Ecstasy A Study Of Happiness

This compelling love story from Dutch novelist, playwright, and poet Louis Couperus uses a fraught, non-traditional romance between lonely widow Cecile van Erven and dashing Taco Quaerts as a means of examining important philosophical questions about the nature of love, happiness, and suffering.

Excerpt from Ecstasy: A Study of Happiness, a Novel Even the gentle lady Poetry is not seldom seen soiling her white hands and straining her tender muscles, dragging logs to make kennels for unheard-of monsters. So now, and for a long time to come, it would seem, the novel is the preferred form of artistic utterance. In the novel this century has found that for which it passionately yearned. Among modes of art it is by far the most mobile and variable. The fewness of its restrictions places it with the greatest. It is alike capable of intense complexity and as great simplicity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

"Ecstasy, A Study of Happiness" by Louis Couperus is a thought-provoking novel that delves into the complex nature of human happiness. Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, this literary work explores the various facets of ecstasy, examining how individuals pursue and experience moments of profound joy and fulfillment. Through vivid characters, philosophical musings, and evocative storytelling, Couperus invites readers on a journey to explore the depths of human emotions and the quest for lasting happiness.

Ecstasy - A Study of Happiness is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1897. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

Dolf Van Attema, in the course of an after-dinner stroll, had called on his wife's sister, Cecile van Even, on the Scheveningen Road. He was waiting in her little boudoir, pacing up and down, among the rosewood chairs and the vieux rose moire ottomans, over and over again, with three or four long steps, measuring the width of the tiny room. On an onyx pedestal, at the head of a sofa, burned an onyx lamp, glowing sweetly within its lace shade, a great six-petalled flower of light. Mevrouw was still with the children, putting them to bed, the maid had told him; so he would not be able to see his godson, little Dolf, that evening. He was sorry. He would have liked to go upstairs and romp with Dolf where he lay in his little bed; but he remembered Cecile's request and his promise on an earlier occasion, when a romp of this sort with his uncle had kept the boy awake for hours. So Dolf van Attema waited, smiling at his own obedience, measuring the little boudoir with his steps, the steps of a firmly-built man, short, broad and thick-set, no longer in his first youth, showing symptoms of baldness under his short brown hair, with small blue-grey eyes, kindly and pleasant of glance, and a mouth which was firm and determined, in spite of the smile, in the midst of the ruddy growth of his crisp Teutonic beard.