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.
Read more about this topic: Louis Couperus
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm’s way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“It seems to me that since I’ve had children, I’ve grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.”
—Anne Tyler (20th century)