Pieter Cornelis Boutens

Pieter Cornelis Boutens[1] (February 20, 1870 – March 14, 1943) was a Dutch poet, classicist, and mystic.

In 1894 he accepted the post of teacher of classical languages at the Noorthey boarding school for boys in Voorschoten, at the time a renowned institute for young people from aristocratic families.

After a physical collapse in 1904 and a subsequent holiday in Tyrol, he settled in The Hague, where he earned his living by private tuition and the financial support of some aristocratic friends he had met at Noorthey.

In the last year of his life, during the German occupation in World War II, he also became a member of the Gleichschaltung professional artists' association, the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer.

This taint did not hinder his posthumous fame as a poet and translator: his voluminous collected works were successively published in seven volumes from 1943-1954.

Portrait by Jan Toorop (1905)
Portrait of Boutens (1914) by Willem van Konijnenburg