Jurgen
A satirical tour de force, giddily creative and brilliantly witty, this fantasy is also a meditation on middle age and the emptiness of promiscuity. Jurgen is transformed into a youth and embarks on a bizarre series of sexual conquests and adventures in ever more fantastical landscapes populated by mythological and literary figures.
Approx. 95,981 words.
ng can be said of few communicants and of no monks. Think, too, of his fine artistry, as evidenced in all the perilous and lovely snares of this world, which it is your business to combat, and mine to lend money upon. Why, but for him we would both be vocationless! Then, too, consider his philanthropy! and deliberate how insufferable would be our case if you and I, and all our fellow parishioners, were to-day hobnobbing with other beasts in the Garden which we pretend to desiderate on Sundays! To arise with swine and lie down with the hyena?--oh, intolerable!"
Thus he ran on, devising reasons for not thinking too harshly of the Devil. Most of it was an abridgement of some verses Jurgen had composed, in the shop when business was slack.
"I consider that to be stuff and nonsense," was the monk's glose.
"No doubt your notion is sensible," observed the pawnbroker: "but mine is the prettier."
Then Jurgen passed the Cistercian Abbey, and was approaching Bellegarde, when he met a black ge