BOOKS
347
uals.
If
they are somewhat less than three-dimensional, the reader is
barely aware of it, for each chapter has all the precocious clarity of a
fme short story. The real theme, which Miss Cicellis does not focus on
directly, is why these people with energy and talent, intelligence and
emotion, are lost in a world in which they have no faith, no cause, and
no organic relations to anyone but each other. The group, formed dur–
ing
the excitements of late adolescence, persisted throughout the war,
and now, in postwar Athens, they are continually re-enacting the myth–
ology of their past. Maya, who has fallen in love with Gregory, de–
scribes her friends somewhat bitterly, "Once, quite by accident, they
were the heirs to the earth.... soon they'll have to realize that their
share is both far smaller and far heavier than they imagined." Maya
wants
a "real, ordinary love affair" but Gregory wants only to play
the group role of lover as it has been played before and as the others
expect it to be played.
Perhaps it is carping to suggest that
if
Miss Cicellis had thought
a little more in historical terms, she might have created a larger world.
Cultural history is full of the dispossessed, as Pierre discovers in
War and
Peace.
What Gregory discovers is that the real hero of this band is
Emmanuel who was once one of them but whom they haven't seen since
the war when he was a leader of the Resistance. All of them are afraid
of what he would think of them now.
Mr. Mauriac, recent winner of the Nobel Prize, has an answer for
the dispossessed. The answer, of course, is the Church. But Mr. Mauriac
is
too accomplished a novelist to be merely a propagandist.
The Loved
and the Unloved
has all the subtle psychological shading of the best
French movies. God works in mysterious ways: Mr. Mauriac no doubt
loves God but he does not seem to love his fellow human beings very
much. Gilles and Marie, the loved, have little more than an animal
attraction for each other which moves them to override any feelings
of decency they might have toward friends or relatives. And the excited
sweat on the young lady's upper lip, the young man's flush, presage the
ugliness and corpulence of middle age. Galigal, the unloved, is a dia–
bolical female who has conceived a perverse passion for the soulful and
sensitive young student, Nicolas. She bribes and forces her way into
his
presence, and he, to help his friend Gilles (his false idol), gets in–
volved in a promise of marriage. Nicolas could not possibly make a
promise without intending to keep it, but his horror and disgust make
it
impossible for him to accept the results.
Most of the characters in this novel are
provincial insects
(as Mr.
Mauriac points out in a postscript in which he defends himself against
