Te leven op duizend plaatsen. Jo Otten 1901-1940

Abstract

In the period between the world wars the Rotterdam author Jo Otten revealed a view of the world in his writings that can be called fairly unique in Dutch literature. The first fruits of Otten's pen were born during his education, when he studied Trade Economics. These are texts steeped in a melancholic atmosphere and betray the thinking of the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Over the years Otten became convinced that everything in life was dependant on a position of satisfaction. In his critical work he reacted to stagnation by pleading for a 'mobile' way of life, where everything was constantly on the move. It describes the hyper-awareness of the modernist: a person subject to doubt, who resists stagnation and reflects this in his work. Otten introduced his critical view of the world in the essay Mobiliteit en revolutie (Mobility and Revolution) (1932). In this essay he applauded the 'mobile person', an autonomous, chameleon-like figure who tries to escape social stagnation in various ways, some of them even surrealistic. Otten put into words the fundamental unrest that is the consequence of such a way of life in his kaleidoscopic novella Bed en wereld (Bed and World) (1932).