Gerrit Achterberg (20 May 1905 - 17 January 1962) was a Dutch poet. His early poetry concerned a desire to be united with a beloved in death.
Achterberg was born in Nederlangbroek in the Netherlands as the third son of a family of nine children. He was raised as a Protestant within the Calvinist tradition. His father was a coach man until the automobile gained popularity. Achterberg was a very good student, and in 1924 he embarked on his career as a teacher. In the same year, he made his literary debut together with Arie Dekkers, who had encouraged him to write. Together they published "De Zangen van Twee Twintigers." In 1959 Achterberg received the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire body of works.
Meanwhile, Achterberg became more withdrawn and introverted. After he was turned down by the military due to "sickness of the soul", he threatened to kill himself. This effectively ended his engagement. Achterberg's literary career really started to take off when Roel Houwink presented himself as his mentor. Achterberg published his collection "Afvaart" in 1931, in which his famous theme, that of a love irrevocably lost, was already strongly present. After the publication of "Afvaart", Achterberg suffered a mental breakdown, and was committed to a psychiatric institution several times. His mental instability led him to have occasional violent outbursts.
These eruptions of violence escalated in 1937. At that time, Achterberg was living in Utrecht and was engaged once again. Despite his engagement, however, he fell in love with his landlady, Roel van Es. On December 15, 1937, he tried to force himself on Van Es' daughter Bep. When Van Es tried to stop him he shot her, and wounded her daughter. After the shooting he turned himself in at the police station, after which he was sentenced to involuntary commitment. He was committed until 1943, after which he returned to society. His involuntary commitment and the period that followed did not render him inactive, however. Between 1939 and 1953 he published 22 collections of poetry. In 1946 he married his childhood friend Cathrien van Baak, with whom he lived in Leusden until he died from a heart attack in 1962.
Achterberg's most famous work is the sonnet sequence Ballade van de gasfitter (1953; English translations: A Tourist Does Golgotha and Ballad of the gasfitter). J.M. Coetzee made a translation of the sequence Ballad of the Gasfitter and included it in his bilingual (Dutch-English) anthology of Dutch poetry Landscape with Rowers (2004).[1] Coetzee also wrote an earlier essay on the sequence Ballad of the gasfitter, under the title: 'Achterberg's "Ballade van de gasfitter": The Mystery of I and You' (1977).[2]