Ode to Jacoba van Velde | Dutch writer, translator, ballet dancer, dramatist and literary agent

This text was translated using AI and may contain errors. If you have suggestions or comments, please contact us at info.ode@amsterdammuseum.nl.

De Zaak Muurbloem, of which I am a member, aims to make women visible and findable with their work. In our search for writers who we think deserve a street name, I came across information on the internet about Jacoba van Velde (The Hague 10 May 1903 - Amsterdam 7 September 1985). And although I have not yet read her work, I am deeply impressed by her multifaceted qualities. Her frustration at the lack of recognition touched me, which is why I was moved when I read about her last hours in this life, how she was assisted by and received recognition from the nursing staff. That is why I want to pay tribute to writer Jacoba van Velde.

Jacoba van Velde was a Dutch writer, translator, ballet dancer, dramaturge and literary agent. Her debut novel ‘De grote zaal’ (The Great Hall) was published in 1953 and was translated into 13 languages within 10 years. Around 75,000 copies of this existentialist novel were sold during her lifetime. In 2010, the book was given away for free to members of all public libraries as part of the national ‘Netherlands reads’ campaign.

Jacoba van Velde came from a working-class family; she attended primary school until the age of 10. At 17, she left for Paris, where she studied dance. With a male dance partner, she formed the dance duo ‘Pola Maslowa & Rabanoff. Together they toured cabarets and variety theatres in many European countries. Her brothers Geer and Bram van Velde also lived in Paris and would make a name for themselves as painters after World War II.

Under the pseudonym Tonny Clerx, she became literary agent of Irish writer and poet Samuel Beckett just after World War II. She resigned this position in 1947 to concentrate on her own writing. She played a very important role in introducing Beckett's work to our country. She did so both by translating much of it and with her work as dramaturge for French drama at the Studio company, to which she was attached from 1965 to 1971. Besides Becket's works, she also translated authors such as E.T.A. Hoffman, Edgar Ellen Poe and Arthur Schnitzler into Dutch.

Jacoba van Velde was instrumental in introducing absurdist theatre to the Netherlands in the 1950s.

After ‘De grote zaal’, she wrote her second and last novel ‘Een blad in de wind’ (A Leaf in the Wind) in 1961. This received less favourable reviews. She never completed her third novel ‘De verliezers’ (The Losers). 

Jacoba van Velde lived alternately in Paris and Amsterdam. In the 1970s, she lived on the Herengracht in Amsterdam. She suffered from ill health, her poor material situation and lack of recognition. Her fame was far dwarfed by that of Beckett, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969. And also to that of her brothers, Bram and Geer, now internationally famous painters.

It made her feel bitter.

In her final years, she got more lost in the mists of her own mind. In her Herengracht flat, some young nurses took care of Jacoba on a daily basis for a while. On 5 June 1985, she broke her hip and ended up in care home ‘Vreugdenhof’ in Buitenveldert. She was in a room with five demented women, with whom any contact was impossible. On 7 September 1985, the carers formed a chain around her bed and read passages from her novel: ‘My sadness is so great that I would love to cry. But what would it help? There is no other way out for me. From the small room I will go to the big room. And a day will come when I will lie like this. Alone! Will I be alone even in the last hour.’

In the late-night hour Jacoba van Velde died. Lonely but not alone.

Marianne de Wit