ANDRE GIDE AND THE LITERARY LIFE
silent, unexpectedly discreet. He tells us that he was virgin till he was
twenty-three. Writing in 1911 of
Corydon,
his defense of homosexuality,
he says that "the difficulty comes ... from the fact that I must artifi–
cially revive a problem to which I have found (as far as I am concerned)
a practical solution, so that, to tell the truth, it no longer bothers me."
Gide has dealt with all these matters in other books. He seems to
intend his journal as a different kind of document, a document of the
literary life. But this phrase must be understood in a very broad sense.
Proust lived in order to write; Valery wrote in order to live (or so he
kept telling Gide in his weary later years-perhaps only to shock him) ;
but both affirmed the impersonality of art. Gide has worked on the
opposite principle. He writes in the journal in 1893: "I wanted to sug–
gest, in the
Tentative amoureuse,
the influence of the book upon the
one who is writing it, and during that very writing. As the book issues
from us it changes us, modifying the course of our life." Like any
nineteenth-century master he has regarded his work as a sort of con–
tinuous autobiography. His journal is thus the medium in which his mind,
his work, his reading, his friendships, are seen in their relations. The very
first entry, for Autumn 1889, shows Gide and Pierre Louys
in
search
of a Latin Quarter garret "where our group can meet." They are rather
theatrical about their literary beginnings: they remember Rastignac.
"And together we dream of the impecunious student's life in such a room,
with an unfettered pen as the only means of earning a living. And at
your feet, on either side of the writing table, all Paris."
This early dream of the literary life quickly gives way to bitter reali–
ties. The journals are among the most disenchanted of documents.
Goethe, supposedly fortunate, remarked that in fact he had never been
happy for more than a few days together. For Gide life seems to have been
even worse, and social life a profound irritant. He finds-or at any rate
he records-little pleasure in his relations with the literary commune of
France and Europe. This commune always resolves itself, for him, into
distinct personalities to whom his reactions are shifting and sensitive.
Reactions!-his extremely individualistic sensibility drenches him in
reactions, permits him to take almost nothing and nobody for granted.
He is, it is true, regularly devoted to a few friends: Marcel Drouin,
Jacques Copeau, Charles-Louis Philippe-the latter's death and funeral
provoke one of the most beautiful passages in the present journal. Valery
bullies him, exhausts him with his superior
elan,
talks nonsense in the
passion of his eloquence. Towards the others Gide's feelings vacillate
between affection and disgust. At worst, literary men are all vanity,
101
