Authors

Dutch · 1864–1927

Herman Gorter

Herman Gorter was a Dutch poet whose epic poem Mei (May, 1889) — an allegorical tale of spring written in an innovative free rhythm that reinvented the classical hexameter — is the masterpiece of the Dutch Tachtigers movement. He later became a committed Marxist and devoted much of his energy to communist politics, writing political pamphlets rather than poetry. His early lyric work, especially Mei and the Sensitivist poems, remains his literary legacy.