COUPERUS AND MULTATULI; TWO VIEWS ON THE DUTCH EAST INDIES

27 May – 14 November 2010

Max Havelaar pictured during his speech to the regents of Lebak

Comparison

The summer exhibition in the Louis Couperus Museum is devoted to a comparison between perhaps the most famous Dutch authors: Couperus and Multatuli. Both have lived in and written about the former Dutch East Indies. 'Multatuli' was the pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820-1887). Exactly 150 years ago he published Max Havelaar, a flaming protest against the Dutch colonial policy in the Dutch East Indies, dedicated to King William III. It was based on his experiences as a 'resident' on the islands of Sumatra and Java, where he witnessed the exploitation of the poor by their peers. Forty years later, Louis Couperus wrote The Hidden Force, also a novel about a Dutch colonial resident, who thinks he can handle his job and his native subjects. Their silent hostility finds it way into mysterious practices which eventually get the better of him and his family. In 1921, Couperus was invited to travel again to the Indies in order to write travel stories for a new The Hague magazine. After his death, these were published in the book Eastward. In these stories he expresses his personal views of the Dutch East Indies.