BOO K S
237
a little disgusted, yet always sufficiently flattered and thrilled to keep
hope's flame alive. The wooing, of course, was a false one from start
to finish. For if, in his lifelong swing between the pleasure of duty and
the duty of pleasure, Gide sometimes suggested a belief in Christ, a
need for prayer, his Christ was always that of the Gospels, never that
of the Catholic interpretation, his prayer the direct voice of the indi–
vidual soul, never the call upon Our Lady and the Saints to intercede
at God's throne. This Protestant side of Gide remained an entire mys–
tery to Claudel, a born Catholic reconverted. He could and did recog–
nize the Goethean humanist side of Gide, and it was this that he finally
despaired of saving. But for him, any religious manifestation was a
move toward the Church.
If
Claudel failed to understand, however,
Gide was never prepared fully to enlighten him. While "not entirely
accepting" Claudel's arguments, he always remained "very moved" or
"deeply impressed." This inability to reject outright Claudel's attempts
at conversion may seem at first sight to fit
ill
with Gide's great em–
phasis on sincerity, yet his motives were an integral part of his char–
acter. As a humanist, he found Claudel greatest as a man in the very
strength and narrowness of his convictions, and it was to this strength
that he was responding when he seemed to be moved by Claudel's
arguments. The deep-seated insecurity, too, of his emotional balance
drove him at the very moments of his most sincere rejections of the
arguments of others, to add the little note of doubt that would retain
him their interest and regard. And so he led Claudel up the garden
path. The natural bitterness of his wooer, when at long last he saw
that the whole affair was but flirtation, is revealed in Claudel's state–
ment twenty years later in his now famous interview with Dominique
Arbon of
Combat.
"I don't see," he said, "that Gide has any talent
at all."
The full tragedy of Gide's emotional insecurity is at last revealed
in
Et nunc manet in te,
those sections of his journal relating to his
wife. The journalistic phrase "at last revealed" may be used appro–
priately and, I think, without unkindness, for it was part of Gide's
whole attitude to himself that, from one aspect, his personal life should
be presented as a sort of newspaper story.
Et nunc manet in te
makes,
if one may continue this phraseology, grim and tragic reading. For
many, Gide's revelation of the misery which surrounded his marriage
and the obvious self-pleading with which he describes his wife's be–
havior have lessened his stature. It is equally easy, however, to see this
plea for the world's sympathy as a natural reaction to the bitterness
