A Platonic Love

A Platonic Love is Paul Alexis' novel, or novella, about the unrequited love between a mature man of means, Mr. Mure, who is fifteen years the senior of the beautiful Helen, a woman he's known since she was a child. It was published originally in 1886 as Un amour platonique (but even earlier, in 1880, under the title Journal de Monsieur Mure). Paul Alexis's touch is fine, his style is deft. This book is elegantly written, nostalgic, and masterful. If it weren't for the Naturalist moniker that often gets attached to him - by literary historians - one might almost call him Romantic. The last thing that comes to mind when reading him and A Platonic Love in particular, because their styles seem, although similar, so very different - is Émile Zola, who was his friend and master and the founder of Naturalism. Paul Alexis is not very well known at all in the English-speaking world, nor even in the French one. A Platonic Love is even less so. If one had to compare this novel with something better known today, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby comes immediately to mind. Both participate in a rich and deep feeling of longing, unrequited love, and a strong sense of nostalgia for things of the past. Another book similar in theme might be The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Goethe.