Partner Marie van der Zeyde
Queer Places:
Bilderdijklaan 14, 3723 DC Bilthoven, Netherlands
Zutphenseweg 120, 7211 EE Eefde, Netherlands
Ida Gardina Margaretha Gerhardt (Gorinchem, 11 May 1905 – Warnsveld, 15 August 1997) was a Dutch poet and classicist. She has also translated literature from Latin and Hebrew, including the psalm translation from 1972, which was also included in the Willibrord translation three years later.
Ida Gerhardt's parents were Dirk Reinier Gerhardt and Grietje Blankevoort, who married in 1898. Their children were Truus (1899-1960), Everardus (1901), who lived only one day, Ida and Mia (1918-1988). The family moved from Alkmaar to Gorinchem in 1904 after Dirk Gerhardt had found work there as director of a craft school. The sisters were eager to learn. That was not to the liking of the mother, with whom Ida had a bad relationship. In 1916 Ida went, also against the wishes of her mother, to the Erasmiaans Gymnasium, where she was taught by the poet J.H. Leopold, who inspired Ida and also her later life partner Marie van der Zeyde to the love for classical literature, philosophy and poetry.
After Ida graduated in 1924, she studied classical languages in Leiden. At that time, her mother became mentally ill and had to be admitted to an institution. Gerhardt's later poem De Mantel is about this major event. Not much later, Ida was evicted from her parental home. She had to study further away in Utrecht and was no longer financially supported. One bright spot was that there she met Marie van der Zeyde, who was studying Dutch literature there. Gerhardt had Van der Zeyde read one of her earliest verses. In 1933 Gerhardt passed her doctoral exam, but there were no jobs in the crisis period. She became unemployed and poor. In 1934 she was readmitted to her parental home. In the same year, her mother died. In 1935 Gerhardt started writing poems in earnest. Her sister Truus Gerhardt had also developed into a poet and then published her first collection: The Angel with the Sundial. A year later Gerhardt's first poem, Kinderspel, appeared in the magazine Tijd en Taak, for which Marie van der Zeyde also worked. Eventually she found work at the Stedelijk Gymnasium in Groningen. A negative criticism by Marie van der Zeyde of Truus' second collection, Laagland (1937), led to removal between Ida and Truus. In the meantime, Ida translated Lucretius' Latin teaching poem De Rerum Natura, for which she would receive her PhD in 1942. In 1940 Gerhardt got a job at the Municipal Lyceum in Kampen, where she showed great commitment. It was here that her love for the water-rich landscape that would be expressed in later poems also developed.
Marie van der Zeyde and Ida Gerthardt, ca. 1970
Ida Gerhardt's first book – the collection Kosmos – was published on 9 May 1940, one day before the German invasion of the Netherlands. The occupation inspired her to write one of her most famous poems, Het Carillon, which appeared in her second collection in 1945: Het Veerhuis. For this she received the Lucy B. and C.W. van der Hoogt prize, but Ida's family begrudged her. Nevertheless, she wrote three more collections of poetry in Kampen and translated Virgil's Georgica. In 1951, Ida was asked to apply her way of teaching, which she had developed in Kampen, to kees Boeke's Workshop Children's Community. She would lead a gymnasium department there. In 1953, Ida's father died.
Since 1956 Ida Gerhardt lived together with the highly gifted Marie Helene van der Zeyde, a grant lady of Letters, poet and translator. Van der Zeyde was noted for her translations of the medieval Hadewych poetry into modern Dutch language. She received her Ph Doctorate on Dutch literature and philosophy on her dissertation on "Hadewych. Een studie over de mens en schrijfster" that she received "cum laude" on 26 January 1934 in Utrecht. She was also like Gerhardt a noted translator of the Hebrew Psalms into the Dutch Willibrord translation of 1975. It is unclear if the two intellectual women were lesbians, but that they were of great support for each other in an by man dominated world is beyond doubt. Ida Gerhardt wrote poems about the lesbian poet Sappho since 1945 and translated her poetry, but Gerhardt was also very secretive about her personal private life.
In November 1956, Ida Gerhardt took an important step: she moved in with her friend Marie van der Zeyde. Together they bought a house on the Bilderdijklaan in Bilthoven. In 1967 the two moved from Bilthoven to quiet Eefde.
After the death of Marie van der Zeyde in 1990, Ida's mental health deteriorated and she got periods of paranoia. In 1992 she had to cared for in the resting home 'Berkelstaete' in Warnsveld. She died 15 August 1997 in Warnsveld. She was not buried with her family in Wassenaar, but cremated. Her ashes are scattered over the North Sea
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