edition of 100 copies and was filled with Neo-Dadaist gestures, ready-mades and both verbal and pictorial collages.

Eclips (1993) captures the reverse process as the victim of an accident whose mind has been incapacitated slowly returns to normality.