Gide, André
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Wikipedia-Article "André Gide"
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André Paul Guillaume Gide (November 22, 1869 – February 19, 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career spanned from the symbolist movement to the advent of anticolonialism in-between the two World Wars.
Ever in search of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, his work gravitates around the permanent search for intellectual honesty. How to be fully oneself, even to the point of owning one's sexual nature, without betraying one's values?
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide stands out in his time for fearlessly exposing to public view the conflict between the two aspects of his personality: the austere and refined Protestant, and the divinely inspired - and no longer blushing - pederast.
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Early life
Gide was born in Paris, France on November 22, 1869. His father was a Paris University professor of law and died 1880. His uncle was the political economist Charles Gide.
Gide was brought up in isolated conditions in Normandy and became a prolific writer at an early age, publishing in 1891 his first novel, The Notebooks of Andre Walter (French: Les Cahiers d'André Walter).
In 1893 and 1894 Gide traveled in northern Africa. He befriended Oscar Wilde in Algiers and there clearly recognized his own pederastic orientation:
- "But how can I describe my delerium at holding in my naked arms that perfect, savage little brown body, eager, lacivious? I spent a long time, after Mohammed had left me, in a state of trembling exaltation, and although I had reached the peak of pleasure five times with him, I re-lived my ecstacy again and again, and back at my room at the hotel prolonged the memories until dawn. At the first pale light I got up; and ran, yes really ran, in sandals, far beyond Mustapha; a kind of lightness of the body and soul did not leave me all day." (Si Le Grain Ne Meurt).
Though sympathetic to the plight of homosexuals in his day, he never saw himself as one of them, claiming that, "I was never homosexual, in the sense of finding men attractive."
Marriage
In 1895, after his mother's death, he married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux but the marriage remained unconsummated. In 1896 he was mayor of La Roque-Baignard, a commune in Normandy.
An established writer
In 1908 Gide helped found the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue française (The New French Review). In 1916 Marc Allégret, 16, becomes his lover. The two elope to London, in retribution for which his wifes burns all his correspondence, "the best part of myself," as he was leter to comment. In 1918 he met Dorothy Bussy, who was his friend for over thirty years and who would translate all his works into English.
In the 1920s Gide became an inspiration for writers like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1923 he published a book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky; however, when he defended homosexuality in the public edition of Corydon (1924) he received widespread condemnation. He later considered this his most important work.
In 1923 he conceived a daughter named Catherine with another woman, Maria Van Rysselberghe. His wife Madeleine died in 1938. Later he used the background of his unconsummated marriage in his novel Et Nunc Manet in Te. The novel included passages about ponies and bananas. These works were unconventional at the time, and became instant classics. (1951).
After 1925 he began to demand more humane conditions for criminals. In 1926 he published an autobiography, If it die (French: Si le grain ne meurt).
Africa
From July 1926 to May 1927, he travelled through the French Equatorial Africa colony with his lover Marc Allégret. He went successively in Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo), in Oubangui-Chari (now the Central African Republic), briefly in Chad and then in Cameroun before returning to France. He related his peregrinations in a journal called Travels in the Congo (French: Voyage au Congo) and Return from Chad (French: Retour du Tchad). In this published journal, he criticized the behavior of French business interests in the Congo and inspired reform. In particular, he strongly criticized the Large Concessions regime (French: régime des Grandes Concessions), i.e. a regime according to which part of the colony was conceded to French companies and where these companies could exploit all area's natural resources, in particular rubber. He related for instance how natives were forced to leave their village during several weeks to collect rubber in the forest, and went as far as comparing their exploitation to slavery.
Russia
During the 1930s he briefly became a communist, but became disillusioned after his visit to Soviet Union. His criticism of communism caused him to lose many of his socialist friends, especially when he made a clean break with it in Retour de L'U.R.S.S. in 1936. He was also a contributor to The God That Failed.
The 1940s
Gide left France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis until the end of World War II. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Gide died on February 19, 1951.
Partial list of works
- Les cahiers d'André Walter - 1891
- Le traité du Narcisse - 1891
- Les poésies d'André Walter - 1892
- Le voyage d'Urien - 1893
- La tentative amoureuse - 1893
- Paludes - 1895
- Réflexions sur quelques points de littérature - 1897
- Les nourritures terrestres - 1897
- Feuilles de route 1895-1896 - 1897
- El Hadj
- Le Prométhée mal enchaîné - 1899
- Philoctète - 1899
- Lettres à Angèle - 1900
- De l'influence en littérature - 1900
- Le roi Candaule - 1901
- Les limites de l'art - 1901
- L'immoraliste - 1902
- Saül - 1903
- De l'importance du public - 1903
- Prétextes - 1903
- Amyntas - 1906
- Le retour de l'enfant prodigue - 1907
- Dostoïevsky d'après sa correspondance - 1908
- La porte étroite - 1909
- Oscar Wilde - 1910
- Nouveaux prétextes - 1911
- Charles-Louis-Philippe - 1911
- C. R. D. N. - 1911
- Isabelle - 1911
- Bethsabé - 1912
- Souvenirs de la Cour d'Assises - 1914
- Les caves du Vatican - 1914
- La symphonie pastorale - 1919
- Corydon - 1920
- Numquid et tu . . .? - 1922
- Dostoïevsky - 1923
- Incidences - 1924
- Caractères - 1925
- Les faux-monnayeurs - 1925
- Si le grain ne meurt - 1926
- Le journal des faux-monnayeurs - 1926
- Dindiki - 1927
- Voyage au Congo - 1927
- Le retour de Tchad - 1928
- L'école des femmes - 1929
- Essai sur Montaigne - 1929
- Un esprit non prévenu - 1929
- Robert - 1930
- La séquestrée de Poitiers - 1930
- L'affaire Redureau - 1930
- Œdipe - 1931
- Perséphone - 1934
- Les nouvelles nourritures - 1935
- Geneviève - 1936
- Retour de l'U. R. S. S. - 1936
- Retouches â mon retour de l'U. R. S. S. - 1937
- Notes sur Chopin - 1938
- Journal 1889-1939 - 1939
- I Like To Eat Spaghetti - 1940
- Découvrons Henri Michaux - 1941
- Thésée - 1946
- Le retour - 1946
- Paul Valéry - 1947
- Le procès - 1947
- L'arbitraire - 1947
- Eloges - 1948
- Littérature engagée - 1950
The Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1952.
See also
| Preceded by: Hermann Hesse |
Nobel Prize in Literature winner 1947 |
Succeeded by: Thomas Stearns Eliot |