Couperus, Louis

Couperus, Louis 

Born June 10, 1863, in The Hague; died July 16, 1923, in De Steeg. Dutch writer.

The son of a highly placed official in the Dutch administration in Indonesia, Couperus published a collection of verses entitled Orchids in 1887. His novel Eline Vere (1889) showed the decay of high society. The theme of the inevitability of fate is central to his novels Fate (1890) and Old People and the Things That Pass (1906). In the novel The Hidden Force (1900), Couperus contrasted the Dutch colonizers and the people of Java, slumbering but full of latent power.

Couperus wrote the utopian novels Majesty (1893, Russian translation, 1906) and Peace to All the World (1895, Russian translation, 1907). World War I dealt a blow to his Utopian ideas; he turned to antiquity and sought in the past the sources of modern barbarism and antihumanism—for example, in the novels Comedians (1917) and Xerxes (1919). Couperus was a representative of naturalism in Dutch literature.

WORKS

Proza [vols. 1–3] Amsterdam, 1923–25.
Verzamelde werken, vols. 1–12. Amsterdam-Antwerp, 1952–57.
De boeken der kleine zielen, vols. 1–4. The Hague [1952].
In Russian translation:
“Fatum.” Novyi zhurnal literatury, iskusstva i nauki, February-April, 1905.

REFERENCES

Tricht, H. W. van. Louis Couperus. The Hague, 1960.
Ham, J. van, and J. C. Verkerk. Facetten en figuren. The Hague-Rotterdam [1961].
Bogaerts, T. De antieke wereld van Louis Couperus. Amsterdam, 1969.

I. V. VOLEVICH