Louis Couperus - The Hidden Force

Our tropical paradise was a madhouse, whose people looked down on one another in ways that no outsider could ever fathom. It was a factory of inferiority complexes, which produced all manner of contorted behaviour that still has not entirely disappeared.

The fusion between Dutch and East Indian never took, culturally or politically, except in some individual instances of people highly educated in both cultures. Yet it is that blend, that ambiguity, if you like, that state of having the best of both worlds, which many Dutch writers born in the East, including Couperus and Kousbroek, have yearned for. This can result in mawkish regret. But the best of these writers came to see that their dream was bound to fail, as long as one side had its boot at the neck of the other. It would not work, no matter how well-meaning or idealistic the rulers might be. Of course, many rulers were neither. Van Oudijck was both, which is why he couldn’t understand why his native subjects hated him: “There was no logic in it. Logically, he should be loved, not hated, however strict and authoritarian he might be considered. Indeed, did he not often temper his strictness with the jovial laugh under his thick moustache, with a friendly, genial warning and exhortation?”

His insight into the tragedy of European colonialism made Couperus a great writer. And his sympathy for the hybrid, the impure, the ambiguous, gave him a peculiarly modern voice. It is extraordinary that this Dutch dandy, writing in the flowery language of fin-de-siècle decadence, should still sound so fresh. But we can only be grateful. For now that the dreams of ethnic purity are making a comeback, his voice is more urgent than ever.

IAN BURUMA