Louis Couperus

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Statue of Louis Couperus

Louis Marie Anne Couperus (born June 10, 1863 in The Hague , † July 16, 1923 in De Steeg ) was a Dutch author .

Life

He was the youngest of eleven children of Jonkvrouwe Catharina Geertruida Reynst and Dr. John Ricus Couperus, retired judge at the two high courts in what was then the Dutch East Indies ( Indonesia ).

Louis Couperus spent most of his life abroad, as a schoolchild in Batavia , as an adult on his extensive travels in Scandinavia , England , Germany , France , Spain , the Dutch East Indies , Japan and especially in Italy , which he loved so much extremely fascinated. On September 9, 1891, he married Elisabeth Wilhelmina Johanna Baud. He celebrated the outbreak of the First World War as a release from rigidity. As a result of the war, he returned to The Hague in 1915, where his friends offered him a house in De Steeg, which he only lived in for a short time. He died there on July 16, 1923, a few weeks after his 60th birthday, presumably of pneumonia and blood poisoning .

His grave is in the Dutch cemetery Oud Eik en Duinen in The Hague .

Works

The impressive series of historical and psychological novels , stories , travelogues , essays , features and poems that Couperus left behind testify to an astonishing diversity and not least of an extraordinarily hard-working writer . For his literary work he received the Order of Officers of Orange-Nassau in 1897 and the Order of the Dutch Lion in 1923, on his 60th birthday.

A large part of his novels and short stories takes place in the circles of the upper class of the Hague, the area in which Couperus grew up. Other works deal with the Orient, particularly (but not exclusively) with the Dutch East Indies . His work is often assigned to the style genre of Impressionism .

In addition to countless shorter works, the most important novels were that were translated into various languages ​​during the author's lifetime:

  • Eline Vere (1889). A German version of Louis Couperus' "Eline Vere" appeared in the Magdeburgische Zeitung in 1893 - without specifying the translator. The German “Eline Vere” has been shortened by around half (individual words, sentences, paragraphs or entire chapters have been deleted).
  • Destiny (1890) - Noodlot (not translated into German; English: Fate )
  • Psyche (1898 / German: 1924)
  • The silent force (1900)
  • The Slow Lines of Gradation (1900)
  • Babel (1901 / German: 1911)
  • Yahweh (1902)
  • The Books of Little Souls (1901/1903, not translated)
  • Dionysus (1905 / German: 1920)
  • De berg van licht / Heliogabal (1905–1906 / German: 1916)
  • Of Old People, Things That Pass (1906)
  • Aphrodite in Egypt (1911 / German: 1920)
  • The unfortunate one (1915 / German: 1921)
  • The Comedians (1917 / German: 1919)
  • The floating chessboard (1917 / German: 1921)
  • Xerxes or The Arrogance (1919 / German: 1919)
  • Nippon (1925 / German: Japanese forays : 1929)
  • Iskander (1920 / German: 1926)

literature

  • The small encyclopedia , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, volume 1, page 318
  • Peter Habermehl : Phaeton on the Lichtberg. The Heliogabal novel by Louis Couperus. In: Antiquity and the Occident . Volume 50, 2004, pp. 106-123.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Geert Buelens: Bepaald geen oorlog small. De Eerste Wereldoorlog in de literatuur in Nederland (Couperus, Verwey, Van Looy) . In: Elke Brems u. a. (Ed.): Eighth de behave. Over de literatuur van de twintigste eeuw . Peeters, Leuven 2007. ISBN 978-90-429-1951-8 . Pp. 59-74; and Geert Buelens: Europe's poet and the First World War . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2014. ISBN 978-3-518-42432-2 . In it the chapter “A hot summer. July - September 1914 ", pp. 50-102.
  2. ↑ This novella is said to have influenced Oscar Wilde in the conception of The Portrait of Dorian Gray .

Web links

Wikisource: Louis Couperus  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Louis Couperus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Couperus, Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Couperus, Louis Marie Anne (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch author
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH The hague
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1923
Place of death De Steeg