BIOGRAPHICAL MEMORANDA 



Kluyver's first reaction was always to cite the memorable words of 

 Cornelis Tromp, the Dutch admiral who had proposed to send pow- 

 der and ammunition to his Spanish adversary in order to insure that 

 the battle might go on without an insuperable handicap on one side. 

 Or, to cheer up the associate in question, he would cite the words of 

 Kipling: 'They copied all they could follow, but they could not copy 

 my mind, and I left them swearing and stealing a year and a half 

 behind.' But soon he would face the interests of his own pupils, and 

 the end result was usually a satisfactory compromise. 



It was a delight to be in attendance when Kluyver was writing a 

 letter or, for that matter, to witness the process of a well-considered 

 argument taking shape in any manuscript from his hand. He used a 

 vocabulary and style that were unique, and had developed, in Dutch 

 as well as in other languages, a distinctive Kluyverian idiom which 

 was apparent also in his speech. It was based on the premise that the 

 meaning or effect aimed at should be inescapably clear, and expressed 

 in phrases of irreproachable grammatical correctness. At the start a 

 captatio benevolentiae, a bow to the reader, was needed to catch his at- 

 tention; at the end a climax to drive the point home. Within this 

 framework Kluyver took advantage of every opportunity to insert his 

 typical, flourishing expressions, usually overstatements, the fruits of 

 quick wit and rich imagination, designed to amplify his intentions 

 with sudden gushes of surprising perspicacity. Not infrequently he 

 spiced his speech and letters with veiled and highly subtle criticisms 

 that were not always immediately grasped, and thus had the effect of 

 a time bomb, producing an unexpected shock when later their true 

 significance began to dawn upon the recipient. Instead of criticizing 

 people to their faces, with the prospect of jeopardizing pleasant rela- 

 tionships, he only supplied the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle from which 

 the listener could afterwards reconstruct the true state of affairs in strict 

 privacy; this eliminated the need for referring to it on later occasions. 

 Praise and encouragement, too, were often wrapped up in the same 

 way, and for the same reason. He liked to tease a little those who 

 could stand it, including an audience or his readers, in order to dispel 

 even the semblance of pomposity. Thus he evoked reactions that could 

 not have been elicited as easily by other means. It has been noticed 

 that many of his pupils unconsciously picked up some of the ways of 

 their master, and could thus be unambiguously identified as such. 



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