Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

A short while ago, in a bookshop, I was browsing a reprint of Gide’s Journal . I have never read it in its entirety, but this time, reading a few pages convinced me, once again, that I shall never be able to pursue it to the end. Why? I don’t really know. Its style is exquisite, and every page is full to the brim with great intellectual riches; but in the same time as the book yields all that it can give, it also freezes the heart, and as one reads on, one feels left with less faith, with less hope, and (I say this with regret) with less love.[116]

On the subject of Gide, when reading Herbart — as well as Martin du Gard, for these two were Gide’s favourite friends[117] — one wonders, on what did their unquestionable attachment rest? Not on his works: in the inner Gidean circle, there were no disciples, and both Herbart and Martin have stated that no book of Gide ever had a significant impact upon them.[118] They simply cherished the man, Herbart says, yet he could also foresee that “The particular value which his life presented will, it seems to me, become unintelligible once those who witnessed it have all disappeared.”[119] Indeed.

LITERATURE

Literature was the very meaning of Gide’s life, its exclusive purpose.[120] He loved literature with a devotion that was admirable and touching. Reading was as essential to him as breathing; it was both a vital need and a constant joy. Often it was also a convivial celebration, a fervour which he shared with those whom he loved most. When he was with his wife in their Normandy estate, or with his friends in Paris, entire evenings were spent reading aloud to each other.[121]

Gide was a deliberate, slow and omnivorous reader. He was never without a book in his hand, or in his pocket, or at his bedside. He read in order to write; he drew all his writing out of himself, as one draws water from a well, and only an uninterrupted stream of reading could ensure that the well would not run dry.

In his approach to literature, besides the solid foundations that traditional French schooling provided to all children of the bourgeoisie, he was equipped only with his own voracious curiosity. His enjoyment of literature was never warped by the sterile games that academics play professionally — he never attended any university. He belonged (as Sheridan accurately observes[122]) to the vanishing breed of “common readers.” (E.M. Forster, who much admired him, was himself very Gidean when he wrote: “Study has a very solemn sound. I am studying Dante sounds much more than I am reading Dante . It is really much less.”) At the conclusion of a symposium on his beloved Montaigne, Gide’s characteristic contribution was simply to suggest with gentle irony that Montaigne would probably not have understood a word of what had just been said about him.

He was a good Latinist; from adolescence till death, Virgil’s Aeneid remained his most constant reading.[123] He had a loving familiarity with the French classics: Montaigne first and foremost, and also Pascal, Racine, Molière, La Fontaine, Bossuet, La Bruyère, Voltaire, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert. On Hugo, he was ambivalent: “Sometimes execrable, always prodigious.”[124] He ignored Dumas.[125]

What set him apart, however, was his openness to foreign literatures, which was exceptional for his time and in his milieu. He knew some German, a little Italian, and worked hard on his English. His command of foreign languages always remained shaky (“Honestly, as regards foreign languages, I am a hopeless case…”[126]) but his hunger for learning and discovery was impressive. He applied himself to read Goethe (one of his greatest cultural heroes) in the original, and he devoted years of strenuous work to Shakespeare, painstakingly translating Hamlet into French. Strangely enough, however, he eventually became quite disenchanted with the play: “ Hamlet lacks artistry. I wish an Englishman could explain to me in what respect it is admirable. Reading it, I never feel that I am in front of something beautiful, which I would wish to transmit to others. It is muddled and amphigoric.”[127] Actually, on the subject of Shakespeare, his evolution — from admiration to prejudice — very much duplicated that of Voltaire, and he came to some curious conclusions: “I deny that there are any human teachings to be derived from his plays; his most sublime lines are in fact utterly banal, his psychology conventional. Generally speaking, theatrical plays always give me this impression, with the sole exception of Racine.”[128] And again: “The English are irritating with their habit of always praising Shakespeare without reservation.”[129] He found As You Like It “completely devoid of charm.”[130] Immediately after the war he had the chance to watch Richard III , staged in Paris by the Old Vic; he confessed he could not understand a word of it.[131] At the very end of his life he saw King Lear in Laurence Olivier’s interpretation. The Tiny Lady reported: “Gide was utterly disappointed by the play; he thinks it is one of Shakespeare’s weakest works, without any psychological interest, quite boring in fact.”[132]

He also expressed some other puzzling value judgements; for instance, he found Samuel Butler’s Erewhon much superior to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels , and he could not understand the popularity of the latter.[133]

He loved Browning’s poetry. George Eliot’s Middlemarch elicited his enthusiasm; as for Jane Austen, he found her novels extraordinarily well crafted, but with “a somewhat low-alcohol content.” Henry James was a disappointment: “a mere socialite” ( un auteur de salon ): “his characters live only in their heads, they have nothing below the shoulders.”[134] He was bored by The Ambassadors and could not finish it: “His manner reminds me of Proust, but, unlike Proust, it is dreary, and most of all, it lacks efficacy.”[135] He read most of Thomas Hardy’s novels; The Mayor of Casterbridge was his favourite.[136] Joyce’s Ulysses was “needlessly long; in the end, it will remain only as a sort of monster.”[137]

Claudel made him discover Conrad’s novels, the reading of which gave him the desire to meet the author. He visited Conrad several times in England and developed a deep affection for him.[138] Gide loved Lord Jim : “One of the most beautiful books I have ever read, and also one of the saddest, and yet utterly soul-stirring,”[139] and he translated Typhoon . This translation was made with loving care, yet the result is odd: the style is pure Gide, with all his syntactical mannerisms and it is rife, not exactly with blunders (Gide was too conscientious and circumspect for that), but with omissions and inaccuracies that constantly betray his uncertain grasp of the language of the original.

After Conrad’s death, Gide wrote a short but warm essay in his memory, concluding: “No one ever led such a wild existence; and afterwards, no one was ever able, like him, to submit life to such a patient, deliberate and sophisticated transmutation into art.”[140] Still, for all the praise and friendship he lavished on Conrad, one wonders to what extent he understood either the man or the artist. He was bored by Nostromo and abandoned it; nor could he finish The Secret Agent .[141] His total lack of interest in these two prophetic works suggests an incomprehension that ran deeper than an inability to appreciate Conrad; it makes one doubt that he really understood the twentieth century. In later years, he even revised his earlier admiration and sadly came to the conclusion: “As regards Conrad, I cannot rank the writer as highly as I used to; yet, as I loved the man very much, it pains me to acknowledge this.”[142]