Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

7. Its title notwithstanding, the small work Peintures has nothing to do with Chinese painting.

8. The best French editions are those produced by Sophie Labatut (Paris: Châtelain-Julien, 1999; Paris: Folio-Gallimard, 2000). English-language translation by J.A. Underwood: René Leys (Woodstock, New York: Overlook, 1988; New York: NYRB, 2003).

9. He had just given up opium, which he had smoked for twenty-odd years. Although he denied the impact of this, the absence of the drug must surely have worsened his state.

CHESTERTON

1. If the Chesterbelloc was in half part a French animal, the French half — paradoxically enough — was not on the Belloc side. Chesterton’s sensibility may have been quintessentially English, but his intellectual attitude was oddly continental (and this in turn may account for the fact that he found some of his most perceptive readers outside the English-speaking world). Contrary to the pragmatic approach which is so characteristic of the English, Chesterton always held that no fruitful practical initiative can ever be taken without first being set within a clear conceptual framework.

He illustrated this point in a remarkable parable: “Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, ‘Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of light. If the light be in itself good…’ At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes and they go about congratulating each other on their unmedieval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily.

“Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So gradually and inevitably, today, tomorrow or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and all depends on what is the philosophy of light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.”

PORTRAIT OF PROTEUS

1. Charles Du Bos used this passage from Gide’s most ambitious novel as an epigraph to his Dialogue with André Gide (1928), a critical essay which considerably strained the relationship between the two old friends.

2. Letter of 17 March 1956 to Shirley Abbott.

3. I found very few errors. Page 235, Maria Van Rysselberghe’s love for Émile Verhaeren was not “unreciprocated” (far from it!) but unconsummated (as Sheridan himself qualifies it accurately further down the same page). Page 574, the name of the film director who adapted La Symphonie pastorale to the screen is not “Jean Delaunay” but Jean Delannoy. Page 619, Roger Martin du Gard did not die “aged sixty-seven” but seventy-seven. Page 432, it is not altogether accurate to state that Martin du Gard’s apprehensions regarding his daughter’s marriage with Marcel de Coppet were unfounded; though, indeed, the couple did produce healthy children and (alcoholism and tuberculosis notwithstanding) Coppet lived a long life, the marriage itself did not last and collapsed in great bitterness. In the index, the names of the Marx Brothers and of Stalin are missing. (In the text, mention of a pleasant evening at the movies, watching A Night at the Opera , could convey the misleading impression that Gide appreciated the genius of the Marx Brothers. This was unfortunately not the case, as is evidenced in other passages of the Cahiers de la petite dame .) Larbaud’s Christian name is not “Valéry” but Valery. Page 20, “ classe de premier ” should read class de première ; page 229, “ désbabille ” should be déshabillé ; page 578, “ problèmes actuelles ” is a mistake for problèmes actuels ; page 663, “André Suarez” is a misspelling of André Suarès. But I am nitpicking here. These errors are all minor, and the very fact that so few of them are to be found in a work of such magnitude gives a measure of Sheridan’s care and reliability.

4. Gide’s Journal (two volumes) was issued in Pléiade, in two different editions. When I quote from Vol. 1, I refer to the earlier (1949) edition, whereas Vol. 2 refers to the latest (1997) edition. (The two editions do not share the same pagination.)

5. Sheridan’s bibliography is remarkably comprehensive. Yet a few interesting books have come out since the publication of his work: Jean Schlumberger, Notes sur la vie littéraire, 1902–1968 (Paris: Gallimard, 1999, abridged hereafter as Schlum. ), and also Béatrix Beck, Confidences de Gargouille (Paris: Grasset, 1998), in which one chapter deals with the author’s experiences as Gide’s last secretary (hereafter abbreviated as Beck ). Besides, I must also mention the first volume of an important biography, Claude Martin, André Gide, ou La Vocation du bonheur, 1869–1911 (Paris: Fayard, 1999); Vol. 2, 1911–1951, is being prepared. Finally, another Pléiade volume, André Gide, Essais critiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1999); this monumental collection encompasses the near-totality of Gide’s critical endeavour — which may well prove to be his most lasting achievement.

6. Besides these individual correspondences, there is also a general correspondence, the inventory of which was established by Claude Martin—25,000 letters!

7. Journal 1, pp. 396–8, entry of 24 January 1914.

8. Proust’s mother was Jewish — like Montaigne’s. Without mentioning this particular fact, Gide made a perceptive comparison of the two writers in the fine essay he wrote on Proust (originally collected in Incidences , now reproduced in Essais critiques, op. cit. , pp. 289–93.)

9. Maria Van Rysselberghe: Les Cahiers de la Petite Dame (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), hereafter abridged as PD , Vol. 1, p. 99.

10. PD 2, p. 22.

11. PD 2, p. 30.

12. PD 2, p. 146.

13. PD 2, p. 439.

14. Beck , p. 91.

15. PD 3, p. 303. See also art. Devil and note 79, infra.

16. Pierre Herbart: À la Recherché d’André Gide (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), hereafter abridged as Herbart , p. 36.

17. Blum wrote to Gide in January 1948, expressing his deep friendship, but he confessed that these passages from the Journal did hurt him. (See Journal 2, pp. 1, 054, 1,502, note 4.) After Blum’s death in 1950, his widow came to see Gide and told him: “He loved you more than you loved him. Not only were you his best friend, but you were his only friend.” Gide was touched — and somewhat puzzled. (See Schlum. , p. 330.)

18. Sheridan, p. 127.

19. Journal 1, p. 787 (24 June 1924).

20. Jean Prévost, Caractères , quoted in PD 4, p. 121.

21. Quoted by R. Martin du Gard, Notes sur André Gide (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), abridged hereafter as Martin , p. 90.

22. Francois Mauriac, Bloc-notes (Paris: Seuil, 1993), Vol. 3, p. 449, entry of 28 February 1964.

23. Sheridan, p. 510.

24. Sheridan, p. 593.

25. Gide grieved at the death of his wife Madeleine. The Tiny Lady commented: “When Gide says that he never loved anybody more than his wife, I believe him and I am sure that he is telling the truth. But when he pretends that he loved her more than himself, he is wrong — he lies. He was incapable of that — he loved nothing more than himself.” See Schlum. , p. 346. On Gide’s selfishness — shocking, spontaneous, absolute — see also Herbart , pp. 49–55.