In 1891 I wrote as follows apropos of the _Cahiers d'André Walter_, an
anonymous work: "The diary is a form of good literature and perhaps
the best for some extremely subjective minds. De Maupassant would make
nothing of it. For him the world is like the cover of a billiard table;
he notes the meetings of the balls and stops when the balls stop, for
if there is no further material movement to be perceived, there is
nothing more to be said, The subjective soul feeds on itself through
the reserve of its stored sensations; and, by an occult chemistry,
by unconscious combinations whose numbers approach infinity, those
sensations, often of a faraway past time, become changed and are
multiplied in ideas. Then are narrated, not anecdotes, but the very
anecdotes of oneself, the only kind that can often be retold, if one
has the talent and gift to vary their appearances. In this way has the
author of these copy books worked and thus will he work again. His
is a romantic and philosophic mind, of the lineage of Goethe. One of
these years, when he will have recognized the helplessness of thought
against the onward course of things, its social uselessness, the scorn
it inspires in that mass of corpuscles named society, indignation will
seize him, and since action, though illusive, is forever closed to
him, he will wake armed with irony. This oddly enough, is a writer's
finishing touch; it is the co-efficient of his soul's worth. The theory
of the novel, stated in a note of page 120 is of more than mediocre
interest; we must hope that the author upon occasion will recollect it.
As for the present book, it is ingenuous and delicate, the revealer
of a fine intelligence. It seems the condensation of a whole youth
of study, dreams and sentiment, of a tortuous, timorous youth. This
reflection (p. 142) rather well sums up André Walter's state of mind:
'O, the emotion when one is quite near to happiness, when one has but
to touch it,--and passes on.'"
There is a certain pleasure in not having been deceived in one's first
judgment of the first book of an unknown person. Now that André Gide
has, after several intelligent works, become one of the most luminous
of the Church's Levites, with the flames of intelligence and grace
quite visible around his brow and in his eyes, the time nears when
bold discoverers will discuss his genius, and, since he fares forth
and advances, sound the trumpets of the advancing column. He deserves
the glory, if anyone merits it (glory is always unjust) since to the
originality of talent the master of minds willed that in this singular
being should be joined an originality of soul. It is a gift rare enough
to justify speaking of it.
A writer's talent is often nothing but the terrible faculty of
retelling, in phrases that seem beautiful, the eternal clamors of
mediocre humanity. Even gigantic geniuses, like Victor Hugo or Adam de
Saint-Victor were destined to utter an admirable music whose grandeur
consists in concealing the immense emptiness of the deserts: their soul
is like the formless docile soul of deserts and crowds; they love,
think, and desire the loves, thoughts, desires of all men and of all
beasts; poets, they magnificently declaim what is not worth the trouble
of being thought.
The human species, doubtless, in its entire aspect of a hive or colony,
is only superior to the bison species or the king-fisher, because we
are a part of it; here and there man is a sorry automaton; but his
superiority lies in his ability to attain consciousness; a small number
reach this stage. To acquire the full consciousness of self is to know
oneself so different from others that one no longer feels allied with
men except by purely animal contacts: nevertheless, among souls of
this degree, there is an ideal fraternity based on differences,--while
social fraternity is based on resemblances.
The full consciousness of self can be called originality of soul,--and
all this is said only to point out the group of rare beings to which
André Gide belongs.
The misfortune of these beings, when they wish to express themselves,
is that they do it with such odd gestures that men fear to approach
them; their life of social contacts must often revolve in the brief
circle of ideal fraternities; or, when the mob consents to admit such
souls, it is as curiosities or museum objects. Their glory is, finally,
to be loved from afar and almost understood, as parchments are seen and
read above sealed glass cases.
But all this is related in _Paludes_, a story, as is known, "of animals
living in dusky caverns, and which lose their sight through never being
used"; it is also, with a more intimate charm than in the _Voyage d'
Urien_, the ingenuous story of a very complicated, very intellectual
and very original soul.