MICHEL TOURNIER
47
were a snake which by some aberration could never quite slough its
old skin, unable at his worst to resist the temptation to slip into it
again. She had only one saving grace: in 1918 she took it on herself
to destroy all the letters Gide had written her - quite a considerable
bundle-which would doubtless have constituted a remarkably fat–
uous, nauseating and mushy area of his work. She had the courage
to perform this amputation. Why didn't he take advantage of it to
carry out one that was even more radical and necessary?
This role of living relic that Madeleine played with Gide in–
evitably makes one think of another madeleine, namely Proust's....
which was also an index of time lost. But the two men were travel–
ling in opposite directions, Gide being passionately attracted to an
absolute and radiant future, while Proust, with his back turned on
the twentieth century, was patiently reconstituting the skeleton of his
childhood. This is no doubt why Gide's Madeleine possessed none of
the mouthwatering charms of the delicate and golden little cake that
melted so deliciously on Proust's tongue.
We have mentioned Paul Valery and Marcel Proust: we should
also invoke Henri Gheon, Pierre Louys, Oscar Wilde, the principal
figures and the lesser characters who gave life to that influential
group from which the
Nouvelle Revue Franfaise
would be born. We
shall do so from one angle which may offer a fourth dichotomy, that
of "primary" and "secondary" natures.
Let us first make it clear that this distinction comes to us from
the tradition of character sketches, and that in order to understand it
properly, it is necessary to forget the school-room connotation,
which runs the risk of clinging to it like a bad smell .
A "secondary" person lives with constant reference to his past
and his future. Nostalgia for what has been, and fear of what is to
come, befog the present, and devalue immediate sensation. His in–
telligence depends more on calculation than intuition. The space he
inhabits is an echo-chamber and a labyrinth of possibilities. In love,
fidelity is more important to him than freedom.
The "primary" person is dazzled by the freshness of an
everlasting present. He can be cerebral or sensual but he is a man of
primitive clarity and first beginnings. For him every morning is the
first day of Creation. He doesn't get entangled with ghosts and shad–
ows. He can at any given moment be rude or inconsiderate but
