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Paperback
Publisher: Mondial
Andrew Moore
"Strait is the Gate", first published in 1909 in France as "La Porte etroite", is a novel about the failure of love in the face of the narrowness of the moral philosophy of Protestantism. --- André Gide (1869 - 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career spanned from the symbolist movement to the advent of anticolonialism in between the two World Wars. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, without at the same time betraying one's values... --- "For Gide was very different from the picture most people had of him. He was the very reverse of an aesthete, and, as a writer, had nothing in common with the doctrine of art for art's sake. He was a man deeply involved in a specific struggle, a specific fight, who never wrote a line which he did not think was of service to the cause he had at heart." (Francois Mauriac)
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| A Favorite |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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"Now that I have found you again, life, thought, our souls-everything seems beautiful, adorable, inexhaustibly fertile"
This is one of the most complex, heart wrenching books I've ever read. Its beautifully written too, almost poetic. I won't get into the plot, but it goes much, much deeper than religious piety; if thats all you got out of it you weren't reading close enough. It's the first and only book I've read by Gide; I'm afraid to read others in case they don't live up to the expectations this book gave me.
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| Piercing psychological observations into the facade of Romanticism... |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Subtle; powerful. The limited point of view demands much patience, but the work ends with a searing revelation of the lie that is Romanticism, in all its guises, whether it is Jerome's saintly idealization of Alissa, or Alissa's self-alienating and eventually suicidal devotion to a God that is really an aspect of her own unloved Self.
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| Pretty Good |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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I first heard about André Gide, I believe, while reading one of Boyle's short story. It was some off handed reference but I found myself picking up Strait is the Gate and the book the proceeded to live on my shelf for quite some time before I read it. The plot is intriguing but somewhat generic: two sisters fall in love with the same man. Some interesting twists occur, the man is rejected by both women, and the book ends developing both of the sister's positions in the relationship (otherwise the book is narrated by the man). However, the book increasingly became annoying as the relationships floundered for no apparent reason. Even by the end of the novel once reasons of sacrifice and a hire calling are pursued one still stops and wonders: say what? Strait is the Gate is filled with a misogynistic tendency of consistent and regular female sacrifice for the higher calling of a man. It's interesting in its fashion and a short read but the constant referencing of the childlike love is very true - it's a very immature and over romanticized love that blossoms.
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| a strange emptiness |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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A reviewer said earlier that he became physically ill as he read on. I felt something similar. The story gripped me in my throat, and there were moments when I think I stopped breathing. The story of utmost purity and self-sacrifice (utter foolishness to cynics) cut so close that I think it tore my heart. The image painted at the end of the story was so sublime that the reader will find himself unable to utter a single word, and at the same time, a strange emptiness wells up within...
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| beautiful book |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I read this book long long ago when I was 15 or so. It was one of the first real literary works I have ever read, and, at that age, the purity in human relationship which this story pursuits came through naturally for me (getting ideas about human relationship through this book was definitely better than through tabloids or crappy magazines or romance novels or Hollywood movies!). I have never cried or suffered over a relationship, and been happily married for 25 yrs now.
In the Afterward in the edition I have read, the translator explained that the story reflects Gide's own marriage, or the relationship with his wife. Gide loved his wife dearly, but they hardly had a sexual relationship, or something to that effect, and throughout their marriage, Gide was tormented.
To me, at age 15, the idea, the kind of love that Alissa was looking for -- "divine" and on a higher plane, spiritual than physical, intangible than tangible, and eternal and true -- was quite attractive. It may look unhealthy, but you don't read a story and take it literally. It is a story of Gide's thoughts and ideals, not the story of literal facts. You don't really live your ideal, but to keep that ideal in your mind while you live your daily life is a great way to live.
This book's ideal doesn't go with today's trend or culture, and it is hard to understand. But I think Gide's endeaver was well worth it. It's a very good book to read, especially for young people. It will take you to a -- if not a higher plane, a different realm, and you will see love and relationship from a totally different angle.
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