MULTATULI

MULTATULI. - Pseudonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker, writer, b. in Amsterdam on March 2, 1820, d. in Nieder-Inghelheim on Feb. 19, 1887. A brilliant prose writer and of a fiery, restless temperament, he was sent while still young as an official

to Java. He returned in 1856, recalled and disillusioned: in the Dutch colonies the indigenous chiefs exploited the people and the government of the mother country did not trouble itself to defend them.

This is M.'s thesis, which forms the basis of his famous novel Max Havelaar (Amsterdam 1859), a romantic work par excellence, uneven, disorderly, overflowing here and there with a tender lyricism (the episode of Saidyah and Adinda), full of moving pages and rare beauty. The author poured his whole heart into it: indignation sometimes leads him to resort to the most scathing sarcasm. After the publication of this passionate book, the author lived a wandering life, separated from his wife, and spent his days in the most painful misery, working desperately on seven volumes that he called Ideen (ibid. 1862-77), containing reflections, eccentricities, stories, and even a drama. Through his conception of art, despite his imbalances, he paved new ways in Dutch literature, wholly consumed by what, rightly or wrongly, he called «truth». A scarcely philosophical mind, M. characteristically expressed the ideas and clichés of the age of positivism and materialism, so it is not surprising that currents remaining on the terrain of «free thought» continue to see him as a leader.