# Hugo Claus: Departing with pride and dignity



## nickel (Apr 25, 2008)

Αντιγράφω αποσπάσματα από τη Wikipedia:

Hugo Claus (1929-2008) was considered to be one of the most important contemporary Dutch language authors... Claus was also a dramatist. He wrote 35 original pieces and 31 translations from English, Greek, Latin, French, Spanish and Dutch plays and novels...
In the early 1970s, he had an affair with actress Sylvia Kristel, who was 27 years younger, with whom he had a son Arthur born in 1975...
He was a "contrarian", of "anarchist spirit". Journalist Guy Duplat recalls that Claus had organized in Knokke the election of a "Miss Knokke Festival", which was a standard Beauty contest, except for the Claus ruling that the members of the all-male jury would have to be naked...
Claus suffered from Alzheimer's disease and requested his life to be terminated through euthanasia at the Middelheim Ziekenhuis in Antwerp on March 19, 2008. Euthanasia is legal in Belgium. The Belgian Minister of Culture stated, "I knew him well enough to know that he wanted to depart *with pride and dignity*". Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said that he imagined the onset of Alzheimer's must have been "inevitable and unbearable torture". "I can live with the fact that he decided thus", he said, "because he left us as a great glowing star, right on time, just before he would have collapsed into a black hole". His death by euthanasia has received criticism from the Roman Catholic Church and the Belgian Alzheimer League...

Ευχαριστούμε τον Ανδρέα Παππά για την ενημέρωση μέσα από το σχετικό άρθρο του στην Ελευθεροτυπία.


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## stathis (Apr 27, 2008)

Εδώ και η σχετική είδηση από την Ελευθεροτυπία, με πολλές πληροφορίες για το έργο του.
Προσωπικά, δεν με σοκάρει καθόλου η λύση που επέλεξε ο Κλάους, ίσως επειδή ξέρω από πρώτο χέρι τι σημαίνει άνοια.
Ενδιαφέρουσα η πληροφορία ότι είχε σχέση με τη Σίλβια Κρίστελ, την οποία μάλιστα ενθάρρυνε να γίνει ηθοποιός και να κάνει οντισιόν για το ρόλο της Εμμανουέλ(λ)ας. (Παρεκτρέπομαι όμως...)
Αν έχει διαβάσει κανείς το αριστούργημά του, τη Θλίψη του Βελγίου, ή κάποιο άλλο από τα βιβλία του, ας μας πει πώς του φάνηκε.


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