Born: The Hague, The Netherlands, 10 June 1863. Spent part of his youth on Java. Education: Failed his school exams, 1886. Family: Married his niece Elizabeth Baud in 1891. Career: After 1891 spent most of his life in the south of France and in Italy; travelled to Indonesia, 1899. Worked for the magazine Nederlandsch Spectator; also wrote for The Hague newspaper Het Vaderland. Died: 16 July 1923.
Publications
Collections
Verzamelde werken [Collected Works]. 12 vols., 1952-57. Nagelaten werk. 1976.
Fiction
Eline Vere. 1889; as Eline Vere, translated by J.T. Grein, 1892.
Noodlot. 1890; as Footsteps of Fate, translated by Clara Bell, 1891.
Extase. 1892; as Ecstasy, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and John Gray, 1892. Eene illuzie [An Illusion]. 1892.
Majesteit. 1893; as Majesty, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and Ernest Dowson, 1894.
Wereldvrede [World Peace]. 1895, reprinted 1991.
Willeswinde [Wind of Will]. 1895.
Hooge troeven [High Stakes]. 1896.
Metamorfoze. 1897.
Psyche. 1897; as Psyche, translated by B.S. Berrington, 1908.
Fidessa. 1899.
Langs lijnen van geleidelijkheid. 1900; as The Law Inevitable,translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, 1921.
De stille kracht. 1900; as The Hidden Force, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, 1922, revised and edited by E.M. Beekman, 1985.
Babel. 1901; as Babel, translated by A.A. Betham, n.d. De boeken der kleine zielen. 4 vols., 1901-04; as The Book of the Small Souls, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, 4 vols., 1914-18.
Over lichtende drempels. 1902.
Van oude menschen, de dingen die voorbijgaan. 2 vols., 1902; as Old People and the Things That Pass, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, 1918.
God en goden [God and Gods]. 1903. Dionyzos. 1904.
De berg van licht [The Mountain of Light]. 3 vols., 1905-06.
Aan den weg der vreugde [Along the Road of Joy]. 1908.
Van en overmijzelf en anderen [Of and About Myself and Others]. 4 vols., 1910-17.
Korte arabesken (stories). 1911; selection as Eighteen Tales, translated by J. Kooistra, 1924.
Antiek toerisme. 1911; as The Tour, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, 1920.
Antieke verhalen [Antique Stories]. 1911.
Herakles. 2 vols., 1913.
Van en over alles en iedereen [Of and About Everything and Everyone]. 5 vols., 1915.
De ongelukkige [The Unfortunate One]. 1915.
De komedianten. 1917; as The Comedians, a Story of Ancient Rome, translated by J. Menzies-Wilson, 1926.
De ode. 1918.
Legende, mythe en fantazie. 1918.
De verliefde ezel [The Enamoured Ass]. 1918.
Xerxes of de hoogmoed. 1919; as Arrogance, the Conquests of Xerxes,translated by Frederick H. Martens, 1930.
Lucrezia. 1920.
Iskander. 1920.
Het zwevend schaakbord [The Hovering Chessboard]. 1922.
Het snoer der ontferming en Japansche legenden [The String of Mercy and Japanese Legends]. 1924.
Via appia. 1972.
De zwaluwen neer gestreken [The Alighted Swallows]. 1974.
Endymion. 1976.
Verse
Een Lent van vaerzen [A Lent of Verses]. 1884.
Orchideen. 1886; selection in Flowers from a Foreign Garden, translated by A.L. Snell, 1902.
Other
Schimmen van schoonheid [Phantoms of Beauty] (sketches). 1912.
Uit blanke steden onder blauwe lucht [From White Cities under Blue Skies] (sketches and impressions). 2 vols., 1912-13.
Brieven van een nutteloozen toeschouwer [Letters of a Useless Spectator] (anti-war polemic). 1918.
Met L. Couperus in Afrika (journalism). 1921.
Oostwaarts. 1924; as Eastward, translated by J. Menzies-Wilson and C.C. Crispin, 1924.
Nippon. 1925; as Nippon, translated by J. de la Vallette, 1926.
Kindersouvenirs [Childhood Memories]. 1978.
Epigrammen. 1982.
Translator, Verzoeking van den Heiligen Antonius, by Flaubert. 1896, reprinted 1992.
Critical Studies:
Leven en werken van Louis Couperus by Henri van Booven, 1933; Verhaal en lezer by W. Block, 1960; Couperus in de kritiek by M. Galle, 1963; Louis Couperus: Een verkenning by H.W. van Tricht, 1965; Beschouwingen over het werk van Louis Couperus by K.J. Popma, 1968; De antieke wereld van Louis Couperus by T. Bogaerts, 1969; Couperus, grieken en barbaren by E. Visser, 1969; De man met de orchidee. Het levensverhaal van Louis Couperus by Albert Vogel, 1973, 2nd revised edition, 1980; Een zuil in de mist. Van en over Louis Couperus by F.L. Bastet, 1980; Eenheid in verscheidenheid: over de werkwijze van Louis Couperus by H.T.N. van Vliet, 1996.
A novelist of international stature, Louis Couperus belonged to two late 19th-century literary traditions of naturalist and decadent prose. He was born in The Hague in 1863 into a formal, conventional, and aristocratic milieu where colonial administration was one of the traditional professions. Consequently, the family of the young Couperus spent six years in the Dutch colony of Indonesia, returning to the Netherlands in 1877.
As an aspiring literary figure, he did not immediately find his natural form. In 1884 he published a none-too-successful collection of poems, Een Lent van vaerzen [A Lent of Verses], and in 1886 a second collection, Orchideen [Orchids]. The tepid reaction to these poetry collections encouraged him to concentrate on prose. Nevertheless, in the eyes of many critics, his persistent love for poetic, ”beautiful” language and extended ornate description was to mar a number of his novels.
However, when Eline Vere, his first novel, appeared in 1889, Couperus was an immediate success. In 1888, when the novel was serialized in the newspaper Het Vaderland, it coincided with the appearance of two other naturalist novels: Een liefde by Lodewijk van Deyssel and Juffrouw Lina by Marcellus Emants. Dutch naturalism differed from the scientific-minded French naturalism in several respects. The works tend to focus on middle-class milieux, and the main characters are anti-heroes, frequently over-sensitive, over-civilized men and women reacting against the smug calm of the surrounding prosaic, bourgeois society. There is frequently an investigation of taboo subjects like homosexuality or self-gratification. The text aims at objective representation of the characters, and combines colloquial dialogue with woordkunst (”artistic writing”), highly descriptive, evocative passages full of adjectives and neologisms.
In the novel Eline Vere, a victim of her class and her gender, can find no escape for her pent-up energy. Too finely tuned for her own good and consequently misunderstood, she takes an overdose as the result of an unhappy love affair. Unlike other Dutch naturalists, Couperus stressed the laws of deterministic inheritance: Eline Vere has inherited her character from her father, while her cousin Vincent suffers from a similar clash between his personality and his environment.
In a logical step, Couperus’s next novel was entitled Noodlot (Footsteps of Fate), associating family hereditary factors with a fate the three main characters cannot escape. Meijers suggests that Footsteps of Fate and the next novel Extase (Ecstasy) partially attempt to work through Couperus’s homosexuality by transferring it onto a sublimated desire for heterosexual love.
Couperus’s generally recognized masterpiece is a novel written during a year-long return to the Dutch East Indies, and once again deals with the disintegration of character and the notion of fate. In De stille kracht (The Hidden Force), the senior colonial administrator Van Oudijck is undermined by his wife’s infidelities, which weakens his resistance to the pervasive atmosphere of Indonesian magic, ”goena goena.” The rational Dutch colonials one by one become completely submerged in the alien culture they are trying to control and suppress. As Dutch pianos and furniture disintegrate because of the heat, humidity, and termites, their mental and physical health is drained by the atmosphere. In fact there is a suggestion that it is their own moral corruption that allows the silent forces of magic to take hold of their minds.
Back in the bourgeois atmosphere of The Hague, the four novels that make up De boeken der kleine zielen (The Book of the Small Souls) present another Dutch family slowly falling apart under outside strain, with the addition of typically fin-de-siecle mystical elements.
Van oude menschen, de dingen die voorbijgaan (Old People and the Things That Pass) is sometimes likened to a psychological detective novel, as the reader slowly learns how the old people, a 94-year-old man and a 97-year-old woman, murdered the woman’s husband 60 years earlier, with the guilty knowledge of the family doctor. In what is generally regarded as one of his best novels, Couperus slowly peels away this family secret that is affecting the younger generations.
Less well-liked are the novels where Couperus shows a clearer connection with European decadent writers like Baudelaire, de Maupassant, and Wilde. A number of long novels are situated in antiquity or Eastern history, like De berg van licht [The Mountain of Light], about the Roman child-emperor Heliogabalus, Herakles [Hercules], and Xerxes. Above all, Iskanderdepicts Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian empire, with prolonged evocations of the exotic Persian court. These novels are frequently faulted by critics for an overindulgence in long descriptions of luxurious, decadent palaces, sounds, smells, and wines. Frequently, a certain shying away from the homoerotic subtext is also partly the cause for the unpopularity of these novels. However, while these novels are hard-going at times, their opulence and excess can be regarded more positively. By means of their very textual excesses Couperus was in fact able to evoke the exotic, alien quality of long-gone cultures and lifestyles, thus along with his other works, contributing to his highly original and enduring position in Dutch literature.
