Background
He was born on November 22, 1869 into a middle-class protestant family to a Law Professor at the University of Paris, Paul Gide and his wife Juliette Rondeaux.
(In beautiful, evocative prose, Gide's short novel explore...)
In beautiful, evocative prose, Gide's short novel explores such themes as love, blindness, honor, and mortality.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0318636018/?tag=2022091-20
(Book by Andre Gide)
Book by Andre Gide
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0880013656/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005R5VN3G/?tag=2022091-20
(First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylo...)
First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/2070368793/?tag=2022091-20
(A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the...)
A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394718429/?tag=2022091-20
(Book)
Book
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140180958/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018EYG03E/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000RHEJUI/?tag=2022091-20
(Passing with cinematographic speed across the capitals of...)
Passing with cinematographic speed across the capitals of Europe, Nobel laureate André Gide’s Lafcadio’s Adventures is a brilliantly sly satire and one of the clearest articulations of his greatest theme: the unmotivated crime. When Lafcadio Wluiki, a street-smart nineteen-year-old in 1890s Paris, learns that he’s heir to an ailing French nobleman’s fortune, he’s seized by wanderlust. Traveling through Rome in expensive new threads, he becomes entangled in a Church extortion scandal involving an imprisoned Pope, a skittish purveyor of graveyard statuary, an atheist-turned-believer on the edge of insolvency, and all manner of wastrels, swindlers, aristocrats, adventurers, and pickpockets. With characteristic irony, Gide contrives a hilarious detective farce whereby the wrong man is apprehended, while the charmingly perverse Lafcadio—one of the most original creations in all modern fiction—goes free.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008C82QA4/?tag=2022091-20
("Strait is the Gate", first published in 1909 in France a...)
"Strait is the Gate", first published in 1909 in France as "La Porte etroite", is a novel about the failure of love in the face of the narrowness of the moral philosophy of Protestantism. --- André Gide (1869 - 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career spanned from the symbolist movement to the advent of anticolonialism in between the two World Wars. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, without at the same time betraying one's values... --- "For Gide was very different from the picture most people had of him. He was the very reverse of an aesthete, and, as a writer, had nothing in common with the doctrine of art for art's sake. He was a man deeply involved in a specific struggle, a specific fight, who never wrote a line which he did not think was of service to the cause he had at heart." (Francois Mauriac)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159569062X/?tag=2022091-20
He was born on November 22, 1869 into a middle-class protestant family to a Law Professor at the University of Paris, Paul Gide and his wife Juliette Rondeaux.
He received his early education at home before moving to the school.
At the age of 8, he enrolled in Ecole Alsacienne in Paris but his health conditions didn’t permit him to have a continual education. As a result, he was instructed by private tutors at home.
In 1880, his father left for heavenly abode and he was raised up by his mother who was devoutly concerned about him. He received tuition from his mother’s governess as well as private tutors.
In June 1947, he was honored by the University of Oxford which conferred on him the ‘Doctor of Letters’, a higher doctorate degree for his outstanding achievement and original contribution to the writing.
In 1891, he published his novel, Les Cahiers d'Andre Walter (The Notebooks of Andre Walter). It was well received by his friend, Pierre Louys, a French novelist and poet, who introduced him to the works of Stephane Mallarme, a major French Symbolist poet.
In 1893 and 1893, he embarked on a journey to North Africa where he became acquainted with the life and practices of the Arab world which liberated him from the restrictive and pointless Victorian convictions at social and sexual levels.
In early 1896, he was elected as a Mayor of a commune in Normandy, La Roque--Baignard and became the youngest Mayor ever. In the same year, he completed his book, ‘Fruits of the Earth’, which was published a year later but not well-received. By the end of the First World War it became one of his most influential works.
In 1908, he founded a literary magazine, ‘La Nouvelle Revue Francaise’ (The New French Review) along with Jacques Copeau and Jean Sclumber.
In 1918, he met Dorothy Bussy, an English novelist and translator, who was his long-time friend. She assisted him in translating his works to English, being originally in French.
In 1920's, he gained much popularity and highly influenced writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as several young writers of that time.
In 1923, he published a book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, short-story writer and essayist. In the following year, with the publication of ‘Corydon’, he was greatly condemned. The book was based on homosexuality in which he defended pederasty.
In 1924, he published his autobiography, ‘Si le grain ne meurt’ (Unless the seed dies). It was based on those themes which obsessed him throughout his career and imbued his famous classical novels, ‘The Immoralist’ and ‘The Counterfeiters’.
During July 1926 to May 1927, he travelled extensively through the French Equatorial Africa colony going to Middle Congo, Oubangui-Chari, Chad and Cameroun before returning to France. He penned down his travelling experiences in the journals called, ‘Voyage au Congo’ (Travels in the Congo) and ‘Retour du Tchad’ (Return from Chad). At that time, his books had a big impact on anti-colonialism movements in France.
In 1930s, he embraced communism for a brief period but his ideologies and perception regarding it received a severe blow when he was invited on a Soviet Union tour as a guest of the ‘Soviet Union of Writers’. He criticized communism in his book ‘Retour de L’U. R. S. S’ in 1936. He also contributed an essay in ‘The God That Failed’, a book which collected testimonies of several famous ex-communist writers and journalists.
In 1942, he left for Africa and resided in Tunis until the end of the Second World War. He wrote ‘Theseus’ there whose story showcased his realization of the value of the past.
He left France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis until the end of World War II.
He devoted much of his last years to publishing his Journal. Gide died in Paris on 19 February 1951.
Andre Gide was popular for his fiction and autobiographical works.
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality, split apart by a straitlaced traducing of education and a narrow social moralism.
In November 1947, he received the ‘Nobel Prize in Literature’ for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings in which human psyche were portrayed with keen psychological insight.
His works were placed on the ‘Index Librorum Prohibitorum’ (Index of Forbidden Books) by Roman Catholic Church in 1952.
(Passing with cinematographic speed across the capitals of...)
("Strait is the Gate", first published in 1909 in France a...)
(A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the...)
(In beautiful, evocative prose, Gide's short novel explore...)
(First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylo...)
(Book by Andre Gide)
(Book)
His political activity is informed by the same ethos, as indicated by his repudiation of communism after his 1936 voyage to the USSR.
Quotations:
“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. ”
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. ”
“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ”
“Be faithful to that which exists within yourself. ”
“The color of truth is grey. ”
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity. ”
“Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason. ”
“Everything's already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again. ”
“I do not love men: I love what devours them. ”
His growing awareness of his homosexuality made him accept the need to follow his own impulses and the open atmosphere that offered him the much-needed encouragement.
In 1895, he met Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, in Algiers, who became his close friends and further encouraged him to accept his homosexuality without any hint of guilt.
In 1895, he married his cousin Madaleine Rondeaux but the marriage was an unconsummated one due to his dissimilar sexual orientation. She died in 1938 and thereafter became the subject of his book ‘Et Nunc Manet in Te’.
In 1916, he began a relationship with 15 year old boy, Marc Allegret. , who was the son of the best man at his wedding, Elie Allegret. He adopted Marc and fled to London along with him.
In 1923, he fathered a daughter with a much younger Elisabeth van Rysselberghe who was the daughter of his closest female friend Maria Monnom. He christened his daughter Catherine.
