Hecate (The Adventure of Catherine Crachat Series #1) by Pierre Jean Jouve, Lydia Davis (Translator)

From the Publisher

First published as companion volumes in France, Pierre Jean Jouve's novels Hecate and Vagadu trace the carnal and emotional liaisons of Catherine Crachat, a Parisian actress. Hecate recounts the debaucheries and betrayals of a vicious love triangle: Catherine Crachat and her young lover, Pierre Indemini, part ways in Paris, only to be drawn separately to Vienna and into the web of lust and intrigue cast by the Baroness Fanny Felicitas Hohenstein. Desired both by Fanny and by Pierre, Catherine must choose between joining in the threesome that Fanny is cultivating, or losing both friend and former lover. The deaths of Pierre and of Fanny force Catherine to explore the intersection of love, hatred, and spiritual striving which threatens her very identity.

Publishers Weekly

Although the melodrama and religious symbolism characteristic of the French surrealists intrude gratuitously in the first of two volumes that chronicle the life of a fictional heroine, avant-garde Catholic poet Jouve (1887-1976) uses haunting descriptions to paint a dark psychological portrait that gradually overshadows his novel's silly plot and philosophical pretensions. When the narratorbeautiful, self-hating Parisian movie star Catherine Crachat (her last name means "spit")spies Pierre Indemini posing for a neighborhood painter, she falls in love with the soulful young man and commences an ethereal affair with him. Yet she promptly, willfully, destroys their intimacy by playing the coquette. Years later in Vienna, Catherine meets Baroness Fanny Felicitas Hohenstein, a bisexual femme fatale who tries to persuade her to take part in a mnage trois with Fanny's current lovernone other than the elusive Pierre. But when a spiritual crisis convinces Pierre that he and Catherine must part, she returns to Paris, where their daily correspondence sustains her until he dies, leaving a stash of unsent letters. In a final attempt to seduce Catherine, Fanny takes the letters, and the two women enter into a struggle to the death. The relationship between Catherine and Fanny is brilliantly drawn and reaches a powerful climaxall the more powerful in comparison to Jouve's tame, rather sappy meditations on (heterosexual) love. First published in 1928, the same year as Georges Bataille's erotic masterpiece The Story of the Eye, part one of Catherine's Adventures has none of that novella's heat, but the better controlled sequel (reviewed below) earns the novel as a whole a place on the shelf next to its celebrated contemporary. (Oct.)

Louis Begley

Jouve is a master of erotic writing. -- Louis Begley, The New York Times Book Review

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