In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Mauriac et Gide: la recherche du moi
  • David H. Walker
Mauriac et Gide: la recherche du moi. By Malcolm Scott . (Malagar). Bordeaux, L’Esprit du Temps, 2004. 256 pp. Pb €14.00.

In 1969, at the centenary of Gide's birth, Mauriac declared that 'la pierre scellée sur le tombeau de Gide l'a été aussi sur l'époque la plus excitante pour l'esprit que la France ait connue' (p. 242). The eighty-four-year-old éminence grise might be forgiven for failing to acknowledge the intellectual ferment of the previous year: he personally had lost in Gide an interlocutor of crucial importance, who gave to the word 'esprit', a sense that had all but evaporated. Malcolm Scott has sifted all the evidence relating to the long dialogue between the two, and around this rich source has written a book that does ample justice to the intellectual and moral calibre of their exchanges. Each holds up for the other a mirror of his repressed urges. Gide affirms that he is achieving serenity without the aid of transcendant inspiration, but Mauriac is confident that his attachment to Christ gainsays his commitment to the here and now. Mauriac, secure in his faith, wonders 'au prix de quelles mutilations?'(p. 225) and as his son Claude puts it, remains 'hanté par ce qu'il y a d'impureté dans la vie de Gide'(p. 236). Their paradoxical affinity arises, Scott argues, from certain similarities of childhood, notably the early loss of a father and a sense of vulnerability which issues in an unstable, divided self. Their paths subsequently cross on an ideological terrain whose chief landmark is Barrès, though religion will determine major differences. The protestant Gide trusted to his conscience rather than the Church and read the Scriptures in his own idiosyncratic way. However, the intellectual honesty of Mauriac kept him at a distance from rigorous orthodoxy: when Henri Massis, a disciple of Maurras, publicly attacked Gide in 1921, Mauriac, though a fellow-contributor to the Revue universelle, chose to publish a repudiation of the charges and a rebuke to doctrinal authoritarianism. Gide was gratified to find a self-questioning catholic: already impressed by the younger man's literary works, he was especially sensitive to his disquiet and hesitations as he struggled to construct a moral identity. Above all, Gide was alert to the sexual ambivalences that precipitated a crisis from which Mauriac emerged with his faith and his novelistic vocation intact, but marked henceforth by a certain intransigence with regard to the homosexuality he had struggled to overcome in himself: later he will condemn in Gide a writer whose life and work are dedicated solely to expressing the claims of the flesh. This will place severe limits on their intellectual complicity, but their social and political commitments of the 1930s, their concern with the autobiographical aspects of writing, the urge to mythologize the self through fiction, ensure continuing common ground and intermittent communication. Scott's exposition and analysis of the dialogue, explicit and implicit, between the men, their beliefs and their writings, is at once subtle and sure-footed, and brings to life the urgency of the intellectual adventure involved.

David H. Walker
University Of Sheffield
...

pdf

Share