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58-590: The magazine was founded in 1909 by a group of intellectuals including André Gide , Jacques Copeau , and Jean Schlumberger . It was established 'in opposition to other, more established, cultural institutions, most notably the Académie Française and its associated networks'. In 1911, Gaston Gallimard became editor of the Revue , which led to the founding of the publishing house, Éditions Gallimard . During World War I its publication stopped. The magazine

116-522: A "new" title: La Nouvelle Nouvelle Revue Française ). The Revue was a monthly for many years, but became a quarterly. Andr%C3%A9 Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide ( French: [ɑ̃dʁe pɔl ɡijom ʒid] ; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a prolific French writer and author whose writings spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature . Gide's career ranged from his beginnings in

174-521: A Protestant Christian Socialist , Gide was involved with progressive politics in France, endorsing the université populaire philosophy after the Dreyfus Affair . He promoted the establishment of a School for Advanced Social Studies ( École supérieure de sciences sociales ) (1899). Additionally, he served among the early faculty of the École supérieure de journalisme de Paris . Together with

232-530: A book about the Blanche Monnier case titled La Séquestrée de Poitiers , changing little but the names of the protagonists. Monnier was a young woman who was kept captive by her own mother for more than 25 years. In 1939, Gide became the first living author to be published in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade . He left France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis from December 1942 until it

290-401: A concern for others less fortunate than himself." André Gide's writings spanned many genres – "As a master of prose narrative, occasional dramatist and translator, literary critic, letter writer, essayist, and diarist, André Gide provided twentieth-century French literature with one of its most intriguing examples of the man of letters." But as Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan points out, "It

348-723: A continuous and developing tradition." In Thesee , written in 1946, he showed that an individual may safely leave the Maze only if "he had clung tightly to the thread which linked him with the past". In 1947, he said that although during the human history the civilizations rose up and died, the Christian civilization may be saved from doom "if we accepted the responsibility of the sacred charge laid on us by our traditions and our past." He also said that he remained an individualist and protested against "the submersion of individual responsibility in organized authority, in that escape from freedom which

406-538: A defense of pederasty . At that time, the age of consent for any type of sexual activity was set at 13. Charles Gide Charles Gide ( French: [ʒid] ; 1847–1932) was a French economist and historian of economic thought . He was a professor at the University of Bordeaux , at Montpellier , at Université de Paris and finally at Collège de France . His nephew was the author André Gide . A founder of Revue d'économie politique in 1887, Gide

464-781: A favour to the Fascists, who greeted it with joy. In 1937, in response, Gide published Afterthoughts on the U. S. S. R. ; earlier, Gide read Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed and met Victor Serge who provided him more information about the Soviet Union. In Afterthoughts , Gide is more direct in his criticism of the Soviet society: "Citrine, Trotsky, Mercier, Yvon, Victor Serge, Leguay, Rudolf and many others have helped me with their documentation. Everything they have taught me so far I had only suspected it – has confirmed and reinforced my fears". The main points of Afterthoughts were that

522-430: A homosexual?" Gide "No monsieur, I am not a homosexual, I am a pederast!" —from Vedres' documentary Life Starts Tomorrow (1950) Gide's journal documents his behavior in the company of Oscar Wilde . Wilde took a key out of his pocket and showed me into a tiny apartment of two rooms...The youths followed him, each of them wrapped in a burnous that hid his face. Then the guide left us and Wilde sent me into

580-547: A long time, as she was the daughter of his friends Maria Monnom and Théo van Rysselberghe , a Belgian neo-impressionist painter. This caused the only crisis in the long-standing relationship between Allégret and Gide, and damaged his friendship with van Rysselberghe. This was possibly Gide's only sexual relationship with a woman, and it was brief in the extreme. Catherine was his only descendant by blood. He liked to call Elisabeth "La Dame Blanche" ("The White Lady"). Elisabeth eventually left her husband to move to Paris and manage

638-413: A pederast the man who, as the word indicates, falls in love with young boys. I call a sodomite ("The word is sodomite, sir," said Verlaine to the judge who asked him if it were true that he was a sodomist) the man whose desire is addressed to mature men...The pederasts, of whom I am one (why cannot I say this quite simply, without your immediately claiming to see a brag in my confession?), are much rarer, and

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696-677: A room in La Valeuse Cottage in St Brelade . Whilst there he worked on the second chapter of Strait Is the Gate (French: La Porte étroite ), and van Rysselberghe painted his portrait. In 1908, Gide helped found the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française ( The New French Review ). During World War I, Gide visited England. One of his friends there was artist William Rothenstein . Rothenstein described Gide's visit to his Gloucestershire home in his autobiography: André Gide

754-405: A tutor for her son. Élie Allégret had been best man at Gide's wedding. After Gide fled with Marc to London, his wife Madeleine burned all his correspondence in retaliation– "the best part of myself," Gide later commented. In 1918, Gide met and befriended Dorothy Bussy ; they were friends for more than 30 years, and she translated many of his works into English. Gide also became close friends with

812-517: Is characteristic of our age." Gide contributed to the 1949 anthology The God That Failed . He could not write an essay because of his state of health, so the text was written by Enid Starkie , based on paraphrases of Return from the USSR , Afterthoughts , from a discussion held in Paris at l'Union pour la Verite in 1935, and from his Journal ; the text was approved by Gide. In 1930 Gide published

870-418: Is immediately stifled. And I doubt whether in any other country in the world, even Hitler's Germany, thought to be less free, more bowed down, more fearful (terrorized), more vassalized. Gide does not express his attitude towards Stalin, but he describes the signs of his personality cult: "in each [home], ... the same portrait of Stalin, and nothing else"; "portrait of Stalin... , in the same place no doubt where

928-455: Is the fiction that lies at the summit of Gide's work." "Here, as in the oeuvre as a whole, what strikes one first is the variety. Here, too, we see Gide's curiosity, his youthfulness, at work: a refusal to mine only one seam, to repeat successful formulas...The fiction spans the early years of Symbolism, to the "comic, more inventive, even fantastic" pieces, to the later "serious, heavily autobiographical, first-person narratives"...In France Gide

986-413: Is wanted now is compliance, conformism. What is desired and demanded is approval of all that is done in the U. S. S. R.; and an attempt is being made to obtain an approval that is not mere resignation, but a sincere, an enthusiastic approval. What is most astounding is that this attempt is successful. On the other hand the smallest protest, the least criticism, is liable to the severest penalties, and in fact

1044-402: Is what makes Gide's work 'essentially modern': the 'perpetual renewal of the values by which one lives.'" Gide wrote in his Journal in 1930: "The only drama that really interests me and that I should always be willing to depict anew, is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, to his integration. Most often the obstacle

1102-419: Is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental." As a whole, "The works of André Gide reveal his passionate revolt against the restraints and conventions inherited from 19th-century France. He sought to uncover the authentic self beneath its contradictory masks." In his journal, Gide distinguishes between adult-attracted "sodomites" and boy-loving "pederasts", categorizing himself as the latter. I call

1160-472: The Index of Forbidden Books in 1952. Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan summed up Gide's life as a writer and an intellectual: Gide was, by general consent, one of the dozen most important writers of the 20th century. Moreover, no writer of such stature had led such an interesting life, a life accessibly interesting to us as readers of his autobiographical writings, his journal, his voluminous correspondence and

1218-696: The Alliance d'Hygiène Sociale (Alliance of Social Hygiene, created in 1905), and reported on the social economy exhibition at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. Gide was a champion of the cooperative philosophy, including both agricultural and consumers' cooperatives , during the first third of the 20th century. His book, Consumers' Co-operative Societies , which was published first in French in 1904, and in English in 1921,

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1276-527: The Soviet Union as a guest of the Soviet Union of Writers. He encountered censorship of his speeches and was particularly disillusioned with the state of culture under Soviet Communism. In his work, Retour de L'U.R.S.S. ( Return from the USSR , 1936), he broke with such socialist friends as Jean-Paul Sartre ; the book was addressed to pro-Soviet readers, so the purpose was to expose a reader to doubts instead of presenting harsh criticism. While admitting

1334-503: The symbolist movement, to criticising imperialism between the two World Wars. The author of more than fifty books, he was described in his obituary in The New York Times as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti." Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide expressed the conflict and eventual reconciliation of

1392-436: The 1920s, Gide became an inspiration for such writers as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre . In 1923, he published a book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky . When he defended homosexuality in the public edition of Corydon (1924), he received widespread condemnation. He later considered this his most important work. In 1923, Gide sired a daughter, Catherine , by Elisabeth van Rysselberghe , a much younger woman. He had known her for

1450-472: The Bible; [who enjoyed playing Chopin and other classic works on the piano;] and who engaged in commenting on the moral, political and sexual questions of the day. "Gide's fame rested ultimately, of course, on his literary works. But, unlike many writers, he was no recluse: he had a need of friendship and a genius for sustaining it." But his "capacity for love was not confined to his friends: it spilled over into

1508-644: The French cooperative philosophy that came to be known as the École de Nîmes . The Sociétés Coopératives de Consommation de France had its first national congress in Paris on 27 July 1885. The journal l'Émancipation was initiated at this meeting, and was published first on 15 November 1886 in Nîmes. Gide, de Boyve and Fabre all contributed to the journal. Gide was active in the social Protestant movement, as were other Musée social members such as Jules Siegfried (1837–1922), Édouard Gruner (1849–1933), Henri Monod (1843–1911) and Pierre-Paul Guieysse (1841–1914). As

1566-654: The School for Social Studies, it was established in 1899 as one of three grandes écoles developing from the Collège libre de science sociales initiated in 1895. Gide endorsed the Union pour la Verite (League for Truth) created by philosopher Paul Desjardins in 1892 promoting the cause of the Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus during the political scandal involving him. Gide was interested in reform projects as well, such as

1624-788: The United States in 1952. From July 1926 to May 1927, Gide traveled through the colony of French Equatorial Africa with his lover Marc Allégret . They went successively to Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo), Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic), briefly to Chad and then to Cameroon. He kept a journal, which he published as Travels in the Congo (French: Voyage au Congo ) and Return from Chad (French: Retour du Tchad ). In this work, he criticized

1682-467: The World War II Gide came to a conclusion that "absolute liberty destroys the individual and also society unless it be closely linked to tradition and discipline"; he rejected the revolutionary idea of Communism as breaking with the traditions, and wrote that "if civilization depended solely on those who initiated revolutionary theories, then it would perish, since culture needs for its survival

1740-456: The banishment of truth, one of the distressing symptoms of war. The Germans were not all black, and the Allies all white, for Gide. In 1916, Gide was about 47 years old when he took Marc Allégret , age 15, as a lover. Marc was one of five children of Élie Allégret and his wife. Gide had become friends with the senior Allégret during his own school years when Gide's mother had hired Allégret as

1798-506: The behavior of French business interests in the Congo and inspired reform. In particular, he strongly criticized the Large Concessions regime (French: Régime des Grandes Concessions ). The government had conceded part of the colony to French companies, allowing them to exploit the area's natural resources, in particular rubber. He related that native workers were forced to leave their village for several weeks to collect rubber in

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1856-525: The critic Charles Du Bos . Together they were part of the Foyer Franco-Belge , in which capacity they worked to find employment, food and housing for Franco-Belgian refugees who arrived in Paris following the 1914 German invasion of Belgium . Their friendship later declined, due to Du Bos's perception that Gide had disavowed or betrayed his spiritual faith, in contrast to Du Bos's own return to faith. Du Bos's essay Dialogue avec André Gide

1914-472: The dictatorship of the proletariat became the dictatorship of Stalin, and that the privileged bureaucracy became the new ruling class which profited by the workers' surplus labour , spending the state budget on projects like the Palace of Soviets or to raise its own standards of living, while the working class lived in extreme poverty; Gide cited the official Soviet newspapers to prove his statements. During

1972-485: The economic and social achievements of the USSR compared to the Russian Empire, he noted the decay of culture, the erasure of the individuality of Soviet citizens, and the suppression of any dissent: Then would it not be better to, instead of playing on words, simply to acknowledge that the revolutionary spirit (or even simply the critical spirit) is no longer the correct thing, that it is not wanted any more? What

2030-464: The forest, and compared their exploitation by the companies to slavery. The book contributed to the growing anti-colonialism movements in France and helped thinkers to re-evaluate the effects of colonialism in Africa. During the 1930s, Gide briefly became a Communist, or more precisely, a fellow traveler (he never formally joined any Communist party ), but he, an individualist himself, advocated

2088-478: The further room with little Mohammed and shut himself up in the other with the [other boy]. Every time since then that I have sought after pleasure, it is the memory of that night I have pursued...My joy was unbounded, and I cannot imagine it greater, even if love had been added. How should there have been any question of love? How should I have allowed desire to dispose of my heart? No scruple clouded my pleasure and no remorse followed it. But what name then am I to give

2146-501: The icon used to be. Is it adoration, love, or fear? I do not know; always and everywhere he is present." However, Gide wrote that these problems could be solved by raising the cultural level of Soviet society. When Gide began preparing his manuscript for publication, the Kremlin was immediately informed about it, and soon Gide would be visited by the Soviet author Ilya Ehrenburg , who said that he agreed with Gide, but asked to postpone

2204-542: The idea of Communist individualism. Despite supporting the Soviet Union, he acknowledged the political repression in the USSR. Gide insisted on the release of Victor Serge , a Soviet writer and a member of the Left Opposition who was prosecuted by the Stalinist regime for his views. As a distinguished writer sympathizing with the cause of Communism, he was invited to speak at Maxim Gorky 's funeral and to tour

2262-750: The latter was in exile. In 1895 the two men met in Algiers. Wilde had the impression that he had introduced Gide to homosexuality, but Gide had discovered homosexuality on his own. In 1895, after his mother's death, Gide married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux, but the marriage remained unconsummated. In 1896, he was elected mayor of La Roque-Baignard , a commune in Normandy. Gide spent the summer of 1907 in Jersey , with friends Jacques Copeau and Théo van Rysselberghe and their families. He rented

2320-538: The narrator's." "In 1946, when Pierre Herbert asked Gide which of his books he would choose if only one were to survive," Gide replied, 'I think it would be my Journal.' " Beginning at the age of 18 or 19, Gide kept a journal all of his life and when these were first made available to the public, they ran to 1,300 pages. "Each volume that Gide wrote was intended to challenge itself, what had preceded it, and what could conceivably follow it. This characteristic, according to Daniel Moutote in his Cahiers de André Gide essay,

2378-691: The practical aspects of Gide's life (they had adjoining apartments built on the rue Vavin). She worshipped him, but evidently they no longer had a sexual relationship. In 1924, he published an autobiography If it Die... (French: Si le grain ne meurt ). In the same year, he produced the first French-language editions of Joseph Conrad 's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim . After 1925, Gide began to campaign for more humane conditions for convicted criminals. His legal wife, Madeleine Gide, died in 1938. Later he explored their unconsummated marriage in Et nunc manet in te , his memoir of Madeleine, published in English in

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2436-531: The publication, as the Soviet Union assisted the Republicans in Spain; two days later, Louis Aragon delivered a letter from Jef Last asking to postpone the publication. These measures didn't help, and as the book was published, Gide was condemned in the Soviet press and by the "friends of the USSR": Nordahl Grieg wrote that the reason of writing the book was Gide's impatience, and that with his book he made

2494-477: The rapture I felt as I clasped in my naked arms that perfect little body, so wild, so ardent, so sombrely lascivious? For a long time after Mohammed had left me, I remained in a state of passionate jubilation, and though I had already achieved pleasure five times with him, I renewed my ecstasy again and again, and when I got back to my room in the hotel, I prolonged its echoes until morning. Gide's novel Corydon , which he considered his most important work, includes

2552-511: The replacement of the NRF in Free France (Algeria was the first part of France to be liberated). L'Arche commenced in 1944 (issues 1–6) and finished in 1947 (issues 23–27). Montreal, Tangiers and Algiers in this period became literary francophone centres replacing Paris. After liberation of the whole of France, the NRF was banned for collaborationism , but reopened in 1953 (initially with

2610-511: The second world war the NRF continued operations under the Vichy Regime, thanks to the work of Otto Abetz in negotiating terms with Gaston Gallimard . Then director Jean Paulhan resigned his position as director of the NRF and was replaced by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle . Gide and Général de Gaulle gave explicit blessing to L'Arche , a literary review created by Jean Amrouche and edited by Edmond Charlot . It became effectively

2668-613: The sodomites much more numerous, than I first thought...That such loves can spring up, that such relationships can be formed, it is not enough for me to say that this is natural; I maintain that it is good; each of the two finds exaltation, protection, a challenge in them; and I wonder whether it is for the youth or the elder man that they are more profitable. From an interview with film documentarian Nicole Védrès with Andre Gide: Védrès "May I ask you an indiscreet question? Gide "There are no indiscreet questions, only indiscreet answers." Védrès "Is it true, cher Maître , that you are

2726-555: The testimony of others. It was the life of a man engaging not only in the business of artistic creation, but reflecting on that process in his journal, reading that work to his friends and discussing it with them; a man who knew and corresponded with all the major literary figures of his own country and with many in Germany and England; who found daily nourishment in the Latin, French, English and German classics, and, for much of his life, in

2784-582: The two sides of his personality (characterized by a Protestant austerity and a transgressive sexual adventurousness, respectively). He suggested that a strict and moralistic education had helped set these facets at odds. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints. He worked to achieve intellectual honesty. As a self-professed pederast , he used his writing to explore his struggle to be fully oneself, including owning one's sexual nature, without betraying one's values. His political activity

2842-501: Was a professor of law at University of Paris; he died in 1880, when the boy was eleven years old. His mother was Juliette Maria Rondeaux. His uncle was political economist Charles Gide . His paternal family traced its roots to Italy. The ancestral Guidos had moved to France and other western and northern European countries after converting to Protestantism during the 16th century, and facing persecution in Catholic Italy. Gide

2900-427: Was a proponent of the French historical school of economics . Gide supported economist Léon Walras , as they shared a social philosophy, social activism, and disdain for the "Manchester-style" economics of the journalistes . During the early 1880s Gide worked with Édouard de Boyve, founder in 1884 of the cooperative Abeille Nîmoise , and with the former manufacturer Auguste Marie Fabre . These three men founded

2958-474: Was brought up in isolated conditions in Normandy. He became a prolific writer at an early age, publishing his first novel The Notebooks of André Walter (French: Les Cahiers d'André Walter ), in 1891, at the age of twenty-one. In 1893 and 1894, Gide travelled in Northern Africa. There he came to accept his attraction to boys and youths. Gide befriended Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in Paris, where

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3016-528: Was considered a great stylist in the classical sense, "with his clear, succinct, spare, deliberately, subtly phrased sentences." Gide's surviving letters run into the thousands. But it is the Journal that Sheridan calls "the pre-eminently Gidean mode of expression." "His first novel emerged from Gide's own journal, and many of the first-person narratives read more or less like journals. In Les faux-monnayeurs , Edouard's journal provides an alternative voice to

3074-490: Was in England during the war...He came to stay with us for a time, and brought with him a young nephew, whose English was better than his own. The boy made friends with my son John , while Gide and I discussed everything under the sun. Once again I delighted in the range and subtlety of a Frenchman's intelligence; and I regretted my long severance from France. Nobody understood art more profoundly than Gide, no one's view of life

3132-442: Was more penetrating. ... Gide had a half satanic, half monk-like mien; he put one in mind of portraits of Baudelaire . Withal there was something exotic about him. He would appear in a red waistcoat, black velvet jacket and beige-coloured trousers and, in lieu of collar and tie, a loosely knotted scarf. ... The heart of man held no secrets for Gide. There was little that he didn't understand, or discuss. He suffered, as I did, from

3190-438: Was published in 1929. The essay, informed by Du Bos's Catholic convictions, condemned Gide's homosexuality. Gide and Du Bos's mutual friend Ernst Robert Curtius criticised the book in a letter to Gide, writing that "he [Du Bos] judges you according to Catholic morals suffices to neglect his complete indictment. It can only touch those who think like him and are convinced in advance. He has abdicated his intellectual liberty." In

3248-642: Was re-taken by French, British and American forces in May 1943 and he was able to travel to Algiers where he stayed until the end of World War II. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". He devoted much of his last years to publishing his Journal. Gide died in Paris on 19 February 1951. The Roman Catholic Church placed his works on

3306-415: Was relaunched in 1919. Established writers such as Paul Bourget and Anatole France contributed to the magazine from its early days. The magazine's influence grew until, during the interwar period, it became the leading literary journal, occupying a unique role in French culture. The first published works by André Malraux and Jean-Paul Sartre were in the pages of the Revue . During the occupation in

3364-516: Was shaped by the same ethos. While sympathetic to Communism in the early 1930s, as were many intellectuals, after his 1936 journey to the USSR he supported the anti-Stalinist left ; during the 1940s he shifted towards more traditional values and repudiated Communism as an idea that breaks with the traditions of the Christian civilization. Gide was born in Paris on 22 November 1869 into a middle-class Protestant family. His father Jean Paul Guillaume Gide

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