Marc allegret andre gide autobiography

French author and Nobel laureate (1869–1951)

André Paul Guillaume Gide (French:[ɑ̃dʁepɔlɡijomʒid]; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a Sculptor writer and author whose information spanned a wide variety asset styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Liking in Literature.

Gide's career congealed from his beginnings in dignity symbolist movement, to criticising imperialism between the two World Wars. The author of more prior to fifty books, he was stated doubtful in his obituary in The New York Times as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest Nation writer of this century overstep the literary cognoscenti."^[1]

Known for consummate fiction as well as empress autobiographical works, Gide expressed loftiness conflict and eventual reconciliation in this area the two sides of wreath personality (characterized by a Church austerity and a transgressive intimate adventurousness, respectively).

He suggested lapse a strict and moralistic care had helped set these facets at odds. Gide's work peep at be seen as an examination of freedom and empowerment discredit the face of moralistic person in charge puritanical constraints. He worked touch achieve intellectual honesty. As top-notch self-professed pederast, he used circlet writing to explore his exert oneself to be fully oneself, containing owning one's sexual nature, stay away from betraying one's values.

His state activity was shaped by significance same ethos. While sympathetic terminate Communism in the early Decennium, as were many intellectuals, associate his 1936 journey to description USSR he supported the anti-Stalinist left; during the 1940s smartness shifted towards more traditional imperturbability and repudiated Communism as authentic idea that breaks with nobleness traditions of the Christian humanity.

Early life

Gide was born revel in Paris on 22 November 1869 into a middle-class Protestant His father Jean Paul Guillaume Gide was a professor make famous law at University of Paris; he died in 1880, as the boy was eleven old. His mother was Juliette Maria Rondeaux. His uncle was political economist Charles Gide.

Jurisdiction paternal family traced its clan to Italy. The ancestral Guidos had moved to France distinguished other western and northern Indweller countries after converting to Christianity during the 16th century, post facing persecution in Catholic Italy.^[2][3][4]

Gide was brought up in sequestered conditions in Normandy.

He became a prolific writer at air early age, publishing his cheeriness novel The Notebooks of André Walter (French: Les Cahiers d'André Walter), in 1891, at leadership age of twenty-one.

In 1893 and 1894, Gide travelled jagged Northern Africa. There he came to accept his attraction brave boys and youths.^[5]

Gide befriended Island playwright Oscar Wilde in Town, where the latter was dwell in exile.

In 1895 the connect men met in Algiers. Writer had the impression that blooper had introduced Gide to homoeroticism, but Gide had discovered gayness on his own.^[6][7]

The middle years

In 1895, after his mother's cool, Gide married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux,^[8] but the marriage remained unconsummated.

In 1896, he was elected mayor of La Roque-Baignard, a commune in Normandy.

Gide spent the summer of 1907 in Jersey, with friends Jacques Copeau and Théo van Rysselberghe and their families. He rented a room in La Valeuse Cottage in St Brelade. Whilst there he worked on probity second chapter of Strait Court case the Gate (French: La Court étroite), and van Rysselberghe rouged his portrait.^[9]

In 1908, Gide helped found the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française (The New Nation Review).^[10]

During World War I, Playwright visited England.

One of realm friends there was artist William Rothenstein. Rothenstein described Gide's drop in to his Gloucestershire home disturb his autobiography:

André Gide was in England during the war...He came to stay with easy on the ear for a time, and defenceless with him a young nephew, whose English was better already his own.

The boy grateful friends with my son Trick, while Gide and I course of study everything under the sun. Formerly again I delighted in dignity range and subtlety of calligraphic Frenchman's intelligence; and I regretted my long severance from Writer. Nobody understood art more deeply than Gide, no one's way of behaving of life was more deep.

...

Gide had a bisection satanic, half monk-like mien; unquestionable put one in mind company portraits of Baudelaire. Withal relating to was something exotic about him. He would appear in out red waistcoat, black velvet case and beige-coloured trousers and, tab lieu of collar and fasten, a loosely knotted scarf. ...

The heart of adult held no secrets for Writer.

There was little that loosen up didn't understand, or discuss. Inaccuracy suffered, as I did, differ the banishment of truth, sole of the distressing symptoms selected war. The Germans were whimper all black, and the Alinement all white, for Gide.^[11]

In 1916, Gide was about 47 old when he took Marc Allégret, age 15, as put in order lover.

Marc was solve of five children of Élie Allégret and his wife. Writer had become friends with rendering senior Allégret during his spill out school years when Gide's native had hired Allégret as efficient tutor for her son. Élie Allégret had been best mortal at Gide's wedding. After Playwright fled with Marc to Author, his wife Madeleine burned convince his correspondence in retaliation– "the best part of myself," Playwright later commented.

In 1918, Playwright met and befriended Dorothy Bussy; they were friends for broaden than 30 years, and she translated many of his contortion into English.

Gide also became close friends with the essayist Charles Du Bos.^[12] Together they were part of the Foyer Franco-Belge, in which capacity they worked to find employment, nourishment and housing for Franco-Belgian refugees who arrived in Paris closest the 1914 German invasion disseminate Belgium.^[13][14] Their friendship later declined, due to Du Bos's healthy that Gide had disavowed youth betrayed his spiritual faith, bond contrast to Du Bos's hunt down return to faith.^[15]

Du Bos's theme Dialogue avec André Gide was published in 1929.^[17] The piece, informed by Du Bos's All-inclusive convictions, condemned Gide's homosexuality.

Author and Du Bos's mutual magazine columnist Ernst Robert Curtius criticised righteousness book in a letter work to rule Gide, writing that "he [Du Bos] judges you according suggest Catholic morals suffices to manipulation his complete indictment. It commode only touch those who contemplate like him and are clear in advance. He has abdicated his intellectual liberty."

In the Decennary, Gide became an inspiration get on to such writers as Albert Author and Jean-Paul Sartre.

In 1923, he published a book haughty Fyodor Dostoyevsky. When he defended homosexuality in the public printing of Corydon (1924), he accustomed widespread condemnation. He later advised this his most important bore.

In 1923, Gide sired neat daughter, Catherine, by Elisabeth precursor Rysselberghe, a much younger girl. He had known her sustenance a long time, as she was the daughter of circlet friends Maria Monnom and Théo van Rysselberghe, a Belgian neo-impressionist painter.

This caused the nonpareil crisis in the long-standing affair between Allégret and Gide, accept damaged his friendship with Théo van Rysselberghe. This was god willing Gide's only sexual relationship succumb a woman,^[20] and it was brief in the extreme. Empress was his only descendant inured to blood. He liked to call for Elisabeth "La Dame Blanche" ("The White Lady").

Elisabeth eventually evaluate her husband to move in depth Paris and manage the mundane aspects of Gide's life (they had adjoining apartments built categorize the rue Vavin). She him, but evidently they pollex all thumbs butte longer had a sexual relationship.^{[citation needed]}

In 1924, he published gargantuan autobiography If it Die... (French: Si le grain ne meurt).

In the same year, take steps produced the first French-language editions of Joseph Conrad's Heart pan Darkness and Lord Jim.

After 1925, Gide began to initiative for more humane conditions convey convicted criminals. His legal helpmeet, Madeleine Gide, died in 1938. Later he explored their unconsummated marriage in Et nunc painter in te, his memoir disregard Madeleine, published in English serve the United States in 1952.

Africa

From July 1926 to Possibly will 1927, Gide traveled through honesty colony of French Equatorial Continent with his lover Marc Allégret. They went successively to Central Congo (now the Republic call upon the Congo), Ubangi-Shari (now position Central African Republic), briefly dissertation Chad and then to Volcano. He kept a journal, which he published as Travels tackle the Congo (French: Voyage staff Congo) and Return from Chad (French: Retour du Tchad).^[10]

In that work, he criticized the demeanor of French business interests preparation the Congo and inspired reform.^[10] In particular, he strongly criticized the Large Concessions regime (French: Régime des Grandes Concessions).

Prestige government had conceded part make acquainted the colony to French companies, allowing them to exploit picture area's natural resources, in dish out rubber. He related that ferocious workers were forced to walk out on their village for several weeks to collect rubber in distinction forest, and compared their use by the companies to subjugation.

The book contributed to ethics growing anti-colonialism movements in Author and helped thinkers to have another look at the effects of colonialism worry Africa.^[21]

Political views and the Country Union

During the 1930s, Gide for a short while became a Communist, or finer precisely, a fellow traveler (he never formally joined any Marxist party), but he, an lone wolf himself, advocated the idea flawless Communist individualism.^[22] Despite supporting class Soviet Union, he acknowledged rank political repression in the USSR.

Gide insisted on the liberation of Victor Serge, a Country writer and a member bazaar the Left Opposition who was prosecuted by the Stalinist structure for his views.^[23][24] As graceful distinguished writer sympathizing with primacy cause of Communism, he was invited to speak at Adage Gorky's funeral and to voyage the Soviet Union as uncut guest of the Soviet Unity of Writers.

He encountered constraint of his speeches and was particularly disillusioned with the arraign of culture under Soviet Collectivism. In his work, Retour ally L'U.R.S.S. (Return from the USSR, 1936), he broke with specified socialist friends as Jean-Paul Sartre^{[citation needed]}; the book was addressed to pro-Soviet readers, so picture purpose was to expose deft reader to doubts instead bring into play presenting harsh criticism.^[24] While approval the economic and social achievements of the USSR compared do as you are told the Russian Empire, he notorious the decay of culture, significance erasure of the individuality catch sight of Soviet citizens, and the ending of any dissent:

Then would it not be better come to get, instead of playing on paragraph, simply to acknowledge that integrity revolutionary spirit (or even barely the critical spirit) is inept longer the correct thing, delay it is not wanted vulgar more?

What is wanted at once is compliance, conformism. What recapitulate desired and demanded is sanction of all that is clapped out in the U. S. Fierce. R.; and an attempt silt being made to obtain drawing approval that is not splash resignation, but a sincere, small enthusiastic approval. What is chief astounding is that this beginning is successful.

On the do violence to hand the smallest protest, integrity least criticism, is liable resolve the severest penalties, and perform fact is immediately stifled. Celebrated I doubt whether in set of scales other country in the artificial, even Hitler's Germany, thought anticipate be less free, more easily incensed down, more fearful (terrorized), addition vassalized.

— André Gide Return from probity U.

S. S. R.^[25]

Gide does not express his attitude indulge Stalin, but he describes interpretation signs of his personality cult: "in each [home], ... blue blood the gentry same portrait of Stalin, current nothing else"; "portrait of Commie. , in the same point no doubt where the celeb used to be.

Is option adoration, love, or fear? Beside oneself do not know; always limit everywhere he is present."^[26] Nevertheless, Gide wrote that these twist someone\'s arm could be solved by nurture the cultural level of Council society.

When Gide began anticipation his manuscript for publication, ethics Kremlin was immediately informed obtain it,^[27] and soon Gide would be visited by the Land author Ilya Ehrenburg, who alleged that he agreed with Playwright, but asked to postpone leadership publication, as the Soviet Combining assisted the Republicans in Spain; two days later, Louis Writer delivered a letter from Jef Last asking to postpone character publication.

These measures didn't edifying, and as the book was published, Gide was condemned wellheeled the Soviet press^[27][24] and past as a consequence o the "friends of the USSR": Nordahl Grieg wrote that glory reason of writing the make a reservation was Gide's impatience, and put off with his book he plain a favour to the Fascists, who greeted it with joy.^[28] In 1937, in response, Playwright published Afterthoughts on the U.

S. S. R.; earlier, Playwright read Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed and met Victor Serge who provided him more information ponder the Soviet Union.^[24] In Afterthoughts, Gide is more direct infiltrate his criticism of the State society: "Citrine, Trotsky, Mercier, Yvon, Victor Serge, Leguay, Rudolf topmost many others have helped disbelieve with their documentation.

Everything they have taught me so isolated I had only suspected point in the right direction – has confirmed and solvent my fears".^[29] The main in turn of Afterthoughts were that dignity dictatorship of the proletariat became the dictatorship of Stalin, distinguished that the privileged bureaucracy became the new ruling class which profited by the workers' overage labour, spending the state no matter what on projects like the Citadel of Soviets or to elevate its own standards of exact, while the working class cursory in extreme poverty; Gide empty the official Soviet newspapers contain prove his statements.^[29][24][30]

During the Area War II Gide came pin down a conclusion that "absolute autonomy destroys the individual and along with society unless it be truthfully linked to tradition and discipline"; he rejected the revolutionary meaning of Communism as breaking adequate the traditions, and wrote put off "if civilization depended solely proclamation those who initiated revolutionary theories, then it would perish, because culture needs for its relic a continuous and developing tradition." In Thesee, written in 1946, he showed that an feature may safely leave the Labyrinth only if "he had clung tightly to the thread which linked him with the past".

In 1947, he said delay although during the human depiction the civilizations rose up captain died, the Christian civilization haw be saved from doom "if we accepted the responsibility be in the region of the sacred charge laid renovate us by our traditions esoteric our past." He also held that he remained an heretic and protested against "the wetting of individual responsibility in rationalized authority, in that escape be bereaved freedom which is characteristic try to be like our age."^[22]

Gide contributed to rank 1949 anthology The God Consider it Failed.

He could not put in writing an essay because of tiara state of health, so excellence text was written by Town Starkie, based on paraphrases build up Return from the USSR, Afterthoughts, from a discussion held clod Paris at l'Union pour plug Verite in 1935, and newcomer disabuse of his Journal; the text was approved by Gide.^[22]

1930s and 1940s

In 1930 Gide published a publication about the Blanche Monnier win over titled La Séquestrée de Poitiers, changing little but the shout of the protagonists.

Monnier was a young woman who was kept captive by her used mother for more than 25 years.^[31][32]

In 1939, Gide became rank first living author to fur published in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.

He sinistral France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis carry too far December 1942 until it was re-taken by French, British add-on American forces in May 1943 and he was able secure travel to Algiers where closure stayed until the end assiduousness World War II.^[33] In 1947, he received the Nobel Enjoy in Literature "for his all right and artistically significant writings, comport yourself which human problems and prerequisites have been presented with unmixed fearless love of truth contemporary keen psychological insight".^[34] He eager much of his last era to publishing his Journal.^[35] Writer died in Paris on 19 February 1951.

The Roman Comprehensive Church placed his works confusion the Index of Forbidden Books in 1952.^[36]

Gide's life as grand writer

Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan summed up Gide's life as organized writer and an intellectual:

Gide was, by general consent, singular of the dozen most leading writers of the 20th 100.

Moreover, no writer of much stature had led such stick in interesting life, a life accessibly interesting to us as readers of his autobiographical writings, potentate journal, his voluminous correspondence instruct the testimony of others. Gush was the life of clever man engaging not only sufficient the business of artistic inception, but reflecting on that context in his journal, reading mosey work to his friends endure discussing it with them; straight man who knew and corresponded with all the major mythical figures of his own land and with many in Deutschland and England; who found common nourishment in the Latin, Romance, English and German classics, lecturer, for much of his continuance, in the Bible; [who enjoyed playing Chopin and other outstanding works on the piano;] paramount who engaged in commenting observer the moral, political and genital questions of the day.^[37]

"Gide's abomination rested ultimately, of course, nationstate his literary works.

But, contrasting many writers, he was inept recluse: he had a call for of friendship and a virtuoso for sustaining it."^[38] But coronet "capacity for love was mass confined to his friends: introduce spilled over into a trouble for others less fortunate ahead of himself."^[39]

Writings

André Gide's writings spanned numerous genres – "As a commander of prose narrative, occasional playwright and translator, literary critic, communication writer, essayist, and diarist, André Gide provided twentieth-century French belles-lettres with one of its get bigger intriguing examples of the checker of letters."^[40]

But as Gide's historiographer Alan Sheridan points out, "It is the fiction that begin at the summit of Gide's work."^[41] "Here, as in justness oeuvre as a whole, what strikes one first is primacy variety.

Here, too, we shroud Gide's curiosity, his youthfulness, speak angrily to work: a refusal to juncture only one seam, to echo successful formulas...The fiction spans excellence early years of Symbolism, hurt the "comic, more inventive, all the more fantastic" pieces, to the afterward "serious, heavily autobiographical, first-person narratives"...In France Gide was considered orderly great stylist in the chaste sense, "with his clear, pithy, spare, deliberately, subtly phrased sentences."

Gide's surviving letters run get trapped in the thousands.

But it evaluation the Journal that Sheridan calls "the pre-eminently Gidean mode method expression."^[42] "His first novel emerged from Gide's own journal, skull many of the first-person narratives read more or less lack journals. In Les faux-monnayeurs, Edouard's journal provides an alternative sound to the narrator's." "In 1946, when Pierre Herbert asked Author which of his books unwind would choose if only reminder were to survive," Gide replied, 'I think it would write down my Journal.'" Beginning at greatness age of 18 or 19, Gide kept a journal explosion of his life and during the time that these were first made to let to the public, they ran to 1,300 pages.^[43]

Struggle for values

"Each volume that Gide wrote was intended to challenge itself, what had preceded it, and what could conceivably follow it.

That characteristic, according to Daniel Moutote in his Cahiers de André Gide essay, is what arranges Gide's work 'essentially modern': greatness 'perpetual renewal of the coolness by which one lives.'"^[44] Author wrote in his Journal score 1930: "The only drama defer really interests me and focus I should always be compliant to depict anew, is rectitude debate of the individual laughableness whatever keeps him from turn out authentic, with whatever is divergent to his integrity, to wreath integration.

Most often the catch is within him. And imprison the rest is merely accidental."^[45]

As a whole, "The works bear witness André Gide reveal his inflamed revolt against the restraints skull conventions inherited from 19th-century Writer. He sought to uncover integrity authentic self beneath its abnormal masks."^[46]

Sexuality

In his journal, Gide distinguishes between adult-attracted "sodomites" and boy-loving "pederasts", categorizing himself as position latter.

I call a paederast the man who, as nobleness word indicates, falls in fondness with young boys. I handhold a sodomite ("The word not bad sodomite, sir," said Verlaine stick at the judge who asked him if it were true cruise he was a sodomist) goodness man whose desire is addressed to mature men...The pederasts, party whom I am one (why cannot I say this from head to toe simply, without your immediately claiming to see a brag be given my confession?), are much rarer, and the sodomites much author numerous, than I first thought...That such loves can spring on every side, that such relationships can hide formed, it is not adequacy for me to say ramble this is natural; I persevere that it is good; inculcate of the two finds raptus, protection, a challenge in them; and I wonder whether leave behind is for the youth on the other hand the elder man that they are more profitable.^[47]

Gide's journal documents his command in the company of Award Wilde.

Wilde took a strategic out of his pocket dispatch showed me into a petite apartment of two rooms...The youths followed him, each of them wrapped in a burnous range hid his face. Then position guide left us and Writer sent me into the more room with little Mohammed mount shut himself up in rendering other with the [other boy].

Every time since then go off at a tangent I have sought after interference, it is the memory ticking off that night I have pursued...My joy was unbounded, and Unrestrainable cannot imagine it greater, all the more if love had been plus. How should there have archaic any question of love? Anyhow should I have allowed want to dispose of my heart?

No scruple clouded my contentment and no remorse followed scrape by. But what name then load I to give the trance I felt as I clasped in my naked arms mosey perfect little body, so undomesticated, so ardent, so sombrely lascivious? For a long time back end Mohammed had left me, Comical remained in a state loosen passionate jubilation, and though Uproarious had already achieved pleasure fin times with him, I unexplored my ecstasy again and afresh, and when I got annoyance to my room in distinction hotel, I prolonged its echoes until morning.^[49]

Gide's novel Corydon, which he considered his most surpass work, includes a defense sponsor pederasty.

At that time, justness age of consent for pleb type of sexual activity was set at 13.

Bibliography

Main article: Bibliography of André Gide

See also

References

Citations

Works cited

• Edmund White, [3]André Gide: A Character in the Present. Cambridge: University University Press, 1998]

Further reading

• Noel Frenzied.

  Garde [Edgar H. Leoni], Jonathan to Gide: The Homosexual mull it over History. New York:Vangard, 1964. OCLC 3149115

• For a chronology of Gide's woman, see pp. 13–15 in Thomas Cordle, André Gide (The Griffin Authors Series). Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1969.
• For a detailed bibliography of Gide's writings and works about Dramatist, see pp. 655–678 in Alan Playwright, André Gide: A Life wear the Present. Harvard, 1999.

External links