The Poetry of St. Titus Brandsma (1881–1942): Oeuvre, Reception, New Perspectives

Abstract

Titus Brandsma (1881–1942), Dutch Carmelite and martyr, canonized in 2022, has been widely studied as a journalist, mystic and writer on spirituality. His poetry, however, still remains a relatively understudied part of his work. The purpose of this article is to provide a new evaluative survey of Brandsma’s poetic oeuvre, and to trace the reception of his poetry during his lifetime, and through the post-war period until the present day. One of the effects of this research, presented in this article, is a bio-bibliographic analysis, which for the first time offers a comprehensive overview of Brandsma’s poetry. As regards critical reception, this article focuses on the reasons why Brandsma’s verse was initially neglected and he himself was not considered a poet by his biographers. It examines the factors responsible for a recent revival of interest in several, though not all, of Brandsma’s poems, and their representation in recent biographies. The findings suggest that the post-war popular appeal of Brandsma’s poetry, especially his prison poem “Before the picture of Jesus”, and its growing international circulation, combined with an increased literary awareness and new methods of analysis, as well as changes to the understanding of literature itself, led to a much-needed reassessment of Brandsma as a poet in the first decades of the 21st century. However, the bibliography of Brandsma’s poetry indicates that the majority of his poems require further in-depth research using modern literary-critical methods.

1. Introduction

Titus Brandsma (1881–1942) was a Dutch Carmelite philosopher, journalist, and scholar born in Bolsward (the Netherlands). He died a martyr’s death at the Dachau concentration camp during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Recent biographies are available in English and Dutch (Dölle 2002; Crijnen 2008; Arribas 2022; Millán Romeral 2022; Bocken 2024). During his lifetime, Brandsma was recognised as a leading expert on the medieval mystical tradition of the Low Countries and Carmelite mysticism (Brandsma 2023c, 2023b). He was also considered a mystic himself (Arribas 2022, pp. 6–7). As a journalist, he co-edited Carmelite periodicals, worked in the local press in Oss (in the eastern Netherlands) and wrote articles for national Catholic newspapers (Brandsma 2025a). Brandsma co-founded Ons Geestelijk Erf (Our Spiritual Heritage), a journal dedicated to the study of medieval spirituality, and collaborated with it. A tireless publisher and organiser, he was a member of countless organisations, including those dedicated to the language and Catholic heritage of Friesland, the region of his birth. He was the rector of the Catholic University of Nijmegen from 1932 to 1933 and was well known to the public as a speaker on Dutch Catholic radio. During the 1930s Brandsma developed a unique vision of the cultural evolution of the concept of God in Western civilization (Brandsma 2023c, pp. 117–57). Shortly before World War II, he delivered a critique of National Socialist ideology in his lectures at the Catholic University of Nijme-gen (Brandsma 2025b). Due to his interest in journalism, the Dutch episcopate assigned him the role of spiritual advisor to the Catholic press. This assignment ultimately cost him his life. His opposition to Nazi interference with Dutch Catholic newspapers resulted in his arrest in early 1942. Frail health, combined with the hardships of imprisonment, eventually to his death in Dachau (Crijnen 2008, pp. 415–34; Bocken 2024, pp. 511–33).

Brandsma was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1985 and canonised by Pope Francis in 2022. In recent years, he has received acclaim from Catholics and non-Catholics alike as a strong voice for freedom of religion and freedom of speech, as an activist for peace, and as an advocate of Christian social justice (Embassy of the Netherlands 2022).

2. Approaching St. Titus Brandsma as a Poet: Initial Assumptions, Method, and Aims of Research

Following Brandsma’s beatification and, in particular, in the years immediately before and after his canonisation, a series of books and articles by scholars, as well as works by artists, once again brought his activities to the attention of the public, both in the Netherlands and worldwide. His reputation as an expert on mysticism, a mystic (Brandsma 2023c, 2023b; Bos 2022), an academic and publisher (Brandsma 2024), an anti-Nazi intellectual (Brandsma 2023a, 2025b) and a journalist (Brandsma 2025a) has been the subject of intense research. In contrast, Brandsma remains relatively unknown as a poet, and his poems have generally received little critical attention. For example, when his first two Dutch-language biographers, Brocardus Meijer, O.Carm. (1906–1983) (Meijer 1951) and Hendricus (H. W. F.) Aukes, O.Carm. (1905–1999) (Aukes 1985) inspected a selection of his verse, neither recognised Brandsma as a significant religious poet nor considered his poems to be of literary value. Nevertheless, despite an initial lack of critical or scholarly acclaim, readers have shown unabated interest in Brandsma’s poetry from the second half of the 20th century until today. In recent decades, as we shall see, several of his poems have been translated into multiple languages, and new biographies and works of scholarship have acknowledged their significance.

This article argues that during the second half of the 20th century Brandsma’s poetry was mischaracterised and his achievements as a poet were not adequately or objectively represented owing to a complex set of factors. One effect of this was, on the one hand, that Brandsma’s poetry came to be generally treated as a marginal and insignificant part of his wider body of work. On the other hand, the less-than-favourable opinions of the first generation of biographers hindered more specialised research into Brandsma’s poetry. Moreover, the stereotypes that formed around Brandsma’s poetry did not encourage questioning the existing assumptions about its literary quality, message or wider significance. Starting from this point, I will argue that the recent revival of interest in other aspects of Brandsma’s work should lead to a re-evaluation of his status as a poet. My main point is that we should recognise that Brandsma’s body of poetry is more varied and complex than previously acknowledged. In particular, his entire corpus of verse should be brought to light and examined in a way that emphasises the thematic interrelations of the poems, while also forming a solid foundation for constructing a comprehensive image of Brandsma’s poetics. Poetry intersected with the key moments in Brandsma’s life, providing him with a space for to articulate a unique theology that sometimes paralleled, but also went beyond, what he could express in his academic and journalistic writings. While this article lacks the space for a detailed analysis of a large number of texts, it suggests where in Brandsma’s poetic corpus a literary approach is likely to yield fruitful results.

Regarding Brandsma’s image as a poet, I argue that a critical investigation is needed into the assumptions behind the biographical discourse that perpetuated the notion that he was, at best, a mediocre writer. Indeed, everything suggests that Brandsma should be recognised as a far more capable and inventive poet than he is given credit for. The enduring interest in and international impact of his work should lead to his recognition as one of the most unique Dutch Catholic religious poets of the first half of the 20th century. This article asserts that his small but varied body of work has the potential to inform research in the intersection of literature studies, theology and intellectual history, and should therefore be opened up to further investigation. By addressing long-standing misconceptions regarding Brandsma’s image as a poet, this research will hopefully contribute to a more comprehensive and balanced portrayal of him as a talented creative writer.

Ultimately, this discussion highlights that Brandsma’s poetry cannot be overlooked, but should play an important part in the ongoing scholarly debate about how he creatively used language to express and to give shape to his ideas and spiritual experiences. Studying these poems may shed new light on Brandsma’s thoughts relating to the significance of prayer and mystical experience, which may be recognised as relevant to today’s world.

Taking its cue from literary studies, this article proposes an approach inspired by research in sociology of literature and reception studies combined with traditional literary history. This differs from the methodology of most existing studies into Brandsma’s writings, which are predominantly theological or in the domain of intellectual history. The research questions follow this approach: Firstly, which poems comprise Brandsma’s poetic oeuvre, where and when did these poems originate, what are the key poetical features, and what are the central themes? Secondly, what image of the Carmelite as a poet did his biographers create; why was their attitude towards his poetry ambivalent until the early 21st century, and what factors caused a recent shift in favour of his poems? The following sections present and discuss a bibliography of Brandsma’s poetic output in the context of the major events of his biography (Section 3 and Appendix A). Then, using the aforementioned methods, the reception of Titus Brandsma as a poet will be assessed (Section 4). Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1995) theory of a literary field, this study plots Brandsma’s position among other Dutch Catholic poets between 1900 and 1940 (Section 4.1). Next, Brandsma’s biographies will be investigated. This section will explain how an ambiguous attitude towards the Carmelite’s poetry has, in recent decades, given way to a growing acceptance (Section 4.2 and Section 4.3). By mapping the evolution of views on Brandsma’s poetry in recent biographies, this section will identify several factors that may have contributed to the recent increase in interest among professionals and the general public worldwide.

3. St. Titus Brandsma’s Poetry: A Bio-Bibliographic Survey

Titus Brandsma wrote poetry throughout his adult life, from his school years at the Franciscan College in Megen until the months before his death in Dachau in 1942. However, identifying the intrinsic features of this poetry presents significant challenges. Evidently, the lack of a clearly defined corpus makes any kind of assessment, quantitative or qualitative, a daunting task. No collected edition of Brandsma’s poetry has yet been published. A digital bibliography of Brandsma’s writings is available online, combining information from earlier printed ones (Bibliography 2025); this resource, however, does not list all of Brandsma’s poems. This has suggested the need for a bibliography specifically designed with this type of literature in mind. The sources of this bibliography, which is presented in Appendix A, consist of the documents preserved in the Brandsma family archive (ADRKF) and the National Carmelite Institute in Boxmeer (NCI). In order to compile this bibliography, the author of this article has inspected the majority of these archival sources either physically or as a digital facsimile. In addition to this, the relevant printed publications such as biographies, editions and anthologies have also been consulted.

The bibliography of Brandsma’s poetry in Appendix A is by no means exhaustive. The discovery in 2022 of the poem “Aan Marie” shows that Brandsma composed verse on the spur of the moment without always preserving a copy of what he wrote. Written in 1910 in an album belonging to a young girl named Marie Cox, the poem was rediscovered in Oss, the Netherlands (Van Erp 2022). It is now part of the collection of the City Archive of Oss (Stadsarchief Oss). In 2025 it was displayed in Museum Jan Cunen in Oss. Similarly, it is not inconceivable that more examples of his poetry will come to light beyond those listed here. This bibliography, therefore, should be seen as a work in progress that may be augmented by new findings in the future.

Qualitative and Quantitative Results

The bibliography of Brandsma’s poetry (Appendix A) reveals that he wrote at least 52 individual texts (this research adopts a wide definition of poetry as encompassing all texts in verse, regardless of their genre or function). Out of the total, 25 were song lyrics, a surprisingly large number in view of the fact that Brandsma has seldom been associated with music. The remaining 27 texts (52%) were intended for reading. Of the total, 20 texts (38%) have been preserved exclusively in manuscript form, while the remaining 32 texts were published in print during Brandsma’s lifetime. Twelve of the texts (23%) were dedicated to specific individuals, mainly family members. The attribution to Brandsma of the poems printed in booklets in Oss and Zenderen is based on the Bibliography (2025). The vast majority of poems (48 texts—92%) were written before 1918. The remaining four poems were composed during the interwar era and war years, in other words, over a period of more than two decades. The two poems for which Brandsma is best known today, “Before a Picture of Jesus” and “[Grief]”, therefore represent only around 4% of the total body of work.

A part of this research consisted of performing a reading of all poems (with the exception of no. 1, whose location is unknown),1 for the purpose of identifying the interrelatedness of characteristic themes and tropes. The chronological order in which the poems were written suggests the existence of several clusters that correspond to different phases, events and social networks in Brandsma’s life. The results of this literary and biographical investigation are be presented below.

The first cluster (nos. 1–8) consists of poems written as didactic exercises within an educational context. Despite the apparently unfavourable circumstances for artistic writing, these poems demonstrate Brandsma’s early ability to express ideas with epigrammatic brevity, while tempering a moralising zeal with irony and humour. Certain theological notions explored at that early stage reoccur in Brandsma’s later writings. Poem no. 3 in particular prefigures the Carmelite’s later poetic dialogues with Christ. It anticipates the theme of amor non amatur—the rejection of God’s love in contemporary culture—which Brandsma revisited during the 1930s (Crijnen 2008, p. 306; Miczyński 2025, p. 336). It is also a Eucharistic poem that, like “Before the picture of Jesus” (no. 51), emphasizes the intimacy of the mystical moment when one becomes aware of the presence of Christ. Here, Christ initiates a conversation with the speaker from the tabernacle. In words ascribed to Christ, this poem strongly criticises the attitudes of contemporary Christians who do not live up to their name.

The second cluster contains poems written as letters to family members in Friesland. These poems, which may be classified as egodocuments, offer glimpses into the young Brandsma’s relationships with his parents and siblings. Humorous yet serious, they are interspersed with moments of profound reflection on the sense of life for a Christian family. The idea that personal sanctity can be pursued by taking part in the events of everyday life is a constant theme (nos. 10, 16). In compact forms such as a sonnet and ballad-like verse, Brandsma explored the meaning of marriage as a path to holiness (nos. 11, 16). He urged parents to take responsibility for their children’s physical, intellectual, and spiritual development, while giving them freedom to pursue their vocation (nos. 15, 17). The poems reveal Brandsma’s personality and his sense of humour, as well as his love of the Frisian language (nos. 12, 13, 14). Although these poems are written in a conventional literary style that some readers might consider unoriginal, they are certainly neither trivial nor contrived.

The song lyrics and poems that Brandsma wrote at the Carmelite houses in Zenderen and Oss (1899–1910) are examples of light verse intended for festive occasions (nos. 18–27, 29–43). While one biographer (Crijnen 2008, pp. 33–34) found it difficult to reconcile the idea of Brandsma as a mystic and martyr with singing and drinking, this combination illustrates how the Carmelite’s profound piety coexisted with a sociable and easy-going nature. These poems suggest that balancing work and contemplation with occasional festivities was an important part of the life of Brandsma’s religious community. No. 44 was written during the same period. It reveals its author’s early interest in St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897), which predates her beatification (1923) and canonisation (1925).

After completing his studies in Rome, Brandsma began editing Carmelrozen (Roses of the Carmel), a Carmelite journal intended for the laity. He contributed three poems on the theme of Marian devotion to this journal (nos. 45, 46, 47). In terms of theme, style and diction, these resemble the poetry written at that time for the same magazine by other Carmelites, such as Berthold van der Pluijm and Angelus Wijtenburg. Brandsma expressed his admiration for the latter’s poetry (Brandsma 1914c). We may assume that this circle of Carmelite poets played a significant role in nurturing his own poetic development. The absence of complex intellectual arguments, combined with a fairly conventional Marian imagery and vocabulary, belies the strength of the message of these poems; similarly as no. 45, they poetically explore the idea that everyone has the ability to encounter God ‘face to face’. This, in turn, is a significant theme in Brandsma’s later writings on mysticism, for instance in his lecture “Mysticism and Pseudo-Mysticism” from 1929 (Brandsma 2023b, pp. 245–66).

During the interwar period, Brandsma was intensely preoccupied with his work as an academic, scholar, journalist, and Frisian Catholic activist. He combined this with a contemplative life within the order and with providing pastoral care for the community in Nijmegen. Perhaps due to his busy schedule, he only wrote two poems in the space of as many decades. In 1918, he wrote lyrics for a song for the Catholic Frisian Union (Roomsk Frysk Boun), of which he was a member. One of his non-religious poetic texts, it expresses a profound love for Friesland and its language. Brandsma was fond of this poem and vehemently disagreed when stylistic changes were proposed that contradicted the meaning he intended to convey (ADRKF, no. 038-001, letter to Jentje G. van Balen dated 20 March 1918). The other poem, no. 50, is a contemplative lyric describing the celebration of the Eucharist on the feast of the Presentation of Christ (2 February 1932) at a convent of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood in Rijkevoort, where his sister Willibrorda was Mother Superior. In compact, narrative form, it recounts a profound mystical experience that took place in a liturgical setting, masterfully combining it with the imagery of light and fire (the interpretation of this poem is the subject of an upcoming article by the author of this paper).

Brandsma’s final two poems were written after his arrest in early 1942. Having experienced the trauma of imprisonment for the first time, he recognized that solitary confinement could lead, paradoxically, to a more profound experience of the Carmelite charism of mystical contemplation. In a series of letters, he described how he transformed the prison cell into a space for encountering God (Brandsma 2022b, pp. 166–88). Poem no. 51 celebrates Christ’s response of unconditional love to the speaker’s isolation and trauma. This is the poem in the translation by Elisabeth Hense and Joseph Chalmers:

(Police prison, Scheveningen, 12 and 13 February 1942)

O Jesus, when I look on You,

My love for You revives in me,

And Your heart too, is loving me,

Indeed as Your particular friend.

If this demands more grief from me,

O, all this grief is good for me,

Because it makes me look like You,

and is the path into your Land.

Now I am fortunate in my grief,

Because it seems no grief to me,

But just the utmost favourite fate,

That makes me one with You, o God.

O, leave me here, just still alone,

With all around me bleak and cold,

And don’t let people come to me,

My solitude won’t tire me.

For You, o Jesus are with me,

I’ve never been so close to You,

Stay with me, Jesus sweet,

Your presence makes all good for me.

(Brandsma 2022b, p. 552)

Meanwhile, no. 52, written in transit camp Amersfoort and notable for its lack of explicit mention of God, offers a poignant yet enigmatic reflection on the inevitability of suffering (here in a translation by Constant Dölle):

Grief would come and lay me low,

No chance to make it go away,

Nor with any tears allay,

Else I had done it long ago.

Then it came and on me weighed,

Till I lay still and no more wept,

Learned to watch and patience kept;

Thereafter it no longer stayed.

All that is passed and set aside;

From far away I still recall

And cannot understand at all

That ancient grief or why I cried.

(Dölle 2002, p. 140)

Although he was not a professional poet, Brandsma was a competent writer of verse. He could produce poetry in various forms and metres, but he tended to favour poems of several stanzas in six- or eight-foot verse, creating the impression of a natural conversation. In this respect, he aligned himself with the poetics of the Flemish priest Guido Gezelle (1830–1899) (Gezelle 2016); the extent to which this was deliberate is open to debate. However, the alexandrines that were still in vogue in Dutch poetry around 1900 were not his preferred verse; no. 44 is one of the exceptions to this rule. The corpus shows that Brandsma mastered various stylistic registers. His poetic language avoids verbose diction or convoluted syntax, generally steering clear of clichés. He did not deliberately experiment with form or diction. Even in his most mystical poems he remains rather matter-of-fact, and his poetry is remarkably free of didacticism or affectation. He was skilled at conveying his meaning with very few words. Adjectives such as ‘natural’, ‘simple’ or ‘direct’, which have been used to describe Brandsma’s poetry in the past, come to mind. However, it is clear that his strength as a poet lies most of all in his ability to express himself easily, though not without the occasional ambiguity, and to formulate his message lucidly.

We conclude this survey of Brandsma’s poetic oeuvre with a summary of the aspects that appear to be most characteristic of his activities as a poet. These include a long time span and relatively long intervals between individual texts, especially when Brandsma was in his forties and fifties; a marked preference for informal communication and a reticence about his abilities; a fondness for private meditation, Christocentric and Eucharistic meditation; a transparent diction and conversational form, and a surprising penchant for humour. In the next section we will proceed to identify Brandsma’s place in the literary field of his time and trace his reception from the earliest biographies to the year 2025.

4. The Reception of St. Titus Brandsma as a Poet

4.1. The Literary Field of Dutch Catholic Poetry During the Interwar Period (1918–1940)

In 1943, just one year after Brandsma died at Dachau, the Dutch literary scholar Gerard Knuvelder (1902–1982) published a small anthology entitled Katholieke poëzie na 1880 (Catholic Poetry after 1880) (Knuvelder 1943). It contained a selection of the work of thirty-six modern Dutch Catholic poets: men and women, laypeople, clergy and members of religious orders. Brandsma, however, was not mentioned. Despite having published some poetry in Carmelrozen, he was not assigned to what Knuvelder identified as the first or second generation of Dutch Catholic poets. In Knuvelder’s taxonomy, the first generation wrote after the watershed date of 1880, when the rebellious young neo-romantics known as “The Generation of 1880” appeared, and published in the journal Van Onzen Tijd (From Our Time). The second generation published their poems after 1920 in Roeping (Vocation) or De Gemeenschap (Community) (Knuvelder 1943, pp. 7–8).

The fact that Knuvelder omitted Brandsma from this anthology is indicative of the latter’s position outside the field of interwar Dutch Catholic literature. The reasons for Brandsma’s absence are not difficult to find. Unlike the other authors mentioned by Knuvelder (1943), he did not publish a volume of poetry and his poems were not featured in any standard literary journal. Moreover, as he had no ambition to be recognised as a poet (see below), his poetry reached only a very limited audience. These factors undoubtedly contributed to Brandsma’s post-war image as a writer, in which his poetry was treated as only marginally important.

The consequences of Brandsma’s invisibility in the Dutch literary field from the 1910s to the end of the 1930s persist to this day. In recent years, he has been mentioned only once in a standard history of Dutch literature, and then not for his writing but for his anti-Nazi activities (Bel 2018, p. 793). However, eighty years later, the image of the literary field has changed in the eyes of the readers themselves, and perhaps nowhere in Dutch literature has this transformation been stronger than in its Catholic segment. The reputation of many Dutch Catholic authors who were once esteemed has declined rapidly since the mid-20th century, as popular poets became the “rearguard” (Bourdieu 1995, p. 152) of the literary field in terms of innovation or prestige. One writer whose popularity waned radically was the priest Jacques Schreurs (1893–1966) (Spronck 2022), whom Knuvelder (1943) mentioned as highly promising. Although Brandsma’s poetry has not attracted a mass audience, it is widely appreciated in the Netherlands and around the world, attaining a level of recognition that seems to be unmatched by any other Catholic author from the Netherlands in his era (see below, Section 4.3). This may be an argument for recognising Brandsma as an author who deserves a belated place on the map of Catholic poetry in the interwar Netherlands.

4.2. Responses to Brandsma as a Poet in 20th-Century Dutch Biographies

Can Titus Brandsma be called a poet? Did he write good poetry? The authors of the earliest Dutch biographies of the Carmelite—Meijer (1951) and Aukes (1985)—grappled with these questions. Ultimately, neither of them entirely overcame their doubts. Below, we will examine how these biographers influenced the reception of Brandsma’s poetry in the mid- to late-20th century. In particular, we will investigate how these authors evaluated Brandsma as a writer, where they situated him in the literary field, and how they assessed the value of his poetry.

4.2.1. Brocardus Meijer

In 1951, Brocardus Meijer published an extensive book-length biography of Titus Brandsma. Although limited to a single printing run, it remained an essential source of information about the Carmelite martyr for many years. While Meijer admired Brandsma, he seemed to contradict himself in his opinion of whether the latter could be appreciated as a writer. On the one hand, Meijer dismissed Brandsma outright as “no poet” (Meijer 1951, p. 15), even claiming that his fellow Carmelite was unable to “express his thoughts and emotions in bright forms and clear, complete sentences” (Meijer 1951, p. 228; all translations from Dutch are by the author of this article, unless mentioned otherwise). Elsewhere, seemingly unaware of a contradiction, Meijer praised Brandsma’s “undeniable talent as a writer”, which made him a sought-after journalist (Meijer 1951, p. 59). Meijer noted that Brandsma enjoyed writing poetry, acknowledging its “spontaneous simplicity”, and added that the author’s modest ambitions were limited to providing friends and acquaintances with “pious thoughts in sensitive forms” (Meijer 1951, p. 15). Elsewhere, Meijer expressed greater appreciation, writing that “every now and then, Brandsma’s old love for noble poetry, full of daring and tenderness, flared up in him, and it cannot be said that he did badly” (Meijer 1951, p. 26).

In the literary field, Meijer placed Brandsma’s poetry within the tradition of Dutch Catholic priest-poets, mentioning the priest, writer, and politician Hermanus Schaepman (1844–1903) (Meijer 1951, p. 15). This was not a good analogy because Schaepman distinctly belonged to an older generation of writers. By the mid-20th century such a reference identified Brandsma’s poetics as outdated and unoriginal. Deliberately or not, Meijer diminished Brandsma’s status even more by pointing out that he never managed to become a “serious competitor” to Schaepman (Meijer 1951, p. 15). This was absurd, given that Brandsma was only twenty when Schaepman died. In another passage, Meijer drew an unfavourable comparison between Brandsma’s poem “Before the Picture of Jesus” (no. 51) and the poetry of Melis Stoke (pseudonym of Herman Salomonson, 1892–1942). The reason for selecting Salomonson, a Dutch-Jewish journalist and poet who was a victim of the Holocaust, for comparison is unclear, given that he had left behind a much larger and more varied body of poetic work. Nevertheless, Meijer implicitly categorised Brandsma’s work as belonging to the literary genre of Holocaust and resistance literature.

An attempt at canonization by an author who held a prominent position in the post-war Dutch literary scene occurred when Meijer cited a favorable opinion of the author’s work by the Dutch poet Anthonie Donker (the pseudonym of Nico Donkersloot, 1902–1965). However, this cannot be considered a success, given that Donkersloot’s idealistic, anti-avant-garde neo-romantic poetics had become obsolete by the 1960s (Brems 2016, p. 152). Ultimately, Meijer softened his criticism by referring to Brandsma’s poetry as “springing from the deepest vein of a life dedicated to God”, shifting the focus back from literature to theology (Meijer 1951, p. 402). Meijer based his opinion of Brandsma’s poetry on three poems: “To St. Anno, Bishop of Cologne” (no. 2), “The Solemn ‘Yes’ Resounded...” (no. 11), and “Before the Picture of Jesus in Prison” (no. 51), reserving the highest praise for the second poem in a marked divergence from the opinion of more recent biographers.

4.2.2. Henk Aukes

Aukes published a booklet version of his biography of Brandsma in 1947, followed by a book-length publication that same year. An enlarged edition (Het leven van Titus Brandsma) appeared in 1961. By the time of Brandsma’s beatification in 1985, a third, revised edition had been published, which was used as the source for this article.

Aukes seems to have had a very low opinion of Brandsma as a writer. He characteristically placed the word “author” in quotation marks, suggesting that the Carmelite martyr was not a writer in the true sense of the word (Aukes 1985, p. 41). For Aukes, Brandsma “remained someone who expressed his nature and interests with indomitable zeal, even in written language, but he did not become an alluring prose writer” (Aukes 1985, p. 42). A similar opinion to Aukes’ can be found in Joseph Rees’ English-language biography of Brandsma: “one cannot, in all honesty, say that [Brandsma] was himself a great stylist” (Rees 1971, p. 34). Furthermore, Aukes condemned anyone who, like Meijer (1951, p. 26), saw any positive aspects in Brandsma’s poetry (see Section 4.2.1), claiming that there was “room for disagreement” (Aukes 1985, p. 41). Although he recognized that poetry was not important to Brandsma, like Meijer, Aukes acknowledged that writing verse was a recurring activity in the Carmelite mystic’s life.

Both Aukes and Meijer placed Brandsma alongside priests and seminarians who dabbled in literature. This type of poetry was considered outdated or excessively conventional from the perspective of Dutch high modernism or the avant-garde of that period. In comparing Brandsma’s work with the poetry of Flemish Franciscan Hilarion Thans (1884–1963), Aukes criticised both for lacking taste (Aukes 1985, p. 42). Proof of this could be found, according to Aukes, in how Brandsma combined “simple folk wisdom in rhyme, friendly and smelling of camphor” with quotes from William Wordsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) and St. Teresa of Ávila in his prison letters. Condescendingly, Aukes claimed that Brandsma had never developed a sense of form (Aukes 1985, p. 42).

Overall, however, Aukes’s opinion was not entirely negative. In his abundant prose, including articles and speeches, Brandsma occasionally expressed a simple lyricism. In his most profound arguments, he sometimes achieved a beautiful power of expression, for instance in his 1932 lecture The Idea of God (Aukes 1985, p. 42). Aukes mentioned only one of Brandsma’s poems, “Before the Picture of Jesus in Prison” (no. 51), commenting on its wide circulation and its impact on readers (Aukes 1985, p. 327).

Both Meijer (1951) and Aukes (1985) had mixed feelings about Brandsma’s poetry. Meijer created an image that can be described as contradictory, while Aukes offered a generally bleak view of the Carmelite’s literary style. Neither of them investigated Brandsma’s poetry in great detail, although Meijer based his opinion on a wider choice of poems (three compared to one). It is unclear which of Brandsma’s other poems Aukes had actually read.

The way in which Meijer (1951) and Aukes (1985) approached Brandsma’s poetry appears to be superficial. Both attempted to situate Brandsma within the literary field but neither critically examined their assumptions. Furthermore, neither compared Brandsma to other Carmelite poets of that era. Ultimately, as neither Meijer nor Aukes had any background in literary studies, they did not analyse any of Brandsma’s poems in greater detail. Below, we will examine how biographers writing after Brandsma’s beatification understood his reception as a poet, and how this changed the image of the Carmelite as a literary author.

4.3. Mysticism and Martyrdom: Responses to Brandsma as a Poet in 21st-Century Biographies and Academic Studies in the Netherlands and Internationally

Following his beatification and canonisation, new biographies about Brandsma emerged on the Dutch and international book markets. We will take into consideration the books published before 2025 (Dölle 2002; Crijnen 2008; Millán Romeral 2022; Arribas 2022; Bocken 2024). To illustrate how the Carmelite’s poetry gained a positive reputation during this period, several key scholarly texts on or referencing Brandsma’s poetry will also be examined. The reception of Brandsma’s poetry by these authors will be investigated using the same set of criteria as above.

4.3.1. Constant Dölle

The biographies that began to appear after the year 2000 indicated that a transformation was underway in the perception of Brandsma’s poetry. This shift was signalled by Dölle (2002). Significantly, an English translation was published almost simultaneously with the original Dutch version (2001), suggesting a growing international interest in Brandsma’s testimony of faith. Recognising Titus Brandsma’s poetry as a source of insight into his moral and religious sensibilities, Dölle dedicated a significant portion of his book to an in-depth analysis of two poems. This can be considered a close reading which uncovers “patterns and details so as to open up new and underlying meanings of [a] text” (Brillenburg Wurth and Rigney 2019, p. 241). The poems scrutinised by Dölle were “Before the Picture of Jesus” (Dölle 2002, pp. 117–30) and “[Grief]” (Dölle 2002, pp. 140–45).

In a lengthy chapter resembling an essay, Dölle emphasised the dialogic nature of “Before the Picture of Jesus” (no. 51), offering an intimate perspective on Brandsma’s contemplation of Christ’s presence. According to Dölle, the poem fostered the realisation that the “mystical space of solitude” (Dölle 2002, p. 125) was a place where one can embrace and be embraced by God, despite anxiety, solitude, and despair. “[Grief]” (no. 52), one of Brandsma’s rare personal statements, revealed the Carmelite martyr’s powerlessness in the face of psychological and physical suffering beyond description. Dölle commented on the poems’ “paradoxical language” (Dölle 2002, p. 129), echoing modern views on poetry as a specific use of linguistic features (Vaessens and Bijl 2013, p. 38). For Dölle (2002), attentively reading Brandsma’s poetry provided a starting point for reflection on the Carmelite’s spiritual life and his martyrdom. This hermeneutic exercise enables readers to investigate the poems as documents of the intertwining of suffering and God’s love in Brandsma’s martyrdom.

4.3.2. Ton Crijnen

Twenty-three years after Brandsma’s beatification, the Dutch journalist Ton Crijnen published a biography which was advertised as presenting a nuanced, non-hagiographic image of the Dutch martyr than its predecessors (Crijnen 2008, pp. 9–11). However, when it came to Brandsma’s poetry, Crijnen’s opinion did not differ significantly from those of Meijer and Aukes. Characteristically, Crijnen assessed the merits of Brandsma’s poetry as follows: “The result shows that he was not a major poet, although some of his poems are interesting because of the underlying mystical thoughts” (Crijnen 2008, p. 33). According to Crijnen, this held true of “Before the Picture of Jesus” (no. 51). Although Crijnen was unwilling to take Brandsma seriously as a poet, he too mitigated his most negative statements. He felt that the poem lacked the “intellectual brilliance” purportedly ascribed to it by Meijer and Aukes, but considered it significant in terms of a “mysticism of suffering” (Crijnen 2008, p. 375). At the same time, Crijnen acknowledged its widespread popularity, though without examining the reasons behind it (Crijnen 2008, p. 374). While Dölle analysed two poems at length, Crijnen’s discussion was limited to brief comments. However, he cited more texts either partially or entirely, including three early poems (Crijnen 2008, pp. 31, 34, 53) besides “Before the Picture of Jesus” (no. 51) and “[Grief]” (no. 52).

Both Dölle (2002) and Crijnen (2008) proved, albeit in different ways, that Brandsma’s poetry became an indispensable part of the standard biography of the Carmelite martyr. Despite downplaying the literary value of the poems, Crijnen recognised that they provided important information about the mystical aspects of Brandsma’s life. Mysticism and martyrdom were two lenses through which Brandsma’s life came to be viewed. The two final poems, which unified the two perspectives, seemed, therefore, to be of exceptional value, providing a deeply personal account of Brandsma’s innermost thoughts during the final months of his life.

4.3.3. Studies and Biographies After 2010

The potential of “Before the Picture of Jesus” (no. 51) to reveal Brandsma’s mystical vision was reaffirmed by Carmelite theologian Kees Waaijman (2018, pp. 234–43). In a poignant essay, Waaijman employed a combination of close reading and hermeneutics to highlight several previously unnoticed linguistic and poetic aspects of the poem. These included a meaningful interjection and the syntactic structure. According to Waaijman (2018), Brandsma’s use of subordinate clauses created a symmetrical pattern of references. This pattern enhances the poem’s artistic value by reflecting the theme of friendship between the speaker and Christ, acknowledged and strengthened through shared suffering. Anne-Marie Bos recognised this poem as one of the key texts for understanding Brandsma’s mysticism (Bos 2022). Conversely, the remaining poems have attracted less attention, although the author of the present paper explored Brandsma’s juvenile poetry as providing insight into the Carmelite’s thoughts on marriage and family (Polkowski 2023).

Several different English translations of “Before the Picture of Jesus” exist, and these have been republished multiple times (see, for example, Houle and Ciganovich 1985, p. 30; Brandsma 2018, 2022b, pp. 550–51; Arribas 2022, pp. 188–89, 312–13). Translations into other languages include Spanish (Millán Romeral 2013, pp. 143–44; Ubarri and Jiménez Sánchez 2023, p. 124), Italian (Millán Romeral 2025) or Esperanto (Millán Romeral 2018) as well as Bahasa Indonesia, German, Polish, Maltese, and Portuguese. The abundance of translations into languages other than Dutch testifies to the poem’s international appeal.

The year of Brandsma’s canonisation saw the publication of two English biographies for an international audience. These books each mention one of Brandsma’s two last poems, which now appear to form his authorial canon: “Before the Picture of Jesus” (no. 51) or “[Grief]” (no. 52). Arribas (2022) emphasised Brandsma’s role as a martyr and witness to religiously motivated truth in opposition to a totalitarian regime. Concentrating on “Before the Picture of Jesus”, Arribas (2022, p. 196, note 20) acknowledged that it was “appreciated more for its content than its form”, yet still recognised its “perfect rhyme.” Elsewhere, Arribas (2022, p. 189) considered its significance to lie in how it revealed Brandsma’s “inner peace”. Millán Romeral (2022, pp. 96–97), on the other hand, considered “A Grief” to be a poem that “expressed a contemplative resolution and acceptance” in the face of martyrdom. The two biographies complemented each other by offering slightly different interpretations of Brandsma’s poetry. However, both stemmed from a shared assumption that Brandsma’s final poems offered unique insights into his martyrdom as a fulfilment of his spiritual life.

The following year, an innovative Dutch biography investigating Brandsma’s intellectual pathways was published (Bocken 2024). Bocken focused on the poems’ literary qualities, investigating them as documents of Brandsma’s intellectual endeavours in the area of mystical theology. Citing “Before the Picture of Jesus” (no. 51), Bocken identified a “Marian perspective”, arguing that, although Mary was not mentioned directly in the poem, Marian spirituality enabled Brandsma to approach Christ closer through her relationship with Him during the Crucifixion (Bocken 2024, pp. 510–11). “[Grief]”, on the other hand, was a poem that Bocken (2024, pp. 524–25) interpreted through a biographical lens as a record of tensions in Brandsma’s life, and theologically as an expression of the Carmelite charism of living in God’s presence.

5. Discussion: Assessing the Evolution of Brandsma’s Reception as a Poet

Below, we will discuss some of the most significant themes in relation to Brandsma’s evolving identity as a poet and the responses to his work. Firstly, we will consider how his poetry has been transformed into other media, while his prose has been rewritten as poetry (Section 5.1). We will then examine the reasons for the recent shift in reactions to Brandsma as a poet (Section 5.2). Finally, we will explain how literary theory can shed light on the assumptions behind historical attitudes towards Brandsma’s poetic work (Section 5.3).

5.1. Adaptations and Transformations of Brandsma’s Poetry and Prose

The popular reception of Brandsma’s poetry after World War II is a testament to the appeal of “Before the Picture of Jesus” (no. 51) among successive generations of readers. In the Netherlands, the poem resonated with the general public from the final years of the German occupation, during which time it was published clandestinely countless times. Crucially, it was included in a prestigious anthology of resistance poetry, republished after the war (Schenk and Mos 1975, p. 46). This fact brought it to the attention of a large part of Dutch society, including Catholics, Christians of other denominations, and non-believers. During the post-war era, Brandsma was universally recognized in the Netherlands as a representative of religiously motivated resistance to Nazism, and his poem became a literary symbol of his courage and dedication to his principles. Despite the opinion of biographers and the generally low degree of endorsement from literary authorities (see Section 4.1 and Section 4.2), this poem attained wide circulation; presented as a prayer, for instance, it circulated on devotional cards printed by Church institutions.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, “Before the Picture of Jesus” obtained a second life through a series of adaptations. The first of these was by Margit Leiker (1910–2012) in 1945. A printed edition by the prestigious underground printing house Bezige Bij was circulated clandestinely in an edition of one thousand copies (Leiker 1945). In 2000, the Dutch composer Chris Fictoor created a musical score for the participants in an annual remembrance pilgrimage to Dachau. According to Fictoor, Brandsma “was a master of language, both in prose and in poetry,” and setting his poems to music revealed their artistic excellence. In “Before the Image of Jesus”, Fictoor specifically referred to an interplay of linguistic elements, sound, and imagery (Fictoor 2022, p. 544). In 2015, organist Reinier de Graaf performed a rendition of Brandsma’s poem in Dutch with a Polish choir at the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Poznań, Poland (De Graaf 2015). Domingo Cols (1928–2011) set the Spanish translation of the poem to music (Arribas 2022, p. 297).

Another indication of renewed 21st-century interest in the literary and aesthetic quality of Brandsma’s writings is the recontextualisation of his prose as poetry. To highlight these aspects, Fictoor transformed key passages from Brandsma’s essays and lectures into modern free verse (Fictoor 2022). One such result is the poem “Ja, mijn ziel zoekt God” (Yes, my soul is searching for God) (Fijen 2022, pp. 252–53). Here, Fictoor reworked a prose passage by Brandsma that was originally part of his speech Mystiek in Nederland (Mysticism in the Low Countries). Recontextualising Brandsma’s prose altered its function, turning a passage embedded in a lecture for a mass audience into an object of attentive reading or meditation. The graphic layout of prose passages in Titus Brandsma. Een blijvende bezieling (Brandsma 2022a) transformed them into texts resembling late-20th or early-21st century poetry. Although this kind of re-editing takes liberties with the original prose, raising questions in itself, it undoubtedly makes the text more accessible by acknowledging a change in the type of audience. In conclusion, this type of transformation brought Brandsma’s language and style to the forefront as significant features of his writing.

5.2. New Accents in the Reception of Titus Brandsma’s Poetry

As we have seen, a shift in the reception of Brandsma’s poetry can be detected between his beatification in 1985 and his canonisation in 2022. Dölle (2002) and Waaijman (2018), for example, employed close reading techniques and hermeneutics to reveal the spiritual and mystical depth of Brandsma’s poetry. Although Crijnen (2008) echoed some older opinions, he too speculated about how Brandsma’s poetry might contain important mystical insights. Others, like Fictoor (2022), took the path of remediation, exploring the potential of Brandsma’s poetry in music, while elsewhere the Carmelite’s prose became the basis for poetic reinterpretation and recontextualization.

This chronology of events raises the following question: Is there a causal connection between the increased interaction with Brandsma’s poetry and its growing acceptance as an important part of his body of work, and the social impact of beatification or canonisation? Any event of this magnitude in the life of the Church sparks renewed historical studies, and Brandsma was certainly no exception. The sequence of publications indicates that interest in Brandsma’s writings gained momentum shortly before his canonisation. It is still too early to judge whether this will be an enduring trend. However, the impact of religious events does not seem to be the only explanation. In the cases of Dölle (2002) and Waaijman (2018), these authors employed textual interpretation techniques that were unavailable to their predecessors, such as close reading. Furthermore, both displayed a considerably greater awareness of the significance of poetic language in texts within the Western mystical tradition.

In conclusion, although the biographies published around the time of canonisation were set in theological and socio-historical frameworks rather than literary ones, they all relied on close readings that paid systematic attention to linguistic features, symbolic language, and poetics. Therefore, a fundamental reason why Brandsma’s poetry became the subject of serious consideration after 2000 may be found in the ability of a new generation of authors and scholars to engage in hermeneutic readings of his work. This approach did justice to the unique nature of poetic language in relation to mystical experiences. It revealed Brandsma’s poetic talent and dispelled the myth that he was an inept writer. Despite their differences, Dölle (2002), Waaijman (2018), Bos (2022) and Bocken (2024) were in agreement that, to gain a better insight into Brandsma’s intellectual and spiritual background, it is essential to reveal the full significance of his writings, including the message of his poetry.

5.3. Perspectives from Literary Studies for Reevaluating Brandsma’s Poetry

The history of the reception of Brandsma’s poetry, and especially his prison and concentration camp poems, now spans at least eight decades. Such “durability”, according to Brillenburg Wurth and Rigney (2019, p. 46), is a defining feature of literature, giving texts a “life” of their own, as opposed to everyday linguistic communication that serves pragmatic purposes. Brillenburg Wurth and Rigney (2019, p. 47) attribute this enduring power of a text to speak to generations and across cultural boundaries to linguistic features, the effect on readers and the role of institutions. Setting Brandsma apart from other Catholic literary authors of his era and cultural context, the fact that his poetry has survived and found new readers is testament to its literary merit.

This considered, the boundary between literary and non-literary texts is much less clear-cut today than in the mid-20th century. The notion of literature as something inherently defined by subjective aesthetic factors (an essentialist definition) has given way to a more socially and institutionally founded approach (the institutional definition). This shift has been accompanied by growing uncertainty as to whether literature can be unequivocally defined at all (Vaessens and Bijl 2013, pp. 27–41). From a present-day perspective, therefore, a discussion on whether or not Brandsma wrote literature seems beside the point, as does a debate on whether or not he should be considered a major poet (in response to the view expressed by Crijnen 2008). In effect, debating whether Brandsma’s poems are literary or great literature distracts from more urgent points of discussion. An enquiry into the aesthetic merits of Brandsma’s poetry is not the subject of this article. However, key questions concern the message conveyed by his poetry, the purpose and method of his poetics, how his poetry aligned with the literary culture of his time, and its impact on readers.

The essentialist and institutional definitions of literature referred to above (Vaessens and Bijl 2013, pp. 27–29) have impacted the reception of Brandsma’s poetry in various ways. In reaction to the former, a number of biographers disqualified Brandsma’s work as non-literary or lacking in aesthetic quality. However, the institutional definition of literature also disqualified Brandsma as a poet due to his low visibility in the literary field (see Section 4.1 and Section 4.2). Meanwhile, our understanding of literature in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has expanded to encompass genres that were once considered non-literary. This includes egodocuments, which have now been recognised as legitimate sources for historical and literary research (Dekker 2002). This development has had a significant impact on the study of Brandsma’s private writings and correspondence, as well as having positive consequences for research into his poetry. This shift towards a broader understanding of literature has indeed shaped a more open attitude towards Brandsma’s poetry since 2000 (see Section 5.2).

6. Conclusions

Before his canonization and shortly afterwards, St Titus Brandsma’s poetry was finally recognised as an important part of his literary legacy, offering insight into his mystical experience, intellectual life and martyrdom (Dölle 2002; Crijnen 2008; Waaijman 2018; Arribas 2022; Millán Romeral 2022; Bocken 2024). Although earlier, ambivalent opinions and inadequate recognition from the literary establishment in the Netherlands delayed a positive critical response, these factors ultimately could not prevent it entirely. The fact that the general public appreciated a poem by Brandsma meant that at least some of his poetry could not be ignored. Meanwhile, Dutch Catholic readers had lost interest in almost all Catholic poets of Brandsma’s generation as the Netherlands secularized at a rapid pace after the 1960s. This, however, was not the case for the Carmelite. Despite being unrecognized by professional critics during his lifetime, at least one of his poems continued to be widely read after his death, becoming a literary symbol of Catholic resistance to Nazism.

From 2000 onwards, a growing literary awareness among the scholars studying Brandsma’s work was a positive factor. Modern literary analysis techniques, such as close reading or hermeneutics, could now be used to reveal the complexity of his poems. By the second decade of the 21st century, this had ultimately helped to dispel the prevalent notion that his poetry was insignificant. Meanwhile, the question itself has largely become irrelevant owing to a paradigm shift in literary studies. Over the last twenty years, culminating in Brandsma’s canonization in 2022—a major event that undoubtedly served as a significant catalyst—his poetry has received favourable attention on a global scale. Some of his best-known poems have reached a wider audience after being translated into English, Spanish and other languages (sometimes multiple times). In the Netherlands, meanwhile, his prose has increasingly been re-contextualized as poetry. All these events have garnered new attention for the Carmelite saint’s literary style and poetic language.

Specifically, this article has argued that Brandsma’s representation as a literary author of no merit can be explained by an interplay of factors. These include his position outside the Dutch literary field from around 1900 until his death, his reticence about his poetry and the lack of literary expertise among his early biographers. The latter deliberately or inadvertently framed his poetics as obsolete. In contrast, changes in literary understanding in the late 20th century, the emergence of professional scholars trained in literary analysis and the positive attention Brandsma received in the Roman Catholic Church have led to a gradual improvement in the depth and scope of reflection on his poetry in recent years.

In conclusion, although only a few of Brandsma’s poems have been the subject of in-depth research, this study suggests that his poetic corpus contains a greater number of texts conveying significant theological insights than has generally been assumed. This means that poetry is certainly a key area on which Brandsma scholars will focus in the future. One aspect that deserves closer scrutiny is the way in which Brandsma expressed his theological outlook through poetry, using metaphor and symbolism to convey ideas that he could not or did not want to express in other ways. Another avenue for Brandsma research is investigating the relationship between his poetry and wider intellectual themes in his writings, particularly his exploration of Dutch and Western mysticism. Finally, some of the poems seem to suggest that poetry was a means for Brandsma to express his personal mystical experiences. While this is generally assumed to be the case with his prison poem “Before the picture of Jesus” (no. 51), other, earlier poems also invite this interpretation. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to analyse Brandsma’s poems using modern literary research methods should be welcomed as a means of gaining a better understanding of those texts, revising existing views of his abilities as a writer and discovering new dimensions of his intellectual, spiritual and social activity.

From a broader perspective, Brandsma’s poetry addresses the issues associated with studying poetry as a locus theologicus. A significant aspect of this is striking the right balance between interpreting poetry as a source of theological or mystical insights and as literature that expresses theology poetically through language and form that are integral to its message. Brandsma’s poetry also illustrates a further problem that arises at the intersection of religion and literature in reception studies. This can manifest itself as either inflating the significance of poetry by a well-known religious figure or downplaying its value. An example of the latter is the trajectory of the critical reception of the poetry of Thérèse of Lisieux, a canonised Discalced Carmelite nun, whose links to Brandsma were discussed by Millán Romeral (2024); the parallels in the reception of their poetry could also be the topic of additional research. Further study of Brandsma’s poetry is expected to provide a theoretical contribution to these discussions.