I now come to “Jurgen.” It is Cabell’s great book, published in 1919; it was censored almost immediately and eagerly sought by book collectors. Jurgen was born in Poictesme in the time of Dom Manuel, but the scene of the novel is laid in dreamland. It recalls the voyages of Saint Brendan and Dante. I shall try my best to disentangle the real from the fanciful in the book. “Jurgen” is the story of a youth of Poictesme by that name. He was full of ambition. Everybody predicted for him a career of great deeds and amorous exploits. Instead, Jurgen settled down; he married dame Lisa, a matter-of-fact woman, and he opened a pawnshop. One day dame Lisa disappeared and as he missed his domestic comfort Jurgen made up his mind to go after her. He came to a cave on Amneran Heath and here the fantastic story begins. It appears that dame Lisa was a witch, and Jurgen suspected the Devil as being her kidnaper. Jurgen enters the cave and for several hundred pages we follow him in the subterranean world. The author’s imagination winds round and round. It is impossible to follow it in all its meanderings. Led by the centaur Nessus, Jurgen travels in the nether world. He is taken back to his heyday and, younger by twenty years, he soon forgets dame Lisa to explore the land of the dead on his own account. Loved by witches, vampires and queens, he marries a Hamadryad and flirts with Helen of Troy. From escapade to escapade he finally finds himself in hell, where he meets the shadow of his father. He interviews Koshchei, the master “who made things as they are.” Quiet at last after so many marvelous adventures, he comes back to his Penelope, to his slippers and his hearth. “Jurgen” caused a scandal in America. It reads like the sixth book of the “Æneid” adapted by Casanova. Eroticism dominates the book, but it is so mingled with humor that it is inoffensive. There are lengthy digressions, but the interest never flags. Jurgen is a most sympathetic rogue. It is hard to see him surrender to the commonplace at the end of his long journey, like an ordinary Carol Kennicott or a George Babbitt. From being emperor and pope he descends to a pawnbroker again without much ado. But let us judge Jurgen on his faith and not on his works. When he finds dame Lisa he cannot believe that he ever dreamed. But dream he did for a very long while and he will never forget it. Jurgen had dreamed enough to find out that, after all, there was not such great difference between dreaming and staying awake. In wonderland he met with the same petty passions, cares and prejudices which mark this world. Why go so far for so little? And yet, romance is better than routine and who knows if Jurgen will not start again?