The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics) (17 page)

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
]

Gide eventually published, and not only was he not damned but, in the end, he was rewarded with a Nobel Prize. This conclusion, however, could not have been foreseen at the time and it must be acknowledged that, in 1924, as I have already pointed out, it required considerable courage to present a defence of homosexuality to the public. In this respect, the book retains a historical significance, even though its reasoning appears curiously flawed—and today it is hardly read at all.

Gide’s argument—developed at a length that borders on the ludicrous—is that homosexuality, far from being against nature (as its traditional critics used to insist), is, in fact, to be found in nature. Here, his many examples, drawn from the natural sciences, seem to miss the real issue. Of course there may well be scientifically observed instances of homosexual cows, and homosexual whales, and homosexual
ladybirds; after all, isn’t nature the greatest freak show under heaven? Earthquakes and plagues, two-headed sheep and five-legged pigs . . . whatever
is
, is in Nature (with the exception of a few productions of the human soul, such as Chartres cathedral, the music of Bach, the calligraphy of Mi Fu, etc.). Exhaustive catalogues of natural phenomena can prove nothing, one way or another. Furthermore, not only would it be quite feasible to demonstrate that, in given circumstances, for various species of creature, homosexuality may indeed be “natural,” but one could even argue (at least this was the view of Dr. Johnson[
60
]) that, on the contrary, it is the state of permanent, monogamous union between a man and a woman that actually goes “against nature”—since it is, in fact, a crowning achievement of
culture
(a fact acknowledged by all the great world religions, which agree that in normal circumstances such a state cannot be attained without some form of
supernatural
assistance). The point is: the issue that should be of primary concern for us is not what naked bipeds can accomplish in their original state of nature but how human beings, clad with culture, are more likely to achieve the fullness of their humanity.

A second problem of
Corydon
is that it is an apologia exclusively for
pederasty
, and, as Sheridan points out, “by claiming that the pederast, far from being effeminate, presents the zenith of maleness, Gide is justifying homosexuality in the terms of a largely heterosexual society, and therefore by implication, lining up with that society against other homosexuals.”[
61
] Gide took pains to emphasise that the two other types of homosexual—sodomites and inverts, according to his taxonomy—inspire in pederasts “a profound disgust . . . accompanied by a reprobation that in no way yields to that which you [heterosexuals] fiercely show to all three.”[
62
] Furthermore, in his description of “Greek love,” Gide celebrates an ideal relation in which a caring adult initiates a youth not merely into sensual pleasure but mostly into the loftier enjoyments of knowledge and wisdom—the role of the elder partner being not so much that of a lover as that of a teacher and moral guide.[
63
] Here resides precisely the main flaw of the book. Inasmuch as Gide claimed to have revealed his “real self,” to have cleared “the fog of lies” that had weighed upon his childhood and youth,
Corydon
is essentially fraudulent, for Gide’s frenzied sexual activity—especially
the monomania of his old age—was not pederastic
à la mode antique
but flatly and sordidly pedophiliac[
64
]—very much like today’s “sex tours” which bring planeloads of wealthy Western tourists to the child brothels of South-East Asia. Now, homosexuals are usually keen to draw a line at this point; they insist—not without reason—that their sexual orientation implies no more inclination towards pedophilia than is the case for heterosexuals. If they expect, however, to find in Gide an advocate for their cause, they would be well advised to reconsider the moral (or at least tactical) wisdom of choosing such a champion.

DAUGHTER

Gide’s daughter, Catherine, was born in 1923. Her mother was Elisabeth Van Rysselberghe (1890–1980), the daughter of the Tiny Lady. Elisabeth, who was briefly Rupert Brooke’s lover, bitterly regretted not having been able to give birth to the poet’s child. In 1920, she thought that Marc Allégret—then Gide’s teenage lover—had made her pregnant. Gide was ecstatic; he said to his old lady-friend, the prospective grandmother: “Ah,
chère amie
, we are making possible a new humanity! That child must be beautiful!”[
65
] Once again, however, Elisabeth’s hope did not come to fruition. But Gide had always thought that she deserved to have a child; a few years earlier, during a train journey, he had slipped a note to her: “I shall never love any woman, except one [thinking of his wife, Madeleine] and I have true desire only for young boys. But I cannot bear to see you without children, nor do I wish to remain childless myself.”[
66
] Eventually, in 1922, on a secluded beach by the Mediterranean, he rediscovered with her “all the liberty that fosters amorous dispositions.”[
67
] Catherine was born the next year.

Gide followed the growth of the child with sporadic interest; he observed her with an eye that was, by turns, fatherly and entomological. Elisabeth eventually married the writer Pierre Herbart, her junior by fifteen years (the age difference was of no real significance, Gide reassured the future mother-in-law, because, after all, Herbart was
more interested in his own sex[
68
]), and Catherine came to live with her mother and Herbart when she was not pursuing her education in Swiss boarding schools. Occasionally, she spent brief holidays with Gide, who, one day, informed her that he was her real father. The girl was thirteen at the time, and this revelation had a mixed psychological effect on her.

Catherine is rarely mentioned in Gide’s
Journal
. In 1942 (his daughter was nineteen), he noted: “Catherine might have been able to attach me to life, but she is interested only in herself, and that doesn’t interest me.”[
69
] Sheridan comments pointedly: “In other words, the daughter was behaving like the father, and the father didn’t like it.”[
70
]

She appears more frequently in the diaries of her grandmother, who remarked: “The relations between father and daughter are difficult . . . This is mostly due to the fact that both are too much alike, and also because the relationship is ill-defined—which is a result of the circumstances. They do not have father–daughter exchanges; he is trying too hard to please her and is incapable of exerting any authority.”[
71
] Meanwhile, Catherine felt more able to confide her true feelings to Martin du Gard, who recorded in his diary this conversation with her—Martin had mentioned a book by Gide and Catherine replied that she had not read it. Then, noticing Martin’s surprise, she continued:

A little earlier, Catherine was supposed to go abroad, but these plans had to be abandoned. Martin du Gard said to Gide:

At about the same time, Gide tried to make Catherine realise that she was enjoying a privileged situation: “I am afraid you may not fully appreciate how rare is the harmony that prevails in our little group. [The little group was comprised of Gide, the Tiny Lady, Elisabeth and her lover, Pierre Herbart—within that small community, Catherine was thus provided with two fathers]. Don’t imagine that most families have such luck.”[
74
]

In 1942, Gide went to North Africa, where he was to spend the remaining years of the war. On the eve of this long separation, the parting message he left for Catherine was twofold: “1. Had you wished, I could have taught you a way of reciting French verse that is now largely lost. 2. Never do anything simply out of a desire to conform, to
be like the others. Do only what deeply pleases you.” And he quoted the famous instruction of Madame de Lambert to her son: “My son, do nothing silly, unless it amuses you.”[
75
]