ANDRE GIDE AND COMMUNISM
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taking form, and that my dream is about to. become reality.
It is
simply that my being reaches out toward a longed for goal. A II my
thoughts, involuntarily even, come back to it. And if my life were neces–
sary for the success of the U.S.S.R. I should give it readily-as so many
others have done and will do.-/ set this down with a cool head and in
all sincerity, for the reason that I very much feel{ the ,need )of leaving at
least this statement, in case death should come before it is possible for
me to declare myself more fully."
Whatever may be said, it is the emotional short cut to Communism
which Gide has taken. As he puts it in the
Persephone,
he has gone
"where not so much the law as love doth lead me." The symbol of the
narcissus flower, running throughout the poem, is a hi ghly personal one.
He who bends above its cup,
He who breathes in its odor,
Beholds the unfamiliar world of hell.
It is "love's too brimming day" which leads to the nether-world vision
(the nether world may here be taken as the historically submerged world
of the proletariat), a vision from which the Nymphs, reprc3enting the
principle of a blithe dalliance with the pristine material pleasures of liie,
would restrain Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the earth's fruitfulness,
and incarnation here of Beauty, or the aesthetic principle. \Vhat is it
Persephone beholds, as she bends over the narcissus?
I behold wandering
A people without hope,
A peop/e all,
Sad, restless, drab.
A people poor and grieving, all,
lf?ho know not hope,
For whom no springtime laughs.
Gide's own case is summed up in the lines:
Thy compassion already allies thee
To Pluto, King of Hell.
With these verses, it is instructive to compare something else which
G ide has written since becoming a Communist:
"They arouse my indignation, those who say, 'Oh, workingme1t1 and
peasants, the common people, they are not worth bothering about'. And
