“Pardonne-moi de m’être tu: depuis Wilde je n’existe plus que très peu.”

10 Journal I 148. “Wilde ne m’a fait, je crois, que du mal. Avec lui, j’avais désappris de penser. J’avais des emotions plus diverses mais je ne savais plus les ordonner: je ne pouvais surtout plus suivre les deductions des autres. Quelques pensées, parfois; mais ma maladresse à les remuer me les faisait abandoner. Je reprends maintenant, difficilement mais avec de grandes joies mon histoire de la philosophie où j’étudie le problème du langage (que je reprends avec Müller et Renan.)”

11 According to a letter to his friend Marcel Drouin, 24 January 1896 cited in André Gide, Romans, Récits et soties. Oeuvres lyriques (Paris: Gallimard, Edition de la Pléiade, 1958) 1483.

12 André Gide, The Fruits of the Earth, trans. Dorothy Bussy (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1949) 68.

13 Fruits of the Earth 71.

14 According to Jean Delay, unpublished notes for Si le grain ne meurt, Gide’s autobiography, indicate he had met Oscar Wilde and Lord Douglas in Florence the preceding year. Youth of André Gide 391.

15 Youth of André Gide 391.

16 Youth of André Gide 437.

17 Ellmann 438. The card, left ten days before, read: “To Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite (sic).”

18 Ellmann 493.

19 See his books Corydon, Voyage au Congo, Retour de l’URSS and Retouches au Retour de l’URSS, also his support of the Free French and General Charles De Gaulle during World War II.

Jeanine Parisier Plottel

New York, New York 2012

JEANINE PARISIER PLOTTEL, professor emeritus of French, CUNY Hunter College & The Graduate Center, is the former executive director of the New York State Conference, American Association of University Professors and former chair of the Hunter Dept. of Romance Languages. The French government has decorated her twice (Palmes Académiques) for her contribution to French language, literature and culture. She is a former trustee of Barnard College, and a trustee of the Society for French-American Cultural Exchange (FACE). She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Maison Française at Columbia University, the Institute for French Studies at New York University, and the Henri Peyre French Institute of the City University Graduate Center. An author of numerous books and articles in both English and French, the editor and publisher of New York Literary Forum, she is an honorary life member of the Modern Language Association. A graduate of Barnard College, she received her master’s and doctoral degrees in French literature from Columbia University.

ANDRÉ GIDE QUOTES

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself—and thus make yourself indispensable.

Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.

The funny thing about love is that it must continually grow or it will diminish.

It is now, and in this world, that we must live.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves—in finding themselves.

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.

Art begins with resistance—at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.

Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain.

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labor of peace.

There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, “It all depends on me.”

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say—because they were too obvious.

Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.

Dare to be yourself.

Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

It is good to follow one’s own bent, so long as it leads upward.

In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.

At times it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin.

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

The color of truth is grey.

Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.

The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers most from its own limitations.

Only fools don’t contradict themselves.

Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you.

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness.