Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice

Here Cabell suggests that all of us would be no better off than Jurgen, were our heartfelt desires granted and we found ourselves in our ideal circumstances. And yet, these dreams and ideals are not a waste of time, rather they are the very core of what is needed for our best life. Squaring that circle is left to each reader, though it appears there are far fewer Cabell readers today than when he wrote the book.

There is a mimetic element to the story: I experienced some of Jurgen's lack of satisfaction or discontent as I proceeded through the various episodes. Recognition of this effect actually lifted my spirits: Cabell may well have attempted this deliberately, and such a literary effect is thematically fitting. The double entendre show more for which Jurgen is notorious certainly is evident throughout, and it was becoming a bit tiresome until I noted my flagging interest was parallel to Jurgen's almost exactly.

Worth revisiting, as are all of Cabell's efforts I've read so far, but I suspect it never will be my favourite. Possibly it is because the plot and prose are so very richly embroidered. Though initially it was difficult to get a handle on Cabell's many and distinct motifs, in other writings they spool out more leisurely and with more space to develop. I might enjoy Jurgen best as recapitulation, after having read the rest of the Biography. show less

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Jurgen, an aging pawnbroker who considers himself a poet and a “monstrous clever fellow,” sets off to find his missing loquacious wife — not because he likes her, but rather because his family and friends say it’s the manly thing to do. While searching for Lisa, he enters a strange land and charms Mother Sereda into temporarily giving him back his youth and good looks. Then he uses his renewed vigor to lie and philander his way across a magical landscape, “dealing fairly” with all the women he meets, as he half-heartedly searches for his wife. Along the way he meets dozens of historical and mythical creatures and people (including Queen Guenevere, shown in the picture), first show more introducing himself as a duke, then promoting himself to prince, king, emperor, pope, and eventually, for a moment, even God.

Despite being a vain and hypocritical rogue, Jurgen has a sentimental heart (though he can’t seem to be faithful). But he is never content, even when he’s married to the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, or even when he’s sitting on God’s throne. Thus, the story of Jurgen is about man’s quest for meaning, pleasure, and purpose. Jurgen is full of human insight and amusing social satire and, for a novel written in 1919, is oh so impolite. Much of the symbolism and metaphor is crude and puerile double entendre of the “big upright lance” and “remarkable powers of penetration” type.

Yet, James Branch Cabell (rhymes with “rabble”) writes in a sardonic voice which is beautiful and genuinely clever and funny, especially when Jurgen talks about women:

* I am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to have been carried off by a devil, poor fellow!
* Love’s sowing is more agreeable than love’s harvest.
* You talk and talk: no woman breathing equals you at mere volume and continuity of speech: but you say nothing that I have not heard seven hundred and eighty times if not oftener.
* “You have a wife, then!” says Jurgen, who was always interested in such matters. “Why, but to be sure! Either as a Christian or as a married man, I should have comprehended this was Satan’s due. And how do you get on with her?”
“Pretty well,” says Grandfather Satan: “but she does not understand me.”
“Et tu, Brute!” says Jurgen.
“And what does that mean?”
* For the devils, he found, esteemed polygamy, and ranked it above mere skill at torturing the damned, through a literal interpretation of the saying that it is better to marry than to burn.
* When Jurgen asks if it’s possible to get divorced in Hell, the devils say no because “we trafficked in them for a while, but we found that all persons who obtained divorces through our industry promptly thanked Heaven…”

I also found it amusing that Jurgen, a pawnbroker with a paunch, backs up his arguments with fake scholarly citations and uses the study of mathematics to seduce intelligent women.

Even a well-educated reader will miss most of the allusions in Jurgen unless armed with a source such as David Rolfe’s Notes on Jurgen. These notes also point out references to Cabell’s previous novels about his fabricated world of Poictesme. Fortunately, understanding of all of these allusions isn’t required for enjoyment of the story, but they elicit chuckles when discovered and could be a source of much diversion for those who like to spend time studying these kinds of things.

Back in its day, Jurgen was deemed offensive by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which tried to get it banned. This, of course, only increased Jurgen’s popularity. The Vice squad lost their case because, superficially, Jurgen seems harmless enough and, according to Cabell and his publisher, complaints about the recurrent references to Jurgen’s big staff, majestic scepter, upright lance, and amazing sword (which seem to meet a lot of veils, sheaths, clefts, and other dark places along the way) prove only that Cabell's detractors have dirty minds.

Perhaps the real issue behind the outcry against Jurgen, however, is its disrespect of Christianity and, in particular, the Roman Catholic Church. For, when Jurgen is sent to Hell, he meets Grandfather Satan and learns that Hell is merely a construct developed by men who think so highly of themselves that they feel that their bad deeds were so influential that they cannot be forgotten and must be punished for eternity. The devils that Jurgen meets are hard-pressed to keep up with people’s demands for torture, lament that Hell’s population is increasing, and look for ways to stop the influx. When Jurgen gets bored of Hell, he talks his way into Heaven and finds that it’s just a figment of his grandmother’s imagination. His discussions with St. Peter cast an ill light on Catholic bishops and popes.

Jurgen is in the public domain and can be downloaded for free at Project Gutenberg. I downloaded the mobipocket version and stuck it right on my Kindle. Besides being free, Jurgen is an interesting and thoughtful novel which is worth reading not just for entertainment, but as part of the history of fantasy literature. show less

Cabell is the fantasy writer of the road not taken: urbane, sophisticated, civilized -- which also means dependent on a web of allusions and on the reader's grounding in his predecessors.

Jurgen is the best-known of his novels and one of his best. It does not require (but is enriched by) prior knowledge of his Poictesme; it is assisted more by having the general background knowledge that an educated (and a classically-educated) reader would have had in the early 20th Century, though that is not absolutely required, either.

It helps in reading the story to keep in the back of one's mind things like Jean-Baptiste Pérès' demonstration that Napoleon was a solar myth, and keep an eye on the calendar.

The pawnbroker Jurgen goes in search of show more his wife, who has been taken away by Koschei, and manages to come up against various mythical, legendary, and generally non-earthly realms and their rulers. He also passes from lady friend to lady friend, some not entirely human, as he goes. He is clever, not averse to dissembling, and adaptable: Odysseus to Dom Manuel's Ajax, Cabell's pre-emeinent example of the gallant approach to life. He ends up returning to domesticity and to the erasure of his travels.

Cabell was resolutely non-heroic in attitude, and his type of fantasy, perhaps more reminiscent of the French prose tradition (Rabelais, Voltaire, Proust, Alain-Fournier) than of the English in its wit and structure, has had little impact on the writers of the later 20th Century. (Heinlein may make gestures towards Cabell in Job, also titled "A Comedy of Justice", but it's hard to imagine a writer less equipped to write Cabellian literature than Heinlein.) show less

Rabelais, Dante and Homer explore the human condition; with fewer fart jokes, and more scepter, sword and staff jokes. For a long while, I thought the book a bit old-fashioned in its approach to the genders. I still think that, but I realized toward the end that Cabell's allegory is big enough for readers of either gender.

This, the most famous novel by James Branch Cabell, is not his best. Nor is it his worst. But it is his most famous.

It became a cause celebre, and thus achieved a kind of immortality that his best books ("The Cream of the Jest," "The Silver Stallion," "The Music from Behind the Moon," "The High Place," "The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck," to name just a few) never did achieve. It was received by certain moralists to be immoral. And so the comedy began in earnest.

But earnest comedies of literary reception do not make for usable literary standards. This book is an elaboration of a short story, and the story itself was perfect in its way. The novel? Well, it is funny, and suggestive, and it has even moved some readers, such as composer Deems show more Taylor, to tears. It also provided one Finnish-American author with a theme for a science-fiction novel. But, though it did all these things, and made Cabell a richer man than he was before (writing well is one thing, marrying well is much more effective), the book remains what it is.

A good book.

A book worth reading.

A book to laugh over, and wonder at.

A book with some images that will last till your dying day, perhaps.

But still, it is not a perfect book.

My advice to readers interested in Cabell is to start with "The Music from Behind the Moon." If you don't like that, give up. You will not like the rest. If you do approve, if you are moved to both laughter and tears, then move on to the main tales of "The Biography of the Life of Manuel," the highlights of which we can list as follows:

1 Figures of Earth (1921)

2 The Silver Stallion (1926)

3 Domnei

4 Jurgen #6 (1919)

5 The High Place #8 (1923)

6 Something About Eve #10 (1927)

7 The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck (1915)

8 The Cream of the Jest (1917)

And if you still enjoy Cabell, beyond these most obvious classics, try the various short story collections in the series, and try his books published after the series ended.

I just want to mention that, if you are like me at all, you will find "The Cream of the Jest" to be the cream of the geste. "Jurgen" pales in comparison. show less

Cabell's most notorious novel because of its obscenity association. Beyond that an exposition of accepting things just because that's the way they are. The story involves Jurgen, the last person in Poictesme to see Dom Manuel (with the grim reaper), or did he? Anyway, he has gotten on in age to eight and forty years and wishes he could do it all over again, this time rightly. He gets his wish, but does it all the same again and settles in the end content for the way things are. Along the way we visit heaven and hell and most places in between along with a bunch of new and recurring characters from the Biography of Dom Manuel.

Coth, Jurgen's father and a Knight of the Silver Stallion, meets Jurgen in hell (he's only there because he was show more burdened with a conscience in life) and does not recognize his own son. He constantly taxes the demons that torment him with the need for new and more painful tortures because he is not content with the way things are in hell. This gives you just a flavor of Cabell's irony. This and so much more as Jurgen plies his lance, sword, and scepter in the dark to find a woman more beautiful than his wife Lisa or his boyhood love Countess Dorothy.

Bawdy and picaresque Jurgen deals with one of Cabell's three philosophies, that of gallantry (chivalry and poetry being the others).

There are more than 25 slightly connected works in the Biography of Dom Manuel, so there is much more Cabell to savor beyond Jurgen. show less

The most famous comedy of Cabell's career, it became so because of a famous censorship trial, in which the book was exonerated of all charges of indecency. Indeed, though it is obvious that Cabell was making some elaborate double-entendres, they were of such a nature that youngsters and the monomaniaclly dirty-minded would find nothing erotic (much less pornographic) in these droll pages.

Cabell, of course, designed it as such. He had prophesied his own ascendancy in his previous book, and he found it easy to prophesy, since he was the one in control.

An elaborate jape, perhaps not better than the original story it developed from ("Some Ladies and Jurgen"), and not nearly as great as was sometimes extolled, but well worth reading show more nonetheless. show less