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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2021
Fundamental characteristics of André Gide are his acute sense of the diversity of man and nature and his fervent desire to apprehend the infinitely varied manifestations of life which seem to him the essence of reality. Nowhere in his writings are these chracteristics more readily perceived than in the works inspired by his contact with the land and peoples of Northern Africa. For Jean Hytier, however, author of an excellent analysis of Gide's art, the sincerity and force of the writer's sympathy with diversity explain a certain lack of provocative, picturesque qualities in his African exoticism; indeed, thinks this critic, “Gide a . . . renouvelé l'exotisme en l‘éliminant, à force d'adhérer de tout son cœur, et sans faire la petite bouche, sans discriminations qui rétablissent l‘étrangeté, avec précisément une volonté, ou plutôt un don, de ne pas rester étranger.”
1 Jean Hytier, André Gide (Alger: E. Charlot, 1938), pp. 39-40.
2 André Gide, Œuvres complètes, édition augmentée de textes inédits établie par L. Martin-Chauffier (Paris: Nouvelle Revue Française, [1932-39]), x, 370-371. Except for the Journal, 1889-1939, all references to Gide's writings in this study are to this splendid edition, in fifteen large volumes, published under the author's own supervision.—The citation from Virgil is from the Tenth Eclogue.
3 Œuvres, iv, 340.
4 For the sake of completeness it may be noted that Paludes (1895), Gide's first book after his “discovery” of Africa, includes a few pages suggesting the significance of that new experience, though in general it deals with the kind of stagnation to which Algeria for Gide was proving such a powerful antidote. Occasional traces of the writer's preoccupation with Africa are apparent in the Lettres à Angele, the literary chronicles he published in L'Hermitage at intervals during the years 1898-1900. In addition, the short “traité” El Hadj (1899) is notable for what Martin-Chauffier calls a sort of “exotisme réfléchi” or “exotisme renversé” (cf. Notices, in Œuvres, iii, viii-ix). Among Gide's compositions between the publication of Amyntas (1906) and his two books on French Equatorial Africa (1927-28), La Marche turque (1914) recalls the earlier travel notes because Gide constantly contrasts the sordid actuality of Asiatic Turkey, where land and people seem equally unattractive to him, with the remembered enchantments of his beloved Algeria and the Arabs. The permanent mark that Africa had left upon Gide may even be discovered in certain of his fictions: thus Lafcadio in Les Caves du Vatican (1914) had made “un merveilleux voyage en Algérie” and the book that Édouard surprises little Georges Molinier stealing from the bouquiniste in Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1926) is an old Joanne guide to Algeria. Moreover, it may be added that Gide's Journal, 1889-1939, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition (Paris: Nouvelle Revue Française, 1939), contains brief notes on several African trips, including one to Morocco in 1923, one to Algeria as recently as 1936, and a mission to French West Africa in 1938.
5 Cf. André Gide, Journal, 1889-1939, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition (Paris: Nouvelle Revue Française, 1939), pp. 952-953.
6 Cf. Charles Tailliart, L'Algérie dans la littérature française (Paris: Champion, 1925).
7 Cf. ibid., p. 325.
8 Cf. ibid., pp. 656-658, and especially Roland Lebel, Histoire de la littérature coloniale en France (Paris: Larose, 1931), pp. 79-80, 93, 129, 134-135.
9 Cf. S. A. Rhodes, “The Influence of Walt Whitman on André Gide,” Romanic Review, xxxi (April 1940), 156-157.
10 Œuvres, x, 348.
11 Ibid., x, 352.
12 Ibid., x, 353.
13 Ibid., x, 353-354.
14 Ibid., x, 355-356.
15 Ibid., x, 369-370.
16 Ibid., x, 373.
17 Ibid., x, 373.
18 Ibid., x, 378-379.
19 Ibid., x, 392.
20 Ibid., x, 393.
21 Ibid., x, 395.
22 Ibid., x, 425.
23 Ibid., x, 431.
24 Œuvres, ii, 100.
25 Ibid., ii, 104.
26 Cf. Tailliart, op. cit., p. 331.
27 Œuvres, ii, 191-192.
28 Ibid., ii, 197-198.
29 Ibid., ii, 198.
30 Œuvres, x, 83.
31 Œuvres, ii, 201.
32 Ibid., ii, 201-202.
33 Ibid., ii, 203-204.
34 Ibid., ii, 216-217.
35 Cf. L. Martin-Chauffier's Notices, in Œuvres, iv, viii.
36 Œuvres, iv, 5.
37 Ibid., iv, 51.
38 Ibid., iv, 156.
39 Ibid., iv, 159-160.
40 Ibid., iv, 169-170.
41 Journal, 1889-1939, p. 324.
42 René Lalou, review of Amyntas, in Nouvelle Revue Française, xxvi (May 1926), p. 616.
43 Œuvres, iii, 11.
44 Ibid., iii, 11.
45 Œuvres, ii, 14.
46 Ibid., ii, 34.
47 Ibid., ii, 35.
48 Ibid., ii, 36.
49 Ibid., ii, 42.
50 Ibid., ii, 44.
51 Œuvres, iii, 279.
52 Ibid., iii, 282.
53 Ibid., iii, 283-284.
54 Œuvres, iv, 241.
55 Ibid., iv, 339.
56 Ibid., iv, 242. Cf. Journal, 1889-1939, p. 145.
57 Cf. Notices, in Œuvres, iv, x.
58 Œuvres, iv, 250.
59 Ibid., iv, 277.
60 Ibid., iv, 302.
61 Ibid., iv, 325.
62 Ibid., iv, 268.
63 Ibid., iv, 317-319.
64 Ibid., iv, 320.
65 Ibid., iv, 330.
66 Ibid., iv, 322.
67 Ibid., iv, 322.
68 Ibid., iv, 330.
69 Ibid., iv, 339.