Louis Couperus

Louis Marie-Anne Couperus
Couperus in 1917
Born	Louis Marie-Anne Couperus 10 June 1863(1863-06-10) The Hague, Netherlands
Died	16 July 1923(1923-07-16) (aged 60) De Steeg, Netherlands
Occupation	Novelist
Years active	1878–1923

Louis Marie-Anne Couperus (10 June 1863 – 16 July 1923) was a Dutch novelist and poet during the Belle Époque. His oeuvre contains a wide variety of genres: poetry, fairy tales, psychological novels, and historical novels. Couperus is considered to be one of the foremost figures in Dutch literature.

Biography

Louis Marie-Anne Couperus was born on 10 June 1863 in The Hague in the Netherlands. He was the eleventh and youngest child of John Ricus Couperus (1816–1902) and Catharina Geertruida Reynst (1829–1893). Four of his ten siblings had passed away before Louis was born. He was baptised on 19 July 1863 in the Église wallone in The Hague.

Statue of Louis Couperus (Kees Verkade 1998), Lange Voorhout, The Hague

Couperus grew up in a wealthy patrician family. He was the great-grandson of Abraham Couperus, a Governor General of Dutch Malacca and many of his relatives were employed in the local government. The Dutch literary historian Rob Nieuwenhuys has observed that Couperus "must have known that his family was of mixed (Indo i.e Dutch-Javanese) descent".

Couperus spent part of his youth (1871–1877) in the Dutch East Indies, going to school in Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia).

After returning to The Hague in 1878, he published his first work of poetry. He was a journalist for Het Vaderland and De Haagse Post. Only after the publication of his first novel, Eline Vere, he became an established author, in 1888.

In 1891, Couperus married his niece Elisabeth Baud (1867–1960), who in 1893 translated Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray into Dutch. They had no children.

The famous author and his wife lived most of their married life in boarding houses and rented villas in France and Italy. Settling in Florence and Nice until 1910, they then began travelling more broadly throughout Italy. Their worldly goods and library were moved about in huge trunks and crates. When the First World War started they reluctantly moved back to The Hague. During all of his life, Couperus travelled around the world, such as to North Africa and Japan in the 1920s.

A renowned wit, raconteur and commentator, Couperus continued to publish critically and commercially successful work until his death of sepsis in 1923. His most important works have been in print ever after. A Louis Couperus Society was first established in the 1930s, afterwards in 1993 (there are currently 600 members). In 1996 the Louis Couperus Museum was founded at the Javastraat, not far from where the author had lived.

After a collection of his works in twelve volumes had been published in 1952-1957 (reprinted in 1975), in 1987-1996, his complete works have been published in fifty volumes. A semi-annual publication, Arabesken, has been dedicated to his work since 1993, and among a host of publications about Couperus, the standard biography by Frédéric Bastet (1987) is most notable.

Writing

Couperus published some early volumes of poetry after 1878, which garnered little success or critical attention. Couperus came to fame with the publication of his first novel Eline Vere (1888), a naturalist work influenced by French novelists like Emile Zola and Gustave Flaubert. Couperus' 1891 novel Noodlot ('Footsteps of Fate') was much admired by Oscar Wilde, and many have noted stylistic similarities between Noodlot and Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Couperus attained popularity with his novels Majesteit ('Majesty', 1893) and Wereldvrede ('World Peace', 1895), both set among royals in modern Europe, threatened with anarchism. Also his fairy tale Psyche (1898) has often been reprinted. A veiled autobiography, Metamorfoze (1897), despite its Art Nouveau bookbinding design by Jan Toorop, did not sell well.

When he was in his late thirties, Couperus attained full command of his own idiosyncratic language in writing. He was and is loved by many for his effusive, precise and plastic descriptions and masterful psychology in his voluminous novels as well as in his light-hearted newspaper work. His style has been imitated by many authors of his own day, but also by modern Dutch writers.

Couperus's later works include De Stille Kracht ('The Hidden Force', 1900) and De Berg van Licht ('The Mountain of Light', 1906), a decadent novel set at the height of the Roman Empire. His psychological novels, such as De Boeken der Kleine Zielen (1901–1902; translated as 'The Books of the Small Souls') and Van Oude Menschen, de Dingen, die Voorbij gaan... (1906: translated as 'Of old people and the Things that Pass') enjoyed much success in the English speaking countries after the First World War. His historical novels were popular in Germany. His books have been translated in many other languages, like French and Italian, Scandinavian languages, Hungarian, Czech, Esperanto and in recent years even in Urdu. Couperus's books received as much attention abroad as in the Calvinistic Netherlands of his days.

Fifty novels and volumes of collected stories by Couperus have been published.

Bibliography

Cover of Eline Vere designed by Ludwig Willem Reymert Wenckebach

Cover of Extaze designed by Hendrik Petrus Berlage

Cover of Psyche designed by Jan Toorop

Cover of De boeken der kleine zielen. Zielenschemering designed by Theo Neuhuys

• Een lent van vaerzen (1884) (A Ribbon of Poems)
• Orchideeën (1886) (Orchids)
• Eline Vere (1889) (revised translation published in 2009 by Holland Park Press and new translation published in 2010 by Archipelago Books, NY)
• Noodlot (1890) (Destiny)
• Extaze. Een boek van geluk (1892) (Ecstasy, a book of happiness)
• Eene illuzie (1892) (An illusion)
• Majesteit (1893) (Majesty)
• Reis-impressies (1894) (Travel impressions)
• Wereldvrede (1895) (World peace)
• Williswinde (1895)
• Hooge troeven (1896) (High Trumps)
• De verzoeking van den H. Antonius (1896) (The Temptation of St. Anthony)
• Metamorfoze (1897) (Metamorphosis)
• Psyche (1898)
• Fidessa (1899)
• Langs lijnen van geleidelijkheid (Translated into English as Inevitable, The Inevitable and The Law Inevitable) (1900)
• De stille kracht (1900) (translated as The Hidden Force)
• Babel (1901)
• De boeken der kleine zielen. De kleine zielen (1901) (translated as The books of small souls. Small Souls)
• De boeken der kleine zielen. Het late leven (1902) (The books of small souls. The Later Life)
• De boeken der kleine zielen. Zielenschemering (1902) (The books of small souls. The Twilight of the Souls)
• De boeken der kleine zielen. Het heilige weten (1903) (The books of small souls. Dr. Adriaan)
• Over lichtende drempels (1902) (Over Shining Doorsteps)
• God en goden (1903) (God and gods)
• Dionyzos (1904)
• De berg van licht (1905/6) (The mountain of light)
• Van oude menschen, de dingen, die voorbij gaan... (1906) (Of old people, the things that pass)
• Aan den weg der vreugde (1908) (On the road of happiness)
• Van en over mijzelf en anderen. Eerste bundel (1910) (About me and others)
• Van en over mijzelf en anderen. Tweede bundel (1914) (About me and others II)
• Van en over mijzelf en anderen. Derde bundel (1916) (About me and others III)
• Van en over mijzelf en anderen. Vierde bundel (1917) (About me and others IV)
• Antieke verhalen, van goden en keizers, van dichters en hetaeren (1911) (Antique Stories, about gods and emperors, of poets and hetaeras)
• Korte arabesken (1911) (Short Arabesques)
• Antiek toerisme. Roman uit Oud-Egypte (1911) (translated as The Tour. A Story of Ancient Egypt)
• De zwaluwen neêr gestreken... (1911) (The Swallows Landed)
• Schimmen van schoonheid (1912) (Shadows of Beauty)
• Uit blanke steden onder blauwe lucht. Eerste bundel (1912) (From White Cities under Blue Air)
• Uit blanke steden onder blauwe lucht. Tweede bundel (1913)
• Herakles (1913)
• Van en over alles en iedereen (1915) (About everything and everyone)
• De ongelukkige (1915) (The unhappy one)
• De komedianten (1917) (translated as The Comedians. A Story of Ancient Rome)
• Jan en Florence (1917) (Jan and Florence)
• Wreede portretten (1917) (Cruel portraits)
• Der dingen ziel (1918) (The Soul of Things)
• Brieven van den nutteloozen toeschouwer (1918) (Letters of the Useless Spectator)
• Legende, mythe en fantazie (1918) (Legend, myth and fantasy)
• De verliefde ezel (1918) (The donkey in love)
• De ode (1919) (The Ode)
• Xerxes of de hoogmoed (1919)
• Iskander. De roman van Alexander den Groote (1920)
• Lucrezia (1920)
• Met Louis Couperus in Afrika (1921) (With Louis Couperus in Africa)
• Het zwevende schaakbord (1922) (The floating chessboard)
• Oostwaarts (1923) (Towards the East)
• Proza. Eerste bundel (1923) (Prose)
• Proza. Tweede bundel (1924)
• Proza. Derde bundel (1925)
• Het snoer der ontferming (1924) (The String of Compassion)
• Nippon (1925)

External links

Works by Couperus

• Works by Louis Couperus at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Louis Couperus at Internet Archive
• (Dutch) Works by Louis Couperus at the Digital Library for Dutch Literature

Other links

• PushkinPress.com English editions of works by the author
• (Dutch) Website of the Louis Couperus Society
• Multimedia Study-pack on Louis Couperus' Eline Vere (University College London)
• Van Oude Menschen --Wiki Translation Project (Dutch -> English)
• Blauwbaards dochter --Wiki Translation Project (Dutch -> English)

Several books have been recently published in translation, including Ecstasy ISBN 1-901285-02-2, Psyche ISBN 1-901285-21-9.