And indeed Hergesheimer has to find his man in the relaxed
society to which I have referred, a society wearied by unchartered
freedom, where business is profitable but trivial, where duty and
religion exist only as a convention, disregarded by the honest,
upheld by the hypocritical, a society where Cytherea marks and
grips her own. Even so, it is an achievement.
Cytherea in the story is a doll with a glamorous countenance,
bought and cherished by Lee Randon as a symbol of what he did not
find in his married life, what no man finds and keeps, because it
is an illusion. Cytherea is Lee Randon's longing for emotional
satisfaction, a satisfaction that is not to be of the body merely.
And when he meets Savina Grove, a pathological case, whose violent
sex emotions have been inhibited to the bursting point, he thinks
(and fears) that he has found his heart's desire. In the old, old
stories their elopement would have been their grand, their tragic
romance. In this cruel novel it is tragic, for she dies of it; but
she is not Cytherea; she is earthly merely; it is felt that she is
better dead.
It is a cruel story, cruel in its depiction of an almost worthless
society with just enough of the charm of the Restoration to save
it from beastliness; cruel in its unsparing analyses of man's sex
impulses (by all odds the most valuable part of the story); cruel
particularly because the ruined Lee Randon is a good fellow,
honester than most, kinder than he knows to individuals, although
certain that there is no principle but selfishness, and that it is
folly to limit desire for the sake of absolutes, like
righteousness, or generalities, like the human race.
Pages:
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264