Gide, André (Paul-Guillaume)
GIDE, André (Paul-Guillaume)
Nationality: French. Born: Paris, 22 November 1869. Education: École Alsacienne, Paris, 1878-80; Lycée in Montpellier, 1881; boarder at M. Henri Bauer, 1883-85, and at M. Jacob Keller, 1886-87; École Alsacienne, 1887; École Henri IV: baccalauréat, 1890. Family: Married Madeleine Rondeaux in 1895 (died 1938); had one daughter by Elisabeth van Bysselberghe. Career: Mayor of a Normandy commune, 1896; juror in Rouen, 1912; special envoy of Colonial Ministry on trip to Africa, 1925-26. Helped found Nouvelle Revue Française, 1909. Awards: Nobel prize for literature, 1947. Honorary doctorate: Ph.D.: Oxford University. Member: American Academy (honorary member), 1950. Died: 19 February 1951.
Publications
Collections
Romans, récits, et soties; Oeuvres lyriques, edited by YvonneDavet and Jean-Jacques Thierry. 1958.
Short Stories
L'Immoraliste (novella). 1902; as The Immoralist, 1930.
Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue (novella). 1907; as The Return of the Prodigal, 1953.
La Porte étroite (novella). 1909; as Strait Is the Gate, 1924.
Isabelle (story). 1911; as Isabelle, in Two Symphonies, 1931.
La Symphonie pastorale (story). 1919; as The Pastoral Symphony, in Two Symphonies, 1931.
Two Symphonies (includes Isabelle and The Pastoral Symphony). 1931.
Deux récits. 1938.
Novels
Les Cahiers d'André Walter. 1891; in part as The White Notebook, 1965; complete translation as The Notebook of André Walter, 1968.
La Tentative Amoureuse. 1893; as "The Lovers' Attempt," in The Return of the Prodigal, 1953.
Le Voyage d'Urien. 1893; as Urien's Voyage, 1964.
Paludes. 1895; as Marshlands, with Prometheus Misbound, 1953.
Les Nourritures terrestres. 1897; as Fruits of the Earth, 1949.
Le Prométhée mal enchaîné. 1899; as Prometheus Illbound, 1919; as Prometheus Misbound, with Marshlands, 1953.
Les Caves du Vatican. 1914; as The Vatican Swindle, 1925; as Lafcadio's Adventures, 1927; as The Vatican Cellars, 1952.
Les Faux-monnayeurs. 1926; as The Counterfeiters, 1927; as The Coiners, 1950.
L'École des femmes. 1929; as The School for Wives, 1929.
Thésée. 1946; translated as Theseus, 1948.
Plays
Philoctète (produced 1919). 1899; as Philoctetes, in My Theatre, 1952; also in The Return of the Prodigal, 1953.
Le Roi Candaule (produced 1901). 1901; as King Candaules, in My Theatre, 1952.
Saül (produced 1922). 1903; as Saul, in My Theatre, 1952; also inThe Return of the Prodigal, 1953.
Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue (produced 1928). 1909.
Bethsabé. 1912; as Bathsheba, in My Theatre, 1952; also in The Return of the Prodigal, 1953.
Antoine et Cléopatre, from the play by Shakespeare (produced1920). In Théâtre complet, 1947.
Amal; ou, La Lettre du roi, from the play by Tagore (produced1928). 1922.
Robert: Supplément a l'école des femmes (produced 1946). 1930; as Robert; ou, L'Intérêt général, 1949.
Oedipe (produced 1931). 1931; as Oedipus, in Two Legends, 1950.
Les Caves du Vatican, from his own novel (produced 1933). InThéâtre complet, 1948.
Perséphone (libretto), music by Igor Stravinsky (produced 1934).
1934; edited by Patrick Pollard, 1977; translated as Persephone, in My Theater, 1952.
Geneviève. 1936.
Le treizième arbre (produced 1939). In Théâtre, 1942; as The Thirteenth Tree, adapted by Diane Moore, 1987.
Théâtre. 1942; as My Theater, 1952.
Hamlet, from the play by Shakespeare (produced 1946). In Théâtre complet, 1949.
Le Procès, with Jean-Louis Barrault, from the novel by Kafka (produced 1947). 1947; translated as The Trial, 1950.
Théâtre complet. 8 vols., 1947-49.
Poetry
Les Poésies d'André Walter. 1892.
Other
Le Traité du Narcisse. 1891; as Narcissus, in The Return of the Prodigal, 1953.
Réflexions sur quelques points de littérature et de morale. 1897.
Feuilles de route 1895-1896. 1899.
Philoctète, suivi de Le Traité du Narcisse, La Tentative amoureuse, El Hadj. 1899; in The Return of the Prodigal, 1953.
De l'influence en littérature. 1900.
Lettres à Angèle (1898-1899). 1900.
Les Limites de l'art. 1901.
De l'importance du public. 1903.
Prétextes. 1903; enlarged edition, 1913; in Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality, edited by Justin O'Brien, 1959.
Amyntas. 1906; translated as Amyntas, 1958.
Dostoïevsky d'après sa correspondance. 1908.
Oscar Wilde. 1910; translated as Oscar Wilde, 1951.
Charles-Louis Philippe. 1911.
C.R.D.N. 1911; enlarged edition as Corydon (privately printed), 1920; 2nd edition, 1925; translated as Corydon, 1950.
Nouveaux prétextes. 1911; in Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality, edited by Justin O'Brien, 1959.
Souvenirs de la cour d'assises. 1914; as Recollections of the Assize Court, 1941.
Si le grain ne meurt. 2 vols., 1920-21; as If It Die…, 1935.
Numquid et tu…? 1922; translated in Journal, 1952.
Dostoïevsky. 1923; translated as Dostoevsky, 1925.
Incidences. 1924.
Caractères. 1925.
Le Journal des faux-monnayeurs. 1926; as Journal of the Counterfeiters, 1951; as Logbook of the Coiners, 1952.
Dindiki. 1927.
Émile Verhaeren. 1927.
Joseph Conrad. 1927.
Voyage au Congo. 1927; in Travels in the Congo, 1929.
Le Retour du Tchad, suivi du Voyage au Congo, Carnets de route.1928; as Travels in the Congo, 1929.
Travels in the Congo. 1929.
Essai sur Montaigne. 1929; translated as Montaigne: An Essay in Two Parts, 1929.
Un Esprit non prévenu. 1929.
Lettres. 1930.
L'Affaire Redureau, suivie de Faits divers. 1930.
Le Sequestrée de Poitiers. 1930.
Jacques Rivière. 1931.
Divers. 1931.
Oeuvres complètes, edited by Louis Martin-Chauffier. 15 vols., 1932-39; Index, 1954.
Les nouvelles nourritures. 1935; in Fruits of the Earth, 1949.
Retour de l'U.R.S.S. 1936; Retouches, 1937; as Return from the U.S.S.R., 1937; as Back from the U.S.S.R., 1937.
Journal 1889-1939. 1939; 1939-1942, 1946; 1942-1949, 1950; translated as Journals 1889-1949, edited by Justin O'Brien, 4 vols., 1947-51.
Découvrons Henri Michaux. 1941.
Attendu que. 1943.
Interviews imaginaires. 1943; as Imaginary Interviews, 1944.
Jeunesse. 1945. Lettres à Christian Beck. 1946.
Souvenirs littératures et problèmes actuels. 1946.
Et nunc manet in te. 1947; as The Secret Drama of My Life, 1951; asMadeleine, 1952.
Paul Valéry. 1947.
Poétique. 1947.
Correspondance 1893-1938, with Francis Jammes, edited by Robert Mallet. 1948.
Notes sur Chopin. 1948; as Notes on Chopin, 1949.
Préfaces. 1948.
Rencontres. 1948.
Correspondance 1899-1926, with Paul Claudel, edited by RobertMallet. 1949; as The Correspondence 1899-1926, 1952.
Feuillets d'automne. 1949; as Autumn Leaves, 1950.
Lettres, with Charles du Bos. 1950.
Littérature engagée, edited by Yvonne Davet. 1950.
Égypte 1939. 1951.
Ainsi soit-il; ou, Les Jeux sont faits. 1952; as So Be It; or, The Chips Are Down, 1960.
Correspondance 1909-1926, with Rainer Maria Rilke, edited by Renée Lang. 1952.
Lettres à un sculpteur (Simone Marye). 1952.
The Return of the Prodigal (includes Narcissus, "The Lovers'Attempt," El Hadj, Philoctetes, Bathsheba, and Saul). 1953.
Correspondance 1890-1942, with Paul Valéry, edited by RobertMallet. 1955.
Lettres au Docteur Willy Schuermans (1920-1928). 1955.
Correspondance 1890-1942, with Paul Valéry, edited by RobertMallet. 1955; as Self-Portraits: The Gide-Valéry Letters 1890-1942 (abridged edition), edited by Robert Mallet, 1966.
Lettres au Docteur Willy Schuermans (1920-1928). 1955.
Correspondance inédite, with Rilke and Verhaeren, edited by C. Bronne. 1955.
Correspondance, with Marcel Jouhandeau. 1958.
Correspondance 1905-1912, with Charles Péguy, edited by AlfredSaffrey. 1958.
Correspondence 1904-1928, with Edmund Gosse, edited by Linette F. Brugmans. 1960.
Correspondance 1908-1920, with André Suarès, edited by SidneyD. Braun. 1963.
Correspondance 1911-1931, with Arnold Bennett, edited by Linette F. Brugmans. 1964.
Correspondance 1909-1951, with André Rouveyre, edited by Claude Martin. 1967.
Correspondance 1913-1951, with Roger Martin du Gard, edited by Jean Delay. 2 vols., 1968.
Lettres, with Jean Cocteau, edited by Jean-Jacques Kihm. 1970.
Correspondance 1912-1950, with François Mauriac, edited by Jacqueline Morton. 1971.
Le Récit de Michel, edited by Claude Martin. 1972.
Correspondance, with Charles Brunard. 1974.
Correspondance 1891-1938, with Albert Mockel, edited by Gustave Vanwelkenhuyzen. 1975.
Correspondance, with Jules Romains, edited by Claude Martin.1976; supplement, 1979.
Correspondance 1897-1944, with Henri Ghéon, edited by JeanTipy. 2 vols., 1976.
Correspondance 1892-1939, with Jacques-Émile Blanche, edited by Georges-Paul Collet. 1979.
Correspondance, with Justin O'Brien, edited by Jacqueline Morton. 1979.
Correspondance, with Dorothy Bussy, edited by Jean Lambert. 2 vols., 1979-81; as Selected Letters, edited by Richard Tedeschi, 1983.
Correspondance 1907-1950, with François-Paul Alibert, edited by Claude Martin. 1982.
Correspondance 1929-1940, with Jean Giono, edited by RolandBourneuf and Jacques Cotnam. 1983.
Correspondance 1934-1950, with Jef Last, edited by C.J. Greshoff. 1985.
La Correspondance générale de Gide, edited by Claude Martin. 1985.
Correspondance, with Harry Kessler, edited by Claude Foucart. 1985.
Correspondance 1927-1950, with Thea Sternheim, edited by Claude Foucart. 1986.
Correspondance 1891-1931, with Francis Viélé-Griffin, edited by Henri de Paysac. 1986.
Correspondance 1902-1928, with Anna de Noailles, edited by Claude Mignot-Ogliastri. 1986.
Correspondance, with Jacques Copeau, edited by Jean Claude, 2 vols., 1987-88.
Correspondance avec sa mère 1880-1895, edited by ClaudeMartin. 1988.
Correspondance 1903-1938, with Valery Larbaud, edited by Françoise Lioure. 1989.
Correspondance, with André Ruyters, edited by Claude Martin and Victor Martin-Schmets. 2 vols., 1990.
Editor, The Living Thoughts of Montaigne. 1939.
Editor, Anthologie de la poésie française. 1949.
Translator, Typhon, by Joseph Conrad. 1918.
Translator, with J. Schiffrin, Nouvelles; Recits, by AleksandrPushkin. 2 vols., 1929-35.
Translator, Arden of Faversham, in Le Théâtre élizabethain. 1933.
Translator, Prométhée, by Goethe. 1951.
*Bibliography:
An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism on Gide 1973-1988 by Catharine Savage Brosman, 1990.
Critical Studies:
Gide, 1951, and Gide: A Critical Biography, 1968, both by George D. Painter; Gide by Enid Starkie, 1953; The Theatre of Gide by J. C. McLaren, 1953; Gide and the Hound of Heaven by H. March, 1953; Portrait of Gide by Justin O'Brien, 1953; Gide by Albert Guerard, 1963, revised edition, 1969; Gide: His Life and Work by Wallace Fowlie, 1965; Gide: The Evolution of an Aesthetic by Vinio Rossi, 1967; Gide and the Greek Myth by Helen Watson-Williams, 1967; Gide by Thomas Cordle, 1969; Gide: A Study of His Creative Writings by G. W. Ireland, 1970; Gide: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by David Littlejohn, 1970; Gide and the Art of Autobiography by C. D. E. Tolton, 1975; Gide and the Codes of Homotextuality by Emily S. Apter, 1987; Gide by David H. Walker, 1990; Gide: Homosexual Moralist by Patrick Pollard, 1991; Void and Voice: Questioning Narrative Conventions in Andrè Gide's Major First-Person Narratives by Charles O'Keefe, 1996.
* * *André Gide was too complex a figure to be neatly pigeonholed. Novelist, playwright, autobiographer, and philosopher, he also kept a valuable journal and translated Shakespeare, William Blake, and Joseph Conrad into French. He was born into a prosperous middle-class family and enjoyed a private income that freed him from the necessity of earning a living. This gave him the liberty to write whenever and whatever he pleased, and the result was a prolific body of work that made him one of the leading French authors and prose stylists of the twentieth century. His books vary in length from Les Faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters), a large-scale work that anticipated Faulkner and Dos Passos in its use of the technique of simultaneity, to brief essays of reminiscence like Oscar Wilde and writings about travel and music. (He was a gifted amateur pianist specializing in Chopin.)
His was a divided spirit. Although a homosexual who found adventure with Arab boys on his travels in North Africa, in his late twenties he married his cousin Madeleine. The conflict between homosexuality and the state of marriage is depicted in L'Immoraliste (The Immoralist), which, like most of his writing, is autobiographical. The marriage remained unconsummated, although, having been brought up in a strict, almost Calvinistic Protestantism, Gide claimed to have a deep spiritual affection for his wife.
From all the stress and turmoil of his private life, Gide distilled a series of intensely personal writings. Like Montaigne, with whom he has sometimes been compared, he could say that his main subject was himself. When he pictures the conflict between homosexuality and marriage in The Immoralist, he is exploring his own personal dilemma. When he charts the mysticism of love in La Porte étroite (Strait Is the Gate), he is describing his own religious problems. We cannot, therefore, expect of so inward-looking an author the sort of features we look for in more conventional writers: character drawing, neat plotting, well-balanced narrative. All Gide's very diverse writings are merely installments of an emotional and philosophical development that is continually unfolding. It follows, inevitably, that he does not write short stories in the sense that Maupassant or Maugham or Chekov understood the term, whereby characters are involved in situations that are resolved within the space of a few pages. What he did write were short pieces, often called "treatises," that discuss a particular idea or put forward a commentary on life. Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue (The Return of the Prodigal), for example, is typical of him in that he takes a well-known story, in this case from the Bible, and turns it into a personal statement about his own spiritual pilgrimage. With Thésée (Theseus) he calls on Greek myth and, while following the main lines of the old legend, contrives to shape it into an allegory with several layers of meaning. The narrative becomes a debate between Oedipus and Theseus, in which they discuss the nature of heroism and wisdom. Theseus draws on his experience to argue that man must always strive to overcome the obstacles that fate places in his way. By contrast, when Oedipus blinded himself, Theseus suggests, he was admitting defeat and accepting the idea of guilt. Oedipus retorts that by so doing he was affirming his superiority to destiny. Theseus remains unconvinced.
Another classical legend that Gide used for his own purpose was that of Prometheus. The scene of Le Prométhée mal enchaîné (Prometheus Misbound) is a Parisian café. Here a random gathering of customers is assembled by a waiter who, not being seated at a table and taking no part in the conversation, claims that he is disinterested and can describe his act as "gratuitous." This is the nub of the discussion that follows, led by Prometheus who designs to call in at the café. The idea of "gratuitous action" (l'acte gratuit) was one that fascinated Gide, and it appears in a number of other works, notably Les Caves du Vatican (The Vatican Cellars). Is there such a thing, he keeps asking himself, as a purely disinterested action? Once an action has been performed it tends to swallow up the personality of the one who performed it, just as the eagle in the Greek legend devoured the flesh of Prometheus. In the end Gide was forced to admit that a wholly disinterested action was impossible and that "gratuitous" action was nothing more than inconsequence.
Again taking his cue from classical literature, this time from Corydon, the name of Virgil's Arcadian shepherd who has become a symbol of homosexual love, Gide wrote an apologia for his own homosexuality. C.R.D.N. (Corydon) appeared in 1911 and caused something of a scandal. It takes the shape of a Platonic dialogue in which Gide attempts to dispute the generally held opinion that pederasty was unnatural and a danger to society. He draws on biological evidence, some of it rather dubious, to show that since homosexuality is prevalent among many animals, this must be proof that the conditions cannot be harmful to nature. As for any danger to society, Gide claims that, while the female is confined to the biological function, the male is free to devote himself to a wide variety of other interests, such as the arts, sport, and, presumably, pederasty. The argument, put thus baldly, may seem thin, but Gide clothes it in very readable and persuasive language. "I am the only person who interests me," said Montaigne. So could Gide have remarked. His shorter writings, too formless to be called short stories, are, rather, fascinating explorations of an intricate personality that was self-contradictory, elusive, sometimes baffling and exasperating, but always very human.
—James Harding
See the essays on The Immoralist and Strait Is the Gate.