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Andre Gide was a French writer and Nobel laureate known for his autobiographical works that explore the struggle between sexual and spiritual aspects of the self. He discovered his homosexuality during a trip to North Africa and had an unconsummated marriage. Gide became politically active and a Communist in the 1930s but abandoned it after a trip to the Soviet Union. He died in 1951 and is also known for his Journals.
Andre Gide was a French writer and Nobel laureate in 1947. Much of his work is autobiographical or semi-autobiographical and deals with the struggle to reconcile the sexual and spiritual aspects of the self. Moral constraints and intellectual freedom are important concepts that he often contrasts with each other in his work. His writing style is simple and spare, but with a deep emotional depth that requires much reading between the lines.
Gide was born into a French Protestant family in Paris on November 22, 1869. His father, a law professor at the University of Paris, died when Gide was 11 years old. He spent his childhood in Normandy and started writing at an early age. His first novel, The Notebooks of Andre Walter, was published in 1891.
Gide spent the years of 1893 and 1894 in North Africa, where he met and befriended the Irish writer Oscar Wilde. He discovered his homosexuality during his stay in North Africa and had his first homosexual experiences with some local boys. His personal moral struggle as a homosexual raised in a strict Protestant household influenced much of his later work.
Shortly after returning to France, his mother died and he married his cousin, Madeleine Rondeaux, in 1895. Heartbroken, he wrote of his unconsummated marriage to Madeleine in Strait is the Gate (1909) and Madeleine (Et Nunc Manet in Te ) (1951). During his marriage, Gide wrote prolifically, acted as mayor of La Roque-Baignard in 1896, and helped found The New French Review, a literary journal, in 1908. One of his best-known books, The Immoralist, based loosely on the his experiences in Algiers, was first published in 1902.
In 1918, Gide fled to London with her young lover, Marc Allegret, the son of the best man. Madeleine was furious and she burned her correspondence in her absence. In England, he met the English writer Dorothy Bussy, who was to become his lifelong friend and translator of his works into English. She had a daughter, Catherine, by Elisabeth van Rysselberghe in 1923. Madeleine died in 1938.
During the 1920s he became increasingly famous, inspiring Camus and Sartre, and became more politically active. He spoke out against the inhumane treatment of criminals in 1925, and during a trip to French Equatorial Africa with Allegret in 1926, he condemned French commercial interests’ exploitation of indigenous people and resources. Gide published an autobiography, If He Dies, in 1926.
In the 1930s, Gide became a Communist and produced anti-fascist articles and speeches. However, he abandoned his new political affiliation after a 1936 trip to the Soviet Union, during which he realized that communism in action fell short of his ideals. He lived in Africa during World War II, from 1942 to 1945. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947 and died in Paris on February 19, 1951. In addition to his fictional works, he published many Journals which some critics consider his most valuable work.
