André Gide - Autumn Leaves

He. — Nor every Christian a hero! Heaven only knows! I know only too many, and you too, who are beyond the pale.

I. — Free thinking does not always retain the indulgent smile of Renan, the sarcasm of Voltaire, or the detachment of France. The non-acquiescence to dogmas and simple integrity of mind has been able to lead many to martyrdom. A martyr without palms, without hope of reward and, for this reason, all the more admirable. Without going that far, let us say that human dignity, and that sort of moral bearing, of “consistency” to which we attach all our hopes to-day, gets along very well without the support and comfort of the Faith. In these recent times, Christians have given fine examples, both Protestants and Catholics, before which we have only to bow our heads; but I hold it a very grave error to think, with a great number of fine minds, that France must and can find her salvation only in attachment to a Credo.

When a ship is in distress, those who kneel down and intone chants address prayers and supplications to the Most-High … that is fine; tears come into my eyes only at the thought of it. And at least they keep back the cries of the women and children, and the crazed rushing about that would disturb the maneuvers of the crew.But just the same, if the ship is to be saved, it will not be by clasped hands.

He. — Montherlant says some daring things in this respect.

I. — Which please me. And wait a minute; I see in him an excellent example of anti-Christianity not like Goethe’s.

He. — You would like from him, don’t you agree, parallels to the Lives of the Saints and The Golden Legend, some biographies that would, in themselves, have nothing legendary about them, which he would write so well! valorous heroes, entirely human, according to his taste (and yours doubtless); among others, the Marshal Strozzi, cousin to Catherine di Medicis.

I. — I remember only in what special esteem he was held by Montaigne who admired in him, at the same time, the warrior of great merit in his “military competence” and the scholar; a very fine passage in the Essays congratulates him on having chosen Caesar’s Commentaries for bedside reading. “They should be,” he said, “the breviary of every military man.”

He. — What Montaigne does not tell us and that Brantôme told, is that Strozzi, as learned in Greek as in Latin, had translated Caesar into the Greek language with “Latin annotations, the finest additions and instructions for soldiers,” says Brantôme, “that I ever saw or that were ever written.”

I. — That should delight Montherlant, indeed.

He. — The account of his death is of a nature especially likely to please him, such as we read it in Vieilleville’s Mémoires. When Strozzi was mortally wounded by a musket shot at the siege of Thionville, on June 20, 1558, the Duke de Guise went to him, Vieilleville tells us, exhorting him to repentance. But you must read the text itself: I copied it; one would hate to change or lose a single word. Listen. He took a note-book from his pocket and read to me:

Then the Duke de Guise, “recalling the name of Jesus — ‘What Jesus, for heaven’s sake,’ said Strozzi, ‘are you trying to bring to me? I deny God. My good times are over.’ And the prince redoubling his pleas told him that he should think of God and that that very day he would be face to face with Him. ‘Heavens!’ he responded, ‘I shall be where all the others are who have been dead for six thousand years’.”

I. — Six thousand years!.. To-day we know that is an understatement.

He. — Wait a minute! Wait a minute! And Vieilleville adds, in his charming manner, don’t you agree? “Everything is in the Italian language.”

I. — I recognize that this ending does not lack grandeur. It is almost as difficult, if not more so, to die well as to live well. But then Strozzi had neither wife nor family with him. Ah! I understand Montaigne’s wishing to die far away from his people, a death all his own, not distorted by pity or sympathy.… It is an article of death that one expects from the great souls under discussion. In the death struggle they relax, let themselves go to the priest who is lying in wait, with the aid of a wife’s objurgations, or a sister’s, or a mother’s. Then the Church is quick to take possession of their past and of their very resistance which at first they had opposed to it.

He. — Yet you admit …

I. — Why yes; I admit all the rest. I give in; I acquiesce, and even, as well as I can, I understand …

He. — It concerns the salvation of souls. Put yourself at their point of view.

I. — That’s all I do, I roared, put myself at other people’s point of view. I’ve done nothing else all my life; to such a degree that it is my own point of view which becomes difficult for me to find again later. And yet that is the important thing. To depend constantly on others in order to judge, form an opinion, is to take the savor from the salt.

He. — “And if the salt loses its savor, with what shall it be salted?” Yes, I know you have been nourished on the gospels. You come back to them in spite of yourself.

I. — Now you annoy me. It is true: I feel you there, on the scent of some sentence that may compromise me.… Mind your own business and simply do your duty as an interviewer. If you try again to make me talk more than I intend to, I shall slam the door in your face. Consider that final.…

Come now! Sit down again. But let us go back to literature. May I ask you in my turn, if during the long time that I have left you, you have progressed in your book.

He. — To tell the truth, no. But it is mellowing. What bothers me is that I should like to say nothing in it that is not essential, general, universal.

I. — But my dear friend, be sure to tell yourself that, in art, nothing general is attained except through the particular. That is what Goethe understood so well.

He. — Haven’t you anything more to say to me about him?

I. — Not to-day at least. You have worn me out. Come back.

II

I. — I let myself be carried away ridiculously the other day; I beg you to excuse me. Immediately after your departure, reflecting on what had put me out, I thought that …

He. — Allow me: it is you who are coming back to it. However you promised to touch on nothing with me again except literary questions.

I. — But on certain days you stifle at always hiding what fills up your heart.

He. — You were then thinking that … you were saying?

I. — That what upsets and holds me back is certainly not the Gospels, which contain better advice than any other book in the world. And I was even forced to understand very quickly that what I was looking for formerly in communism (in vain, for where I hoped to find love, I found only theory), was what Christ teaches us, teaches us with all the rest additional.

He. — Then, what stops you?

I. — It is that act of blind credulity the Church requires: Faith. Reason itself, with love, leads me to the Gospels; so why deny reason?

He. — Does the Faith deny it?

I. — Good heavens, yes; that is, strictly speaking, what makes up “believing.” One believes contrary to all verification, to all evidence. In order to “believe” you have to put out your eyes. The object of belief, to stop looking at it in order to see it. You know very well that belief in a personal God, in Providence, implies abdication of everything reasonable in us. I even prefer, and very much so, the Quia absurdum to every rational effort of some to attach to a divine plan the dangerous effects of forces and natural laws, or the criminal follies of mankind. It is franker and more honest, and the believer has won the game as soon as he refuses to play it. Won for himself at least. For, as for me, to believe in that God he proposes to me would lead me very quickly into saying with Orestes: