Jacques Fabrice Herman Perk

Jacques Fabrice Herman Perk (10 June 1859 – 1 November 1881) was an important Dutch poet of the late 19th century. His crown of sonnets Mathilde, published by Willem Kloos, was the first important announcement of a renewal in Dutch poetry brought about by artists that came to be known as the Tachtigers. Perk's lyrical poems about nature, especially his sonnets, were influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and were of great importance to Dutch poetry.

Youth and education

Jacques Perk was born into a prominent family; he was the son of Marie Adrien Perk, a minister in the Walloon church (part of the Dutch Reformed Church), and a nephew of Betsy Perk, an important suffragette. Perk's father preached in French, and was a progressive with great literary interests and acquaintances. Perk grew up in an environment that resembled European aristocracy more than Dutch bourgeoisie.

This literary environment was conducive to young Jacques, who began writing poetry around age 10. In 1872 the family moved from Breda to Amsterdam, where Perk attended the Hogere Burgerschool. Influenced by his Dutch teacher Willem Doorenbos, he developed a strong interest in the Renaissance ideal of well-rounded education. Disappointed with the intellectual climate of the HBS, he left it in 1877, and by next year his father had found him a position with the Algemeen Handelsblad, an important liberal newspaper, where he translated and edited from French. He also wrote many short poems, most of them dedicated to the love of his youth, Marie Champury, the daughter of his French teacher at the HBS. Her father had no faith in any relationship his daughter might form with a drop-out who was all too interested in literature, and Marie herself, while honored, was not swayed by the young poet's romanticism, which he expressed in poetry and in a five-act play called Herman en Martha.