André Gide: Homosexual Moralist by Patrick Pollard (review)

100Rocky Mountain Review particular political moments in particular societies" (137-38). He broaches the hope in his introduction that through such historically aware acts of reading we may find the only imaginable route out of the power relations embodied in the state's ministerial labyrinth, which conditions our fear, our flight, our confusions. But isn't political art inevitably awkward, ephemeral . . . inferior? Perhaps this is the question Paulin raises for himself. A telling passage occurs in his essay on Yeats' "Easter, 1916," in which he contextualizes the poem as a response to the hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, who died in 1920: "At certain moments in a nation's life public official language and poetic inspiration fuse—at this critical point a certain type of poet is integrated into society. Such poets are not pure, and there is a price to pay for the risks they take in allowing their imaginations to become burdened by the living moment. When this happens something molten issues into the public light and we observe the powerlessness ofinstitutional reality to control the imagination" (143). Or so we—from Paulin's view—might come to believe. PAUL DOUGLASS San Jose State University PATRICK POLLARD. André Gide: Homosexual Moralist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. 498 p. 1 his new book by respected Gide critic Patrick Pollard certainly offers what it promises: a comprehensive study of Gide's writings as they directly or indirectly address the theme of homosexuality. Yet it also serves as a fascinating overview of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theories of sexuality of a literary, scientific, and social nature; as such, it far exceeds the scope of most Gide criticism. Corydon and other works serve as a pretext for Pollard's true enterprise, which seems to be nothing less than a history of the philosophical debate over the legitimacy of (male) homosexual practices in general, and of pederasty in particular. Pollard quite rightly sees Corydon, Gide's tortuous and often neglected apology for pederasty, written in a pseudo-classical dialogic mode, as belonging to a specific genre with a long overlooked history. This opens up a vista that encompasses literature, historiography, philosophy, and science, all of which are accounted for in the first three parts of the essay. The sources are so eclectic that it is not always clear which criteria determined what is included. In a section on Freud, for example, Pollard discusses Gide's acquaintance with, and ultimate dismissal of, psychoanalysis, but does not mention his aborted analysis undertaken in the early stages of writing Les Faux-monnayeurs. The chapter on "literary sources" contains a section on Balzac and the sexually ambiguous figures of Paquita in La fille aux yeux d'or and Vautrin; but in limiting himself to works that he is confident Gide actually read, based largely on references in the Journal, a reading list compiled under the title of Subjectif, and other documents, Pollard Book Reviews101 imposes drastic restrictions on his primary material. It seems that more could be made about the homosexual subtext in Balzac's other works, especially as Gide was influenced by him to such a degree. Elsewhere, Pollard is more liberal in his inclusion of texts, for example when he claims that "[it] is not unreasonable to assume that in 1911 Gide perused the new edition of . . . Senancour's De l'Amour selon les lois primordiales ..." (54). Had he adhered to the principle of exploring affinities between texts (as he does in some cases) rather than carefully reconstructing Gide's reading experiences , Pollard might have avoided these strictures; but it must also be counted as one of his major accomplishments that he has come as close as anybody to establishing a guide to the literary and scientific (or pseudo-scientific ) influences on the Gidean corpus. Pollard explores the peculiarities of Gide's sexual credo, which include the valorization of chastity, mentor-disciple relationships, ideal beauty. All these serve as myths to illustrate the culture of homosexual love of young boys, mediated by educational and aesthetic concerns, as well as the spiritual , unconsummated relationship with the opposite sex; they also establish the fundamental importance of this type of homosexual desire as a subject...