BOO KS
463
noble words he pronounced three days ago? How can one fail to ap–
prove Churchill? And not subscribe most heartily to General De
Gaulle's declaration?"
During the following months, Gide continued to waver and grope
in the darkness of the time. By the 8th of January 1941, he was writing
in his journal of his own efforts at adjusting himself to the occupation
and attempting as ever to explain himself to himself (the reader ought
to bear in mind tha t anyone less honest than Gide would have felt free
to suppress or conceal pages in which he reveals his own easily mis–
interpreted and painful sentiments) . Seeking to explain how he came
to contribute to a periodical which the Vichy regime permitted to appear,
he wrote: "My contributing to the review, the
Feuillets
I gave to it, the
very plan of resuming publication-all that goes back to the period of
dejection immediately following the defeat. Not only was resistance not
yet organized, but I did not even think it possible. To fight against the
inescapable seemed to me useless, so that all my efforts at first tried
to find wisdom in submission, and within my distress to right at least my
thoughts." Ten months after the June 14, 1940, entry, on March 30,1941,
when the meaning of a passive submission to Vichy became clear to him
(and long before military events in the least suggested that Germany
would ultimately be defeated) , he denounced a book by Jacques Char–
donne
l
advocating collabomtion, published an explicit and unequivocal
attack on it, and wrote in his journal: "I am reading with amazement
and dismay Chardonne's book ... that sort of facile superiority ... comes
closer to revolting than enchanting me. . . . Yet I am grateful to Chardonne
for h aving written this book which leaves everything in doubt except
himself. ... This book provokes a reaction in me, for as I read it I feel
clearly that this position is at the opposite pole from the one I must
and will take; and it is important for me to declare it at once. My mind
is only too inclined by nature to acceptance ; but as soon as acceptance
becomes advantageous or profitable, I am suspicious.
An
instinct warns
me that I cannot accept being with them on 'the right side'; I am on
the other."
These lengthy quotations are made necessary by the fact that one
distinguished critic in a review of this volume of the journals has cited
entries which, wheW"isolated from the rest of the book, seem to justify
the assertion that Gide was not really opposed to Nazism. This political
1.
In Justin O'Brien's glossary to this volume of the journals, we learn that
Chardonne was elected to L'Academie
Fran~aise
in
1950. This is a beautiful
example of having one's cake served up by whoever happens to be in power.
I t also casts a peculiar light on the political critics of Gide.
