Maurice Bedel's "Jerome"—A Study of Contrasting Types

About three years ago Maurice Bedel published a novel, which was awarded the Prix Goncourt and aroused considerable amusement and some indignation in at least two countries. It was translated into English and soon attained the respectability of the conventional but almost incredible publication figures that decorate the title pages of all French best sellers. The amusement and indignation, as also perhaps some other features of the novel's career, were due to the fact that, under a slight veneer of literary irony, it expounded, in trenchant but truthful fashion, two conflicting points of view—points of view so wide in outlook that they may fairly be called philosophies. These philosophies are moreover of no mere academic interest, but have on the contrary the liveliest practical importance, inasmuch as they distinguish the main underlying trends of the present day erotic life (and therefore also to a large extent the social life) of the already mentioned countries. As the philosophies in question have seldom if ever been explicitly treated in modern psychological literature, we may perhaps be permitted to take Maurice Bedel's book as a text for a preliminary orientation of the problems concerned—problems which, as we shall see, reveal themselves even to casual examination as of wide import and considerable complexity.

Jerome, the hero of the novel, who also gives it its title, a young and successful French playwright, is on his way to Christiania (as the city was then called) to superintend the production of one of his own plays. He is of an ardent and romantic disposition, given to innumerable short lived love affairs, each of which promises the happiness it does not give, but for a moment fans to a fresh brilliance the fitful flame of his idealistic