ABSTRACT
Jude Stefan's refined writings stem from the most lettered and aristocratic branch of Greek and Roman humanism. Call them blazing fires circumscribed by brilliantly innovative variations on rigid, classical forms. Stefan is a refined innovative stylist. It is interesting that the narrator remarks, in "La Fin des Adolescents", that Roman "by no means evoked a personal story, apart from the seductions of memory and talking; one could believe that he didn't have any whatsoever, feeling himself almost nonexistent". Feeling nonexistent defines another personality trait shared by Stefan's narrators and characters; it is a theme associated with the baroque elements of his vision: the vanity and emptiness of a life irremediably invaded by death. The uncertainty between existence and nonexistence, between autobiography and fiction, constantly incites Stefan to ponder the "vertigo of having a separate identity, which is our human fate".
