Alexis, or the Treatise on the Vain Struggle

Marguerite Yourcenar

• Other Authors Walter Kaiser (Translator)
• Title

  Alexis, or the Treatise on the Vain Struggle

• Date 1983 [1929]
• ISBN 9780374102630
• Publisher New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Description 102 p., 8.2 in.
• Language English, translated from French
• Collections Permanent Collection
• Summary

  It was with Alexis that, in 1929, Marguerite Yourcenar began her career as a novelist. Few literary debuts in this centry are quite as astonishing; for this profound analysis of a man's homosexuality was written by a young woman of twenty-four. The novel takes the form of a letter from the protagonist, Alexis, to his wife, Monique. His letter declares that he can no longer continue in the marriage, that he must obey the demands of his own sexuality, against which he has struggled in vain, to achieve a freedom without which he cannot live. (FSG)

• Tags Fiction, French literature