Dutch poet, essayist, translator and critic.
His parents were prude Calvinists in Velsen, but the French teacher Adriaan Morriën wrote rather shameless about human sexuality.
Morriën studied French in Amsterdam (Plantage Muidergracht) and debuted in 1935 with a poem in Forum . His first poetry collection Hartslag (Heartbeat) was published in 1939. It dealt with the man-woman-child relation.
After the Second World War he mainly worked on translations, literary reviews and reviews for the newspapers Het Parool and NRC, among others. He taught French till 1941 and worked at the Institute for Translation Studies at the University of Amsterdam . He was involved in the foundation of the Dutch Literature Fund.
As editor of a number of literary magazines (Criterium, Libertinage and Tirade) and , he reviewed manuscripts. He was also a consultant to the funding of publishing houses GA van Oorschot and De Bezige Bij. A number of important writers, including Harry Mulisch , Gerard Reve and WF Hermans and the poet Hans Lodeizen, were ‘co-discovered’ by him. He promoted the publication of the work of Pierre Kemp, Jan Hanlo en Rogi Wieg.
He also was well received in Germany and was part of the Gruppe 47and got in 1954 their Prize for the satirical Zu große Gastlichkeit verjagt die Gäste.
Adriaan Morriën translated works by Albert Camus , Heinrich Böll , Sigmund Freud , Erich Kästner , Choderlos de Laclos (Les liaisons dangereuses ), Guy de Maupassant and Pauline Réage ( Histoire d’O).
Morriën was a member of the anti-monarchistic Republican Society , but in 1999 he was appointed Commander in the Order of the Dutch Lion .
Morriën was the father of the two artists Adriënne (1950) and Alissa Morriën, who lived since the 1990’s together with the artist couple Marte Röling (1939) and Henk Jurriaans (1940-2005) in Groningen.
Morriën was open about the unspoken (grandparents) or visual sexual escapades in his family (brought a daughter soup in a brothel), but remained silent about their birth-dates.

Link to German Wikipedia