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461
is : "Well, what else
is
there to think about except mankind?"-which,
however realistic, is hardly the answer and the tone of a devout
humanist and democrat.
Of the two, Oedipus emerges as the truly noble hero who has sur–
passed himself. In Gide's novel the two characters meet after both
have endured a great deal, and they exchange their studied views of
existence. Oedipus declares that he has been trying to "break through
to reality," and that he now believes in original sin, redemption through
suffering, and the existence of an inner. world compared to which the
world of the living who are not blind is a deceitful illusion. Theseus
congratulates Oedipus on having made "good use of his misfortunes,"
and then cynically congratulates himself on being other than Oedipus,
shrewd enough to have other views, sensible enough to make practical
and political use of Oedipus' religious beliefs.
In an interesting introduction to this volume, John Russell declares
that Theseus resembles Goethe, Paul Valery, and Gide himself. To the
present reviewer, Theseus seems a complacent and hardened egotist
quite unlike those great authors, whatever their shortcomings. But it
may well be that a variety of interpretation is precisely Gide's ironic
intention. Such an ironic intention can be too clever, and certainly
there are passages where Gide indulges in cleverness for its own sake. The
possible or probable meaningfulness of both interpretations may thus
be Gide's acceptance, through the figure of Theseus, of the limitations of
humanity; or it may be a systematic ambiguity directed at the reader, as
if Gide said: Sincere or hypocrite reader, you must judge Theseus in
terms of what
you
are.
On the whole, and however we interpret the text,
Theseus
is a little
masterpiece. And of both the play and the novel we must say what
Gide's Antigone says of herself: "Not a word comes to my lips that has
not first been in my h eart." But of course we must never forget that it
is Gide's complex heart.
The fourth volume of Gide's journals would not require attention
in the pages of
Partisan R eview
(its readers are certainly aware by now
of how important this work in its entirety is), were it not for two dis–
tressing phenomena. One is the interpretation of passages in this new
volume as a demonstration that Gide was a collaborationist or at least
ambiguous for a time in his attitude toward the German occupation
of France in 1940. The second phenomenon, which
is
linked with the
first, is the use of Gide as a scapegoat whose sins and shortcomings are
representative of the weakness and the wrongness of modem literature.
