Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Passatist: Louis Couperus's Interpretation of Dutch Colonialism

1984; Volume: 37; Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3350935

2164-8654

E. M. Beekman,

Lexicography and Language Studies

is one of the great writers of Dutch literature and one of its classic novelists.Together with Multatuli, he was an im portant innovator of Dutch prose, while his inspiration was anything but typical of the prevailing norm.He contributed five masterpieces to the history of the Dutch novel, including The Hidden Force, which doubles as a major work of Dutch colonial literature.Couperus was of two minds about what he discerned both in himself and in the world at large.He lived among and wrote about opposing forces which seldom re sponded to conciliation.What is important here are not his attempts as such, but the experience of the dichotomy itself.While awareness of disjunction is almost a commonplace of the romantic imagination, and Couperus was most definitely a roman tic, it is also a prominent feature of Dutch colonial letters.One should be able, therefore, to illuminate the general nature of that literature by discussing the spe cific example of The Hidden Force.The Couperus family had deep roots in colonial society.1 Louis Couperus's great-grandfather, Abraham Couperus, went to the Indies in the latter half of the eighteenth century.While the Dutch still controlled Malacca he acquired a fortune there, and became its governor.He married a local woman from a respected family -Catharina Johanna Koek-whose grandmother was a Malay.After he moved to Java, he continued his impressive career in the colonial Civil Service and became a friend of Raffles, who ruled Java during the British interim regime from 1811 to 1816.John Ricus Couperus, the w riter's father and Abraham Couperus's grandson, was born in 1816 in the colonial capital, Batavia, and, as was customary, was sent to Holland for his secondary and graduate education.He acquired a law degree from Leyden University and returned shortly thereafter to the Indies, where he em barked on a distinguished career in the colonial judiciary.While living in Batavia he married in 1897 a woman from an aristocratic family, Catharina Geertruida Reynst, whose father had been a vice-president of the powerful Council of the Indies as well as acting governor-general.They had eleven children.John Couperus retired officially in 1862 and went back to Holland to live in Th e Hague, the city preferred by most retired colonialists.Three children were born there, of whom two died, in addition to one older daughter.The eleventh (and last) child, and fourth son.