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
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“A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape, I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.”
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