by Leys, Simon
What redeemed his monstrous self-absorption and made his company so pleasant and rewarding for his intimates was his restless and ravenous appetite for discovery, his polymorphous curiosity. Béatrix Beck recalls how exhilarating it was to work as his secretary; at the time, she wrote to her sister: “Gide has become my only interest—which means that, from now on, I am interested in everything.”[32] Gide used to end his letters with the courtesy phrase “Attentivement vôtre”—but, for him, this was not an empty formula; he was indeed paying attention to his interlocutor, whoever he or she might be—and therein resided the rare quality of the Gidean dialogue.* Furthermore, his attention was not directed at people only, it seems to have extended to all creatures. For instance, the Tiny Lady recorded a typical scene: “At lunchtime, in the midst of an exciting conversation, he abruptly stops and examines a fly that has a tiny parasite on one leg. In this area, nothing escapes his eye.”[33] Or again, when he went to visit Herman Hesse at home in Switzerland (Gide had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and Hesse was to receive it the following year), during this first meeting between the two grand old men of letters (they had already been corresponding for some time), most of Gide’s time and attention were lavished on a cat which had just had kittens.[34] Thus, the interview passed agreeably for both: Hesse was fascinated by Gide, and Gide was fascinated by Hesse’s cat.
Yet, in his dealings with people, one could say of him what André Suarès said of Goethe: “He does not care for a man, however talented, if he cannot extract from him something that may be of use to his own development.”[35] His curiosity was always alert, but quick to shift to another object. The instant warmth of his welcome was only matched by the abruptness with which he could drop hapless visitors once they were no longer of interest to him. Or again, he could not recognise in the street persons with whom he had enjoyed long, congenial and intimate exchanges shortly before; they had exhausted their usefulness, they were already obliterated from his memory.[36] He became easily bored not only with new acquaintances in life, but even with the creatures of his own imagination: he could not write long novels, for, after a while, he lost interest in his own characters.[37] He worked ceaselessly, however (his stern Calvinist education had instilled in him a deep aversion for laziness and waste), but he could not remain long attached to the same task, and this explains why his best writing is to be found in his slim novellas, in his short critical essays, and above all in the discontinuous jottings of his Journal.
CHOICES
Gide’s indecisiveness, hesitations, ditherings, vacillations and contradictions were legendary among his friends. With him, no decision was ever stable or final; sometimes, in the very same breath, he managed to opt simultaneously for one course of action—and for its exact opposite. It was impossible to predict what, in the end, would be his choice, and it was wiser not even to ask.[38] He thrived on ambiguity, he relished muddle. In any debate, his interventions were so twisted and contradictory—each affirmation being cancelled by a reservation, and each reservation questioned by an afterthought—that it was impossible to know if he supported or opposed the point at stake.[39] This attitude was displayed in all matters—big and small: whether he should seek reconciliation with God, and whether he should have coffee after lunch.[40]
Living at his side, the Tiny Lady was at a vantage point to observe on a daily basis his mental pirouettes and somersaults, and, as she herself was bold and decisive by temperament, she recorded these permanent acrobatics with a mixture of amusement, amazement and exasperation. One day, as Gide was once again deliciously writhing on the hot coals of one of his religious crises, she snapped back: “If it is your wish to go to God—go! But don’t fret: soyez net.”[41] Alas, for Gide, to be driven into a corner was unspeakable agony; he always avoided the straight line (as he once said: “A direct path merely takes you to your destination”[42]) and invariably chose the oblique; his mind progressed only through meanders, or in “hooked fashion” (en crochet[43]); every issue had to be approached sideways. He was totally incapable of tackling problems head-on; in fact, he would rather not tackle them at all.[44] He was forever making imprudent promises, which he could not keep, and then he did not know where to escape. He was constantly torn between the spontaneous effusions of his own irresponsibility and the panic of finding himself unable to meet the obligations he had recklessly contracted. On the one hand, he never felt committed to any course of action, and on the other, he was racked with guilt every time he disappointed other people’s expectations.[45]
He was essentially a bystander: “Action interests me passionately, but I prefer to watch it being performed by someone else. Otherwise I fear it would compromise me—I mean, what I actually do might limit what I could otherwise be doing. The thought that, since I have done this, I will not be able to do that—this is something I find intolerable.”[46]
Gide always avoided defining his positions: “What bothers me is to have to outline my opinion, to formulate it; I hate to have anything cast in concrete; and, in the end, there is hardly any subject on which I have not changed my mind.”[47] He would certainly have approved of the old Persian wisdom: “When you enter a house, always observe first where the exit is.” The only domain in which he ever expressed firm views and a stable taste was literary aesthetics[48]—and even there, in old age, he lost confidence in his own judgement and became uncertain and confused.[49]
Various reasons may explain this incapacity to commit himself to any line of thought or to any definite course of action. First, he was genuinely inhibited by self-doubt and self-distrust: “I can never truly believe in the importance of what I say.”[50] As various casual acquaintances noted, his great charm was that “André Gide did not know he was André Gide.” (This was no longer true in later years, when he became a prisoner of his persona—but this is probably the inevitable fate of most great men in their old age.) More profoundly, however, his indecisiveness reflected a refusal to choose—for every choice entails sacrifice and loss. As he himself remarked: “Before he chooses, an individual is richer; after he chooses, he is stronger”[51]—and inner riches were more important to him than inner strength.
Yet, one day, he confessed to Martin du Gard how much he envied his firmness. Reporting this cri du coeur, the Tiny Lady commented: “Indeed, his own difficulty in making any decision is simply incredible. What bothers him most is not the choice itself, but the fact that, by choosing, he risks losing something unexpected and more pleasant.”[52]
He could not control his intellectual greediness (in old age, this lack of restraint even found a physical expression: he would gorge himself on forbidden delicacies which, each time, made him vilely sick): “He never refuses anything. Subtraction is an operation he ignores; he is always adding up, even things that are totally contradictory. For instance, he would say in the same breath, ‘Me, to enter the Academy? Never!’ and then, immediately, ‘To occupy Valéry’s chair—why not?’”[53] He was never embarrassed by his own contradictions; to someone who objected that he could not simultaneously maintain views that were mutually exclusive, he replied by quoting a witticism of Stendhal: “I have two different ways of being: it is the best protection against error.” Martin du Gard observed: “For Gide, I am afraid this was not mere jest.”[54]
CORYDON
“If I had listened to other people, I would never have written any of my books,” Gide once observed.[55] It was particularly true for Corydon; his close friends were all aghast when he expressed the intention of taking a public stand in defence of homosexuality. They strongly advised against such a project, believing it would provide his enemies with weapons, ruin his moral authority and destroy his reputation. But it was as if their apprehension worked only to spur him on his reckless course (he often confessed that recklessness appealed to him[56]). To Martin du Gard, who implored him to be prudent and not to rush things, he replied: “I cannot wait any longer . . . I must follow an inner necessity . . . I need, I NEED to dissipate th
is fog of lies in which I have been hiding since my youth, since my childhood . . . I cannot breathe in it any longer . . .” Martin believed that his wish to “come out” partly reflected a habit inherited from his Protestant education: the need for self-justification (which remained with him all his life) and also, perhaps, an unconscious Puritan desire for martyrdom, for atonement.[57] His wife, Madeleine, whose eye could penetrate his soul, made the same observation when she tried to warn him against publication: “I fear it is a sort of thirst for martyrdom—if I dare apply this word to such a bad cause—that pushes you to do this.”[58] And to Schlumberger, who thought that Corydon would bring discredit on his moral authority, he replied: “You fear that I might lose my credibility on all other issues, but actually should I not regain it by acquiring a new freedom? . . . We were not born simply to repeat what has already been said, but in order to state what no one has expressed before us . . . Don’t you see that, in the end, my credibility will become much greater? Once a man has no more need for compromise, how much stronger he becomes! Misunderstandings make me suffocate . . . I wish to silence all those who accuse me of being a mere dilettante, I wish to show them the real ‘me.’”[59]
Gide eventually published, and not only was he not damned but, in the end, he was rewarded with a Nobel Prize. This conclusion, however, could not have been foreseen at the time and it must be acknowledged that, in 1924, as I have already pointed out, it required considerable courage to present a defence of homosexuality to the public. In this respect, the book retains a historical significance, even though its reasoning appears curiously flawed—and today it is hardly read at all.
Gide’s argument—developed at a length that borders on the ludicrous—is that homosexuality, far from being against nature (as its traditional critics used to insist), is, in fact, to be found in nature. Here, his many examples, drawn from the natural sciences, seem to miss the real issue. Of course there may well be scientifically observed instances of homosexual cows, and homosexual whales, and homosexual ladybirds; after all, isn’t nature the greatest freak show under heaven? Earthquakes and plagues, two-headed sheep and five-legged pigs . . . whatever is, is in Nature (with the exception of a few productions of the human soul, such as Chartres cathedral, the music of Bach, the calligraphy of Mi Fu, etc.). Exhaustive catalogues of natural phenomena can prove nothing, one way or another. Furthermore, not only would it be quite feasible to demonstrate that, in given circumstances, for various species of creature, homosexuality may indeed be “natural,” but one could even argue (at least this was the view of Dr. Johnson[60]) that, on the contrary, it is the state of permanent, monogamous union between a man and a woman that actually goes “against nature”—since it is, in fact, a crowning achievement of culture (a fact acknowledged by all the great world religions, which agree that in normal circumstances such a state cannot be attained without some form of supernatural assistance). The point is: the issue that should be of primary concern for us is not what naked bipeds can accomplish in their original state of nature but how human beings, clad with culture, are more likely to achieve the fullness of their humanity.
A second problem of Corydon is that it is an apologia exclusively for pederasty, and, as Sheridan points out, “by claiming that the pederast, far from being effeminate, presents the zenith of maleness, Gide is justifying homosexuality in the terms of a largely heterosexual society, and therefore by implication, lining up with that society against other homosexuals.”[61] Gide took pains to emphasise that the two other types of homosexual—sodomites and inverts, according to his taxonomy—inspire in pederasts “a profound disgust . . . accompanied by a reprobation that in no way yields to that which you [heterosexuals] fiercely show to all three.”[62] Furthermore, in his description of “Greek love,” Gide celebrates an ideal relation in which a caring adult initiates a youth not merely into sensual pleasure but mostly into the loftier enjoyments of knowledge and wisdom—the role of the elder partner being not so much that of a lover as that of a teacher and moral guide.[63] Here resides precisely the main flaw of the book. Inasmuch as Gide claimed to have revealed his “real self,” to have cleared “the fog of lies” that had weighed upon his childhood and youth, Corydon is essentially fraudulent, for Gide’s frenzied sexual activity—especially the monomania of his old age—was not pederastic à la mode antique but flatly and sordidly pedophiliac[64]—very much like today’s “sex tours” which bring planeloads of wealthy Western tourists to the child brothels of South-East Asia. Now, homosexuals are usually keen to draw a line at this point; they insist—not without reason—that their sexual orientation implies no more inclination towards pedophilia than is the case for heterosexuals. If they expect, however, to find in Gide an advocate for their cause, they would be well advised to reconsider the moral (or at least tactical) wisdom of choosing such a champion.
DAUGHTER
Gide’s daughter, Catherine, was born in 1923. Her mother was Elisabeth Van Rysselberghe (1890–1980), the daughter of the Tiny Lady. Elisabeth, who was briefly Rupert Brooke’s lover, bitterly regretted not having been able to give birth to the poet’s child. In 1920, she thought that Marc Allégret—then Gide’s teenage lover—had made her pregnant. Gide was ecstatic; he said to his old lady-friend, the prospective grandmother: “Ah, chère amie, we are making possible a new humanity! That child must be beautiful!”[65] Once again, however, Elisabeth’s hope did not come to fruition. But Gide had always thought that she deserved to have a child; a few years earlier, during a train journey, he had slipped a note to her: “I shall never love any woman, except one [thinking of his wife, Madeleine] and I have true desire only for young boys. But I cannot bear to see you without children, nor do I wish to remain childless myself.”[66] Eventually, in 1922, on a secluded beach by the Mediterranean, he rediscovered with her “all the liberty that fosters amorous dispositions.”[67] Catherine was born the next year.
Gide followed the growth of the child with sporadic interest; he observed her with an eye that was, by turns, fatherly and entomological. Elisabeth eventually married the writer Pierre Herbart, her junior by fifteen years (the age difference was of no real significance, Gide reassured the future mother-in-law, because, after all, Herbart was more interested in his own sex[68]), and Catherine came to live with her mother and Herbart when she was not pursuing her education in Swiss boarding schools. Occasionally, she spent brief holidays with Gide, who, one day, informed her that he was her real father. The girl was thirteen at the time, and this revelation had a mixed psychological effect on her.
Catherine is rarely mentioned in Gide’s Journal. In 1942 (his daughter was nineteen), he noted: “Catherine might have been able to attach me to life, but she is interested only in herself, and that doesn’t interest me.”[69] Sheridan comments pointedly: “In other words, the daughter was behaving like the father, and the father didn’t like it.”[70]
She appears more frequently in the diaries of her grandmother, who remarked: “The relations between father and daughter are difficult . . . This is mostly due to the fact that both are too much alike, and also because the relationship is ill-defined—which is a result of the circumstances. They do not have father–daughter exchanges; he is trying too hard to please her and is incapable of exerting any authority.”[71] Meanwhile, Catherine felt more able to confide her true feelings to Martin du Gard, who recorded in his diary this conversation with her—Martin had mentioned a book by Gide and Catherine replied that she had not read it. Then, noticing Martin’s surprise, she continued:
“But you should know that I have read virtually none of his books. No . . . I do not feel the slightest curiosity for his works . . . I never read any of them . . . Sometimes, I have picked one up, but quickly let it drop.” Seeing my astonishment, she hesitates, then suddenly declares, “You know, until very recently, I detested him.”
“. . .?”
“Yes.”
“Detested?”
“As much as it is possible to detest someone!”
she proceeds with determination. “His presence was horrid to me, it made me absolutely sick. For instance, whenever I had to travel with him, it was an abominable torture!”
“But . . . since when?”
“Oh, it was always like that. And certainly since I learned that he is my father.”
“And before that?”
“Before, I found him dreadfully irritating and I did not enjoy seeing him. Perhaps I did not completely hate him then. Not as much as later on.”
“And now?”
She is embarrassed by my inquisitive stare. She does not protest. Obviously, she does not wish to say that, now, she does not hate him. She merely says, “Now, it is no longer the same. It slightly changed this summer.”
I say, “Did he ever suspect anything of this?”
“No, luckily not.”[72]
A little earlier, Catherine was supposed to go abroad, but these plans had to be abandoned. Martin du Gard said to Gide:
“You must be so glad that Catherine did not leave!”
“Oh, my dear, I am more happy than I can express, especially now that our relations have become so charming,” and then, after a silence, he added, “And yet, if she had gone away, after three days I would have forgotten her.”[73]
