Andre Paul Guillaume Gide was born on November 22, 1869, in Paris,
France. His father, named Paul Gide, was a professor of law at the
University of Paris, he was a descendant from Cevennes Huhuenots. His
mother, named Juliette Rondeaux, was a devoted Calvinist. He received
an excellent private education at home, then at the Ecole Alsacienne.
At the age of 18 Gide started writing. His first book 'Les Cahiers
d'Andre Walter' (The Notebooks of Andre Walter, 1891) was well received
by his friend Stéphane Mallarmé. In 1893 and 1894 Gide made voyages to North
Africa, where he learned different moral and sexual conventions. In
Algiers he met Oscar Wilde and the two became close friends. Gide's
early collection of prose and poetry 'Les nourritues terrestres'
(Fruits of the Earth, 1897), gained popularity, influencing Guillaume Apollinaire,
Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as a generation of young writers. His
serious illness and a near-death experience there, gave him material
for his "twin" psychological novels 'l'immoraliste' (The Immoralist,
1902) and 'La porte etroite' (Strait is the Gate, 1909). In dialogues
between the inner narrator and the outer narrator Gide tackled the
Shakesperian question, reformulated as "to be free" vs "to get
freedom."
In his 'La symphonie pastorale' (The Pastoral Symphony, 1919) Gide
revealed the hypocrisy behind the mask of a pastor, who adopted a blind
orphan girl. Pastor seduces the girl on the eve of her eye surgery; she
opens her eyes only to see the ugly truth about people, then commits
suicide. In 'Les faux-monnayeurs' and 'Le journal des feux-monnayeurs'
(The Couterfreiters, 1926) he exposed the self-deception and
counterfeit personality of the protagonist, Edouard, who falls in love
with his nephew. Gide was alluding to his own relationship with his
adopted son Marc Allegret, with whom he eloped to London in 1916. In
1923 Gide conceived a daughter named Catherine with his girlfriend
Elisabeth van Rysselberghe. Gide's wife Madeleine died in 1938 after an
unconsummated marriage.
Andre Gide was an admirer of Fyodor Dostoevsky from his youth. In 1923 he
published a collection of his lectures on Dostoyevsky, in which he
reconstitutes the writer's personality through the traits of the
characters of his books. At that time Gide prepared the first public
release of his 'Corydon', which was initially published privately in
1911. It received widespread condemnation, but was considered by Gide
his most important work. He was praised by his friends, such as
Marcel Proust, Paul Claudel, Paul Valéry and others; their correspondence was
published in 1948. Gide collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev on a ballet
production for the "Seasons Russes" in Paris. He was a regular member
of 'literary Fridays' and developed a good friendship with Gertrude Stein.
Gide briefly associated with French communists, but he repudiated the
Soviet communism after his 1936 voyage to the Soviet Union. His
disillusionment with the communist doctrine was expressed in his
contribution to 'The God That Failed' (1949). During the Second World
War he lived in Tunis. Gide was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
(1947). He died on February 19, 1951. A fine literary biography of
Andre Gide was written by André Maurois.
