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The American criticism of Andre Gide

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The American criticism of Andre Gide

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Content THE AMERICAN CRITICISM OF ANDRE GIDE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Comparative Literature University of Southern California In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by DONALD W. HEINE* April 1949 UMI Number: EP55102 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI EP55102 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Dissipation Publishing Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 C © ‘ ‘ -n This thesis, w ritten by Donald W* Heiney under the guidance of h%3.... Faculty Com m ittee, and approved by a ll its members, has been presented to and accepted by the Council on Graduate Study and Research in p a rtial fu lfill ment of the requirements fo r the degree of Master of Arts " Dean Date Ap.rI1..1949........ . Faculty Committee Chairman .. Le seul drame qui vraiment m’int€resse et que je voudrais toujours g nouveau relater, c'est le d€bat de tout #tre avec ce qui ^empiche d’etre autbentique, avec ce qui s’oppose a son integrite, a son integration. L*obstacle est le plus souvent en lui-mSme. Et tout le reste n'est qu’accident. Andr€ Gide; Journal, 3 juillet 1930. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION...................... . . . 1 II. THE YEARS OF OBSCURITY: 1891-1925 . . . 6 Early reviews of Strait Is the Gate • 14 Reviews of The Vatican Swindle .... 18 III. THE IMPACT OF THE COUNTERFEITERS .... 22 IV. REVIEWS OF BOOKS, 1929-1930 39 Reviews of Travels In the Congo . . . 40 Reviews of The School for Wives . . . 46 Reviews of The Immoral!st ...... 49 V. THE FIRST DEFINITIVE STUDIES ........... 55 VI. REVIEWS OF BOOKS, 1931-1935 ...... 75 Reviews of Two Symphonies ...... 75 Reviews of If It D i e........ 81 VII. GIDE AND COMMUNISM..................... 87 Reviews of Return from the U.S.S.R. . 89 VIII.BROAD STUDIES IN THE MIDDLE PERIOD (1935-43) 99 IX. GIDE AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR . . . . 109 Reviews of Imaginary Interviews . . . 114 X. 1944-1948 ........................ 121 M.H. Fayer’s Gide, Freedom and Dostoevsky 126 Van Meter Ames’s Andrt? Gide . • • • • 130 X. 1944-1948 continued; Reviews of the Journals i ..... . 133 CONCLUSIONS.......... 138 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . ................... 144 American editions of Gide’s works • . 145 Material by Gide in American periodicals 146 Material by Gide in anthologies . . . 147 General studies of Gide............. 148 Reviews of individual books ..... 150 Reviews of Strait Is the Gate . . . 150 Reviews of The Vatican Swindle • • 150 Reviews of The Counterfeiters . . • 150 Reviews of Travels in the Congo . • 151 Reviews of The School for Wives . . 152 Revievtfs of The Immoralist ..... 152 Reviews of Two Symphonies ..... 152 Reviews of If It, Die ••••... 153 Reviews of Return from the U.S.S.R. 153 Reviews of Imaginary Interviews . • -154 Reviews of The Journals of Andr€ Gide 155 Miscellaneous . . . . . • • • • • • • 156 The Nobel Prize award ....... 157 Selected material by foreign critics 158 Reference materials . . . ........... I59 I. INTRODUCTION Andr€ Gide, as one of the world’s most prominent living novelists, is now enjoying a somewhat tardy fame in America* He has recently been awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature, a definitive edition of his work has been issued in Prance, and his masterpiece The Counterfeiters has been selected by Modern Library as one of the classics of our age* His separate publications in America number over thirty books, articles, essays, and stories* Since it does not seem likely that Gide will produce any more major works in his lifetime, it is possible at this time to make a fairly complete study of his reception in America and his impact on American critics* American opinion of Gide, at first divergent and nebulous, has matured until today it has developed into a fairly cohesive set of conclusions about his work, his personality, and his moral position. This present study attempts to gather together the significant articles, reviews, and books about Gide published in America during the past thirty years, to arrange these materials into some sort of pattern, and finally to demonstrate certain broad trends in American criticism during that period. First and foremost this paper is a study of American thought in the twentieth century. Its main value lies not in any light it may shed on the figure of Gide himself, but in the panorama it presents of American intellectual development since 1918* Not only does the study cut a cross-section through time, but it offers another cross-section vertically through the intellectual scales the reaction to Gide runs the gamut from the erudite criticism of Justin 0»Brien and M*H« Payer to the cynicism of the Time reporter who pointed out that the Nobel award had made Gide richer by $40,693*^- One particular tendency of American critics, the preoccupation with classification, will be apparent in this study* A great many critics were eager to fit Gide into a literary school, to immolate him with a catchphrase, or to find striking parallels with other authors* Some of these efforts, it will be seen, were well-founded and convincing; others were merely ingenious* But if American infatuation with ingenuity was betrayed here, another social factor, the American core of Puritanism, Was no less apparent. A great many critics, the study will show, have ignored Gide’s contributions in the aesthetic field and have concerned themselves exclusively with what they considered to be his morality or lack of morality* Gide the artist often had to cede the limelight to Gide the satanist* 1 Unsigned, “Good Grounds,n Time, 50s33, November 24, 1947. While it has been impossible to collect all the material written on G-ide in America, this study attempts to present all the criticism available in the ordinary course of research* Reviews from all the more important American magazines, news-magazines and trade journals are included, as well as criticism from scholarly journals and bulletins* A complete study of newspaper criticism was impracticable, but there have been included the important reviews from The Hew York Times, The Hew York Herald Tribune, and The Christian Science Monitor* Hot only are these newspapers commonly available in libraries, but they each issue weekly magazines containing book reviews and offer a fair sample of journalistic criticism of the higher type* The period covered in periodical research extends from 1900 to January 1, 1949. As far as possible the study has been confined to American critics, i.e. those who present a characteristically American point of view* As a result it has been necessary to exclude several excellent studies in English, written by authors of foreign birth or background. Certain critics of foreign extraction have been included, however, where it was felt that a lifetime residence in America had given them an American outlook. Criticism by certain American expatriates living in Europe was-included although in many cases such critics showed attitudes markedly different from those of domestic reviewers* Wherever possible the fact that such critics are expatriates has been indicated* Research for this work has necessarily involved the accumulation of a large file of reviews, essays and books about Gide* Since this material has apparently never been collected before, and since an American bibliography of Gide will be useful to literature students who do not read French, considerable attention has been given to the organization of the bibliography. While the list does not pretend to be complete it does contain several items not listed in ordinary indices. It is not generally known, for example, that parts of Gide’s memoirs were presented to the American reader as far back as 19202 or that his varied activities have included obituary writing for American newspapers.3 In addition the student who wishes to examine the American reaction to any specific Gide book will find a classified list of reviews making this information readily available* Since the study is intended to be of use to students who do not read French, the titles of Gide’s works and 2 Andr& Gide, ’ ’Some Memoirs of a Parisian Childhood,” Living Age, 305;117-19, April 20, 1920. 3 __________ , ’ ’ Paul Valery; In Memoriam, ” New York Times Book Review, August 12, 1945, p. 2* 5 quotations therefrom have been given in English* The only exceptions are (1) titles of works as yet untranslated, and (2) paraphrases from reviews in which French titles were used by critics, thus possibly indicating that French-language editions of the works were being reviewed* The assistance of Alfred A* Knopf, Inc., Random House Inc. and New Directions Books has been of value in determining sales figures and exact publication dates of some of Gide’s books* % & CHAPTER II THE YEARS OP OBSCURITYs 1891-1925 By 1925 Andr§ Gide had published more than a score of hooks in Prance. He was already a leading figure in French letters and a considerable body of criticism and controversy had gro\vn up about his work* Yet the material on Gide published in America up to that year could be comfortably written on a single sheet of paper. Gide’s French publications began with Les Cahiers dfAndrg- Walter in 1891, quickly followed by Les Poesies d*Andr6*Walter, Le Traitg du Narcisae, La Tentative amoureuse, Le Voyage d’Urien, and Les Hourritures terrestres. The last- named of these works, which contains Gide’s earliest affirmation of the validity of sensual experience and the emotional independence of the individual, is one of his most important early books. Yet no review of this work, no comment upon it and scarcely any acknowledgement of its existence appeared in America for thirty years after its publication. A similar silence existed with regard to the other early works. Whether this revealed an inability on the part of American critics to read French, or whether it merely indicated a certain apathy toward European intellectual developments, is uncertain. Whatever the 7 cause, Gide on the eve of the first world war was still waiting for an American champion. This conspiracy of silence might have continued indefinitely had not Gide found a warm British defender in Edmund Gosse, an eminent critic, an expert On French literature, and Gide’s personal friend.-*- Gosse lauded Gide in numerous magazine articles and essays after 1900, but his campaign did not extend to America until 1909, when The Living Age reprinted an article, ’ ’The Writings of M. Andrd Gide,” which had originally appeared in the British Contemporary Review. This would appear to be the first mention of Gide in print in America.2 In 1912 Gosse’s Portraits and Sketches, which contained an extensive study of Gide, was reprinted in New York by Scribner’s.3 The extent of Gosse’s influence is difficult to determine, but at least he was the first to bring Gide to the notice of Americans who did not read French. 1912 also saw the publication of another milestone in Gide criticism, the first hook by an American critic to mention Gide. This was the History of French Literature J ££• T*1e Journals of Andrg Gide (Hew York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1947-48) II, p. 148. 2 Edmund Gosse, ’ ’The Writings of M. Andr£ Gide,” Living Age, 263J780-86, December 25, 1909. 3 ______» Portraits and Sketches (Hew York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912)• published by a Harvard professor, C.H. Conrad Wright. Professor Wright, who necessarily had to read Gide in French, since nothing had been translated into English at that time, was apparently most impressed by the Andrg Walter poems and by Le Voyage dfUrien; he found Gide a romantic in the ’ ’lineage of Rousseau, Benjamin Constant, Senancour and Amieland noted that he was subject to an extreme and sometimes excessive emotionalism. Wright’s interpretation is perhaps understandable with respect to the Andrd Walter series or even to Le Voyage d’Urien. but since he also expressed cognizance of L’Immoraliste and La Porte Stroite it is surprising that he found no evidences of the classic restraint which later critics were to praise. In his final estimate, however, Wright was remarkably acute for so early a critic. He noted Gide’s tendency to find his inspiration in literature rather than in life, a trait which later crities were to stresss A distinguished though not widely read author! an aesthetic egotist, who has undergone far-reaching influences, drawn from different literatures rather than from life, and ranging from Rousseau to Oscar Wilde and Nietzsche.5 4 C.H. Conrad Wright, A History of French Literature (New York, Oxford University Press, 1912J p. 841. 5 Ibid., p. 862. In the matter of technique Wright ventured only to remark that Gide ”scarcely lays claim to being a novelist and his works are of interest more for the author’s attitude than for the plots.”6 Some of his judgments have been confirmed by later critics; for example he called Isabelle ”a gloomy story of Normandy, In which the hero, drawn like the troubador Rudel, Is disenchanted when he meets the reality.”7 Here he avoided the mistake of some early reviewers who covered their confusion by passing the book off as a ”transitional work.”8 Writing without the benefit of precedent (he may or may not have been familiar with Gosse1s work) Wright had to strike out blindly and make his own path* If he made mistakes the public had to be content with them; it was eight years before another critical evaluation of Gide was printed in America. The war years brought with them the sidetracking of purely intellectual activity that usually accompanies such times, and from 1914 to 1919 American criticism of French literature was mostly confined to books on the war. Since Gide did not indulge in that sort of writing, his 7 Loc. oit. 8 Gf. Chapter VI for early reviews of Two Symphonies. In general there was a tendency to minimize Isabelle as an inferior or ”transitional” work. 10 brief notoriety in America died out completely and did not revive until the early twenties. Beginning with 1919, however, we have a series of translations of Gide’s work appearing in American magazines, the first of his works to see the light in America. At that time The Living Age was almost the only magazine to publish translations of foreign authors, and in this publication, in November, 1919, Gide made his American debut. The article was a reprint of an essay originally published in the Nouvelle Revue Frangaise in September, 1919 under the title "Considerations Sur La Mythologie Grecque” and later reprinted in Incidences (Gallimard, Paris, 1924).9 The Living Age translation bore the title "Classic Mythology.”10 No acknowledgement was made to the translator, although the translation was identical to that made earlier by Edmund Gosse. This essay, in which Gide praised the classic myth as a valid interpretation of life, could have given later critics the cue to interpret him as a classic stylist. In April of the following year appeared another 9 Oeuvres Compldtes D*Andre Gide (Paris, Nouvelle Revue Frangaise, 1932-395 IX, p. 147. 10 Andr€ Gide, "Classic Mythology,” Living, Age, 303:421-23, November 15, 1919. 11 article of even greater importance; The Living Age reproduced under the title ’ ’Some Memoirs of a Parisian Ghlldhood”H excerpts from Gide’s memoirs which had appeared earlier in the Nouvelle Revue Francaise. These excerpts, "beginning with Gide's sixth year, paralleled parts of the later Si le Grain ne meurt and apparently consisted of a series of notes for that work# As in the first article, no acknowledgement was made to the translator# Finally, in 1923, Gide contributed to The Living Age an article on European politics which along with articles by Dmitri Merezkowski and Miguel de Unamuno formed a symposium on the future of E u r o p e#12 Gide’s contribution, according to an editorial notiee, was a reprint of an essay from the Swiss Revue de Gendve for January# Neither this article nor the two preceding it seem to have made any impression on the critics whatsoever# Up to this point the only notice of Gide to appear in an American magazine, aside from the Edmund Gosse sketch, had been a brief mention by Ezra Pound in the October, 1920 Dial.13 But in the fall of 1923 a Forum article on French 11 Andr€" Gide, ’ ’Some Memoirs of a Parisian Childhood,” Living Age, 305:117-19, April 10, 1920# 12 , ”The Future of Europe,” Living Age, 316:561-66, March 10, 1923. 13 Ezra Pound, ’ ’The Island of Paris,” Dial, 69:406, October, 1920. Gf. also 69:515, November, 1920. fiction included a short summary of Gide’s work. Lloyd Morris compared Gide with Proust and found the letter’s influence confined to technique, whereas Gide had exerted his influence through philosophical content. According to Morris, this philosophy was based on two sources: The writers whose attitude toward life have most directly modified his own are Dostoievsky and Nietzsche, and the dominant problem toward which all his work approaches is the reconciliation of the doctrine of individualism with that of renunciation.14 It is not clear which of Gide’s books Morris had read, but he may have been familiar with Gide's study of Dostoievsky published in Prance during this same year (1923) and issued later in America by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. His mention of ’ ’renunciation” suggests that he may have been at least cognizant of L’Immoraliste or La Porte Stroite. The following year Gide was included in two more histories of Prench literature, those of Henry S. Schwarz and Maxwell A. Smith. The first of these authors, a New York University professor, noted Gide merely as "a novelist and critic” who possessed ”an irregular but forceful style 14 Lloyd Morris, ’ ’Recent Prench Fiction,” Forum, 70:2028, October, 1923. 13 together with a power of keen observation and careful psychological analysis.He listed only three works: L1 Immoral!ste. Les Caves du Vatican (the first mention of this book in America) and La Symphonic pastorale * The notice in Smith's much larger book was more extensive. It showed a wide familiarity with Gide's work and attempted to arrive at a genuine critical evaluation. In addition Smith's study was the first to take a position that later became very popular: the concept of Gide as a classicist* Smith, who was apparently concerned mostly with technique, saw classicism as a growing movement in Prance: it had its man of action in Jules Romains, its poet in Paul Valery and its critic and philosopher in Gide.16 "For Andr3 Gide the theory of modern classicism is the anchor to which he clings, the comforter of an uneasy heart,"1*7 But, as Smith pointed out, Gide's classicism was not the narrow preoccupation with form of a Barr§s or a Maurras; he noted Gide's interest in Dostoievsky, Keats, Browning, Tagore and Shakespeare, the romantics of all ages. His summary stressed this romantic undertone as well as what he considered to be Gide's weaknesses: his artificiality and over-abstraction: 15 Henry S. Schwarz, An Outline History of French Literature (Hew York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1924) p. 142. 16 Maxwell A. Smith, A Short History of French Literature (Hew York, Henry Holt & Go., 1924) p. 342. 17 Ibid., p. 244. Often his style contains a great depth of emotion. In Les Uourritures terrestres and in L1Immoraliste, it is charged with notations of delicate and impetuous sensuousness; at other times a fluid prose alternates with the grave accents of a Jansenist style, in the tone of Pascal. Unfortunately this style, which has in its infinite richness a strongly marked character of its own, is sometimes a little marred by a tendency to philosophical abstraction; sometimes, too, the effort for originality is too apparent. The style of Gide is never spontaneous, for the inflexible rigor of his classical method gives it something of a strain, which has its beauty to be sure, but an impetuous and intellectual beauty.18 In spite of these flaws, however, Smith found Gide ”one of the greatest masters of prose today” and ”the principal representative of classicism.”19 in addition, Smith was far ahead of other critics in detecting in Gide an inner conflict, a dualistic nature which Smith expressed as a struggle between Passion and The Quest for God.20 EARLY REVIEWS OP STRAIT IS THE GATE Gide1s narrative La Porte gtroite was first published in France in 1909; and, as we have seen, Wright gave it considerable attention in his 1912 History. In 1924 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. published a translation of this book 18 Ibid., p. 353. 19 Ibid., p. 363. 20 Ibid., p. 362. “ by Dorothy Bussy under the title Strait Is The Gate > The Knopf firm was probably induced to publish Gide by Ernest Boyd, a translator, critic of Prench literature and at that time adviser on European literature for Knopf. At any rate Boyd became one of the two American critics to write a serious review of the book when it appeared; in fact he seized the occasion to score the apathy that America had thus far shown toward Gide. In the course of this review, which was later reprinted in Studies From Ten Literatures,21 Boyd noted: There has been no perceptible excitement since Andr€ Gidefs La Porte gtroite appeared in the excellent translation of Mrs. Dorothy Bussy as Strait Is The Gate, nor even that minimum of appreciative attention to which a first-rate work of fiction is entitled. The translation has been made under the author’s supervision, for he knows English well, and has translated Conrad and Tagore. It so adequately reflects the sober charm of the French that it will be quite unnecessary to cite It as an excuse for whatever neglect may be the fate of Gide in America.22 Strait Is The Gate is constructed around the figure of Alissa Bucolin, a saintly and ascetic young girl who sacrifices her lover In her zeal to achieve spiritual perfection. Critics have generally taken two approaches 21 Ernest Boyd, Studies from Ten Literatures (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925) pp. 32-40. 22 ___________, "The Protestant Barr§s," New Republic, 39:247, July 23, 1924. 16 to the character of Alissa. One group, led by Mrs. Bussy, have seen a subtle satire in Gide’s depiction of Alissa’s passion for sacrifice which ends only in self-destruction, while others have tended to view Alissa as heroic or even to identify her with Gide. Boyd, by inference, attached himself to this latter opinion. He found the tale to be based on "one of the great themes of tragedy, renunciation in pursuit of perfection. . .** Alissa’s love for Jerome is to her mind the chief obstacle to salvation, and it is in a sort of ascetic ecstasy that she sets out to kill this emotion, so contaminated, as she has seen, by things of the earth earthy.23 Although this interpretation is the more obvious one, later studies and especially statements by the author himself have tended to show that the book was intended as a satire. Gide in his journal, discussing the Prench criticism of La Porte £troite, warned: It will not be easy to trace the trajectory of my mind; its curve will reveal itself only in my style and will escape most people. If someone, in my latest writing, thinks he can finally seize my likeness, let him be undeceived; it is always from my last- born that I am most different 23 Loc. cit. 24 The Journals of Andr€ Gide (Hew York, Alfred A* Knopf, Inc., 1947--) I, p. 240. 17 Again, in the second volume of the translated journals, "But how could I be surprised that they didn’t immediately * see in my Porte gtroite a critical work?”25 and a few days later, "I have up to now written nothing but ironic— or, if you prefer, critical books”.26 Naturally Boyd and other early critics did not have the.benefit of the journals, which were not published until much later, but they did have the opinion of Mrs. Bussy, Gide’s authorized translator and personal friend. The only other critic to give Strait Is The Gate any attention at this time was Joseph Wood Krutch, the Columbia University prefessor of literature and exponent of ’ ’ psychological" criticism. Like Boyd, he found the introduction misleading and was unable to perceive any satire in the figure of Alissa; Doubtless the publisher, with the sale of the book in mind, hardly dared say,"This is a passionately mystical book about a young woman who died an old maid, rejecting her lover because she was afraid their love would come between her and her love of God, and because she preferred the ecstasy of renunciation to the ecstasy of fulfillment." Yet this would be the simplest and truest description.27 25 Ibid., II, p. 31. 26 Ibid., II, p. 39. 27 Joseph Wood Krutch, "The Ecstasy That Refrains,” Nation, 118:447, supp. April 16, 1924. 18 Krutch pointed out that Gide was a type of moralist we in America little understand— to us the term ^Puritan” calls up visions only of Sunday-school superintendents* Gide, however, was a Puritan of the highest type, an aseetic who created at a spiritual level impossible for a more earthly artist* To dispel any possible doubt about his position, Krutch added, Mthe author achieves a complete imaginative identification of himself with his characters."28 Which characters Krutch was referring to is uncertain, but the use of the plural would indicate that he included at least JgrSme and Alissa. REVIEWS OP THE VATICAM SWINDLE In 1925 Knopf published, under the title The Vatican Swindle* Dorothy Bussy1s translation of Les Caves du Vatican, which had appeared in Prance in 1914. This sotie consisted mostly of straight narrative, contained a good deal of action and had a well-defined plot line; thus the criticism concerning it was considerably more lucid than that of Strait Is The Gate. In addition it had in Lafeadio a hero of such remarkable qualities that most critics found him highly diverting. 28 Ibid.. p. 447. Another facet of the book, however, the critics overlooked at this time. Les Caves du Vatican was largely concerned‘ with what Gide called the acte gratuit. i.e. the completely unmotivated and i&pulsive act. Although it is possible that Gide may have taken the germ of this idea from Dostoievsky’s Crime and Punishment, it became to him a private obsession and a matter for great thought. To understand Les Caves properly, therefore, it is necessary to study Gide’s earlier experiments with the acte gratuit, which are contained in Le Prom^thge mal encha£ng\ published in Prance in 1899, and in various other early articles. Since no translation of Le Promgthge was available in America in 29 1925 and since none of the critics who reviewed The Vatican Swindle at this time seemed to have read Le Promb'th^e in any language, they missed one of Gide’s chief themes. Nevertheless most of them accorded the book great praise. An unsigned reviewer in The Dial noted enthusiastically, if somewhat vaguely: The adventures of the swindlers and their victims form a rapid and fascinating, in many respects a great novel,* its significance goes far beyond the theme. It may or may not be M. Gide's best work.30 29 A translation had appeared in Britain*: however, under the title Prometheus I11-Bound (London, Chatto & Windus, 1919). This was available in many American libraries. 30 Unsigned, Dial, 80:427, May, 1926. 20 Another anonymous reviewer found the hook "Gallic in the most diverting sense of the word. • .it recalls Anatole Prance at his slyest.The elements of detective story, thriller, picaresque novel and satire were cleverly interwoven, the writer reported; in fact "it is difficult to keep in mind the plot mazes M. Side weaves for our delectation."32 If the reviewer found difficulty here, we can only wish he had given us his impressions of The Counterfeiters when it appeared the following year. The only scholarly analysis of The Vatican Swindle at this time came from the pen of the author and philosopher Ernest Sutherland Bates, writing in the Saturday Review of Literature. Bates unconsciously grazed the topic of the acte gratuit, hut apparently was no more familiar with Le PromSthSe mal enchain^ than were his colleagues. However his review penetrated to the core of Side’s philosophy and showed a wide knowledge of his earlier works. Bates concluded: Whether his vast influence has been wholly beneficial is for the future historians to determine. He has avowedly loved life rather than reason, hazard rather than security, the play of thought rather than the seriousness of action. His questioning goes deep: neglecting the absurdities of conventional morality which are the whole stock in trade of many novelists, he searches the fountain-heads of ethical action 31 Unsigned, "The Vatican Swindle," Literary Digest International Book Review, March, 1926, p. 267. 32 Loc. cit. 21 and usually finds them muddled and obscure. There is no one “gospel” to be found in his work but a hundred gospels hastily suggested and let fall; inconsistencies, paradoxes and casuistry abound; yet there is a pervading tendency to regard all experience as welcome because life is greater than any theory of life.33 Bates was particularly gratified with Gide’s style; he called the book “a particolored semi-novel of many intertwined fantastic strands”34 an(j hailed Lafcadio as “as fascinating a devil-hero as one can meet in modern fiction.“35 This perfection, Bates believed, proceeded from Gide’s classic respect for precision and simplicity: However chaotic his material and however much of an ethical anarchist Gide may be, his style is classical in its precision and order. In a characteristically French manner, Gide. skeptical of everything else, is never skeptical of the value of artistic workmanship in writing.36 Although this passage might seem to imply censure of Gide’s “ethical anarchism” other contexts indicated that Bates was not offended by Gide’s morals, or lack of them. The preoccupation with morality was to arise later and to become one of the main battlegrounds of Gide criticism in America. « • 33 Ernest Sutherland Bates, “An Important Author”, Saturday Review of Literature, 2:539-40, February 6, 1926. 34 Loc. oit. 35 Ibid., p. 539-40. 36 Loc. cit. CHAPTER III THE IMPACT OP THE COUNTERFEITERS In 1927, on the eve of the publication of The Counterfeiters, Side's position In America was curious. Only a few critics had mentioned him in print and these had praised him warmly but superficially. There seemed to be a tacit agreement to accept him as "one of Prance's foremost novelists" although it was not made clear why he merited this position. With the possible exception of Ernest Sutherland Bates, no American critic had attempted a serious analysis of Gide's philosophical position or made a really extensive study of his untranslated works. In short, Gide's reputation at this point rested on very amorphous groundsj he was feebly eulogized without being properly understood, and he had made no Impression whatsoever on the great mass of the public. A reviewer of The Counterfeiters noted in 1927J Andr§ Gide's reputation in America has so far been of the most deadly sort. Pour of his books have been translated; his name is known and will even produce a certain effect if injected abruptly into a literary conversation; but it may be doubted that any save the few whose business it is to read him have bothered to do so.l 1 Theodore Purdy, Jr., "A Spreading Plant", Saturday Review of Literature, 4:301, November 12, 1927. This amiable apathy was to end, however, with the publication by Knopf on September 16, 1927 of The Counterfeiters. Les Faux-Monnayeurs, the book that Gide had called his "first novel," had been published in France by Gallimard shortly after Gide had left for the Congo in 1926. In August and September of 1926 there appeared in La Uouvelle Revue Francaise Gide's Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs, a day-by-day notebook in which he had recorded the progress of the novel, the ideas and concepts he wished to convey and the techniques whereby he meant to convey them.2 Thus it is apparent that the J ournal des Faux-Monnayeur s is a valuable aid for the critic who sets out to study Les Faux-Monnayeurs. Without it he is immersed in a quagmire of interlocking plots, apparently irrelevant journals, incidents without any immediate significance and episodes whose import becomes apparent only after a second or third reading. Unfortunately most American critics were not familiar with the Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs, nor did they have the time or inclination to give the novel these second and third readings. In spite of this, Gide's vague repittation as an "eminent French novelist" carried him a great way by force of momentum. The first inclination of the critics was to praise the book even though its purpose and Technique seemed obscure* 2 The Journal des Faux-M onnayeur s was published in book form by Gallimard in 1926 and also appeared in tiie Oeuvre a Completes* However no English translation has yet appeared. 24 Most reviewers were able to detect at least one of the principles of the work, however: the concept of the roman pur, the novel divested of all its unessentials* This idea, the kernel of Gide’s purpose in writing the book, was expressed within the novel itself through Edouard’s journal and was thus necessarily encountered by even the casual reader* This clue was eagerly seized upon by the critics* Louis Kronenberger, of The New York Times, not only used the expression ”pure novel” but developed the idea at some length: What all novelists do unconsciously to a certain degree, Gide has done deliberately to the ultimate degree; he had discarded ftthe real world” for ”the representation of it which we make to ourselves.”3 Kronenberger devoted most of his space to the technique of characterization; he found the book ”a novel of the development of related lives’ ’^ and praised the depiction of personality as vivid and significant. The Counterfeiters was a logical advance in the ’ ’great tradition”; it bypassed the documentational technique of Flaubert and Joyce and returned to the universality of Balzac and Tolstoy. Its weakness, if any, lay in its artificiality; it was ”a kind 3 Louis Kronenberger, ”Andr€ Gide's New Novel is in the Great Tradition,” New York Times Book Review, October 2, 1927, p. 2. 4 Loc. cit. 25 of intellectualist*s novel.1 1 * 5 In general Kronenberger showed no interest in the moral aspects of the novel and concerned himself exclusively with technique. In this approach he was followed by Clifton Fadiman, writing in The Hew York Evening Post on October 15th and in the Hation on October 26th* These two critics were alone in refraining from some comment on the alleged “moral anarchism” of The Counterfeiters * Like Kronenberger, Fadiman saw the main importance of the novel in the concept of the roman pur: In it we observe the abandonment of the sociological-humanitarian theme, the employment (but tactfully and quietly) of the vertical exploratory psychologic method, the denial of realism as an instrument for the projection of life* On these three counts Gide rests his famous conception of the roman pur— a conception which has its rough analogue in 'the pure anti- literary aesthetic of the modernist painters.6 Fadiman departed from Kronenberger, however, in his choice of literary parallels* He saw Gide, Proust and Joyce the leaders of a revolt against the “sociological realism” of the end of the nineteenth century: 11* • .you do not make people real by presenting them realistically.'1^ But Joyce and B’ roust were too subjective, too influenced by their own 5 Loc. cit. 6 Clifton Fadiman, “Pure Hovel,1 1 Hation, 125:454, October 26, 1927. 7 Loc. cit* 26 personalities; only Gide had achieved real detachment. Thus The Counterfeiters became a "breviary for modern novelists."® Kronenberger and Fadiman formed a minority of two who approached The Counterfeiters from a strictly artistic point of view. Another group of critics, a much larger group, were apparently conscious of moral flagrancies in the novel but sought to condone them, to pass over them as unimportant or to hail them as revolutionary. Typical of this tendency was Angel Flores, the Bookman reviewer, who felt the book had ' great literary merit but feared that its "latent current” of homosexuality would prevent its wide acceptance. Although the ostensible theme of the book was an attempt to get at the essence of man’s being, Flores saw the secondary theme of sexual anomaly as the actual backbone of the novel: ". • almost every male character is touched with Corydon’s habits."® Apart from the moral aspect Flores praised the book highly. He was one of the first critics to express cognizance of J ournal des Faux-M onnayeur s, and he was able to preface his review with a survey of Gide’s more important early works. To these The Counterfeiters represented the logieal conclusion and the climax: 8 Loc. cit. 9 Angel Flores, ”Andr6 Gide and His First Hovel," Bookman, 66:167, October, 1927. Flores refers to Gide’s dialogue Corydon (Gallimard, Paris, 1924) in which he defends homosexuality with examples drawn from the animal kingdom and from ancient Greece. 27 When we come to the end of "The Counterfeiters” we remain in a sort of trance, bewildered by the intricacy of a weird machine and the smoothness of its operation. It is the apotheosis of a highly artificial!zed art from every cog of which rings a strange music. • .’ ’The Counterfeiters” reads like a novel of Dostoevsky revised by a Pinero of genius.10 An even more bewildered critic was the unsigned Living Age reviewer, who protested, ”To describe the plot of this enormously intricate and ingenious novel would more than exhaust the space at our disposal.”11 Instead the reader was advised to try the novel for himself. This reviewer also attempted to view Gide’s sexual candor with a tolerant eye: • • .we constantly feel a moral imperative at work, unusual in Gallic literature. He remains, however, sufficently French to have included a number of passages not suited to reading aloud in circles where only the Living Age occupies a place of honor next the family bible,12^ It is interesting to note here the use of the word ’ ’French” with an implied connotation of ”salacious.” The tendency to view all French literature as something slightly and deliciously indecent would seem to be an Anglo-Saxon tradition, manifesting itself even in the most detached critics. Theodore Purdy, 10 Loc. cit. 11 Unsigned, Living Agef 333:845, November 1, 1927. 12 Loc. cit. 28 the critic who has been previously quoted with respect to Gide’s American reputation, found himself unable tp overcome this feeling toward The Gounterfeiters; The character of the book is not always pleasant. The preoccupation with sexual perversion which Gide has shown lately. . .is here exemplified in the relationship of Passavant and Olivier, and in a more sentimental manner in the affection of Edouard for Olivier. There are traces, too in the valise incident of an earlier attitude which may seem curious to those unfamiliar with Gide’s other books.13 Purdy was referring especially to Les Caves du Vatican; he pointed out that Bernard of The Gounterfeiters was originally to have been the hero of Les Caves in a later stage of development. This would seem to indicate a knowledge of the J ournal des Faux-Monnayeurs. Purdy also developed at length the connections between Gide and Dostoievsky, and found the Russian author ’ ’doubtless responsible for these peculiarities of conduct on the part of his heroes.”!^ However, Purdy felt, these philosophical aspects were secondary in importance to the contributions of Les Faux— Monnayeurs in technique; 13 Purdy, op,, cit., p. 302. 14.Loc* cit. 29 The book is a sort of demonstration of strength on the novelist 's part, a kind of proof that material, a thesis, documentation, psychological correctness, and all the other shibboleths of whatever school are unimportant* What matters (he appears to claim and demonstrate) is the way in which the narrator illuminates his subject, whatever it may be*15 A Mew Republic reviewer, P* Lipsius, took an even bleaker view of Gide's moral intent. He saw in the novel an attempt to convert the reader to sexual deviation, and resented it heartily; So far as I am concerned, M. Gide, detached propagandist, has been wasting his time* He bids me distinguish between homosexuals and homosexuals* I refuse* I go on repeating that the homosexuals who have received, and who show, their stigmata are not to my liking. I refuse M. Gide's subtlest invitation of all— an invitation to feel that Edouard's and Olivier's love affair, if Edouard didn't happen to be Olivier’s mother's half-brother, mightn't be so bad, might not be half bad, might get by. And I cannot help imputing to M. Gide a self-restraint which affects me like insincerity. I suspect him of rating the loves of nephew and uncle many hands higher than he seems to wish me to rate them. If he had not kept himself so in hand, if he had shaken out all reefs and let himself run before the wind of his doctrine, I fancy that he would have poetized Edouard into a modern counter part of Herakles and Hylas. I accuse this teacher of tolerance of surpressing a wish to teach more* "Pour moi,n as M. Gide once said, "Je prSfgre la grossiSret'g’ •" 16 15 Ibid., p. 301. 16 P. Lipsius, New Republic, 53:170, December 28, 1927. 30 Lipsius, however, found the "book commendable apart from this moral lesion. He noted the subtle selection of episodes for the novel, he was one of the first critics to note the book’s "onion-skin” technique— the significant fact that it contains an author who is writing a novel called The Counterfeiters which in turn includes many of the characters who are duplicated in Gride’s novel— and he had the highest possible praise for G-ide’s skill in coordinating material with technique; ”M. Gide does the impossible. He makes his track and his red herrings severely one.”!’ ? This vie?/ of The Counterfeiters— i.e. that it is a slightly indecent novel whose unfortunate moral aspects are overshadowed by its literary excellence-persisted for many years and is even apparent today. Herbert J. Muller, who in many ways typifies the later attitude toward The Counterfeiters, noted in his 1937 Modem Fiction; He not only admits perversion into his ethical scheme; he frankly glorifies it— notably in his novelist Edouard. • .yet those ?/ho condemn Gide’s attitude should at least note the delicacy with which he expresses it in The Counterfeiters. No eighteenth-eentury swain ever conceived a more spiritual love for his nymph than that of Edouard for Olivier* • .L° Loc. cit. 18 Herbert J. Muller, Modem Fiction; A Study of Values (New York; Funk & Wagnalls Co., 19371 p~» 360. C_f. more lengthy discussion of this book, Chapter VIII. 31 There exists, however, an equally large body of criticism which was not only repelled by Gide’s subject matter but unimpressed with his treatment* At least one of these critics dated her antipathy from the French publication of the novel in 1926* Louise Morgan Sill, writing from France over a year before the American publication of The Counterfeiters, found the matter of the book abhorrent and the technique sterile: It is the narrative of only one year in the life of a few young people* The inevitable tendency of Gide to regard vice as more interesting than sanity Is here. These young men, some of them almost children, disgusted with their parents’ and teachers’ exhortations, decide to experiment in the other direction. Some of their experiences cannot even be hinted at, while most of the rest leaves an exceedingly bad taste in the mouth.I9 And, as for style: The literary fault of this first, or final attempt, Is that M. Gide’s encyclopaedic mind has endeavored to cluster round his story all the ideas, prejudices, cravings, and disgusts which mankind in its evolution has ever tried to express, and no amount of talent is equal to the task.20 19 Louise Morgan Sill, ”A Letter from France,” Saturday Review of Literature, 2:953, July 24, 1926. Miss (?; Sill was a Hawaiian-born author, reviewer, publisher’s reader and translator of Claudel* She was an expatriate during most of her reviewing career. 20 Loc. cit* 32 Ludwig Lewisohn, an American author of German-Jewish extraction, shared Miss Sill’s views but gave The Counterfeiters more summary treatment. After noting that Gide was "luckily still alive," flourishing, and as acute as ever, he dispensed with the novel in the following paragraph: He proceeded to do something which he called the "pure novel" and which turns out to be the novel stripped as far as possible of all its elements of both life and thought.21 Lewisohn concluded with a brief note on Numquid et tu?, apparently the only mention of this essay on the Gospels ever to appear in an American magazine: • • .he ends for the present with "Numquid et tu?" an account of his conversion, a tract that recalls the Salvation Army. M. Gide safe in the arms of Jesus I Satire could invent nothing further*22 By far the most virulent attack on The Counterfeiters was that printed in The New Masses in March, 1928. It has been impracticable in this study to make a complete survey of communist criticism, which was generally detached from the usual stream of literary thought and did not properly belong to the sphere of serious criticism at all*23 This particular 21 Ludwig Lewisohn, "French Literature Today," Nation, 125:572, November 23, 1927. 22 Loc. cit. 23 In general, however, communist publications snubbed Gide before 1933, eulogized him during the brief "honeymoon" from 1933 to 1936, and reviled him as a renegade thereafter. review, however, managed to make a number of stimulating, if somewhat inaccurate, statements about the book* The reviewer, Cardwell Thomson, ridiculed The Counterfeiters1 layer technique and taunted what he considered to be Gide’s mystical impracticality, but reserved his principal thrusts for Gide’s ’ ’innate Protestantism"i Edouard, like M* Gide, was suckled in the Huguenot creed and, having been a nervous child, he still retains an insatiable curiosity concerning the reality beyond appearance; so persistent is this Protestant malady he considers it the highest attribute of the genuine artist, confusing (as all Protestant artists do) the artist with the morbid "investigator*"24 Thomson deplored what he called Gide’s "guerilla novel- wri ting"— i.e* the disinterested detachment that made Gide so hard to attack from a personal point of view* However he contrived to associate Gide with the figure of Edouard, whom he depicts as "regretting that Olivier had never known this early starvation of the senses*"25 This was the soul of Protestantism— a seeking out of asceticism, of privation, of barrenness for their own sakes* Gide had written a Christian novel, a work extolling denial, but "with the hope of salvation, that Thomas k Kempis and others added, left off*"26 In his summary Thomson achieved some invective 24 Cardwell Thomson, "Protestant Phobia," The Mew Masses, 3:24, March, 1928* of a character which will perhaps justify reproducing this passage In full: M. Gide has a facile touch, the customary virtues of the Latin genius, a sprightly intelligence, wit, irony, clarity, simplicity, hut he does not live at ease with this happy birthright, a stern and ascetic faith having early laid a heavy pall over these Innocent and precious qualities, burdening him with a mind delighting in detecting the vanity of human works* A novelist with a sackcloth vision. Taunting, belittling, insulting the all-too-human— with a divine bitterness counterfeiting as love, as divine bitterness does* Not a superficial cynical novelist, the worldly type, the sybarite, taking what pleasure life has to offer, loving comfort, compromising to get it, finding escapes and seeking o b l i v i o n . 27 Thomson was the sole critic to ignore completely the technique of The Counterfeiters, the aspect which Gide himself considered most important. After explaining, f , It has, you see, the construction of the o n i o n ” , 28 k e proceeded to his attack on Gide’s Protestantism and never returned to the subject of technique. In this Thomson differed from the usual reviewers, who tended to discuss the technique to some extent while according it less attention than the moral aspects. In recent years the tendency to minimize The Counterfeit e rs1 35 contributions in technique has continued. In 1931 The Sewanee Review published a long study of Gide by E.L. Loughnan attacking the "formlessness" of the novel and accusing Gide of a deliberate and studied diabolism* This critic, apparently influenced by Henri Massis, Gide's conservative and Catholic arch-enemy, declared The Counterfeiters to be composed entirely of "incidents that normal human judgement procounces outrageous. • Gide the ex-Puritan is proud to possess a soul that has been pronounced damned. . . fie sets out on the high seas of adventure to discover epically the human soul: all that he shows us Is himself— and that, not as a hardy mariner, but as a leisured gentleman seated at his study desk. He has yet to look out of himself. M. Massis, with quivering finger pointed, cries "DemoniacI" That, at least, Is M* Andrd Gide’s pose.29 In a like manner Flora Emma Ross in a scholarly 1937 study of Gide^O found The Counterfeiters anti-religious or even diabolic; its main theme was "a Satanic supernaturalism." Whether this approach to the novel was inspired by Massis* attacks in France, or whether it developed independently is not clear. At any rate this interpretation of the novel, although not presently in favor, has never completely died. 29 E.L. Loughnan, "The Thirteenth Apostle: A Study of M. Andr£ Gide," Sewanee Review, 39:293-308, July, 1931* p* 308. Cf. discussion of this study in Chapter V. 30 Flora Emma Ross, "Goethe in Modern France," Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, XXI, 3 & 4, 1937. Cf. discussion of this monograph in Chapter VIII. Many later critics have endeavored to fit The Counterfeiters into their own particular interpretations of the Gidean philosophy— Ross was concerned with finding parallels to Goethe, Wallace Fowlie in an essay on Gide's narcissism tried to identify Gide/Edouard with Narcissus,31 and Justin O'Brien, subsequently translator of the Journals, offered a study of adolescence in French literature purporting to demonstrate that The Counterfeiters was "adolescent” in its amorphous and disjointed style.32 0’3rien, however, developed his ideas on The Counterfeiters at greater length in a 1942 Nation article33 in which he reduced the intent of the novel to two main antitheses: (a) the conflict between generations, and (b) the conflict between reality and representation. This essay showed considerable familiarity with Gide's work; it stressed the importance of the J ournal des Faux-M onnayeurs (which titled O'Brien translated as The Counterfeiters' Daybook) and developed at length Gide’s interest in the layer technique— the "novel within a novel." He found evidences of this device not only in Les Caves du Vatican but in Paludes, an early satire that few other critics seem to have read. 31 Wallace Fowlie, "Andr£ Gide", in Writers of Today (London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1946) pp. 29-42. 32 Justin O’Brien, The Novel of Adolescence in France (New York, Columbia University Press, 1937). 33 __________ , "On Rereading the Modern Classics," Nation, 155:579-80, November 28, 1942* 37 O'Brien also devoted some space to the influence of The Counterfeiters on Aldous Huxley and especially on Point Gounter Point, a book which utilized not only the fugue technique but the "novel within a novel," O'Brien was even able to say, "Huxley's best novel is directly inspired by, not to say frankly imitative of, Gide's"34 However O'Brien reported, apparently via his work in the yet untranslated Journals, that Gide himself "could not get into Point Counter Point.” Gide!s American fame began with The Counterfeiters. Within a year his portrait had appeared on the cover of a magazine whiGh described The Counterfeiters as "one of last year's best books”35 and in 1931 the novel was reprinted by Modern Library with an introduction by Raymond Weaver. Random House, the publishers of the Modern Library editions, stated apropos of Gide and The Counterfeitera: It is generally accepted that admission to the Library Is a kind of inscription on the literary honor roll. . . We have our ov/n literary standards and try to follow them scrupulously in the series. Certainly Gide is of such a stature, as a contemporary writer, to deserve a place of distinction in a series of important literary works. 34 Ibid., p. 580. For additional analyses of this parallel cf. Chapter V. 35 Forum, 80jcover, December, 1928. 36 Letter from Random House, Inc. dated September 30, 1948, in possession of writer# 38 In spite of this "stature as a contemporary writer," however, the inexpensive Modern Library reprint has sold only 32,000 copies to date (January, 1949) and sales of all editions of The Counterfeiters total only about 45,000,37 indicating that perhaps Gide's reputation is still based more on hearsay than on actual public acceptance of his work* 37 Loc* cit* Also Time, June 7, 1948, p* 106* ■5 : ~ CHAPTER IV REVIEWS OP BOOKS, 1929-1930 Although response to The Counterfeiters was diverse it was at least established by 1929 that Gide’was a significant writer who was worth reviewing# His position in America was permanently established, and henceforth his reputation, if not his prestige, was to grow steadily# Immediately there was a rush to secure rights to the work of this "obscure” author who had been publishing in Prance for thirty-six years and who was the founder of one of its foremost literary reviews. The first magazine to get Gide into print after the publication of The Counterfeiters was Forum, which in January, 1929 began a serial version of L!Ecole des Femmes under the title “The School of Women.”- * - In June the Yale Review published a translation of the tale Le Retour de L1Enfant prodlgue,2 and in July there appeared In the Virginia quarterly Review an essay, "Classicism,” translated by Francis H* Abbot#® In October the last-named review published a translation from Incidences; a list of ten French novels Gide would have taken to a hypothetical 1 Andris Gide, ”The School of Women,” Forum, 81:10, 118 and 188; January, February and March, 1929# 2 , ”The Return of the Prodigal Son," Yale Review, ns 18:648, June, 1929. 3 ___________, "Classicism,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 5:321-24, July, 1929. desert island,4 In Marcia, 1930 the Yale Review offered a translation of the essay, "Henry James,1 1 originally an ■unsent letter to Charles du Bos;5 and in May of that year Asia published a short nature piece about an animal which Gide had made a pet during his travels in Africa.6 None of these articles excited any comment in print, although I^Ecole des Femmea was later published in book form as School for Wives, at which time it was extensively reviewed.7 In addition to these new publications, Knopf in 1928 reissued The Vatican Swindle. inexplicably changing the title to Lafcadio1s Adventures. REVIEWS OF TRAVELS IN THE CONGO In July, 1925, Gide went to French Equatorial Africa at the request of the French government to investigate mismanagement and exploitation of the natives by the administration and by various French colonial companies. This trip, which lasted almost a year, was described in Voyage au Congo and Le Retour du Tchad (Gallimard, Paris, 1927 and 1928)• Although these books consisted for the 4 AndrS Gide, "Ten French Novels Which I. . • * * Virginia Quarterly Review, 5:532-38, October, 1929. 5 , "Henry James," Yale Review, 19J641, March, 1930. 6 __________, "Dindiki, " Asia, 30:332 ff, May, 1930. 7 V. infra, p. 46. most part of personal impressions and descriptions of country and natives, the passages treating the exploitation of the natives by the colonial companies produced a heated controversy in France, translated versions of these two books were published under one cover by Knopf as travels in the Congo in 1929, and with the appearance of the earliest reviews it was apparent that the alleged exploitation of the natives was not the burning issue in America it had been in France. Only one reviewer, Blair Niles of the New York Herald tribune, praised Gide to any extent for his attack on the French companies; He then proceeds to set down what he has seen of the formidable power and influence of the great commercial companies which exploit Africa; of what he believes to be the two terrible impediments of the French administration of Equatorial Africa— want of sufficent staff and want of sufficent money— and of the consequent wrongs from which the natives suffer.8 Niles showed considerable familiarity with Gide’s earlier works; he mentioned Lafcadio’s Adventures, The Counterfeiters and “The Street Cailed Straight,1 1 apparently his own name for La Porte €troite» He saw Gide as a typical Latin 8 Blair Niles, ”A Frenchman in Africa,” Books (New York Herald Tribune), March 12, 1929, p. 5. artist and commended him for being able to "feel without shame and without crossing the boundary line which divides 9 the land of emotion from the land of gush." The only other critic to mention Gide’s criticism of the companies was John Chamberlain of the Bookman, - who, however, took a somewhat sarcastic attitude toward Gide’s variety of social idealism: . • .he is continually ruminating on ’ ’values" and, though he finds it difficult to do much condemning, he is forever protesting in a fairly dispassionate tone that kindness to the equaltorial natives would pay in the cash-value sense, as well as in other senses.10 Chamberlain found the style of Travels in the Congo excellent and like most other critics praised Dorothy Bussy’s work as translator* He was the first of several critics to compare Gide’s book with Paul Morand’s Black Magic, a collection of stories on Africa which had appeared at the same time* The great remainder of the reviewers of Travels in the Congo ignored the socio-political facet entirely and concentrated their attention on the personal and literary aspects* One of the most remarkable reviews was written by William McFee, a marine engineer, traveller and writer of 9 Loc * cit* 10 John Chamberlain, "Travels in the Congo," Bookman, 69:554, July, 1929. sea stories, in the June 3rd Hew Republic. McPee took a "malicious and melancholy pleasure” in comparing Gide’s book with, for example, the works of Martin Johnson and other writers of African adventure narratives. He conceded that Johnson's books woxild no doubt attain greater popularity, but declared the greater value of Gide’s work to human thought wad undeniable. "And this," he confessed, "is the opinion of a reviewer who has been unable, so far, to read 'The Counterfeiters' in spite of numerous determined attempts.”* 1 - * 1 - McFee took exception, however, to the publisher's introduction to the book, which he maintained had wrongly praised the book only for the "truth” it contained; he deplored the lack of an index which would have made Gide's numerous references comprehensible, and he complained that the purpose of the trip was never adequately explained and would be obscure to American readers: Throughout the book one is bothered by the failure to comprehend just how and why a novelist sixty years old, instead of arriving in New York to be feted and lionized by intellectual America, goes on an official journey involving such singular hardships.12 11 William McFee, "AndrS Gide in Africa,” New Republic, 59:188, June 3, 1929. 44 Tiie Outlook review was signed by the editor-in- chief, Francis Rufus Bellamy. Like Chamberlain, he compared the book with Morand’s Black Magic to Gide’s great advantage. He especially praised Gide's deep and philosophical understanding of the primitive mind, and called his style ’ ’the perfection of simplicity.”13 The comparisom with Black Magic was made again by Walter White, a sometime expatriate who was apparently familiar with part of Gide’s work in French. He, too, commended the lucid style of Travels in the Congo and based his review mostly on Gide’s personal reactions? "In brief, the book is a magnificent picture of a keenly sensitive and alert mind in its contact with new experiences. , ! 14 White mentioned Gide’s criticism of the colonial companies only in passing. The attitude of Bellamy and White also characterized the unsigned Hew York Times review on May 12th. In addition to these literary reviews Travels in the Congo was honored by a review in Nature magazine because of its long descriptions of the flora and fauna of Equatorial Africa. The review conceded that Gide's impressions could 13 Francis Rufus Bellamy, Outlook, 152:106, May 15, 1929. 14 Walter White, "The Road to Africa," Nation, 128:770-71, June 26, 1929. 15 Unsigned, "Andr€ Gide Journeys to the Congo," New York Times Book Review, May 12, 1929, p. 7. 45 hardly be considered scientific, but noted that they were nevertheless “a vivid impressionistic picture of life and » travel in tropical Africa.1 1 - * - 8 Henry G. Bayer, in the Yale Review, found yet another book to compare with Travels in the Congo: Grace Flandrau’s Then I Saw The Congo. Gide’s book, he found, was much the better: M. Gide, with his usual power of observation, brilliant style of writing, and fondness for details, reveals the life, customs, and rudimentary culture of the natives; he paints beautiful pictures of enchanted scenes, strange villages, enchanted flora and wild animals.I7 About the social aspects of the book Bayer remarked only, “He distributes, equally, praise and criticism as he goes gently along with his presentation of general conditions•H* L8 What these general conditions were, however, the reader had to find out for himself: Bayer did not explain them. The fact that Travels in the Congo Was judged mainly as a work of art and not as a social or moral treatise is especially interesting in view of the later criticism of 16 Unsigned, Mature, 125:596, April 19, 1930. 17 Henry S. Bayer, “In the French and Belgian Congo,” Yale Review, 19:853, Summer, 1930. 18 Loc. cit. 46 Gide’s Russian memoirs19 and the general consternation of American critics toward what they considered to be his moral deficiencies. This is perhaps to be explained by the fact that the Congo memoirs were concerned neither with sexual morals nor with the delicate subject of communism, and thus American reviewers were, to a certain extent, left free of their environmental inhibitions. Whatever the reason, it was with Travels in the Congo that Gide received his first unanimous acclaim in America. REVIEWS OP THE SCHOOL FOR WIVES The plaudits accorded Travels in the Congo continued with the publication of Gide’s next book. L’Ecole des Femmes, a narrative of a young girl’s confessions and her ideas of life before and after her marriage, was published In France by Gallimard in 1929. As we have noted, the story was published in serial form in Forum in early 1 9 2 9 and in September of the same year The School for Wives, a translation by Dorothy Bussy, was offered for sale by Knopf. On September 18th Outlook printed the first review, a short summary by Frances Lamont Robbins. She showed some familiarity with Gide’s previous work, contrasting the 19 Gfm Chapter VII. 20 X* supra, p. 39. 47 "preciosity" of La Symphonie Pastorale with the severe, even chaste simplicity of Strait is the Gate; she found the diary medium of The School for Wives striking and the characterizations of both principals masterly* Gide is the greatest novelist of the day in his approach to such subtle problems of judgement and responsibility. It was perhaps- to be expected that the approach would be too oblique to satisfy American r e a d e r s *21 Miss Robbins thereupon enlarged her views on the unfair American attitude toward Gide, ending with "* • .one may hope that he will soon be v/idely read.”22 The publication of The School for Wives elicited the first Gide criticism by Malcolm Cowley, an editor and author later to be the translator of Imaginary Interviews. Cowley devoted most of his review to contrasting The School for Wives with The Counterfeiters, demonstrating plausibly that the later work was a triumph of simplicity. Such severity, however, did not imply a superficiality or a lack of depth: • . .we might say the book is like Giotto’s circle, and that its simplicity could be achieved only by a master craftsman.23 21 Frances Lamont Robbins, "The School for Wives," Outlook, 153:109, September, 1929. 22 Loc. cit. 23 Malcolm Cowley, "Albumblatt,” Books (Mew York Herald Tribune), October 20, 1929, p. 5. Or, added Cowley, the book might be compared to the simpler works Beethoven wrote between symphonies— an "Albumblatt.” Cowley was familiar with most of Gide’s work and made especial mention of Les Nourrltures terrestres and of Gide’s 1926 autobiography Si le Grain ne meurt. The Saturday Review of Literature notice, by the French-born critic Abel Chevalley, developed this theme of simplicity even further* The unity of plot, the coherent and static characters, the single-observer point of view and the severe style, said Chevalley, were almost classic in effect; It is as if Gide had wanted to convince the admirers of his ’ ’The Counterfeiters” that they admired its defects, not its merits, and that he was able to wield the simplest as well as the most complicated instruments of mental analysis.2-* This review was accompanied by a large pencil sketch of Gide by William Rothenstein, a drawing apparently also in the possession of The Hew York Times, which ran it with almost every Gide review. Only one critic found a flaw in The School for Wives large enough to attack. Pierre Loving*s Nation 24 Abel Chevalley, Saturday Review of Literature, 6:205, October 5, 1929. 25 Pierre Loving, ’ ’ Meet the Wife,” Nation, 130:49, January 8, 1930. 49 review found Gide somewhat too subtle, but pointed out that his sins were those of genius: In this brief and remarkably condensed novel M. Gide shows himself to be not only profound but over-subtle, for so fastidiously has he handled the character drawing and the central theme that the real point is- likely to be missed*25 Loving did not explain what this "real point” was, but his review was titled ’ ’ Meet the Wife”— perhaps indicating that he viewed the book as an exposition of Gide’s own marriage* This review was a sample of the least praise Gide was to receive from any critic on the score of The School for Wives, and marked a period of truce between Gide and his critics which was to end with his next American publication. REVIEWS OF THE MORALIST LfImmoral!ste was the first work of Gide that we might conceivably call a novel, although Gide himself applied the term only to Les Faux-Monnayeurs* Based to a certain extent on his youthful travels in North Africa, it was first published in Paris by Mercure de France in 1902. The Dorothy Bussy translation Was issued by Knopf on April 11, 1930 as the wave of acclaim following The Counterfeiters was beginning to subside. For some reason, perhaps because Tb.e Tmvnorfllist concerned moral and sexual issues, the critical 25 Pierre Loving, ’ ’ Meet the Wife,” Nation, 130:49, January 8, 1930. 50 reaction returned to the attitude it had shown toward Counterfeiters* admiratxon of Gide’s talent combined with profound suspicion of his motives. Again the first critic into the breach was Miss Robbins of the Outlook. She had apparently read L1Immoral!ste in French, for she maintained that where the original displayed Gide’s talent as a stylist to best advantage, the translation placed the stress on the plot. The theme of The Immoral!st she saw as ’ ’the story of a man whose moral sense was lost in an overwhelming interest in the effect of 26 everything upon himself.” In spite of this lukewarm moral opprobrium she found the book ’ ’like all of Gide’s books” to be ’ ’rewarding and provocative r e a d i n g . ”^7 A few days later a Nation staff reviewer repeated this interpretation of the work, and added, ’ ’ Were it not for its depressing close, the novel might almost be considered a seductive argument for immorality.”^8 This critic, Henry Hazlitt, went on to argue that the moral issues involved were ”fin de siecle”^ and were rather anachronistic in the present day. Like Miss Robbins he heartily approved of the 26 Frances Lamont Robbins, Outlook, 154:627, April 15, 1930. 27 Loc. cit* 28 Henry Hazlitt, ' ’Gide’s First Novel,” Nation, 130:491, April 23, 1930. 29 Loc. cit. book as a work of art. Marcelline, the unfortunate heroine, was ’ ’lovely and pathetic."30 In The Immoralist, classic in form and mood, Gide had created almost a masterpiece. In the June Bookman Peter Vincent developed the thesis that since Gide in The School for Wives had returned to the simple psychological narrative, he had found the complexity of The Counterfeiters beyond his reach— Gide felt, in Vincent's words, "more at home in the tale than in the n o v e l . "33- Thus The Immoralist, one of Gide's first narratives, was ’ ’typical of Gide at his best.”32 The subject matter of the work Vincent found less felicitous. Although it was ostensibly concerned only with Michel's discovery of the sensual and hedonistic life in general, Vincent saw in it a subtle discourse on homosexuality: No one can indeed read this book without being aware that Michel's expansive discovery of life merely symbolizes his rather tardy recognition of his own unorthodox sexual orientation.55 But Gide, said Vincent, had lacked the necessary candor to present the issue openly; a ’ ’ master of evasion and insinuation”, he had merely hinted at the problems involved without laying himself open to attack: 30 Loc. cit. 31 Peter Vincent, Bookman, 71:327, June, 1930. 52 It is just this timid half-approach to a difficult subject that is at once the most characteristic and the most reprehensible feature of Gidefs work. The Socratic dialogues of Corydon, which Gide withheld until after Marcel Proust * s nobler treatment of the same theme, fail to convince because of their almost scientific impersonality; and even when he descends to intimate confessions as in Si le Grain ne meurt, he draws back in fear*3b If this passage seemed to indicate that Vincent thought Gide somewhat too prudent, his next remarks inferred that he, along with M. Massis, viewed Gide as a satanist. He scored what he referred to as Gide*s "moral anarchism", which he defined as a "Nietzschean theory of immorality thinly veiled in a pretence of stern Protestantism. . ."36 Luckily, concluded Vincent, the book was not interesting enough to provide any danger that it would be widely read. An unsigned reviewer in The Saturday Review of Literature seemed less shocked than Vincent, but he attacked the book mildly for weakness in motivation. After reciting the plot at some length, he concluded; Michel, though supposedly much in love with his wife, kills her by his restlessness and urge to travel when she falls ill with a disease he has himself given her.^ 35 Ibid., p. 328. 36 Loc. cit. 37 Unsigned, The Saturday Review of Literature, 6:1147, June 21, 1930. 53 Thus this reviewer, by reciting the plot baldly and without benefit of Gide's narrative devices, conveyed the impression that the story was utter nonsense. Louis Kronenberger, the Hew York Times reviewer, was alone among the critics of this period in accepting the moral message of The Immoral!3t but in finding fault with the technique. Hot only did the situations have an air of unreality, but the characters were mere pasteboards E'or 1 1 The Immoralist” is not really human drama, is not actually living substance, is not a picture from which we deduce meaning; like parable it is all meaning.38 It was not clear, however, that Kronenberger totally disapproved of the parable technique. Such an attitude, he explained, was natural in a writer of Gide’s personality: . . .Gide is far more like Hawthorne than like Dostoyevsky; in ’ ’The Immoralist” his world, like Hawthorne’s, is abstract; his interest is in man, not men; his insight moral, not psychological.39 With Kronenberger the criticism of Gide comes full circle. We have followed it from suspicious acceptance of 38 Louis Kronenberger, ’ ’ Man’s Ethical Dilemma In Andr£ Gide’s ’ ’The Immoral!st,Hew York Times Book Review, April 20, 1930, p. 9. 39 Loc. cit. The Counterfeiters, through the almost unanimous eulogies accorded Travels in the Congo, and in The Immoralist back to wary moral suspicion. At this time it will be valuable to examine some of the earliest definitive studies of Gide in order to understand more fully his literary position in American during the early nineteen-thirties. CHAPTER V THE FIRST DEFINITIVE STUDIES Tlie success of The Counterfei ters and the controversy over it had stimulated a considerable public interest in Gide* Immediately there was a demand for details of his personal life, for journalistic descriptions of his work and for condensed evaluations of his position for those who wished to know something about Gide but did not care to plunge through his books. Even before the American publication of The Counterfeiters Ernest Boyd had included a broad portrait of Gide in his Studies From Ten Literatures. With respect to Gide's American reputation at that time (1924) Boyd noteds In English there is one adequate study of him, in Edmund Gosse's Portraits and Sketches, as against several in German. He receives a perfunctory paragraph in Professors Cunliffe and de Bacourt's French Literature during the Last Half-Century and is not mentioned at all in the recent history of Professors Nitze and Dargan*1 Boyd stressed Gide's versatility in technique but expressed a preference for the simpler r^cits— "By common consent L'Immoral!ste and La Porte gtroite are Gide's masterpieces. 1 Ernest A* Boyd, Studies from Ten Literatures (Chapter X, "The Protestant Barres: Andr€ Gide,, r pp. 32-40) (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925, p. 33. This chapter is fundamentally the same as the New Republic article of July 23, 1924— cf • supra p. 15* 2 Ibid., p * 37. 56 He found, Les Caves du Vatican not characteristic of Gide's best style— the various elements were poorly combined and the total effect immature and gauche.® This same diversity of Gide had intrigued several other critics, and some of them at this time began to detect in it a philosophical dualism, an .inherent conflict between flesh and spirit, God and Satan. Gide himself had expressed this idea in the Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs and elsewhere, and it soon became a popular approach to his work. One of the first to discuss this aspect of Gide was Angel Flores, in the review of The Counterfeiters already noted under Chapter III.^ Although Flores developed the idea at length, his views were summed up in a paragraph: Gide is a man of extremes. • .there is something hyperboreal about him, a mixture of St. Francis and Nietzsche. • .He is the spiritual father of Alissa Bucolin, one of the most piously beautiful characters of fiction, and yet he was also the creator of the perverse Lafcadio and has remained the champion of the Uranians. He is accused of corrupting the Athenian children and still he keeps a^rigorous Huguenot air. He loves his Dada and his Dostoevsky. It is this combination of the angelic and the demoniac that qualified him so well to translate Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell. 3 Loc. cit. 4 V. supra, p* 26. 5 Angel Flores, "Andr£ Gide and his 'First Novel'," Bookman, 66:167, October, 1927, p. 167. Flores In this review discussed Gide’s earlier work in some detail: he had read Si le Grain ne meurt and found it ’ ’ frightfully honest, scandalously so”;® he was one of the first critics to mention Le Traitg du Narcisse, which he called ’ ’one of those lyrico-philosophical dissertations on symbols so much in vogue during the anti-Parnassian days” and Paludes, which he saw definitely satirical; . .the triumph of irony. With pitiless vigor Gide ridicules his previous state of mind.”® In his discussion of L’Immoral!ste Flores inferred that Gide had Identified himself with Michel; "Gide once experienced a similar exhilarating thrill while travelling through Algeria”.^ Likewise, La Porte gtroite was a satire that had gone awry in the writing; Gide's purpose was to write a satire hut as his work progressed Normandy appeared to him, wrapped in its gray mist, giving off the piou3 redolence of its faith and the moved artist spoke of things he had begun to forget, profound things that were hidden deep in the very hypocaust of his soul. Gide, the satirist, kneels down and prays. • .Whoever touches him here touches a saintI^ 6 Loc. cit. 7 Ibid.. p. 168. 8 Ibid.. p. 169. 9 Loc. cit. 10 Ibid., p. 169f. Flores ventured no opinion on Isabelle except to label it "a transitional work. . .straight narrative”.11 But he found Les Caves du Vatican "limpid, human, delightful", infused with a "pervasive irony."12 Thus his evaluations were almost directly opposite to those of Boyd discussed above. He also examined Gide's alleged immorality,and found that it had been greatly overemphasized; Gide's diabolism was invariably balanced by an equal reverence, and even in Si le Grain ne meurt the excellence of his style was enough to carry the somewhat questionable content. Gide's dualism again came to the attention of critics with the American publication of the critical Gide biography by LSon Pierre-Quint in 1934.13 On this occasion Ben Ray Redman, an author, columnist, and motion picture writer, contributed to The Saturday Review of Literature an essay, "The Dual Souls of Andr^ Gide," which developed the idea at length.1^ Redman stressed the importance of studying Gide's dualism apart from any question of morality and merely as a conflict between two opposing forces. The Pierre-Quint biography was also reviewed in The Hew York Times by Harold 11 Loc. cit. 12 Ibid., p. 170. 13 Leon Pierre-Quint, Andrg Gide, translated by Dorothy Richardson (Hew York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1934). 14 Ben Ray Redman, "The Dual Souls of Andre Gide," Saturday Review of Literature. 11:31, August 4, 1934. Strauss, who saw the dualism as a "conflict of man's psychological nature with his ethical self."-5 - 5 Gide's new popularity, felt Strauss, was mostly due to awakening popular interest in psychology: Although much of Gide's work was done before the war, it was not until Freud's analysis of psychological causation had aroused profound contemporary interest that he was widely read* - * - 6 It is interesting to compare here the concept of Gide as a "psychological novelist" with the attitude of the unsigned reviewer of The Immoralist in The Saturday Review of Literature who had characterized Gide as a rebel from the psychological "motivation" school of novel-writing*^-1 7 Carrying this psychological interpretation even further, however, S* Stephenson Smith in his Craft of the Gritic included Gide in the chapter on "The Psychological Novel" and described his technique as "playing on several senses at once, to give a kind of symphonic effect."^ Probably the most curious of such attempts to fit 15 Harold Strauss, "Andr^ Gide in Search of Himself," The New York Times Book Review, July 22, 1934, p* 2* 16 Loc * cit* 17 Unsigned, Saturday Review of Literature, 6:1147, June 21> 1930* 18 S. Stephenson Smith, The Craft of the Critic (New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Col, 1931)' p• 203* Gide into a literary school was that made by Joseph Shipley, who in The Quest For Literature typified him as a naturalist. Shipley’s theory was apparently based on Gide’s preoccupation with sensual experience; Gide is concerned in his novels only with acts and thoughts that rise from the viscera, (as opposed to disgust of Val€ry for these ideas) with the extension and intensity of feeling, with the problems of morality in the modern world. Shipley ventured no statement on Gide’s technique, which is usually felt to be marked by a total absence of documentary detail, or of the extreme decorum other critics had noted in his treatment of sensuality. He was simply concerned, as were many other critics, with selecting facts that would enable him to classify Gide according to his prearranged plan In 1931 a short sketch of Gide was included in Living Authors: A Book of Biographies, a source-book published by the H.W. Wison Company This volume, noting Gide's dualism, suggested that it proceeded in part from his diverse hereditary strains, an idea later expressed by Gide himself. The Immoralist was included by the editor ”in the 19 Joseph T. Shipley, The Quest For Literature (Hew York, Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1931) pT 437. 20 Dilly Tante, editor (Stanley J. Kunitz, pseudonym) Living Authors; A Book of Biographies (New York, The H.W, W iling coTTT93iT- — ------------ 61 first rank of his work."2- * - The brief personal details appended were the only description of Gide the American public had then been offered3 His appearance and movements are mysterious and theatrical. A soft black hat habitually shades his lean and clever face* (In his youth he wore a loose moustache, but now he believes in exposing the "natural* 1 physiognomy.) He often wears a skull cap to cover his bald head and a shawl over his shoulders in the Ivlallarme tradition. His eyes are brown, his skin yellow.22 The book included an early photo of Gide, showing him much as described. It also repeated an anecdote about him that had become common stock in Prance: When Si le Grain ne meurt was published some years ago the frankness of his confessions shocked some of the French public. The translation of the axiom "Nature abhors a vacuum’ * is "la nature a l'horreur du vide." Gide’s shocked compatriots turned it into "la nature a l'horreur du Gide."23 21 Ibid., p. 149. 22 Loc. cit. 23 Loc. cit. The story apparently refers to one of Gide's many quarrels with the conservative journalist Henri B^raud. C,f* L€on Pierre-Quint, Andr^ Gide, Sa Vie, Son Oeuvre (Paris, Librarie Stock, 1933) p. 92: iT. . .le directeur d'une petite revue (L'Oeuf dur) lui ayant envoys en communication, avant qu'il ne parftt, un papier de B^raud intitule: "La Nature a horreur du Gide" il le retourna simplement avec cette mention: ^on £ . tirer." Probably the most significant trend in criticism at this time was the tendency to find parallels between Gide and various other literary figures. Gide himself took a bleak view of this practice— he reiterated several times that his talent was a highly individual thing and that he had found only confirmation of his ideas in other authors. His views were probably best stated in a 1927 Journal entry* I have reflected considerably about this question of "influences” and believe that very gross errors are committed in this regard. The only thing that is worth anything in literature is what life teaches us. Every thing we learn only from books remains abstract, a dead letter. Had I not encountered Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Blake or Browning, I cannot believe that my work would have been any different. At the most they helped me to disentangle my thought. And even then? I took pleasure in hailing those in whom I recognized my thought. But that thought was mine, and it is not to them that I owe it. Since critics in the nineteen-thirties did not have access to the Journals they felt free to find any parallels they could, and this became one of the most popular approaches to Gide criticism* One of the most obvious of such "influences" was that of Dostoievsky, since Gide had published a study of this author. The parallels were apparently first developed 24 The Journals of Andrg Gide, translated by Justin O’Brien, (New York, Alfred A* Knopf, Inc., 1947-48) II, p. 420 at length in a 1929 essay in The Sewanee Review signed by Tatiana Vacquier* The matching process began with the dualism of the two authors: "This tendency in Dostoevsky’s work could not fail to impress Andr£ Gide and to arouse similar feelings’ 125 and continued through their ’ ’obsession with God”: ”Andr£ Gide, wrapped up in the same enigna, watching it, trying to penetrate it was naturally attracted by the similar trend of mind of the Russian author.”*^ The parallels continued through the introspection of the two authors to the subject of the unmotivated act, which Vacquier traced to Crime and Punishment with its hero ’ ’beyond good and evil.” Other parallels cited included alleged weakness in characterization of women, interest in young people, concern with.the problem of free will and fascination with the theme of satanism. As for technique, Vacquier was able to point out only that both authors were fond of a sort of formlessness. A few months later Kenneth Burke attempted the same sort of comparison! between Gide and Thomas Mann. An author and translator of Mann’s Death in Venice, Burke was inspired 25 Tatiana Vacquier, "Dostoevsky and Gide: A Comparison!, Sewanee Review, 37:478-89, October, 1929, p. 480. 25 Doc. cit. 27 Ibid., p. 489. 64 to compare the two authors book by book, and usually to Gide’s disadvantage. Thus Death in Venice corresponded to The Immoralist. The Counterfeiters was a nebulous and confused Magic Mountain, and The Vatican Swindle, whatever Burke's point may have been, bore no resemblance to Buddenbrooks. His principal objections to Gide's work appeared to be concerned with morality! we find him attacking Les Hourritures terrestres as "a crooked evangelism, calling us to vague and unnatural revelations, • ,a kind of morbid Whitmanism.The key to Mann lay in his "earnestness"; that of Gide in his "corruption". Burke even maintained that the interest Gide had expressed in the welfare of the Congo natives had been due to his unusual sexual proclivities I It is doubtful, I grant, whether Gide arrived at his useful position through wholly untrammeled motives. The Olympian result shows traces of troubled Orphic beginnings. It seems likely that his concern for homosexuality, and his struggle for its "recognition", early gave him a sense of divergence from the social norms among which he lived, and in time this sense of divergence was trained upon other issues. In seeking, let us say, to defend a practice which society generally considered reprehensible, he came to defend practices which society considered more reprehensible--as a child who resented a cruel father might end by slaying the king.,,5U 28 Kenneth Burke, "Thomas Mann and Andr€ Gide," Bookman, 71:257, June, 1930, p. 258. 65 Although this passage would seem to indicate that Burke felt that Gide, in calling for better treatment of the Gongo natives, was defending "practices which society considered more reprehensible," this application seems somewhat confused* A slightly more defensible comparison! was offered by Joseph Warren Beach, a University of Minnesota professor, in his Twentieth Century Hovel: the link between The Counterfeiters and Aldous Huxley's Point Counter P o i n t He pointed out several similarities in incident (the acte gratuit, etc*) and in technique (the "fugue" pattern, the composition en abyme) and concluded, "• • .one is inclined to assume that some of these things in Huxley are reminiscences of Gide."5^ Beach was also able to point out that Huxley was probably familiar with Gide's Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs. This link between Gide and Huxley was developed at even greater length in a 1934 book by two Columbia University professors, Dorothy Brewster and Angus Burrell. An essay titled "Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point and Andr€ Gide's The Counterfeiters" formed a chapter in their Modern Fiction.25 31 Joseph Warren Beach, The Twentieth Century Hovel (Hew York, D. Appleton-Century Company, 1932). 32 Ibxd., p » 463. 33 Dorothy Brewster and Angus Burrell, Modern Fiction (Hew York, Columbia University Press, 1934). 66 The authors listed a great many points of similarity between the two novels, especially in structure: the analogy to music, the device of the novelist as a leading character, and the experiments in point of view. Brewster and Burrell, however, expressed their disapproval of any attempts to demonstrate direct influences: The similarities between Gide and Huxley are so striking that the question whether Gide (whose book came out four years before Huxley’s) influenced Huxley enters our mind; and there it had better rest quietly. • .34 Not only had Gide himself expressly repudiated this approach to his or anyone else’s novels, but there were wide divergences between The Counterfeiters and Point Counter Point. Huxley1s book was a novel of manners rather than a novel of ideas; it contained a brilliance of dialogue and a profusion of detail that were foreign to Gide* In .addition Gide’s book was centered about the novelist-protagonist to a much greater extent than Huxley’s: M • . .Huxley’s use 35 of Philip is incidental; Gide’s use of Edouard is integral.” Brewster and Burrell were apparently familiar with the Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs, since they quoted from it 34 Ibid., p. 256. 35 Ibid., p. 259. 67 several times; but they made no attempt to prove that Huxley had borrowed from this notebook* Another plausible connection was developed by S.A. Rhodes, a professor in the College of the City of New York* *In a Romanic Review monograph Rhodes described a "literary affinity'* between Gide and Marcel Schwob, an admirer and disciple of the older author. The principal comparison! offered was that between Les Nourritures terrestres and Schwob’s Le Livre de Monelle, both of which contained an "admixture of intoxicating earthly passions and* . .rarified spiritual anarchy."36 Although he was unable to find any direct points of influence, he expressed a hope that "in a later chapter of Si le Grain ne meurt he will speak of the spiritual and aesthetic ties that must have e x i s t e d * " ^ In 1940 Rhodes carried the parallel between Gide and Schwob to even greater lengths* Again in the Romanic Review, he argued that Gide's great interest in Walt Whitman had been inspired by Schwob and that both Schwob and Gide had found Whitman a "welcome guide" during the years when they 36 S.A. Rhodes, "Marcel Schwob and Andr^ Gide: a Literary Affinity," Romanic Review, 22:28-37, January, 1931, p * 29 • 37 Ibid., p. 30. 68 were formulating their philosophies.3® Rhodes was able to quote a personal letter from Gide to himself in which Gide had related his emotions upon being shown translations of Whitman by Schwob in 1893. Rhodes was cautious enough, however, to speak of "parallels1 1 rather than "influences." Not only was this critic sympathetic to Gide, but he showed a considerable familiarity with his work. In a 1930 essay in The Sewanee Review he combined a review of Un Esprit Non Prevenu (Editions du Sagittaire, Paris, 1929) with a detailed analysis of the anti-Gidism of Henri Massis, Charles du Bos and Victor Poucel. This essay stressed Gide’s "continuous state of becoming" and the strange contrasts of his personality: ". • .he is morally on the side of God, artistically on the side of the devil."3® This demi-satanism, Rhodes found, proceeded from the intense savor which Gide found in life and from his consequent unchristian distaste for death: He abhors nothing so much as cessation of being, or death, since the kingdom of God, for him, nunc est. (John IV, 23:V, 25)• So the devil becomes a primary instrument of salvation in his heretical theosophy. He seeks 38 S.A. Rhodes, "The Influence of Walt Whitman on Andr# Gide," Romanic Review, 41:156, April, 1940, p. 168. 39 S.A. Rhodes, "Andr€ Gide and His Catholic Critics," Sewanee Review, 38:484-90, October, 1930, p. 488. 69 temptation with the complicity of the adversary of God. In fact, the more he seeks the latter, the more often does he find the former in his path, and thanks to his own connivance, at times.40 In short, Rhodes was among the first to detect Gide's satanisticbent and was alone in this period in studying this trait from a psychological rather than a moral point of view. None of these studies, with the possible exception of Burke's comparisom of Gide and Mann, could be considered wholly and uncompromisingly antagonistic toward Gide. But at least two such philippics existed at this time. The earliest unmitigated attack against Gide was contained in the History of French Literature offered by Professors Nitze and Dargan in 1927. This work referred to Gide as an "extreme libertarian"1 ^ and found a "subtle immoralism"4^ in L 1Immoral!ste, La Porte €troite, Les Caves du Vatican and La Symphonie Pastorale. Les Caves, the authors noted, "illustrates how all these rarified aesthetes are much more 40 Ibid., p. 486. 41 William A* Nitze and E. Preston Dargan, A History of French Literature (New York, Henry Holt & Co., revised edition 1927) p . 733. No mention of Gide appeared in the first (1922) edition of this history. 42 Loc. cit. 70 occupied with talking about art than with creating it."43 As for influences, the authors noted only that Dostoievsky had been valuable to Gide "less for his deep humanity than as furnishing notable examples of perversity in crime and of moral degradation.1,44 It was not clear why these authors were so antagonistic to Gide, but apparently their antipathy proceeded from an aversion to his homosexuality* This subject was skirted but never specifically treated. The only merit Hitze and Dargan found in Gide was in his styles "Opposed to all the French Classical values, Gide seems to preserve the merit of writing even and at times exquisite prose.ri45 In December, 1929, the Bookman published a similar attack by Rebecca West, a British authoress and critic, which actually lies outside the scope of this study but which must be included because it had a demonstrable influence on later American critics, at least one of whom quoted Miss West in the course of his own attack.46 In addition, the essay, which 43 Doc. cit. 44 Ibid., p. 733-34. 45 Ibid., p. 734. 46 Cf• Geoffrey Stone, Bookman, October, 1931. This article is discussed at length on p. 78. 71 was later included in Ending in Earnest (Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1931), merits attention as the most aeidulent Gide criticism yet to appear. Miss West found the Montaigne essay "a patchwork of quotations unified by a commentary directed chiefly to proving, without any startling success, a resemblance between Montaigne and M. Gide.”417 L' Immoraliste was "fee-faw-fum hokum about the man who takes his wife down to the desert, though he knows it will kill her, in order to gratify his appetite for stranger than matrimonial pleasures As for The Counterfeiters, she was convinced Gide had used his unusual technique "not because he was experimenting with a new form, but through sheer uncertainty of touch"• In short, Gide's popularity was mostly among misfits: . . .Gide has a devoted following such as no writer who appealed to the non neurotic and the adult could possibly boast, since those who lead us in the search for reality prefer us to attain independence rather than to give them worship.^ How Miss West reconciled this theory with Gide's exhortations in Les Hourritures terrestres and In other works to disregard all authority other than one's own conscience is not clear. 47 Rebecca West, "A Letter from Abroad," Bookman, 70:433, December, 1929. 48 Ibid., p. 434. 49 Loc. cit. t r 48 72 Basically her dislike of Gide, like that of Professors Nitze and Dargan, seemed to be based on his homosexuality* In addition she expressed a profound distaste for the journal- diary form of his reoits. The 1931 essay of E.L. Loughnan in The Sewanee Review has already been discussed briefly with respect to The Counterfeiters*50 This twelve-page article dwelt on Gide’s alleged Protestant mysticism and at the same time attacked at length his ’ ’ moral anarchism” and his excessive preoccupation with sensuality* L* Immoral!ste, for example, embodied a moral paradox: It is not an encouraging picture, and we seem far from the idea of a pilgrimage toward a God who will crown with completeness and give its meaning to our life on earth. For too great attention to cultivating a beautiful body may beget a love of evil as a part of beauty, and from the blind adoration of strength may spring sadistic tendencies. In both combined lie the seeds of anarchy and of her first fruits, tyranny and selfishness. Gide, by this presentation of an extreme case, has landed himself m a dilemma*- yet we find him undismayed. The quest goes on. . . Loughnan believed that Gide's exhortation in Les Rourritures terrestres to "throw away my book” proceeded from a Rousseau-like 50 V. supra, p. 35 51 E.L. Loughnan, "The Thirteenth Apostle: A Study of M. AndrS aide," Sewanee Review. 39:293-308, July, 1931, p. 2 • 73 52 fear of becoming embroiled in the responsibility of education, and found his influence in Prance to be not only deleterious 53 but much less widespread than imd been alleged. Finally, Loughnan impugned the whole basis of Gide’s attitude toward the Gospels: But since sensation triumphs over thought and all values are reversed in this Buddhistic absorption, what can result but total anarchy, if society at large suffers its influence? In reply Gide affirms that it is not anarchy whose threshold we are treading, hut the Gospels, isolated from all churchly interpretation, the Gospels from which he claims (with touching disregard for the findings of modern biblical exegesis) that we receive directly the words of the historical Jesus. Loughnan out of all Gide's work was able to praise only La Porte g~troite, and that mainly for its style. He saw in the book an account of the simple religion of Gide’s childhood, and accepted the message to be "a scorching 55 criticism of Puritan muddle-headedness.” He did not develop this thought, however, and we are left uncertain whether he believed Gide’s part in this attack on Protestantism was 52 Ibid., p. 296 f. 53 Ibid., p. 307. 54 Ibid., p. 303. 55 Ibid., p. 300. 74 premeditated and laudable, or unconscious and indicative of a certain moral hypocrisy in Gide as well as in his characters* At least it is clear that Loughnan, like most other critics in this period, found Gide morally defective* It will be interesting to compare this attitude with later critical tendencies to be presented in Chapter VIII. ■» CHAPTER VI REVIEWS OF BOOKS; 1931-35 After the publication of Lea Faux-Monnayeurs and the Congo travel books Gide entered a gestative period which was to result, in 1933, in his affirmation of communism. Thus the early thirties were not a productive period for him; he published only the drama Oedipe (Gallimard, Paris, 1931) and a prose poem, Les Nouvelles Nourritures (Gallimard, 1935)• American publishers were at a loss how to take advantage of the wave of interest that had followed the publication of The Counterfeiters and were eventually forced to search back into Gide's earlier work for material to translate. This resulted in the publication by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. of two books% Two Symphonies (1931) and Lf It Die (1935). REVIEWS OF TWO SYMPHONIES In May, 1931, Knopf issued Dorothy Bussy's translations of> Isabelle (Gallimard, 1911) and La Symphonie pastorale (Gallimard, 1919) in one volume under the title Two Symphonies. The first of these tales was a neo-Radcliffian romance about a young student and a mysterious country house which some critics chose to find satirical and others did not; and the second was a powerful journal-form narrative of a pastor who charitably takes a helpless blind girl under his wing 76 only to find himself betrayed by his outraged instincts. Prom the beginning critics were confused about these two books, and especially about the first. Flores, who in his 1927 study had characterized Isabelle as a "transitional work. . .straight narrative”3- now felt it necessary to attack his former position. In a Mew York Herald Tribune review he castigated critics who had covered their confusion over Isabelle by using the vague term "transition": This much abused word falls flat when applied to Gide, for the indefatigable explorer of techniques and themes is always on the alert, forever changing the perspectives of contemporary fiction. What the critics knew \fas that something "different" had appeared, and they lazily proceeded to conceal themselves in a misty tautology.2 This duty over, Flores proceeded into some misty tautology of his own, in the course of which he described Isabelle as a "hair-raising" mystery in the English Gothic tradition. He perceived no satire in Gide’s attitude. In The Pastoral Symphony, however, he believed that Gide was criticizing, all the characters as well as all the ideas expressed: 1 Angel Flores, "AndrS Gide and his First Hovel," Bookman, 665167, October, 1927. (Cf. supra, p. 58.) 2 _________ , "Two Moods of Andr€ Gide," Books (New York Herald Tribune) May 24, 1931, p. 3. Two religious attitudes failed, St* Paul and Christ failed, the heart and the mind and the gospels failed— the "angels” sank into an abyss of sin. • On the same day Louis Kronenberger in The Mew York Times took a similar attitude toward Two Symphonies, although presenting slightly more palpable arguments. Kronenberger found the two stories demonstrated two sides of Gide's oharac.ter Isabelle the "clever intellectual" and The Pastoral Symphony 4 the moralist. Both narratives unfortunately lacked reality: The sense of life being absent from "Isabelle" it has no pathos in its irony, no undercurrents, no overtones; and were it not ingenious, had it not some appeal to the mind (for Gide is astute) it would be dull. It is the work, not really of a novelist, but of a showman in ideas.^ The Pastoral Symphony failed to achieve reality mainly through inadequate characterization: In driving home the moral of lost innocence and sin, it literally goes back to the Garden of Eden; and though its purity of line and simplicity of sentiment give it a touch of beauty, it is not a story of men and women, but a lesson for humanity. 3 Loc. cit. 4 Louis Kronenberger, "Andr€ Gide's Contrasting Aspects in Two Novelettes," New York Times Book Review, May 24, 1931, p. 78 Kronenberger was somewhat uncertain about Gide’s attitude toward the characters, especially the pastor: ’ ’One can never quite decide whether he is a victim who has strayed help lessly into temptation, or whether he is a sanctimonious self-deceiver.”7 This doubt, said the critic, arose through the minister's endless pat sentiments— were they genuine, or were they intended as hypocrisy? On the whole, Kronenberger preferred The Immoral!st, where the issues were clear* Rebecca West's enthusiastic tirade against Gide in the Bookman has already been treated in Chapter V* She had read Isabelle in French and conjectured that it could be interpreted as an intricate Freudian allegory in which every event from the perfidy of the heroine to the cutting of the trees on the country estate became fraught with deep and all-too-obvious significance*® This endeavor had its due effect on Geoffrey Stone, who reviewed Two Symphonies for the same magazine* Stone quoted Miss West’s description of Isabelle— "a Freudian fantasy, full of sexual symbols, explicable in the light of Gide's defense of homosexuality”, and went further to find the book ’ ’ proof that Gide can neither tell a good story nor uncover, nor 'suggest’ any profound 7 Loc * cit* 8 V. supra, p. 70. 9 Geoffrey Stone, Bookman, 74:196, October, 1931# 79 truths of the mind.'*9 The story contained irrelevant episodes to which the reader, awed by Gide’s subtlety, was tempted to ascribe a hidden significance. The Pastoral Symphony was ! , perhaps. . .as comprehensible a thing as Gide has written”, yet its technique was underhanded and it ’ ’brings us nothing new nor does it more ably restate old truths.”^9 On the contrary, Two Symphonies'received high praise from Gerald Sykes, who reviewed it for both the Nation and the New Republic. The New Republic review, in fact, lauded the book for the very lack of tangible purpose that Stone had attack: ”« . .of course it is never the surface of Gide’s work that gives it its peculiar fascination.”3-1 Sykes saw in The Pastoral Symphony a “strong note of self-castigation” Gide, he felt, was trying to remind himself of a certain tendency toward hypocrisy in his own temperament. In the Nation review Sykes confined himself to more restrained encomiums. Yihere in the New Republic he had suggested that the American reader would be pleased with Two Symphonies, here he warned that the book was: 10 Ibid., p. 197. 11 Gerald Sykes, “For Connoisseurs,” New Republic, 67:295, July 29, 1931.. 12 Loc. cit. .12 9 80 . . .almost certain to prove a disappointment— perhaps a revelation— to the American reader. For however well- written, these are not living stories hut fleshless implausible'specters of stories. Each is told in the first person and ends in the narrator’s self-castigation*15 This artificiality, however, was the only fault Sykes found ln Two Symphonies, or in Gide's work as a whole. He expressed a warm admiration for Gide and for his literary judgment: His admirers--and I may say that I am among them--think his spirit has ranged further and stayed younger than that of any other living literary critic, that his criticism can be depended upon to seek out that which is essential and most deeply human, that his ' ’classicism’ ’ is one of the most creative forces of our time*1^ In other words, to summarize Sykes’s attitude, Gide was a good critic but a mediocre novelist* He could discuss Dostoievsky with acumen and eloquence, but "his own ’Immoralist’ is merely a studio sinner.1 ’15 The greatest contribution of his novels lay in their perceptive insight into problems of good and evil, and thus lay outside the aesthetic field altogether. 13 Gerald Sykes, ’ ’The Sins of a Critic,” Nation, 133:260, September 9, 1931. 3-4 hoc. cit. 15 Ibid., p. 261. 81 REVIEWS OP IF IT DIE Gide had published Corydon, his Socratic dialogue defending homosexuality, in 1924, and In 1926 he followed it with his extremely frank: and penetrating autobiography Sji le Grain ne meurt» Fragments of his memoirs, as we have seen, 1 A were published in America as early as 1920. In 1931 The Yale Review printed what appeared to be translated excerpts from Si le Grain ne meurt under the title ‘ "Memoirs of a 1 * 7 Sentimental Schoolboy”, with, however, no mention of the source. The American rights to Si le Grain ne meurt were acquired by Random House, Inc. and in 1933 this firm published the memoirs, translated by Dorothy Bussy, in a volume titled merely Autobiography. This, however, was a limited edition retailing at $20, and it excited little attention and no criticism whatsoever. But in 1935 Random House reissued the book as If It Die in a $5 edition and sent out copies to retailers and critics. This caused repercussions that were both instantaneous and spectacular. The book was available to critics in late October and was released for sale about two weeks later. In mid-December, 16 V. supra, p. 11. 17 Andr^ Gide, "Memoirs of a Sentimental Schoolboy", Yale Review, ns 21:266, December, 1931. 82 after Random House’s supply of the edition was exhausted, a copy of the hook offered for sale by the Gotham Book Mart in New York City was seized by John S. Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The Publisher’s Weekly commented: This volume by the famous French author has been listed in innumerable Christmas catalogs and sold throughout the country. The representatives of John S. Sumner, for this raid, passed over the large bookstores of the city, all of whom have had it displayed in their windows, and seized upon the Gotham Book Mart, where it was not in the window, perhaps because a small store seemed a safer targeu.1B On January 17th, however, Magistrate Nathan D. Perlman, basing his verdict on the decision of Judge John M. Woolsey in the case of Joyce’s Ulysses two years before, ordered the book released. According to Publisher’s Weekly: Magistrate Perlman rendered his decision after reading the work in question, concluding that although the author did depict ’ ’the dark corners of his life” vice was not made the major topic of the book*-’ - In spite of, or because of, this unfavorable publicity, most critics found the book commendable, and if they attacked 18 Unsigned, ”’If It Die’ Seized”, Publisher* s Weekly? 128:2229, December 21, 1935. 19 Unsigned, ”’If It Die* Released”, Publisher’s Weekly, 129:608, February 1, 1936. 83 it at all did so on the basis of its artistic qualities* Raymond Weaver, the author of the introduction to the Modern Library reprint of The Counterfeiters, was almost alone in condemning what he called Gide's "diseased exhibitionism", and even he was content to conclude merely, "This is one of the most extraordinary accounts that any mortal clothed and in his right mind has ever written and published of himself."^ Kronenberger, the New York Times critic, found the book principally a study of the adolescent mind and felt that the sexual aspect had been unduly stressed. "The notoriety achieved for this book by its homosexual passages has been exceedingly great; it has also been exceedingly disproportionate."21 But he saw little artistic merit in it. "One expected a richer texture, a more piercing light".^ Its chief value was not as an artistic production but as a source-book which would help the reader to understand Gide's other works. However, Kronenberger felt, Gide had told the truth about his life more frankly and in greater detail in his novels. This view of Lf It Die was shared by Ernest Boyd, a member of the rival firm that had handled most of Gide's 20 Raymond Weaver, "No Seed Is Quickened Save It Pall f And Die," Books (New York Herald Tribune) November 3, 1935, p. 5. 21 Louis Kronenberger, "Andr£ Gide Tells His Life Story," New York Times Book Review, November 10, 1935, p. 8. 22 Loc. cit. 84 other American publications. The autobiography would not have stood on its own merits, he stated, had not Gide’s reputation and artistic standing made any sort of memoirs saleable.23 But the book was so accurate a guide to Gide’s personality that it could even be used to e:xplain his politics: Although he closes this chapter of his reminiscences with his marriage to his dearly loved cousin, when he was but six and twenty and had published only two anonymous and hopelessly unsuccessful works, it throws a light upon his future development which extends so far forward as to explain his recent adherence to communism.24 A University of Pennsylvania professor, Milton H* Stansbury, had discussed Si le Grain ne meurt briefly in his French Novelists of Today, and had remarked ”. • .it is doubtful if Gide, with all his courage, would have dared to publish either Corydon or S3L le Grain ne meurt had not Marcel Proust first paved the way.”25 Professor Stansbury also reviewed the book for Current History after the American publication of If It Die, by which time he had considerably modified his position and decided that Gide’s new courage had come from 23 Ernest Boyd, ”Andr£ Gide’s Autobiography”, Saturday Review of Literature, 13:11, November 30, 1935. 24 Loc• cit• 25 Milton H. Stansbury, French Novelists of Today (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935) p. 6. Note also the detailed discussion of this book, Chapter VIII. ’ ’the more emancipated post-war world. Whatever secret knowledge he possessed of the real nature of his desires and aspirations, it took the increased tolerance and understanding of this epoch to make possible the publication of his memoirs, with their plea for individual morals, and, more narrowly, his own.S'? One of the few critics to offer the autobiography unadulterated praise was the New Republic reviewer, Norbert Guterman. He minimized the alleged salacious content and typified If I_t Die as f , A classical account of the inner struggles that the majority of artists must undergo in order to conquer themselves, wrest themselves out of their environment•”28 Although certain frank passages existed, he felt that Gide’s discretion and simplicity had managed to render the content inoffensive: Certain critics have maliciously observed that this autobiography will be read chiefly for its brief second part, devoted to the account of the author’s associations with Oscar Wilde. • .In reality, the amateurs of the scabrous will be disappointed, for Gide is never purer than in ”impurity. ”29 Thus it will be seen that the critics of If It Die divided themselves rougjily into two camps: one group, including 26 Milton H. Stansbury, ’ ’ Postwar French Fiction”, Current History, 43:377-82, January, 1936, p. 379. 27 Loc. cit. 28 Norbert Guterman, New Republic, 85:317, January 22, 1936. Guterman and Kronenberger, tended to treat the autobiography as an aesthetic accomplishment and as a source-book of information about Gide; and the others, notably Raymond Weaver, castigated it as "diseased exhibitionism." If ,It Die has not been reprinted, however, and public interest in it has therefore waned in recent years* CHAPTER VII GIDE AND COMMUNISM In the years after his travels In French Equatorial Africa Gide had demonstrated an increasing interest in the plight of the common man and in his own relation to social and economic problems. In early 1953 this moral ferment came to a climax, and the Nouvelle Revue Frangaise published an excerpt from his Peuillets in which he avowed his sympathy for communism, his desire for the collapse of the capitalistic system and his interest in the Russian experiment . • * * Gide did not renounce his personal individualism In this "confession of faith," nor Is there any evidence that he ever became a member of the communist party; the article was simply an expression of sympathy and a recognition of common cause. In France, however, his action caused an immediate and prolonged controversy. Soviet sympathizers were quick to hail Gide as a revolutionary, while anti-communists cried that he had betrayed his country and religion. In America the reaction to this affair was much less violent than it had been in France; in fact the controversy passed almost unnoticed. The "confession of faith" in the Nouvelle Revue .1 Andr£ Gide, "Feuillets," La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, 236:720, May, 1933. 88 Fran^aise was reprinted in translation in The Living Age in March, 1933 along with an anti-GIdean comment from the Nouvelles Lltteraires and a triumphant panegyric from a Russian literary weekly which announced, "AndrS Gide now takes his place among the hest and noblest spirits who have shaken the dust of the bourgeois world from their feet.”^ A little over a year later, when these articles had still excited no comment, a Ration writer noted the apathy over the affair and explained! Gide has never been popular in the Protestant Anglo-Saxon countries for the simple reason that the central principle of his thought, the acceptance of the individual authority in morals and religion, is so commonplace as to be hardly interesting* It is not to foe expected, therefore, that this new development in his career should have anything like the significance in those countries that it has in France, where he has owed his distinction from the beginning to the fact that he is a Protestant in a Catholic country.3 The critic, William Troy, also pointed out that Gide’s "conversion” was on an emotional rather than an intellectual plane, and that Gide had not abandoned his individuality. 2 "Gide Goes Communist,” Living Age, 344:70-74, March, 1933. Included in the series were: Andr^ Gide, "Confession of Faith”; Z. Lvovsky, "Gide and Communism” and Ivan Anissimov, "Gide and Capitalism”. Quotation from page 74. 3 William Troy, "The Conversion of Andr^ Gide,” Nation, 139:444, October 17, 1934. The next development occurred in 1935, when The Living Age published an account of the controversy in France and 4 especially of the opposition of Henri Massis. This article, which on the whole was sympathetic to Gide, was the final word on Gide’s affirmation of communism to appear in the American press. In the case of his later report on his Russian trip, however, it was to be another matter. REVIEWS OF RETURN FROM THE U.S.S.R. In 1936 Gide went to Moscow as the guest of the Soviet Union, was greeted and entertained by Russian officials, spoke publicly in Moscow and later made an extensive survey of Russia by train* Upon his return to France he described his journey in the book titled Retour de l’U.R.S.S. (Gallimard, Paris, 1936) in which he praised the spirit of the Russian people but with typical Gidean probity criticized several aspects of Russian communism, especially the suppression of personal individualism and the adulation accorded to Stalin. This book provoked its due reaction, and now it was the turn of the communists to vilify Gide as a renegade and the anti communists to hail him as the epitome of honesty. The farce was complicated by the advent of the Spanish civil war, and 4 Unsigned, ’ ’Gide Before His Judges,” Living Age, 384J176-77, April, 1935. 90 Gide found himself accused of giving comfort to the fascists who were suppressing freedom in Spain. The new controversy in Prance was noted by several American critics. In February, 1937, M.E. Ravage, a Russian- born author who had been in America since the turn of the century, published an article in the Nation in which he stressed not only Gide's dissatisfaction with the ’ ’depersonalization of the individual” but his praises for much of what he had seen in Russia, especially the spirit of the young people. Ravage paraphrased an anecdote of Gide's journey that had become famous in Prance: as Gide was passing through Gori on his way out of Russia he had stopped to send his appreciations to Stalin by telegraph, but was told he could not use the name ’ ’Stalin” without affixing a laudatory title of a certain stylized wording. Ravage also had a word for fanatic controversialists on both sides: But what amazes the detached witness is the incapacity of both camps to perceive the primary fact that Gide abandons neither proletarian revolution as a way of salvation nor the Russian example. His strictures are addressed not^to socialism, or even to the present leadership in the Kremlin, but purely and simply to certain departures from the original objective— to certain aberrations of Stalinism, if you like— or what appears to him to be such. That the non—conformist Marxists hail the publication with delight is easy to understand. But what the fascists and other foes of the Soviet Union find to crow over is a bit of a poser.5 5 M.E. Ravage, "Vi/hat Good Is Revolution?” Nat ion., 144:210-11, February 20, 1937, p. 210. 91 This moderate view was shared by Malcolm Cowley in the Mew Republic. He chastized the French conservative press for unfair selection of quotations, and pointed out that ”the first third of it is filled with praise for the Soviet /■» Union.1 1 Gide, as usual, had been detached rather than partisan: “Out of it one could extract an essay filled solely with praise for the Soviet Union. Out of it one could extract a slightly longer essay filled solely with condemnation. Cowley noted the telegraph station episode as ”a story that has already become famous.”8 In spite of these conciliatory efforts a Living Age article the same month paraphrased the French attacks on Gide in a manner that left him in a very bad light. The unsigned article reported that foes of Russia had been overjoyed by ”these acidulent books”9 and ended by complaining: But Gidet The Gide who had only lately announced his conversion to Communismi • . .it was Gide who was the betrayer, the hypocrite— who has been the object of the inky vengeance of his Socialist fellow craftsmen. Thus, although this article purported merely to summarize the 6 Malcolm Cowley, ”Retreat from Moscow,” New Republic, 90:172, March 17, 1937. 7 Loc. cit. 8 Loc. cit. 9 Unsigned, Living Age, 352:74-75, March, 1937, p. 74. 10 Loc. cit. 92 development of the controversy in Prance, it unfortunately ignored the actual message of the hook and thus obfuscated Gide’s intent* Soon after the original publication of Retour de 1’U.R.S»S* the American rights were acquired by Alfred A* Knopf, Inc., and on March 31st the New Republic printed excerpts from the Knopf edition, translated by Dorothy Bussy, with the editorial note that the extracts were offered only ’ ’for their journalistic interest and of course without endorsement of his personal judgements.r ’H This condensation in the left-wing New Republic had certain curious omissions; it did not include the telegraph station incident, which the New Republic1s own reviewer only two weeks before had called ”a story that has already become famous” and it ignored completely Gide's criticism of the cult of hero- worship that had grown up around the figure of Stalin. These passages were presented in full, however, when the Knopf book was released on April 19th.-^ The publication of this book provoked more reviews in magazines and newspapers than any other single work by Andr§" Gide. The immediate reaction of the critics was to follow RavageLs lead in steering a middle course between Gide’s detractors and his defenders and in pointing out that Gide’s 11 Andr^ Gide, ’ ’ Return from the U. S.S.R. ” New Republic, 90:230-36, March 31, 1937, p. 230. 12 ______. ____, Return from the U.S.S.R* (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 193*75 * position had been basically consistent. Thus the Russian- born New York Times reviewer Michael Plorinsky titled Gide f,the lover of truth who feels in duty bound to unveil those Soviet conditions about which the more orthodox admirers of Moscow prefer to maintain a discreet silence and found the key to the book in the individualism and love of humanity expressed in Si le Grain ne meurt. Ernest Sutherland Bates in The New York Herald Tribune pointed out the errors due to fanaticism on both sides,and the Time reviewer noted that the volume would Mstrike non-Soviet readers as especially effective because it carries with it no trace of spleen, no suggestion of anathema."-*-® The Catholic Commonweal referred to Gide as a writer who was "honest enough to write frankly of his deceptions"-*-® and The Saturday Review of Literature deplored what it called the "political criticism" of the book 17 in Prance. In addition to this moderate bloc, however, there was a certain amount of partisan criticism, most of which proceeded 13 Michael T. Florinsky, "Andr^- Gide Reports on his Tour of the Soviet Union," New York Times Book Review, May 2, 1937, p. 4. 14 Ernest Sutherland Bates, "That Lively Dictatorship in Soviet Russia," Books (New York Herald Tribune) May 9, 1937, p. 6. 15 Unsigned, Time, 29;85, May 3, 1937. 16 James A. Corbett, "Communism in Action," Commonweal, 26:8-9, April 30, 1937. 17 Dorothy Dudley, Saturday Review of Literature, 16:14, May 29, 1937. 94 from the left-wing press. The economist Maxwell Stewart, writing in The Survey Graphic, found Gide’s concern over the suppression of individuality in Russia naive: But in expressing this concern he very clearly overstates the amount of such standardization which exists. (One wonders what Gide’s reaction to the products of America1s school system would be on this score) Stewart, however, found Return from the U. S. S.R. f , a thoroughly honest, sincere piece of writing”-*-^ and concluded that Gide’s change of opinion had developed from the conflict between his individualism and his feeling for the common man. Some attacks were more spirited, however5 the May Current History printed a translation of an article by the German radical Lion Peuchtwanger which had originally appeared in Pravda,^ and The New Masses incorporated a diatribe against Gide into a review of Peuchtwanger’s Moscow, 1957: My Visit Described for my Friends. This review trated Return from the U.S«S.R. with utter disdain: 18 Maxwell S. Stewart, Survey Graphic, 26:398, July, 1931. 19 Loc. cit. 20 Lion Peuchtwanger, ’ ’ Andrg" Gide’s Communism,” Current History, 46:110-11, May, 1937. You would be rather surprised, I imagine, if you picked up a biography of Cromwell and found four hundred pages devoted to the wart on his nose and only a footnote to say that he led the Puritan revolution* Yet this kind of fantastic reversal of values is the chief characteristic of Andre Gide’s volume on the Soviet Union. . . You will recall how the celebrated French novelist casually remarked that the Soviet Union has abolished the exploitation of man by man. A little thing like that is dismissed in a single sentence. But whole pages and chapters are reserved for more important considerations like the alleged laziness of the Russian people, the alleged suppression of free thought, and the alleged significance of a Georgian telegraph clerk who would not take a message to Stalin unless it included some hifalutin’ salutation. Some anti-Soviet reviews were as antagonistic if less vitriolic. In The Yale Review John Cournos, an author, translator and critic of Russian literature, attacked Gide1 protestations of sympathy for Russian strivings toward Utopia: Is M. Gide so naive as to believe that they will accept his advice gratefully? • . .If I know anything about the Communist mentality, he will never write a book called "Return to the U.S.S.R." for the very simple reason that after the present volume, its rulers will no longer regard as persona grata this modern seer, whose experience was the opposite of that ancient prophet who went to a strange land to curse and was moved to bless.^ 21 Joseph Freeman, The New Masses, 24:23, August 24, 1937. 22 John Cournos, "Balaam in Reverse," Yale Revigw, 26:829, Summer, 1937. 96 Another anti-Soviet interpretation appeared in the April . Current History# The sociologist V.F. Calverton analyzed the controversy between Gide and- Romain Holland at length, and found Rolland's statement that Stalin was not idolized in Russia ridiculous.2^ The publication of Gide*s Afterthoughts on the U.S.S.R.24 the following year produced mixed comment# Ernest Sutherland Bates, who had defended Gide's earlier book, found the sequel f , an angry book, and, one fears, an injudicious book*' and added, "the comments on Russia seem to indicate that M* Gide has lost pC his sense of proportion in the fog of personal controversy." On the other hand a reviewer signed only "E.L." in The Saturday Review of Literature stated, "It does not take Its tone from the bitter calumny to which he has been subjected# Rather, it is suffused with a great sadness over the fanatic blindness of communist apologists."2® In recent years Gide's transitory avowal of communism has become something of a dead-'issue, and most later studies gave it scant attention. A notable exception was the 23 Y.F. Calverton, "AndrS Gide Speaks— Romain Rolland Answers," Current History, 46;90, April, 1937. 24 Andr£ Gide, Afterthoughts on the U.S.S.R. tNew York, Dial Press, 1938)• . 25 Ernest Sutherland Bates, "Back-Talk About Russia," Books (Hew York Herald Tribune) September 25, 1938, p. 16. 26 "E.L." (not in masthead) The Saturday Review of Literature, 18;42, October 15, 1938* Van Meter Ames book Andrg Gide. which devoted an entire chapter to the subject "Christ and Marx."27 This chapter ' dwelt at length on Gide's attachment to the rightist Action Francaise during the first world war and on his refusal in 1931 to intercede with Mussolini for the leftist aviator Lauro de Bosis, who had been captured while dropping anti fascist leaflets over Rome* On the whole Ames seemed to be trying to prove that Gide had right-wing sympathies, although the accusation was never made directly. The broadest inferences occurred in the description of Gide's attitude toward the Spanish civil wars In 1936-7, when Gide's anti-Soviet books were papering the book-shops of Paris, his words were appropriated by Rightist and pro-Nazi forces. It would doubtless be exaggeration to think his opinions had very much to do with the dissolution of the Popular Front, preventing aid to Loyalist Spain, or preparing for Vichy betrayal. His books were more a symptom of the times than a cause* Yet he was aware of his potential service to the Right* . .If heading off Hitler and Mussolini in Spain or elsewhere was what he wanted, It is strange that he did not explicitly disavow the comfort which the fascist cause might find in what he wrote at a moment when the Franco-Soviet accord against Hitler was hanging in the balance.^® This was almost the only post-war mention of Gide's communism Perhaps in normal times the controversy might have been 27 Van Meter Ames, Andr£ Gide (Norfolk, Conn., New Directions Books, 1947). For a complete discussion of this . book see Chapter X* 28 Ibid., p. 165. prolonged indefinitely, but the commencement of the war in 1939 and the occupation of Prance in 1940 diverted the attention of the public elsewhere. Gide’s politics were to be discussed later in connection with Imaginary Interviewsy. but this time the question of communism did not enter. CHAPTER VIII BROAD STUDIES IN THE MIDDLE PERIOD (1935-43) In 1935 all of Gide's major works with the exception of his journals had been published in America; The Counterfeiters had been in print for eight years and had been reissued in an inexpensive reprint, and his autobiography was available for the first time in English. With all this material at hand scholars and other serious critics began to turn to Gide with increasing interest. The period of the late thirties and early forties produced not only some of the most extensive studies of Gide, but some of the best. In this period the earlier inclination to pigeonhole Gide with an ingenious term or catchphrase was less evident; critics now tended to stress his complexity and diversity. In addition there was an increasing tendency to minimize the moral, or immoral, aspects of his work and to judge it exclusively from the aesthetic and philosophical standpoint. One of the first champtions of this new interpretation Was a University of Pennsylvania professor, Milton H. Stansbury. Professor Stansbury accorded Gide the place of honor in his French Novelists of Today, explaining that this eminence was due not only to Gide's seniority but, paradoxically, to his youthful spirit: 100 Never static, aiming not "to be" but to become," he has ever maintained an open mind. He is a man who has been both loved and feared; hailed as a saint and denounced as a demon. His powerful enemies are only exceeded by his passionate admirers. Groping, vacillating, testing, he has challenged the whole field of conventional ethics. But neither his eccentricities of character nor his heresies have prevented him from being acclaimed one of the foremost writers and thinkers of the present day in France.1 We have noted in the previous discussion of If It Die that Stansbury claimed Gide would never have published his memoirs had not Proust paved the way with his earlier treatment of p homosexuality. But Gide's use of this theme was not confined ££ Stansbury believed the aberration explained much in Gide's earlier novels, in fact that "Gide's works of fiction are not less self-revealing than his autobiography.”3 He saw Lafcadio of Les Caves du Vatican as "the Gidian hero par excellence”4 and described The Counterfeiters as "a triumph in mobility.”5 His only censure he reserved for La Porte €troite, which he declared was unconvincing; ”. . .neither 1 Milton H. Stansbury, French Novelists of Today (Philadelphia, The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935) p. 1. 2 Cf> Chapter VI. 3.Stansbury, ££. cit* , p. 6. 4 Ibid., p. 10. 5 Ibid., p. 12. 101 6 Alissa nor Gide makes this renunciation very plausible*" Such sympathetic but critical praise was typical of the period. One of Gide’s most loyal champions after 1935 was Justin O’Brien, who was later to translate the Journals for the Knopf edition. O’Brien’s debut into Gide criticism was a Romanic Review essay, based partly on Gide's yet unpublished journals, developing the similarity between Les Nourritures terrestres and the 1869 Chants de Malador of Isadore Ducasse, 7 Comte de Lautr£amont* This study pointed out the scorn for familial attachments to be found in both Gide and Lautr^amont, but cautiously described the connection only as "a simple rencontre.'1® The same year O'Brien published his book-length study The Kovel of Adolescence in Prance, which contained a chapter on Gide devoted principally to proving that his main interest was in adolescence. Gide’s eternal youthfulness, his rebellion against tradition was apparent in his opposition to the enraclnement theories of BarrSs as well as in his continual travels in Africa and Europe.^ O’Brien was able to cite Thibaudet, Leon Pierre-Quint, John Charpentier, Andre Th^rive and Ramon Fernandez on his side,-*-® and in addition 6 Ibid., p. 7. 7 Justin O'Brien, "A Rapprochement: M. Andr^ Gide and Lautr^amont," Romanic Review, 28:54-58, February, 1937. 8 Ibid., p. 58. 9 ___________, The Novel of Adolescence in France (New York, Columbia University Press, 1937) p. 77. 10 Ibid., p. 84. U n iv e rs ity o f S o u th e rn California 102 plausibly developed the youthful elements in each of Gide’s books in turn. The parallel, however, seemed a little threadbare in the ease of Les Faux-Monnayeurs. Here O’Brien himself seemed to betray a lack of confidence: There seems to be some diversity of opinion as to just which of the subjects jjL.e* philosophical freedom, the art of the novel, or adolescence] is the more important in this novel, but the majority of critics incline to agree that it is primarily a novel of adolescence.11 But, aside from quoting critical authority, O’Brien was able to offer in evidence only the ”air of confusion” which Gide had created ”simply by leaving the novel itself in a chaotic state which parallels the amorphous quality of adolescence.”1^ The most intensive scholarly study of Gide in this period was that contained in the monograph of Flora Emma Ross on Goethe in Modern France. This study devoted fifty-five pages to Gide’s ’ ’fundamental Goethe-spirit”1® and found parallels in the lives, works and philosophies of the two authors. This matehingprocess managed to be convincing partly because of the large mass of data that Ross was able 11 hoc, oit. 12 Ibid., p. 85. 13 Flora Emma Ross, Goethe in Modern France (University of Illinois, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, Vol. .XXI, Mo s. 3-4, 1937,* p. 136. 103 to present and partly "because the kinship had to a certain extent been confirmed by Side’s own testimony*14 The key to the similarity, said Ross, lay in the dualism of the two authors* Like Goethe, Gide had his private Mephistopheles, and like Goethe he was profoundly involved with God. Ross then developed the geographical and religious factors in Gide's life, and the parallels between successive works of the two authors* Thus Les Gahiers d'Andr€ Walter was Gide's Werther, Les Nourritures terrestres his West-ostlioher Divan, La Porte Stroite his Schffne Seele, and Si_ l_e Grain ne meurt his 15 Dichtung und Wahrheit. As for philosophy, both writers were influenced by Spinoza but each ,felaborated certain corollaries in his own manner, and asserted his own personality to the highest degree*"16 In style Gide followed the lead of Goethe in expressing his romantisme domptg~ in the purest of classic prose; . . .there is ample evidence of a deep classic spirit, in the same manner as in the best French tradition, as in Racine, for example, for whom he professes a sincere admiration and the deepest appreciation. Clarity, simplicity, precision, beauty, strength* 14 Cf. La Houvelle Revue FranQaise, March 1, 1932 ("Goethe-Hommage7F number); also Journals, November 4, 1927. 15 Ross, oj). cit., passim. 16 Ibid., p. 152* 104 emotional depth, always in moderation, psychological analysis of the greatest human emotions— these are some of the characteristics that have won for him a supreme place in modern French classicism. L'Ecole des Femmes and La Porte gtroite illustrate artistic perfection, subtlety of analysis, and deep pathos almost to the highest degree.17 It is noteworthy that Ross did not attempt to find parallels where there were none, and that the divergences between the two authors were described as well as the similarities. Les Faux-Monnayeurs bore little resemblance to anything in Goethe except insofar as it was an expression of diabolism, and there was a basic difference in the southern Wanderings of Goethe and Gide; Ross quoted Baldensperger1s remark that Goethe had found the Hellenic spirit where Gide had found only the dissolution of his personality*- * - ® Thus Ross avoided the Infatuation with theory and the eagerness to prove a point that marred the "paralleling" efforts of other critics. The parallel with Goethe was also developed more recently by the Wisconsin literature professor Philo M. Buck in his Directions in Contemporary Literature. This somewhat shorter analysis presented the parallel chronologically. Both Gide and Goethe had gone through three phases.* (1) youthful 17 Ibid., p. 173. 18 Ibid., p. 149. 105 acceptance of Protestant determinism and austerity, (2) rebellion into hedonism, and (3) the period of philosophical self-analysis. Goethe expressed this development in Faust, and Gide throughout his entire work climaxed by Les Faux- 19 Monnayeurs. Like Faust’s his life is one long Odyssey of wandering, of ceaselessly beating his wings toward the horizon of the heavenly city. And the episodes are recounted in the soties, rS'cits, and his one roman, the half- satirical criticisms of contemporary life, the examinations that he subjects his own life to, and the one novel of self-realization by which he professed to round out his career.^ Buck saw Les Faux-Monnayeurs, therefore, as the summation of Gide’s philosophy, and its protagonist (whose name Buck consistently spelled "Eduard”) the spokesman of Gide himself. It was to expose social hypocrisy and to penetrate the essence pi of reality that Gide Wrote his one and only novel. Another academic critic, Herbert J. Muller, was equally willing to judge Gide solely on Les Faux-Monnayeurs; . . .it is safe to generalize his contribution on the basis of his masterpiece, The Counterfeiters, for it is a virtually complete statement of his art and philosophy. While writing this novel, he sought to pour 19 Philo M. Buck, Directions in Contemporary Literature (Hew York, Oxford University Press, 1942) p." 6IT! 20 Loc. cit. 21 Ibid., p. 75* 106 out without reserve everything that was in him, to persuade himself that it was the last hook he would ever write# In a sense it is, in fact, what he calls it: his only novel.22 Muller was impelled to defend Gide's morals; he attacked at length those critics who had dismissed him as "a mere pervert or monster."23 He called Edouard "only incidentally" 24 a homosexual, and plead: ". . .to regard Gide simply as a damned soul, or even as a rotten sophisticate, is to he naively taken in hy his hravado, his pose."25 In short, Muller believed that Gide, like the characters in King; Lear, represented a purely literary essence of good and evil. The final pre-war study of Gide was contained in Wallace Powlie’s Clowns and Angels, published in 1943 but apparently composed of articles written over the course of the previous years. The theme of Powlie’s essay was that one should not attempt to pigeonhole Gide at all, that his books must be considered as works of art independent of their creator: Ytfhich is the central book in this long work? Which man is-Gide in this long list of heroes? These are useless questions in the case of Gide. He himself is the subject of all his 22 Herbert J. Muller, Modern Fiction: A Study of Values (Hew York, Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1937) p .354. 23 Ibid., p. 353. 24 Ibid., p. 356. 25 Ibid., p. 358. 107 books, but all of them together do not compose a picture of himself which is totally true.20 Gide1s greatness lay rather in his ability to seize upon his personal moral issues and elevate them to a universal level; this feat he accomplished through the rigid discipline of classic art* Fowlie stressed the importance of studying all of Gide’s work rather than a single book; in fact Paludes and Les Nourritures terrestres were "among the most important."2* ^ Les Faux-Monnayeurs, far from being Gide’s masterpiece and the key to his philosophy, was an inferior experimental works Les Faux-Monnayeurs appeared in the twenties, that period between two Wars, and it deals with themes that period pursued too exclusively; psychologism, child delinquency, the place of the artist in society.20 It was on this question of the artist in society, however, that Gide had made one of his major contributions; Fowlie saw him, along with James, Proust and Joyce, among those novelists who had been "most scrupulous in the defining of their vocation."29 In regard to influences Fowlie was terse; he noted that the names of Dostoievsky, Nietzsche, and Freud had often been associated with Gide, but concluded that "Gide’s thought would 26 Wallace Fowlie, Clowns and Angels (New York, Sheed and Ward, 1943) p. 28. 27 Ibid., p. 31. 28 Ibid., p. 32» 29 Ibid., p. 42. have been the same if he had never known them.1 1 Fowlie’s study, although anomalous in its conclusions, was in many ways typical of Gide criticism in the immediate pre-war period* Critics had learned the fallacy of typifying Gide as an immoralist, a satanist, or a propagandist for homosexuality; they were concerned with developing his value as an artist who had made significant contributions and who was too complex to be explained through any single facet of his work* With the War and its insistence on partisan art, however, this attitude toward Gide was to change and critics were again to comb his books for evidences of didactic purpose* CHAPTER IX GIDE AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR In the period after the publication of Return from the U«S.S.R« Gide wrote very little, and nothing bearing his name was published in America* In March, 1939, The Yale Review reprinted his essay on Montaigne,which had appeared in p book form in France in 1929 and in America the same year* With the exception of this article, nothing signed by Gide appeared in America from early 1938 to 1943* As we have seen, Gide had by this time reached a position of considerable eminence in America* With the onset of the war, therefore, there was an immediate attempt to establish that this great artist, so distinguished in his own field, was also a loyal patriot according to the orientational standards of that chaotic era* Thus Gide, the avowed individualist and internationalist, Was interpreted for the time as eminently patriotic or even chauvinistic. This movement took two forms; those who were able to find evidence supporting Gide's patriotism presented it with due fanfare, and those who could not find such evidence maintained a discreet silence* There was almost no censure of Gide's 1 Andr£ Gide, "Montaigne," The Yale Review, 28:3572-93, March, 1939. 2 ___________, Montaigne, (New York, Horace Liveright and Company, 1929). 1 1 0 position in the War, but there was also no serious criticism of his work from a literary standpoint. In the first months of the war the immediate tendency was to slide over Gide's part in the struggle as lightly as possible. Thus the Gide expert and translator Justin O’Brien, in a 1940 article on literary aspectsof the War, failed to mention Gide specifically! The young writers were called to the Maginot line. • .and the older writers, having seen active service twenty-five years ago, offered their pens to the country.^ . The following year, after the occupation, a writer for the liberal New Republic noted that Gide was on the C8te d’Azur,"^ and in 1942 a Prench-born critic reported that he was in the South and inferred that he was anti-German.5 Books Abroad in 1943 listed Gide’s publication of the pamphlet D^couvrons Henri Michaux,6 and a 1945 Saturday Review of Literature 7 article on "heroic war authors" ignored Gide completely. At this point at least one critic, Henri Peyre, a French national 3 Justin O’Brien, "French Literature and the War," Saturday Review of Literature, 22:3-4, June 15, 1940, p. 3. 4 Marc Slonim, "French Writing Today," New Republic, 105:866-67, December 22, 1941. 5 Jacques Le Franc, "French Literature Under the Nazi Heel," Antioch Review, 2:137-42, March, 1942, p. 140. 6 G. Lounz, "French Books After the Armistice," Books Abroad, 17:21-26, January, 1943, p. 26. 7 Curt Reiss, "Notes on a Visit to France," Saturday Review of Literature, 28:16-17, April 14, 1945. with long residence in America, felt that Gide was now obsolete! When the long silence of four years of oppression was broken in the summer of 1944, reports soon reached the outside world of the surprising persistence and wealth of French literary production under the invader. . . Older writers, including Gide and ValtTry, were now shelved with courteous deference.° Xf such critics appeared to be somewhat embarrassed by Gide’s far record, an even larger group found no difficulty in portraying him as a resistance writer. In 1942 the music critic and editor Minna Lederman, in an article entitled "France’s Turncoat Artists,” noted that not all French writers were collaborating with the Germans; ”Andr§ Gide on the Riviera conducts a subtle rear-guard action against Paris.”9 A 1943 New York Times writer, equally barren of factual evidence, stated that Gide Was in Algiers ”glad to be free” and added, ”He gave the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War the proceeds from sales of his books and manuscripts.”10 The following year Poetry magazine was able to construe Gide as a "resistance poet,” although no poems such as those 8 Henri Peyre, ”The Resistance and the Literary Revival in France,” Yale Review, 25:1:84-92, Summer, 1945, p. 84. 9 Minna Lederman, "France’s Turncoat Artists,” Sation, 155:169-71, August 29, 1942, p. 170. 10 "Gide is in Algiers,” Hew York Times, May 28, 1943, p. described have ever been published; 1 1 2 The war poems of Gide which, P.O. Weiskopf writes, are exerting an important force in the underground in Prance, should prove, when available, valuable documents for the critics and invaluable guides to the poet*11 It was not made clear how Gide could continue to write such poems in an occupied country while public attention was being called to them In America* The confusion was augmented when a 1944 Saturday Review of Literature article stated, "Claudel, Valery, Maritain, Gide, Bernanos, Rolland can answer present when the roll of honor is called”12 and an article in The Christian Science Monitor Magazine titled ”They Fight For Freedom” contained a large photograph of Gide captioned only with his name, and noted in the text below; "Andr^- Gide, who had lived in the ’free zone’ after the defeat, escaped to Algiers after the Allied landing and has since returned to 13 France*” Thus such notices sought to give the impression that Gide had ”fought for freedom” without offering any real evidence in support of their claims* 11 William Van O’Connor, ”Andr£ Gide and the Poet In Wartime,” Poetry* 63:276-78, February, 1944, p. 278* 12 Henry C. Wolfe, "French Literature Emerges from the Blackout,” Saturday Review of Literature, 27:66, October 14, 1944. 13 Egon Kaskeline, "They Fight For Freedom,” Christian Science Monitor Magazine, December 2, 1944, p* 9. Only one writer during this period‘suggested that acclamation of Gide’s patriotism was not unanimous* Lincoln Kirstein/ a Third Army soldier, wrote from Prance: Prom North Africa AndrS' Gide sends his journal of the arrival of the Americans in Algiers, and adds his name to the roster of the writers of the Resistance. The next week, in a withering J*Accuse, in the identical columns, Louis Aragon practically denies Gide the right to call himself a Frenchman, since he found the occupation the first occasion to learn German and read Goethe in the original.14 Even the one study of this period which made any attempt to evaluate Gide as an artist was connected geographically with the war* Carlos Lynes, in a monograph 15 on ’ ’ Northern Africa in AndrS- Gide's Writings”, stressed theinfluence of Algeria and Tunisia on Gide’s personality and their contributions to the dualism of his character* In addition, Lynes found, Northern Africa had given Gide a love of nature and natural beauty, provided a great deal of local color for such books as L’Immoralls te, and had offered a ”tangible area” to balance the austere influence of Normandy. 14 Kincoln Kirstein, ’ ’ Letter from France,” Nation, 160:103-6, January 27, 1945, p. 103. 15 Carlos Lynes, "Northern Africa in kndv€ Gide’s Writings,” PMLA, 57:851-66, September, 1942. REVIEWS OP IMAGINARY INTERVIEWS 114 During much of the occupation Gide was engaged in writing a column for Figaro, published for the time in Lyons, in the form of dialogues with an imaginary journalist* These dialogues, which concerned such diverse topics as French prosody, popular songs, American novelists and the classic drama, were eventually collected along with La Dglivrance de Tunis in a French edition titled Interviews Imaginaires (New York, Pantheon Books, inc*, 1943)* During 1943 and 1944 various translations from this book appeared In American magazines* The first, "The Deliverance of Tunis," in the October, 1943 Free World, contained a passage that should have been carefully noted by those who had tried to construe Gide as an active partisan in the warJ Ragu tried to convince me that I had an important role to play here in North Africa and that I was the only one able to assume it. I think he Is mistaken both about myself and about the influence my fcoice might have. Even if I were less tired, I should not feel myself in any way qualified for political action, whatever it might be* For one thing, I haven’t a clear enough picture of the dissensions that are now coming to light; for another, I am too uncertain in my own mind to propose any sort of equitable middle course, and I could not speak without betraying or distorting my ideas. I cannot take part nor do I wish to get entangled 115 in the struggle that can be foreseen. I fear that Prance, or at least the liberated part of France, will be divided for a long time by- bitter rivalries. I fail to see what "declaration" I could make which, if it remained sincere* would not be of a nature to offend all parties.16 From the Malcolm Cowley translation of Interviews Imaginaires The Mew Republic in February, 1944, printed the dialogue on i 7 American novelists and in April the Saturday Review of Literature followed with "The Rebirth of French Poetry. The last of this series was "St. Mallarmg the Esoteric" in the summer Partisan Review.1^ The Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. edition of the book appeared in the fall following a preview of Malcolm Cowley’s introduction on ln New Republic. In this introduction Cowley seemed mainly concerned to justify Gide’s war record and to point out instances of double-entendre in the book which might be interpreted as subtle resistance propaganda: 16 AndrS" Gide, "The Deliverance of Tunis," Free World, 6: 325-26, October, 1943, p. 325. 17 , "Imaginary Interviews," Mew Republic, 110:184, February 7, 1944. 18 , "The Rebirth of French Poetry," Saturday Review oFTiterature, 27:5-7, April 29, 1944. 19 ___________, "St. Mallarmt? the Esoteric," Partisan Review, XI-3, Summer, 1944, p. 288. 20 Malcolm Cowley, "Andr£" Gide in Wartime," New Republic, 110:766-68, June, 1944. 116 Many of his remarks have political implications that must have been clear to everybody except the Germans. . .His best thrusts at Vichy and the collaborationists take the form of literary allusions that the censors had no time to track down. . .often he seems to be writing messages in code to French patriots. . . .Simply by talking about literature, in his own subtle fashion, Gide had affirmed his belief in the older French values, including that other and genuine revolution that Vichy was trying to abolish.21 The tone of this introduction is worthy of study because it appears that, after its publication, a great many critics followed Cowley’s line in interpreting the book principally as resistance propaganda. Vincent Sheean, although he objected heartily to alleged freedoms Cowley had taken in the translation, remarked apropos of the double-entendre passages the translator had indicated! What such sly references contribute to the work is the assurance that Gide was steadfast, that he never truckled under to Vichy or to the Germans, and that his heart, at least, was with the Maquis.22 21 Malcolm Cowley, ’ ’Introduction," in Andr€" Gide, Imaginary Interviews, (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1944) pp. vii ff. In addition to the interviews and "The Deliverance of Tunis” this volume contained the dialogue on American novelists* (not included in the French text,) an essay on Chardonne’s Chronique privge de l’An 1940, and a condensation of a list of ten French novels that Gide would have taken to a hypothetical desert island. 22 Vincent Sheean, "The Papers of Andr^ Gide,” Saturday Review of Literature, 27:9, October 21, 1944* Harry Levin, a translator and expert on James Joyce, mentioned the literary aspects of the book briefly but inferred that Gide had in Imaginary Interviews passed the acid test as a resistance artist, ^ and Edmund Wilson, the New Yorker reviewer, noted? These interviews deal mainly with literary matters, but, by various unobtrusive devices, they conceal, as the editor points out, the unmistakeable indications of an intransigeant attitude toward the Germans# • #24 The Hew York Times reviewer merely noted in passing that the papers "had sometimes to exercise ingenuity to escape the eye of the censor"2^ and a later commentator In the same newspaper titled his review "Rear-Guard Action Against the Spirit of Vichy."'5 The Irish-born reviewer Francis Hackett treated the book entirely as Gide's way of "going on record." "Obviously Andr6" Gide was saying it in code. But he said it."^^ 23 Harry Levin, "Reading Between the Lines," New Republic, 111:570, October 30, 1944# 24 Edmund Wilson, uThe New Yorker, 20i78, November 4, 1944# 25 J. Donald Adams, "Speaking of Books," New York Times Book Review, November 12, 1944, p. 2. 26 Cuthbert Wright, "Rear-Guard Action against the Spirit of Vichy," New York Times Book Review, January 21, 1945, p 27 Francis Hackett, "Andr^ Gide as Patriot," in On Judging Books (New York, The John Day Co., 1947} p. 207* This was apparently a reprint of an article written in 1944# 118 Several critics, however, did. not share this view of Imaginary Interviews as underground propaganda or as a ticket to political respectability* A review by Catherine Maher in The New York Times, published before the release of the Knopf edition containing Cowley’s introduction, stated; The whole series of ”interviews” becomes Gide’s affirmation of faith in the mission of the artist, restated in the squalor of defeat to his interlocutor— by design a young man of this war’s generation.2® In addition two reviews of the Knopf edition were manifestly hostile to Cowley’s position. Louise Bogan in The Nation admitted that certain double meanings did exist, but added, ”It would be a mistake to take this book as a piece of writing whose value lies solely in its hidden polemic.’ ’29 In The New York Herald Tribune Kay Boyle noted that Gide had not collaborated as had certain other authors, but she took a short view of Cowley’s detective work: Malcolm Cowley, in his painstakingly conscientious and rather naive introduction to these collected articles, has, apparently, convinced himself that this is a volume of note in that fascinating litterature a clef which was undoubtedly written during the four years of occupation, but which is, perhaps, still not available to us. For some time to come now it will, very likely, be the^ fashion to read far more political inference i nto the 28 Catherine Maher, "A France at War,1 1 New York Times Book Review, Rebruary 13, 1944, p. 7. 29 Louise Bogan, ’ ’The Head and the Heart,” Nation, 159:526, October 28, 1944. 119 writings of authors who lived and were published during the occupation than the writers themselves were ready or willing to convey. In spite of Mr. Cowley's laborious underscorings, it is difficult, indeed, to make this present volume of Gide's serve as a very convincing, or interesting, or important case in point, u The only extensive discussion of Gide's war record in more recent years occurred in Ames's Andr€~ Gide, which we have already examined on the subject of Gide's Russian trip. Ames was disposed to belittle Gide's contributions to the resistance, but on the whole confined himself to half-hearted denunciationi Whether this stratagem should be lauded as a kind of "resistance” or should be contrasted unfavorably with the decision of other writers to publish only in the underground press, is a question that must be settled by a riper time with a fuller knowledge of the specific acts and dedislons involved. • .He was able to distract himself somewhat by reading Goethe. It was admirable that he saw no incongruity in comforting himself with a German writer under the circumstances. But the fact of looking for solace in literature, the fact of looking for private solace exactly as he was in the habit of doing when there was no such public emergency, would not appeal to men who joined the resistance movement • * 5 3 . 30 Kay Boyle, "Through Pour Years of Darkness," Books flew York Herald Tribune) October 29, 1944, p. 5. 31 Van Meter Ames, Andrg Gide (Horfolk, Conn., Hew Directions Books, 1947) p. 171. 1 2 0 Ames might have added that in choosing Goethe Gide had selected the least nationalistic of German authors, one who was an avowed internationalist and who had continually opposed war in all forms, ^ and moreover that Gide at over seventy years of age was hardly fit to ’ ’join the resistance.” But in general it would seem that we must agree with Ames in postponing a judgment on Gide’s war record until "a riper time with a fuller knowledge of the specific acts and decisions involved*” 32 Note Gide1s own remarks on Goethe’s politics in Imaginary Interviews (Knopf edition) p. 99. # * CHAPTER X 1944-1948 The period following the second world war found Gide’s position in America consolidated, and his writings were in great demand among publishers. During the war excerpts from his Nouvelles Nourritures (Gallimard, Paris, 1935) were included in The Best of Modern European Literature under the title ”0n Joy and Progress” and upon the death of Paul Val€ry in 1945 Gide’s obituary for his friend was translated for The Hew York Times.^ Excerpts from his Journals were included in two postwar anthologies, The Partisan Reader* ^ and Doubleday, Doran and Company’s Hobel Prize Treasury;^ and in 1948 Knopf reissued The Immoral!st, long 5 out of print. During this same year a French motion picture based on Gide’s La Symphonie pastorale was shown in America and received favorable comment from cinema reviewers,^ and 1 Klaus Mann and Hermann Kesten, editors, The Best of Modern European Literature (Philadelphia, The Blakiston Co., 1943) pp. 30-35. 2 Andr6" Gide, ’ ’ Paul Val'S'ry i In Memorium, ” The New York Times, August 12, 1945, p. 2. 3 William Phillips and Philip Rahv, editors, The Partisan Reader (New York, The Dial Press, 1946) pp. 354-62. 4 Marshall McClintock, editor, The Nobel Prize Treasury (New York, Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1948)• 5 Andrg" Gide, The Immoralist (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1948). 6 £L£* ^ew Yorker, October 23, 1948, p. 14. 1 2 2 The Partisan Review printed a translation of Gide's Thgsge with the announcement that this work would soon be published in book form by New Directions.7 The interest in Gide had by 1944 become so acute that Time devoted a large article to what it called ’ ’the Gide Pad.” Although Gide had formerly been popular only among a "handful of intellectuals," Time noted that 1944 found him a subject of popular discussions Little magazines translated snatches of anything Gidean they could get hold of. Dozens of University students announced that Gide would be the subject of their Ph.D. theses.9 The article reviewed Gide's life and work at length, noting that during the war he had been "ardently anti-Nazi."9 His new popularity was also demonstrated when The Saturday Review of Literature for September 20, 1947 featured his portrait 10 on the cover. The postwar era was not lacking in more serious studies of Gide, however^ and on the whole, literary evaluations in this period (aside from journalistic articles) were more 7 Andr€ Gide, "Theseus," Partisan Review, November, 1948, p. 1159 ff. 8 Unsigned, "Gide Pad," Time, 43;100, March 6, 1944. 9 Loc. cit. 10 Saturday Review of Literature, 30:1, September 20, 1947, cover. critical and penetrating than earlier studies and were less inclined to take Gide at his face value*- Where earlier criticism had been either overtly hostile or completely eulogistic, later critics tended to combine recognition of his contributions and his stature as an artist with a not unsympathetic discussion of what they considered to be his weaknesses• This approach was manifest in the discussion of Gide in No Voice Is Wholly Lost, by Harry Slochower, a Brooklyn 11 College professor in comparative literature* He developed Gide's "relativism1 *, i.e* his complete abnegation of the principle of absolute values, which in Gide took the form of protest against authority in art, life, morals, and politics, and attachment to the principle of illegitimacy. Slochower showed no hostility toward this moral position but scored Gide for imagining that he had achieved truth through the catholicity of The Counterfeiters; Par from containing "everything," the story is limited to the acts of a select social group. It Is intended as a "natural," true account, yet It strikes one as a somewhat forced and difficult manipulation. It would confine Itself to truth, and introduces the "reality" of the angel. 11 Harry Slochower, No Voice Is Wholly Lost* * * (New York, Creative Age Press, 19457*7" 12 Ibid., p . 61* But if Slochower attacked Gide for being inconsistent, Wallace Fowlie in the British-printed Writers of Today found him consistently a narcissist: Gide has maintained, despite the diversity of his thought, a central role of extraordinary unity. In fact, no other role could represent such oneness of purpose and attitude, because it is that of Narcissus.13 Thus L'Immorallste was "a circumstantial tale of narcissistic love'*, M^nalque and Nathanael in Les Nourritures terrestres were "two roles of Narcissus", La Porte €troite was "the same narcissistic dilemma, but raised to a Christian level'1 and Les Faux-Monnayeurs was "largely solipsistie, or, as we prefer to call it, 'narcissistic.'"1^ The essay was devoted chiefly to this sort of enthusiastic analogy and avoided any discussion of Gide's wider contributions. A Nation article by the vanguard novelist Henry Miller took a moderately critical view of Gide1s morality via a review of Mann's Andr€ Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought. Miller was not unduly offended by Gide1s "satanism", but he 13 Wallace Fowlie, "Andrg- Gide," in Denys Val Baker, edi Writers of Today (London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1946) p. 29. 14 Ibid«» P* 29 f f * 125 wondered what would have happened to Gide’s intense individualism if he had been bom in England, Soviet Russia, 15 or America instead of in Prance. Gide, he thought, had emerged from the Russian controversy with honor only because of his obvious honesty and sincerity, but had not been as totally frank in reporting the facts of his life: Though it was Gide himself who said that the imperative of the artist is ”to communicate frankly what one may have found out about one's inmost conflicts and condition,1 1 there is in his writings, nevertheless, an amazing reserve and discretion. Even the results of the Algerian adventure remain obscure. • .his wife, Emmanuele, remains a veiled figure. Was it pudeur that withheld him? Gould he not even confide in his faithful, portly diary? One would like to know. Another characteristic of this period was that numerous studies of Gide by French and other European writers were published in American magazines. These are outside the scope of this study, but since they bear a certain relation to American opinion of Gide some of the most important might be cited. One of the best studies appeared in The Atlantic Monthly for February, 1947 under the names of Charles J. Rolo, an Egyptian-born Briton, and Jean de SSguey, a Turkish 17 poet who had been personally encouraged by Gide. The 15 Henry Miller, ’ ’The Honest Man,” Nation, 156:422-24, March 20, 1943, p. 422. 16 Ibid., p. 424. 17 Charles J. Rolo and Jean de Seguey, ”Andr£ Gide,” The Atlantic Monthly, 179:115-19, February, 1947. 126 United Nations World for February, 1948 carried an extensive 18 study of Gide by the French journalist Edmond Demaitre, and the spring Books Abroad of the same year printed a long 19 essay by Charles Eubd- on Gide’s philosophy. Finally, an extremely interesting eomparisom of Rabelais’ Panurge, Stendhal’s Julien Sorel, and Gide's Lafeadio, by a Swiss critic, Werner Vortriede, appeared in the autumn University of Kansas PO City Review. M.H. PAYER’S GIDE. FREEDOM AND DOSTOEVSKY In 1946, Mischa Harry Fayer published a Columbia University doctoral dissertation on certain aesthetic and moral aspects of Gide's work under the title Gide, Freedom 21 and Dostoevsky. Not only was this book a painstaking and penetrating study, but its conclusions were to a certain extent authorized by Gide himself, who praised the work highly In a personal letter to Fayer: 18 Edmond Demaitre, ”Andv€ Gide, A Silhouette,” United Nations World, 2:61-62, February, 1948. 19 Charles Eubd- , ’ 'New Aspects of AndrS" Gide,” Books Abroad, 22:2, Spring, 1948. 20 Werner Vortriede, "Rabelais, Stendhal and Gide,” University of Kansas City Review, XV-1, Autumn, 1948, pp. 65-73. 21 Mischa Harry Fayer, Gide, Freedom and Dostoevsky (Burlington, Vermont, printed at The Lane Press, 1946). 127 Je m'^tonne d’avoir pu trouver 1© temps de lire votre longue igtude. • .J'y ai puis'g' grand r^confort a me sentir si bien compris. . . .Gertainment une des meilleures, sinon la meilleure mime, qu’on a:?t jamais Sorites sur moij et je ne me souviens pas que jamais aucune m ’alt satisfait davantage. . . Je ne me suis jamais si bien compris moi-meme qu’en vous lisant.^2 Payer’s well-documented study contained profuse quotations in French, from Gide's work, and included all the earlier critical material that had any bearing on its problem. The object of the study was to establish that ’ ’unremitting search for human freedom is the unifying trait in Gide’s personality and outlook and the key to an unequivocal understanding of prz his message*” This ’ ’search for freedom” Payer Was able to trace in several aspects to Dostoievsky. The influence, however, had not been overt and imitative. In many instances, Payer found, Gide had been sympathetic to Dostoievsky’s characters where their creator had not— i.e. Gide felt that Dostoievsky had not properly understood some of his own characters, or the workings of his mind in creating those characters* • .’ ’in Gide’s opinion, 22 Letter from Andrg Gide quoted in Payer, 0£. cit., p. 1. 23 Payer, o£. cit., p. 5. the Russian master thinks most clearly and relevantly through 24 the medium of his characters." In most cases such characters were rebels: Raskolnikov, Kirillov, Stavrogin, Ivan Karamazov. All these men had in common a desire for self-expression and a scorn for conventional values— exactly the characteristics of such a Gidean hero as Lafcadio. Gide had recognized this aesthetic, if not ethical, kinship immediately, and reported it in his critical work on Dostoievsky. Fayer divided Gide’s philosophical development into three stages: (1) The Satanic Period, before 1914, during which Gide was egotistic and hedonistic; a period of "rationalized and ennobled selfishness which, by his own 25 definition, constitutes the essence of Satanism”; (2) the transitional period, roughly corresponding to the years of the first world war, during which Gide arrived at "a synthesis- of individualism and altruism”^ and, finally, (3) the Seraphic Period, comprising the years after 1918, during which "Gide uses his new concept of freedom to elaborate a coherent P7 philosophy of life." It was in this final period that Gide had written his most significant works, including Les Paux-Monnayeurs. 24 Ibid., p . 6. 25 Ibid., p. 142. By this time tie had reconciled his Bietzschean individualism with the doctrine of personal abnegation he had found in Dostoievsky, and the result was f , harmony within diversity, freedom within unity, and individual perfection within a pp state of general well-being.” In short, Gide in 1925 had arrived at a pluralistic rather than a monistic concept of existence. This synthesis could explain all of Gide’s major interests since 1918* The manifestations included a repudiation of conventional ’ ’ motivation” psychology and a new theory of motive based on ”self-will, bifurcation, gratuitous and spontaneous action and the cohabitation of 29 contradictory emotions”, a new aesthetics which had as its goal the advancement of individuality and the pursuit of 30 scientific detachment, and a new religious orientation in which God became merely the sum of all human aspiration * Z *1 toward God. This last belief, however, did not imply any irreverence or diminution of personal moral force: it was precisely because God exuded from man that man had so great 28 Ibid., p. 43. 29 Ibid., p. 59. 30 Ibid., p. 89. 51’Ibid., p. 98. 130 an obligation not to betray God# Payer's work was probably the most intensive study of Gide up to its time. Although he continually reiterated Gide1s diversity— "Gide has fifty facets and all of them are genuinehe managed to analyze most of these facets plausibly, and to advance sound documentary evidence in support of his claims. It may be hoped that Payer's book begins a new period in Gide criticism, a period in which Gide‘s artistic efforts will be correlated with his published views on aesthetics and morality, and in which a more than superficial attention will be paid to the myriad intellectual e:xperiences that have molded his character. VAN METER AMES' ANDRg GIDE The only other book-length study of Gide by an American critic to appear thus far Is Andr5 Gide, by Van 33 Meter Ames, a University of Cincinnati professor. This book, a unit of New Directions* "Makers of Modern Literature" series, was anomalous in that it studied Gide from a new viewpoint and honored him with a novel labeli "the novelist of science." By -this term Ames apparently did not mean to 32 Ibid., p. 57. 33 Van Meter Ames, Andrg Gide (Norfolk, Conn., New Directions Books, 1947). infer that Gide was in the deterministic tradition of Zola or that he followed the trail of psuedo-scientific adventure blazed by H.G. Wells, but merely that Gide was experimental in his approach to life: It can be said in one word that his secret is science, but it must be understood that science for him amounts to more than for most people* It means a creative and experimental procedure which unites science with religion and' art, as well as with industrial technology. For Gide science at bottom is human life alert to Its problems and prospects, facing them with hope and boundless resourcefulness It can be seen from this quotation that Ames's definition of "science" was hardly the ordinary one, and that the theory bore certain resemblances to Slochower's "relativism." Ames attempted to carry this analogy into each of Gide’s works, sometimes with indifferent results; for example in his discussion of L'Immoral!ste he accounted for Michel's actions by explaining, "People who believe in science and progress, (though it is not clear that Michel does) must be ready to take chances. . ."35 Again, in analysing Corydon he admitted "The real lesson of Gide Is to trust love", certainly not synonymous with science even in Ames's definition. The 34 Ibid., p. 231. 35 Ibid., p • 54. 36 Ibid., p. 77. 132 thesis, however, was embellished by the presentation of evidence that Gide was interested in zoology and had read extensively in Bergson. Ames’s personality intruded at several points in the book: he was obviously antagonistic to the message of the 37 Gospels, he was fond of the theory and vocabulary of modern psychology,3^ he viewed asceticism such as that of Alissa 39 with scant enthusiasm, he opposed Gide’s demands for more tolerance toward homosexuality,^ and he preferred a scientific method of bible scholarship to Gide's transcendental and emotional approach•4- L As we have seen in previous chapters (VIILand IX) he was suspicious of Gide1s position in the Russian affair and of his record in the second world war. In short, it would seem that Ames, leftist in politics, anti- Christian in religion, and scientific in philosophy, was a rather unsympathetic critic to have done such a major study of Andr§” Gide* 37 Ibid.. p. 27. 38 Ibid., p. 38* 39 Ibid., p. 56. 40 Ibid., p. 75. 41 Ibid., p. 80. REVIEWS OP THE JOURNALS 133 Andr€ Gide’s Journal: 1889-1959 had "been published in Prance by Gallimard in 1939, and excerpts from his journals had been presented to the American public from 1946 (or from 4 P 1943, if we include "The Deliverance of Tunis"). In the summer of 1947 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc* reissued The Counterfeiters, and in the fall appeared the first volume of the projected three-volume Knopf edition of The Journals of AndrS" Gide, translated and edited by Justin O'Brien. The second volume, 4 which carried the journal as far as 1927, appeared in May, 1948." The publication of these volumes fas preceded in July by the appearance of O’Brien’s introduction to the Journals in The Saturday Review of Literature* This extremely sympathetic essay stressed Gide's dualistic nature and his fascination with conflicting elements in the individual, and concluded by equating the Journals to Goethe’s Conversations With Eckermann and Montaigne's Essays. "The comparison with those two giants of literature is not fortuitous, since they have been Gide's constant companions from his earlier years. This spirit of encomium was general among reviewers 42 V. supra, pp. 114 and 121. 43 The Journals of Andrg Gide: 1889-1959 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1947— .) 3 vols. 44 Justin O'Brien, "Diary of a Quasi-Libertine," Saturday Review of Literature, 30:9-10, July 5, 1947. 134 of the Journals» Maxwell Geismar wrote that Gide had escaped nthe vanity of a Stendhal or the petulance of a Flaubert’ ' and placed him alone among French moderns in the 45 class of Proust, and in a later review of Volume II predicted that the Journals would be "considered as the only ' A CL books of Gide which completely represent him." Time found the new books an excuse for a long resume of Gide’s life and work, drawn mostly from If It Die and from the Journals themselves* This article reacted favorably toward the Russian episode and toward Gide's war record, and seemed especially concerned to prove him an anti-communists it noted that in 1945 communists in the Algiers Consultative Assembly 47 had asked that he be tried and put to death* Also Included were an Impressionistic personal description of Gide and a schedule of a typical day in his life* This article was noteworthy In containing the first American mention of Gide's 48 illegitimate daughter Catherine. 45 Maxwell Geismar, "Frightful Heart Beat," Saturday Review of Literature, 30s12, September 20, 1947. 46 , "Voice of 1/estern Puritan Conscience," Saturday Review of Literature, May 29, 1948, p. 14* 47 Unsigned, "Immoral Moralist," Time, June 7, 1948, p• 114• 48 Loc. cit. 135 A New Yorker review followed this same pattern on a slightly more critical plane. The article discussed at length the recent revival of the journal as an art form, and called Gide's "surely the most remarkable journal ever 49 divulged during an author's lifetime. . Journal keepers, it was pointed out, have traditionally been either Protestants or Frenchmen, and Gide was both. Thus, like Time, The New Yorker felt that the Journals represented the crowning glory of Gide's works Gide is never so Protestant as when he is counting up every minute of his time, and never so modern as in his belief that work will fill the spiritual vacuum* But if the ideal success has escaped him, there is always his journal* j - n And so, consuming his life, he still has it* u Justin O’Brien's translation, in this review as in others, was felt to be satisfactory in every way. THE NOBEL PRIZE In November, 1947 the Swedish Academy announced that Gide had been awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature* Although the selection of Gide had not been predicted in print, 49 Alfred Kazin,"The Journal Keeper," The New Yorker, June 12, 1948, p. 85* 50 Ibid., p. 86. 136 most critics seemed to accept the news without astonishment. The New York Times reviewed Gide * s work and remarked that he had introduced to Prance f,the personalized novel— the novel 51 of self-adulation"; Publisher1s Weekly listed Gide*s French- 52 language publications in America, and The Saturday Review of Literature complained, "It is strange that this man. • . who was the prophet of individualism and the castigator of K.'T social injustice, had to wait so long for this honor." The sole note of discord was struck by Time: Apparently Gide, who thinks membership in the French Academy is beneath him, thought the Swedish Academy liked him on good grounds. He said the Nobel award made him "very happy." He was also richer by 146,115 Swedish crowns (#40,693.)54 The most obvious attempt to "democratize" Gide in America appeared in Life, which on the occasion of the Nobel award devoted a three-page article including six photographs to the more personal aspects of his life and work. This article referred to Gide as the "shy, septuagenarian darling of the intellectuals of two continents"^ and reported "today most critics agree that Gide has had as much influence on 5L The New York Times, November 14, 1947, p. 1. 52 Publisher1s Weekly, 152:2414, November 22, 1947. 53 H. Smith, "Andr£ Gide," Saturday Review of Literature, 30:20, November 29, 1947. 54 "Good Grounds,"-Time, 50:33, November 24, 1947. 55 Life, 23:51 ff, November 24, 1947, p. 51. modern literature as M s late great compatriot Marcel Proust*1 '^® The article ineluded a description of a Ne w York City production of The Trial, a Franz Kafka novel adapted by Gide for the stage* Thus Gide had arrived at the ultimate in American popular recognitions from the obscurity of the twenties he had progressed until the intimacies of his private life were bared in popular magazines and his art was made available to the masses through the medium of the motion picture* Whatever might happen to his popular position in the future, however, his stature among men of letters had now been firmly .and forcefully established* CONCLUSIONS It is apparent from the foregoing study that American criticism of Gide has concerned itself with two separate aspects of his work, and has thus arrived at two clearly divided sets of conclusions. The first of these aspects is the moral. Not only is Gide a French author and thus likely to be regarded as salacious per se by the great mass of American readers, but he is a moral revolutionary who has frankly discussed homosexuality, the perils of marriage, and the ethical anarchism of the acte gratuit. These ingredients have in many cases blinded critics to the other facets of Gide’s work and restricted them to (1) savage denunciation of Gide’s ’ ’diabolism,” or (2) impassioned defence of his right to self-expression. Thus Louise Morgan Sill in The Saturday Review of Literature attacked The Counterfeiters as a guidebook to perversion,'*' and Herbert J. Muller countered by pointing out that the immoral episodes in the book, while totally reprehensible, were presented 2 with a classical and spiritual delicacy* It was this sort of bickering which delayed recognition of The Counterfeiters as a significant novel for years. 1 X* supra, p. 31* 2 X* supra, p. 30. In the other aspect of Gide’s work, the aesthetic, critics have generally been sympathetic. Only a few reviewers like Ludwig Lewisohn, who found The Counterfeiters barren, . and Louis Kronenberger, who criticized the stark characterization of the rgcits,^ failed to commend his technique and style* This praise extended from Gide's early lyrical prose such as Les Hourritures terrestres through the pared and severe style of ttie rgcits to the revolutionary and experimental Counterfeiters even Gide's non-fiction style (e.g* in Travels in the Congo) was favorably criticized* Certain chronological changes are to be noted in criticism of Gide's works; critics In the early twenties and in the period after 1944 tended to pay more attention to the aesthetic aspects of his work, whereas during the thirties these aspects were found less important than moral considerations* Whether this tendency was due to changes in the spirit of the times, or whether It was caused by the impact of The Immoral!st, If it Die, and The Counterfeiters during the middle period, is difficult to determine. At least it would seem that American critics In 1948 were Inherently less inclined to moralize than were those of 1928* Few differences were to be noted in the several 3 V* supra, p. 32. 4 V* supra, p. 77* media of criticism* In general, magazines, books, and scholarly publications alike followed the tendencies noted above with remarkable consistency. Naturally discussions in scholarly journals and bulletins tended to be on a higher philosophical level than those in popular magazines, but many of the critics in large-circulation magazines and nevi/spapers were able to show evidence of wide backgrounds in literature* For example, Louis Kronenberger of The New York Times often showed familiarity with Gide’s more obscure and untranslated works* However, the pressure of time was apparent In the incompleteness and superficiality of many newspaper reviews* The tendency to classify and categorize which we have noted in Chapters V, VIII, and X were most frequent among scholars and university professors* On the other hand scholarly critics, with a few exceptions, were inclined to be more tolerant of Gide’s moral anomalies and more sympathetic to the real purpose of such books as Corydon. Although criticism of Gide in America diverged in some aspects from French criticism, the differences seemed to be due more to the perspective afforded by geographical detachment than to any inherent differences in critical temperament* The Congo books caused more of a furor in France than they did in America, where the issue had little political or sociological significance; on the other hand 141 Gide*s sexual revelations produced more reaction in America than they did in a Prance where the Puritan approach to literature is not endemic. Many American critics seemed handicapped by inability or failure to read French and by lack of background in contemporary French literature. Too often they attempted to judge The Counterfeiters or The Immoralist by the standards of the American novel. This Was of course not true of such erudite critics as Justin O'Brien, M.H. Fayer, and Flora Emma Ross, but the tendency extended throughout the magazine reviewers and even into the lower brackets of scholarly criticism. Only a handful of critics, for example, showed a familiarity with the important Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs, and almost none were aware of the controversies between Gide and his French antagonists BarrSs, Massis, and B€raud. Whether a critic is competent to judge a translation without having read the original is debatable, but certainly a wider knowledge of French intellectual currents would have helped to avoid mistakes for many reviewers. Although American criticism of Gide is still in an emergent state, it seems likely that at least The Counterfeiters and The Journals of Andrg Gide will gain a wider acceptance during the coming years, and that, if we may extrapolate from past tendencies, Gide’s alleged immoral!sm will merit less attention* These changes will not he due to any action on the part of Gide, whose major work probably ended with the Journals; rather, like other tendencies in the criticism of Gide, they will be an expression of the changing attitudes of the critics and of the Zeitgeist in which they live. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY Since this bibliography is contrived, to be of use to students who do not read French, it departs from the usual form in several respects. The materials are classified according to type and scope, and reviews of each of Gide’s American publications are listed separately. Thus the researcher who wishes to study American reaction to, for example, The Counterfeiters, will find all the reviews of that novel grouped under a single heading. In addition certain discussions of individual books will be found included under Section 3, ‘ ’ General Studies of Gide." Section 2, "Material by Gide in American periodicals," will be found valuable in locating little-known American sources of Gide’s writings. The reviews of individual books are listed chronologically. In cases where critics reviewed the earlier French editions of books, the reviews are placed for convenience along with other material on the same book. Although this study concerns only American criticism of Gide, certain important or interesting materials by foreign critics, either written in English or translated into English, have been included under Section 7. This will facilitate a broader critical evaluation of Gide* 145 1. AMERICAN EDITIONS OF GIDE’S WORKS Gide, AndrS", Strait Is The Gate, translated by Dorothy Bussy* New York; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1924. Reprinted, 1928. 231 pp. _______, Dostoievsky, translated by Arnold Bennett. Knopf, 1925. 224 pp . ___________, The Counterfeiters, translated by Dorothy Bussy. Knopf, 1927. Reprinted, 1948. 365 pp. ____________, The Counterfeiters, translated by Dorothy Bussy with introduction by Raymond Weaver. New York: The Modern Library, 1931. 372 pp. ____________, The Vatican Swindle, translated by Dorothy Bussy. Knopf, 1925. Reprinted with title Lafcadio's Adventures, 1928. 278 pp. ' _____ ______, Travels in the Congo, translated by Dorothy Bussy. Knopf, 1929. Reprinted, 1934. 375 pp. ____________, The School For Wives, translated by Dorothy Bussy. Knopf, 1929. 116 pp. ____________, Montaigne, an essay in two parts, translated by Stephen H. Guest and Trevor E. Blewitt. New York; Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1929. 128 pp. A limited autographed edition. ____________, The Immoralist, translated by Dorothy Bussy. “ Knopf, 1950. Reprinted, 1948. 214 pp. ____________, Two Symphonies, translated by Dorothy Bussy. Knopf, 1931. 246 pp. (Includes Isabelle and The Pastoral Symphony.) ________, Autobiography, translated by Dorothy Bussy. New York, Random House, Inc., 1933. A limited edition of the translation of Si _le Grain ne meurt; autographed. , If It Die, translated by Dorothy Bussy. Knopf, 1935. ____________, Return From The U.S.S.R., translated by Dorothy Bussy. Knopf, 1"9"37T 146 ________, Afterthoughts on the U.S.S.R., translated by Dorothy Bussy. ' New York, Dial Press, Inc., 1938. ________, Recollections of the Assize Court. New York: Hutchinson & Co., 1941. _______Imaginary Interviews, translated by Malcolm Cowley. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1944. 172 pp. ________, The Journals of Andrg Gide, translated with .introduction and note s“T5y~ Jus tin CP Frien. 3 vols., Knopf, 1947— . 2. MATERIAL BY GIDE IN AMERICAN PERIODICALS Gide, Andr§, ’ ’ Classic Mythology,” Living Age, 303:421-23, November 15, 1919. , "Some Memoirs of a Parisian Childhood,” Living Age, 305:117-19, April 10, 1920. . _________, ’ ’The Future of Europe; A French View,” Living 316:561-66, March 10, 1923. ____________, ’ ’The School of Women: A Novel in Three Instalments,” Forum, 81:10, 118, 188; January, February and March, 1929. A complete translation of L’Ecole des Femmes. __________, ’ ’The Return of the Prodigal Son,” Yale Review, ns 18:684, June, 1929. ____________, ’ ’ Classicism,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 5:321-24, July, 1929. ____________, ’ ’Ten French Novels Which I. • .” Virginia Quarterly Review, 5:532-38, October, 1929. ___________, ’ ’ Henry James,” Yale Review, ns 19:641, March, 1930. __________ , ’ ’ Dindiki,” Asia, 30:332, May, 1930. ____________, ’ ’ Memoirs of a Sentimental Schoolboy, ” Yale Review, ns 21:266, December, 1931. 147 , "Gide Goes Communist (Confession of Faith) " Hiving" Age, 344:70-71, March, 1933. , "Return From The U.S.S.R.," Mew Republic, 90:230-36, March 31, 1937. A condensation of the Knopf edition of the hook. , "Montaigne," Yale Review, ns 28:3:572-93, March, 1939. ________, "The Deliverance of Tunis," Free World, 6:323-26, October, 1943. A translation by Albert Lippman. , "Imaginary Interviews," New Republic, 110:184, February 7, 1944. This is the sixteenth interview, titled "The New American Novelists" in the Knopf edition. _____"The Rebirth of French Poetry," Saturday Review of Literature, 27:5-7, April 29, 1944. An excerpt from Imaginaryolnbervi ews (Knopf). ________, "St. MallarmS" The Esoteric," Partisan Review, XI:3, Summer, 1944, p. 288. An excerpt from Imaginary Interviews (Knopf) . ____ , "Paul Valtfry: In Memoriam, " New York Times Book Review, August 12, 1945. p. 2. , "Theseus," Partisan Review, November, 1948, pp. 1159 ff. A translation by John Russel. 3. MATERIAL BY GIDE IN ANTHOLOGIES Gide, AndrS', "On Joy and Progress, " in: Klaus Mann and Hermann Kesten, editors, The Best of Modern European Literature. Philadelphia: The Blakiston Company, 1943. An excerpt, translated, from Les Nouvelles Nourritures (Gallimard, 1935). ________ , excerpt from Journals, in: William Phillips and Philip Rahv, editors, The Partisan Reader: Ten Years of Partisan Review. New York, Dial Press, Inc.7 1S46. ____________, excerpts from Journals, in: Marshall McClintock, editor, The Nobel Prize Treasury. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1948. 612 pp. / 4. GENERAL STUDIES OF GIDE 148 Morris, Lloyd, ’ 'Recent French Fiction," Forum, 70:2028-31, October, 1923* Boyd, E (rnestl A., "The Protestant Barr§s: AndrtS Gide," in: Studies From Ten Literatures* .(New York: Charles Scribner1s Sons, 1925. 331 pp. Vacquier, Tatiana, "Dostoevsky and Gide: A Comparisons," Sewanee Review, 37:478-89, October, 1929. Burke, Kenneth, "Thomas Mann and AndrS" Gide," Bookman, 71:257-60, June, 1930. Rhodes, S.A., "AndrS Gide and his Catholic Critics," Sewanee Review, 38:484-90, October, 1930. Unsigned, "Andr6 Gide," Wilson Bulletin, 5:110, October, 1930. Shipley, Joseph T., The Quest For Literature. New York: Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1931. 540 pp. Smith, S, Stephenson, The Craft of the Critic. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1931. 400 pp. Rhodes, S.A., "Marcel Schwob and AndrS Gide: A Literary Affinity," Romanic Revi'ew, 22:28-37, January, 1931. Loughnan, Edmund Lloyd, "The Thirteenth Apostle: A Study of M. Andr^ Gide," Sewanee Review, 39:293-308, July, 1931. Beach, Joseph Warren, The Twentieth Century Novel. New York: D. Appleton-Gentury Co., 1932. 570 pp. Brewster, Dorothy, and Angus Burrell, Modern Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1934. 442 pp. Cf. Chapter X, "Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point and Andr*? Gide's The Counterfeiters", pp. 248-272. Strauss, Harold, "Andr^ Gide in Search of Himself," New York Times Book Review, July 22, 1934. p. 2. Redman, Ben Ray, "The Dual Souls of Andr€~Gide,” Saturday Review of Literature, 11:31, August 4, 1934. Stansbury, Milton H., French Novelists of Today. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935. 220 pp. 149 Muller, Herbert J., Modern Fiction: A Study of Values. New York: Funk and Vvagnails Co., 1937. 447 pp • O’Brien, Justin, The Novel of Adolescence in France. New York; ColumbiaTUniversity P ress, 1937• 240 pp. Hoss, Flora Ertima, Goethe in Modern France; With Special Reference to Maurice Farr &s. Paul' Bourget. and AndrtT Gide. Urbana: University of Illinois (Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, XXI, Nos. 3-4) 1937. 234 pp. O’Brien, Justin, "A Rapprochement: M. Andrd" Gide and Lautrdamont," Romanic Review, 28:54-8, February, 1937. Rhodes, S.A., T , The Influence of Walt Whitman on Gide," Romanic Review, 41:156, April, 1940. Burke, Kenneth, The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies In Symbolic Action. Louisiana State University Press, 1941. 455 pp. Buck, Philo M., ’ ’The Eternal Adolescent: Andrd Gide,” In: Directions. in Contemporary Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1942. 354 pp. Lynes, Carlos, nNorthern Africa in Andrd Gide's Writings," PMLA, 57:851-66, September, 1942. O’Brien, Justin, "On Rereading the Modern Classics," Nation, 155:579-80, November 28, 1942. Fowlie, Wallace, Clo¥</ns and Angels: Studies in Modern French Literature. ' New York; Sheed and WarcTi 1943• 162 pp• Miller, Henry, "The Honest Man," Nation, 156:422-24, March 20, 1943. Unsigned, "Gide Fad," Time, 43:100-104, March 6, 1944. Slochower, Harry, No Voice Is Wholly Lost. . . New York: Creative Age Press, 1945. 404 pp. Fayer, Mischa Harry, Gide, Freedom and Dostoevsky. Burlington, Vermont, printed at the Lane Press, 1946. 159 pp. The only study by an American critic authorized by Gide himself. 150 Fowlie, Wallace, "Andr£ Gide," in: Denys Val Baker, editor, Writers of Today. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1946. 169 pp. O’Brien, Justin, , ! Diary of a Quasi-Libertine,*1 Saturday Review of Literature, 30*9-10, July 5, 1947. Ames, Van Meter, Andr€ Gide. (Makers of Modern Literature series). Norfolk, Conn., New Directions Books, 1947. 302 pp. 5. REVIEWS OF INDIVIDUAL BOOKS REVIEWS OF STRAIT IS THE GATE Krutch, J [oseph| W foocQ , "The Ecstasy That Refrains," Nation, 118:supp 447, April 16, 1924. Boyd, Ernest, "The Protestant Barr^s," New Republic, 39:247, July 23, 1924. Same material as "The Protestant Barr^s: Andr£ Gide," in: Studies From Ten Literatures, listed supra, Section 4. REVIEWS OF THE VATICAN SWINDLE Bates, Ernest Sutherland, "An Important Author," Saturday Review of Literature, 2:539, February 6, 1926. Unsigned, "The Vatican Swindle," Literary Digest International Book Review, March, 1926. p. 267. Unsigned, "Briefer Mention," Dial, 80:427, May, 1926. REVIEWS OF THE COUNTERFEITERS Sill, Louise Morgan, "A Letter From France," Saturday Review of Literature, 2:953, July 24, 1926. Discusses the French e'di tion of Les Faux-Monnayeurs. Flores, Angel, ’ ’ Andrd- Gide and His ’First Novel’,1 ’ Bookman, 66:167, October, 1927. Kronenberger, Louis, ’ ’ Andre* Gide ’ s New Novel Is in the Great Tradition,” New York Times Book Review, October 2, 1927, p. 2* Fadiman, Clifton P., ’ ’ Pure Novel,” Nation, 125:454, October 26, 1927. “ Unsigned, Living Age, 333:845, November 1, 1927. Purdy, Theodore, Jr., ”A Spreading Plant,” Saturday Review of Literature, 4:301, November 12, 1927. Lewisohn, Ludwig, ’ ’French Literature Today,” Nation, 125: 572, November 23, 1927. Lipsius, P., New Republic, 53:170, December 28, 1927. Thomson, Cardwell, ’ ’Protestant Phobia,” New Masses, 3:24, March, 1928. REVIEWS OF TRAVELS IN THE CONGO Niles, Blair, ”A Frenchman In Africa,” Books (New York Herald Tribune), May 12, 1929, p. 5. Unsigned, ’ ’ Andrd Gide Journeys To The Congo,” New York Times Book Review, May 12, 1929, p. 7. Bellamy, Francis Rufus, Outlook, 152:106, May 15, 1929. McFee, William, ”Andrd Gide in Africa,” New Republic, 59:188, June 3, 1929. White, Walter, "The Road to Africa,” Nation, 128:770-71, June 26, 1929. Chamberlain, John, Bookman, 69:554, July, 1929* Unsigned, Nature, 125:596, April 19, 1930. Bayer, Henry G., ”In the French and the Belgian Congo,” Yale Review, ns 19:853, Summer, 1930. 152 REVIEWS OP SCHOOL FOR WIVES Robbins, Prances Lamont, Outlook, 153i109, Seotember 18, 1929. Chevalley, Abel, Saturday Review of Literature, 6s205, October 5, 1929. Cowley, Malcolm, "Albumblatt," Books (New York Herald Tribune) October 20,. 1929, p. 5. Loving, Pierre, "Meet the Wife," Nation, 130:49, January 8, 1930. REVIEWS OP THE IMMORALIST Unsigned, The Saturday Review of Literature, 6:1147, June 21, 1930. Robbins, Frances Lamont, Outlook, 154:627, April 16, 1930. Kronenberger, Louis, "Man’s Ethical Dilemma in Andr^f Gide's ’The Immoral!st1," New York Times Book Review, April 20, 1930, p. 9. Hazlitt, Henry, "Gide’s First Novel," Nation, 130:491, April 23, 1930. Vincent, Peter, Bookman, 71:327, June, 1930. Unsigned, The New Yorker, 24:21, July 17, 1948. REVIEWS OF TWO SYMPHONIES Flores, Angel, "Two Moods of AndrS- Gide," Books (New York Herald Tribune), May 24, 1931, p. 3. Kronenberger, Louis. "AndrS' Gide1s Contrasting Aspects in Two Novelettes," New York Times Book Review, May 24, 1931, p. 2. Sykes, Gerald, "For Connoisseurs," New Republic, 67:295, July 29, 1931. Stone, Geoffrey, Bookman, 74:196-97, October, 1931. Sykes, Gerald, "The Sins of a Critic,1 1 Nation, 133:260, September 9, 1931. REVIEWS OP IP IT DIE Weaver, Raymond, "No Seed Is Quickened Save It Pall .and Die," Books (New York Herald Tribune), November 3, 1935, p. 5. Kronenberger, Louis, "Andr^- Gide Tells His Life Story," New York Times Book Review, November 10, 1935, p. 8. Boyd, Ernest, "AndrtT Gide’s Autobiography," Saturday Review of Literature, 13:11, November 30, 1935. Unsigned, H‘If It Die' Seized,” Publisher1s Weekly, 128:2229, December 21, 1935* Unsigned, ”1 If It Die1 Released,1 1 Publisher’s Weekly, 129: 608, February 1, 1936. Stansbury, Milton H., "Postwar French Fiction,1 1 Current Hi story, 43:377-82, January, 1936. Guterman, Norbert, New Republic, 85:317, January 22, 1936. REVIEWS OP RETURN PROM THE U.S.S.R., ETC. Troy, William, "The Conversion of Andrt? Gide," Nation, 139:444, October 17, 1934. Unsigned, "Gide Before His Judges," Living Age, 348:176-77, April, 1935. Ravage, M.E., "What Good Is Revolution?" Nation, 144:210-11, February 20, 1937* Unsigned, "Inconstant Gide," Living Age, 352:74-75, March, 1937. Cowley, Malcolm, "Retreat Prom Moscow," New Republic, 90:172, March 17, 1937. Calverton, V.F., ”Andre Gide Speaks--Romain Rolland Answers,” Current History, 46:90, April, 1937. Unsigned, Christian Science Monltor Magazine, April 26, 1937, p. 18. Corbett, James A., “Communism In Action,n Commonweal, 26:8-9, April 30, 1937. Florinsky, Michael T., ”Andr£ Gide Reports on His Tour of the Soviet Union, ” New York Times Book Review, May 2, 1937, p. 4. Unsigned, Time, 29;85, May 3, 1937. Bates, Ernest Sutherland, “That Lively Dictatorship in Soviet Russia,” Books (New York Herald Tribune), May 9, 1937, p. 6. Dudley, Dorothy, Saturday Review of Literature, 16:14, May 29, 1937. Stewart, Maxwell S., Survey Graphic, 26:398, July, 1937. Freeman, Joseph, New Masses, 24:23, August 24, 1937. Cournos, John, “Balaam.in Reverse,” Yale Review, ns 26:829, Summer, 1937. Unsigned, New Yorker, 14:76, September 24, 1938. Bates, Ernest Sutherland, “Back-Talk About Russia,” Books. (New York Herald Tribune), September 25, 1938, p. 16. "E.L.” (not in masthead), Saturday Review of Literature, 18:42, October 15, 1938. REVIEWS OF IMAGINARY INTERVIEWS Maher, Catherine, ”A France at War,” New York Times Book Review, February 13, 1944, p. 7. Cowley, Malcolm, ”Andr€f Gide in Wartime,” New Republic, 110:766-68, June 5, 1944. Same as introduction to Knopf edition of Imaginary Interviews. 155 Sheean, Vincent, "The Papers of Andr€ Gide,1 1 Saturday Review of Literature, 27:9, October 21, 1944.' Bogan, Louise, "Gide; The Head and the Heart," Ration, 159:526, October 28, 1944. Boyle, Kay, "Through Pour Years of Darkness," Books (Hew York Herald Tribune), October 29, 1944, p* 5. Levin, Harry, "Reading Between the Lines," Mew Republic, 111:570, October 30, 1944. Wilson, Edmund, New Yorker, 20:78, November 4, 1944. Adams, J • Donald, Books (New York Herald Tribune), November 12, 1944, p. 2. Wright, Guthbert, "Rear-Guard Action Against the Spirit of Vichy," New York Times Book Review, January 25, 1945, p. 25. Hackett, Francis, "Andrd" Gide as Patriot," in: On Judging Books. New fork: The John Day Company, 1947. 294 pp. REVIEWS OF THE JOURNALS OF ANDRE GIDE O'Brien, Justin, "Diary of a Quasi-Libertine," Saturday Review of Literature, 30:9-10, July 5, 1947. Also listed in Section 4. Geismar, Maxwell, "Frightful Heart Beat," Saturday Review of Literature, 30:12, September 20, 1947. ___________, "The Voice of Western Protestant Conscience," Saturday Review of Literature, 31:14, May 29, 1948. Unsigned, "Immoral Moralist," Time, June 7, 1948, p. 106 ff. • Kazin, Alfred, "The Journal Keeper," The Hew Yorker, 24:16, June 12, 1948. Unsigned, "Journals of Andrd" Gide, Vol. II," Atlantic Monthly, 182:1, July, 1948. 1 5 6 6. MISCELLANEOUS Pound, Ezra, "Island of Paris," Dial, 69:406, October, 1920* A brief mention* Unsigned, '"AndrS- Gide Sells Out," Living Age, 325:645, June 20, 1925. An account of Gide* s 1925 auction of part of his library. Opfer, Ivan, charcoal sketch of Gide, Forum, 80:LXI, December, 1928. Rothenstein, William, pencil or charcoal portrait, Saturday Review of literature, 6:203, October 5, 1929. From Rothenstein* s Twenty Portraits. Hanighen, F.C., "New Literary Movement in France," Bookman, 74:45, September, 1931. Schreiber, Georges, pencil portrait of Gide, Bookman, 76:16d, January, 1933. Howe, G., "Portents of Literature," Living Age, 344:509-18, August, 1933. Loveman, A., "Clearing Housed Contemporary French Fiction," Saturday Review of Literature, ’ '10:619, April 7, 1934* Lists Gide s translated works. Pencil portrait of Gide, New York Times Book Review, September 22, 1935, p. 20. Rosenfeld, Paul, "The Mystery of Persephone," New Republic, 82:213-14, April 3, 1935. A review of Persephone, the musical drama by Gide and Stravinsky presented in Boston on March 15, 1935. O’Brien, Justin, "French Literature and the War," Saturday Review of Literature, 22:3-4, June 15, 1940. Slonim, Marc, "French Writing Today," New Republic, 105: 866-67, December 22, 1941. LeFranc, Jacques, "French Literature Under the Nazi Heel," Antioch Review, 2:137-42, March, 1942. Lederman, Minna, "France^ Turncoat Artists,1 1 Nation, 155:169-71, August 29, 1942. Lounz, G., "French Books After the Armistice," Books Abroad, 17:21-6, January, 1943. Unsigned, "And Gide Is In Algiers," Mew York Times, May 28, 1943, section 8, page 6. 0*Connor, William Van, "Andr^- Gide and the Poet in Wartime," Poetry, 63:276-78, February, 1944. Wolfe, Henry C., "French Literature Emerges from the Blackout Saturday Review of Literature, 27:12-3.3, October 14, 1944 Kaskeline, Egon, "They Fight for Freedom," Christian Science Mdnltor Magazine, December 2, 1944, p. 9. Kirstein, Lincoln, "Letter from France," Nation, 160:103-06, January 27, 1945* Riess, Curt, "Notes on a Visit to France," Saturday Review of Literature, 28:16-17, April 14, 1945* Peyre, Henri, "The Resistance and the Literary Revival in France," Yale Review, ns 25:1:84-92, September, 1945. Rhodes, Peter, "How the French Writers Kept Going," Virginia Quarterly Review, 21:4:535-52, October, 1945. d'Estournelles, Paul, "Hamlet in French," Theatre Arts, 29:665-66, November, 1945. The only American review of Gide1s translation of Hamlet. Unsigned, "French Literature in Current Translation," Publisher1s Weekly, 152:1039-40, September 6, 1947. Portrait of Gide, unsigned, Saturday Review of Literature, 30:1 (cover) September 20, 1947. THE NOBEL PRIZE AWARD Unsigned, "Gide gets Nobel Literature Prize," New York Times, November 14, 1947, section 1, page 2. Unsigned, "Wins 1947 Nobel Prize For Literature," Publisher’s Weekly, 152*2414, November 22, 1947, Unsigned, "Nobel Prize Goes to Gide," Life, 23:51-52, November 24, 1947. Includes numerous photographs. Unsigned, "Good Grounds," Time, 50:33, November 24, 1947. Smith, H., "AndrtT Gide," Saturday Review-of Literature, 30:20, November 29, 1947. Unsigned, "Prizes Are Given to Nobel Winners," New York Times, December 11, 1947, section 10, p. 3. 7. SELECTED MATERIAL BY FOREIGN CRITIGS Gosse, Edmund (Sir), Portraits and Sketches. New . York; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912. West, Rebecca, "A Letter From Abroad," Bookman, 70:433, December, 1929. __________ , "Gide," in: Ending In Earnest. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1931. Identical to item above* Arland, Marcel, "Andrg' Gide--Saint or Demon?" Living Age, 340:173, April, 1931. Lvovsky, Z., "Gide Goes Communist," Living Age, 344*71-72, March, 1933. A communist interpretation. Anissimov, Ivan, "Gide and Capitalism," Living Age, 344: 72-74, March, 1933. A translation from the Soviet Llteraturnaya Gazeta. Pierre-Quint, L^on, Andr€ Gide, His Life and Work, translated by Dorothy Richardson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1934. 300 pp. Mann, Klaus, AndrS Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought. New York: Creative Age Press, Inc., 1943. 331 pp. Feuchtwanger, Lion, "Andre Gide’s Communism," Current Hi story 46:110-11, May, 1937. 159 Lemaitre, Georges, Four French Novelists. New Yorks Oxford University Press, 1938. Rolo, Charles J., and Jean de S^guey, "Andr!f Gide," Atlantic Monthly, 179:115-19, February, 1947. One of the best short studies* Denialtre, Edmond, "Andr^ Gide, A Silhouette,n United Nations World, 2:61-62, February, 1948. EublF, Charles, "New Aspects of Andre Gide," Books Abroad. 22:2, Spring, 1948. '-- Vortriede, Werner, "Rabelais, Stendhal and Gide," University of Kansas City Review, 15:1:65-73, Autumn, 1948. A Swiss critic. 8. REFERENCE MATERIALS Gide, AndrS" Paul Guillaume, Oeuvres Completes d*Andr€ Gide. Edition augmentse de textes in^dits Stablie par L. Martin-Chauffier. Paris: La Nouvelle Revue Franjaise, 1932-39. (Printed Imprimerie Sainte-Catherine, Bruges)• 15 vols. Wright, C.H. Conrad, A History of French Literature. Hew York: Oxford University Press, 1912. 964 pp. Schwarz, Henry S., An Outline History of French Literature. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,~T9'24Y 162 pp. Smith, Maxwell A., A Short History of French Literature. New York: Henry Holt "& CoT, 1924. Nitze, William A., and E. Preston Dargan, A History of French Literature. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1927. ’ ’ TSl pp. Talvart, Hector, and Joseph Place, Bibliographie des Auteurs modernes de Langue Frangaise (1801-1927). Paris: • Editions de la Chronique des Lettres Franchise aux Horizons de France, 1928. Tante, Dilly (Stanley J. Kunitz, pseud.) editor, Living Authors: A Book of Biographies. New York: The H.W, Wilson Co., 1931. 466 pp. Van Ausdall, Alma Veril, Bibliography of French Works In English Translation. Unpublished Has’ £e’ rTs "thesis, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1936 Letter from Random House, Inc. dated July 2, 1948, in possession of writer* Letter from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., dated July 14, 1948, in possession of writer* Letter from Random House, Inc., dated September 30, 1948 in possession of writer. Letter from Hew Directions, Inc., dated October 1, 1948, in possession of writer* * Onhcrsfty of Southern r^utnmtm

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Creator Heiney, Donald William (author)

Core Title The American criticism of Andre Gide

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Comparative Literature

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

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Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c26-152020

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