OUTSPOKEN AUTHOR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26619, 15 November 1947, Page 9

OUTSPOKEN AUTHOR

ANDRE GIDE'S LITERATURE AWARDED NOBEL PRIZE Rec. 8 p.m. STOCKHOLM, Nov. 13. The Swedish Academy has awarded Andre Gide, the French author, the Nobel prize for literature, worth £IO,OOO. Andre Paul Gide. was born in 1869 in Paris into a very strict and religious family. His father,. Professor Paul Gide, of the Faculty of Law, was born in Uzes (Languedoc) and came from an old Huguenot stock of Cevennes peasants. In spite of his irregular schooling, Andre Gide obtained his baccalaurete in 1890. On finishing school, he rented a chalet near Annecy and there shut himself up, with a piano. In his seclusion a struggle ensued between the strict religious outlook which his background and especially his mother (who came from a wealthy Protestant family, tempered by a Catholic strain) had left upon him, and his material desires; this struggle, vastly exaggerated in his imagination and couched in the vague ethereal form of Symbolism, resulted in his first book, “ Cahiers d’ Andre Walter,” printed at his own expense, in 1890. Gide was one of the typical eccentrics of literary France in the ’nineties; a thin, tall, pale young man with a black beard, brown cloak, black felt hat, and his h3nd on his life-long co ipanion—the Holy Bible. In 1909, “ Strait is the Gate ” appeared, Gide's first novel to have any real sale. Gide scored his greatest popular success m 1914 with “The Vatican Swindle.” When the war ended, Andre Gide had reached the age of 50, but he was still young in spirit and participated in the tempestuous literary and artistic “ isms ’’ of post-war Europe. His Lafcadio, the amoralistic hero of “ The Vatican Swindle,” became the symbolic figure pt the new era. As his influence on the younger generation increased, enemies appeared on all sides. In 1924, when the Catholic nationalist, Henri Massis, accused Gide of corrupting public morals, Gide answered with a popular edition of “ Corydon," a defence of homosexuality which he had nervously circulated privately. In that same year, his autobiography, “If It Die,” was printed, but this was withheld from circulation till 1926. ’ The repercussion from these two books was almost annihilating; his enemies ostracised him, claiming that Gide had overstepped the bounds of decency. Left alone, Gide replied to the shocked literary world by selling the books of most of his “friends, disposing of his estates, and taking a boat bound for French Equatorial Africa. In his absence his masterpiece, “The Counterfeiters” (1926) was published. Gide, after his return to France, gradually turned to- Marxism and in 1932 openly accepted the programme of Communism. A ferocious individualist like Gide, however, could not assimilate Marxism entirely; on his visit to the Soviet Union in 1935-36, he became disillusioned with the collectionist society, too. Andre Gide’s tortuous career mirrors, perhaps melodramatically, the crisis of modern man. He impersonates the inquisitive spirit of our age, its zig-zags, its counterpoints of bliss and anguish, its maelstrom, and also its deepest concern for sincerity, even if it leads to outrageous confession. “ The Vatican Swindle,” ‘ The Counterfeiters,” and his revealing autobiography, have assured him of a high place in contemporary world literature —but clever and profound as are his translations of his inner struggles, they do not excel his contributions as friend, adviser, and influence —for more than a man Gide has been, above all, a force.