Background

Henriette Goverdine Anna "Jet" Roland Holst-van der Schalk was born on December, 24, 1869, in Noordwijk, Netherlands, to an intellectual, influential family and grew up in a mansion of Theodore Willem van der Schalk and Anna Ida van der Schalk-van der Hoeven.

Education

Henriette attended boarding school in Arnhem and received private education in Liege.

Career

In 1888 Henriette wrote her first love poem in French to a young baritone at the Liège opera company, ‘Et quand vous reviendrez, je ne serai plus là’. She met her husband, the painter Richard Roland Holst, in 1892 during Paul Verlaine's visit to the Netherlands. She was introduced to the French poet as the ‘jeune poète hollandaise’. Six months later she made her debut with six sonnets published in De Nieuwe Gids, the journal of the Men of the ‘Eighties (‘Tachtigers’) that breathed new life into Dutch literature.

At the end of the nineteenth century, many Dutch artists turned to socialism under the influence of the British social reformer and artist William Morris, who perceived socialism as an improved version of medieval religious society. Henriette Roland Holst and her husband, a personal friend of Morris, were among them. They shared his belief that artistic renewal was impossible without social renewal in the socialist sense.

Henriette and Gorter became editors of the theoretical journal De Nieuwe Tijd. She practised Marxist literary criticism and spoke at meetings. In 1900 Henriette attended the International Socialist Congress in Paris. This was the fifth congress of the Second International (successor to the First International in which Marx played a prominent role). Here she met leading international social democrats such as Karl Kautsky, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg and Jean Jaurès. She spent many days attending meetings with international figures, and enjoyed the atmosphere of passionate intellectual debate.

In addition to poetry and political propaganda, Henriette published influential theoretical works during this period, including the much-praised Capital and Labour in the Netherlands (Kapitaal en Arbeid in Nederland, 1902). At Kautsky's request she wrote - in German - General Strike and Social Democracy (Generalstreik und Sozialdemokratie, 1905), a book that was translated into many languages. So too were the articles she wrote for the influential German journal Die Neue Zeit.

Influenced by her international circle of Marxist friends, she took a stand against reformism and revisionism in social democracy. This led to dramatic conflicts of principle that were serious enough to result in a schism within the SDAP in 1909. The Marxist wing split from the party and called itself the SDP (Social Democratic Party). Initially, Henriette remained a member of the SDAP, but found herself in a somewhat isolated position.

Despite the support she received from Kautsky, she suffered a nervous breakdown and left the SDAP in 1912. The anguish she felt as a result of her isolation and her inability to make a political choice found its expression in the anthology The Woman in the Wood (De vrouw in het woud, 1912), the drama Thomas More (1912) and a biography of Jacques Rousseau.

Henriette did not become politically active again until the beginning of the First World War. Strongly influenced by the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg, she founded the Revolutionary Socialist Party, an organisation of radical Marxists from within and outside existing parties. She also founded the journal De Internationale. In 1915, she was the only Dutch delegate to attend the Zimmerwald Conference, a secret international gathering of radical socialists - including Lenin and Trotsky - held in Switzerland. At the Zimmerwald Conference, the foundations were laid for the Third International, or Comintern. Roland Holst's meeting with Trotsky inspired a devotion that bordered on love.

In 1916 Henriette and her Revolutionary Socialist Party joined the SDP - which Gorter had joined when it was founded. This move was instigated by Lenin, who gave Henriette the leadership of the international Marxist publication Vorbote. In the same year, the SDP organ De Tribune became a daily newspaper. Roland Holst became one of its chief editors and helped to finance the publication.

After the war, Roland Holst, widowed since 1938, settled in Amsterdam. She remained politically active up to her death. She also supported Indonesian independence, which came about in 1949. Vice President Hatta of Indonesia honoured her with a visit to show his gratitude for her work.

Achievements

• 

  Henriette Roland Holst was the greatest Dutch poetess of the twentieth century. She was considered a legend by many of her contemporaries for her literary prowess and the passionate political activism which placed her on the international scene.
  
  She also earned respect with her presence on the international scene, in particular through her attendance at the secret international socialist conference in Zimmerwald in 1915, where she was the only Dutch participant, and the congress of the Comintern in Moscow in 1921, as well as through her friendships with such figures as Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, and Leon Trotsky.
  
  Roland Holst's significance derives not only from the image that she and her followers created, but also from the way in which she struggled to overcome her inner conflict. As a writer and poet she publicly testified to her crises of conscience, her changing beliefs, the splits with former political sympathisers, and the ethical questions with which she struggled. She thus came to personify the political and moral dilemmas of the twentieth century.
  
  Her engagement in the history of that period is the very source of her poetic art. She was involved in all the important events and developments of her time, and she made choices she regretted and mistakes that she acknowledged. That experience enabled her to develop independent beliefs that still command respect today. As a communist, she condemned Stalin's dictatorship early on. In the 1920s and 1930s she warned against the dangers of fascism and National Socialism.
  
  Henriette was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Sonnetten En Verzen In Terzinen 1895
  • Kapitaal En Arbeid In Nederland 1902
  • De Vrouw In Het Woud 1912
  • Het Feest Der Gedachtenis 1915
  • Het Vuur Brandde Voort 1949
  • Jean Jacques Rousseau 1912
  • De Held En De Schare 1920

Religion

Henriette Roland Holst came to religion late in life. Precisely how and when, she herself could not say, although she acknowledged that it was largely a reaction to her disillusionment with communism. Her poetry had always tended towards the religious; her early work was clearly inspired by mysticism. It is not difficult to prove that, in her politics too, Henriette Roland Holst had always been a believer. She experienced socialism and communism as religions.

Politics

A socialist, Roland Holst began to use her literary talent to fight for the rights of workers. Her translation of the International anthem was still being used by socialists in the Netherlands at the end of the twentieth century. However, her activism was not limited to writing. She assisted in organizing strikes and demonstrations and was instrumental in organizing the great railroad strike of 1902.

From 1917 to 1927, Henriette Roland Holst was a communist. After the Russian Revolution in 1917 the SDP joined the Comintern and called itself the Dutch Communist Party. During the unsuccessful Dutch ‘revolution’ of November 1918 Roland Holst led workers and soldiers in a demonstration in Amsterdam - an action that she almost paid for with her life.

Events at home and abroad created more disappointment. World War I had decimated socialist solidarity, there were no workers’ revolution in the Netherlands, and the Russian revolution had failed to live up to its promises. Roland Holst visited the Soviet Union in 1921 and was disillusioned by the totalitarianism of Soviet communism.

In 1927 Roland Holst resigned from the Dutch communist party, focusing on her poetry and other forms of writing such as prose and drama. However, her efforts to improve the lot of the workers did not diminish. Instead, it took the form of religious socialism represented by Bart de Ligt, which renewed her interest in Tolstoy, whose ideas she believed were still applicable in her era. She felt that religious and socialist values had failed individually, but that a utopian society could be achieved if both systems were abandoned in favor of complementary combination of their ideals. She later joined the Communist Workers' Party of the Netherlands, a council communist party.

Even before Hitler came to power in 1933, Roland Holst opposed fascism and National Socialism. She championed the cause of Indonesian independence and, on the occasion of Princess Juliana's wedding to Prince Bernhard in 1937, she wrote a letter to Juliana requesting amnesty for imprisoned Indonesian nationalists such as Sukarno, Hatta and Shahrir.

During the German occupation she worked for the resistance - as far as her advanced age would allow. She refused to join the Chamber of Culture and her calls for support for the Jews led to the founding of the illegal newspaper De Vonk, to which she contributed from early 1941. She took Jews into hiding at her country house in Brabant and wrote resistance poetry under the pseudonym ‘In Liefde Bloeiende’ (‘Blossoming in Love’). She also worked on biographies of international figures such as Victor Hugo (not published), Gandhi and Romain Rolland.

Views

Throughout her life, Henriette's work would mirror her different approaches to her socialist ideals, beginning with great confidence in a communist future in Het Feest der Gedachtenis followed by disillusionment and finally by the introduction of a religious element in Venvorvenheden, Vernieuwingen, and Tussechen Tijd en Eeuwigheid.

Her poetry is described by various critics as being sometimes sloppy, clumsy and even grating, lyric and personal, hesitant and irregular, breathless and passionate, unrestrained and exuberant, expressive of her deep mystical experience of being, and always moving. The poems contain long, flowing sentences running through numerous verses. The classic forms of the sonnet and terza rima are personalized to an extent that only the fourteen-line form remains.

Her poetry expressed the special difficulty of a socially aware woman who cannot be satisfied with the role of wife and mother. She strove as much as possible to ignore the limitations imposed on women but denied her womanhood to identify with male artists advocating art for the sake of art and was able to develop her literary talent and independence, thereby becoming one of the most honored women in Dutch history.

From a young age, Roland Holst needed an all-embracing ideal to work towards and live for. Without such an ideal, which soon came to be embodied in international socialism, she could not develop as a poet. Conversely, her social influence and authority are inextricably linked to her inspired and prophetic work as a poet. For Roland Holst, poetry was the servant of her ideals, to which she devoted herself in countless other ways too. She was acclaimed as a poet because, in her work, she searched for answers to man's existential questions - and this was precisely what was expected of artists at that time.

Her search for existential meaning led her to explore various all-encompassing ideals, which, although formulated in different ways, were essentially the same: brotherly love, justice, community spirit, becoming completely absorbed into a greater whole and, finally, subjection to something that she could hardly define but eventually came to call God. Although she was apparently attracted by dogma, Roland Holst's views changed constantly. This made her unpredictable as a politician, but as a poet, the doubts she so openly experienced were the driving force behind her work. Her idealism and spirit of sacrifice appealed not only to her political sympathizers - an ever-changing group - but also to a much broader audience.

Quotations: "Man's sorrow often will not let me sleep."

Personality

Roland Holst’s life and life’s work were naturally colored by the fact that she was a woman. The Dutch Labor Party asked her to serve in many functions because there were not many women with her skills and talents. Verses from De Vrouw in het Woud, written when she left the Party in 1912, indicate that her dilemma with respect to the splintered organization partly stemmed from the fact that she was a woman and that she wished to be acknowledged by Party members.

Roland Holst’s contemporaries considered her their greatest poetess and noted that her verse reflected her unwavering commitment to a better future for all. Her work is voluminous and her political and personal lives were inextricably linked.

On her death in 1952, Henriette Roland Holst was hailed as the greatest poet in the Netherlands. Yet her poems, contrary to prevailing opinion at the time, have not become classic works. The poetry which won her so much acclaim as a socialist, communist and later a religious socialist, is largely characterized by her presumption to speak for ‘humanity’, which found its expression in high-flown language. Yet her oeuvre is strewn with works that express doubt and uncertainty, in stark contrast to the certainty she desired. These verses, which she wrote without the ‘prophet's cloak’ about her shoulders, still move those that read them today.

Henriette had deep slumps. She suffered from depression, bouts of anorexia, anemia and heart disease but when she was well she struggled with an unrelenting zeal to improve the position of workers, youth, and women.

Quotes from others about the person

• "She was driven by her vision and indignation, and for more than 40 years with her enormous energy and interest she devoted herself orally and in writing to propaganda for a socialist society." - K.F. Proost

Connections

Henriette married Richard Nicolaas Roland Holst, a painter, in 1896.

Father:

Theodore Willem van der Schalk

August 6, 1841 - June 29, 1892

Mother:

Anna Ida van der Schalk-van der Hoeven

February 17, 1842 - April 23, 1914

husband:

Richard Nicolaas Roland Holst

December 4, 1868 - December 31, 1938

Richard Nicolaus Roland Holst was a Dutch painter.

Friend:

Herman Gorter

26 November 1864 – 15 September 1927

Herman Gorter was a Dutch poet and socialist. He was a leading member of the Tachtigers, a highly influential group of Dutch writers who worked together in Amsterdam in the 1880s, centered on De Nieuwe Gids (The New Guide).

mentor:

Jan Toorop

20 December 1858 – 3 March 1928

Johannes Theodorus 'Jan' Toorop was a Dutch-Indonesian painter, who worked in various styles, including Symbolism, Art Nouveau, and Pointillism.

Friend:

Rosa Luxemburg

5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919

Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist, anti-war activist and revolutionary socialist who became a naturalized German citizen at the age of 28.

Friend:

Karl Kautsky

16 October 1854 – 17 October 1938

Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Friend:

Leon Trotsky

7 November 1879 – 21 August 1940

Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, was a Soviet revolutionary, Marxist theorist, and politician whose particular strain of Marxist thought is known as Trotskyism.

References

• Biographical Dictionary of Marxism
  1986
• Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders The dictionary defines the parameters of peace advocacy, surveys the different approaches taken in antiwar efforts, and provides information on many individuals who have either contributed to organized peace efforts or who have questioned war and organized violence.
  1985
• Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern
  1986
• Literature of the low countries: A short history of Dutch literature in the Netherlands and Belgium
  1971
• Poetry of the Netherlands in Its European Context, 1170-1930 This survey of Dutch and Flemish poetry from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Century pays special attention to its contacts with, and, during certain periods, its positive influence upon the literatures of other European countries.
  1960