A review of Notre Amour by Roger Peyrefitte, 1967

Jedson   Wednesday, 1 November 2017

The movie, Les AmitiésParticulières, is based on a very great book, and is, in my opinion, one of the finest movies in the history of cinema. The story here about a boy who fell in love with Peyrefitte – just from reading the book – is new to me and quite fascinating. I do find the comment about Gide confusing. Why did Peyrefitte not like him?

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Edmund Marlowe   Wednesday, 15 November 2017

I am not sure that Peyrefitte did dislike Gide beyond simply disagreeing with him about sodomy, often a divisive issue. As Peyrefitte explains, Gide once accused a friend of having "brutalised" an Arab boy by sodomising him. I imagine Peyrefitte found this offensive and wrong-headed, since, in his view, only thus could pederastic love affairs be fully consummated. Elsewhere he describes Gide as a Calvinist and Puritan, which he may have associated with Gide's distaste for sodomy. Compared with Gide, I think Peyrefitte was always more self-assured about the rightness of sex with boys.

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jedson   Wednesday, 15 November 2017

Interesting. I think my own take on this is similar to what Father Glyphis says to Joe in Koan:

“The issue of whether a love relationship between a man and a boy leads to higher things may not depend, as Socrates would have it, mainly on whether it’s expressed sexually. Socrates had an unfortunate prejudice against physical life.”

“On what then would it depend?”

“On whether the man puts the child’s needs first, I think."