My Delight

Bilderdijk, Willem, 1756-1831Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 95K words
Chapters: 10

Summary

Mijn verlustiging is a work by the Dutch poet Willem Bilderdijk, written in Dutch and prepared as a public-domain electronic text by Project Gutenberg. Bilderdijk is known in Dutch literary history as a poet of strict form and careful metre; this work is short and is better treated as a small doorway into his linguistic world than as a systematic introduction. Its value lies not in plot or narrative but in giving readers direct contact with the diction, rhythm and religious-moral tone of Dutch poetry from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; for learners of Dutch or students of Low Countries literature, it is a primary text to be read aloud repeatedly. Reading requires slowing down and using notes and dictionaries to handle old spellings and allusions; without Dutch, machine translation alone can hardly convey its metrical design.

Editor's review

Mijn verlustiging is a work by the Dutch poet Willem Bilderdijk, written in Dutch and made available as a public-domain electronic text by Project Gutenberg. Bilderdijk is known in Dutch literary history as a poet of strict form and careful prosody; this work is short and better treated as a small doorway into his linguistic world than as a systematic introduction. Its value lies not in plot or narrative but in giving readers direct contact with the diction, rhythm, and religious-moral tone of Dutch poetry from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century; for those learning Dutch or studying Low Countries literature, it is a primary text to be read aloud repeatedly. Reading requires a slow pace and the use of notes and dictionaries to handle old spelling and allusions; without Dutch, machine translation alone can hardly convey its prosodic design.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Intermediate and advanced language learners of Dutch who wish to engage with poetry in the original
Scholars and students of Dutch literary history and Bilderdijk's work
Readers interested in European religious lyric poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Literature enthusiasts who enjoy short verse and are willing to read slowly and check references

Not a good fit for

General readers with no Dutch who expect a smooth translation
Readers who prefer fiction with plot and strong narrative
Beginners seeking a modern annotated edition or detailed introduction

Reading tips

Read through once for overall impression, marking recurring words and images, then look up words paragraph by paragraph.
Read aloud to feel the rhythm and line breaks, annotating old spelling rules as needed.
Read alongside chapters on Bilderdijk in Dutch literary histories to avoid taking the work out of its period context.
After each section, write two or three summary sentences noting shifts in tone and where the moral exhortation lands.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can I read this book without knowing Dutch?

You can grasp the general sense with a bilingual dictionary and machine translation, but rhythm, diction, and religious tone are hard to convey; for literary study, use a reliable translation or annotated edition rather than treating machine translation as final understanding.

Is this a long narrative work?

No. It is a short verse work focused on linguistic form and lyric or exhortative tone rather than continuous plot; readers should read slowly by stanza rather than seeking story progression.

What background should I know before reading?

At minimum, know the Dutch literary environment of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century in which Bilderdijk worked and the common expressions of religious-moral discourse of the time; this background helps in understanding the allusions and exhortative tone of the poems.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Bilderdijk, Willem, 1756-1831 Author

Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831) was a Dutch poet and scholar, known in Dutch literary history for his wide learning and dignified style. Public information about him is limited, and the details of his life are difficult to set out fully, yet the three works held here give a sense of his writing. Mijn verlustiging is chiefly personal and reflective, with a contemplative, introspective tone; De ondergang der Eerste Wareld draws on the destruction of an ancient world, showing his ambition in handling grand themes and mythological imagination; and Kort verhaal van eene aanmerkelijke luchtreis en nieuwe planeetontdekking ventures into air travel and the discovery of a new planet, an early science-fiction-like imaginative narrative. These works span a considerable range of subjects and together show a writer equally at home in lyric, epic and fantastic narrative, with some influence on later Dutch-language literature.