Climats was published by Grasset in 1928, and it remains Maurois’s masterpiece as a novelist — the book on which his literary reputation, as distinct from his biographical reputation, principally rests. Where his biographies were admired for their readability, Climats was recognized as a genuine work of art: a novel of psychological precision that belongs in the company of Benjamin Constant’s Adolphe, Stendhal’s De l’Amour, and the Proustian analysis of jealousy.
The novel is divided into two parts, each narrated by a different character. In the first, Philippe Marcenat tells the story of his marriage to Odile, a beautiful and elusive woman whose infidelities destroy him — not because of the acts themselves but because of the gap between the woman he imagined and the woman who exists. Odile is charming, affectionate, entirely without malice, and constitutionally incapable of fidelity. Philippe knows this intellectually but cannot accept it emotionally. When she dies (of influenza, not dramatically), he is left with the realization that he never knew her at all.
In the second part, Philippe’s second wife, Isabelle, narrates. She loves Philippe with a devotion that mirrors his own love for Odile — and she discovers, with growing despair, that Philippe cannot return it. He is kind, considerate, even affectionate, but his emotional capacity has been consumed by his first marriage. Isabelle finds herself in the exact position Philippe occupied in Part One: loving someone who cannot be fully present. The symmetry is merciless.
The title — Climats — refers to Maurois’s central metaphor: each person creates a “climate” in which love can or cannot flourish, and the tragedy is that the climates of two people in a relationship almost never match. The lover’s climate is intense, demanding, suffocating; the beloved’s is cool, breezy, indifferent. These are not moral categories — Odile is not evil, Philippe is not weak, Isabelle is not pathetic — but temperamental ones, and they are essentially unchangeable.
The novel draws heavily on Maurois’s own experience: his first wife, Janine de Szymkiewicz, died young, and his grief informed Philippe’s mourning for Odile. His second marriage, to Simone de Caillavet (a descendant of Proust’s Madame Arman de Caillavet), was reportedly happier, though the novel’s bleakness suggests that even happy marriages carry the shadow of asymmetry.
Climats was a major bestseller in France and has never gone out of print there. The English translation, published as Atmosphere of Love or simply Climates, was less successful — the novel’s psychological subtlety requires close reading, and Maurois’s English-language audience preferred his biographies. But French critics have consistently ranked it among the best novels of the interwar period, and it was adapted for film in 1962 and again in 2012.
Collecting Climats
First edition (Grasset, Paris, 1928): French text, original wrappers. One of the most important French novels of the interwar period.
Market values:
- French first, fine wrappers: $60–$200
- English translations: $15–$40
- Deluxe limited editions (numbered copies): $100–$400