A minor poet

Jan (Joannes) Six van Chandelier (1620-1695) is a minor poet of the midseventeenth century, whose lasting presence in the historiography of Dutch literature is largely due to the publication of a single volume: the 1657-edition of his collected poems, simply entitled Poësy. In its own time, the volume appears not to have been very successful, and it was never reprinted (Porteman & Smits-Veldt, 2008, p. 519). To be immediately clear, in describing Six as a minor poet I am not using that label in any derogatory sense of the adjective. Minor poets are not necessarily lesser poets, as John Ashbery has reminded us in the Charles Eliot Norton-lectures that he delivered at Harvard in the academic year 1989-1990. Drawing on W.H. Auden, Ashbery pointed out that while we make use of both quantitative and qualitative criteria in our attempts to distinguish major poets from minor ones, the former set of criteria definitely prevails. Major poets (both Auden and Ashbery would be good examples) have a more substantial poetic output, a diverse set of publications spread over the years that make up the author's poetic career. Also, they write on a wider range of topics. In the larger course of their work, they tend to take their time in developing a personal voice and a concomitant view on the artistic project that their work embodies. That development usually enables critics to distinguish early from later phases in the careers of major poets. On average, minor poets do not have that distinct vision, but what their work is said to lack primarily is the development that underlies the genesis of their singular voice. However, Ashbery quotes Auden as saying, ‘[o]ne cannot say that a major poet writes better poems than a minor; on the contrary, the chances are that, in the course of his lifetime the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor’ (Ashbery, 2000, p. 7).

Without wanting to open a discussion on who should be regarded as the true major poets of the Dutch seventeenth century (Vondel, Hooft, Huygens and Cats would be the usual suspects, but with respect to the latter two there might be disagreement among critics), I am quite confident that most scholars working in the field would agree that Six does not belong to that (premier) league.