Most of Andre Gide's richly-varied literary output has long been available to American readers. Only one aspect of his protean career has been lacking in translation: the essays, the publication of which will go far to explain why Gide holds in France such high rank as a critic. Many of the essays in Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality were provoked by events in the cultural and political world of twentieth-century France, a turbulent setting that produced a lasting literature. These essays are vintage Gide, informed by his characteristic spirit his hard brilliance, pointed honesty, and the enduring relevance of his concerns. Readers of his Journals will be prepared for the style, intelligence, and marksmanship that Gide brings to bear in these forty-two articles on life as well as on letters. His range, as always, is broad: a long and moving memoir of his encounters with Oscar Wilde; a series of combats against reactionary nationalists and self-appointed purifiers of morals; estimates of Mallarme, Baudelaire, Proust, Gautier, and Valery, among others; letters to Jacques Riviere, Jean Cocteau, and Francis Jammes; and general essays on art, literature, the theater, and politics. Justin O'Brien, famous for his studies in modern French literature, has written that Gide is "related to La Fontaine and Racine by his essential conciseness and crystalline style, to Montaigne and Goethe by his inquiring mind which reconciled unrest and serenity, to Baudelaire by his lucid, prophetic criticism." O'Brien, who has done so much to bring contemporary French literature to America, supervised the translations in Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality, prepared several of them himself, and contributes an informative general introduction and additional commentary to preface the various sections of this major book.

Most of Andre Gide's richly-varied literary output has long been available to American readers. Only one aspect of his protean career has been lacking in translation: the essays, the publication of which will go far to explain why Gide holds in France such high rank as a critic. Many of the essays in "Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality" were provoked by events in the cultural and political world of twentieth-century France, a turbulent setting that produced a lasting literature. These essays are vintage Gide, informed by his characteristic spirit--his hard brilliance, pointed honesty, and the enduring relevance of his concerns. Readers of his "Journals "will be prepared for the style, intelligence, and marksmanship that Gide brings to bear in these forty-two articles on life as well as on letters. His range, as always, is broad: a long and moving memoir of his encounters with Oscar Wilde; a series of combats against reactionary nationalists and self-appointed purifiers of morals; estimates of Mallarme, Baudelaire, Proust, Gautier, and Valery, among others; letters to Jacques Riviere, Jean Cocteau, and Francis Jammes; and general essays on art, literature, the theater, and politics. Justin O'Brien, famous for his studies in modern French literature, has written that Gide is "related to La Fontaine and Racine by his essential conciseness and crystalline style, to Montaigne and Goethe by his inquiring mind which reconciled unrest and serenity, to Baudelaire by his lucid, prophetic criticism." O'Brien, who has done so much to bring contemporary French literature to America, supervised the translations in "Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality," " "prepared several of them himself, and contributes an informative general introduction and additional commentary to preface the various sections of this major book.

Set in the 1890s, Andre Gide's famous satire centres around a group of ingenious fraudsters ('The Millipede') who convince their wealthy victims that the pontiff has been imprisoned in the Vatican cellars, and a false Pope has been enthroned in his place. Posing as clergy, they con money by promising to obtain the true Pope's release and restoration. The book features one of Gide's most memorable creations: the amoral Lafcadio, who in pushing a man from a moving train commits the ultimate motiveless crime. Unavailable in the UK for 25 years, this scandalous, funny and highly original novel has been re-translated to mark the centenary of its publication. Supported by English PEN.

Madeleine is the story of a great writer's marriage, a deeply disturbing account of Andre Gide's feelings towards his beloved and long-suffering wife. It was a relationship which Gide exalted-he termed it the central drama of his existence-yet deliberately shrouded in mystery. This was no ordinary marriage. Madeleine Rondeaux, two years older than her cousin Andre Gide, became his wife after Gide's first visit to Algeria. In his Journal, Gide refers to her as Emmanuele or as Em. Only in this book, published a few months after his death, does Gide call her by her real name and painfully reveal the nature of their life together. All of Gide's vast work may be viewed as a confession, impelled by his need to write what he believed to be true about himself. In Madeleine this act of confession reaches a crowning point. It is a complex tale by a complex man about a complex relationship. "Ranks among the masterpieces of Gide's vibrating prose. It is also the most tragic personal document to have emanated from Gide's pen."-New York Times.

A delicate boy growing up in Paris, Jerome Palissier spends many summers at his uncle's house in the Normandy countryside, where the whole world seems 'steeped in azure'. There he falls deeply in love with his cousin Alissa and she with him. But gradually Alissa becomes convinced that Jerome's love for her is endangering his soul. In the interests of his salvation, she decides to suppress everything that is beautiful in herself - in both mind and body

A devastating exploration of aestheticism taken to extremes, Strait is the Gate is a novel of haunting beauty that stimulates the mind and the emotions.

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

This is a new release of the original 1925 edition.

First published nearly one hundred years ago, Andre Gide's masterpiece, translated from the original French by Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Howard, draws from the disciplines of biology, philosophy, and history to support the author's assertion that homosexuality is a natural human trait At the time of his death in 1951, having won the Nobel Prize in Literature only four years prior, Andre Gide was considered one of the most important literary minds of the twentieth century. In Corydon, initially released anonymously in installments between 1911 and 1920, Gide speaks his most subversive and provocative truth. Citing myriad examples that span thousands of years, Gide's Socratic dialogues argue that homosexuality is natural--in fact, far more so than the social construct of exclusive heterosexuality, the act of systematically banning or ostracizing same-sex relationships. Corydon, named for the pederast character in Virgil's Eclogues, caused its author "all kinds of trouble," according to his friends, but he regarded it as his most important work. The courage, intelligence, and prescience of Gide's argument make it all the more impressive today.

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

1925. French writer, humanist, and moralist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947. Gide's search for self, the underlying theme of his several works, remained essentially religious. Throughout his career Gide used his writings to examine moral questions. He is as well known for his influence as a moralist and a thinker as for his contributions to literature. Lafcadio Wluiki is one of the original creations in modern fiction. Gide's preoccupation with the gratuitous action, the unmotivated crime-it has a place in more than one of his books-here receives its most extended treatment, and Lafcadio is the instrument. With characteristic irony, Gide leads the police to a solution wherein the wrong man is apprehended and punished for the crime, while the charmingly perverse Lafcadio goes free. The action passes with cinematographic speed, chiefly in the capitals of Europe. The actors, other than Lafcadio, are noblemen, saints, adventurers and pickpockets. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

1925. French writer, humanist, and moralist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947. Gide's search for self, the underlying theme of his several works, remained essentially religious. Throughout his career Gide used his writings to examine moral questions. He is as well known for his influence as a moralist and a thinker as for his contributions to literature. Lafcadio Wluiki is one of the original creations in modern fiction. Gide's preoccupation with the gratuitous action, the unmotivated crime-it has a place in more than one of his books-here receives its most extended treatment, and Lafcadio is the instrument. With characteristic irony, Gide leads the police to a solution wherein the wrong man is apprehended and punished for the crime, while the charmingly perverse Lafcadio goes free. The action passes with cinematographic speed, chiefly in the capitals of Europe. The actors, other than Lafcadio, are noblemen, saints, adventurers and pickpockets. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Muerto en Paris, donde paso los ultimos anos de su vida bajo seudonimo, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), irlandes de nacimiento pero ingles de devocion, tuvo que afrontar un escandaloso proceso por B+ultraje a la moralB; en la rigida sociedad victoriana, que habria de llevarle a la carcel y al exilio. Andre Gide (Paris 1869-1951, premio Nobel de Literatura en 1947) no ofrece aqui una biografia de Wilde o un ensayo sobre su obra, sino que recoge dos B+semblanzasB; la primera, escrita apenas un ano despues de la muerte del autor de Balada de la carcel de Reading, es una elegia a la memoria de un escritor que, defendiendo los principios del B+arte por el arteB; , paga, paradojicamente, la practica del arte con la propia vida; la segunda es un analisis, antes moral (aqui sin comillas) que literario, del poema De Profundis, que Wilde escribiera en prision en forma de carta dirigida a Lord Douglas, el personaje desencadenante de su desgracia, y que no se publicaria hasta 1905, postumamente. Dos textos, en suma, que nos hablan de la categoria humana y artistica de dos escritores de nuestro tiempo.

Muerto en Paris, donde paso los ultimos anos de su vida bajo seudonimo, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), irlandes de nacimiento pero ingles de devocion, tuvo que afrontar un escandaloso proceso por B+ultraje a la moralB; en la rigida sociedad victoriana, que habria de llevarle a la carcel y al exilio. Andre Gide (Paris 1869-1951, premio Nobel de Literatura en 1947) no ofrece aqui una biografia de Wilde o un ensayo sobre su obra, sino que recoge dos B+semblanzasB; la primera, escrita apenas un ano despues de la muerte del autor de Balada de la carcel de Reading, es una elegia a la memoria de un escritor que, defendiendo los principios del B+arte por el arteB; , paga, paradojicamente, la practica del arte con la propia vida; la segunda es un analisis, antes moral (aqui sin comillas) que literario, del poema De Profundis, que Wilde escribiera en prision en forma de carta dirigida a Lord Douglas, el personaje desencadenante de su desgracia, y que no se publicaria hasta 1905, postumamente. Dos textos, en suma, que nos hablan de la categoria humana y artistica de dos escritores de nuestro tiempo.

The book "Prometheus Illbound" is one of the most characteristic books of Andre Gide: a work of pure intelectual fantasy, where the subtle brain of the author has full play. It is the expression of the humorous side of a mind which must be ranked among the greatest of the world's literature. "The work of art is the exaggeration of an idea," says Gide in the epilogue of "Prometheus Illbound." This is really the explanation of the whole book and of many other books of Gide. --- Andre Paul Guillaume Gide (1869-1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. His other works include: "Les Caves du Vatican" ("Lafcadio's Adventures"), "Les Nourritures Terrestres" ("Fruits of the Earth"), "La Porte Etroite" ("Strait is the Gate"), "L'Immoraliste" ("The Immoralist") and many others.

RETURN FROM THE U. S. S. R. Also by Andre Gide THE COUNTERFEITERS THE IMMORALIST TRAVELS IN THE CONGO These are Borzoi Books published by ALFRED A. KNOPF I DEDICATE THESE PAGES TO THE MEMORY OF EUGENE DABIT, BESIDE WHOM, WITH WHOM, THEY WERE LIVED AND THOUGHT THE HOMERIC HYMN TO DEMETER relates how the great goddess, in the course of her wanderings in search of her daughter, came to the court of Keleos. No one recognized the goddess under the borrowed form of a humble wet-nurse and Queen Metaneira entrusted to her care her latest-born child, the infant Demophoon, afterwards known as Triptolemus, the founder of agriculture. Every evening, behind closed doors, while the household was asleep, Demeter took little Demo phoon out of his comfortable cradle and with appar ent cruelty., though moved in reality by a great love 1 and desirous of bringing him eventually to the state of godhoodj laid the naked child on a glowing bed of embers. I imagine the mighty Demeter bending ma ternally over the radiant nursling as over the future race of mankind. He endures the fiery charcoal he gathers strength from the ordeal. Something super human is fostered in Mm, something robust, some thing beyond all hope glorious. Ah, had Demeter only been able to carry through her bold attempt, to bring her daring venture to a successful issue But Metaneira becoming anxious, says the legend, burst suddenly into the room where the experiment was be ing carried on and guided by her mistaken fears, thrust aside the goddess at her work of forging the superman j pushed away the embers, and, in order to save the child, lost the god. CONTENTS FOREWORD XI RETURN FROM THE U. S. S. R. 3 APPENDICES r. Speech Delivered on theOccasion of Maxim Gorkis Funeral 65 n. Speech to the Students of Moscow 70 in. Speech to the Men of Letters of Leningrad 74 iv. The Struggle against Religion 78 v. Ostrovski 83 vi. A Kolkhoz 86 vu. Bolshevo 89 vni. The Besprizornis 91 FOREWORD THREE YEARS AGO I declared my admiration, my love, for the U. S. S. R. An unprecedented experi ment was being attempted there which filled our hearts with hope and from which we expected an immense advance, an impetus capable of carrying forward in its stride the whole human race. It is indeed worth while living, I thought, in order to be present at this rebirth, and worth while giving ones life in order to help it on. In our hearts and in our minds we resolutely linked the future of culture itself with the glorious destiny of the U. S. S. R. We have frequently said so. We should have liked to repeat it once again, Already, without as yet having seen things for ourselves, we could not but feel disturbed by cer tain recent decisions which seemed to denote a change of orientation. At that moment October 1935 I wrote as fol lows It is largely moreover the stupidity and unfair xi Xll FOREWORD ness of the attacks on the U. S. S. R. that make us defend it with some obstinacy. Those same yelpers will begin to approve the Soviet Union just as we shall cease to do so for what they will approve are those very compromises and concessions which will make some others say There You see but which will lead away from the goal it had at first set itself. Let us hope that in order to keep our eyes fixed on that goal we may not be obliged to avert them from the Soviet Union Nouvelle Revue Frangaise, March 1936 Resolving, however, to maintain at all costs myconfidence until I had more to go upon, and pre ferring to doubt my own judgment, I declared once more, four days after my arrival in Moscow, in my speech in the Red Square on the occasion of Gorkis funeral The fate of culture is bound up in our minds with the destiny of the Soviet Union. We will defend it. 1 have always maintained that the wish to re main true to oneself too often carries with it a risk of insincerity and I consider that if ever sincerity is important, it is surely when the beliefs of great masses of people are involved together with ones own...