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Herman Rudolf "Rudy" Kousbroek (1 November 1929 – 4 April 2010) was a Dutch poet, translator, writer and first of all essayist. He was a prominent figure in Dutch cultural life between 1950 and 2010 and one of the most outspoken atheists in the Netherlands. In 1975 he was awarded the P.C. Hooft Prize for his essays. His principal work is the book ''Het Oostindisch kampsyndroom'' (The East Indian Camp Syndrome), a compilation of critical essays that are in one way or the other related to the Dutch East Indies and clearly show his admiration for Dutch Indo-Eurasian authors like E. du Perron, Tjalie Robinson, Beb Vuyk as well as Indonesian intellectual Sutan Sjahrir.〔Topics covered include chapters on colonial mentality, Japanese occupation, post colonial trauma, nostalgia, Dutch and Indonesian literature (Sutan Sjahrir, E. du Perron, Beb Vuyk) and many more. See: Kousbroek, Rudy ''Het Oostindisch kampsyndroom.'' (Publisher: Olympus, 2005) ISBN 978-90-467-0203-1 〕 == Life == Rudy Kousbroek was born in Pematang Siantar, on the isle of Sumatra, in the Dutch East Indies. The first sixteen years of his life he lived there. During the Japanese occupation he and his family were imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp. After World War II his family repatriated to the Netherlands. He studied mathematics and physics in Amsterdam and Japanese in Paris. He never finished his studies, but he had thoroughly absorbed the culture of both the sciences and the humanities, what C. P. Snow has called The Two Cultures. Scientific thinking and empiricism remained the core of his world view.〔See: (Kousbroek, Rudy ), Digitale bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse letteren (DBNL).〕 He lived in France for many years but returned to the Netherlands in the early 1970s. He became for some time the moving spirit of the Cultural Supplement of NRC Handelsblad. His range of interests was very broad: he wrote poetry for children, analysed with subtlety human emotions, such as: longing, nostalgia, sexuality, love for cars, love for animals. Indonesian and Indo Eurasian culture and literature as well as the aftermath of colonialism remained a lifelong interest. He has written quite a lot about the visual arts and photography. He advocated a more prominent role of the natural sciences in intellectual discourse and education. In the 1950s Kousbroek became friends with Willem Frederik Hermans, a Dutch writer who is considered one of the best Dutch writers of the 20th century. They had many interests in common: the scientific worldview, cars, typewriters, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, surrealism, atheism, literature. The friendship ended in the 1970s with a quarrel about the reliability of Friedrich Weinreb's memoirs. The correspondence between Hermans, Kousbroek and Ethel Portnoy, who was Kousbroek's wife at the time, has been published under the title ''Machines en emoties'' (2009) (Machines and emotions).〔''Machines en emoties. Briefwisseling tussen Willem Frederik Hermans, Rudy Kousbroek en Ethel Portnoy tussen 1955 en 1978, becommentarieerd en ingeleid door Willem Otterspeer'', Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2009.〕 Another renowned Dutch writer, Gerard Reve, has also been on friendly terms with Kousbroek. But there remained a gap between the rationalist Kousbroek and the Roman Catholic convert Reve. The latter mocked Kousbroek and his rationalism in his novel ''Het boek van violet en dood'' (1996) (The book of violet and death). Kousbroek had been married to Ethel Portnoy. He later married the Irish writer Sarah Hart. He had three children, two with Ethel Portnoy and one with Sarah Hart. His daughter, Hepzibah Kousbroek (1954–2009) became a writer. His son Gabriël Kousbroek became a professional illustrator. Rudy Kousbroek died aged 80 in Leiden. He sometimes used the pen names ''Leopold de Buch'' or ''Fred Coyett''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rudy Kousbroek」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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