Il trauma come “valore aggiunto”. L’opera letteraria di Gustaaf Peek

Abstract

Gustaaf Peek is a Dutch writer and poet who translates art into words. His works are often harsh, difficult to understand for the reader and complicated. He hunts for unknown facts in history as well as in daily life, for instance, in his first novel Armin, with the monstrosity of the Lebensborn project in Nazi Germany, or in his second novel Dover where he discusses the reality of illegal immigration and warlords living in complete freedom in western towns. It is art for art’s sake. But the novels written by Peek also contain the red thread of traumatic experiences. All of his characters suffer from one or many traumas, and act consequently. To the author this was a kind of wake-up call, a new way to consider his work and a new way to engage in the literary world. The aim of this article is to try to explain where Peek wrote about trauma and how. His topics and writing methods have also been illustrated.