The Immoralist - Gide E-Book

André Gide

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 223

Beschreibung

André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869-1951), known as André Gide, was a renowned French writer. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 and founder of the prestigious publishing house Gallimard, André Gide is the author of memorable books such as "The Immoralist," "If It Die...," "Strait is the Gate," and "The Counterfeiters," among others. His work contains many autobiographical elements and explores moral, religious, and sexual conflicts. "The Immoralist" is a parable about the dialectic between nature and morality, as well as a reflection on the unfolding of individual freedom. A thought-provoking work that still retains its power to challenge complacent attitudes and unfounded cultural assumptions, it narrates the attempt of a young Parisian to overcome social and sexual conformity. "The Immoralist" is included in the famous critical selection: "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die."

Leseprobe

André Gide

THE IMMORALIST

Original Title:

“L’Immoraliste”

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

THE IMMORALIST

FIRST PART

SECOND PART

THIRD PART

INTRODUCTION

André Gide

1869 - 1951

André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869-1951), known as André Gide, was a celebrated French writer and a towering figure in 20th-century literature. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947, he was also a co-founder of the prestigious publishing house Gallimard, cementing his influence on French cultural and intellectual life. Gide's literary works are deeply autobiographical, addressing complex themes of moral, religious, and sexual conflicts with unprecedented frankness.

Born in Paris, Gide faced significant personal challenges from a young age. Orphaned by his father at eleven, he was raised by his authoritarian and puritanical mother. This strict upbringing imposed rigid moral constraints that Gide later vehemently rejected, seeking instead to explore and express his true self. This rebellion against conventional norms is a central theme in his oeuvre.

Gide's profound impact on literature is evident in his numerous acclaimed works. "If It Die" is a candid autobiography that provides insights into his formative years. "Corydon," a controversial dialogue, defends homosexuality and challenges societal norms. "The Immoralist" delves into the complexities of self-discovery and moral ambiguity. "Strait is the Gate" explores themes of love and renunciation, while "The Counterfeiters," his most ambitious novel, experiments with narrative structure and explores themes of authenticity and deception.

Throughout his career, Gide's works provoked both admiration and controversy, reflecting his commitment to intellectual honesty and artistic freedom. His legacy continues to influence contemporary literature and thought, making him a pivotal figure in the literary canon.

André Gide passed away on February 19, 1951, in Paris. His death marked the end of an era, but his literary contributions endure, continuing to inspire and challenge readers and writers alike. He was buried in the small village of Cuverville in Normandy, where he had spent much of his later life, reflecting his deep connection to the French countryside.

About the work

"The Immoralist" is a parable about the dialectic between nature and morality, as well as a reflection on the unfolding of individual freedom. Gide conceived this work as an appendix to another story, "Strait is the Gate," which he wrote simultaneously.

A thought-provoking work that still retains its power to challenge complacent attitudes and unfounded cultural presumptions, "The Immoralist" narrates the attempt of a young Parisian to overcome social and sexual conformity.

The character Michel, born and raised in a puritanical family, marries Marceline to fulfill his dying father's wishes. During a journey through North Africa, he falls seriously ill, and during his convalescence, he discovers sensuality and the pleasures of life. This revelation provokes a radical change in his way of living, leading him to liberation from moral constraints.

Michel's attempt to access a deeper truth by rejecting culture, decency, and morality results only in confusion and loss. In his pursuit of authenticity, he ends up harming others. Nonetheless, the novel remains both a condemnation of the arbitrary impositions of a hypocritical society and a critique of Michel's misguided behavior.

"The Immoralist" continues to resonate as a profound exploration of the conflicts between societal expectations and personal freedom, challenging readers to reflect on their own values and the consequences of defying norms.

THE IMMORTALIST

PREFACE

I present this book for what it is worth — a fruit filled with bitter ashes, like those colocinths of the desert that grow in a parched and burning soil. All they can offer to your thirst is a still more cruel fierceness — yet lying on the golden sand they are not without a beauty of their own.

If I had held my hero up as an example, it must be admitted that my success would have been small. The few readers who were disposed to interest themselves in Michel's adventure did so only to reprobate him with all the superiority of their kind hearts. It was not in vain that I had adorned Marceline with so many virtues; they could not forgive Michel for not preferring her to himself.

If I had intended this book to be an indictment of Michel, I should have succeeded as little, for no one was grateful to me for the indignation he felt against my hero; it was as though he felt this indignation in spite of me; it overflowed from Michel on to myself; I seemed indeed within an ace of being confounded with him.

But I intended to make this book as little an indictment as an apology and took care to pass no judgment. The public nowadays will not forgive an author who, after relating an action, does not declare himself either for or against it; more than this, during the very course of the drama they want him to take sides, pronounce in favor either of Alceste or Philinte, of Hamlet or Ophelia, of Faust or Margaret, of Adam or Jehovah. I do not indeed claim that neutrality (I was going to say 'indecision') is the certain mark of a great mind; but I believe that many great minds have been very loath to... conclude — and that to state a problem clearly is not to suppose it solved in advance.

It is with reluctance that I use the word 'problem' here. To tell the truth, in art there are no problems — that are not sufficiently solved by the work of art itself.

If by 'problem' one means 'drama,' shall I say that the one recounted in this book, though the scene of it is laid in my hero's soul, is nevertheless too general to remain circumscribed in his individual adventure. I do not pretend to have invented this 'problem'; it existed before my book; whether Michel triumph or succumb, the 'problem' will continue to exist and the author has avoided taking either triumph or defeat for granted.

If certain distinguished minds have refused to see in this drama anything but the exposition of a special case and in its hero anything but a sufferer from disease, if they have failed to recognize that ideas of very urgent import and very general interest may nevertheless be found in it — the fault lies neither in those ideas nor in that drama but in the author — in his lack of skill, I should say — though he has put into this book all his passion and all his care, though he has watered it with many tears. But the real interest of a work and the interest taken in it by an ephemeral public are two very different things. A man may, I think, without much conceit, take the risk of not arousing immediate interest in interesting things — he may even prefer this to exciting a momentary delight in a public greedy only for sweets and trifles.

For the rest, I have not tried to prove anything but only to paint my picture well and to set it in a good light.

THE IMMORALIST

(TO THE MINISTER , MR D.R)

Sidi B. M, 30th July I89-

Yes, my dear brother, of course, as you supposed, Michel has confided in us. Here is bis story. You asked me to let you have it and I promised to; but now at the last moment I hesitate to send it and the oftener I re-read it the more dreadful it seems. Oh, what, I wonder, will you think of our friend? What, for that matter, do I think of him myself?...

Are we simply to reprobate him and deny the possibility of turning to good account faculties so manifestly cruel? But I fear there are not a few among us today who would be bold enough to recognize their own features in this tale. Will it be possible to invent some way of employing all this intelligence and strength? Or must they be altogether outlawed?

In what way can Michel serve society? I admit I cannot guess.... . He must have some occupation. Will the position and the power you have so deservedly attained enable you to find one? Make haste. Michel is still capable of devotion. Yes, he is so still. But it will soon be only to himself.

I am writing to you under a sky of flawless blue; during the twelve days that Denis, Daniel and myself have been here, there has not been a single cloud nor the slightest diminution of sunshine. Michel says the weather has been of crystalline clearness for the last two months.

I am neither sad nor cheerful; the air here fills one with a kind of vague excitement and induces a state as far removed from cheerfulness as it is from sorrow; perhaps it is happiness.

We are staying with Michel; we are anxious not to leave him; you will understand why when you have read these pages; so we shall await your reply here, in his house; lose no time about it.

You know what ties of friendship bound Michel, Denis, Daniel and myself together — a friendship which was strong even in our school days but which every year grew stronger. A kind of pact was concluded between us four — at the first summons of any one of us the other three were to hasten. So when I received that mysterious signal of alarm from Michel, I immediately informed Daniel and Denis and we all three let everything go and set out.

It is three years since we last saw Michel. He bad married and gone traveling with his wife and at the time of his last stay in Paris, Denis was in Greece, Daniel in Russia and I, as you know, looking after our sick father. We were not, however, without news, though the account given of him by Silas and Will, who saw him at that time, was, to say the least, surprising. He was no longer the learned Puritan of old days, whose behavior was made awkward by his very earnestness, whose clear and simple gate had so often checked the looseness of our talk. He was... but why forestall what his story will tell you?

Here is his story then, just as Denis, Daniel and I heard 'it. Michel told it us on his terrace, as we were lying beside him in the dark and the starlight. At the end of his tale we saw day rising over the plain. Michel's house looks down on it and on the village which is not far off. In the hot weather and with all its crops reaped, this plain looks like the desert.

Michel's house, though poor and quaint-looking, is charming. In winter it would be cold, for there is no glass in the windows — or rather, there are no windows but huge holes in the walls. It is so fine that we sleep out of doors on mats.

Let me add that we had a good journey out. We arrived here one evening, gasping with heat, intoxicated with novelty, after having barely stopped on the way, first at Algiers and then at Constantine. At Constantine we took a second train to Sidi B. M.., where a little cart was waiting for us. The road comes to an end some way from the village, which is perched on the top of a rock, like certain little hill-towns in Umbria. We climbed up on foot; two mules took our luggage. Approached by the road, Michel's house is the first in the village. It is surrounded by the low walls of a garden — or rather, an enclosure, in which there grow three stunted pomegranate-trees and a superb oleander. A little Kabyle boy ran away at sight of us and scrambled over the wall without more ado.

Michel showed no signs of pleasure as he welcomed us; he was very simple and seemed afraid of any demonstrations of tenderness; but on the threshold, he stopped and kissed each one of us gravely.

Until night came, I’ve barely exchanged a dozen words. An almost excessively frugal dinner was laid for us in a drawing-room where the decorations were so sumptuous that we were astonished by them, though they were afterwards explained by Michel’s story. Then he served us coffee, which he made a point of preparing himself; and afterwards we went up on to the terrace, where the view stretched away into infinity and all three of us, like Job's comforters, sat down and waited, watching and admiring the day's abrupt decline over the incandescent plain.

When it was night Michel said:

FIRST PART

I

My dear friend, I knew you were faithful. You have answered my summons as quickly as I should have answered yours. And yet three years have gone by without your seeing me. May your friendship, which has been so proof against absence, be equally proof against the story I am going to tell you. For it was solely to see you, solely that you might listen to me, that I called upon you so suddenly and made you take this journey to my distant abode. The only help I wish for is this — to talk to you. For I have reached a point in my life beyond which I cannot go. Not from weariness though. But I can no longer understand things. I want... I want to talk, I tell you. To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom. Let me speak of myself; I am going to tell you my life simply, without modesty and without pride, more simply than if I were talking to myself. Listen:

The last time we saw each other, I remember, was in the neighborhood of Angers, in the little country church in which I was married. There were very few people at my wedding and the presence of real friends turned this commonplace function into something touching. I felt that others were moved and that in itself was enough to move me. After we left the church, you joined us at my bride's house for a short meal, at which there was neither noise nor laughter; then she and I drove away in a hired carriage, according to the custom by which we always have to associate the idea of a wedding with the vision of a railway station.

I knew my wife very little and thought, without being much distressed by it, that she knew me no better. I had married her without being in love, largely in order to please my father, who, as he lay dying, felt anxious at leaving me alone. I loved my father dearly; engrossed by his last illness, I had thought of nothing else all through that melancholy time but how to make his end easier; and so I pledged my life before I knew what the possibilities of life were. Our betrothal took place at my dying father's bedside, without laughter but not without a certain grave joy, so great was the peace it brought him. If, as I say, I did not love my betrothed, at any rate I had never loved any other woman. This seemed to me sufficient to secure our happiness; and I thought I was giving her the whole of myself, without having any knowledge of what that self was. She was an orphan as I was and lived with her two brothers. Her name was Marceline; she was barely twenty; I was four years older.

I have said I did not love her — at any rate, I felt for her nothing of what is generally known as love but I loved her, if that word may cover a feeling of tenderness, a sort of pity and a considerable measure of esteem. She was a Catholic and I a Protestant... but, thought I, so little of a Protestant! The priest accepted me; I accepted the priest; it all went off without a hitch.

My father was what is called an 'atheist' — at least so I suppose, for a kind of invincible shyness, which I imagined he shared, had always made it impossible for me to talk to him about his beliefs. The grave Huguenot teaching which my mother had given me had slowly faded from my mind together with the image of her beauty; you know I was young when I lost her. I did not then suspect how great a hold the early moral lessons of our childhood take of one, nor what marks they leave upon the mind. That kind of austerity for which a taste had been left in me by my mother's way of bringing me up, I now applied wholly to my studies. I was fifteen when I lost her; my father took me in hand, looked after me and himself instructed me with passionate eagerness. I already knew Latin and Greek well; under him I quickly learnt Hebrew, Sanskrit and finally Persian and Arabic. When I was about twenty, I had been so intensively forced that he actually made me his collaborator. It amused him to claim me as his equal and he wanted to show me he was right. The Essay on Phrygian Cults which appeared under his name was in reality my work; he scarcely read it over; nothing he had written ever brought him so much praise. He was delighted. As for me I was a little abashed by the success of this deception. But my reputation was made. The most learned scholars treated me as their colleague. I smile now at all the honors that were paid me.... And so I reached the age of twenty-five, having barely cast a glance at anything but books and ruins and knowing nothing of life; I spent all my fervor in my work. I loved a few friends (you were among them) but it was not so much my friends I loved as friendship — it was a craving for high-mindedness that made my devotion to them so great; I cherished in myself each and all of my fine feelings. For the rest, I knew my friends as little as I knew myself. The idea that I might have lived a different existence or that anyone could possibly live differently never for a moment crossed my mind.

My father and I were satisfied with simple things; we both of us spent so little that I reached the age of twenty-five without knowing that we were rich. I imagined, without giving it much thought, that we had just enough to live on. And the habits of economy I had acquired with my father were so great that I felt almost uncomfortable when I learned that we had a great deal more. I was so careless about such matters that even after my father's death, though I was his sole heir, I failed to realize the extent of my fortune; I did so only when our marriage settlements were being drawn up and at the same time, I learned that Marceline brought me next to nothing.

And another thing I was ignorant of — even more important perhaps — was that I had very delicate health. How should I have known this, when I had never put it to the test? I had colds from time to time and neglected them. The excessive tranquility of the life I led weakened, while at the same time it protected, me. Marceline, on the contrary, seemed strong — that she was stronger than I we were very soon to learn.

On our wedding-day, we went straight to Paris and slept in my apartment, where two rooms had been got ready for us. We stayed in Paris only just long enough to do some necessary shopping, then took the train to Marseilles and embarked at once for Tunis.

So many urgent things to be done, so many bewildering events following each other in too rapid succession, the unavoidable agitation of my wedding coming so soon after the more genuine emotion caused by my father's death — all of this had left me exhausted. It was only on the boat that I was able to realize how tired I was. Up till then, every occupation, while increasing my fatigue, had distracted me from feeling it. The enforced leisure on board ship at last enabled me to reflect. For the first time, so it seemed to me.

It was for the first time too that I had consented to forgo my work for any length of time. Up till then I had only allowed myself short holidays. A journey to Spain with my father shortly after my mother's death had, it is true, lasted over a month; another to Germany, six weeks; there were others too but they had all been student's journeys; my father was never to be distracted from his own particular researches; when I was not accompanying him, I used to read. And yet, we had hardly left Marseilles, when memories came back to me of Granada and Seville, of a purer sky, of franker shadows, of dances, of laughter, of songs. That is what we are going to find, I thought. I went up on to the deck and watched Marseilles disappearing in the distance.

Then, suddenly, it occurred to me that I was leaving Marceline a little too much to herself.

She was sitting in the bow; I drew near and for the first time really looked at her.

Marceline was very pretty. You saw her, so you know. I reproached myself for not having noticed it sooner. I had known her too long to see her with any freshness of vision; our families had been friends for ages; I had seen her grow up; I was accustomed to her grace... For the first time now I was struck with astonishment, it seemed to me so great.

She wore a big veil floating from a simple black straw hat; she was fair but did not look delicate. Her bodice and skirt were made of the same material — a Scotch plaid which we had chosen together. I had not wanted the gloom of my mourning to overshadow her.

She felt I was looking at her and turned toward me...until then I had paid her only the necessary official attentions; I replaced love as best I could by a kind of frigid gallantry, which I saw well enough she found rather tiresome; perhaps at that moment Marceline felt I was looking at her for the first time in a different way. She in her turn looked fixedly at me; then, very tenderly, smiled. I sat down beside her without speaking. I had lived up to then for myself alone or at any rate in my own fashion; I had married without imagining I should find in my wife anything different from a comrade, without thinking at all definitely that my life might be changed by our union. And now at last I realized that the monologue had come to an end.

We were alone on deck. She held up her face and I gently pressed her to me; she raised her eyes; I kissed her on the eyelids and suddenly felt as I kissed her an unfamiliar kind of pity, which took hold of me so violently that I could not restrain my tears.

"What is it, dear?" said Marceline.

We began to talk. What she said was so charming that it delighted me. I had picked up in one way or another a few ideas on women's silliness. That evening, in her presence, it was myself I thought awkward and stupid.

So the being to whom I had attached my life had a real and individual life of her own! The importance of this thought woke me up several times during the night; several times I sat up in my berth in order to look at Marceline, my wife, asleep in the berth below.

The next morning the sky was splendid; the sea almost perfectly calm. A few leisurely talks lessened our shyness still more. Marriage was really beginning. On the morning of the last day of October we landed in Tunis.

I intended to stay there only a few days. I will confess my folly; in so new a country nothing attracted me except Carthage and a few Roman ruins — Timgad, about which Octave had spoken to me, the mosaics of Sousse and above all the amphitheater of El Djem, which I decided we must visit without delay. We had first to get to Sousse and from Sousse take the mail diligence; between there and here I was determined to think nothing worth my attention.

And yet Tunis surprised me greatly. At the touch of new sensations, certain portions of me awoke — certain sleeping faculties, which, from not having as yet been used, had kept all their mysterious freshness. But I was more astonished, more bewildered than amused and what pleased me most was Marceline's delight.

My fatigue in the meantime was growing greater every day; but I should have thought it shameful to give in to it. I had a bad cough and a curious feeling of discomfort in the upper part of my chest. We are going towards the South, I thought; the heat will put me to rights again.

The Sfax diligence leaves Sousse at eight o'clock in the evening and passes through El Djem at one o'clock in the morning. We had engaged couple places; I expected to find an uncomfortable shandrydan; the seats, however, were fairly commodious. But oh, the cold!... We were both lightly clad and, with a kind of childish confidence in the warmth of southern climes, had taken no wrap with us but a single shawl. As soon as we were out of Sousse and the shelter of its hills, the wind began to blow. It leaped over the plain in great bounds, howling, whistling, coming in by every chink of the door and windows — impossible to protect oneself from it! We were both chilled to the bone when we arrived and I was exhausted as well by the jolting of the carriage and by my horrible cough, which shook me even worse. What a night! When we got to El Djem, there was no inn, nothing but a frightful native Bordj. What was to be done? The diligence was going on; the village was asleep; the lugubrious mass of the ruins lowered dimly through the dark immensity of the night; dogs were howling. We went into a room whose walls and floor were made of mud and in which stood two wretched beds. Marceline was shivering with cold but here at any rate we were out of the wind.

The next day was a dismal one. We were surprised on going out to see a sky that was one unrelieved grey. The wind was still blowing but less violently than the night before. The diligence passed through again only in the evening.... It was a dismal day, I tell you. I went over the amphitheater in a few minutes and found it disappointing; I thought it actually ugly under that dreary sky. Perhaps my fatigue added to my feeling of tedium. Toward the middle of the day, as I had nothing else to do, I went back to the ruins and searched in vain for inscriptions on the stones. Marceline found a place that was sheltered from the wind and sat reading an English book, which by good luck she had brought with her. I went and sat beside her.

"What a melancholy day!" I said: "Aren't you bored?"

"Not particularly. I am reading."

"What made us come to such a place? I hope you are not cold, are you?"

"Not so very. And you? Oh, you must be. How pale you are!"

"No, oh no!"

At night, the wind began again as violently as ever.... At last the diligence arrived. We started.