Korenbloemen, Nederlandsche Gedichten van Constantin Huygens

Ridder; Heere van Zuylichem, Zeelhem ende in Monickeland; Eerste Raad ende Rekenmeester van S. Hoocheit den Heere Prince van Orange. In XIX boecken. 's Graven-Hage, Adriaen Vlack, 1658.

Small 4to, parchment, illus. frontispiece, title in red and black with vignette, portrait of the author by C. de Visscher, (24), 1355 pp., a folding print of Hofwyck, Hof-stede van den Heere van Zuylichem onder Voorburgh. Huygens was a language virtuoso. His poems are rife with wordplay, amusing turns, strange combinations and cryptic phrasing. This cleverness can be found throughout his entire oeuvre, but may be most conspicuous in a genre that appears to have been invented for the art of language: epigram. Huygens himself called epigram 'quick poetry', defined by him as follows: Vraeght ghy wat Sneldicht voor een Dicht is? Het is een Dicht dat snel en dicht is. Huygens wrote a staggering three thousand epigrams in various languages. Most are included in the omnibus Korenbloemen from 1658 and mostly in the enhanced edition from 1672. Many epigrams however have been preserved solely in handwriting. These epigrams often contain a variety of clues as to Huygen's methods for writing his poems. For example, Huygens often dated the poems he was working on, from which could be deduced how many epigrams he wrote in one day. (Copied from online text page from the Royal Library, The Hague).