Frederik van Eeden
1860–1932
Biography
Frederik van Eeden (1860–1932) was a Dutch writer and psychiatrist, born in Haarlem and dying in Bussum. As a medical student in Amsterdam in the 1880s he lived a bohemian life and wrote poetry, and he went on to become one of the first Dutch psychiatrists to earn an international name. He belonged to the Tachtigers, the generation of young writers who set out to renew Dutch literature in that decade, and from 1885 he was among the leading editors of the magazine De Nieuwe Gids, which became their main platform.
His output covers poetry, novels, plays and essays, and his medical work runs through much of it. He is best known for De kleine Johannes (1887), a fantastical adventure about an ordinary young man who grows up, runs into the hardships of the world, and finds his purpose in serving the people around him. It appeared in the first issue of De Nieuwe Gids. In Van de koele meren des doods (1900) he turned to the psychology of illness again, following a woman's addiction to morphine and her decline.
Van Eeden tried to live the ideals he wrote about. He founded a community called Walden at Bussum, named after Thoreau's book, where members shared what they had and grew as much of their own food as they could, and he accepted a far plainer way of living than he had known before. He is credited with coining the term lucid dream, the name for dreaming while aware that one is dreaming, which is still used in dream research. His own views shifted over the years, and in the early 1900s he moved away from the vegetarianism he had taken up in 1890.
This site lists De kleine Johannes under his name. It is his best-known work and the most direct way into his fiction, and it shows the mix of dreamlike adventure and moral reflection that runs through much of his writing.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
De kleine Johannes
by Frederik van Eeden
Johannes, a boy who loves the dunes and the garden behind his house, is befriended by the elf Windekind, who makes him small enough to live among the insects and flowers and speak their language. His longing for the book that explains everything leads him to stranger and darker…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.