Als een laatste liefdesdienst: Willem Kloos’ editie van Jacques Perks Gedichten (1882)

In 1882 the enthusiast, bohemian-like, 23-year-old poet Willem Kloos edited the posthumous collection of Jacques Perks poems in collaboration with his elderly, more moderate, literary and socially well-established colleague Carel Vosmaer. The book is a poetical manifesto, more particularly Kloos’s introduction to the poems. The publication of this book had the effect of a literary roadside bomb. The book also served as a semi-biographical monument for the deceased Perk. In terms of literary text edition it is a monstrosity. In short: it is beautiful and powerful, precisely because Kloos wasn’t a professional editor. He greedily emended the poems as if they were his own.