Multatuli

MULTATULI. - Pseudonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker, man of letters, b. in Amsterdam on 2 March 1820, d. at Nieder-Inghelheim on 19 Feb. 1887. A brilliant writer with a fiery and restless temperament, he was sent, while still young, as an official to Java. He returned from there in 1856, recalled and disillusioned: in the Dutch colonies the native chiefs exploited the people, and the government of the mother country did not concern itself with defending 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 gentle lyricism (the episode of Saidyah and Adinda), full of moving pages and of rare beauty. The author poured his whole heart into it: indignation makes him resort at times to the most scathing sarcasm. After the publication of this impassioned book, the author lived as a wanderer, separated from his wife, spent his days in the most painful misery, working desperately on seven volumes which he called Ideen (ibid. 1862-77), containing reflections, oddities, tales and even a play. Through his conception of art, he prepared, despite his imbalances, new paths in Dutch literature, wholly absorbed by what, rightly or wrongly, he called "truth." A scarcely philosophical mind, M. expressed in a characteristic way the ideas and commonplaces of the age of positivism and materialism, so that it is no surprise that the currents which remained on the ground of "free thought" continue to see in him one of their leaders.

Felice Rütton.