MICHEL TOURNIER
55
swimming pools and beaches in Normandy. Gide introduced Gheon
to North Africa. Their correspondence is so brimming with in–
timacies and amazing tales that Gheon protests in mock horror at
the idea that it might one day be published: "Don't worry about your
letter, it will be buried along with those that follow it; do likewise
with mine. Think of it! The day when they publish our secret cor–
respondence!" And they did, in
1976.
But there is always time and its vicissitudes, the slow wearing
down and the brutal assaults. Poor Gheon could not endure the test
of time. The
1914-18
war, in which he served as a doctor, took him
unawares and dealt a blow to his grand appetite for life and for
things ofthe flesh. What he saw, heard, and did, lancet in hand, for–
ever cast a shadow over the "bearded satyr" and strangled his great
Rabelaisian laughter. He turned to Catholicism of the most sancti–
monious kind and parted from his former "true friend." In
1917,
he
visited Gide who noted in his
Journal:
Gheon has taken on a resemblance to the good vicar of Cuver–
ville . .. The same intonations; the same absentminded and
benevolent attention; the same provisional agreement followed
by the same withdrawal; even the same indefinable absence . .. I
stiffen myself against grief, but it seems to me at times that
Gheon is more lost to me than if he were dead. He is neither
changed nor absent; he is confiscated.
We can perhaps add to the four dichotomies we have tried out on the
"Gide case" a fifth binary key to comprehend and shed light on them.
In following the course of Gide's life you cannot help admiring the
man. A successful life, that is the image which positively dominates .
No wrong turns, or if there are they seem fated, like his marriage
with Madeleine Rondeaux. A measured progression. And naturally
a long life too, in which old age shows no sign of decrepitude, and
which forced those who knew him to use that wonderful and
mysterious word,
wisdom.
This is why we must judge kindly those
successors of Gide whom premature and accidental death deprived
of this significant dimension. I refer to Antoine de Saint-Exupery
and Albert Camus, who died at forty-four and forty-seven respec–
tively, and who can seem a little like the anaemic heterosexual off–
spring of the grand progenitor. As far as one can judge from what we
have, they would probably have aged well, because their work pos–
sesses that very virtue which constitutes Gide's greatness: a kind of
