He was born in Rijswijk, Netherlands, and studied, lived and worked in Leiden, and he moved permanently to Genoa, Italy, in 2008. Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer was born on 17 January 1968 in Rijswijk in the Netherlands.
Doctor in Classics, Leiden University, 1996.
He made his début in 1998 with a collection entitled Of the Square Manitoba, containing of fifty-odd highly individualistic poems. As well as a poet, Pfeijffer was for some time a Greek scholar on the staff of Leiden University. He wrote a dissertation on the poetry of Pindar and published a history of classical literature for the general reader.
Regarding his own poetry he has outspoken views, not just in his oft-quoted programmatic opening poem "Farewell Dinner," in which he dismisses the hermetic Hans Faverey and calls for "butter-baked images / and bulimic verse".
Pfeijffer"s poetic polemics leave no room for doubt as to what kind of poetry he prefers. He feels akin to Lucebert, and he abhors the paper verse of introverted hermetics and meek-hearted dreamers ("stumble, stiff romantic, mumble on"). should have life, and preferably, in Lucebert’s words, "life in full".
Thus Pfeijffer, the "gleaner of contrivances," quotes not only Pindar and Ezra Pound, Horace and Lucebert, Sophocles, Derek Walcott, Herman Gorter, Hans Faverey, Martinus Nijhoff and Gerard Reve, but comic book characters as well. He not only writes about the political martyr Ken Saro Wiwa, but also about C&A sweaters and Fiat Croma, barcodes, canned beer, butt-tight and garamond ten-point italic.
The poet neither lacks humor or self-mockery, nor seriousness for that matter, witness his hotly tender love poems: "and though I sang and gave over my loins / and you failed to scorch my senses / I should be useless white on white." C.
( "If Italo Calvino decided to make one of his invisible ...)
(Rupert has been accused of a terrible crime, and his imag...)
( Rupert has been accused of a terrible crime, and his im...)
