Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

Yet, in his dealings with people, one could say of him what André Suarès said of Goethe: “He does not care for a man, however talented, if he cannot extract from him something that may be of use to his own development.”[35] His curiosity was always alert, but quick to shift to another object. The instant warmth of his welcome was only matched by the abruptness with which he could drop hapless visitors once they were no longer of interest to him. Or again, he could not recognise in the street persons with whom he had enjoyed long, congenial and intimate exchanges shortly before; they had exhausted their usefulness, they were already obliterated from his memory.[36] He became easily bored not only with new acquaintances in life, but even with the creatures of his own imagination: he could not write long novels, for, after a while, he lost interest in his own characters.[37] He worked ceaselessly, however (his stern Calvinist education had instilled in him a deep aversion for laziness and waste), but he could not remain long attached to the same task, and this explains why his best writing is to be found in his slim novellas, in his short critical essays, and above all in the discontinuous jottings of his Journal .

CHOICES

Gide’s indecisiveness, hesitations, ditherings, vacillations and contradictions were legendary among his friends. With him, no decision was ever stable or final; sometimes, in the very same breath, he managed to opt simultaneously for one course of action — and for its exact opposite. It was impossible to predict what, in the end, would be his choice, and it was wiser not even to ask.[38] He thrived on ambiguity, he relished muddle. In any debate, his interventions were so twisted and contradictory — each affirmation being cancelled by a reservation, and each reservation questioned by an afterthought — that it was impossible to know if he supported or opposed the point at stake.[39] This attitude was displayed in all matters — big and small: whether he should seek reconciliation with God, and whether he should have coffee after lunch.[40]

Living at his side, the Tiny Lady was at a vantage point to observe on a daily basis his mental pirouettes and somersaults, and, as she herself was bold and decisive by temperament, she recorded these permanent acrobatics with a mixture of amusement, amazement and exasperation. One day, as Gide was once again deliciously writhing on the hot coals of one of his religious crises, she snapped back: “If it is your wish to go to God — go! But don’t fret: soyez net .”[41] Alas, for Gide, to be driven into a corner was unspeakable agony; he always avoided the straight line (as he once said: “A direct path merely takes you to your destination”[42]) and invariably chose the oblique; his mind progressed only through meanders, or in “hooked fashion” ( en crochet [43]); every issue had to be approached sideways. He was totally incapable of tackling problems head-on; in fact, he would rather not tackle them at all.[44] He was forever making imprudent promises, which he could not keep, and then he did not know where to escape. He was constantly torn between the spontaneous effusions of his own irresponsibility and the panic of finding himself unable to meet the obligations he had recklessly contracted. On the one hand, he never felt committed to any course of action, and on the other, he was racked with guilt every time he disappointed other people’s expectations.[45]

He was essentially a bystander: “Action interests me passionately, but I prefer to watch it being performed by someone else. Otherwise I fear it would compromise me — I mean, what I actually do might limit what I could otherwise be doing. The thought that, since I have done this , I will not be able to do that —this is something I find intolerable.”[46]

Gide always avoided defining his positions: “What bothers me is to have to outline my opinion, to formulate it; I hate to have anything cast in concrete; and, in the end, there is hardly any subject on which I have not changed my mind.”[47] He would certainly have approved of the old Persian wisdom: “When you enter a house, always observe first where the exit is.” The only domain in which he ever expressed firm views and a stable taste was literary aesthetics[48] — and even there, in old age, he lost confidence in his own judgement and became uncertain and confused.[49]

Various reasons may explain this incapacity to commit himself to any line of thought or to any definite course of action. First, he was genuinely inhibited by self-doubt and self-distrust: “I can never truly believe in the importance of what I say.”[50] As various casual acquaintances noted, his great charm was that “André Gide did not know he was André Gide.” (This was no longer true in later years, when he became a prisoner of his persona —but this is probably the inevitable fate of most great men in their old age.) More profoundly, however, his indecisiveness reflected a refusal to choose — for every choice entails sacrifice and loss. As he himself remarked: “Before he chooses, an individual is richer; after he chooses, he is stronger”[51] — and inner riches were more important to him than inner strength.

Yet, one day, he confessed to Martin du Gard how much he envied his firmness. Reporting this cri du coeur , the Tiny Lady commented: “Indeed, his own difficulty in making any decision is simply incredible. What bothers him most is not the choice itself, but the fact that, by choosing, he risks losing something unexpected and more pleasant.”[52]

He could not control his intellectual greediness (in old age, this lack of restraint even found a physical expression: he would gorge himself on forbidden delicacies which, each time, made him vilely sick): “He never refuses anything. Subtraction is an operation he ignores; he is always adding up, even things that are totally contradictory. For instance, he would say in the same breath, ‘Me, to enter the Academy? Never!’ and then, immediately, ‘To occupy Valéry’s chair — why not?’”[53] He was never embarrassed by his own contradictions; to someone who objected that he could not simultaneously maintain views that were mutually exclusive, he replied by quoting a witticism of Stendhal: “I have two different ways of being: it is the best protection against error.” Martin du Gard observed: “For Gide, I am afraid this was not mere jest.”[54]

CORYDON

“If I had listened to other people, I would never have written any of my books,” Gide once observed.[55] It was particularly true for Corydon ; his close friends were all aghast when he expressed the intention of taking a public stand in defence of homosexuality. They strongly advised against such a project, believing it would provide his enemies with weapons, ruin his moral authority and destroy his reputation. But it was as if their apprehension worked only to spur him on his reckless course (he often confessed that recklessness appealed to him[56]). To Martin du Gard, who implored him to be prudent and not to rush things, he replied: “I cannot wait any longer… I must follow an inner necessity… I need, I NEED to dissipate this fog of lies in which I have been hiding since my youth, since my childhood… I cannot breathe in it any longer…” Martin believed that his wish to “come out” partly reflected a habit inherited from his Protestant education: the need for self-justification (which remained with him all his life) and also, perhaps, an unconscious Puritan desire for martyrdom, for atonement.[57] His wife, Madeleine, whose eye could penetrate his soul, made the same observation when she tried to warn him against publication: “I fear it is a sort of thirst for martyrdom — if I dare apply this word to such a bad cause — that pushes you to do this.”[58] And to Schlumberger, who thought that Corydon would bring discredit on his moral authority, he replied: “You fear that I might lose my credibility on all other issues, but actually should I not regain it by acquiring a new freedom?… We were not born simply to repeat what has already been said, but in order to state what no one has expressed before us… Don’t you see that, in the end, my credibility will become much greater? Once a man has no more need for compromise, how much stronger he becomes! Misunderstandings make me suffocate… I wish to silence all those who accuse me of being a mere dilettante, I wish to show them the real ‘me.’”[59]