Background
Willem Bilderdijk was the son of an Amsterdam physician. His parents were ardent partisans of the House of Orange-Nassau, and Bilderdijk grew up with strong monarchical and Calvinistic convictions.
Willem Bilderdijk was the son of an Amsterdam physician. His parents were ardent partisans of the House of Orange-Nassau, and Bilderdijk grew up with strong monarchical and Calvinistic convictions.
Willem Bilderdijk studied law at the University of Leyden, and practiced as a lawyer at The Hague.
Bilderdijk's production was enormous. He wrote a great number of ballads, an epic, satires, lyrical verses, religious poetry, and dramas with astonishing fluency. His excellent command of the language, his brilliant fantasy, the dramatic accent of his more personal lyrics, made him dominate the Dutch literary scene for many years. In politics he was the proponent of the theory of royalty by divine right, a concept which he vigorously defended, though it was already antiquated in his time.
Bilderdijk's fame has greatly diminished. His language and the subjects he treated are now of little interest, but many of his romantic ballads are still alive, and several of his religious and sensual poems have a quality that puts them among the best works of Dutch poetry.
