Tip Marugg

Silvio Alberto (Tip) Marugg 1923 - 2006) was a Dutch-Curaçaoan writer and poet. His novel De morgen loeit weer aan (1988) was nominated for a major Dutch literature prize. His style is best characterized as a variation on magic realism. Marugg also wrote several poems (published in literary magazines as well as his book of poems Afschuw van Licht) and a Dikshonario Erotiko, a dictionary of all words with an erotic meaning used in Papiamentu.

Biography

Marugg was born in Willemstad, Curaçao, on 16 December 1923. His ancestors on his father's side hail from the Swiss town of Klosters, and moved to the Netherlands. His great-great-great-grandfather was born in Amsterdam in 1784; he was a surgeon who left for Curaçao in 1804 where he married Elisabeth Schul(d)er. Silvio Alberto Marugg was the son of Johann Isaac Abraham Marugg (1893-1968) and Johanna Helena Curiel (1887-1961); he was one of seven siblings who survived infancy. Until 1973 he worked for Shell.

Marugg's first literary publications were surrealist poems, published in the magazine De Stoep between 1946 and 1951. A foundational theme in his work is the inability to live an authentic life, and fate, dead, and night are recurrent elements in his poetry, which is influenced by Hendrik Marsman. He published his first novel in 1957; Weekend pelgrimage has the economic and political situation of Curaçao as a subject, and expresses a distaste for industrialization. Existential loneliness is the subject of his second novel, In de straten van Tepalka (1967). An ingenious doubling of characters allows the first-person narrator to make fun of himself without turning the novel into melodrama. His collected poetry was published in 1976 as Afschuw van licht.

Bibliography

• 1957 - Weekendpelgrimage
• 1967 - In de straten van Tepalka
• 1976 - Afschuw van licht; gedichten 1946-1951 (poems)
• 1988 - De morgen loeit weer aan (English: "The roar of morning")
• 1992 - Un prinsipio pa un dikshonario erótiko papiamentu
• 2009 - De hemel is van korte duur