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The Immoralist
by André Gide
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Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Richard Howard
'To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom' - Andre Gide. Michel had been a blindfold scholar until, newly married, he contracted tuberculosis. His will to recover brings self-discovery and the growing desire to rebel against his background of culture, decency and morality. But the freedom from constraints that Michel finds on his restless travels is won at great cost. And freedom itself, he finds, can be a burden. Gide's novel examines the inevitable conflicts that arise when a pleasure seeker challenges conventional society and, without moralizing, it raises complex issues involving the extent of personal responsibility.
With today's headlines and talk shows, it takes a lot to shock a reader--certainly more than was required in 1902, when André Gide's The Immoralist was first published. What was seen then as a story of dereliction translates today into a tale of introspection and fierce self-discovery. While traveling to Tunis with his new bride, the Parisian scholar Michel is overcome by tuberculosis. As he slowly convalesces, he revels in the physical pleasures of living and resolves to forgo his studies of the past in order to experience the present--to let "the layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there." But this is not the Michel his colleagues knew, nor the man Marceline married, and he must hide his new values under the patina of what he now reviles. Bored by Parisian society, he moves to a family farm in Normandy. He is happy there, especially in the company of young Charles, but he must soon return to the city and academe. Michel remains restless until he gives his first lecture and runs into Ménalque, who has long outraged society, and recognizes in him a reflection of his torment. Finally, Michel heads south, deeper into the desert, until, as he confides to his friends, he is lost in the sea of sand, under a clear, directionless sky. What Gide's story lacks in sensationalism is fulfilled by his descriptive prose, which evokes the exotic nature of Michel's inner and outer journey: "I did not understand the forbearance of this African earth, submerged for days at a time and now awakening from winter, drunk with water, bursting with new juices; it laughed in this springtime frenzy whose echo, whose image I perceived within myself." --Joannie Kervran Stangeland
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| Freedom vs. responsibility |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Having faced his mortality following a bout with tuberculosis, scholar Michel resolves to live a more "authentic" life, obeying the dictates of his heart rather than the repressive strictures of society.
For me, the fascinating tension in this novel concerns the balance between selfish egotism and one's responsibility to others. Andre Gide's presentation of illness is compelling and horrifying, offering a plausible catalyst for Michel's decision to change his life in fundamental ways. It is easy to sympathize with him as he struggles to rearrange his priorities, particularly considering that he is clearly a repressed homosexual living during oppressive times who feels compelled to marry a woman he doesn't love. However, he loses sympathy when he repays her attentive nursing during his own illness by dragging her about on a debilitating journey when she herself becomes sick. In my view, Michel emerges as a cautionary figure. Everyone would like to live a life unencumbered by expectations from others, but the ultimate test of character lies in recognizing the line between legitimate personal freedom and reckless disregard of other people. I fear that Michel failed his test.
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| Intelligent, engaging, and enjoyable. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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THE IMMORALIST (written in 1902) is a predecessor, both chronologically, literarily, and intellectually, to central works such as Nietzche's WILL TO POWER (1903), Albert Camus' THE FALL (1956), among others. If you have already read the nihilists, existentialists, and absurdists, this work is particularly interesting given its influence on Camus and Sartre, particularly. If you have not, Gide's THE IMMORALIST provides an excellent entry point into these distinct philosophical areas. THE IMMORALIST has considerable depth. Gide wrote in the preface to the Vintage edition (Paul Howard translator): "One may without too much conceit, I think, prefer the risk of failing to interest the moment by what is genuinely interesting -- to beguiling momentarily a public fond of trash." Gide did tackle the genuinely interesting.
Structurally, the novel is interesting in that most of the novel is told in the first person from the perspective of Michel. However, Michel's narrative is related to us secondhand through one of his friends. The novel begins with a letter from one friend of Michel's to a government official. The short letter poses an opening question: "Can we accommodate so much intelligence, so much strength-or must we refuse them any place among us?"
While the question is posed in the context of a letter examining whether Michel could be of use to the state, Gide is really asking the reader about such supermen and society. Gide does not answer the question. As he explained: "I wanted to write this book neither as an indictment of Michel nor as an apology, and I have taken care not to pass judgment."
The text of the letter is followed by a purportedly verbatim account by Michel. Michel's account begins with his marriage to Marceline, a woman towards whom he felt "tenderness" and "a kind of pity" rather than love. While in a small desert town, Michel contracts tuberculosis. Marceline dutifully nurses him back to health. Michel's illness renews his passion for living: "Now I would make the thrilling discovery of life." during his recovery, he decides he must redefine "Good" and "Right" to mean "whatever was healthy for [him]." He rejects his formerly bookish ways and sets out to define a new path, wringing from life what pleasure he can.
When his health improves enough to leave his sickbed, he discovers that Marceline has been become acquainted with a group of local boys. He starts avoiding Marceline's company in favor of the company of the boys. The boys are, after all, vigorously alive and youthful. This trend is repeated in numerous locales, where Michel finds someone new and, in their way, exotic to him. His friendships usually involve breaking social mores and, often, the law.
Michel spends the rest of the novel exploring the world and his newfound philosophy of life. For Michel, "sensation was becoming as powerful as thoughts." Gide magnificently manages Michel's transformation from a dependable, bookish man of means to a rather self-centered, erratic, pleasure-seeker. But Michel's pleasure-seeking is not simple hedonism, he is trying to navigate between living in the past (as in his previous vocation as scholar of history) and living only for the future. A man Michel meets, Menalque, encourages Michel to adopt his own philosophy:
"I create each hour's newness by forgetting yesterday completely. Having been happy is never enough for me. I don't believe in dead things. What's the difference between no longer being and never having been?"
Gide never spells out whether Michel answers this or any of the other questions so adroitly presented. Readers are left to ponder the weighty issues raised for themselves. This is an idea-driven novel. However, there are compelling plot points throughout, which I will not ruin by detailing. The book is a quick read.
THE IMMORALIST has the potential to be life changing in ways that few books are. Gide's Nobel Prize for Literature was well-deserved.
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| Love and Evil Collide in Andre Gide's THE IMMORALIST |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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One of great surprises when reading French author Andre Gide's classic novel, THE IMMORALIST, is discovering the light it shines on the study of balanced and imbalanced demands sometimes made on women within the context of marriage. The novel is largely the story of Michel, a man who emerges from a long bout with tuberculosis only to realize that he is a social clone who now yearns for a more individual identity and complete life. Illness generally provides the framework for transformation and the study of loyalty in The Immoralist.
The first part of the book finds Michel suffering gravely from tuberculosis and his wife, Marceline, battling triumphantly to save him. However, once Marceline contracts the same disease, Michel becomes too enchanted with his own evolving consciousness to save his wife's life as she did his. With this single brilliant stroke of irony, Gide poses a number questions still challenging for men and women to contemplate. Namely, are the qualities inherent in a woman's love necessarily more capable of sustaining life than those inherent in a man's? And if so, why? Moreover, what personal sacrifices or changes must men make in order to generate a more life-affirming sensibility? What are the likely consequences--social, individual, political, spiritual--if men fail? And mostly, to what degree, and why, do women so often participate in their own oppression?
The element of mysticism in The Immoralist is subtle but significant, with Oscar Wilde, in the form of the character named "Menalque," providing encouragement to live beyond established social restraints. The Immoralist abounds with the kind of literary, historical, and philosophical allusions that by 1917 had convinced numerous admirers that Gide was a prophet for the 20th century. It also demonstrates why his Nobel Prize-winning voice still commands attention all over the world in the 21st century.
by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)
and ELEMENTAL: The Power of Illuminated Love
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| Trite, Superficial--intentionally so. |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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It is a generally sound practice to not conflate the author with this work, but, after reading this I am reminded of the quote by Martin Buber: "They [the French] are too superficial for a reevaluation of all values." The Immoralist as "a confession of French modernity" tediously outlines how and why, and as such it accomplishes its aim fair well. Otherwise, this novelette is overbearingly boorish apart from brief, but dull flashes of (dis)illumination all of which can be traced back to doppelgängers of Nietzsche. The plot itself is a gross caricature of certain biographical datum from Nietzsche's life, with strange mix of sentimentalism in self-pity and self-love with a certain subconscious homosexual overtones imparted by the author. The main character is womanish and sickly, though apparently brilliant. Synchronistically, he might be considered Raskolnikov's ill turned out patrician son, for whom the shadow of a murdered god weighs too heavily to have hope, or a good conscience.
There are better books than this by French authors and even Gide himself, find them and skip this one, because it is probably not what you are looking for and morbid curiosity never fails to avail little vindication for itself in these cases.
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| Beyond Remorse |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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In 1921, Andre Gide published "The Immoralist" in Paris. In the novel, he examined the strength of the obligations put upon us by family and society to: study culture persistently, maintain a steady occupation, develop a stable marriage, and become responsible citizens. This process takes dedication and self-sacrifice that offers only minimal individual satisfaction.
It may take a life-threatening illness to show someone that his responsible life is an unfulfilling pose compared to his idealized life filled with unbounded and intense desires. Recovery from an illness causes him to take a new interest in the basic sensuality of life.
If society's moral code prevents the expression of the person's new found life joy, then he may become an immoralist. At first, the transition is a slow struggle that can lead to agonizing self-doubt. But once the free expression of desires occurs, he discovers, at last, his "special value." His prior responsibility and self-sacrifice were characteristics that obscured his reason for living. The main character, Michel described his driving force as "a kind of stubborn perseverance in evil."
The appreciation of art once satisfied Michel's driving force and he felt harmony with its symbolic presentations. When sensuality becomes his obsession, Michel does not know "what mysterious God" he serves. He wants personal experiences of "unimagined" forms of beauty, and he wants them immediately.
You can experience your own moral dilemma as your read "The Immoralist" and gain some insight into the consequences of breaking the bonds of duty and sacrifice. One of the most poignant lines in literature is spoken by Michel's dying wife as he leaves their hotel room in pursuit of his hedonistic desires. Close to death she speaks softly.
"Oh, you can wait a little longer, can't you?"
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