“I want to be nothing but a voice, one of those many voices that sound up loud or silent from people’s hearts.” -Jacqueline van der Waals
‘Sleeping water’ is a little photo essay about Jacqueline (Lien/Lina/Line) Elisabeth van der Waals and tells the story of a Dutch romantic poet in the beginning of the 20th century. Although she entered the circles of famous Dutch poets like Herman Gorter, Jacqueline would soon be forgotten by the general public after her death in 1922, aged 53 years old. Some think Jacqueline has done injustice in the course of literary history due to that one malicious poem, for which her entire oeuvre has been punished.
Interesting detail is that after the death of Anna Witsen’s father in 1901 up until 1921 Lien and her family spent a number of weeks at Ewijckshoeve every summer, the place where I grew up decades later. Lien must have heard about Anna’s tragedy in 1889. A number of Lien’s poems are originated and inspired on Ewijckshoeve and some of them even refer to Anna’s death. It is remarkable that the two ladies somehow show striking similarities…
Please visit my photo esssay ‘Songs for soprano’ about the life and times of Anna Witsen.
