GIDE André (1869-1951).

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Lot n° 68
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GIDE André (1869-1951).
AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT, Les Nourritures terrestres, [1895-1897]; 5 in-4 bound quires, and 2 in-4 bound volumes. An exceptional set of manuscripts of André Gide's early masterpiece. This manuscript, comprising 5 autograph notebooks containing books I to VI, a bound volume containing book VII, and a bound volume for the Ronde de la grenade of book IV, presents numerous corrections and variants: it was used for the publication of the volume in 1897 by the Mercure de France. The eighth and last book is missing (Bruno Roy collection). Gide was twenty-five years old when he started to compose this strange book, mixing prose poems, ballads and rounds, fragments of travel diaries, dialogues... Two fragments were published in a magazine in 1896, but when the book appeared the following year, it contrasted so radically with the literary production of the time that it disconcerted even the author's closest friends. In a rigid society, André Gide was launching a kind of anti-educational manual, based on a mystique of sensation, learning through nomadic life, deprivation, contact with grass, water, fruit, the desired body, and all the "foods" one can enjoy on this earth. Addressed to a boy, Nathanaël, this hymn to freedom and to intellectual and physical emancipation is carried by a lyrical and pantheistic breath. The text of the manuscript is carefully prepared for the composition of the volume published in 1897, and bears typographical marks in blue pencil, as well as the names of typographers in the margins as the composition proceeds. It is entirely autograph, with the exception of two passages that had already appeared in magazines, for which the author has inserted printed pages from the magazines L'Ermitage and L'Art jeune in the appropriate place. Some pages, partially cut out, are of variable format, while others are made up of several pieces mounted by collage. The very many strikethroughs, corrections, marginal additions or overwritten text represent a considerable number of variants, of which we shall mention the most important. I. Les Nourritures Terrestres. Notebooks I to V [Books I to VI]. Five autograph notebooks. Notebooks in-4 (28 x 22 cm), covers of strong blue paper, spine of blue percaline; title labels on the upper cover; in all 109 pages autographed in black ink, plus 7 printed pages, on ivory laid paper (except for a few smaller pages on wove paper), in tan chagrin folder and case (case stained). Book I. Title : " Les Nourritures Terrestres / Cahier I. / Here are the fruits we have nourished on the earth... Koran. II, 23". 23 pages. This booklet contains the prologue and Book I. The author tells how an illness and his convalescence, travels and the teaching of Menalque cured him of his sadness and led him to worship life with a fervour that he wishes to communicate to his reader. There are 29 strikethroughs and corrections, most of the strikethrough words or lines remaining legible, and variants. The inaugural address to Nathanaël, a prologue that will be written in italics in the book, takes up the first two leaves; it comprises 9 lines largely crossed out in graphite (plus an earlier correction in ink). In these two paragraphs, Gide explains the intention of the book, insisting on his rejection of literary artifice: "In this book, I wanted to let my adoration, my passion or my desire, spread out, in an unrestricted form, considering here all literary preoccupation as an artifice which would have made them lose the appearance of their spontaneity, by which especially they are worth of their sincerity. / More preparation would have been less transparency. Even I often wrote here only as much as you needed to follow me. - I wrote as little as possible. And I wish I could do away with that little. (pp. 1-2). We note two instances of "vous" being corrected to "tutoie". Most of the corrections, preserved in the edition, aim at perfect clarity, or track down expressions that might seem worn out, in order to get closer to the truth of the sensation. Gide has also changed the order of some paragraphs. The book ends with a crossed-out sizain, accompanied by the mention that it should "begin the second book": "You would still be looking for a long time / The impossible happiness of souls"...; but these lines will in fact form the first stanza of the Ronde de la grenade in Book IV. Book II. Title: "Les Nourritures Terrestres / [Nathanaël biffé] I". 28 pages. This booklet contains Books II and III, where Gide poses the question of happiness from his own experience before illustrating his point with notes from his trip to Italy and Tunisia. There are about fifty cross-outs and 23 corrections. On the first page, Gide has crossed out the epigraph
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