Talk:Cornelis Vreeswijk

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The article as it stands today is written from a Swedish perspective, and we tend to assume, possessively, that Cornelis is Sweden's very own flying Dutchman, while his Dutch career must be comparatively insignificant. I don't know much about it, so I've left the original claim that in the Netherlands "he never achieved the fame he enjoyed in Sweden". But perhaps this could be denied, qualified, or alternatively fleshed out with a bit more detail from a Dutch perspective? Cornelis lived there for at least a couple of years during his productive years, he released records there (but how many and which ones?), and when I google for Dutch pages, I come up with a professional-looking site of the Dutch Cornelis Vreeswijk society (Cornelis Vreeswijk Genootschap), which I can't read. :-( Also, did he publish poetry in Dutch, are there books about him? Could a Dutch discography and bibliography be added to the article? Is any Dutch speaker out there willing to pitch in? Bishonen 08:32, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't know that much about Cornelis Vreeswijk, but perhaps I can say a few things. There has been some interest in Cornelis in the media the last few years, and what I can remember from those stories is that he 1) was a singer, and 2) was very popular in Sweden. I think this article should be mainly from a Swedish perspective. I'll see if I can add a few things from nl:Cornelis Vreeswijk or from the C.V. Genootschap site. Eugene van der Pijll 17:58, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• That's great! Thanks a lot, Eugene. I'd no idea that Cornelis (Swedes invariably refer to him by first name alone--in Sweden, of course, that's a pretty unique name) released that many Dutch records. What a productive guy he was, altogether. He really is universally beloved in Sweden, now that he's dead :-(, but I can remember when it was different--when the tabloids hounded him about tax debts and stuff. It's sad and ironic that his records are bringing in so much money posthumously, when he was in life always short of cash.

I've experimentally moved the paragraphs around some, and changed headline sizes, to make the structure more logical (see table of contents). I'm not sure--it certainly has some disadvantages, especially that of giving the little reflection "Nationality and style" a big honking headline which it hardly deserves. And that of ignoring the chronological story-line that you respected. Anyway, please feel free to just revert this change, if you don't like it--maybe I've given too much priority to having the TOC look good.

Maybe I should just delete "Nationality and style". What do you think?

The quote about the Swedish language certainly should stay. I have merged the paragraphs about his Dutch carreer and his nationality. I think those two paragraphs fit nicely together; I'm not too sure about the header "Dutch carreer", but I couldn't think of anything better. It would be nice if there is a quote from Cornelis about his Dutch, to compare with the one about the Swedish language, but I haven't found anything suitable.

Take a look, and if you don't like it, just change it.

Hey, what a good idea to merge them. :-) They fit nicely, as you say, and it helps the overall structure a lot. Yes, a quote from Cornelis himself about his Dutch in that paragraph ... that would be a lollipop. But I'm glad you found something about the sense of his Dutch style, and that it was a barrier. I'm sure he was in one sense perfectly bilingual, with Dutch spoken in the home all during his teens, and with all the connections and Dutch family stuff implied by his parents moving back to the Netherlands in, uh, 1961, I think it was. But in another way, his Dutch cultural references and slang etc would have been kind of frozen in time in 1949. Not what the cool people wanted to hear in the seventies.

I took the quote about Cornelis' Swedish from Klas Widén's short CV biography, which is available on the Cornelis Vreeswijksällskapet's site. Widén just says it's taken from "an interview", not what interview or when. (If he had, I would have, too.) It's annoying, because it seems quite possible that Cornelis might have said something about his Dutch in the same context. Hmmm ... You know, I think I might mail the secretary of the Sällskapet and ask if he knows. I've already talked with him on the phone, and he seemed delighted with the attention.

Thanks again, Eugene, I'm really enjoying this collaborative editing. This article is my first attempt. I mean, it's the first that I've substantially expanded.--Bishonen 22:13, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Btw, I notice that you italicize both album and song titles, while I use quote marks for both. I'm not sure about my system (I'm thinking possibly the correct thing would be italics for albums and quotes for songs). Are you sure about yours? Because if not, we might as well leave it inconsistent for a while, and I'll eventually burrow deep enough into the wikipedia site to discover what the house style is on this point. Thanks again.--Bishonen 20:25, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I didn't think about it. I haven't written anything in wikipedia before about singers. I automatically put the titles in italics, because they are in Dutch. They should of course be in the house style (which I don't know), but it is at least clear what is meant now, even if it isn't consistent. Eugene van der Pijll 21:06, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yup, I've just hit the house style titles lode, at Wikipedia Manual of Style (titles). Album titles in italics and song titles within quote marks it is, and I've edited accordingly.Bishonen 20:31, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• It is really pleasing to see how this article has evolved and improved since my original stub. I also see that some of my original information was incorrect (apparently Cornelis' father went to Sweden in 1947 but Cornelis came in 1949. And I had read in an article that Cornelis played Herod in Jesus Crist Superstar (The journalist and I thought theat role was perfect for him and I never questioned that info) but I am glad it has now been corrected to Pilate.) Great work! I wish some of my other articles received equally eager editing. ;-) (Paaskynen 06:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC))

• I just edited the following sentence "and Vreeswijk never achieved the fame in the Netherlands as he did in his home country Sweden." Also based on this discussion here I think it's slightly incorrect to refer to Sweden as being Vreeswijk's home country. New sentence "and Vreeswijk never achieved the fame in the Netherlands as he did in Sweden."

Images

Ok so there were some arguments about the photo. Well, if nothing else, here are two album covers:

File:Cornelis Bästa, album cover.jpg File:Cornelis Vreeswijk, Svenska Klassiker, album cover.jpg

Fred-Chess 12:53, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again, Fred. Sorry to be so quick to jump in with something negative every time; it's just that I've had a lot of time to think of a those negative angles during the long time I've been chasing images. :-( See how the album cover template says "to illustrate the album or single in question" in bold ? The article isn't about those albums, in fact they aren't mentioned in it. We might have a slim chance if we found a cover pic of one of Cornelis' original records (see discography, but Google doesn't hold out much hope). Those are at least mentioned on the page, and they could quite appropriately be mentioned in the actual text, too. Whereas the two above are unfortunately a couple of the many anthologies published after CV's death (or possibly before, not sure, but it doesn't make any difference). It's a shame, the Svenska Klassiker portrait is great! :-( Incidentally, the situation's just the same with the book cover I put in before: the article's not about the book, so we don't get to use that image either. But I do appreciate your interest. Bishonen | talk 13:52, 10 September 2005 (UTC)