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Louis Couperus

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"LOUIS COUPERUS (1863-), Dutch writer, was born at The Hague June To 1863, a member of a family of Scottish origin, banished from Scotland for political reasons in the 16th century. His early boyhood was spent in the Dutch East Indies, where his father was a prominent Government official. His first novel Eline Vere, written under the influence of Tolstoy, appeared in 1889 and was followed by Noodlot (The Footsteps of Fate ) in 18 9 4 and Extaze, the first of his novels to be translated into English (1892). He next produced certain imaginative and idealistic works, such as Majesteit (1895) and several volumes of prose poems. But the work by which he is best known in the English-speaking world is the series of " Books of the Small Souls, " four novels entitled Die Kleine Zielen (The Small Souls), Het Late Leven (The Later Life), Zielenschemering (The Twilight of the Soul), Het Helge Weten (Eng. version Dr. Adriaan ) which, together with Van Oude Menschen, de dingen de voorbijgaan (Old People and the Things that Pass, Eng. version 1919) raised him to the first rank of European novelists. In this record of an ancient crime, buried deep in the hearts of the aged pair of lovers who committed it, and yet poisoning the lives of their descendants to the third and fourth generation, there is the austerity and inevitability of Aeschylean tragedy. Couperus travelled much in Greece and Italy and embodied his classical researches in historical romances such as De Berg van Licht (The Mountain Light ) and its successor De Komedianten (The Comedians), and mythological romances such as Dionyzos (1905) and Herakles (1913), as well as volumes of essays, sketches and short stories. The greater part of his work has been rendered into English by A. Teixeira de Mattos. His historical novel Iskander (concerning Alexander the Great) appeared in 1920.