Informazioni generali

Nome canonico: Dermoût, Maria
Nome legale: Dermoût-Ingermann, Helena Antonia Maria Elisabeth
Data di nascita: 1888-06-15
Data di morte: 1962-06-27
Luogo di sepoltura: Algemene Begraafplaats, Noordwijk, Zuid-Holland, Nederland
Sesso: female
Nazionalità: Nederland
Luogo di nascita: Suikerfabriek Tirto, Pekalongan, Midden-Java, Nederlands-Indië
Luogo di morte: Den Haag, Zuid-Holland, Nederland
Luogo di residenza: Pekalongan, Midden-Java, Nederlands-Indië
Ngandjoek, Midden-Java, Nederlands-Indië
Haarlem, Noord-Holland, Nederland
Pati, Midden-Java, Nederlands-Indië
Garoet, West-Java, Nederlands-Indië
Ambon, Molukken, Nederlands-Indië (mostra tutto 10)
Semarang, Midden-Java, Nederlands Indië
Batavia, Java, Nederlands-Indië
Den Haag, Zuid-Holland, Nederland
Noordwijk aan Zee, Noord-Holland, Nederland
Attività lavorative: Schrijfster
Relazioni: Freriks, Kester (biographer)
Breve biografia: Maria Dermoût, née Ingermann, was born on a sugar plantation in Java in the colonial Dutch East Indies -- now Indonesia -- and sent to the Netherlands at age 11 for her education. In 1907, she married Isaac Dermoût, a civil servant in the judiciary, with whom she had children, and returned with him to the Indies. They spent the next 30 years living in (as she later wrote) "every town and wilderness of the islands of Java, Celebes, and the Moluccas" for her husband's postings. Maria Dermoût did not focus on her writing until after her husband's retirement, when the couple returned to the Netherlands and settled in The Hague. At age 63, she made her publishing debut with the story-memoir Days Before Yesterday (1951). Her celebrated novel The Ten Thousand Things was published in 1955 and became a bestseller. Maria Dermoût produced a total of seven volumes, two of which appeared posthumously. A number of her short stories were translated and published in magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.

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Recensioni

Nog pas gisteren di Maria Dermout

Uitgeleend aan Vale op 10 april 2024

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NeerlandistiekBieb | 3 altre recensioni | Apr 10, 2024 |

Yesterday, a novel di Maria Dermout

Several years ago, I read Dermoût’s best-known work, The Ten Thousand Things. That book contained a series of interconnected stories about life in Indonesia in the early 20th century and I concluded that it was “astonishingly evocative of a time and place, wonderfully lyrical, (dismayingly) short, and a true pleasure to read.” Dermoût (1888-1962) was an “Indo”—a child of Dutch parents born and raised in Indonesia. She wrote The Ten Thousand Things when she was 67. Yesterday is her first work—also a thinly disguised memoir of growing up in a certain time and place—written when she was 63. This work also relies on nostalgia and, though I enjoyed it very much, it didn’t move me as much as The Ten Thousand Things. Still, both books are very successful at evoking her love of place. She is particularly good at observing plants and wildlife, local culture (both Dutch colonial and indigenous), and she has a knack for describing a way of life by painting exceptional portraits of people and their relationships.… (altro)

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Gypsy_Boy | 3 altre recensioni | Mar 8, 2024 |

The Ten Thousand Things di Maria Dermoût

A sad, sad novel of linked stories set in the Dutch colonial Spice Islands.

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Gumbywan | 16 altre recensioni | Jun 24, 2022 |

The Ten Thousand Things di Maria Dermout

"She sat quietly in her chair, they weren't a hundred things but much more than a hundred, and not only hers; a hundred times 'a hundred things,' next to each other, separate from each other, touching here and there flowing into each other, without any link anywhere, and at the same time linked forever...."

After her husband left her, Felicia returns with her young son to the island in the Dutch East Indies where she grew up to live with her grandmother in a house in a lush garden near the tropical inner bay. There's a bit of magical realism here (though only distantly-related to the more well-known Latin American magical realism), and from the beginning we know the garden is inhabited by ghosts, in particularly the ghosts of three small girls who died there. The prose is dreamy and surreal as we follow the day to day lives of Felicia and her grandmother, as Felicia's son Himpies moves through an idyllic childhood to young adulthood.

Then a little more than half-way through the book the focus changes and there are three short-story-like chapters, each focusing on a new and seemingly unrelated character and events, while still being set on the island. This bothered a lot of the readers in the Litsy Book Club, and at first I thought that perhaps the book was not a novel, but actually a novella and short story collection. But in the end, I think it is all tied up fairly well.

The setting of the book is an important part of its appeal, and it is also apparently based in large part on the author's life, as she too grew up in the Dutch East Indies, and returned as an adult. For me, some parts were evocative of my childhood growing up on a tropical island in the Dutch West Indies. This is one I recommend, but it for some reason was not one I was constantly thinking about when not reading it, or one I felt compelled to keep reading.

3 stars

FIRST LINE: "On the island in the Moluccas there were a few gardens left from the great days of spice growing and 'spice parks'--a few only."

LAST LINE: "Then the lady of the Small Garden whose name was Felicia stood up from her chair obediently and was looking around at the inner bay in the moonlight--it would remain there always--she went with them, under the trees and indoors, to drink her cup of coffee and try again to go on living."… (altro)

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arubabookwoman | 16 altre recensioni | Jan 21, 2022 |

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