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IMPRESSIONISTIC IMAGERY 0F UGHT
AND DARKNESS IN ANDRE GIDE'S '
EARLY WORKS

Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY.
HARLAN R. RATTON ‘
_ 1976

 

 

 

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IMPRESSIONISTIC IMAGERY OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
IN ANDRE GIDE'S EARLY WORKS

presented by

Harlan R. Patton

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ABSTRACT

IMPRESSIONISTIC IMAGERY OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
IN ANDRE GIDE'S EARLY WORKS

By
Harlan R. Patton

Since literary impressionism reached its highest
peaks and existed in its purest form in the last decade
of the nineteenth century, this study discusses Gide's
use of light in those works written during the fin-de-
siecle period and most deeply marked by impressionism.
excluding Gide's "symbolist" writings of the same period.
Andre Walter and Ménalque are the first truly antithetical
pair of Gidian protagonists, and Andre Gide in creating
them was careful to surround them with very different
intensities of light. They are complementary beings,
with much in common. This study will attempt to situate
divergent apprehensions of light as the factor which
causes them to develop differently. Apprehension of
light either as reflective of an objective reality, or

as existing in itself and independent of any concrete

Harlan R. Patton

reality. causes the individual subsequently to form a
world-view which must be based on reality's existence or
non-existence. and light's influence thus precedes any
moral or intellectual development. But light also serves
as a construction en apyme, a reflective device incorporated
within the major work of art which presents a parallel to
the protagonist's moral and intellectual development.

The first chapters analyze two divergent ways of viewing
reality. as caused by and reflected in the two radically
different environments of light set forth in.Les Cahiers
d'André Walter and in Les Nourritures terrestres.

André Walter and Ménalque are but two possibilities
of a singlepersonality. and their common traits demon-
strate that apprehension of light could in itself account
for the disparate development of these two protagonists.
An analysis of Llemoraliste serves to demonstrate further
that light is both a determining factor and a construction
.gg‘abymg. Michel. whose beginnings are nearly those of
André Walter, becomes similar to Ménalque by adapting to
the light-surroundings which.Ménalque seeks out; a change
in.Michel's surrounding of light thus leads to a trans—
formation in morality.

Although this study centers upon Gide's early writings.
light serves a similar purpose in many of his later works.
A final chapter discusses light and darkness in.La Pgrte

étroite and in.Les Caves d3 Vatican, choosing these from

Harlan R. Patton

among the later books for their suitability to this type
of analysis. and for their representation of the same

image in two very different genres.

IMPRESSIONISTIC IMAGERY OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
IN ANDRE GIDE'S EARLY WORKS

By

\
i‘ A

Harlan RiflPatton

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Romance and Classical Languages

1976

©Copyright by
HARLAN R. PATTON
1976

For Chantal

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Professor
Marlies Kronegger for her guidance and encouragement
throughout the writing of this dissertation, as well
as for her many valuable comments and suggestions
concerning virtually every aspect of this study. To
Professors Laurence M. Porter and Eugene F. Gray. whose
suggestions have enabled me to clarify and to improve
many sections of this study, and who have indicated
further possibilities to expand it, my thanks for their
close readings and critical questions. Finally, my
thanks to my wife, Chantal, and to my friend, Mark
Andrews, for their patient proofreadings and suggestions

regarding style and form.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

Page
INTRODUCTION 0 O O O O O O O I O O O O O O I O O O O 1
Chapter
I. BETWEEN DARKNESS AND LIGHT:
LES CAHIERS D'ANDRE WALTER . . . . . . . . 30
II. THE TRIUMPH OF LIGHT:
LES NOURRITURES TERRESTRES . . . . . . . . 63
III. FROM DARKNESS INTO LIGHT:
L'IMMORALISTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
IV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS
IN SEVERAL LATER WORKS . . . . . . . . . . 142
CONCLUSION C O O O I O O I O O O O O O O O O O O O 170
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17?

iv

INTRODUCTION

André Gide may be considered as the modern writer
whose individual works most require appreciation as parts
of an organic whole. It is impossible to describe him
except in terms of an evolution; one can be certain only
that he never ceased becoming. Many critics have commented
upon Gide's changing nature: certain mythological allusions
serve to qualify short periods of his life—~Narcissus.
Dionysus, Icarus, Prometheusl——but only Proteus, who
participates in all and has no single form, can serve as
an adequate symbol of Gide's metamorphoses. The "dynamic
equilibrium" of his work rests upon recurrence, but on
recurrence of antinomies.2 and it is opposition of anti—
'thetical elements which gives oneness to Gide's complex
life work. Because he frequently modeled his characters
after some characteristic quality of himself, he found it
necessary to become his protagonists,3 and manifested ever
greater complexity as the number of his creations increased.
Always disponible. yet unable in real life to pursue each
of the diverse possibilities offered to him because of
their mutual exclusivity. he used his writing to illustrate

:for his own edification and for that of his readers "des

possibles qui n'ont jamais été."u These unrealized options
are to be found in oppositions of one character to another,
and for the emergence of a new aspect of Gide’s personality,
destruction of the preceding character was frequently
necessary. His "creative destruction"5 leads him to a
constant abdication of the present and past in favor of
an uncertain future (itself only momentary) and abandoned
as quickly as the preceding pose.6 Constantly renewable
crisis is essential to Gide's creation. especially to his
preferred geggg, the journal,7 and Gide's abdication of the
,present is a recurring form of crisis in which both he and
his characters evolve toward a new and different form of
the self. Thus it does not suffice to study individual
Gidian works apart from their counterparts: each thesis
has its antithesis in another work (if not contained within
the same one) and the reader must recognize both polarities
in order to achieve synthetic overview. To isolate one
moment or one book and to analyze it apart from its
developmental importance would be as misleading as the
isolation of a single frame from a motion picture.

In the early works as elsewhere, the major problem
is that of characterizing a transformation: "La question
qui se pose est de savoir comment se fait le passage de
l'oeuvre romantique, puritaine et éthérée que sont les

Cahiers (d'André Walter) aux rayonnantes Nourritures

terrestres."8 These early works constitute a period of
literary experimentation by the author, and one of the
most striking developments in Gide's style and world—view

occurs between the Cahiers d'André Walter and the Nourri-

 

tures terrestres. In only seven years, Gide's work

passed from having little relationship with the real world,
to hedonism and overt preoccupation with sensual
experience.

If a single influence could account for Gide's own
moral change in the period and for the consequent modifi-
cation of his work, that influence would be the African
sun. Gide wrote the Tentative amoureuse. the last of his
purely symbolist writings. in the summer of 1893, just
prior to his departure for Africa in October of the same
year: the brevity of autumn and winter in this story of
the four seasons of love is perhaps due to anticipation
of his trip. The writer voices his boredom with sterile

parables at the end of the Tentative. and hopes to involve

 

himself actively in life. Africa clearly facilitated Gide's
break with ethereal symbolism: by the spring of 1894, he

had begun to write lyrical praises of sensation, and

had completed the "Ronde de la grenade" which would be
included in the Nourritures terrestres. Throughout the
years between Gide's first voyage to Morocco and the

publication of the Nourritures. Africa dominated his life

and his writings: Gide made several more trips to North
Africa. and gradually completed the Nourritures during
these four years. While the writer had thus long been
influenced by Africa in 1897, the sun bursts upon Gide's
work for the first time in Les Nourritures terrestres.
and remains to dominate a period of writing including
l§§3l and L'Immoraliste. It is as if light became for
him an obsession. as it has for the greatest exponents
of civilization.9 André Walter's avoidance of light prior
to Gide's African experience, and Ménalque's constant
submersion in nearly-liquid light after it. differ as
greatly as do their idealistic and sensual moralities.
References to light in the texts of these, the first
diametrically opposed pair of Gide's prose works. would
suffice in themselves to demonstrate the evolution in
both style and moral outlook from Walter to Ménalque.
Differing responses to light by the protagonists reflect
divergent modes of apprehending reality. and thus serve
to determine the way in which each views and reacts to
his surroundings. In this way, apprehension of light,
and its effect upon the way in which reality is seen, may
well be the basis for distinctions between Walter and
Ménalque. since the seed of each exists within the other.
They are but two of Gide's possibilities. and only two

moments in his continued evolution.

Critics have generally failed to comment upon the
apprehension of light which causes this distinct change
in the protagonist's view of reality, perhaps because
Gide's early works usually receive comparatively little
of their attention. Until very recently. critical
anthologies on the early works were rare.10 and most of
the criticism done on his early writings forced them into
a convenient but clearly delimited frame. There are
several reasons for this absence of criticism on the early
Gide. One is Gide's own rather severe judgment of the
Cahiers d'André Walter: Gide himself sold the first

11 and

edition (except for a few dozen copies) as pulp,
in the 1930's was mortified to look back upon his first
book.12 But this surely attests to Gide's personal devel—
opment in the intervening years, rather than to the literary
aridity of the Cahiers. Modern critics have seemingly
accepted the writer's view of the Cahiers. Even a critic
who judges them "much underrated" condemns them for their
"immature, commonplace" manner and for their "portentous

and lachrymose style."13 When their value has been

grasped, it is frequently as precursors to the later works.14
Gide's early writings have also suffered from their youthful
appeal when compared to more serious undertakings: "Je me

demande si les problemes de Gide, qui sont humains et

importants, ne le sont pas tout spécialement pour la

jeunesse, et si. plus tard, sans les dédaigner, il n'est
pas inevitable d'en avoir d'autres plus pressants."l5
The early works are neglected because their attraction is
different from, not lesser than, that of Gide's later
works.

Another reason for the critical neglect of Gide's
early writings is that Andre Gide is classed primarily
as a modern writer whose major works were produced in
the early and middle twentieth century: yet he was
initially a nineteenth-century writer, moulded by the
romanticism and symbolism which directly influenced many
of his contemporaries. His son—in-law described this
anachronistic aspect of Gide in a memoire shortly after
Gide's death: "Ce que je viens d'appeler le caté XIXe
siécle m'a souvent frappé chez lui——mais il avait passé
au XIXe siécle ses trente premieres années, et tout ce
qui devait former sa morale personnelle prenait appui-—
ffit-ce pour les nier-—sur des conceptions qui avaient
nourri sa jeunesse et dont il ne se libérait pas si

16

aisément." Originally a nineteenth-century writer.
appreciation of his youthful writing has been hindered

by the artificial division forcing authors into a single
literary period. Other critics have noted the anachronistic
nature of some of his works.17 the fact that several of

Gide's books will not conform to established paradigms

in contemporary literature. The dismissal of several
early works results from the fact that Gide wrote as a
symbolist in the period between Les Cahiers d'André Walter
and Les Nourritures terrestres. While an important
innovator in the area of twentieth-century prose, Gide

was at best a minor symbolist poet and prose writer, and
such symbolist works as Le Traité g3 Narcisse, Les Poésies

d'André Walter, Le Voyage d'Urien._and La Tentative

 

amoureuse are examples of the effect of this school upon
a budding writer: they are period-pieces with Gide's
genuine input limited to expression of ideas accepted
from the major symbolist theoreticians.

The critical neglect caused by the inherent difficul-
ties in classifying Gide as nineteenth- or twentieth-century
writer is also favored by the still thornier problem of
classifying him as poet or novelist, as romantic or
symbolist, as idealist or impressionist. Gide has been
described as. and actually was, a romantic in the German
tradition, a symbolist under Mallarmé's influence, and an
impressionist prose—writer, all this before he was the
author of the récits, soties, and romans which brought him
recognition. A prose work such as Les Nourritures terres-
.t§g§ is certainly not a novel in the usual narrative sense,
and it even seems to violate the rules for hybrids such as

18 and for the lyrical

19

the poeme 2g prose by its length,

novel by its narrative undercurrent.

This study will trace a single development in Gide's
complex modification, a change in light imagery in the
early works, a movement toward an extreme impressionism

in the early Gide which culminates in Les Nourritures

 

terrestres. and will have reference to several other of
the early writings. It is not the intention of this study
to biographically detail influences upon Gide and to set
limits to, say, the romantic period, or to situate exactly
the beginning of the symbolist period. But it will be
necessary to limit the discussion to those books which
most clearly demonstrate the stages of this evolution. In
so doing. this study too will omit those writings generally
grouped under the heading of "symbolism," though not because
they pertain solely to the nineteenth century.

There are, to be sure, sufficient references to light
and darkness in Les Poésies d'André Walter, Lg Traité g3

Narcisse, Lg Voyage d'Urien, and La Tentative amoureuse

 

to justify their inclusion as part of this discussion.
But these works are imbued with symbolism, and the impor-
tance of light in each of these four texts is entirely
different from its importance in Les Cahiers d'André
Walter and in Les Nourritures terrestres. As later
chapters will demonstrate, André Walter and Ménalque's
disciple respond to light: it in some measure determines

their activities, even their world-views. Light in these

early symbolist works has meaning, and it is precisely
this meaning which distinguishes it from the earlier and
later works. Light and darkness here are not physical
surroundings imposed upon the consciousness from without
and pertinent because of their effect upon the protagonist:
they are, rather, projections from the consciousness,
purely interior landscape features which serve to express
an emotion preceding the light-effect, causing the light
rather than resulting from it. A brief demonstration of
examples from each of these symbolist efforts, and a
definition of expressionism and impressionism, will serve
to clarify this distinction.

Les Poésies d'André Walter already are the creation
of a walter very different from the adolescent diarist
of the Cahiers. Written rapidly at La Roque, they are
rather poor attempts at symbolist poetry. Gide seems at
this time to have been unable to impose strict form upon
his poetry, understanding it as an opening to the "balbu-
tiements de l'ame," and prose as a more reasoned and
aesthetic elaboration.20 His symbolist poems use pre-
fabricated imagery, bringing to mind the satirical volume
Déliquescences which first caused symbolism to be popularly

21

discussed. A rapid glance at the poems shows that their

imagery is largely unorignal, and is used solely to express.

22

Lamplight in the second of these poems is not a surrounding

10

of light, but a symbol of the frustrating and futile
struggle to bring clarity to confusion: the night returns
inevitably, the lamp goes out, and the "nuits étroites
des tombeaux" close in. The lamp of light and learning.
the night of death: these are but conventional and
expressionistic symbols, independent of realitya In the

23 "un rayon de soleil oblique" serves to

tenth poem,
express the soul's joy, again an inherited image. An
eleventh poefifllinks dawn to rebirth and beginning with

the beloved, a sudden passing from darkness into light.
Throughout this collection, light is not impressed upon

the consciousness, but expressed by it as the embodiment

of an inner state.

Gide's Traité g3 Narcisse is an elaboration of
symbolist doctrine, showing the influence of Ghil, Merrill,
and especially Mallarmé rather than any truly original
idea of Gide's. An exception could perhaps be made of a
note in the Traité which shows Gide already leaving the
symbolist doctrine in some ways, even in the very idea
of attempting to define a symbol.25 Paradise, the Platonic
pre-existence, is here portrayed as a crystaline and
transparent garden. All is immobile, Day reigns supreme,
and the sky is azure (p. 210). Only beneath the branches
of Ygdrasil does Night exist, and with it Mystery. When

Man breaks the harmony of pre—existence, the perfection

ll

of these Ideals flees "vers l'inconnu d'un ciel nocturne"
(p. 212), and mankind is sent forth into "cette terre de
crépuscule et de priéres" (p. 212). The elaboration of
Paradise can be only symbolic: light again has no rela-
tionship to exterior reality, and serves only to express

a mood, to symbolize man's fall from contentment in
pre-existence filled with light to earthly toil in darkness.
The imaginary voyage in.Lg Voyage d'Urien26 is a
conscious attempt at a symbolist novel, where all refer-

ence to light and darkness in transparently symbolist,

though the voyage presents some psychologically interesting
developments.27 In.g§ign, the landscapes serve to reflect
the author’s moods, and have no basis in objective reality.28
Even inythe prelude, Gide uses light to express the state
of the soul: "Quand l'amére nuit de pensée, d'étude et de
théologique extase fut finie, mon ame qui depuis le soir
brfilait solitaire et fidele, sentant enfin venir l'aurore,
s'éveilla distraite et lassée" (p. 281). The inactivity
of the soul is expressed by the night, its reawakening

by the dawn. Throughout this symbolic journey light con-
tinues as a symbol for intellectual and emotional state.
The torpor eXpressed in the "Mer des Sargasses" is trans-
lated into a grey, cheerless light (p. 325), and the final
realization of futility takes place in the polar region

where the travellers cannot be certain if dawn will ever

return (p. 35h).

12

Gide's Tentative amoureuseggvritten shortly before the
trip to Africa, is again openly symbolic in nature: "Much
of the symbolism of the Tentative amoureuse is indeed so
transparent that, less delicately handled, it might appear

"30 It begins predictably at dawn, the

almost puerile.
symbolic time of beginning. as Luc meets Rachel coming

from the shadows of the forest into his light. Their love
begins in spring, matures in summer, fails in autumn, and
dies with the onset of winter. There is at the end an
opening toward life, a decision to leave the sterile
allegory behind and to engage in genuine life (p. 291),

but the allegory itself can be only symbolic, and light
within it wholly independent of the sun's light.

Even from these few brief remarks on Gide's symbolist
writings, the eXpressionistic nature of textual occurrences
of light becomes evident. This study will omit these works
precisely because they are expressionistic rather than
impressionistic, even according to the most general defini-
tions accorded these two terms. Expressionism can be
defined generally as "what the world receives from the
artist," impressionism as "what the artist receives from
the world."31 The symbolic nature of light in these sym-
bolist efforts situates them clearly under the heading of
expressionistic images. In this study, the primary concern

will be rather Gide's impressionistic uses of light, the

13

effect light has upon the protagonist, rather than the
protagonist's effect upon light. Although impressionism
and expressionism generally co-exist,32 distinctions can
be made even in highly similar passages. When Luc meets
Rachel in La Tentative amoureuse (pp. 225-226), there is
an awakening of light, a dawn which symbolizes their new
awareness of one another and a new beginning. But they
do not react to the light: the light conforms to their
state, and serves to express newness, hope, and future.
This dawn is clearly expressionistic. There is also an
awakening of light in the Nourritures terrestres.33 but
here the protagonist reacts to and records the effect of
light upon his own consciousness, becoming other than he
was precisely because of the light which surrounds him.
The contrast here is dramatic: in the Tentative, light
is purely projection from the mind, while in the Nourri-
tgggg it is purely sensation recorded upon passive
consciousness.

Since literary impressionism will constitute a major
point of reference to this study, it requires more detailed
definition. As a term transposed from the visual arts
into the literary arts, it has not been universally
accepted, though its first incidence was in 1879.34 It is
still possible for critics to split about evenly over

whether or not the term should be used, and, when it is

1h

used. about whether it should be applied to a general
movement in literature or to a small, minor group of
Parisian writers.35 In fact, Maria Elizabeth Kronegger
has shown in a recent study that impressionism in litera-
ture extends beyond any specific period, and beyond any
national boundary, even beyond the limits of the West.36
It is the definition of impressionism given in her study
which this analysis will use. Impressionism is, first
of all, "a manner of suggesting reality" (p. 13). It is
a certain way of understanding man in his world, and of
comprehending his interaction with and experience of that
which is outside of himself, and yet which penetrates man
and forms the fabric of his existence:

Impressionism is born from the fundamental insight

that our consciousness is sensitive and passive.

Man's consciousness faces this world as pure passivity,

a mirror in which the world inscribes itself. As a

detached spectator, the individual considers the

world without having a standpoint in it. Reality

is a synthesis of sense—impressions. (. . .) What

we actually see is a vibration of light on matter

in dissolution. (. . .) This means that, for the

impressionists, there is no idealistic mental nature:

the sense-impressions we have are nature itself.

They are not appearances of some underlying realities

we can neither see, smell, nor touch, as the symbolists

would have it: on the contrary, sense impfigssions

are experiences of the quality of things.
Impressionistic literature proposes no goals beyond itself:
a lyrical recounting of life as sense-impression, it re-
quires no values beyond its own. and it subjectivity may be

completely non—narrative (though even the Nourritures

15

terrestres contain certain didactic, narrative elements
together with their lyrical effusion).38 The sense-
impression itself becomes independent, something resulting
from the interaction of subject and object who exist only
in their interdependence: color, for example, becomes not
a quality of any object, but a product of light's play
upon its surface.39 In this, light becomes supreme,
triumphant, capable of creating and dissolving what was
previously seen as a material, independent reality. There
are various stylistic devices associated with literary
impressionism, to which it shall be necessary to refer in
discussing Les Nourritures terrestres, but several good
discussions of these devices in other studies render a
detailing of them unnecessary here.“O
Man exists for the impressionist only "phenomenologi-
cally," in this continued process of perception, only in
his relationship to the world. Several critics have noted
the importance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to
the interpretation and understanding of impressionism};l
and some have confused the terms "impressionistic" and
"phenomenological.”2 While there is in both the reestab-
lishment of primordial contact with an exterior reality,
and while each treats the act of perception at the precise

moment of this contact, sufficient differences remain to

d—istinguish the two terms, at least for the relatively

16

pure impressionism of the Nourritures terrestres. As
Beverly Jean Gibbs has remarked, there is in impressionism
a (perhaps naive) belief in "subjective objectivity:" the
exact representation of the sensation as perceived, without
interference or interpretation, which relates it directly
to realism and to naturalism.1+3 Merleau-Ponty's phenomen-
ology comprehends the inherent subjectivity of the act of
perception, the distortion involved in perception because
of the residue of anterior perceptions, and would deny

the possibility of a perfect tabula rasa. The writer of

 

the Nourritures believes that he has succeeded in divesting
himself of any preconception,nn thus locating his experience
in the objectivity of the early impressionist painters:
the exact and impartial representation of the sense—impres-
sion. It is perhaps for this reason that Merleau-Ponty
chooses to relate his remarks not to the early Cezanne,
but to the later Cézanne of the post-impressionist period.45
Since literary impressionism reached its highest peaks
and existed in its purest form in the last decade of the
nineteenth century, this study will discuss Gide's impres—
sionistic use of light in those works written during this
period and most deeply marked by impressionism. In Gide's
early symbolist writings, light and all other physical and
sensory details serve an expressionistic purpose, and for

this reason they will be omitted from this study. Les Poésies

 

1?

 

and La Tentative amoureuse make use of the established
"pathetic fallacy," according exterior reality to interior
states. In these writings, Gide left behind the phenomeno-
logical existence of seemingly genuine protagonists, and
sought to construct symbolic, explicative fictions, based
not on subjective existences, but on Man's place in the
scheme of things. Each of them is too closely tied to
symbolic doctrine, to reflect the author's or protagonist's
view, or to reflect reality as influenced by apprehension
of light. Paludes. following this period, is an important
transitional work, satirizing the cloistered life of
Parisian salons and bidding farewell to symbolism, but it
too is somewhat outside the scope of this discussion.
Paludes creates an atmosphere of sterility, aridity, and
futility which all its references to physical reality
serve to support. As there are closed windows. ventilators
which fail to work, and enclosures on every side, so there
is also a grey, cheerless light. But light here again
serves to support a thesis: it does not exist independently
or.determine a view of reality. Rather, it reflects an
intellectual atmosphere.

The Cahiers d'André Walter. written prior to Gide's
involvement with the symbolist school, show at least the

possibility of an impressionistic consciousness, and

18

infrequent passages show a style and a world-view very
close to those of Ménalque. The Nourritures terrestres
are Gide's first writings after his declaration of
independence in Paludes, and are the supreme point of
Gide's literary impressionism, perhaps even of all

“6 Andre Walter and Ménalque are

literary impressionism.
thus the first diametrically opposed pair of Gidian
protagonists. Many critics, in seeking the antithesis

to Les Nourritures terrestres, have failed to understand
that this book is in itself a response. Most have looked
forward in time rather than back to Gide's first book.

Justin O'Brien finds a response to the Nourritures

terrestres in.Ei Hadj,”7 while Gabriel Teuler finds in
48

 

Sag; their antidote, and Diana Bronte seeks it in
Paludes/4'9 But since Gide's Cahiers d'André Walter were
"une sorte de Somme, une oeuvre unique, le testament d'une
vie,"5O Les Nourritures terrestres must be their response.
In these two books alone of all the early works of André
Gide, there is an elaboration of a personal view of reality.
The intervening symbolist writings offer only Gide's inter-
pretation of a pre-existing world-view. Paludes is
satirical, and could serve only to destroy a way of seeing
reality; it could not build another. Satire is, by nature,

destructive. Across the span of seven years, Andre Walter

and Ménalque respond to one another as the first clear

19

dichotomy of characters native to Gide. establishing two
variant ways of eXperiencing reality. Both of these
contrastive currents then reappear within a single

personality, that of Michel in L'Immoraliste, joining

 

thesis and antithesis for the first time.

This dissertation adds to existing criticism by
situating André Walter and Ménalque as the first clearly
antithetical pair of Gidian protagonists from among the
early fictional personalities. However, André Walter
and Ménalque (just as the early Michel and the later
Michel) are but two variations upon a single personality:
they contain the same possibilities, developed in entirely
different ways. They are complementary beings, with much
in common. This study will attempt to situate divergent
apprehensions of light as the factor which causes them
to develop differently. Apprehension of light either as
reflective of an objective reality, or as existing in
itself and independent of any concrete reality, causes
the individual subsequently to form a world-view which
must be based upon reality's existence or non-existence,
and light's influence thus precedes any moral or intellec-
tual development. Ménalque's planometric view of the uni—
verse is due to the reduction of reality to light-effects,
enabling him to discount objective reality, and thus to
deny any existence apart from the basic phenomenological

life of sensations.

20

Surprisingly little criticism has discussed the im-
portance of light in the works of André Gide, since most
choose to concentrate on Gide's aural sensitivities. Gide
was a musician, keenly aware of sound in language as well
as in.music. Due to the sharpness of his ear for music,
othersof his sensitivities have been ignored. Even when
Gide's visual awareness forms the topic for an essay, it
is viewed as secondary to his aural response.51 But Gide
was throughout his life very aware of the interplay of
light and darkness, and even physically effected by them.
in 1894 as a pursuit of light alone: "Je m'abandonne.
Fais que tout en moi soit lumiere: oui! lumiére et
légereté."52 Gide extended the analogy of light and
darkness as a reflection of his moods very early in the
journals: "J'en arrive a présent a considérer les jours
d'inquiétude, de scrupules et de désirs abnégatifs, comme
des jours trop nuageux, ou le soleil ne peut paraitre, ou
le passé vit plus que soi dans l'heure présente: comme
des journées de faiblesse, répréhensibles a cause de leur
langueur."53 Roger Martin du Gard knew Gide only'much
later, but he recounts an analogy of style and light made
by Gide himself, comparing his own varied style to
Rembrandt's use of light, darkness, and shadow.54 The

image of light and darkness is thus very much a part of

21

Gide's descriptive repertoire. Several critics too have
seized upon Chiaroscuro as an image to illustrate sudden

development in Gide's work: "Pour la forme, les Nourritures

 

terrestres (. °,°) ne constituent pas, dans l'oeuvre, un
éclatement: elles seraient meme le point le plus extreme,
le plus décanté, de cette volonté initiale de prose
poétique. Mais, au lieu de la développer, frileusement,
dans la demi-ombre, elles la jettent dans le soleil."55
Given such frequent allusions to light and darkness as
physical surroundings. moral analogies, and allusions

to style, the importance of light and darkness, both to
Gide himself and to his work, cannot be doubted. The
alternation of thesis and antithesis so clear in Gide's
writings, the constant recurrence of antinomies with inter-
vening shades of variation, invites the analogy with solar
time and changing light, where opposites constitute the
essential elements of perpetual change. To date no such
extended study of this essential image and theme has been
undertaken.

There is a twofold importance of light in these writings.
Each character first responds to an environment of light:
André Walter is most comfortable in shade, and actually
seeks out shade, attempting to fix it as a permanent
condition which best suits his requirements. Ménalque is

most properly Ménalque when surrounded by brilliant

22

sunlight, Walter is most Walter when shaded from the sun .
and in the presence of moderate, attenuated light. Outside
of this favorable environment, the protagonist changes
profoundly: Walter in sunlight becomes nearly sensual,
responding to summer and ceasing to write: Ménalque's
disciple remains for many years in Paris away from the
sun, occupying himself in intellectual pursuits, and his
sensual education is interrupted until he again goes forth
into the light. Michel is first the one, then the other,
successful in adapting from Walter to Ménalque, and
capable of being both of them genuinely in different sur-
roundings of light. Environments of light thus have a
profound determinative effect upon these protagonists.

But light and darkness have another importance, more
properly termed "imagery." The protagonist's surrounding
of light serves as each moment as a construction en abymg,
reflecting fully his moral and intellectual position. Gide
was the writer who coined the term "mise en abyme" in his
Journal in 1893: "ce procédé du blason qui consiste, dans
le premier, a en mettre un second 'en abyme.’ "56 He
refers here to a device by which a smaller coat-of-arms
is placed in one quarter of another, itself containing a
third, which contains a fourth, a process which could go
on to infinity. It was this placement of a reflective

device within a work of art which Gide admired in Hamlet

23

and in many other masterpieces, both literary and visual,
and which he consciously attempted in many early works as
well as in the "Journal d'Edouard" in Les Faux-Monnayeurs.57
Claude-Edmonde Magny sees in this process a determining
factor to later developments in prose, with an influence
upon the new novel.58 This is not to say that the light
situation becomes symbolic, but that it serves as a parallel:
"La 'mise en abyme' a une signification analogue: elle
nous rappelle a chaque instant l'impossibilité ou se trouve
tout existant de s'affranchir assez de sa situation méta-
physique, de sa condition d'homme, de ses particularités
individuelles, etc."59 Light serves in these early writings
as a construction.§g.abym_. It does this first by pre—
senting a microcosm of the protagonist's moral and intellec-
tual position in the text: a reference to light summarizes
the protagonist's position frequently, while the book
does so but once. The reflection of moral position in
light-surroundings also serves to universalize the
decidedly subjective human position of the character.

This study will analyze light and darkness both as
determining influences and as construction gg.abymg in
Les Cahiers d'André Walter and in Les Nourritures terrestres
in order to elucidate and to analyze two divergent ways of
viewing reality, as reflected in two radically different

environments of light. Since Andre Walter and Ménalque

24

seem to be but two possibilities of a single personality,
their common elements are discussed in order to demonstrate
that apprehension of light could in itself account for
their differences. This will be borne out be a similar
analysis of L'Immoraliste where both of these possibilities
exist in a single personality, and where a Michel similar
to Andre Walter becomes by his receptivity to light very
similar to Ménalque; a change in light environment thus
results in a parallel change in morality. By confining
discussion to the early works, this study does not deny
that this stylistic device and theme are present in the
later works. Indeed, much the same analysis could be

done of Gide's later works as well, and a single chapter
will discuss briefly two of these, La Porte étroite and

Les Caves g3 Vatican.

 

FOOTNOTES

 

lJustin O'Brien, Portrait of André Gide (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), uses these and other mythological
allusions as chapter divisions in his critical biography.

 

2O'Brien, p. 10.

3Daniel Moutote has studied this problem at length
in his Journal d' André Gide et les problémes du moi: 1889-
192 3) (Paris: Université de Paris, Faculte des Lettres,

 

 

“Gabriel Teuler, Ares Gide (Paris: Nouvelles Editions
Debresse, ca. 1959), p. 61.

 

5Albert J. Guérard, André Gide (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 51.

 

6Teuler, p. 21.

7Denis de Rougemont, "Ag sujet du Journal d'André Gide,"
Nouvelle Revue Frangaise, l janvier 1950, quoted by
Teuler, p. 22.

8Claude Lebrun, "La Naissance des themes dans les
premieres Oeuvres d' Andre Gide," Cahiers André Gide,

I(l969). p 205

9Lord Kenneth Clark, Civilisation, a personal view
(New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 212.

 

loCahiers Andre Gide, I (1969), is the first issue
of a literary journal to be devoted entirely to the early
works.

llO'Brien, p. 61.

12Journal, 1939-1949 (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p. 522.

25

26

13G. N. Ireland, André Gide: a Stud 2;; his Creative
Writings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 8, 26, 5—6,
51. '

ll‘hL'insuccés apparent des Cahiers d'André Walter
n'avait d'égal que le précoce talent quis'y montrait,"
which would later produce better books. Henri Mondor,
Les Premiers temps d'une amitié: André Gide gt Paul
Valery (Monaco: Editions du Rocher, 1947), p. 56.

15Teuler, pp. 8-9.

16Jean Lambert, Gide familier (Paris: René Julliard,
1958), p. 28.

l7Wladimir Krysinski, in "Les Faux—Monnayeurs et le
paradigme du roman européen autour de 1925," a lecture
delivered at the University of Toronto on October 25.
1975, found it necessary to put Gide's books into a
separate classification, since they will not fit the
paradigm he establishes.

18Suzanne Bernard, Le Poeme pp prose gg Baudelaire
a nos jours (Paris: Nizet, 1959), p. 15 states that brevity
Is essential to any poeme pp prose, but includes Les
Nourritures terrestres under this heading (p. 41277-

 

 

19Ralph Freedman, The Lyrical Novel: Studies ip
Hermann Hesse, André Gide; and Virginia Woolf (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 193.

20Allain Goulet, "Les remiers vers d'André Gide,"
Cahiers André Gide, I (1969 , p. 126.

21Several of these poems are reprinted in facsimile
by Michael Packenham, ed., Les Premieres armes d3 Symbolisme
(Exeter: Exeter University Printing Unit, 1973).

 

22Les Poésies d'André Walter, in Gide, Oeuvres completes,
Louis Martin-Chauffier, ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1932-1938),
Vol. I, pp. 180—181. These Oeuvres completes remain the
best collection of the early works, though incomplete for
the later ones. References to this edition will herein
be abbreviated O.C.

27

23o.c., I. pp. 188-189.

240.0., I, p. 189.

25Le Traité du Narcisse, O.C., I, pp. 215-216. Other

page references will appear in the text.

ZéLe Voyage d'Urien, O.C., I, pp. 279-365- Page

references will appear in the text.

27Guérard, pp. 53—54.

28O'Brien, p. 77.

ZQLQ Tentative amoureuse, O.C., I, pp. 221-243. Page
references will appear in the text.

30Ireland, p. 71.

31Beverly Jean Gibbs, "Impressionism as a Literary
Movement," Modern Language Journal, XXVI (1952). PP. 176-
177. ‘

32Gibbs, p. 177.
33Les Nourritures terrestres, O.C., II, pp. 69-70.

34Ferdinand Brunetiére, in "L'Impressionisme dans le
roman," Revue des Deux Mondes, l5 novembre 1879, defines
impressionism as a conscious transposition of a painting
technique into the literary arts, in discussing a novel
by'Daudet.

3SIn a "Symposium on Literary Impressionism," Yearbook
of Comparative and General Literature, 17 (1968), pp. 50-
, at least two of the five participants oppose the use
of this term in the literary arts.

36Literary Impressionism (New Haven, Conn.: College
and University Press, 1973).

37Kronegger, p. 14.

28

38Freedman, p. 143.

39Maria Elizabeth Kronegger, "Authors and Impressionist
Reality," French Literature Studies, I (March, 1973), p. 159.

uoSee Kronegger, Literapy Impressionism, pp. 69-85:
Gibbs, pp. 178-180: Calvin S. Brown in "Symposium on
Literary Impressionism, p. 54. There is general agreement
concerning the major techniques of literary impressionism.

41Kronegger, Literary Impressionism, p. 14

42"A cette vision romanesque, on aurait donné en 1890
la qualification d' fimpressionniste' ou de ‘subjectiviste.‘
On dit de nos jours 'phénoménologique.‘ " R.-M. Albérés,
Metamorphoses dp roman (Paris: Albin Michel, 1966), p. 78.

 

uBGibbs. p. 176.

”ugpgp, II, p. 61: "Cette désinstruction fut lente."

u5Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L'Oeil p3 l'esprit (Paris:
Gallimard, 1964).

46

Kronegger, Literary Impressionism, p. 17.

47O'Brien, p. 141.

“8Teuler, p. 17.

49Diana Bronte, "Le Symbolisme dans l'oeuvre d'André
Gide," Cahiers Andre Gide, I (1969), p. 236.

soMondor, pp. 29-30.

51Jean Mouton, "Le Regard d‘André Gide," in Entretiens
sur André Gide, Marcel Arland et Jean.Mouton, eds. (Paris:
Mouton et Cie, 1967), p. 13.

52§i 13 Grain pg meurt, in Journal 1939:1949: Souvenirs
(Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p. 570.

 

53Quoted by Ireland, p. 93.

29

5“Roger Martin du Gard, Notes sur André Gide (Paris:
Gallimard, 1951), p. 37.

55Marc Beigbeder, Andre Gide (Paris: Editions Univer-
sitaires, 1954), p. 50. "

Séleggaalr 9191. I. pp- 511-512.

57Ibid., loc. cit.

58C1aude-Edmonde Magny, Histoire du roman francais
depuis 1918 (Paris: Editions du Seuil,1950), "La ‘mise

en abyme' ou le chiffre de la transcendance," pp. 269-
278.

 

59Magny, p. 274.

CHAPTER I

BETWEEN DARKNESS AND LIGHT:
LES CAHIERS D'ANDRE WALTER

From late in 1889 until late in 1893, the young André
Gide maintained a "cahier de lectures," which testifies
to Gide's remarkable intellectual curiosity. Only recently
published by Jacques Cotnam,l this document permits one to
witness Gide's struggle to settle upon a personal style in
a decade which saw both naturalism's highest point in the
Rougon-Macquart novels, and symbolism's greatest achieve—
ments in poetry. Having read Taineon L'Idéalisme angiais,
Gide desired to be a "héros-poéte" or a "representative
man," but equally desired to conquer the public of his own

time.2

The best of writers excited his emulation, the
worst of writers his hatred: but all readings are under-
stood and commented upon in terms of their effect upon
Gide's own future work. not as gratuitous pastimes.
Momentarily impressed with romanticism or with realism,
no individual writer or school long maintained supreme

interest for him. In July of 1891, the Subjectif (Gide's

own title for this notebook) contains titles from Barres,

30

31

Shakespeare, Heine, and Verlaine;3 in December of 1889,
Rabelais, Gautier, and the Goncourt brothers appear
together.“

Surrounded by polar oppositions in the arts, Gide
was forced to leave the romantic tradition to conquer the
public of his own day, and yet hesitant to choose one or
several literary models. His first published book was
perhaps compelled to be extremely personal as much by
the variety of possible Options as by the narcissistic
personality of the young writer. This book evolved grad-
ually within Gide, originally his own intimate diary,5 and
only later did it occur to him to attribute these personal
remarks and observations first to a fictional Allain, then
to Andre Walter. Gide planned such a journal for several
years: he and Pierre Louis spoke of it in 1887,6 long
before he retired to Switzerland to prepare it in 1890.
Other details point to the intimate, personal nature of
Les Cahiers d'André walter, including his hurry to finish
them before his twentieth birthday. He eXpected the novel
to influence his future in addition to reflecting his past.
serving as a marriage prOposal which Madeleine would be
unable to resist. Less self-conscious at this age than
later in life, Gide showed more of his true self in this
early work than he would again until much later in his

career.

32

A highly personal work, the Cahiers were nonetheless
influenced by other considerations, as one might expect
from a reading of the Subjectif. It has been said that
Gide wrote the Cahiers in part as Goethe wrote his Werther,
to liberate himself from his own sterile romanticism.7
But he had long been immersed in German romanticism as well,
and Renee Lang has shown how well this prepared him for
symbolist salons.8 Gide was introduced to Mallarmé and
to Hérédia in the winter of 1889-1890.9 and he may have
been influenced by symbolist thought well before the final
draft for Les Cahiers d'André Walter. Some date Gide's

10 when he first

conversion to symbolism in January, 1891,
plunged into Mallarmé's poetry, but it is possible to see
a symbolist influence at an earlier date, and prior to
the writing of the Cahiers; Valéry welcomed Gide to the
symbolist fold early in February, 1891, before reading

11

Andre Walter, but upon reading it wrote to Gide in praise

12 Gide was thus in

of the Cahiers as a symbolist work.
the process of becoming a symbolist when he wrote his first
book, and seems to have vacillated about what form it

would take. He travelled in Britanny in 1889 with the
purpose of describing its overcast sky, mists, and land-
scapes as a real frame for his hero,13 something one might

expect from a realist or a naturalist. The eventual

setting for André Walter includes little reference to

33

natural surroundings and could be situated nearly anywhere;
this wavering demonstrates that the young Gide was not yet
a wholeheartedly symbolist novelist, as he at least
considered situating his first book in a genuine landscape
before turning to an imaginary one.

It is at times difficult to distinguish the various
influences of German romanticism, earlier French romanti-
cism, and French symbolism upon Gide. It is equally

difficult to situate Les Cahiers d'André Walter as either

 

a symbolist or romantic work, since it contains elements

of both and evades definition as one or the other. Further-

ing this difficulty is the implicit contradiction in the

label of "symbolist novels" Gide certainly saw himself

as the symbolist novelist shortly after this,14 but to

most of Mallarmé's disciples, "in open revolt against the

excesses of the Naturalists, (. . .) the novel appeared

vulgar and formless."15
If Gide was not yet fully a symbolist, it seems he

had at least eliminated one literary option by turning

away from naturalism. His first prose contains nothing

of the naturalistic techniques or interests so prevalent

in this era. Heredity is mentioned only briefly, and that

to thwart the determination of a single race for Walter, to

set him apart from the common herd. No mention of cause

and effect in the social world is made: Walter's fortune,

34

his circumstances, even his geographic location are left
largely unmentioned. What leads him to his dilemma is not
any physical event or reality, but a purely emotional and
intellectual problem. No attempt is made to study his
madness from a physiological viewpoint, or his reactions
from a social one. The Bildungsroman of the period tended
to confuse adolescence with puberty, and Gide's was one

of the first of this age to recognize that "the intellectual
and spiritual puberty is often as tormenting as the phy-

sical."16

Walter's physical conflicts, while very real,
are subordinate to his emotional distress. Since Gide
was turning away from naturalism. Walter's conflicts are
not directly related to any objectively-described real
world: his conflicts are stated in terms of absolutes,
independent of any specific or objective reality. Those
landscapes necessary to maintaining the fiction are
sketched only in the most non-specific of terms: all
phenomena without meaning to Andre Walter's interiorized
and intellectualized conflicts are eliminated from the
novel.

Since light and darkness are phenomena of the real
world, they should be eliminated from the personal note-
books of a wholly interior life where "il n'en a rien

paru" (p. 31).17 The fact that they figure frequently

in the text means that they must assume a role, not as

35

objective phenomena, but in relationship to Walter's inner
conflicts. Walter's preoccupation with shaded atmospheres,
away from intense light and total darkness, parallels his
intellectual and moral conflict. Full light and total
darkness are extremes, and André Walter regards them as

he regards moral and intellectual extremes, as dangerous

to his existence. Morning and evening are his preferred
environments, times of moderate, changing light. Reflected
and moderated light——the moon and the lamp-—he finds agree-
able and even profitable to his creative life. But not
once in the Cahiers does Walter mention the full light

of day, and unbroken darkness inspires only despair. Light
falls within the same system of filters, barriers, and
reflecting obstacles which Walter uses to attenuate all
things. He seeks reflected, filtered light and avoids

the full, blinding light of day just as he attempts to
attenuate and block other interior and exterior forces,

to keep from being overwhelmed by them. Walter's inability
to synthesize light and darkness into a suitable degree

of half-light directly corresponds to his impossible
situation when faced with the necessity of reconciling
real and ideal. In seeking an ideal surrounding, Walter
must avoid intensities of light and darkness; in facing

his moral and intellectual dilemma, he must avoid inten-

sities of analysis and discovery. The shade Walter desires

36

exists on two levels in the text. There is first of all

an actual physical surrounding of shade which Walter finds
comforting, and secondly a continuing metaphor of shade
which.Walter uses to describe the peace and security he
finds in his protectors and intercessorsx Emmanuele, God,
and prayer. This metaphorical shade is an extension of
physical surroundings of attenuated light, but it is an
ideated comparison. This comparison will be further ex-
tended to show that Walter's only comfortable moral position
is an exact parallel to his only suitable light-environment.
The degree of light preferred by this first of Gide's
protagonists provides an understanding of his intellectual
position.

Shade is important to André Walter first as a physical
surrounding. From the beginning lines of the Cahiers
d'André Walter, "l'ombre est pacifiant" (p. 28). Only
later does he extend this metaphorically to include his
intercessors. Half-light, moderate light, exists first
as a real situation and its importance is established by
Walter's near-obsession with a perfect, controlled light.
His ideal situation, pictured in his mind as an unattain-
able goal, includes specific reference to light: "Je
voudrais une cellule nue: coucher sur une planche, un
oreiller de crin sous la tete; aupres, une prie—Dieu,

simple, énorme; sur le support, la Bible toujours ouverte;

37

au-dessus, une lampe toujours allumée" (p. 49). Any
thought of contemplative monastic life, to which Walter
thinks himself perfectly suited, contains as a necessary
condition the presence of moderate light bringing peace
and repose (see for example pp. 43, 1&3). Other real
surroundings of shade which Walter finds pleasant abound
in the Cahiers. Memories of eveniQ§'by lamp, fire, and
candle are frequently recalled: "Lire a haute voix, les
soirs d'automne; eux rassemblés entre le foyer et la
lampe" (p. 55: see also pp. 56, 58, 86, 173). The lamp
itself comforts Walter in these evenings. It is not the
traditional lamp of knowledge, but a source of moderate,
controlled light which favors creative pursuits such as
writing (pp. 69, 106, 118, 119, 123, etc.), music (p. 47),
and reading (p. 56).

This moderate, artificial, and controlled light is
essential to Walter, and does not simple accompany the
isolated situations of which he dreams. Contemplative
atmospheres depend partially on light for their effect:
"Souvent me prend le désir d'une atmosphere ambiante toute
de noir et de silence, de calme muet; une lampe aupres de
moi qui ne ferait pas d'ombres sur les murs" (p. 105).
Calm is based in.Walter's mind upon immutability: to
excape from solar light is in a sense to escape from solar

time. He tries even to create this absolute moment in

38

his room when he considers finishing Allain, and succeeds
only in parodying it:

Dans ma Chambre j'ai fermé les rideaux des fenetres:
la lampe allumé quoique ce soit le jour, mais pour
l'illusion du travail nocturne ou tout, autour de
soir, dort-—tous les bruits, toutes les images.

L'atmosphere tranquille et comme conseilliére, et
pour plus encore: la pendule et la montre arrétées—-
c'est l'heure indifférente; c'est 1e travail dans
l'absolu sans plus de temps ni d'espace. -Ce qu'il
faut pour manger, pour dormir—— n'importe quand,
puisque l'heure est passée;——et de l'huile encore
pour la lampe, de eur qu'elle ne s'éteigne au milieu
d'une nuit (p. 124).

The surrounding of moderate, controlled light is the very
basis of his attempt to construct the idealcreative
atmosphere. It is, of course, a failure from the first
line: "quoique ce soit 1e jour" shows the futility of his
attempt. Several points about this recurring dependence
upon attenuated light deserve mention. Light in this
passage is as important to Walter's life as sleeping and
eating: lamp oil is listed here as one of three requisites.
It is, if anything, more important than the other two,

the only essential item commented upon and justified. And
there is both pursuit and avoidance involved in seeking
the middle course between light and darkness. Walter must
first of all attenuate the natural extremes, byr imposing
obstacles between solar light and his vision, in this case

his curtain. Secondly, he must attempt to alter even what

succeeds in piercing the disruptive filter, by substituting

39

artificial light which he can control for solar light
which escapes personal control. Avoidance of extremes is
the first requisite, and substitution of a controllable
environment is the second.

Walter thus normally seeks physical surroundings of
half-light, shaded from extremes of light and darkness.
Time and light are intimately connected in his mind, as
the preceding attempt to suspend time indicates, and the
pursuit and avoidance of different light-environments
result in the limitation of times of day. He avoids
bright noon and afternoon, times of intense light, spoken
of only twice in the Cahiers. "Pour éviter les apres-midi
mornes, se coucher au milieu du jour, quand la chaleur
accable" (p. 144), Walter writes to himself at one point.
Afternoon here is bleak, gloomy, a time to be gotten
through by whatever means possible. His only other refer-
ence to daytime comes shortly after the first: "Tout le
jour, je les avais fait rire, follement rire. Puis le
soir est venu; je suis remonté tout seul dans ma Chambre.
Je me suis assis, l'esprit inerte" (p. 157). Daytime is
set off, apart from evening in this, the only description
of how a full day was spent. It is disruptive and
exhausting, detrimental to the inner life.

But night with its total darkness is not more pleasant

than day with its disruptive light. For one who avoids

4O

afternoon and its demands that one pay attention to the
exterior world, night should be the best of times, and,
Walter sees this principle: "Comme tu me plairais, 8 nuit!
sans tes étoiles" (p. 64). The reality of night is
different from the foreseen possibility of being alone in

one's self, even very early in the Cahiers: "Que la nuit

 

est silencieuse. J'ai presque peur a m'endormir. On est
seul" (p. 28). Sleep brings dreams, again escaping control
of the consciousness, and Walter fears night for its
hallucinations (as we shall see), not for what might happen
to him physically. Allain too later reflects this same
fear of hallucination, of his own evoked visions in the
night (p. 147). Darkness constantly threatens rather

than reassures, and threats are metaphorically described

in terms of darkness. Walter's sacrifice of Emmanuele

to his mother's dying wish brings on a fear of the unknown,
a vague sense of despair, "1e sentiment de me jeter dans
une nuit obscure" (p. 30). Starless night seems at times
to kill the entire world ("oh! 1e crépe du crépuscule"

[5. 1587), and its depressing influence is inescapable.

The protagonist feels first ill-at-ease in darkness.
expressing a vague and non-specific fear, and gradually
comes to dread night, crying like a child in the

darkness (p. 162).

41

Walter's avoidance of bright day and dark night is
the correlate of his attempt to establish a controlled and
moderate surrounding of light. Shade is to him an essen-
tial sustainer of life. Shade protects, comforts, and
appeases, while light and darkness disrupt and exhaust.

It is not surprising then that Andre Walter should extend
this condition to a continuing metaphor. All that which
filters, reflects, and attenuates reality, protecting
Walter from intellectual and moral extremes, he identifies
metaphorically with the shade which protects him from
extremes of light.

Emmanuéle protects Walter from many things and serves
to attenuate reality throughout the Cahiers. Her very
existence is reflective and indirect, her glance dark and
shaded. 'She exists not on the same level as others, not
as barbare, but as Walter's only kindred being. Only in
hallucination does Walter ever picture her physically:
she lives in his own domain, at the grey area between
light and darkness. Emmanuele's presence is unreal: she
exists by and through others. A dead sister is reflected
in.Emmanuele: "Le soir, je retrouvais son profil disparu
dans l'ombre de ta tete penchée" (PP- 40-41). She
represents more than she exists: a sister, she is also
an extension of Walter's mother. It is by his mother's

wish that Walter leaves Emmanuele, and what Jean Delay

42

calls "angélisme," the beatification of the beloved thus
making her even more unattainable, certainly shows in
Walter's disembodied image of Emmanuele: thus a dead sister's
profile is found in her shadow,placing Emmanuele at two
removes from physical reality. Emmanuele and Walter can
communicate by glance alone: "Tu étais assise dans l'ombre:
pourtant j'ai senti ton regard lorsque je lus" (p. 56).
Her eyes here look out from the dark: they are frequently
sources of darkness in light, as well: "ton ame chante
dans tes yeux sombres," "dans l'ombre humide de tes yeux"
(p. 71). She is a phantom presence, dwelling with Walter
at his own level, but physically almost non-existent: she
reflects a dead sister and mother, and attenuates all
things.

Her name, Emmanuele ("God with us"), reflects Emmanu-
ele's role of reflector and attenuator. She is Walter's
intercessor before the God of whom he feels unworthy, much
closer to God than Walter himself: "elle prie a haute
voix... moi, reculé dans l'ombre, je me sentais si humble!"
(p. 52). Moderating both the supernatural and the natural,
she projects a comforting shade during the day, and serves
also to moderate darkness. Light in darkness brings to
mind a recurring memory of the ideal "baiser immatériel,"
looking with her at the same star: Emmanuele even merges

with the moon and the star in.Walter's mind (p. 145).

43

Eventually, she becomes one of the "invisibles clartés"
in the surrounding darkness (p. 13f). Emmanuele is thus
identified with shade in physical surroundings during

the day and with light serving to disrupt the surrounding
darkness at night. Comforting Walter and interceding

for him, she too belongs to moderate light environments,
but participates causally in their creation.

Andre Walter's other major consolation from the ten-
sion of extremes in prayer. It too is subsumed by the
metaphor of shadeand moderate light. Walter clearly
requires moderate light for the monastic, contemplative
life of prayer. Emmanuele and Walter frequently pray in
surroundings of twilight (p. 52), and the Gospels are read
in a similar environment (p. 37). The image of religion
as shade extends even to the next life: "En toi, Seigneur,
mon ame se confie. Je cherche un refuge a l'ombre de tes
ailes" (p. 120).

Religious thought, prayer, God, and Emmanuele, all
major comforts to Walter, are thus included in a continuing
metaphor of controlled light, shade, and twilight. Andre
Walter consciously recognizes that brilliant light and
profound darkness are disruptive, exhausting, and terri-
fying. Before discussing the parallel to his intellectual
dilemma which this presents, it is necessary to specify the

basic fears underlying his aversion to extremes of light

44

and darkness, in order to analyze these fears as they
relate to intellectual extremes. At times an amorphous

and barely-described fear, occasional passages in the
Cahiers point to more exact bases for this dread of extreme
light and darkness.

Walter's fear of light stems first of all from his
conviction that the real life is inner: "Pas un évenement:
la vie toujours intime-—et pourtant la vie si violente.
Tout s'est joué dans l'ame: i1 n'en a rien paru" (p. 31).
Real, inner life must be private, the life of the mind and
the emotions which passes within the individual, incapable
of being expressed. Life among his fellow men does not
appeal to Walter except momentarily when old dreams of
influence and success are rekindled by a letter from Pierre
(pp. 68-69). He remedies this by hiding it from his
consciousness, sending all his letters to a fictional
address. Of normal everyday occupations surrounding life
at a country estate, not a word is spoken: the world outside
his mind is foreign to this account. With the real world
disappears the afternoon, the time for real-life occupa-
tions, spoken of only twice in the entire book (see above,
p. 39). Daylight leaves him with "l'esprit inerte" (PP.
107, 157), incapable of pursuing the inner life, and thus
reducing him to a life of physical impressions alone, an

animal life unworthy of him. Daylight tends to impress

45

him too heavily, to involve him at least through the senses
with the outside world which has no place in "la vie
intime," and must thus be shunted aside to favor the inner
life. What Walter fears in daylight is reduction: limita—
tion of his inner life at the least, imposition of a mere
animal life when extreme.

Darkness should favor this inner life: "Oh! que pour
contempler, les nuits sont plus tranquilles,-—1es belles
nuits, que les jours d'autrefois" (p. 116). But night
brings terror instead of the expected contemplative atmo-
sphere. Light imposes external reality too heavily, but
darkness inspires dread by imposing inner reality too
intensely. What Walter fears is not the normal primate
fear of losing vision in the darkness, but hallucination,

a new form of sight inSpired by darkness. Dreams he fears
from the beginning of the Cahiers because of their inten-
sity: "La pensée se projette comme sur un fond noir: le
temps a venir apparait sur 1e sombre comme une bande
d'espace. Rien ne distrait fig 1a vision commencée" (p. 28).
Hallucination impresses itself upon the consciousness just
as does exterior reality, with the same reductive effect:
"on n'est plus qu'elle." Walter's major underlying fear is
a dread of being only what he perceives. Reduction, either
to reflective consciousness or to hallucination, is thus
onefear in vision, whether vision of reality from without

of hallucination stemming from within.

46

Accompanying this fear of being reduced to passivity
is the fear of losing control. It is largely a question
of intensity which decides whether vision is agreeable or
dangerous to Walter. Just as exterior reality can at
times be pleasant, when not too intense, hallucination
can be pleasant when desired and controlled: "se la figurer
présente-—oublier les choses-—r§ver" (p. 100). But in
this as in all things, Walter fears losing control in
hallucination brought on by darkness. The eye can even
cause the mind to lose control:

Que l'esprit domine sans cesse; qu'il ne perde pas

pied un instant: tant qu'il est fervent, la chair

est soumise-—mais veille bien qu'il ne faiblisse——

Veillez gt priez gg peur de succomber. Dans la

nuit, quand le regard s'hallucine, 8 Luther jetant

son écritoire contre le demon maraudeur (p. 132).
Again, it is not night-blindness which Walter fears: it is
rather night-vision, hallucination, another form of percep-
tion equally dangerous to those who prefer the inner life.
Even more dangerous is the moment when external and
internal are indistinguishable, when all points of
reference in external reality are lost, and when the
internal needs them in order to function:

La nuit, devant la glace, j'ai contemplé mon image.

Comme surgie de l'ombre, la fragile apparition se

modele et s'immobilise: autour de moi, dans l'ombre

éclairée, des profondeurs de ténebres s'enfoncent.

Je plonge mes yeux dans ces yeux: et mon ame flotte

incertaine entre cette double apparence, doutant enfin,

comme étourdie, 1equel est le reflect de l'autre
et si jg ne suis pas l'image, un fant8me irréel:—-

47

doutant lequel des deux regarde, sentant un regard

identique répondre a l'autre regard. Les yeux

l'un dans l'autre se plongent,-—et, dans ses

prunelles profondes, je cherche ma pensée... (p. 141).
Here the value of both external and internal reality
is questioned, and all that remains at the fine line
between the two is sufficient reason to wonder which
is real and which unreal, or more appropriately which
exists as object in reality. All control is lost, and
this inspires fear.

Reduction to vision (whether normal or hallucinatory,
brought on by light or by darkness) leads to loss of
control, and when Walter loses control, he fears to
discover more than he is willing to discover. At the
point where Allain and Walter become one, both faces of
this single being fear unmasking the emptiness of Emmanuele
by means of hallucination:

Allain a jeté sur l'image un grand drap étendu,
-—dessous elle est emprisonnée,-— je ne 1a vois plus——
mais je 1a sens vivante encore sous 1e drap, derriere
1e voile et je 1a sens, quand je me tourne, qui me
regarde: c'est un souffle entre les épaules.

Eanpéré, i1 1a créverait,-— mais la peur 1e
retient de trouer aussi le fant8me et que 1e néant
n'apparaisse derriere l'apparence brisée. (. . .)

Voilée de noir, au crépuscule, je t'ai vue
accoudée au chevet de mon lit, telle qu'une ombre,
silencieuse. Contre ta main, ta téte était
appuyée, comme lasse-—elle était couverte d'un
crepe.

J'eus peur, et la vision s'évanouit (pp. 141-142).

Walter tries to explain this hallucination scientifically,

using Taine's thoughts upon the subject (p. 142), but the

48

fear of hallucination continues. Frightening as they are,
these hallucinations are the only links with the past: by
evoking Emmanuele's image before him, Walter can retain
some belief in harcontinued existence. This necessary
vision is all that peoples the night, and a final hallu-
cination about hallucination itself disappearing brings
consciousness of what death must be, a night without
dreams:

La nuit, j'ai vu les visions échapées, les visions

du passé s'évanouir. Les souvenirs s'en vont: je

les ai vus fuir. Les souvenirs du passé, les visions,

les formes cheres,-—quand toutes s'en seront allées.

la nuit sera noire. Dans la nue étoilée les images
s'envolent: quand toutes seront envolés, ah! je

pourrai dormir (pp. 166-167).

Fear of hallucination is counterbalanced by fear of there
being no hallucination to interrupt the darkness which
causes it.

In situations of extreme light and especially of
total darkness, Walter thus fears three things: reduction,
leading to a loss of control, which can bring on unwelcome
discovery. In order to avoid these results, he seeks to
exist totally at the grey area between light and dark,
recognizing dawn and dusk as his most comfortable environ-
ments in the outside world, and attempting to fix a con-
trolled level of light. Walter's aversion to bright light

and to total darkness is motivated not by fear of them as

objective phenomena, but by their effect upon his inner,

49

contemplative life. Indeed, their occunence in these
notebooks of a life where nothing was manifested to others
must be as extensions of Walter's interior life. It is
not only as forces acting upon his intellectual and moral
existence that light and darkness appear in the Cahiers

d'André Walter, but also as a construction.§n abyme,

 

paralleling Walter's intellectual position and conduct.
The same reasons and fears which cause him to seek out
atmospheres of shade and moderate light cause him to dwell
at the grey area between moral and intellectual extremes,
where heattempts to fix a midpoint and thus to find
comfort away from the tensions of oppositions. His search
and his self-analysis are like light: they must not be
allowed to attain full intensity, for the same risks
(reduction, loss of control, and unwelcome discovery)
await him at moral and intellectual polarities, as await
him in deep darkness and bright light. Classical unity
prevails in this first Gidian protagonist: he seeks a
light-surrounding which parallels his moral situation.

All that which is most real to André Walter cannot
stand the full light of day: "Par rapport a l'homme:-—il
faut la pénombre ou l'on sente vaguement transparaitre
le mystére" (p. 137). His self, which disappears under
the press of impressions during the day, becomes overly

clear when vision is no longer impression but expression,

50

hallucination stemming from himself. Darkness causes him
to recognize not only the beauty and uniqueness of the
self, but the existence of the enemy within, and finally
to recognize the ephemeral situation of the self. He comes
very close to recognizing the illusory nature of his ideals
under these circumstances, but since the illusions are
necessary to his continued existence, he prefers to keep
them in half-light and half-darkness, where their mystery
is unimpaired. Everything he believes eventually comes
very close to exposure as fraud or illusion, as an analysis
of Walter's ideals will reveal. The protagonist who prefers
shaded and filtered light also prefers shaded, filtered
contemplation of his condition. When the illusory nature
of his ideals and beliefs becomes nearly apparent, contem-
plation is turned aside to another object: the full light
of his own consciousness is never applied, and certain areas
are left enough in mysterious shade to allow them to con-
tinue. It is this which leads to the continuing cycle of
stages in Les Cahiers d'Andre Walter. Some ideals and
beliefs are very nearly exposed more than once, but the
glance is diverted in time to allow them to continue.

André Walter realizes that the ideal cannot rationally
exist with the real. From early on in the C hiers, the
realization that Cartesian separation of body and soul

cannot be completely realized, that body and soul are

51

inseparable and interdependent, comes clearly to him:

Et tu me dis, ami qu'il ne fautlas se soucier

du corps, mais bien le laisser paitre aux lieux

qu'il convoite:-—mais la chair corrompt l'ame, une

fois corrompue! on ne peut mettre du vin pur en

des vaisseaux qui se pourissent! La chair fait

l'ame a soi, si l'ame ne 1a domine d'abord;-—et i1

faut qu'elle l'asservisse (p. 45).
He clearly realizes that the inner ideal very much depends
on the real: fear of reduction to the nearly-animal level
appears here, and the fear of losing control if the body
is not subjugated. He refuses to admit this interdependence
into his credo, and finishes the entry by consciously dis-
regarding it: "Alors romantique parce que mon sang
bouillonne... Tant pis! l'illusion de l'idéal est bonne et
je la veux garder" (p. 45). Whether or not the soul
depends on the body, Walter has refused to decide: he sees
that it must, but averts his glance in time to keep the
illusion of an independent ideal alive. In doing so, he
manifests the third fear of extreme situations, the fear
of making unwanted discoveries. This begins a cycle where
the same problems return, since he refuses to end them by
decision. He sees subsequently that the soul depends on
the body at least for expression:

La triste chose et dont j'ai bien souffert, que l'ame

n'ait, pour révéler ses tendresses, d'autres signes

que les caresses des désirs impudiques aussi: elle

s'y méprend, elle s'y leurre... (p. 66).

But at the same time, by avoiding any extreme choice, he

can separate the two when he finds it tempting to do so:

52

"Non, 1e corps n'est pas un indispensable interprete: il
est des communions plus subtiles, des baisers qu'il ignore,
et les plus suaves caresses s'échangent au-dela des espaces,
-—quand il repose" (p. 99). By remaining at the area
between moral extremes, by refusing to decide whether the
ideal can or cannot exist together with the real, Walter
succeeds in maintaining a precarious balance without resolu-
tion. It is not the lack of possible decisions, but the
aversion to discard any possibility, even a tired illusion,
which prolongs Andre Walter's debate with himself. Just

as when seeking favorable light, Walter gravitates toward
the midpoint between extremes. His indecision, his refusal
to choose, prolongs the dilemma and reinforces the creative
tension, permitting discussion to recur cyclically.

Other ideals supportive to the existence of an inde-
pendent Ideal are very nearly eXposed as incapable of
existing in the real world, but prolonged in Walter's
belief by this same means of refusing to recognize the
illusion as such. Belief in the ideal requires a central
Truth, and Walter realizes that no single Truth can exist:

Tous ont raison. Les choses DEVIENNENT vraies: i1

suffit qu'on les pense.-—C'est en nous qu'est 1a

réalité: notre esprit crée ses Vérités. Et 1a
meilleure ne sera pas celle que la raison surtout
approuve: les sentiments menent l' homme et non pas

les idées. 0n reconnait l'arbre a ses fruits;

doctrine a ce qu 'elle suggere. La meilleure sera

celle qui dira les mots d' amour pour que 1' homme

avec joie se dévoue...: Seigneur. a qui irions- -nous?

Tu as les paroles de la vie éternelle (p. 54, Gide' 3
stress).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

53

He realizes the relativity of truth, the nonrexistence of
any monolithic Truth, but ends the passage by calling to
God for a single belief. The fears here are the same:
reduction of all values to a single lower level, the fear
of losing control (in this case control of salvation by
ignorance of what system he must follow), and fear of dis-
covering the relativity of the absolute, contrary to his
expectations. No final decision is attained. Only by
diverting his contemplation from the relativity of truth,
by retreating from an extreme moral stand, does Walter
retain a possible Truth.

Chastity is Walter's most constant pursuit, the goal
which he finds most elusive and most necessary to his
integrity and salvation. It too comes very near to being
eXposed as fraudulent:

Oui, vanité, la chasteté! Vanité——C'est un orgueil

qui se déguise; pouvoir se croire supérieur, tres

noble au-dessus des autres:-—il ne faudrait pas s'en
douter, que cette chasteté s'ignore.... Si encore
l'on triomphait: mais on ne supprime rien:-—mais 1e

Malin sit8t traqué se transfigure: ainsi que l'an-

tique Protée, on ne vainc jamais qu'une a une toutes

ses multiples formes,——aussit8t 11 se mute presfigieuse-
ment en une délectation plus spécieuse et plus subtile,
et découvre les perspectives tentatrices de sensualités
plus savantes.-—La continence dépravée! comme perver-
sité, c'est assez délicat!-—0 Seigneur! écartez de

moi 1e blasphéme (p. 171).

Walter's fear of reduction shows in the possible equation

of good with evil. Chastity may be only a subtle form of

perversion, reducing the entire moral hierarchy of his

54

credo to a single level. His dread of losing control comes
out in the reference to Proteus: how is one to deal with
Satan when he is impossible to identify? And his final
fear of making an unwanted discovery shows clearly in the
last words of this passage, when he calls to God to spare
him such thoughts. Again, the final lines turn away from
discovery and thus avoid disillusionment. The ideal is
impossible to realize, the real too dreadful to admit, and
Andre Walter continues at the level between extreme choices.

Often, his glance is diverted from these near—revela—
tions to rest upon something seemingly admirable-—philosophy,
music, creative writing, reason—-but the nature of vision
is such that each one of these false idols is nearly over-
turned. The defense is the same in each case, to discon-
tinue the analysis while the illusion yet remains. Reading,
metaphysics, virtue, reason: almost everything Walter finds
admirable, absolute, or ideal dissolves under close scrutiny,
and scrutiny must thus be avoided. Each of these is taken
up in turn, nearly discredited, but set aside in the shade
where it can continue as illusion before its value is
entirely destroyed. Walter's three basic fears, demon-
strated in his light surroundings, are at the base of each
of these refusals to choose.

Reading and reason-—pleasureable evening occupations
in earlier days-— are rejected together in favor of the

soul:

55

La connaissance intuitive est la seule nécessaire.
Par dela les phénoménes aux pluralités contingentes,
contempler les vérités ineffables.——La raison devient
inutile: il faut la répudier pour qu'elle ne vienne
pas, fallacieuse, devant nos yeux hallucinés, lever
ses arguments troubles. Les sciences sont dangereuses,
-car elles exaltent la raison: aprés, elle parle haut
et se veut autoritaire: les lectures l'enorgueillissent
... et de quoi? Quand l'esprit lit, le coeur sommeille,
-—et sa ferveur tiédit sous les poussieres érudites.
Donc, ne plus lire, sinon beaucoup la Bible,-—et

relire doucement quelque sage classique (p. 110).

All that which troubles intuitive knowledge, all which

threatens the ideal, must be avoided if the illusion is

to remain. Since reason cannot attain the ideal, it com-

promises it and must be disregarded. All that favors reason

is equally dangerous. But the search for the ideal fares

no better than reason: "Speculations abstraites: poursuite

de vent, course apres la chimére-—6 le mirage, pendant

la vie, des choses d'au-dela de la vie..." (p. 150). Again,

the reaction is not to discard the frustrating pursuit,

or to regard it as impossible, or even to study it more

deeply and thus to decide. This entry is followed by

praise of ferveur (p. 151), and then by a return to work

on Allain (p. 151). The cycle is permitted to continue

because the direct and penetrating glance is averted before

the illusion can be destroyed, and debate is pushed into

the shadows away from the full light of reason.
This pattern of near-discovery of illusion followed by

resumption of work is frequent. Despair is never far from

full realization of life's emptiness:

56

Que fais-je ici? enfoui dans cette solitude, absorbé
dans la contemplation de mon réve,-—je me consume
moi—meme: il n'en surgira rien.

Stériles, les grands espoirs! stériles, les pensées,
les recherches et les travaux qui font que 1e front se
releve:-—stériles mes tendresses aussi: mes larmes
'coulent sur moi-mEme, elles n'auront console personne.

Sterile aussi ma chair, sterile volontairement,
péniblement, dans la poursuite d'une chasteté vaine.

Inutile-—tout entier: n'avoir rien fait——ne rien
faire... 8 les ambitions d'autrefois!-—toujours 1e
réve des choses sublimes et la realisation d'aucune.

Et maintenant des désespoirs: c'est ca-—des regrets
laches!

Reveille-toi! toi qui dors gt jg releve d'entre
les morts!

Allain est la. Travaille et regimbe——et ne regarde
plus en arriere...(p. 123).

 

From a point very near the abyss of despair, from contem-
plation of lg néant, Walter's attention shifts to Allain
and he continues to work. More and more, as other illu-
sions near destruction due to a penetratinglook, Allain
is the only admirable object, the only worthwhile pursuit
to ease the mind from despair at its condition, and the
mid-point to which Walter retreats after near-disillusion—
ment.
Viture itself, the single ideal pursuit, nearly
dissolves into relativity in an early entry:
Je cherche ou est la vertu?
La vertu serait le bien sans qu'elle le sache...
Oui, sans qu'apres, aupres d'elle, je revendique
des droits a une estime plus grande... (. .
-—Me laisser calomnier, ffit-ce par elle, et
vaincre la révolte de l'orgueil: accepter l'accusa-
tion injuste, sans chercher a s'en défendre, de

sorte qu'elle me oroie pire que je ne suis. Cela
serait superbe! (pp. 82-83).

57

Virtue is self-denying: if it knows itself, it is not
virtue. It must seek non-recognition, non-existence, a
nirvana-state of existence without consciousness of
existence. Further, it is based here on its opposite, on
injustice and misrecognition by others. Virtue is thus
relative, based not even on its self-denying existence in
itself, but on the injustice of Emmanuele. The ideal again
proves relative. But the illusion remains of virtue as a
worthwhile ideal pursuit, and Walter continues to view

it as "superbe."

In each of these cases, Walter approaches the abyss of
despair, but always pulls back at the exact moment when
prolonged concentration would lead the thin illusion to
disappear and to be replaced by lg ggggt. He fears the
discovery of emptiness and avoids the last step which
would lead him to the abyss, just as he fears extremes of
light and darkness. He fears that the surface will be
stripped away to leave nothing behind it, even in his
relationship with.Emmanuele. He believes that she loves
him, and believes that he can penetrate and understand
her soul: "Loin de moi, de nouveau ton esprit dominait
ton ame" (p. 60): "Nous ne pensions plus, nous regardions
penser l'autre, et c'était meme chose" (p. 64): "ton esprit
me dérobait ton ame" (p. 77): "1e regard, transparent, mais

pour nous seuls" (p. 99). In this as in all things, he

58

has no absolute indication, only subjective phenomena which
prove nothing except by his interpretation: "J'ai relu

tes lettres. (. . .) Elles te feraient bien mal connaitre:
si elles étaient 1e seul souvenir que j'ai gardé de toi....
(. . .) Ton esprit en chassait ton ame" (p. 59). In this
last passage there appears the possibility that his love
for Emmanuele is entirely one-sided: only his knowledge

of her soul keeps these letters from showing him that she
sbught to escape from him rather than to commune with him.
Since he knows that souls cannot be transparent and must
rely on the body to manifest themselves ("et les plus
semblables encore demeureront PARALLELES" Z". 68: Gide's
stressg7), he evades the fact that he cannot perfectly
know her soul, and that his own interpretation is again
subjective, far from the absolute. He also has the inti-
mate proof of her glance, the soul's own form of communi-
cation, but this is felt, not proven: "et tu me regardais:
-—je sentais ton regard sans le voir" (p. 85). Emmanuéle's
reciprocal love might well be another of the illusions
surrounding Walter, but this most essential of illusions
must never come close to scrutiny. It remains in the
shadows, and it is only by the uncontrollable vision of
hallucination that he comes near uncovering this most
necessary illusion, when she appears to him veiled and

covered (pp. 142, 169). and he declines to lift the veil,

59

fearing to find only emptiness where he thought to find
ideal love. Here Emmanuele too is very nearly exposed
as illusory, and only turning away before making the final
discovery permits Walter to retain his desired beliefs.
Andre Walter's light-situation is thus in close paral-
lel to his moral and intellectual position. He seeks
actual surroundings of shade and controlled light, finding
comfort in them as he finds comfort in other phenomena
which block, attenuate, and filter forces too intense for
him. Vision brought on by environments of bright light
and total darkness inspires him with dread of reduction,
loss of control, and unwanted discovery. What is true of
vision is true also of his own self-analysis: it escapes
the defined limits of moderation, and threatens to destroy.
In both light and self—analysis, Walter must pursue the
middle ground, somewhere between intensity and absence.
He seeks to control light as he seeks to control discovery,
so that he will not be forced to an extreme, and due to
the same fears. If the epitaph for Allain, "CI—GIT ALLAIN
QUI DEVINT FOU PARCE QU'IL CRUT AVOIR UNE AME" (p. 163) is
meant to reflect upon.Walter's own situation, it is a mis-
taken epitaph. Walter does not cease to exist because he
follows the illusory ideal to the detriment of the real:
he ceases to be because he will not resolve tensions: he

fears the consequences of all decisions and acts, and most

60

especially the inevitable consequences of analytical
discoveries which would destroy his illusions. Neither
his vision nor his mind must rest too long on any object.
The risk is that sustained analysis will discover lg ggggt
behind the apparent and illusory surface. And in this,
the protagonist's light—situation exactly parallels his
situation in the world. His fear of extremes extends to
all things, to acts (even psychological acts) for which
he might be responsible, and to his environment as well.
His light-situation points up his dominant fear as well.
His protestant upbringing makes him the master of his own
fate, and he cannot allow himself to lose control of his

physical situation any more than he could permit the loss

Of his moral self-control. In the end, of course, his

fear is borne out. The madness which overcomes him is a
total loss of control over all mental faculties of distinc-
tion between real and imaginary, and he thus falls into

the situation he has dreaded more than any other.

FOOTNOTES

’lJacques Cotnam, "Le Subjectif de Gide ou les lectures
d'André Walter (l889-1893Lfl Cahiers Andre Gide, I (1969),
pp. 15-113.

2Ibid., p. 20.

3Ibid., p. 40.

4Ibid., p. 34.

5Jean Delay, "En écrivant André Walter," Table Ronde,
98 (février, 1956), p. 12.

 

6O'Brien, p. 43.
7O'Brien, p. 52.

8Renée Lang, André Gide g3_lg pgnsée allemande (Paris:
Plon, 1949).

9O'Brien, p. 45.
IO .
As does A1a1n Goulet, p. 136.
llMondor, p. 26.

12In a letter dated 12 mars, 1891. Quoted by Mondor,
PP- 70-71-

l3Delay, p. 14.
1”Ireland, p. 49.

15O'Brien, pp. 69-70.

61

62

l6O'Brien, p. 55.

17All references to Les Cahiers d'André Walter will
be to the edition in O.C., 1. PP. 27—175. Page references
will appear in the text.

CHAPTER II

THE TRIUMPH OF LIGHT:
LES NOURRITURES TERRESTRES

A fundamental reorientation takes place in the space
of only six years between Les Cahiers d'André Walter and
Les Nourritures terrestres. It is not surprising that
such a sudden transformation would occur in the Protean
Gide, when many artists among his contemporaries, notably
Cezanne and Gauguin, found their perception of color and
light (and consequently of reality as perceived) changed
by their experience of a more intense southern light. By
the time of the publication of Les Nourritures terrestres
in 1897, Gide had on more than one occasion travelled to
the South,1 and his perception was altered by the African
sun to that of an impressionist viewing external light-play.
Gide had of course travelled before to other regions,
spending time in the South of France with his family, and.
once travelling to Spain,2 but the trip in 1893 with Paul
Laurens to Africa was his first escape from both familiar
landscapes and family influences. Iceland, Gide later

stated, could as easily have been his chosen destination,3

63

64

but the warmer southern regions had clearly attracted him
from his childhood, when his favorite readings were from
the Thousand and One Nights.n And he left with specific
ideas on what he would find in travelling: he and Laurens
had fixed certain goals for the trip, and Gide left as
a symbolist "with the deliberate intention of discovering
the imagined harmony."5 What he actually found was a wild
variety of sensations which caused him to re-evaluate his
concept of reality, to turn from André Walter's concen-
tration of the self inspired by Schopenhauer, toward an
open self without limits or boundaries.6 Gide had been a
symbolist acolyte for several years, introduced to Mallarmé
by Pierre Louis, and although some critics feel that he
was at most a "half-hearted symbolist,"7 the experience
of new sensations caused him to break at least with ortho-
dox symbolism by writing Paludes in 1895.8 Paludes was
a satiric attack upon the dry life of literary salons, an
ironic masterpiece with more destructive than constructive
elements, facilitating a clean break with such salons,
but barely hinting at another alternative for living.
It is not a substitute for or an answer to previous ways
of seeing reality, but a parody of them.

Les Nourritures terrestres constitute the first
genuine elaboration of a world-view after ng Cahiers

d'André Walter, and replace the symbolist's transcendental

65

perspective with the impressionist's atomization of reality.
Symbolism and Mallarmé's school influence both Gide's
earlier and later work, but for Les Nourrituggg terrestres
he totally discarded the attempt to transcend reality.

Here he retreats from transcendence and the intrasubjective
to reality's subjective manifestation as sensation. This
is in fact a regression rather than the usual development,
the point of view moving from within the mind to the

retina of the eye: painting at about this time was moving
from subjective impression further into the consciousness,
the last Cézanne capturing potential geometric shapes,
representations of a universe within the mind and indepen-
dent of objective phenomena.9 Andre Walter's light-situa-
tion is the expression of his moral and philosophical
vacillation between ideated absolutes. Ménalque's light
environment, however, is impressionistic and closer to

the two-dimensional creations of the early Cézanne which
present only the subjective sensation as experienced.

Many aspects of André Walter's world-view cannot
persist in the planometric impressionistic universe, where
all is equal, and exterior reality only a flat surface for
light to play upon.10 Darkness loses its significance
since its identity depends solely upon its correlative of
light. André Walter's Chiaroscuro, representing the

warring of polar opposites at all levels of being, becomes

66

in Les Nourritures terrestres a changing pattern of light
which it suffices to experience and to appreciate. The
levelling extends to moral judgment. Andre Walter concep-
tualizes good and evil as moral extremes: Ménalque's
disciple knows only diverse aSpects of a single universal
harmony, where morality is but a pedantic travesty for
those incapable of life. From Andre Walter's quest for
the au-dela of reality, Ménalque's disciple retreats to
the en-dega of reality, where the individual exists at

the subjective level and is important by his uniqueness.

The first few pages of Les Nourritures tegpestres

 

strive to set forth these new and strikingly different
tenets, serving to pull down the symbolic universe of
André Walter and to erect a new point of view, equally
comprehensive and systematic, but with a totally different
perspective. Having established this different angle of
vision in the first book, the writer proceeds to employ
it in the following six books. In studying light and
darkness in Les Nourritures, one must follow first a
qualitative change in angle of vision, then a related
change in degree. Gide first shifts point of view from
symbolist to impressionist perspective: the first book
postulates this new vision of reality. Subsequent to
this transformation and dependent upon it is a gradual

progression toward the finite limits of impressionism,

67

proceeding by increasing levels which it is possible to
follow throughout Les Nourritures terrestres.

The very first lines of this book postulate a position
which seems at first not far from the symbolist principle
of underlying significance: "Ne souhaite pas, Nathanael,
trouver Dieu ailleurs que partout. Chaque creature
indique Dieu, aucune ne 1e révele. Des que notre regard
s'arréte a elle, chaque creature nous détourne de Dieu”
(p. 61).11 This seems reminiscent of André Walter: value
is beyond the particular, in the au-dela. While every-
thing indicates God, nothing serves as perfect indicator.
But that which seems to be a transposition of neo-Platonic
symbolist tenets (God here identifying with.lg ngg)
dissolves almost immediately into pantheism: "Nous ne
savons hélas, en attendant de Le trouver, ou nous devons
adresser nos prieres. Puis on se dit enfin qu'il est
partout. n'importe ou, l'Introuvable, et on s'agenouille
au hasard" (p. 63). Here is a major step back from the
search for transcendence to a more certain pursuit, a more
tangible quarry than the chimera, a retreat by the pro-
tagonist to a southern world filled with colors, sounds,
textures, odors, and tastes. Pantheistic universality
is accessible simply because all which one perceives
participates in the harmonious unity: while a higher order

unifies all individual perceptions, it is in a sense on the

68

same level. The sum of accessible sensation is God, and
any higher level ceases to exist except in quantity. With
the situation of a single level of existence in which
merge the physical concept of nature and the metaphysical
concept of God, all that which created moral conflict in
André Walter dissolves into a single phenomenon, and the
groundwork for an impressionistic attitude toward reality
is laid. In a very few sentences, all is reduced to a
single level, all phenomena are aspects of a single unity,
and worship joins pleasure and pain at a single level,
fervor being the proper attitude toward all experience.

This first book of Les Nourritures terrestres contains

 

the essentials of flattening all of nature to a single
level, a two—dimensional surface, abundantly available
to the impressionistic consciousness. Once the universe
is reduced to a single but multi-faceted phenomenon holding
no Platonic or symbolic significance, the au—dela has
disappeared, and significance must be situated somewhere
within the remaining dimensions. In the first book of
the Nourritures, significance is re-situated within the
consciousness itself: from a universe of "self-nature-
ideal," reduction to pantheistic unity has left only
self and nature. But both of these necessarily exist

in a symbiotic relationship, neither complete without

the other:

69

Mais plut8t les sources seront ou les feront couler
nos désirs: car 1e pays n'existe qu'a mesure que le
'forme notre approche, et le paysage a l'entour, peu
a peu, devant notre marche se dispose: et nous ne
voyons pas au bout de l'horizon: et meme pres de
nous ce n'est u'une successive et modifiable
apparence (p. 2).
Here the consciousness actively creates. Only by being
witnessed subjectively does reality come into being. This
is not the first time that the creative role of subjective
reflection emerges in Gide's writings: as early as the
summer of 1891, his first published work contains a
similar concept of the central role of consciousness, upon
which the landscape depends for its being.12 But in this
arrangement where the final "ne...que" reduces nature to
sensation, consciousness is stressed almost to the exclu-
sion of objective reality, which is not wholly accurate
in the continuing relationship between the two. Conscious-
ness and reality interact, and each both limits and sur-
passes the other: each is infinitely available and
supremacy of the one is only momentary in a continued
interaction. This superiority of consciousness is a stage
in development of appreciation, a stage where distance
still exists. The witnessing individual's integrity is
still complete. and his importance guaranteed by his
distance from the object: "Que l'importance soit dans ton

regard, non dans la chose regardée" (p. 63: Gide's stress).

Complete subjectivity, the removal of importance from

70

outside to the retina of the eye, clearly appears in this
capital sentence: but equally visible is a consciousness
unwilling to lose its integrity by merging with exterior
reality in the act of perception. A line separates "ton
oeil" from "1a chose regardée," and importance is assigned
to the eye alone.

This is just the beginning of fervor, the first step
toward becoming Vision. Impartiality removes the individual
further from previous prejudices, but continues to assure
his primary role in perception. This is not yet fervent
worship of sensation. The next stage diminishes distance,
and effaces the line between thing and eye:

Nathanael, 1e malheur de chacun vient de ce que c'est

toujours chacun qui regarde et qu'il subordonne a

lui ce qu'il voit. Ce n'est pas pour nous, c'est

pour elle que chaque chose est importante. Que ton

oeil soit 1a chose regardée (p. 89).

A new relationship is established here. Even a comparison
of the two sentences, "Que l'importance soit dans ton
regard, non dans la chose regardée," and "Que ton oeil
soit la chose regardée" shows significant development.

A doubt created by separating regard and ghggg in the
former is removed in the latter. Importance disappears,
and with it judgment, which would be rationalization of
the object. Lg regard becomes l'oeil, an equal partici-

pant with lg chose regardée in a single act of perception,

a relationship where neither exists without the other.

71

Any suggestion of separation or individual integrity apart
from perception is gone in the second sentence, in what
seems nearly a mathematical formula of identity. Self
and other appeared to be separate, and are now shown to
be constituent parts of a single act. This removes the
final pretention to hierarchy, and with its removal comes
a totally planometric universe.

The universe reduced to a single level, and the
equality of participants in the act of perception once
situated, a number of resultant changes must occur from
Andre Walter's universe, that of lg vieil homme weighed
down by the accumulation of culture, and Ménalque's world,
that of lg nouvel homme who prides himself in liberation.
One necessary modification is the view of time. André
Walter is a being weighed down by the press of linear
time. He is in search of a lost past, involved in an
attempt to re-create memory intensely, to the point of
making it absolutely present. In this attempt, he recog-
nizes cyclical recurrence (of despair in the dark, of
religious fervor in the right conditions, etc.) but he
also recognizes on-going progress (his progress toward
madness, the gradual completion of Allain, etc.). A
moment's overwhelming presence is to him a matter of
dread, too intense to be withstood. Nathanael's inter-

locutor, on the other hand, recognizes only the moment:

72

"Nathanael, ne cherche pas, and l'avenir, a retrouver
jamais 1e passé. Saisi de chaque instant la nouveauté
irressemblable et ne prépare pas tes joies, ou sache qu'en
son lieu préparé te surprendra une joie ggtgg" (p. 84).
Each instant is now but a framework for new spontaneous
experiences, and "these instants are radically discon—
tinuous."13 The relationship of one moment to all time
is a parallel with the relationship of one object to all
of nature, of one sensation to the sum total: since the
underlying unity is incomprehensible by its size and by
its very nature, it can be appreciated only to the extent
to which the available and comprehensible atom participates
in the organic whole. In this, only the particular moment,
just as the particular object, is available to the con-
sciousness. To attempt transcendence, to try to go beyond
the particular, would thus be foolish as well as futile,
since all of nature and time are appreciable only in their
atomization. Reality is thus no longer static or consis-
tent. and reflects no au-dela: reality is now composed of
unique atoms without significance apart from new experiences
they may offer.

In Les Nourritures terrestres, all ground rules for
a new and intensely different view of reality are thus
laid down from the first chapters. In order to convert

Nathanael, a world-view is first postulated, and then

73

illustrated throughout the remaining books, a surprisingly
traditional and logical proceeding for what the writer
would give as a spontaneous lyrical song to fervor and

the union of consciousness with reality which exists only
through sensation. But Gide saw himself as always capable
of allying such divergent states as passion and lucidity,
lyricism and cold reasoning in his writing,14 and there

is a conscious intent beneath the lyrical prose. Gabriel
Teuler remarks that "Nathanael ne pouvait que feindre de
résister. Il fut créé pour suivre."15 This feigned resis-
tance must be overcome as would any real objection, and
Nathanael, at least, must be convinced to follOW'Ménalque.
Much of what Ménalque teaches depends upon the destruction
of received prejudice, and accompanying elaboration of a
new world-view there is a negative counterpart, destruction
of other preconceptions. Ménalque's disciple finds it

necessary to rase before rebuilding, and the end of the

first book leaves the disciple with a tabula rasa. But

 

this tabula rasa has been cleared for a purpose, and
Nathanael is freed in order that he might follow a specific
interpretation of life, a sort of impressionistic Odyssey
guided by Ménalque's disciple.

In the course of the impressionistic voyage, light
will be all-important: vision experiences only light

itself, since sensation is the only point of contact with

74

reality. Reality and consciousness interact in the only
valid act, perception, and neither can exist without its
counterpart. But to come to the realization that the self
is an equal partner rather than the controlling force in
perception requires an abdication of the self, a levelling
which is beyond the beginner's power. At this point, con-
sciousness retains an element of choice, at least as the
more voluntary of the participants in perception: "Et tu
seras pareil, Nathanael, a qui suivrait pour se guider une
lumiere que lui—méme tiendrait en sa main" (p. 63).
Nathanael must learn to see from his own perspective the
uniqueness of his sensations. Ménalque's disciple doubts
that Nathanael can at this point understand what it has
taken others a lifetime to grasp: "Peux-tu comprendre cela:
toute sensation est d'une presence infinie" (p. 66).
Nathanael must be led through successive stages to gradually
evolve within himself a realization which cannot be imposed
from without. There is qualitative change, a modification
of angle of vision from Les Cahiers d'André Walter to the
end of the first book of Les Nourrltures terrestrgg.
Largely destructive of previous concepts, the first book
leads virtually back to zero. Within the remaining books
of the Nourrltures,there is quantitative change, a gradual
progression toward the ultimate sensation of light with
the consciousness abdicating more and more to impression

as it travels farther south.

75

As the pantheistic statement made at the beginning
of Les Nourritures terrestres is misleadingly similar to a
symbolist statement, so the quality of light from the
beginning is misleadingly similar to the attenuated,
reflected light which André Walter finds necessary.
Ménalque's disciple has consciously disowned Walter's
form of life:

Obscures operations de l'étre: travail latent,

geneses d'inconnu, parturitions laborieuses:

somnolences, attentes: comme les chrysalides et

les nymphes, je dormais: je laissais se former

en moi le nouvel étre que je serais, qui ne me

ressemblait déja plus. Toute lumiere me parvenait

comme au travers de couches d'eaux verdies. a

travers feuilles et ramures: perceptions confuses,

indolentes, analogues a celles des ivresses et

des grandes étourdissements (p. 69).
He makes a conscious association in this passage between
a form of life and a particular intensity of light. Even

the birth of lg nouvel étre is qualified first as a change

 

in appreciation of light rather than in its intensity.
lg vieil homme sequesters, vegetates, waiting for lg
nouvel étre, and finally the change comes upon him
unbidden:

Puis je me réveillais de tres loin, en sueur, le
coeur battant, la téte somnolente. La lumiere qui
s'inflitrait d'en bas, entre les fentes des volets
clos, et renvoyait au plafond blanc les reflets de
la pelouse, cette clarté du soir m'était la seule
chose délicieuse, pareille a la clarté qui parait
douce et charmante, venue entre les feuilles et les
eaux, et qui tremble, au seuil des grottes, apres
qu'on a longtem s senti vous envelbpper leurs
ténebres (p. 70 .

76

Here is no great change in intensity: leaves and water
filter the light, and the shutters are still closed in the
second passage. But there is progression already toward
ferveur, toward the appreciation of sensation, even in

the reductive phrasing of "la seule chose délicieuse."
Importance has now been readjusted, resituated away from
the priorities of lg vieil homme, and this is a first

step toward Vision.

From this level, light intensifies to a stronger level
with the removal from indoors to outdoors. Gone are the
closed shutters, but the intensity of full light is yet
too strong for the apprentice:

Sous 1e soleil tout se pamait. Nous allions chaque

apres-midi nous reposer sous la terrasse, abrités

uipeu de l'extraordinaire éclat du.jour. C'était

le temps ou les arbres a canes, charges de pollen,
agitent aisément leurs branches pour répandre au

loin leur fécondation. (. . .) ...le pollen des
coniferes sortit comme une fumée d'or des branches
p. 72 .

The sun's full light is still too strong at this point,
causing everything to pale and forcing the central
consciousness to seek shelter. But progress is made here
from the indirect light of the previous passage. From
something which can parvenir, s'infiltrer, light has come
to almost full force. It has already begun to take on
body, filling the air as the golden pollen reflects it.
One might also note a transposition of impressionistic

painting techniques in this: "brume," "poussiere," filling

77

space, reflecting and distorting light in a manner

reminiscent of the Impression: soleil levant from which

the mdvement draws its name.16 In such an atmosphere,

light begins to take on an importance beyond any concrete
object which merely serves to reflect it. But for the
moment its existence is still tenuous, gaseous, able
to be disrupted by the slightest breeze.

Still another stage in progression toward the absolute
sensation, the ultimate sense—impression, occurs in Rome:

Ce qui fit ma joie ce jour-la, c'est quelque chose
comme l'amour—-et ce n'est pas 1'amour-—ou du moins
pas celui dont parlent et que cherchent les hommes.
-—Et ce n'est pas non plus le sentiment de la beauté.
I1 ne venait pas d'une femme: il ne venait pas non
plus de ma pensée. Ecrirai—je, et me comprendras-tu
si je te dis que ce n'était la que la simple
exaltation de la LUMIERE? .

J'étais assis dans ce jardin: je ne voyais pas
le soleil: mais l'air brillait de lumiére diffuse
comme si l'azur du ciel devenait liquide et pleuvait.
Oui, vraiment, 11 y avait des ondes, des remous de
lumiere: sur la mousse des étincelles comme des
gouttes: oui vraiment, dans cette grande allée on
efit dit qu'il coulait de la lumiere, et des écumes
dorées restaient au bout des branches parmi ce
ruissellement de rayons (p. 97).

Light continues to solidify in a further stage yet farther
south. Now it has become liquid, filling space, even
creating the space around the central consciousnes. In

a transposition reflective of its modification, it has
become a tactile phenomenon, not merely a visual experience.
It is a liquid capable of intoxicating. Capable also of

assuming material presence, it retains an almost magical

78

protean quality: it can be mousse, ggutte, onde, remous,
heavy or weightless, airy or smothering. From this point
begins a genuine adoration of light, a worship of visual
perception.

The progression here becomes obvious in a matter of
a few pages: Florence is a "ville d'études graves" (p. 96),
in Rome the sudden realization about light's liquidity
occurs, Naples is awash in light and brings to mind a
"petite boutique (de) coiffeur devant la mer et le soleil"
(p. 97). Naples exists in the area between light and sea.
and is remembered only for the sensations collected there.
References of value begin to multiply within the text:
light confers value to objects, makes them what they are.
Light makes precious metals and jewels of all things that
reflect it: "la mer lointaine et que la lune argentait"
(p. 103: my stress): "les tiges de fenouil (l'éclat de
leur floraison d'g; verdi, sous la lumiere d'gg)" (p. 105:
my Stress). From this point forward, each object is judged
on its light reception and reflection: this remains as
the only value judgment, adding to the dislike of property
and fixity which would bring Gide into a polemic with
Barres.

At this moment, when the sensation is strong and its
value established as the only real criterion, a need occurs

to intensify the sensation, either by increasing its

79

intensity or by sharpening subjective receptivity:

Le pain que j'emportais avec moi, je 1e gardais

parfois jusqu'a la demi-défaillance: alors 11 me

semblait sentir moins étrangement la nature et

qu'elle me pénétrait mieux: c'était un afflux du

dehors: par tous mes sens ouverts j'acceuillais

sa presence: tout, en moi, s'y trouvait convié

(p- 117).
Almost as an intoxicating drug, the sensation becomes a
more demanding habit, requiring not only maintenance of
the existing level, but intensification and supplemental
doses. Occasional momentary retreats occur, the writer
returning to his Paris apartment of former times, to
darkness and the lamp (p. 118), but these serve only to
intensify sensation by providing sharper contrast: thus
even a step back serves the development toward stronger
sensation. This level does indeed last longer than most:
twenty-five years are spent in Paris (or fifteen, perhaps)17
in the pursuit of culture,self—improvement, and friendship.
But in the text only a paragraph summarizes these years
(p. 120), a length equal only to the momentary stopover
in Paris which preceded them (p. 118). Since time is
subjective, moments separated, and continuity only acci-
dental, the measurement of days spent doing anything could
only be artificial, and both the one day and the twentya
five years are foreign to the development of sensation.

Ménalque's disciple changes no more in the twenty-five

years than he does in one day, since this discontinuous

80

self "could not preserve into another instant the identity

18

which the first conferred on it." This is, perhaps, a

nod toward the necessity of assuring one's fortune in
order to assure freedom from fixity.

Even after the brief interruption of a quarter of a
century, descriptive technique and fascination with sensa—
tion remain unchanged:

Le ciel était de la couleur de l'or: des ramures
légeres, parties de la terrasse ofi_j'étais, pendaient
vers 1e couchant splendide, ou s'élancaient, presque
sans feuilles, vers la nuit. De la ville montait

ce qui semblait une fumée: c'était de la poussiere
illuminée qui flottait, s'élevait a peine au-dessus
des places ou plus de lumiere brillait. Et parfois...
une fusée...dont les étincelles d'g; pale tombent

(p. 125: my stress).

 

Light is still embodied, nearly concrete because it and
the dust are but a single phenomenon, and still confers
the value of precious objects to all that which it strikes.
Fascination with light seems especially strong in the
changeability of light, in the dynamic surprise of sunset
and rockets in the evening sky. It is as if light is airy.
weightless, in the morning's mist ("brume," p. 127) or
in the evening's dust, and assumes more concrete physical
form under the midday sun, becoming liquid and foam.
Light's value is increasinay the only value, light's
conferred reality the only reality. Even before the
diarist consciously formulates this as a tenet of impres-

sionistic existence, the fact that light alone confers

81

reality shows in the subjective identification of certain
phenomena: "Et nous entrames vers le soir dans une ville
sillonnée de canaux, une ville couleur de l'or ou de la
cendre et qu'on nommait Amsterdam ou Venise, suivant
qu'elle était brune ou dorée" (p. 136). Of all things one
might say of a city, only its capacity for light reflec-
tion gives it true identity. It is merely a collection of
buildings and canals, capable of reflecting light to a
greater or lesser degree, and Amsterdam becomes Venice,
when illuminated by the proper light. Their value is
equal if their light-reception is equal, and the two are
interchangeable.

Although full sunlight at this point is still too
intense for complete comfort, it is now bearable. In
Italy, "1e jour trOp lumineux" (p. 136) can be escaped or
attenuated near "des sources qu'un bosquet de chenes
abritait" (p. 137). Leaves play an essential role,
sheltering from full light, even from moonlight in a
progressive sequence from moonrise to moonset (pp. 141-
142). Gradual progress from shelter to full light develops
in the cinquieme livre with the coming of autumn and the
dying of leaves. References to dead leaves multiply-—
"feuilles rouies" (p. 150), "m'asseoir...parmi les
feuilles mortes" (p. 153), "ses feuilles roussies tom-

baient" (p. 154). Outside light when autumn comes cannot

82

be filtered by leaves, and the writer is left with a
choice between shelter inside or full light outside. He
chooses first the inside, singing the praises of eight
farm buildings: each one is pleasant, but presents only
a limited diversity to the senses, and none long occupies
the impressionistic consciousness. "La derniere porte
ouvrait sur la plaine" (p. 161), and to resumption of the
search for newer and greater intensity of light, in a
nature now without sheltering leaves.

As light progresses in importance and intensity,
its opposite becomes more forbidding. In a single reference
to total darkness, Nathanael's tutor finds absence of light
repulsive: "La lumiere des torches vacille, est oppressée:
puis 11 y a un encroit tellement sombre qu'on se dit:
Non jamais je ne pourrai remonter plus avant" (p. 167).
To be in blackness is to be deprived of the single sensa-
tion which is most overpowering: it closely approximates
non-existence. Self-preservation of the impressionistic
consciousness must dictate a continuous bath in sensation,
and darkness here is inadmissable. Darkness succeeds even
in imparting a "gout d'ombre" (p. 170) to those waters
which light never touches.

Just as the "exaltation de la lumiere" came suddenly
upon the writer in Rome as a sudden revelation of light's

physical and nearly-concrete existence, so light's ability

83

to confer value and reality suddenly formulates clearly in
his passive consciousness, marking another step toward the
ultimate impression.

Ils ne sont pas si brillants que les perles: ils
ne sont pas si luisants que l'eau: les cailloux du
sentier pourtant brillent. Receptions douces de la
lumiere dans les sentiers couverts ou je marchais.

Mais de la phosphorescence, Nathanael, ah! que
dirai-je? La matiére est infiniment poreuse a
l'esprit, acceptante de toutes lois, obéissante!
transparente de part en part. Tu n'as pas vu les
murs de cette cité musulmane rougir 1e soir, s'éclai-
rer faiblement la nuit. Murs profonds ou la lumiere,
durant 1e jour, s'est déversée: murs blancs comme
1e métal, a midi la lumiere s'y thésaurise: dans la
nuit vous sembliez la redire, la raconter tres
faiblement.-—Cités, vous m'avez semblé transparentes!
vues de la colline, de la-bas, dans la grande ombre
de la nuit enveloppante, vous luisiez, pareilles
a ces creuses lampes d'albatre, images d'un coeur
religieux-—pour la clarté qui les emplit, comme
poreuses, et dont 1a lueur suppure autour, comme
du lait.

Cailloux blancs des routes dans l'ombre: receptacles
de clarté. Bruyeres blanches dans les crépuscules
des landes: dalles de marbre des mosquées: fleurs des
grottes de mers, actinies.... Toute blancheur est
de la clarté réservée (pp. l7l-l72).19

From this realization comes the first act of judgment in
the Nourritures terrestres since the désinstruction of the
first book:"J'appris a juger tous les etres a leur capacité
de réception lumineuse: certains que le jour sfirent
accueillir 1e soleil, m'apparurent ensuite, la nuit, comme
des cellules de clarté" (p. 172). This does indeed mark

a further stage in impressionistic development: from the
equality of all forms and varieties stated in the first

book, the writer has passed to an infatuation with light,

84

then to intoxication, then to the point of seeing nothing
else. In judging all by its capacity to reflect light,
the writer has established a single criterion, and formed
from the pursuit of sensation a personal code of sorts.
The code is of course entirely different from that which
he originally destroyed within himself, but a choice of
any criterion is binding, even when the subjective con-
sciousness alone judges without outside interference. From
this moment on, the writer is bounito a course which leads
to the desert, no longer totally free, and certainly less
disponible.

His choice of sensation alone is reflected in a stylis-
tic change. Like the "petites touches" of impressionist
paintings, short phrases are juxtaposed in a disjointed
manner, evoking sensations but making no attempts at
narrative unity or development:

Deux heures.-—Enfants couches. Silence étouffant.
Possibilitg de musique, mais n'en pas faire. Odeur
des rideaux de cretonne. Jacinthes et tulipes.
Lingerie.

Cinq heures.-—Réveils en sueur: coeur battant:
frissons: tgte légere: disponibilité de la chair:
chair poreuse et que semble envahier trop delici-
eusement chaque chose. Soleil bas: pelouses jaunes:
yeux éclos dans la fin du jour. O liqueur de la
pensée vespérale! Déroulement des fleurs du soir.

Se laver le front d'eau tiede: sortir... Espaliers:

jardins enclos de murs au soleil. Route: animaux

revenant des patis: coucher de soleil inutile a

voir—- admiration déja suffisante.

Rentrer. Reprendre 1e travail pres de la lampe

(p- 174).

85

A11 senses are involved here, and the central consciousness,
bombarded by a variety of sensations, has only to record
the impressions received. An absence of finite verbs
stresses both the separation of this moment from all
others, and the passive state of the consciousness, which
has become only a reflector and recorder of sensations.
The sun serves to increase fervor when it ebbs, but with
a proper level already established it proves "inutile."
This is not to say it is unpleasant or unimportant, only
that the sharpened consciousness is already at its most
receptive, and fervor cannot be increased for the moment.
When fervor diminishes, the writer again finds it
necessary to seek novelty and intensification: mere repe—

tition never suffices:

Je ne peux t'expliquer, Nathanael, ce désir exaspéré
de nouveauté: il ne me semblait point effleurer,
déflorer aucune chose: mais ma subite sensation
était du premier coup si intense qu'elle ne s'aug-
mentait ensuite par aucune répétition: de sorte que,
s'il m'arriva souvent de retourner aux memes villes,
aux mémes lieux, c'était pour y sentir un changement
de jour ou de saison, plus sensible en des lignes
connues (pp. 176-177).

Realization comes after the fact: although he has long
sought novelty in sensation, he formulates this fact
clearly for the first time in this sixth book. Repeated
sensation, like a coin passed too often from hand to hand,
becomes less distinct. Even the nomadic life could become

reductive, lose its advantage, if the consciousness is

86

not on guard to seek the new and the different even in
familiar landscapes. Change in a given landscape, although
a subtler form of sensation requiring a more practiced

eye, is not as striking as a new and different landscape.
It is for this reason, and to avoid forming any habit

which might damage disponibilité, that new lands and
landscapes, under new light, must be found.

The writer, gradually progressing toward more extreme
forms of impressionism, comes to realize more about himself
and about his world-view in this sixth book than in any
of the others. He even attempts to define life as he
experiences it, as a symphony of sensations:

-—J'y suis: j'occupe ce trou, ou s'enfoncent:

dans mon oreille: ce bruit continu de l'eau: grossi,
puis apaisé, de ce vent dans ces
pins: intermittent, des sauterelles,
etc.

dans mes yeux: l'éclat de ce soleil dans le
ruisseau: 1e mouvement de ces pins...
(tiens, un écureuil)... de mon
pied, qui fait un trou dans cette
mousse, etc.

dans ma chair: (la sensation) de cette humidité:
de cette mollesse de mousse (ah!
quelle branche me pique?...): de
mon front dans ma main: de ma
main sur mon front, etc.

dans mes narines: ...(chut! l'écureuil s'approche),
etc.

Et tout cela ensemble, etc., en un petit paquet:——
c'est la vie:-—est-ce tout?-—Non! 11 y a toujours
d'autres choses encore (p. 182).

His consciousness is no longer an equal participant with

nature in a single act of perception. Not only has matter

87

been reduced to a receptacle of light, but consciousness
has been reduced to a receptacle of impressions, "ce trou,
ou s'enfoncent" a variety of sensations. It is, at most,
a coordinator, capable of receiving many messages at the
same moment, forming them into a "petit paquet," synchro-
nizing them in a separate instant which is different from
all other "petits paquets" of other moments consisting

of other impressions. He would deny that he has been
reduced to a mere reflective phenomenon: "crois-tu donc
que je ne suis qu'un rendez-vous de sensations? Ma vie
c'est toujours: CELA, plus moi—méme" (p. 182). But what
distinguishes this self from others is wholly a matter of
disponibilité, and the physical impossibility of two selves
filling the same hold in space at the same time. In what
Guérard calls "the dialogue between the impulse to unify
or concentrate the self, and the impulse to destroy and

dissolve it,"20

it is the latter which wins out, though
the self seems reluctant to recognize its dissolution.
The diarist promises to speak of himself at another time,
but states that, "dans ce livre, je ne veux pas faire de
personnalités" (p. 183). To distinguish no personalities
is to reduce all to one. Any elitist prejudices are thus
dismissed, any reductionist fears subordinated to an

attempt to create a perfectly disponible consciousness,

the lowest common denominator. "Et meme moi, je n'y suis

88

que Vision" (p. 183). The individual personality is
inactive and distinguished from others only by its
receptive ability and its wider experience.

Having stated an extreme form of impressionism and
defined his life as such, the writer is even more narrowly
imprisoned in a single possible course of action. He has
already stated goals, progressed to the limits of the
possible, and at least partially exhausted nature's
almost-limitless variety of sensations. To pursue the
new and stronger sensation now requires more effort than
before, and travel beyond the limits of previous experience.
This is what he does in the course cf the seventh book,
making of it the pinnacle of the impressionist Odyssey,
and perhaps the highest point possible in pure impression-
ism, both in style and in sensation.

Impressionistic style dominates the beginning of
this book:

Départ de Marseille. Vent violent: air splendide.

Tiédeur précoce: balancement des mats.

Mer glorieuse, empanachée. Vaisseau conspué par
les flots. Impression dominante de gloire. Souvenir

de tous les départs passés (p. 187).

No sentence is formed here. The first words serve to
situate the description, and are alone in contributing
to the narrative progression. Each of the other disjointed

phrases serves a purely impressionistic purpose, evoking

sense-impressions and proceeding from the exterior to the

89

interior. Verbs are completely absent from this passage,
thus situating the impression as nearly independent of the
consciousness which registers it. The sensation registers
itself, but the "I" is absent from the account.

In the next entry, sentences nearly emerge, but the
separation between sensations continues, forming a transi-
tion between the style above and a subsequent return to
traditional sentences:

Que de fois ai-je attendu l'aube...

... sur une mer découragée...

et j'ai vu venir l'aube, sans que la mer en soir

calmée.

Sueurs aux tempes. Faiblesses. Abandons (p. 187).
This is a momentary regression in the progress toward
stronger sensation. Ménalque's disciple seems to violate
his own caution against seeking the past in the present
or future. Time has been atomized in most of the Nourri-
tures terrestres, and suddenly becomes linear in a moment
of depression. Regret is linked directly to linear time,
without which there can be no comparison or judgment.

And it is an eXpression of regret which brings forth the
first full sentence in the seventh book, the writer ruing
circumstances which keep him from new and unique sensations:

Mer acharnée. Ruissellements sur le pont.

Trépignements de l'hélice.

O! Sueur d'angoisse.

Un oreiller sous ma téte brisée.

Ce soir la lune sur 1e pont était pleine et splendide
-et je n'étais pas 1a pour la voir (p. 188).

90

This last is not a statement of impression. It comes in
upon the impressionistic consciousness and turns it aside
from the impression of the moment. Further reflections
follow this full sentence: the writer makes associations

and finds himself to be "un bouchon-—un pauvre bouchon sur
les flots" (p. 188). This is of course the perfect situa-
tion, to be a cork floating on the waves, perfectly dispon'-
glg and passive. Depressed with sea-sickness and meditation,
he is nearly broughtto denounce his chosen form of life. In
order to remain pure Vision, the writer must go beyond
former sensations, as shown in the phrase "Mon oeil lassé

de voir" (p. 188)m Boredom threatens him, and renewal can
come only from a new set of perceptions. Even the helpless
writer of Paludes sees that "La perception commence au

21 that it is insufficient to

changement de sensation,"
re-experience past sensations.

Repetition at a single level is now totally insufficient,
the worn impression far too indistinct. Nathanael's tutor
has at this moment become blasé, and consciously realizes
it, regretting the time when all things were new and beauti-
ful to him:

N'est-ce pas que je vais retrouver dans l'aurore

Lorsqu'elle paraitra

La saveur qu'elle avait quand j'y voyais encore

Avec étonnement les clartés et les choses?

Quand j'y viendrai laver mes paupieres brfilées (p.191).

But a new level is available in Africa, and the stated hope

91

of renaissance is immediately answered, as if the writer
knew exactly what he required and where to find it: "Tu
n'imagines pas, Nathanael, ce que peut devenir enfin
cet abreuvement de lumiere: et la sensuelle extase que
donne cette persistante chaleur..." (p. 191). With the
coming of a constant, nearly unbearable light, a new level
never before felt, fervor is reborn in Ménalque's disciple.
The change is of course quantitative: light is not new to
him, but the constant abreuvement of light suffices to
renew all sensation. Its heat and constant liquidity are
strikingly new:
Je courus hier au haut des collines qui dominent
Blidah, pour voir un peu plus longtemps 1e soleil:
pour voir se coucher le soleil et les nuages ardents
colorer les terrasses blanches. Je surprends l'ombre
et le silence sous les arbres: je rOde dans la clarté
de la lune: j'ai la sensation souvent de nager, tant
l'air lumineux et chaud m'enveloppe et mollement me
souleve (p. 192).
Light here is appreciated and eXperienced for itself more
than at any previous point in the Nourritures. Yet even
this liquid bath of light is capable of solidification.
Light and honey are linked in a passage: "Eté! couleur d'or:
profusion: splendeur de la lumiere accrue: immense déborde—
ment de l'amour: Qui veut gouter du miel? Les cellules
de cire ont fondu" (p. 197). Light is nearly solid,
capable of building up, of accumulating, and there is for

the first time a reference to its destructive properties

as well as to its abundance. If the writer found it

92

necessary to seek actively nearly any sensation before
his voyage, he discovers that under the African sun no
search is required. New and unique sensations are avail-
able everywhere, and can be collected like honey from the
rocks.

From this level of light, there is only one further
step possible. Nathanael's tutor first praises the oasis,
last outpost of life, then goes on to where only light
itself exists: "Le lendemain, je n'aimai plus que le
desert" (p. 198). Progression in degree again appears,
from the green oasis to the desert villages (p. 199),
where life is possible only at evening and dawn: full
light at midday is destructive, unbearable, but some
remnant of life remains. From this to the caravan (p. 201),
the last remaining nomadic remnant of life before the desert,
there is a thinning-out of life and of objects to reflect
light. Ultimately, beyond oases and villages,

la vie ne triomphait plus du désert-—comme penché

vers cette source de lumiere, déja trop éclatante

et insoutenable aux regards, ai—je tendu vers toi

mes désirs, vaste plaine de lumiere tout inondée——

de torride chaleur... quelle extase assez exaltée,

quel assez violent amour, assez ardent pour vaincre

l'ardeur du désert (p. 202).

Light alone can exist in the desert: but even here the
writer follows a gradual evolution, passing from one level

to the next, from grass to broken rock where life has

been, then to clay desert where simple forms of life are

93

barely possible, and finally to the sand desert, where all
life is totally impossible, where even the caravan is
stOpped (PP. 203—204). Light here is burning, destructive,
in its own element and at full intensity:

Désert de sable-—vie exclue: il n'y a plus la que

la palpitation du vent, de la chaleur. Le sable

se veloute délicatement dans l'ombre: s'embrase

au soir et parait du cendre le matin (p. 204).

This pure sensation indicates nothing but itself. All
mitigating objects, things which light might touch, are
excluded, and light reaches the consciousness directly.

The reflecting self becomes almost negligeable: it and

the dust are the only things existing between sun and

sand, and like the dust it has become completely atomized
and passive. From this point on, no further progression

is possible: this is the ultimage point in linear progress
from discovery of light, to infatuation with it, to its
gradual (and finally complete) domination of the conscious-
ness. Light has overpowered the consciousness in this
progression. At the first realization of perception as

the only authentic act, both consciousness and light
participated equally, each dependent upon the other. But
the progression here favors the exterior phenomenon, since
the impressionistic consciousness must seek stronger levels
of sensation. The writer is gradually tempted to stronger

and stronger levels of light, coming ultimately to the

desert where light is fatally intense, where life is

94

excluded, and where the presence of any consciousness is
completely gratuitous and accidental. Any pretense of
equilibrium between consciousness and the light which
causes sensation is destroyed under the full light of
the desert sun, where light exists in its own domain and
at its full intensity, regardless of whether or not it
is perceived.

This is, of course, destructive of the consciousness
except as reflector of sensation: light, sound, and other
sensation-producing forces have completely dominated it,
and it can no longer exist except to reflect. "Je ne
comprends plus 1e mot: solitude: etre seul en moi, c'est
n'étre plus personne: je suis peuplé" (PP. 209-210). This
is not only a description of the self, it is a definition:
to be is to be peopled, to experience sensations. The
inverse is also true: not to experience is not to be,
non-experience is death. Since time is discontinuous,
"life is radically discontinuous against a background of
death on which these instants (of life) appear as inter-

ruptions."22

In order to live, the interruption must be
continued. But having once attained the ultimate, nearly-
pure sensation of light in its own element, no intensifi-
cation is possible. All that is left is regret of those

times when all was new and when the diarist knew sensations

"si fortes qu'un peu plus et je n'aurais plus pu les

95

gofiter" (p. 210). Bitterness and regret of time passed
occupy the writer: "Attentes. Attentes: fievres: heures
de jeunesse en allées... Une ardente soif pour tout ce
que vous appelez péché" (p. 212). Sensation has been
habit-forming, destructive by its ever-increasing demands,
to the point where nature's infinite variety has totally
exhausted the resources of the reflecting consciousness

to appreciate: "Mes sens s'étaient usés jusqu'a la trans-
parence, et quand je descendis au matin vers la ville,
l'azur du ciel entra en moi" (p. 214). He is now defense-
less against nature's invasions, having retained nothing
of himself apart from his function as mirror of sensations,
and he is equally powerless to intensify sensations or to
seek new ones. Having lived "as though an intense enjoy-
ment of all senses and of every moment might fill at last
certain vacant places of body and spirit,"‘23 he finds
himself irremediably vacant. Ménalque's disciple is,
finally, a martyr to the quest for sensation, a hole which
can no longer be filled.

He is one of the phosphorescent falling stars of the
"Hymne en guise de conclusion," having only a limited
capacity to glow, burning far more brilliantly than most,
but burning out the sooner for that. Roger Martin du
Gard finds that even the book itself could be judged by

this final analogy, placing it among those books which are

96

"Utiles, mais qui n'ont qu'un temps parce que les généra-

24

tions qui en profitent, les usent." If Gide never
returns to this high point of impressionism, it is because,
like Ménalque's disciple, he finds no further possibility
for dépasgement. Having gone to the desert in search of
the pure sensation, no stronger possibility offers itself.
and one more possibility for living has been pursued to

its ultimate on paper. This is the first perfect opposi-
tion of two characters in Gide's writings: Ménalque's
disciple is the opposite of André Walter, but his seed

was within Walter. Choosing each momentarily, Gide chooses

neither permanently, and elements of both survive in his

later works.

FOOTNOTES

lO'Brien lists three trips to Africa prior to publi-
cation of the Nourritures, as do most critics. Jacqueline
M. Chadourne in André Gide et 1' Afrique (Paris: Nizet,
1968), p. 88, refers also to a fourth trip in 1897.

2Chadourne, p. 33.

381 1e Grain ne meurt, in Journal 1939-1949: Souvenirs
(Paris: Gallimard, 195 4), pp. 550- 551.

“Chadourne, p. 17.

5Guérard, p. 8.

6
p. 17.

G. W. Ireland, Gide (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1963).

7Guérard, p. 14.

8Ireland, Gide, p. 13.

9Ortega Y Gasset, "On Point of View in the Arts," in
The Dehumanization of Art and Other Writings on Art and
Culture (Garden City, N. Y. : Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956),
pp. 97- -120, considers this to be the major movement in
modern art.

10That this levelling extends to all art forms and
to all elements of literature has been brought out by
William Barrett, "The Testimony of Modern Art, " in
Irrational Man: a Study in Existential Philosphy (Garden
City, N. Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1962): pp. 42-65.

11All references to Les Nourritures tergestres will

be to the edition in O.C., 11. PP. 55—223. Page numbers
will appear in the text.

97

98

12Gide, "Reflets d'ailleurs," in Lg Wallonnie, juin-
juillet-aout, 1891, quoted by Allain Goulet, pp. 129-130:
"11 me semblait que le paysage n'était plus qu'une
émanation de moi-méme projetée, qu'une partie de moi
toute vibrante-—ou plutat, comme je ne me sentais qu'en
lui, je m'en croyais 1e centre: 11 dormait avant ma
venue, inerte et virtuel, et je 1e créais pas a pas en
percevant ses harmonies; j'en étais 1a conscience meme."

13Ireland, Gide, p. 20.

luMartin du Gard, p. 111.

l5Teuler, p. 18.

16Such atmospheres are frequent in the Nourritures:
see for examples pp. 68, 113, 121, 127, and 167.

17There is some doubt as to which is the actual
duration. The passage is introduced by the sentence:
"Pourtant g vingt—cinq ans, non lassé de voyages, mais
tourmenté par l'excessif orgueil que cette vie nomade
avait fait croitre, je compris ou me persuadai que j'étais
mfir enfin pour une forme nouvelle" (p. 120; my stress).
This is followed by "Durant quinze ans, je thésaurisai
comme un avare" (p. 120; my stress), somewhat later in
the same passage. A later paragraph, just following
these, begins: "A cinquante ans, l'heure étant venue..."
(p. 120; my stress). This is perhaps an intentional
confusion to further stress the subjectivity of time and
the futility of attempting to measure it by standard means.

18Ireland, Gide, p. 22.

19Gide described very similarly his arrival in Tunis
in 1896 in his Feuilles fig Route: "C'était encore, bien
que déja tres abimée par les grands boulevards qui la
traversent, une ville classique et belle, uniforms
harmonieusement, dont les maisons blanchies semblaient
s'illuminer au soir intimement comme des lampes d'albatre.
(. . .) ...au matin 1e blanc devenait rose sur un ciel
lé érement violet. Mais apres les pluies de l'hiver,
les murs végétent; des mousses vertes les couvrent et 1e
bord des terrasses semble celui d'une corbeille de
fleurs." O.C., II, pp. 25-26.

99

20Guérard, p. 34.

21Paludes, O.C., I, p. #04.

22Ireland, Gide, p. 19.

23Guérard, p. 23.

24Martin du Gard, p. 90.

CHAPTER III

FROM DARKNESS INTO LIGHT:
L'IMMORALISTE

It is generally accepted that Gide's fictional charac—
ters were not wholly imaginary, but the expression of some
aspect of his own personality. Usually their characteris-
tics were extended to an extreme which was impractical
in real life, or which theoretically led to an impasse to
which death provided the only solution. Ménalque and
Walter are but two antithetical possibilities, and each
ends in failure. These two fictional characters are in
one sense exclusive; André Walter would find Ménalque's
world-view inadequate and exclusive of all that which he
finds most real in his contemplative life, while Ménalque
would pity Walter's interior existence, and would find it
equally inadequate to his needs. Neither could be imagined
in the moral or intellectual position of his counterpart,
just as neither would seek out the light-surroundings
preferred by his antithetical being. This establish-
ment of opposition between two early Gidian characters
suggests a linear progression from monastic, contempla~

tive life to pronounced hedonism, while in fact each of

100

101

these is but momentary, and the hedonistic pose no more
permanent that the other. There is the grain of Ménalque
within Walter, and the seed of Walter is in.Ména1que as
well, forming thus thesis and antithesis. It is only the
chronological necessity of destroying a pre-existing
Walter-like personality which suggests an advance, rather
than a regression, in the direction of sensual experience:

the Nourritures after all were written after the Cahiers.

 

Ménalque's disciple is well aware of a Walter within
himself, and consciously sets about destroying him. Walter,
as Gide's initial fictional persona, could be evoked without
first destroying another literary personality. Both the

Cahiers d'André Walter and the Nourritures terrestres

 

 

provide sufficient textual documentation to substantiate
the complementarity of these two seemingly exclusive
personalities, and to suggest that light's effect upon
the protagonist is at the foundation of their differences.
In Walter's case, the Ménalque aspect is less evident
because it is repressed. An austere protestant upbringing
could do no less than to turn Walter from the dangers of
worldly and sensual experience. But there are occasional
glimpses of Ménalque-like reactions in entries where the
diarist suddenly becomes nearly lyrical, and even occa-
sional foreshadowings of Ménalque's world-view. Shade

provides comfort to Walter, and it is shade which he seeks

102

primarily. The escape to shade results in part from what
seems an uncomfortably intense reaction to attractive
aspects of light's play ‘upon exterior reality. There

is, at least in his childhood, a naive response to natural
beauty which would do justice to Ménalque and to his
followers: "5 l'éveil des sens j'errais dans les bois,
cherchant les solitudes, plein d'inquiétudes inconnues;
lorsqu'un chant de vent dans les pins balancés me semblait
chanter les langueurs au gré des strophes récitées; que je
pleurais aux feuilles tombantes, aux soleils couchants.

a l'eau fuyante des ruisseaux, et qu'au bruit de la mer

je restais songeur tout le jour" (p. 35). In this passage,
Walter acknowledges at least an awakening of the senses,
although his spontaneity is in part already conditioned by
romantic sentiment. The finality of certain moments——
leaves falling or the sun setting——gives an awareness of
time's flight and its irreplaceability, though not yet
Ménalque's full appreciation of the moment's uniqueness.
Certainly Walter responds, though less frequently and less
intensely than.Ména1que, to natural beauty.

Walter's flight from exterior reality is due to its
incompatibility with the creative life, as well. The
reaction evoked by light playing on nature can be detri-
mental to Allain or to any project. It occupies the mind

as well as the body, and serves to draw the intellect

103

from more serious matters: "Quelque soir, revenant en
arriere, je redirai les mots de deuil...-—mais aujourd'hui
le ciel luit trop gaiement, trop d'oiseaux chantent. J'ai
du printemps plein la téte" (p. 89). Writing is not the
occupation of one whose vocation is to admire nature's
infinite variety. Ménalque, after all, writes nothing:
only a disciple, by an inexplicable literary tendency,
takes time to write in the hope of converting Nathanael.
Walter recognizes the attraction of leaving literature
behind (albeit momentarily) when impressed too deeply with
nature's beauty. He is capable of appreciating the light-
show offered by nature, when he chooses to leave temporarily
his contemplative existence: "Plus t8t levés que les autres,
nous courions vite aux bois, quand le temps était clair.
Il frissonnait sous la rosée fraiche. L'herbe étincelait
aux rayons obliques; dans la vallée que des brumes encore
faisaient plus profonde et comme irréelle, c'était un
ravissement. Tout s'éveillait, chantait aux heures
nouvelles: l'ame adorait confusément" (p. 42). His evoca—
tion of glimmering light and dispersing mist shows an
appreciation of what might easily be an impressionist
landscape. Changeability, light's dynamic nature, is

what fascinates Walter: he and Emmanuéle admire this
spectacle only as long as the light changes, and when

"les teintes s'étaient faits lumieres " (p. 42), they

104

return to sleep. It is the appeal of light's play, and
not of the landscape as object, which attracts Walter,
and the view becomes uninteresting when evenly illuminated.

Walter's sensitivity to light in nature is a unique
response, and he once makes reference to the individuality
of the subjective viewpoint. In doing so, Walter clearly
enunciates another of Ménalque's beliefs, that uniqueness
alone justifies the attempt to express artistically the
subjective experience:

Tous, ainsi, nous vivons dans notre réve des choses;

une atmosphere émanée de nous enveloppe notre ame

et colore inconsciemment notre vision des choses.

Et, comme elle est impenetrable, elle nous entoure

de solitude.-—Et, comme elle est diversement colorée,

chaque vision des choses est individuelle:——l'on ne

voit jamais que son monde et l'on est seul a le voir:

c'est une fantasmagorie, un mirage, et le prisme eSt

en nous, qui fait la lumiere diaprée (p. 103).
Like Ménalque, Walter places the importance of the act of
perception in the eye, and accords less significance to the
perceived exterior reality. The uniqueness of the individu-
al's perception makes it valuable, but also makes it inex-
pressible. Reality is illusion and only the subjective
consciousness serves to supply it with interesting variega-
tion, as it does for Ménalque.

Andre Walter feels the same attraction to purely
sensual experience that Ménalque both feels and lives.

His understanding of the uniqueness of subjective perception

differs from Ménalque's largely in that Walter ordinarily

105

awaits emotional response from sensation while Ménalque
attempts to seize the sense—impression at its source and
in its purest form before subsequent emotional response
is possible. Several basic formulae, almost mathematical
in their brevity, would need only change "emotion" to
"sensation" in order to fit the framework of the Nourri—
tures: "Pas 1e paysage lui-meme: l'émotion par lui causée"
(p. 39): "Multiplier les emotions" (p. 42). When Walter
drops his guard, even his style becomes nearly that of
Ménalque. Infrequent passages in the Cahiers show a
clearly impressionistic style filled with "petites
touches" just sufficient to evoke sensory response.
Travelling with Emmanuele in a carriage, Walter describes
a vision of passing objects upon awakening:
Pendant notre sommeil, on avait allumé les lanternes.
Nous regardions, amusés, la masse obscure des buissons
dépassés surgir de l'ombre: nous cherchions des formes
connues qui nous dissent si la route était longue.
——Puis des bruits de pas: un passant attardé, brusque-
ment éclairé dans une saccade de lumiere:-—et dans
les raies de la lumiere projetée, fuyantes en avant
de nous sur la route, l'ombre des papillons de nuit
ui s'en venaient heurter aux vitres des lanternes.
. . .) Puis enfin l'arrivée, les rires de nouveau,
le foyer, la lampe et le the qui réchauffe (p. 39).
Walter's style in this passage, setting off short fragments
of sentences with commas and semicolons to describe momen-
tary sense impressions, achieves an effect similar to the

other fictional writer's style late in the Nourritureg.

The visual sensations take precedence, but other

106

sense-impressions are briefly mentioned, to constitute a
passage which nearly approximates the symphonic presenta-
tion of simultaneous impressions in the Nourritures. Even
the destructive capabilities of bright light, fully
realized only in the desert, are hinted at by the reference
to moths both here and later in the Cahiers (p. 168).
Ménalque is also not alone in feeling the temptations
of sensual experience. It is to escape from the stain of
worldly attractions that Walter isolates himself. But
just as nearly-impressionistic vision comes to him when
he has just awakened during a trip with Emmanuéle, Ménalque's
life-style comes to him in his dreams:
Cette nuit, pres ue sans dormir, car la pensée était
trop forte, je revais des courses énormes, des
fatigues épuisantes: et, dans un songe plein de
visions, se déroulaient des champs dorés, des pentes
de vallons que fraichit le cours, ombragé de saules,
d'une riviere fuyante. Et dans la riviére je
revoyais les enfants apercus de ***, qui s'y baignent
et plongent leur torse fréle, leurs membres brunis
de soleil dans cette fraicheur envdoppante.-—Des
rages me prenaient de n'etre pas des leurs, un de
ces vauriens des grandes routes, qui tout le jour
maraudent au soleil, la nuit s'allongent dans un
fossé sans souci du froid ou des pluies; et, quand
ils ont la fievre, se plongent, nus tout entiers,
dans la fraicheur des riviéres... Et qui ne pensent
plus (p. 156).
Much of Ménalque's way of life is summed up in this
repressed bision. A varied and beautiful countryside, and
the praises of water bring to mind several parts of the

Nourritures. The joys of life beneath the sun and the

107

rain, blind acceptance of all natural experience without
protection or interference, and the nomadic life are major
parts of Ménalque's creed. Finally, thought itself being
banished by sensual impression in this life of dénuement
closely approximates Ménalque's complete disponibilité,
free from preconceptions.

There is thus much in.André Walter's subconscious
which parallels Ménalque's conscious elaboration of a
life-style, although most of these similarities are
repressed. Walter's appreciation of beauty in reality
is limited, but he is susceptible to light, which can keep
him from writing. His admiration of changing patterns of
light, while infrequent, is fervent. He grasps the indi-
viduality of the subjective view, although his own vision
is largely contemplative. With these qualities and an
attraction to sensual pleasure, Walter possesses all of
Ménalque's faculties, and would seemingly need only develop
his own ferveur in order to become as Ménalque. There are
passages which seem even to foreshadow Ménalque, including
an early fascination with the desert (p. 34). There is
within Walter a subconscious or repressed Ménalque who
most clearly comes to the surface when conscious defenses
are let down, in moments spent dreaming or when barely
awake. Walter's reaction to this aspect of his personality

is decidedly negative, but his efforts to destroy it are

108

half-hearted, perhaps as semi-conscious as the very
existence of a Ménalque striving to get out.

Ménalque's disciple too contains his own antithesis,
a Walter repressed within his being. But in the Nourri—
.£E£2§: because of its chronological position after the
Cahiers, full consciousness of this antithetical aspect
leads the diarist to struggle actively against it, destroy-
ing or dissipating it sufficiently to feel that he has
been successful. A previous chapter has discussed the
destruction involved in the first entries of the Nourri-
tures terrestres. Ménalque refers to an early period of
his life in which he closely resembled Walter: "j'eus
fini mes premieres études, l'esprit las de travail, le
coeur inoccupé, languissant de l'etre, le corps exaspéré
par la contrainte" (p. 113). This is the position in
which Walter might find himself without Emmanuele, an
attitude of frustraion and emptiness. But while Walter
chooses to busy himself with reading and writing to fill
the vacuum, Ménalque and his disciple set about systemati-
cally eradicating any literary tendencies from their lives:
"Tandis que d'autres publient ou travaillent, j'ai passé
trois années de voyage a oublier au contraire tout ce que
j'avais appris par la tete" (p. 61). Walter's bookishness
would offend Ménalque and his disciples, who set them-

selves free of second—hand eXperience by symbolically

109

burning all books. The lengthy "Ronde pour adorer ce que
j'ai brfilé" (pp. 74-76) devotes itself to a cataloguing

of the books which the writer has burned, at least in
himself. A longing "Nathanael, quand aurons—nous brulé
tous les livres!" (p. 76) stresses that the ultimate goal
is to eliminate all unlived, artificially learned knowledge
from one's being. To Walter, who fills his book with
references to Schopenhauer, Hugo, Taine, Goethe, and the
Bible, reading forms the major part of experience.
Ménalque's disciple does not succeed in this as well as
does Ménalque himself, since this book condemning bookish-
ness comes from his pen. He also retains Walter's predilec—
tion for occasionally beginning an entry by dearly stating
that he cannot write today, but continuing that entry long
enough to explain why (p. 65). It is not easy to destroy
this side of the personality-"Cette désinstruction fut
lente et difficile" (p. 6l)-but carried out systematically,
it effectively rids the intellect of the ideas and systems
which fascinated Walter, and frees it for first—hand
experience. This bookishness is but a single side of
Walter's indecision. His sources are impressively numerous
because he hesitates to choose a single author among many,
a single philosophy from a myriad of such systems.

Ménalque too has experienced this painful and sterile

indecision in his early life. Describing the passion

110

which consumed his youth, he says:

La nécessité de l'option me fut toujours intolerable:

choisir m'apparaissait non tant élire, que repousser

ce que je n'élisais pas. (. . .) Je ne faisais jamais
que ceci ou que cela. Si je faisais ceci, cela m'en
devenait aussit8t regrettable, et je restais souvent
sans plus oser rien faire, éperdument et comme les
bras ouverts, de peur, si je les refermais pour la
prise, de n'avoir saisi qu'une chose. (. . .) Choisir,
c'était renoncer pour toujours, pour jamais, a tout

le reste et la quantité nombreuse de ce reste demeurait

préférable a n'importe quelle unité (PP. 111-112).

It is for these reasons that much of youth is wasted.
Incapacity to choose, one of Walter's major characteristics,
is repressed within.Ménalque's fanatic choice of new sensa-
tions at each moment. Walter's fear of reduction provides
a basis for Ménalque's life of dénuement, as well: "De 15
me vint d'ailleurs un peu de cette aversion pour n'importe
quelle possession sur la terre: la peur de n'aussit8t
posséder que cela" (p. 112). Choice of possession assumes
loss of the complete liberty required for nomadic pursuit
of sensation, and the basis of the nomadic life is in
Walter's fear of reduction.

The renaissance of Ménalque's disciple has already been
characterized as an awakening to light, an escape from the
shadows. His remembrance of youth puts him in the same
light-environment as Andre Walter, prior to this rebirth.
Ménalque's disciple visits the Paris apartment where he

spent his studious childhood without opening the shutters

or the curtains, with lamp in hand: "Dans 1a bibliothéque,

111

la plus sombre et la plus silencieuse des pieces, les
livres sur les rayons et sur les tables gardaient l'ordre
ou je les avais places: parfois j'en ouvrais un, et, devant
lg lampe allumée bien que gglfgt lg jgpr, j'étais heureux
d'oublier l'heure: parfois aussi, rouvrant le grand piano,
je cherchais dans ma memoire 1e rythme d'anciens airs"

(p. 118: my stress). The underlined portion of this
passage quotes nearly word—for-word from a previouSLy cited
passage in which Walter sought to suspend time by imposing
strict control over the light in his room. His attempt

to remember piano melodies also points in the direction

of a youth spent as André Walter. As an old man, the
fictional writer regrets his wasted years, and again char-
acterizes them as dark: "Certes oui! ténébreuse fut ma
jeunesse: je m'en repens" (p. 211). It is a previous
personality more suited to the shadows than to sunlight
which Ménalque and his disciple have left behind in their
pursuit of sensation, and much indicates that the adolescent
personality left behind is that of Andre Walter. Bookish-
ness and hesitation, two determining factors in Walter's
personality, must be overcome by Ménalque and by his
disciple before the nouvel etre can be constructed in his
place. Even the life of dénuement and the absolute devotion
to a single option seem to spring from André Walter's

underlying fears.

112

These similarities between André Walter and Ménalque
point up the mutual dependence of two seemingly anti-
thetical and exclusive personalities. Ménalque is but an
adaptation of André Walter to a stronger environment of
light, a personality who rather than maintaining rigidity
and identification in a single environment seeks new
surroundings in order fully to eXplore changes within him-
self, thereby destroying any specific identity except in
terms of a constant evolution. To destroy within himself
all traditional learning is to simplify for Ménalque, to
seek the level of the child or the animal consciousness
where all is new and response not automatic. He becomes
by this process a less complex entity than André Walter,

a being whose reactions are as unconditioned as is humanly
possible. But the lowest common denominator which Ménalque
uncovers after shedding superfluous knowledge and ration-
ality still contains elements of André Walter, laid bare
and caricatured by the importance they assume in a simpli-
fied personality. Ménalque's change, his simplification,
is based on light, on a regression from emotive response
to sensual reaction. To see nothing but light itself is
to deny the reality of objective reality, and hence to
belittle all of social life: roles, possessions, even
identity, lose their rational importance when rationality

fades. Unreasoned response, characterized by a search for

113

more intense sensations (brighter light in the environ—
ment), supplants walter's emotional and mediated response
to physical sensation. Adaptation, rather than complete
replacement, characterizes the interrelationship of Walter
and Ménalque. In a single controlled environment, Walter
assumes rigidity and could be defined in positive terms,
finding no need to evolve. By changing environments
frequently, Ménalque and his disciple become subjects of
evolution and adaptation, defineable only by what they
no longer are. The necessity of adapting to new sur-
roundings in.Ménalque's constant wandering, or the necessity
of wandering to supply new surroundings, simplifies Ménalque.
Ménalque is a simplified personality, reduced to nearly-
animal consciousness, but with traits similar to those of
André Walter. Walter is more complex, as he adds to
Ménalque's traits the complicating factors of reason and
knowledge. But reaction to environment, in which light
is a major factor, contributes greatly to what distinguishes
the one from the other.

Until now, in this study, it has been necessary to
separate the contemplative personality of André Walter
from the hedonistic character of Ménalque. Andre Gide
himself separated them by publishing the Cahiers and the
Nourritures seven years apart, and they seem on several

levels to be mutually exclusive. Andre walter's belief

114

in the ideal would be wholly unsuited to the hedonistic
life, and Ménalque's impressionistic world-view would

be superfluous to Walter's personality. But, as in all
of Gide's creative writing, fictional characters serve to
actualize potential developments of his own personality,
becoming "des possibles qui n'ont jamais été." Andre
Walter and Ménalque stem from the same creative imagination.
and are thus complementary as well as exclusive. Gide
incorporated both of these tendencies into a single fic—
tional personality for the first time in L'Immoraliste.
Michel undergoes in this novel a development which takes
him from a character very similar to André Walter, to one
very near Ménalque, thus further establishing them as
variations on a single individual.

L'Immoralistg can be interpreted as an illustration
of the importance of light-surroundings (one element of
total environment) to the moral and intellectual develop-
ment of the protagonist. In this novel, the entire plot
can be seen in relationship to Michel's adaptation to a
new environment of stronger light, a gradual evolution of
his sensitivity to light, and a consequent modification
of his apprehension of reality. His new view of reality
causes him to assume a new morality, and gives to this
book its title. Michel's consciousness of light and

darkness. his fascination with and progressive dependence

115

upon light impressions, can leave no doubt that this is
an essential element in understanding his development.
By adapting first to the African sun and then to the
darkness of Normandy, Michel explores the relativity of
two moral extremes, and grasps the principle of a purely
subjective moral system. Africa's light brings him to
destroy within himself the northern intellectual, and
leads him to posit Culture as injurious to Life.

Michel's background prior to his marriage is left
largely untreated, as superfluous to the development of a
second self following rebirth. What he was is less impor-
tant than what he has since become. But there are suffi-
cient references to his early life, especially within the
first pages of the narrative, to establish parallels with
the early André Walter, to whom rebirth of this sort was
denied. Michel, in situating the essential role of his
marriage, mentions several major influences in his early
life. One of these is the Huguenottuxringing which estab—
lishes a primary morality within him, against which he must
later struggle: "Je ne soupconnais pas encore combien cette
premiere morale d'enfant nous maitrise, ni quels plis elle
laisse a l'esprit" (p. 373).1 The rigid moral system
instilled within him as a child is reinforced in part
by the equal austerity of his father's life (pp. 373-374).

though this simple life is a matter of convenience rather

116

than of religious scruple. Michel's childhood, like that
of André Walter, is austere, and his morality Huguenot,
though he too is sufficiently wealthy to be spared the
drudgery of earning his livelihood. Michel is, further,
of a bookish mentality, having spent his youth and adole-
scence in the dry pursuit of ancient languages (p. 373)
and among the ruins of fallen civilizations (Pp. 374-375).
These ruins constitutavirtually his only knowledge of the
real world, and he openly admits having reached the age
of twenty-five "ne connaissant rien de la vie" (p. 374).
Michel's future domestic life is preordained at the
deathbed of his single remaining parent (p. 372), though
in an entirely different manner from Walter's; Michel
receives a wife from his father's hands. He is of delicate
health, but unaware of his susceptibility: "La vie trop
calme que je menais m'affaiblissait et me_préservait a

la fois" (p. 374). It is significant that no reference
to light is made in these pages outlining his early life
and moral tendencies, apart from the image of years spent
in secluded study away from the real world, recalling
Andre Walter's isolation. Unaware of natural forces of
all types, ignorant of the world, he is unaware of the
interplay of light and darkness, and his interest in this
external spectacle is rekindled only by manifest contrast

on his wedding trip.

117

France and his early life are identified with gloom
and shadow. Michel and Marceline pass the evening after
their wedding in Paris, and daylight does not enter the
text until after France is left behind. Michel suddenly
remembers a dormant image of Spain, visited with his
father on one of several brief study trips: "divers
souvenirs de Grenade et de Séville me revinrent, de ciel
plus pur, d'ombres plus franches, de fetes, de rires et
de chants" (p. 375). His memories of southern climates
link these climates to a Chiaroscuro of bright skies and
deep shadows, differing from a presumably more uniform
illumination in France. An atmOSphere of differing
morality, of laughter and celebration, furthers the con-
trast with northern austerity and gloom. With the
southern light, Michel begins to find a fascination with
detail and exterior reality previously left unvoiced in
the text: "Marceline était tres jolie. (. . .) Je me
reprochai de ne m'en etre pas d'abord apercu" (p. 375).
His wife seems beautiful to him for the first time under
a more tropical light, although he was previously
unaware of her appearance. His modification is evident
both in this sudden revelation and in the mention of
her clothing, the first physical detail to intrude into
the text. Their marriage really begins under the "ciel
splendide" (p. 376), and they embark in Tunkssomewhat
modified from the state in which they left Marseille.

118

Michel has become more conscious of physical beauty, a fact
directly attributable to the stronger southern sun.

But if Michel is modified by this new climate, he at
first attempts to remain in Africa the austere intellectual
he was in France. What he later considers sottise (p. 376)
leads him to pursue his old interests in a new country,
planning to visit only places of archeological interest.

He, like Ménalque's disciple early in the Nourritures

 

.terrestres, feels the beginningsof a nouvel étre, but his

 

stirrings are too vague to fully explain: "Au toucher de
nouvelles sensations s'émouvaient telles parties de moi,
des facultés endormies qui, n'ayant pas encore servi,
avaient gardé toute leur mystérieuse jeunesse" (p. 376).
He has not been fully transformed to an impressionistic
consciousness, but has begun to feel its attractions. It
is not the nouvel étre, but the pre-existing Michel as
archeologist ill-suited to this climate, which leads him
to physical crisis at Sousse. The light-surroundings in
this scene reflect his incongruous position as a contem-
plative intellectual in a landscape of sensation. Having
misunderstood his surroundings, he finds himself weary,
but assumes that the heat in an area still further south
will remedy this (pp. 375-377)- His eXpectations are
ruined upon finding a cold, forbidding place for which he

is unprepared: "Par quelle puérile confiance en la douceur

119

d'air du Midi, légérement vétus tous deux, n'avions-nous
emporté qu'un chale?" (p. 377). Weather and light violate
his expectations just as he violates by his rigid self-
concept the necessity of adaptation. Michel is as out
of place in this surrounding as is the cold and wearisome
night, and the "jour lugubre" (p. 377) which follws it.
His health is broken by the cold, windy night, and his
first attack comes with the onset of yet another cold
night. It is from Michel himself and from his new sur—
roundings that the attack springs, from his misadaptation
to these surroundings: a combination of these antithetical
forces results in physical crisis. With dawn comes the
end of his first attack, and perhaps his first realization
that light in this environment is his ally against evil
darkness. In many primitive societies illness is explained
as disharmony with the surrounding universe: Michel's
illness clearly seems to eXpress just such a disharmony.
Michel's unsuitability to the African climate thus
finds a physical eXpression in his tuberculous condition.
His convalescence, on the other hand, is a gradual but
complete adaptation to his light-environment, a reduction
to purely animal and sensory life more closely suited to
the African sun. Michel's recovery occurs as a sensitivity
to the powerful light surrounding him, and an accompanying

rejection of darkness. Diagnosed as a terminal patient

120

(p. 379), he nonetheless slowly regains his health. The
first mention of his impending recovery makes two references
to light: "Un jour enfin, comme un marin perdu qui apercoit
la terre, je sentis qu'une lueur de vie se réveillait

(. . .) 1e jour devint pour moi d'une lumiére inespérée"
(pp. 380-381). Day rather than night is the time for this
realization, and Michel first glimpses the possibility of
life as a "lueur" against the background of darkness which
preceded it. His rebirth occurs in a bright, sunlit room
where nothing but the walls themselves reflect the intense
sunlight: "murs blanchis a la chaux, rien aux murs" (p. 38).
As Michel convalesces in this room, the sun itself provides
his only diversion: "La coulérent des jours sans heures.

(. . .) Je regarde. Je vois 1e soleil: je vois l'ombre:

je vois la ligne de l'ombre se déplacer: j'ai si peu a
penser, que je l'observe" (p. 381). He begins in this
passage to recover, but to recover as a new man with a

new morality and with a new surrounding of light. Having
opted for animal sensory life, Michel leaves the light-
environment of André Walter and enters that of Ménalque.
Light comes to him as the only reality, the sensory life

is now the only valuable life, and he chooses to pursue
light in its novel forms. His will fortified in this
resolution by deciding upon specific steps to physically

strengthen himself, he has yet to make the necessary

121

rejection of darkness which accompanies his decision.
Michel does this by waking an entire night, struggling
against darkness: "Enfin, je vis la nuit palir: 1e jour
parut. C'avait été ma veillée d'armes" (p. 385). His
decision becomes heroic by his reference to vigil: Michel
decides to struggle actively against death and darkness,
and to accord himself fully to light.

In recovering, he comes to appreciate fully the
novelty of Chiaroscuro, and to accept it solely as im-
pression, without going beyond sensation to interpretation.
He is, as Ménalque's disciple was in the beginning, a novice
and not yet sufficiently strong to stand the full light
of the desert. Michel's first opening to unfiltered
sensation is a symbolic opening of windows to moonlight
(p. 387). Soon strong enough for short recreational
walks, he strolls in the public gardens, but chooses a
garden shaded by large mimosas, and with benches and
walkways beneath these trees (p. 387). He graSps at least
in a physical sense the adaptation of the Arabs to their
surroundings in seeing that "dés qu'ils ont quitté 1e
soleil, leur manteau blanc prend la couleur de l'ombre"
(p. 387). Shade, while protective, is also mysterious
to Michel after his recovery in light, and he shudders
when entering the "ombre étrange" (p. 387) beneath the

trees, but he also gradually learns to accord himself

122

to various contrastive environments, finally spending a
good night uninterrupted by his illness (p. 390). As
he grows stronger, his appreciation of light grows more
pronounced. Again in the public garden, he begins to see
the gaseous, nearly-fluid qualities of light: "J'entrai
avec ravissement dans son ombre. L'air était lumineux.
(. . .) L'ombre était mobile et légére: elle ne tombait
pas sur le sol, et semblait a peine y poser. 0 lumiére!"
(p. 390). His progression to a sensory, impressionistic
form of life requires a surrounding where exterior reality
is non-concrete, where light and darkness alone reach
his consciousness without being reflected by specific objects
in reality. His moral position and his light—surroundings
progress hand-in-hand; survival of consciousness alone is
his goal, and consciousness alone apprehends sensation
directly as images of light and darkness.) As his health.
improves, and as he adapts to this new morality, Michel
tolerates stronger impressions and goes with Marceline
to another shaded area. but this time closer to the edge
of the desert, where palm trees instead of mimosas serve
to disrupt the desert sun (p. 392).

The new way of life at an animal and sensory level,
which Michel has chosen, results both from.Ménalque's
doctrine of dénuement, here the simplification of all

things by repressing cognitive processes, and from his

123

newfound ferveur. Thought itself is abandoned in Michel's
recovery: "je sentais 1e soleil ardent doucement tamisé

par les palmes: je ne pensais a rien: qu'importait la
pensée? Je sentais extraordinairemen " (p. 392). His
rhetorical question is subsequent to the actual moment
here, for throughout this period Michel is bereft of any
rational reflection upon his new condition, neither
thinking nor examining, and guided only by a "fatalité
heureuse" (p. 399). But there is at least one dogmatic
tenet within his new morality, perhaps an instinctual
reaction rather than a reasoned response: the injurious
properties of darkness. Michel's health first faded in

a setting of gloom and cold, and his newfound health is

but an adaptation to the tropical sun.' With the onset

of cloudy and rainy weather, he must again struggle against
his tuberculosis (p. 394), and his health suffers from

the least disturbance of light: "ma santé, tant8t meilleure
et tant8t pire, chancelait encore au vent froid, s'inquié-
tait de l'ombre d'un nuage" (p. 397). His health is a
direct result of light, his illness a creature of darkness:
to accord himself to light is to regain his health.

Michel surrounds himself with light, and chooses companions
suitable to his new sensory morality, preferring the

impulsive Moktir to any of the other Arab boys.

124

There ensues in the text an alternation of light and
darkness and their accompanying reactions of well-being
and fear. Michel remembers with dread the "fixité
terrifiante des ombres nocturnes" (p. 397). and more
actively pursues sunlight by deciding to tan his body
under the full force of the sun's rays (pp. 399-400, 401).
Shade attracts him in a grove of lemon trees, but he knows
of its danger to his health: "L'ombre était si dense sous
eux, que je n'osais m'y arréter apres la marche qui me
faisait encore transpirer" (p. 400). Away from the sun,
his body suffers (p. 401), in contrast to the peasants
whose bodies become penetrated with light (p. 401). Michel's
gradual adaptation to light reaches completion in his
total exposure to the sun at Ravello. Indicating a phy-
sical change to accompany his moral transformation, he
invites the sun to penetrate and color his body. A fur-
ther symbolic gesture, the shaving of his beard, puts an
end to his past self, and removes the last physical
obstruction which would keep sunlight away from his skin.

Michel's adaptation to light and the moral develop-
ment which accompanies the light change are fully evolved
at this point. Having become a physical, animalistic
consciousness, his former moral self is completely up—
rooted. The ego established as central consciousness

begins to manifest its presumed physical superiority.

125

A drunken coachman endangers Marceline, and Michel's first
demonstration of physical superiority is to attack him.
Michel's completely subjective morality is evident in

a single sentence, "l'étrangler paraissait légitime"

(p. 405). To protect Marceline is to manifest his phy—
sical superiority to her, seconded by the expression of
the sentence, "Ce fut cette nuit-la que je possédai Mar-
celine" (p. 405). The use of "posséder" here implies
superiority, an act done by Michel to Marceline in which
she is less participant than object. He has now surpassed
her in physical strength and health, and the light which
has made him "harmonieux, sensuel, presque beau" (p. 402)
now shows Marceline to be "triste et pale" (p. 406).

With a return toward the north comes a rebirth in
some measure of the old Michel, and with him an interest
in archeology more suited to this northern climate. But
Michel's interest is not unmodified by his new being, and
he seeks and finds a kindred spirit in antiquity in the
young king Athalaric, who reverted to barbarism and
debauchery after his classical education. (p. 407). A
hope for tranquillity in order to pursue these archeo—
logical studies brings to mind La Moriniere, to which
Michel has not returned in many years. An entirely
different light-environment surrounds the Michel who

decides to Spend the summer at the country estate left

126

by his mother. While Biskra and much of Africa are
inundated by light, "La.Moriniere (. . .) est située
entre Lisieux et Pont—l'Evéque, dans le pays le plus
ombreux, le plus mouillé que je connaisse. (. . .) Nul
horizon: des bois-taillis pleins de mystére; ... oh des
pommiers nombreux, quand le soleil est bas, joignent leur
ombre" (p. 409). Since the reborn.Michel was the product
of the African sunlight, he ceases to exist when sur-
rounded by the obscurity of Normandy. The northern dark-
ness is.stressed when.Miche1 and Marceline arrive at
La.Moriniere with the last rays of daylight, and with the
evening fog obscuring the river below (p. 409). Michel
does not resist this new environment, the nouvel étgg
disappearing much more suddenly than he evolved: "tout

le passé soudain se souleva, comme s'il m'attendait et,
me reconnaissant, voulait se refermer sur mon approche"
(p. 410). La.Moriniere's atmosphere reawakens the past
and causes-day and night to be indistinguishable (p. 410).
The major events recorded at the beginning of this stay
in Normandy occur at twilight: Bocage announces his son's
arrival in the evening (p. 411), Charles arrives toward
the end of the day (p. 412). Normandy's clouds seem

to invade even the waters of Michel's estate, making them
murky and opaque (p. 412). Michel lives peacefully in

this atmosphere, tamed as quickly as the horse which

127

Charles undertakes to break. and assuming his burden as
docilely. The studies which he resumes are as perfectly
suited to twilight as is the northern.Michel, who now
reserves the end of the day and the evening for his
intellectual pursuits.

A return to Paris for the winter leaves Michel in a
similar light-environment and in the same intellectual and
contemplative position. Unable to progress further in the
sensual life, Michel meditates on his past in this interior
surrounding, and arrives at the conclusion that culture
and life are mutually exclusive, though culture is born
of life. Their mutually-dependent exclusivity is a
parallel to light and darkness, each excluding the other.
but depending upon the other for identity. Michel becomes
acquisitive in his shaded situation in Paris, luxuriously
furnishing a new apartment in Passy (p. 421). In Paris
even Ménalque exists in a shaded, dimly-lit environment:
"Deux lampes éclairaient la piece, moins que ne le faisait
le foyer" (p. 435). Again the light-surrounding is appro-
priate to Michel's development: however much Ménalque's
counsel might bear upon his future sensual life, Michel's
discoveries in Paris are wholly intellectual, suited to
the shade and to the lamp.

Marceline too has become a shade—figure since the

departure from Biskra. Expected to join.Michel when a

128

fish-pond is being emptied, she fails to appear in the
sun at La Moriniere (pp.lA2-413). She becomes less
interested in life: "Elle prenait autant de joie, semblait-
il, a me sentir vivre, qu'a vivre" (p. 418). Becoming
physically weaker as Michel strengthens, she must lean
upon him as he first leaned upon her (p. 420). As Mar-
celine retreats from life, she is surrounded by deepening
obscurity, receiving guests in a "petit salon moins
éclairé " (p. 430) than the room Michel frequents in Paris,
and reflecting the absence of light in her color. Mar-
celine's miscarriage during Michel's absence also occurs
in a room "peu éclairée" (p. 437), where Michel, upon
returning, is unsure of what he sees. Michel's illness
originally resulted from the absence of sunlight where
he had expected to find it, and he escaped it by gradu-
ally according himself to light and to life. Illness
and darkness go hand-in-hand in this novel, and Marceline's
illness makes of her a creature of darkness and night
(p. 438). Michel even conceptualizes Marceline's ill-
health as a dark Spot upon her, making of her "une chose
abimée" (p. 439).

All concrete things become for Michel "choses abimées"
when their novelty and perfection are marred by use
(pp. 429-430), and this is true for sensation as well.

Returning to La Moriniére, he finds his former diversions

129

inadequate to his current state of evolution, his tastes
having modified in the intervening period (p. 443). But
Michel's sensitivity to the surrounding environment has

not been diminishai and he finds Normandy remarkably
refreshing by contrast to Paris: "11 me sembla que, depuis
l'an passe, je n'avais plus respiré, ou respiré que des
poussieres, tant pénétrait mielleusement en moi l'atmo-
sphére" (p. 440). His sympathetic identification intensi—
fied by his attentions to Marceline, he finds an attraction
to all of nature: "11 me semblait, ainsi, que ma vue ne

ffit plus seule a m'enseigner 1e paysage, mais que je le
sentisse encore par une sorte d'attouchement qu'illimi-
tait cette bizarre sympathie" (p. 441). Michel is no
longer a mere simple observer, but a participant with
nature in the act of perception, where his consciousness
actively contributes to the process of awareness. In Africa.
he found it necessary to accord himself perfectly to light,
the strongest influence in his environment. But Normandy's
atmosphere is one of darkness and obscurity, and he adapts
equally well to this surrounding, seeking out the deepest
shadows as he sought the brightest light in.Africa. And

as he sought out companions most deeply imbued with sun-
light in Biskra, he seeks in Normandy companions well-

suited to the darkness.

130

Seeking suitable companions, he turned in Africa
to Moktir, least reputable and most instinctual of the
Arab boys: in Normandy, he is drawn first to Pierre, an
itinerant given to drink and "uniquement mené par l'in-
stinct" (p. 442). The Heurtevent family, dark and of
Spanish blood, then receives his attention, especially
the younger son,who sings like an African (p. 445). But
Heurtevent is far too secretive to admit Michel into his
confidence, and it is through Alcide that Michel becomes
a poacher on his own land. Michel again feels the pull
of life, reversing his academic conclusions and allowing
life to kill culture within him as darkness kills light:
"Des lors je ne sortis plus si volontiers le jour, ou les
bois vidés m'offraient moins d'attraits. Je tachai meme
de travailler: triste travail sans but (. . .) travail
ingrat, et dont me distrayait soudain le moindre chant,
1e moindre bruit dans la campagne: tout cri me devenait
appel" (Pp. 448-449). A sudden reversal has taken place
in the relative positions of light and darkness with
this modification. If life was closer to those who existed
in the sunlight in Africa, it is closer to those who prefer
the night in Normandy. The description of Africa as a
sunlit, desert place and of Normandy as a rainy, shaded
environment reverses the method of pursuing life, which

is now carried on in darkness. Michel quickly learns

131

the appeal of night: "c'était notre heure, dont je ne
soupconnais pas jusqu'alors la beauté; et je sortais

comme entrent les voleurs. Je m'étais fait des yeux
d'oiseau de nuit. (. . .) La nuit creusait tout, éloignait,
faisait 1e sol distant et toute surface profonde. Le plus
uni sentier paraissait dangereux. 0n sentait s'éveiller
partout ce qui vivait d'une existence ténébreuse" (p. 449).
It is certain from Michel's reaction that the roots of
life are closer to darkness in Normandy as they were closer
to the sun in Africa. Even its effect upon him is similar;
he learns to enjoy the external light-show, the illusory
deepening of all surfaces, and loses as he did in Africa
his cognitive faculties, returning from these forays "ivre
de nuit" (p. 449). There is an appealing and myterious
secrecy about night which gives it the feeling of danger,
and the authenticity of real life.

Total darkness leads to the same result as bright
light: both kill culture because both are more intense
forms of life. The lamplit environment is essential to
Michel's intellectual endeavors, and the seeking of life's
roots in Normandy's darkness disrupts these projects as
completely as did their pursuit in Africa's light.

Michel's subjective morality is unchanged, but the differing
atmosphere of Normandy requires him to seek life in a

changed light—environment. It is a light-environment of

132

nearly-total darkness which permits him to take a second
role directly in opposition to his primary role as master,
and Michel leads two different lives contingent upon
separate surroundings of light. When Charles confronts
Michel, the impossibility of reconciling his two roles
causes him to sell La,Moriniere: but the separation main-
tained by opposing light-environments allowed him to exist
for some time as master in light and as poacher in darkness.
Michel's pursuit of life in darkness is dependent
upon Normandy, and when he leaves La Moriniere, he returns
to the interior, shaded environment where Marceline has
remained since the beginning of her illness. The scenes
of their winter in Switzerland are filled with references
to evening and to night now spent indoors with Marceline.
At Coire, noise keeps them from sleeping at night. They
leave "des avant l'aube" (p. 455). and a single reference
to light during the trip describes nightfall after their
unpleasant journey: "Je revois 1a tombée du jour, la
rapide ascension de l'ombre contre les pentes des foréts"
(p. 455). When the coach stops, "on plonge jusqu'au
coeur dans la nuit.... 0n repart dans la nuit" (p. 455).
Michel is no longer suited to Marceline's element, and
barely recognizes her in the pervasive darkness. In this
surrounding, Michel continues his studies of antiquity,

but now solely as a means of psychological investigation.

133

He qualifies his studies as a "recherche ténébreuse"

(p. 457). and the surrounding gloom and simplicity of
Switzerland allow him to deepen studies from which he was
drawn by the light of Africa and the darkness of Normandy.
Michel is not alone in feeling the effect of surroundings
upon his development: "Honnete peuple suisse! Se porter
bien ne lui vaut rien. (. . .) Sans crimes, sans histoire,
sans littérature, sans arts, ... un robuste rosier, sans
épines ni fleurs" (pp. 457-458). Michel's luxuries in
Switzerland are a poor substitute for the nearly-animal
life of Biskra and La Moriniere, and his surroundings
offer him little possibiity of variety in sensation. Fog
and snow cause the disappearance of the exterior world

(p. 458) and bring Michel back to a life of exclusively
interior satisfactions, reflecting the moderation of light
and morality among the Swiss.

Leaving Switzerland and going south toward the tropi-
cal sun, Michel again eXperiences an intoxication with
light: "La descente en Italie eut pour moi tous les ver—
tiges d'une chute. Il faisait beau. (. . .) Depuis trop
longtemps nous n'avions plus ri qu'a des ombres. (. . .)
Une énorme reserve d'amour me gonflait: parfois elle
affluait du fond de ma chair vers ma tete et dévergondait
mes pensées" (p. 458). This foretaste of southanisunlight

is sufficient to rekindle Michel's ferveur, and when

134

Italy's warmth proves unseasonal, they flee darkness by
travelling still further south: "Alors, pour fuir 1e

froid, nous descendimes plus au sud: nous quittames Milan
pour Florence, Florence pour Rome, Rome pour Naples qui,
sous la pluie d'hiver, est bien la plus lugubre ville que
je connaisse" (p. 459). Michel's constant search for a
warmer, sunnier climate becomes a matter of obsession:

he feels driven by a demon (p. 459). No longer content

to live in northern shadows, he feverishly seeks a brighter
location, a place where sensation is more varied and avail-
able. Michel even attempts now to accord his surroundings
to himself, rather than adapting to his surroundings, by
filling the apartment with almami blossoms (p. 460).
Marceline's tears at the sight of these blossoms bring
Michel to understand that his environment and hers are now
irremediably separated, that her bonheur and his cannot

be the same (p. 461). Michel's needs have changed, and

he requires more forceful stimulation: a formerly beautiful
hotel garden he now finds depressing rather than charming
(p. 461). His guilt at leaving Marceline alone in the
daytime does not prevent him from stealthily creeping out
at right, and he finds the night more brightly lit than
day: "Le ciel, obscur le jour, s'était délivré des nuages:
la lune presque pleine luisait" (p. 461). Michel pro—

gressively seeks a stronger light—environment, embarking

135

on an impressionistic voyage reminiscent of Ménalque's
disciple's in the Nourritures, where thought is suspended
and where he is driven by a desire for increasingly intense
light. His thought has ceased evolving, having become a
doctrine (PP. 459-460), and he now pursues only his
sensual life. Marceline's needs are for the calm, quiet,
and relative gloom of Switzerland, and her health grows
worse as they near the African continent. Michel formerly
grew healthy under the African sun, and he persuades him-
self that Marceline will do the same: "Par quelle aber-
ration, quel aveuglement obstiné, quelle volontaire folie,
me persuadai-je, et surtout tachai-je de lui persuader
qu'il lui fallait plus de lumiére encore et de chaleur,
invoquai-je le souvenir de ma convalescence a Biskra?"

(p. 462). His own desire for desert light overrides Mar-
celine's needs, and the progress toward the south con-
tinues. With it comes a return to instinctual, passionate
life: Michel prefers the worst of people in Syracuse

(p. 463), and would prefer to live as they live. But
even this environment is inadequate to him, obsessed as

he is by the memory of the South (p. 464). Places become
for him only surroundings of light: Naples lost its grace
andcfiarm when it ceased to reflect light, and Tunis seems
to him less a city than an atmosphere: "Tunis. Lumiere

plus abondante que forte. L'ombre en est encore emplie.

136

L'air lui-méme semble un fluide lumineux ou tout baigne,
ou l'on plonge, ou l'on nage" (p. 464). Just as it does
late in the Nourritures, light takes on a fluid quality,
becoming nearly solid, and all of external reality disap-
pears beneath its force.

While Michel is diverted by the plunge into nearly-
unbearable light, Marceline remains in the shade. Michel
recovered by adapting to light, by choosing a purely
animal existence: but his wife is incapable of formulating
a plan for the necessary adaptation, incapable of imposing
a purely egotistical decision upon Michel. As they
journey further south, their distance. from one another
increases. Marceline cannot find a suitable environment
in which to recover, but exists instead alongside Michel
in his most comfortable surrounding. Her survival becomes
doubtful because she requires a quiet, shaded location in
which to recover, and Michel pursues with her the environ—

u‘

ment most suitable to him: a mesure que nous avancions
vers le sud, l'état de Marceline empirait" (p. 462).
Marceline becomes weaker from the heat (p. 465), finds
it impossible to sleep (p. 465), and her illness grows
worse (pp. 466-467). Unsuited even to Italy, she finds
herself progressively deprived of the necessary sur—

roundings in Africa. Michel alone decides on the fatal

trip to Touggourt, and manages somehow to tell Marceline

137

of his decision (p. 467). The trip to Touggourt is a
journey into the desert, where light is at its strongest
and where little exists to reflect it. Moktir accom-
panies them, "heureux comme un roi" (p. 467). Michel

too is perfectly content with the rock and sand under

the desert sun: "A l'oasis je préfére a présent 1e desert—-
ce pays de mortelle gloire et d'intolérable splendeur"
(pp. 467-468). He has found the ultimate sensation of
light, intolerable and even fatal to life. Marceline
alone suffers from this environment: "la surabondante
lumiere fatigue son regard: ce paysage hostile 1e
meurtrit" (p. 468). Forced by Michel from Switzerland

to Italy and then to Africa, she has found herself in—
creasimiy unsuited to the stronger light-environments
imposed by Michel's wanderings, and dies following the
journey. Even in death she remains a shade-figure, buried
by Michel "dans l'ombre d'un jardin privé qu'elle aimait"
p. 470). His only concession to her needs comes subse—
quent to her death.

Michel has at this point reached the end of possible
evolution toward visual sensation, as did Ménalque's
disciple in the Nourritures. His three friends find him
living in the desert, and seemingly incapable of speech
in the light: they exchange few words until nightfall.

Even assembled on the terrace, Michel and his friends

138

admire the landscape, and it is only when darkness is
complete that Michel begins his account (p. 371), which
ends with the coming of dawn (p. 370). At the end of

his story, Michel himself attaches his moral and intel-
lectual development to the climate: "J'avais, quand vous
m'avez connu d'abord, une grande fixité de pensée, et je
sais que c'est la ce qui fait les vrais hommes:——je ne
l'ai plus. Mais ce climat, je crois, en est cause. Rien
ne décourage autant la pensée que cette persistance de
l'azur. Ici toute recherche est impossible, tant 1a
volupté suit de pres le désir" (p. 471). His pursuit

of life leads him to the southern sun, and the sun leads
him to pursue life to the detriment of intellectual efforts.
Throughout his evolution, extremes of light and darkness
were tied to life at its fullest, while the lamp and
shaded environments permitted him to develop and to expand
his theories. At the end of his development even the
thirst for stronger light abandons him, as it would be
impossible to transcend the desert light. He becomes as
Ménalque's disciple, an empty, burned-out body, attempting
to gather what coolness he can by holding pebbles in his
hand (p. 471). Michel's dependence upon sensation leads
him along a linear development which cannot continue beyond
a certain point, and from which he cannot retreat without

retracing his steps.

139

L'Immoraliste thus provides a clear example of
dependence upon light and darkness. Light is important
to Michel, determining whether he will be contemplative
or hedonistic, and determining also the state of his
health. His illness, originally brought on by his incon—
gruity to a new environment, is overcome by gradually
according himself to Africa's sunlight, by exposing him-
self more and more completely to it. Adaptation to the
light requires of Michel a new and totally subjective
morality, which progresses as light increases, and which
is suspended when light diminishes. Contemplative existence
thus resumes when Michel leaves Africa and returns to
Normandy, but he finds that the roots of life are closer
to darkness in Normandy, and adapts even more easily to
a new light-situation. In each of these extreme situations
of light, life succeeds in supplanting culture within
Michel; culture becomes for him the product of an
intolerable moderation in environment. His journey to
the south can be complete only when he once again finds
the full desert light of Morocco, where his new moral
system, rigidly fixed as a doctrine, can exist in the
proper surroundings. Marceline does not adapt as did
Michel in the desert sun, and the incongruity of a creature
of shade existing in this light leads to her death. In

this novel at least, agreement between light-surroundings

140

and moral position seems inviolable; Michel survives only
by according his entire being to his new surroundings,
and Marceline dies because of her presence in an element

to which she is permanently unsuited.

FOOTNOTES

1References to L'Immoraliste are to the edition
contained in Romansi récits, g3 soties: oeuvres lyriques
(Paris: Gallimard, 1958). Page numbers will appear in
the text.

141

CHAPTER IV
LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN SEVERAL LATER WORKS

This study centers upon the early works of Andre Gide,
not because its findings are inapplicable to the later
writings, but because this image essential to Gide's
entire literary creation has its beginnings in André
Walter and in.Ménalque, and because predominant light and
predominant darkness are brought together for the first
time in Michel. Since much of Gide's creative writing
is characterized by recurrence, and since the same themes
and problems return frequently throughout his literary
career, even the early works as a group must be considered
in their developmental importance, and not separately as
an independent unit. Gide's use of light and darkness as
a determining factor to the protagonist and as a parallel
to moral and intellectual position continues in his later
work, and could be traced throughout his literary career.
To do so is beyond the scope of this limited study. but
discussion of several later works is essential here in
order to establish the existence of this image and theme

later in Gide's career. Two later books. La Porte étroite

 

and Les Caves g3 Vatican have been chosen to illustrate

142

143

this, both because of their suitability to analysis of
light and darkness and because of their very different

natures. Lg Porte étroite is a récit, Les Caves g2 Vatican

 

a sotie, and yet both permit the establishment of light
as a construction.gg abyme, a parallel to moral and intel-
-lectual position, demonstrating that Gide relied on this

device in very different genres.

1. Light and darkness in.Lg Porte étroite

 

The parallel of light—situation to metaphysical
posture is consistent throughout Lg Porte étroite, although
the major characters in this novel are descended from
André Walter rather than from.Ménalque, and shade dominates
most scenes. There is, however, a continued dichotomy
between shade-figures and light-figures: they do not
exist within a single personality as they do in L'Immora-
ligtg. Alissa's descendence from two very different
bloodlines fixes her course in life, and her position
between light and darkness is assured by her descendence
from a father who retires from bright light and a mother
who seems uncomfortable in the northern gloom.

Jér8me's family sends him to Fougueusemare because
he is pale and needs the country sunlight (p. 495).1 But

the Bucolin's country estate is a shaded environment, well

144

protected from the sun's rays. Its garden is sheltered
on all sides from the elements, and constitutes nearly
an indoor surrounding, with finite limits, walls, and
a ceiling of branches. The grass is shaded and bounded
by a low wall which allows a view of the farmyard, itself
surrounded by beech trees (p. 496).

Derriére la maison, au couchant, 1e jardin se

développe plus a l'aise. Une allée, riante de fleurs,

devant les espaliers au midi, est abritée contre

les vents de mer par un épais rideau de lauriers

du Portugal et par quelques arbres. Une autre

allée, 1e long du mur du nord, disparait sous

les branches. Mes cousines l'appelaient "l'allée

noire" et, passé le crépuscule du soir, ne s'y aven-

turaient pas volontiers (p. 496).
Walled, secluded, and covered over by trees, Fougueuse-
mare's garden is a shaded place well away from the sun
and the wind. The tiny door which leads from the garden
and from which the novel draws its name, gives the only
exit from the well-maintained and well-protected grounds.
Although this garden seems to protect from natural forces
more than to offer contact with them, the adults prefer
to stroll there only in the evening, when the shade is
still deeper: Jér8me's mother, his uncle. and Miss
Ashburton accompany the children there only in the evening
(p- 496)-

In this atmosphere of attenuated light, a contrast

is constructed between Lucile Bucolin and the others.

She alone among the book's characters is actively involved

145

in seeking novelty in life, and she alone exists largely
in daylight. She is out of place at Fougueusemare, a
Creole born in Martinique (p. 498) upon whom the sun has
left its mark. While the others prefer to walk in the
garden at dusk, Lucile remains alone in the salon (p. 499).
She is set off from the family: "Lucile Bucolin ne prenait
que peu de part a notre vie: elle ne descendait de sa
chambre que passe le repas de midi: elle s'allongeait
aussit8t sur un sofa ou dans un hamac, demeurait étendue
jusqu'au soir et ne se relevait que languissante" (p. 499).
Stifled and bored by life at Fougueusemare, she remains
apart from the others, having little part in the lives
of the children or the adults. In a short background
paragraph (Pp. 498-499), little effort is made to reinforce
the verisimilitude of Jér8me's uncle having chosen to marry
a woman so far from his religious and social tradition,
although his youth and dépaysement at the time may account
for it. The union of these two very different personalities
produces Alissa, Juliette, and Robert, who are thus
descended both from a tropical race and from a northern
one. Alissa is closer to the dark, Protestant side of
her father: she is his favorite (p. 507), and he relies
on her progressively more and more as the novel goes on.
The division between Alissa and her mother is widened

by an extreme contrast in their light-surroundings. in

146

the scene where Jérfime begins to understand Alissa's
dilemma. In his uncle's absence, Jér8me visits the
Bucolin home and glimpses Lucile with two of her children
and a lieutenant unknown to him:

La Porte est ouverts devant laquelle il faut passer:

un rai de lumiére sort de la chambre et coupe le

palier de l'escalier: ...au milieu de la chambre

aux rideaux close, mais ou les bougies de deux

candélabres répandent une clarté joyeuse, ma tante

est couchée sur une chaise longue: a ses pieds,

Robert et Juliette: derriere elle, un inconnu

jeune homme en uniforme de lieutenant. La presence

de ces deux enfants m'apparait aujourd'hui

monstrueuse: dans mon innocence d'alors, elle me

rassura plut8t (p. 503).
While the presence of the two children might be either
monstrous or reassuring, its use in the text is to set
Alissa off from her mother. The other two children are
closer to Lucile than is Alissa, and Alissa's solitary.
suffering is reinforced by this division. Lucile's
environment is consistent with her pursuit of novelty in
life, a surrounding of brilliant light contrasting strongly
with the dark Bucolin family, constantly in mourning and
austerely Protestant. Her light cuts across the shadows
of the corridor, in sharp contrast to the remainder of
the house.

To this clarté joyeuse, Alissa's darkened room serves
as counterpoint. Continuing to the higher floor, Jér8me

pushes the door and surprises Alissa in a dark, mournful

light: "La chambre est déja si sombre que je ne distingue

147

pas aussit8t Alissa: elle est au chevet de son lit, a
genoux, tournant 1e dos a la croisée d'ou tombe un jour
mourtant" (p. 503). This atmosphere of shadow is Jér6me's
first impression of the room, even before he finds Alissa
in the darkness. Her light-situation in this scene
stresses her decision to pursue a wholly interior life
from this moment on, turning away from the variety of
social reality. Alissa avoids even the "jour mourant"
which filters into the room, turning her back to this small
evidence of natural, exterior reality. From this scene
on, Alissa's light is wholly interior: Jér8me finds her
love an "illumination intérieure" (p. 506), and his two
other friendships exist only "éclairées par (son amour)"
(p. 507). "Eclairé par son regard" (p. 525), everything
seems simple, and her smile illuminates (p. 526). As
Emmanuele becomes a source of light for André Walter,
Alissa, by her choice of contemplative life, becomes a
source of muted, interior light. Her exterior surroundings
continue to be shaded and mysterious: Jér8me walking

with Juliette in the garden describes encountering Alissa
at twilight: "nous allions revenir sur nos pas, quand,
sortant de l'ombre, Alissa se montra tout a coup. Elle
était si pale que Juliette se récria" (pp. 519-520). Just
as André Walter, she begins to avoid intensities of all

types, even the corporal presence of Jér8me. Each must

148

become for the other a reflected presence, since Alissa
finds more safety in correspondence than in conversation.
A parallel in light—environment foreshadows the impending
disembodiment by making of both Jér8me and Alissa reflec—
tions in a mirror. Entering her room, Jér8me finds Alissa
attaching a necklace: "elle mettait un collier de corail
et pour l'attacher levait les bras et se penchait, tour-
nant 1e dos a la porte et regardant par-dessus son épaule,
dans un miroir entre deux flambeaux allumés. C'est dans
le miroir qu'elle me vit d'abord et qu'elle continua de

me regarder quelques instants, sans se retourner" (p. 520).
A sensual impression reminiscent of her mother surrounds
this sight of Alissa attaching a coral necklace by candle-
light, but it is attenuated by the mirror, which serves

as a filter and increases the distance between Alissa and
Jér8me. Only on several occasions of extreme self-indul-
gence, when she allows herself to see Jér8me again, does
Alissa reappear in morning or afternoon sunlight.

While Alissa chooses to remain within the dark,
Protestant tradition of her father, Juliette tends more
toward her mother. It is with Alissa, and not with
Juliette, that Jér8me's uncle seeks support, and the
contrastive scene where Alissa cries while her mother
laughs includes Juliette in her mother's company. Juliette

seems incapable of Alissa's austerity, though equally

149

capable of noble sacrifice. The younger sister is
consistently surrounded by light: "L'été, cette année,
fut splendide. Tout semblait pénétré d'azur. Notre
ferveur triomphait du mal, de la mort: l'ombre reculait
devant nous. Chaque matin j'étais éveillé par ma joie:
je me levais des l'aurore, a la rencontre du jour
m'élancais.... Quand je réve a ce temps, je 1e revois
plein de rosée. Juliette, plus matinale que sa soeur qui
prolongeait tres tard ses veillées, descendait avec moi
dans le jardin" (p. 516). Bright morning is more suited
to Juliette than to Alissa, who prefers to lengthen the
evening. Evening, in this novel, is similar to what it
is in Les Cahiers d'André Walter, a time for reading

(p. 508), prayer (p. 509), and death (pp. 511-512), a .
time for contemplative and spiritual activity, but ex-
cluding the joy and beauty of morning. Juliette accom-
panies Jérfime on his morning and afternoon walks in the
garden while Alissa, like the adults of the first few
pages, prefers to walk out only in the evening. Certainly,
light and darkness suggest a contrast between childhood
and maturity in this novel. The seriousness of adult
life contrasts strongly with the sunlit world of children,
and Juliette remains childlike in certain ways while
Alissa seems old even as a child. Better suited to life
than is Alissa, Juliette is more receptive to full light,

and eventually finds contentment in a southern region,

150

enabling Alissa to write, "Je songe a ce radieux pays
dont me parle Juliette" (p. 547). Juliette is capable
of a simple physical life, and she alone in this novel
can carve out a moderately happy existence, lacking in
grandeur but sufficiently contented. Her surrounding of
light reflects this suitability to life in the real,
social world.

Jér8me by his preference of Alissa to Juliette tends
toward the dark Protestant tradition, but not as decidedly
as does Alissa. Lucile Bucolin repels him: even as a
small child he feels "un obscur instinct" (p. 499) which
warns him against her. To serve as narrator to this
story, he must be astride two different levels, capable
of conversing with Alissa and of amusing Juliette. In_
chronological age, in preferences, and in moral and intel—
lectual position he is between Alissa and Juliette.
Incapable in the end of seconding Alissa's sacrifice in
order to seek the narrow path, he is equally incapable
of accepting willingly the purely animal life to which
Juliette gradually becomes accustomed. Involved in the
real world by his military service and by his need to
earn a living, he is but half-heartedly active. The
light-environment changes as he shifts back and forth
between intellectual life and physical life, as it does

when he accompanies Juliette or Alissa.

151

Jér8me alone among these characters seems consciously
and literarily to recognize the parallel of the light which
surrounds him to his moral and intellectual dilemma. He
seems at times to respond instantly and vibrantly to all
extremes and to all situations of light, as when he finds
joy in the summer following his mother's death (PP. 515-
516). Equally reSponsive is his reaction when Juliette,
at nightfall, accepts the suitor she does not love: "La
nuit se fermait dans mon coeur" (p. 539). He again con-
sciously voices the parallel when absent from Alissa:
"L'épais brouillard d'hiver m'enveloppait; ma lampe d'étude,
et toute la ferveur de mon amour et de ma foi écartaient
mal, hélas! la nuit et le froid de mon coeur" (p. 542).

In each of these varied reactions, Jérame responds to

the situations around him, which parallel his own emotional
conflict. In this latter quotation, he approaches the
pathetic fallacy, and at one point in the novel the
light-situation becomes an emanation of his emotion:
J'avancais lentement: 1e ciel était comme ma joie, chaud,
brillant, délicatement pur" (p. 561). Jérame thus shows
certain romantic tendencies, but whether correspondence
between his actual moral position and surrounding light
are due to the pathetic fallacy or to a pronounced sensi-
tivity to natural phenomena is a moot point. The light

which surrounds him changes as his position changes,

152

going from the bright light of childhood and hope to the
obscure night of despair. He is fully cognizant of the
existing parallel, takes pains to note it in his own
case, and is equally careful to supply the other fic—
tional characters with a light—surrounding indicative of
their differing positions.

If Jér8me himself can leave the intellectual life for
the physical and then return, his love for Alissa cannot.
It is required by her tenacious dedication to the narrow
path of salvation to remain platonic and unexpressed. And
it too is paralleled by a suitable light-environment. The
first scene in which Jérbme feels love and pity for Alissa
(pp. 503—504) has already been characterized as dark and
shaded. Each scene in their love after this is surrounded
by shadow and evening. Even out of doors at midday Alissa
is shaded from the sun: "Le soleil ne tiédissait plus
qu'a peine les espaliers, mais 1e ciel était orientalement
pur. (Alissa) avait le visage encadré, caché presque au
fond d'une grande coiffe zélandaise qu'Abel lui avait
rapporté de voyage..." (p. 525). It is "vers la fin
du jour" (p. 534), and when "le soir tombait et le brouil-
lard de mer cachait la ville" (p. 536), that Juliette
decides to marry her suitor and thus leave Jér8me to
Alissa. Further details on the obscure lighting abound in

the text: the Christmas tree is "dépouillé, presque

153

éteint" (p. 538), "Le vestibule... n'était plus éclairé"
(pp. 538-539). But Juliette's sacrifice does not permit
Jér8me's love for Alissa to move into reality; Alissa
requires that it remain repressed. and it continues
between light and darkness.

Only once in the novel do Jér8me and Alissa meet
in full unattenuated daylight, and that surrounding is
totally unsuited to their love. An aunt is responsible
for this unwilling meeting: "11 faisait chaud pour la
saison. La partie de la c8te ou nous marchions était
exposée au soleil et sans charme: les arbres dépouillés
ne nous étaient d'aucun abri" (p. 556). Both find this
direct exposure to the sun particularly unpleasant: the
full light of day offends the vision ("Alissa était
déplaisamment colorée [5. 55747), and touch too becomes
disagreeable under the sun's light: "1a gene de sentir
accrochées l'une a l'autre nos mains moites nous les fit
laisser" (p. 557). This is perhaps Jér8me's first dis—
covery of the irrealizeable nature of their love, and it
is fitting that it come in full sunlight. Their love is
by its nature something to be kept in shadow, only
potential and not to be brought forth into the real world.
Jér8me and Alissa feel ridiculous playing the roles of
fiancés, and would feel equally ridiculous playing the

roles of spouses. Their negative reactions to this

154

meeting require that all future meeting be arranged in
mysterious darkness.

The first scene of Jér8m§s next visit to Fougueuse-
mare again takes place in the evening (p. 567). Alissa
becomes even more closely identified with darkness,
"penchée.vers l'ombre" (p. 567) while she works, and her
eyes lost their lggg; (p. 568). Her room, which Jér8me
enters for the first time in many years, is dark: "L'ombre
bleue des rideaux aus fenétres et autour du lit, les
meubles de luisant acajou, l'ordre, la netteté, 1e silence,
tout racontaint 5 mon coeur sa pureté et sa pensive grace"
(p. 568). Even the obscurity of the room calls to mind
Alissa, identifying her specifically with the twilight
surroundings. A final meeting between the two, three
years later, is filled with progressive references to
evening and shadow: "1e soleil déclinant" (p. 567), "le
soir tombait" (p. 578), and finally Jér8me "sanglotant
dans la nuit" (p. 579). The love which Jér8me and Alissa
have for one another is dependent upon the atmosphere of
evening and shadow, and is suspended by the sun's light
on the one occasion when they unwillingly parade it before
others. Personal and incapable of realization, it takes
shape and continues as a wholly interior phenomenon, a
part of Alissa's life which must exist as she does, at

the area between light and darkness.

155

Alissa's progress, of which this novel is the account,
can be foDowed in its entirety as an evolution from light
to darkness, as she gradually leaves more and more of the
concrete world behind. Her struggle is to repress a
certain side of her nature, that part inherited from her
mother. Her father reminds Alissa that she resembles
her mother (p. 585). and there are, in her, sensitivities
to impression and realizations of the beauty of natural
phenomena which could lead her to Ménalque's school of
thought. She mentally accompanies Jér8me to Italy, but
finds cause for ferveur much nearer Fougueusemare: "J'ai
fait avant-hier, seule, a pied, une énorme promenade a
travers champs, au hasard: je suis rentrée plus exaltée
que lasse, tout ivre de soleil et de joie. Que les meules,
sous l'ardent soleil, étaient belles!" (p. 549). She
comes very near Ménalque's profession of value in the
uniqueness of natural phenomena, seeing a "hymns confus"
in nature, and comes to "ne comprendre plus que l'adoration
comme seule forme de la priere" (p. 549). In this there
is a distant echo of Ménalque, a pantheistic adoration
of nature where onamight adore anything. But Alissa does
not often permit this side of her nature to dominate, and
continually retreats by stages into deeped darkness to
escape this ivresse gg soleil. Her first entries in the

journal which she leaves to Jérfime speak of the natural

156

beauty of Fougueusemare and of spending the early morning
alone in the garden. At this point she considers shadow
mysterious, even pagan: "nos arbres ... abritent, presque
a l'extrémité du parc, une clairiére étroite, mystérieuse
et se penchant au-dessus d'un gazon doux aux pieds, invi-
tant le choeur des nymphes" (pp. 581-582). Natural beauty
has for her a pagan appeal, and darkness is mysterious.
Jér8me too remarks that his female cousis fear the "allée
noire" (p. 496), and refuse to venture there after dark.
But it is a dark and narrow path that Alissa chooses in
her hope of salvation, and light gradually fades from her
surroundings as she turns further to contemplation.

The second notebook begins at a level of shade much
different from the initial light of the first notebook:.
"Sortant chaque soir, vers la tombée du jour, par la
petite porte du potager, je descends l'avenue déja
sombre..." (p. 591). Further references to the darkned
garden at dusk occur frequently (pp. 591-593), in virtually
every entry, after Jér8me's final visit. Increasingly,
the shadows grow deeper: even the dawn, "grise, mouillée
de pleurs" (p. 593), provides no relief. Her final cry
to God is a metaphorical cry from the darkness: "Je suis
dans la nuit: j'attends l'aube" (p. 595). In this
darkness of despair, the sudden revelation of her solitude

appears to Alissa as a sudden éclaircissement accompanied

157

by a shudder of terror. The final appeal of life is here
indicated textually as a light in the darkness of her
freely-chosen contemplative life. There is thus a
deepening of shade in Alissa's environment as she gradually
progresses away from active pursuit of life toward con-
templative perfection of the soul. The degree of dark-
ness in her physical surroundings parallels her moral
progress toward the dark and narrow path of salvation.
In.Lg Porte étroite, light-surroundings are an accu-
rate indication of the degree of commitment to social or
contemplative life. This novel contains a much wider
variety of degrees of dedication to one option or the
other, and provides a finer degree of shading than can
be found in any of the previously discussed works. Lucile
Bucolin, a Creole fond of bright colors and bright light,
is the most devoted to sensation and novelty in life,
the closest to Ménalque. Her daughter Juliette, while
raised in the Protestant tradition, inherits at least her
mother's ability to eXperience life on a nearly-animal
level, and she too appears in surroundings of light.
Jérame, while approaching Alissa's austerity, retains
several common interests with Juliette, including a desire
to travel and thus to expand sensory experience (p. 519):
he is both chronologically and morally mid-way between

Juliette and Alissa. and suited neither to domestic life

158

nor to religious contemplative existence. Alissa, at the
farthest reach of the spectrum, is closest to André
Walter, avoiding intensity of any sort, turning her back
on life in society, and dwelling as Walter does, mid-way
between light and darkness, unable to attain the ideal in
this life, but equally unable to accept Jér8me and thus
to formalize and to destroy a love which seems genuine
only in its potentiality and incapable or existing in the

full light of day.

2. Light and darkness in Les Caves gg Vatican

Les Nourritures terrestres and Les Cahiers d'André
Walter provide insight into the use of light and darkness
as a parallel to moral and intellectual position in the
early Gide. But each supplies only one part of what
must become a continuing interaction. ‘Walter and Ménalque
respond as complementary beings, each choosing and illus-
trating a single alternative. Later, as Gide's works
grew more complex, he could incorporate both thesis and
antithesis into a single framework while yet constructing
this same parallel, as he does in L'ImmoraListe and in
Lg Porte étroite. Because of its ironic nature. ng
ggzgg‘gg Vatican offers a variety of disparate and

contrastive personae, and hence permits the study of

159

this same technique on a yet more intricate level. There
is of course a certain amount of ambiguity inherent in
any part of the nggg'gg Vatican, and the use of light
and visual perception is no exception: at the midpoint

of this novel Anthime Armand-Dubois, himself halfway
between his first conversion and his second, voices

this ambiguity when he exclaims to his brother-in-law,
"Aveuglé, dites—vous! Est-ce vous qui parlez ainsi?
Illuminé, mon frere, illuminé" (p. 772).2 Just what
contitutes vision and blindness is an open question in

a novel where any truth is elusive, where Protos can seem
to be a priest and Amédée Fleurissoire a hero.

Anthime Armand-Dubois, whose name supplies a title
to the first book of the nggg g3 Vatican, presents an.
ironic but consistent example of transformation both in
intellectual attitude and in light-environment. The
light which surrounds him from the beginning of this first
book is transparently linked to "enlightenment:" his
experimentation on rats is performed in an orangerie
(p. 681), and it is in this hothouse that he attempts
to reduce the animal reaction to vegetal response,
thereby striving to upset the medieval hierarchy of souls:
"Anthime Armand-Dubois prétendait simplement réduire en
'tropismes' toute l'activite des animaux qu'il observait.

Tropismes! (. . .) Evidemment l'organisme cédait aux

160

memes incitations que l'héliotrope lorsque 1a plante
involontaire tourne sa fleur face au soleil" (p. 683).
Anthime conceptualizes his reductive experimentation in
terms of an involuntary response to light, seeing this
as the essential and most irresistible of vegetal responses.
As a philosophe, his purpose is to train the light of
reason upon shaded areas of human ignorance: the eighteenth-
century image of idea as sudden light in darkness recurs
consistently to him-—"Tropismes! Quelle lumiére soudaine
émanait de ces syllabes!" (p. 683), "Une lueur traverse
son cerveau" (p. 687). Of course, priests differ with
him on which is light and which darkness, but use the
same analogy: "Combien d'ames les fausses lueurs de votre
vaine science n'ont-elles pas détournées de la lumierer"
(p. 704). A physical environment of light accompanies
this role of scientist, as Anthime takes notes on his rats
each day at noon (p. 684).

Ambiguity and shade begin to surround Anthime with
the arrival of the Baraglioul family, but he remains
consistent: it is he who trains a lantern on.Marguerite's
eye, and thus succeeds in removing the object from her
eye which Julius and others have tried to take away without
success (pp. 691-692). As sceptic, he attempts to ridicule
Julie's childish faith, but succeeds only in embarassing

himself (pp. 692-694). Lamplight and obscurity are the

161

surroundings for scenes of religious devotion. and
Anthime is touched by the scene of Julie with her mother
and her aunt praying in a surrounding of shadows with

the lamp evenly illuminating this sentimental tableau.
Julie's naive faith has cast doubt and shame on Anthime's
position, and has been accompanied by the encroachment

of shade into his surroundings.

The statue of the Virgin which miraculously converts
the sceptic is even more dimly lit, and the text makes
many references to its situation. Veronique, in hoping
to convert her husband, "chaque soir, et sans en manquer
un, brfile, au nom d'Anthime, deux cierges, aux c8tés de
la Madone triviale" (p. 697). Twice more in this same
paragraph mention is made of the candlelight surrounding
the statue. Without this minimal light, Anthime might
ignore the statue, but Véronique and the Church have made
sunathat it is constantly illuminated: "Eclairant la face
exsangue, les rayonnantes mains, 1e manteau bleu, une
lanterne, en face de la statue, mais assez loin en avant
d'elle, pend a un toit de zinc qui déborde la niche et
abrite a la fois les ex-voto accrochés aux cotés des
murs. (. . .) En plus, deux cierges brfilent jour et nuit
devant la statue" (p. 699). It is beneath the dignity
of such a freemason to become angry at a mere plaster

statue, but Anthime responds negatively to the light of

ll llll'lll III I ‘II l'l..ll|. III" II' II

162

the candles: "Anthime n'en veut point précisément a la
Vierge: c'est spécialement aux cierges de Veronique qu'il
en a" (p. 699). Beppo is offered money not to tip the
statue from its alcove, but to extinguish the candles,
which he refuses to do. Anthime's mutilation of the
statue is accidental: his crutch is thrown to put out the
candles, and his initial reaction is not surprise at
having broken a hand from the icon, but frustration that
the candles are still burning: "Par l'enfer! les deux
cierges brfilent toujours. Mais qu'est-0e a dire? La
statue, a la place de la main droite, ne présente plus
qu'une tige de metal noir" (p. 700). His violence is due
to frustration at the candles' flames, a tropisme this
time against light. At the same time when he entered this
twilit area before the statue, Anthime left his rational
role behind. In seeking out the statue which he habitually
avoided, and in irrationally and violently trying to vent
his rage on an inanimate object, he has in a sense recog-
nized the symbolic importance of the Madonna. His role
and his light-environment are altered together.

From midday's full light to lantern light to candle-
light, Anthime's philosophical and moral position has been
increasiqu compromised. It is only in night's nearly-total
darkness that Anthime's world-view is completely reversed

by miraculous intervention. Light's importance to this

163

scene is shown by the way in which it is carefully
established in the text. Awakening to a knock on an
unused door, "Une demi-clarté lui permettait de distinguer
les menus objets dans sa chambre, une douce et douteuse
clarté pareille a celle qu'efit répandue une veilleuse:
pourtant aucune flamme ne veillait. Comme il cherchait

a s'expliquer d'ou provenait cette lumiere, on heurta une
seconde fois" (p. 701). A mysterious, unspecified, unreal
light bathes the room.coming from no natural lamp. As

the apparition enters the room he sees first only an
"obscure embrasure, mais oh, comme dans une niche, voici
que la Sainte Vierge apparut" (p. 701). He comes to see
that the light proceeds from the statue itself, but his
full conversion, like that of Saul, occurs only in the_
blackness of unconsciousness: "Il lui semblait a présent
que cette étrange clarté émanait d'Elle. Mais, quand la
tige de métal entra tout a coup dans son flanc, une atroce
douleur letperca et 11 s'éveilla dans le noir" (p. 702).
Awakening and standing to find himself healed, Anthime
goes to the afioining room where Véronique finds him in

the atmosphere which previously surrounded the statue
itself: "Son Anthime était 15, en face d'elle: il n'était
assis, ni debout: 1e sommet de sa téte, a hauteur de la
table, recevait en plein 1a lumiere de la bougie qu'il
avait posée sur le bord.... Anthime était agenouillé"

(p. 703). He has ceased to be freemason, sceptic, and

164

philosophe, and becomes as the statue itself, a relic of
divine mercy. Assuming this role, he also assumes the
accompanying mysterious surrounding of candlelight.

It is in this position of half-light, of mysterious
and indirect light, that he continues to exist as long as
his conversion continues in force. Julius, visiting in
Rome, is surprised to find Veronique and Anthime living
in squalor, having given up their material wealth, without
resistance but also without specific intention on Anthime's
part. Although Julius visits them during the day, the
obscurity of their surroundings is among the first details
given on their apartment: "0n l'introduisit dans un misé-
rable appartement de trois pieces——si l'on peut compter
pour une piece l'obscure soupente ou Veronique faisait '
elle-meme cuire quelques legumes, ordinaire de leurs
repas. Un hideux réflecteur de métal renvoyait blafard
1e jour étroit d'une courette" (p. 770). Only with the
end of his temporary conversion to near-sainthood does
Anthime re-emerge into daylight. The last time Julius
(or anyone) sees a Christian and sainted Anthime is at
Amédée's funeral. It is not a large funeral, and the
weather is not conducive to large numbers of followers:
"Trois voitures suivaient 1e corbillard. Il pleuvait"

(p. 861). In this rainy, dimly—lit surrounding, further
attenuated by the fact that the scene takes place inside

165

a carriage, Anthime appears in this attitude and in this
atmosphere for the last time, taking God as his witness
that he freely accepted his sufferings (p. 862). Gradually,
Julius succeeds in convincing Anthime that the Pope is
false, and that his sufferings are in vain. In the
course of this scene, Anthime gradually opens again to
the outside, first Opening the carriage window (p. 862).
Finally convinced that Julius is telling him the truth,
Anthime resumes his original position at exactly the same
moment when the light returns: "11 avait cessé de pleuvoir:
un rayon écartait 1a nue. La voiture avec de lents cahots
rentrait dans Rome.——Dans ce cas, je sais ce qui me reste
a faire, reprit Anthime, de sa voix la mieux décidée: Je
vends la méche" (p. 864). Almost immediately, he leans
out of the carriage to touch the driver with his cane,
then gets out into the light, resuming all at once his
environment of light, his ideas, and his newspaper articles.
It is obvious that the meaning of light-surroundings
differs here from the Nourritures terrestres. Anthime's
dedication to a single option in life puts him in daylight
at the beginning and at the end, but his choice is not
to live hedonistically. Anthime dedicates himself to
freemasonry, to science, and to rationality. This moral
and intellectual choice casts him in a social role, a

real-life role characterized by midday's light. He does

IF I I I!

166

not seek novel atmospheres or strong light as does
Ménalque, and light in his case seems transparently tied
to enlightenment.

There are other parallels of light-environment to

 

moral and intellectual position in Les Caves g3 Vatican.
Almost every character in this ggpig finds himself in
light which directly parallels his interior state. Laf-
cadio, deciding to answer a few questions put to him by
Julius, first goes to the window and raises the curtain,
allowing illumination of the dark room and of his personal
life (usually kept secret) at the same moment (p. 736).
Light surrounding Lafcadio becomes changeable and ambiguous
just before he kills Amédée: Lafcadio reacts negatively

to Amédée's efforts to dim the lights (p. 828), and even
decides to kill Amédée only if he sees a light gleaming
in the dark countryside (p. 829). Amédée Fleurissoire

is an unlikely activist in the fraudulent campaign to

free the Pope: Amédée is unused to travel and lives
contentedly in his still-unconsummated marriage. Like
André Walter in the Cahiers who also retires from physical
activity, Amédée finds both light and darkness uncom-
fortable, but because the one brings mosquitos and the
other attracts bedbugs (pp. 775-780). The strong light

of Rome makes him dizzy (pp. 809-810) and uncomfortable

(p. 816), as (hes the loss of his bearings in an unstable

167

physical world filled with sinister vagaries and constant
flux. Julius de Baraglioul, a writer who retires from
real life in order to develop fictional accounts, keeps
his back to the sun in Rome (p. 816), and usually appears
in a surrounding of lamplight (PP. 700, 707, 708, 843).
Protos alone violates this rule as he violates the others,
and is equally comfortable in all surroundings; but he
alone has no single moral or intellectual position which
an environment of light might reflect.

Les Caves g3 Vatican is among Gide's most ironic works,
and contains numerous satires of himself. Protos, Julius.
Amédée, and Lafcadio each parody some part of Gide's own
personality. The heavy-handed, ironic use of light in
this book seems to be another form of satire, a satire of
the artist at work. Stylistic parodies and irruptions of
the author into the text lend humor to the style by their
sudden violation of vraisemblance, and serve to remind
the reader of the satiric nature of the nggg g3 Vatican.
In much the same way, light is used here not to create a
favorable atmosphere, but to point actively at the novel's
mask, indicating that this too is merely another technique.
Nothing could be less subtle than the sudden reappearance
of the sun when Anthime decides to "vendre la méche,"
and nothing could be more predictable than Amédée's

discomfort in the light of day. But Gide's ironic use

168

of light in this ironic text underlines the importance of
light-environments to his previous work. Satire here is

a matter of caricature, stressing to the point of
incredibility a single aspect of one personality, and

the author's use of light too is caricatured by its obvious

incidence throughout the text.

FOOTNOTES

1References to Lg Porte étroite are to the edition
contained in Romans; récits, g3 soties: oeuvres lyriques
(Paris: Gallimard, 1958). Page numbers will appear in
the text. ’

2References to Les Caves 93 Vatican are to the
edition contained in Romansi récitsi,g§ soties: oeuvres
lygigues (Paris: Gallimard, 1958). Page numbers will
appear in the text.

169

CONCLUSION

The light which surrounds the central consciousness
in Les Cahiers d'André Walter and in Les Nourritures
terrestres is intended to reveal the metaphysical state
of this consciousness. Gide was careful to provide for
André Walter a surrounding of moderate. filtered light
parallel to Walter's tense position between moral and
intellectual extremes, drawn by both extremes in every
situation but fearful of any intensity. André Walter
consciously recognizes the suitability of physical shade
to his character, and constructs an imagery of shade to
express the comfort he finds in intercessors between
himself and all forces. Further, he makes of moderate
light an ideal dream, imagining a surrounding of perpetual
light which does not cast shadows. Attempting to control
his intellectual state, he begins with moderate light in
an interior setting, but finds it impossible to maintain
this surrounding indefinitely. Full light and total
darkness await him without this self-controlled level of
light; the intensity of physical response brought on by
the one and of intellectual anguish brought on by the

other are equally intolerable. Walter's attempt to

170

171

reconcile light and darkness results in failure. a
parallel to the impossibility of uniting the real with

the ideal, the physical with the spiritual. The struggle
between light and darkness which he finds attractive at
dawn and at twilight can be only a momentary balance:

one must eventually surrender to the other. Such is

also the case in his continued struggle to maintain a
biance between his interior antithetical forces; the
equilibrium between real and ideal which he seeks to main-
tain can be only momentarily imposed, and its failure
results in his madness and death. Ménalque's disciple.
too,exists in a light-surrounding suitable to his meta-
physical position. However, he makes no effort to petrify
his surroundings, and seeks actively to change them. From
the beginning of the Nourritures, when he awakens from

his previous condition, the diarist's search is to
intensify constantly the level of light around him. His
attachment to a single possibility in life grows more ardent
as the level of light surrounding him grows stronger. The
state of animal consciousness and the rigidity of his
philosophy both reach their pinnacles in the desert; beyond
this point no evolution can occur. Shadows and doubts
re—enter the fictional diarist's environment at the same
time. Regret of his former growth comes to him in a

surrounding of twilight.

172

That Ménalque and Walter are complementary protagonists
is clear from their common traits and fears, which underlie
their very different ways of life. Their complementarity
is further supported by Michel's development from a youth
similar to Andre Walter, living in the relative gloom of
France. to a character resembling Menalque, once he has
accorded himself to the desert sun. At least partially as
a result of changed light in his surroundings. Michel
explores two divergent moralities. and comprehends the
subjectivity of any Specific moral system.

From the very beginnings of his literary career, André
Gide was careful to surround his characters with an environ-
ment of light suitable to their moral and intellectual
positions, and it is thus inevitable that Andre Walter
and the young Michel of L'Immoraliste should exist in the
shade, while Ménalque's disciple and the later Michel prefer
the intolerable light of the desert. This correspondence
continues in the later Gide as well, as is shown by its

occurrence in.La Porte étroite and Les Caves d3 Vatican.

 

Gide's use of physical surroundings to reflect metaphysical
condition might be interpreted as a pathetic fallacy, but
the consciousness seems to respond to its surroundings
rather than to project them. This device might also be
interpreted as rigid adherence to classical unity, main-
taining infiolable the integrity of the individual to the

point of placing him in suitable lighting conditions.

173

But there are also echos of Gide's early interest
in botany and the physical sciences throughout Gide's
work. from the names and characteristics of marsh plants
in Paludes to Anthime Armand-Dubois's search for vegetal
tropisms in animal response in Les Caves g2 Vatican.
Perhaps what the suitability of light-environment to
character traits and development demonstrates is essen—
tially an adherence to nineteenth-century scientific and
sociological beliefs. Ménalque's differences from André
Walter are matters of adaptation: the same fears underlie
both divergent attitudes. the one ethereal and the other
nearly animal. It is only by leaving his roots and
altering his environment that Ménalque and his disciples
are able to maintain incessant evolution: confined to a
single surrounding, they too would become rigid and
incapable of constantly sharpening their ferveur, as does
Michel in these circumstances. Adaptation is the sole
alternative to death in a changed surrounding. Andre
Walter, too, might be forced to evolve if circumstances
required it, and in a sense it is his failure to adapt to
the absence of Emmanuéle which causes him to perish. One
can find here traces of Hippolyte Taine's determination
of character due to race, surroundings, and time. Of these
three elements, only surroundings vary dramatically from

Andre Walter to Ménalque, and that only because of

174

Ménalque's active efforts to alter them. There is in

this a suggestion of Lysako's theories of adaptation,
rejecting natural selection and genetics on the supposition
that strong individuals could within a single generation
adapt to altered environments while those which failed

to adapt would perish. Indeed, the entire evolution of

the fictional writer of the Nourritures could be placed

 

in analogy with botanical development. Awakening from a
dormant phase, in which the diarist contains only the

germ of the nouvel etre which he is to become, he first
seeks light as the only thing beautiful to him. Too young
to stand the full light of day, he begins in the shadows,
as a seedling, and only gradually succeeds in attaining
higher levels of light by his personal development. Light
becomes more and more essential to Ménalque's disciple as
his growth progresses: he climbs hills in the evening in
order to exist for several more moments in sunlight before
darkness. Straining toward light, he enters the desert,
where light is overpowering, and finds himself drained

and consumed, incapable of continuing to live at this
level of light, and incapable of transcending it. His
final act, the writing of this book, is again that of a
plant, a seminal effort, and he gives to this book a title

recalling the earth's productivity.

175

If the determinative force of light in the environment
brings to mind nineteenth-century developments, the light
imagery in Gide's writings bears directly upon the sub-
sequent development of modern prose. Light and darkness
serve as a construction.en abymg, presenting in a recurring
image an analogy to the moral and intellectual position
of the protagonist, and this technique of placing reflec-
tive devices within a work of art has been of great signifi-
cance to the modern novel. Gide's impressionistic use of
light to dissolve reality into a surface upon which light
plays also places these works directly in the mainstream
of modern fiction. Exterior reality has lost its solidity,
its claim as the only authentic form, to the subjective
sensation which serves as sole indicator of that which
exists outside the subjective consciousness, and this in
itself is a major step away from the Balzacian novel and
an advance toward the nouveau roman. The passive conscious-
ness, incapable of controlling its destiny, and willing
to simply reflect spontaneously whatever registers upon
it, and the gradual dissolution of the protagonist's
identity (especially in the Nourritures), at least suggest
the modern fictional protagonist, no "hero" in the tradi-
tional sense, but a character whose interest lies precisely
in his subjective perception and in the lyrical recounting

of that perception. Each of these movements, observable

176

in the early Gide, would be explored only much later by
the nouveau roman. Light and darkness have an impact
upon each of these movements,enuithey bear directly upon
protagonists throughout Gide's literary career. Compre-
hension of the importance of light and darkness in Gide's
early works can thus provide insight both into Gide's
creative techniques, and into the moral and intellectual

positions of Gidian protagonists.

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