André Gide – Paul Valéry: Correspondance 1890–1942 (review)

The Gide-Valéry correspondence, first edited by Robert Mallet in 1955, became a standard reference for literary scholars, offering as it did key insights into the life, times and work of two major twentieth-century figures. To the 462 letters Mallet published, Peter Fawcett brings valuable enhancements. The most obvious is 176 additional letters, omitted or suppressed previously. Hardly less important is Fawcett's expertise as editor of major correspondences, notably those between Gide and Jean Schlumberger and between Valéry, Gide and Pierre Louÿs. His extensive erudition enables him to bring to bear on the present collection not only a detailed knowledge of the sociocultural context, but also cross-references now available from other published correspondences. Testimonies from colleagues, friends and contemporaries of the two writers, as well as unpublished sources which Fawcett has painstakingly tracked down, make it possible to clarify allusions and correct misunderstandings. Errors of transcription and chronology are put right, and the proper sequence of missives is established. The need no longer to provide glosses on by now canonical reviews like L'Ermitage or La Revue blanche, for example, makes space for new details. The result is a model of literary scholarship, executed with clarity, accuracy and economy. The relationship between Gide and Valéry was born in youthful poetic enthusiasms and was maintained throughout the eventful and often divergent evolution of both writers. Valéry intimidated Gide, who often complained of feeling tongue-tied in his loquacious presence; Valéry's insistence on intellectual rigour and precision – 'le vers est une équation' – entailed a rejection of the 'à peu près' which for a writer like Gide was virtually a prerequisite for creation. But a previously unknown exchange on L'Immoraliste, and a letter on the staging of Saül and another on œdipe, counter suspicions that Valéry took less interest in Gide's work than vice versa; while Gide's support for Valéry, and encouragement of his recalcitrant muse, make for the presentation here of texts of several poems. The publication history of La Jeune Parque is supplemented and Gide salutes Charmes in 1922. Valéry's numerous graphic embellishments on his letters are reproduced in facsimile, as are two by Gide. A fair number of the extra letters, as is to be expected, are simple billets arranging meetings. However the intensity with which the two experienced the Dreyfus affair in 1898 is newly made manifest – Valéry favouring raison d'État whereas Gide struggled not to appear gullible while signing up in support of Zola's protest. Their dealings on the stock market in 1912-13 are chronicled in inaccustomed detail. In 1917 Valéry condemns Baudelaire for plagiarising Poe. An extract from his Cahiers shows Valéry writing of Gide: 'J'ai ignoré sa vie et ses moeurs jusqu'il y a peu de temps'. But in his letter of 1 January 1925 he endorses their friendship: 'Les amis sont ces deux hommes qui ont sauvé du hasard et de l'accident un fait […] qui avait toutes les chances de tomber tel quel dans la statistique des chocs moléculaires des humains.'