AI~
EMANCIPATOIR fREES HIMSELF
1147
The line of
The Fruits of the Earth-the
two titles mean, literally,
Earthly Food and New Food-is that of the prose poem as a medium of
personal confession, not of sins but of enthusiasms, of intensely treasured
states of soul and body. (Both books contain verse as well as prose, but,
as
in
Rimbaud's
Une Saison en Enfer,
the verse is imbedded
in
the
prose.) The 1897 volume, the work of a man well under thirty, some of
it composed during the first zest of marriage, breathes restless desire, a
joyful awareness and love of growth, of "becoming what you are," in
Goethe's phrase. "But here I will speak to you only of
things-not
of
THE INVISIBLE REALITY,
for . . . as the most wondrous seaweed grows
lusterless when it is taken out of the water, so ... etc." A typical sen–
tence, unfinished, agitated, impassioned, with but a trace of the un–
sureness, the self-questioning which characterize so much of Gide's later
work. It was this very positiveness and forthrightness, so startling in the
analytical atmosphere of the turn of the century, that made the rarer
spirits of two generations take
Les Nourritures Terrestres
to heart, suc–
cumbing, in the crucial pre- and post-war years, to ideas which their de–
fenders called aids to self-realization and their detractors branded as
invitations to irresponsibility. Here, in an engagingly pure form, are to
be found many of the doctrines because of which Gide was and doubt–
less always will be regarded in some quarters as a poisoner of youth.
"Never
stay
anywhere, Nathaniel. ... There is no greater danger for
you than
your own
family,
your own
room,
your own
past."-"Every new
thing should always find the whole of us wholly available."-Principles
whose force sprang in large part from the vivid terms in which they
were presented-an account of a credible and understandable experience,
Gide's release from the restraints of a strict, somewhat puritanical up–
bringing. (Perhaps there was something to be said, after all, for those
stern nineteenth-century disciplines. "It feels so nice when it stops," said
the lunatic who kept hitting himself on the head with a hammer.)
Here indeed is a book which "speaks only of things"-things seen
and felt as with new-born senses, life lived as with newly acquired
faculties. 13y suggestion and comment, seldom by direct narration, but
always with an undertone of progress, the eight sections of
Les Nour–
ritures Terrestres
tell a story of sensual and emotional growth in con–
cretely projected settings-Italy, Normandy, Tunisia-as well as in the
inner landscape of the imagination, which is the chief scene of
The New
Fruits,
although there too external happenings are interspersed with
meditative raptures. The naturalness of the earlier book, celebrating with
equal eloquence the delights of writing verses and of being shaved by a
.good Neapolitan barber, feeling a breeze with your eyelids and sensing
