GIDE André (1869-1951)

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Lot n° 125
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GIDE André (1869-1951)
L.A.S. "André Gide", Cuverville 5 July [1902], to Robert SCHEFFER; 5 pages petit in-4 (slight traces of mitering and folding). Remarkable commentary on his novel The Immoralist. Gide thanks Scheffer (who has just published a laudatory article on The Immoralist in La Plume of July 1, 1902): "You tell the book perfectly; you trace at will the evolution of my hero, marking very well the stages, the moment (in particular) "when the physical life and the intellectual life balance in him", the set, then immediately afterwards, the "physical life" prevailing, by acquired impulse". He justifies the reproaches he has been given for having made his hero ill, and then rectifies one of Scheffer's words: "literature, consoling him...etc."; no: I don't think Michel could ever write. His warmth, you can feel it, is only ardour; it burns without warming up; words would crumble under his pen. Believe me, dear Scheffer, that it is only because I am not Michel that I have been able to tell his story as "remarkably well" as you say. - But you know that, and the I, which I found myself obliged to use, will only deceive the fools who need, at the end of a René, that a Chactas comes to show them that: if René is in Chateaubriant, Chateaubriant is not entirely in René, neither is Benjamin Constant all in Adolphe, nor Goethe all in Werther". He acknowledges, however, that there is a bit of his hero in him, but is thus led to define literature: "How many buds we carry within us, dear Scheffer! that never hatch except in our books! These are the "sleeping eyes" that botanists tell us about; - but if, by will, we suppress them all but one, as this one grows at once! and as it individualizes itself! - To create a "hero" my recipe is quite simple: take one of these buds; put it in a pot; alone; one will soon arrive at an admirable individual. Tip: choose preferably (if it is true that you can choose) the bud that bothers you the most. You get rid of it at the same time. Perhaps this is what Aristotle called it: the purging of passions. Let's purge ourselves, dear Scheffer! Let's purge ourselves! There's always enough left"
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