Andre Gide
THESEUS
TRANSLAToR's NoTE
Thesee
is the most recent of Gide's works, but it is one which
had been long projected. For more than thirty years the idea had pos–
sessed him, from time to time, of committing to paper a new mani–
pulation of this ancient legend. Other images of Theseus reverb–
erate, as is natural, within this newest version. The Theseus of Plutarch
is here, even down to the feathery branches of asparagus among which
the beardless hero carried out the first of his summary but appreciative
sexual experiments. The Theseus of Racine is here, for ever aghast at
the murderous favors accorded to him by the gods. But Gide's Theseus
is
a different, more constructive character. He discourses to us in the
cloudless evening of his life with the motiveless lechery of his early man–
hood quite laid aside, and the more disreputable episodes (so carefully
husbanded by Plutarch) discounted as fables . Nor do we see him reduced,
like the Theseus of Racine, to the point at which an anonymous exile
alone offers the possibility of requital. It is rather for Oedipus to pro–
pose this point of view, in the dialogue which closes the book.
One can distinguish many others among the· elements which Gide
has metamorphosed for our enjoyment. The full-scale evocation of
ancient Crete owes something to Flaubert, something to Sir Arthur
Evans ; but the essentials of tone and pace, the golden sensuality and
the pondered detail, are Gide's alone. And what concept could be more
Gidian than that of the ordeal in the Labyrinth-an ordeal, not of en–
durance, but of pleasure? In the Minotaur himself, that flower.-struck
beauty, lulled into hebetude by the delights of his surroundings, we
glimpse the Sudanese negroes whom Gide had watched in Tunis, nearly
sixty years ago, stuffing flowers into their nostrils.
Present and past are mingled, moreover,
in
the construction of
Theseus himself. Pre-Roman and Post-Renaissance traits have coalesced
in this egregious hero. Wraith-like, other admirations of Gide's--not
to speak of Gide himself-compose part of Theseus; nor can all these
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