JOHAN

VAN

See also:

• JOHAN VAN HEEMSKERK (1597—1656)
• HEEMSKERK, MARTIN JACOBSZ (1498-1574)

HEEMSKERK (1597—1656)  , Dutch poet, was born at Amsterdam in 1597 . He was educated as a child at Bayonne, and entered the university of Leiden in 1617 . In 1621 he went abroad on the grand tour, leaving behind him his first volume of poems, Minnekunst (The Art of Love), which appeared in 1622 . He was absent from Holland four years . He was made master of arts at Bourges in 1623, and in 1624 visited Hugo Grotius in Paris . On his return in 1625 he published Minnepligt (The Duty of Love), and began to practise as an advocate in the Hague . In 1628 he was sent to England in his legal capacity by the Dutch East India Company, to settle the dispute respecting Amboyna . In the same year he published the poem entitled Minnekunde, or the Science of Love: He proceeded to Amsterdam in 164o, where he married Alida, sister of the statesman Van Beuningen . In 1641 he published a Dutch version of Corneille's The Cid, a tragi-comedy, and in 1647 his most famous work, the pastoral romance of Batavische Arcadia, which he had written ten years before . During the last twelve years of his life Heemskerk sat in the upper chamber of the states-general . He died at Amsterdam on the 27th of February 1656 . The poetry of Heemskerk, which fell into oblivion during the 18th century, is once more read and valued .

His famous pastoral, the Batavische Arcadia, which was founded on the Asiree of Honor6 d'Urf6, enjoyed a

great popularity for more than a century, and passed through twelve editions . It provoked a host of more or less able imitations, of which the most distinguished were the Dordrechtsche Arcadia (1663) of Lambert van den Bos (1610-1698), the Saanlandsche Arcadia (1658) of Hendrik Sooteboom (1616–1678) and the Rotterdamsche Arcadia (1703) of Willem den Elger (d . 1703) . But the original work of Heemskerk, in which a party of nymphs and shepherds go out from the Hague to Katwijk, and there indulge in polite and pastoral discourse, surpasses all these in brightness and versatility .