Die Schwierigen

Jürg Reinhart, in his search for truth and destiny, abandons painting because the intoxication of creation no longer seems a sufficient reason to live. He then successively renounces love, friendship, and the hope of procreation when he discovers his origins. But this defeat is a victory. Wounded and humiliated, Jürg grows richer as he strips himself bare. Driven by his anxieties, Reinhart seduces two women in turn: Yvonne, disappointed by the weakness of her first husband, an archaeologist; independent and domineering, she will leave Jürg, from whom she is expecting a child, for a man who will offer her security. Hortense, one of his former students, seduced by the adventure that the painter embodies in her eyes, ultimately renounces it for a more earthly, more everyday, more concrete life. But the main character of this novel is destiny, which weaves a tenuous web between beings who cannot meet. For Reinhart, living is the anguished quest for a truth that makes man noble, but he succumbs because everything prevents him from becoming what he is and wants to be.