Authors: André Gide
Oscar Wilde (2 page)
7
Marcel Schwob and Stuart Merrill were among the French authors who worked on and corrected the French of Oscar Wilde's play,
Salomé
.
8
Jean Delay,
The Youth of André Gide
, abridged and trans. June Guicharnaud (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1963) 289.
9
Correspondance
144. “Pardonne-moi de m'être tu: depuis Wilde je n'existe plus que très peu.”
10
Journal I
148. “Wilde ne m'a fait, je crois, que du mal. Avec lui, j'avais désappris de penser. J'avais des emotions plus diverses mais je ne savais plus les ordonner: je ne pouvais surtout plus suivre les deductions des autres. Quelques pensées, parfois; mais ma maladresse à les remuer me les faisait abandoner. Je reprends maintenant, difficilement mais avec de grandes joies mon histoire de la philosophie où j'étudie le problème du langage (que je reprends avec Müller et Renan.)”
11
According to a letter to his friend Marcel Drouin, 24 January 1896 cited in André Gide,
Romans, Récits et soties. Oeuvres lyriques
(Paris: Gallimard, Edition de la Pléiade, 1958) 1483.
12
André Gide,
The Fruits of the Earth,
trans. Dorothy Bussy (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1949) 68.
13
Fruits of the Earth
71.
14
According to Jean Delay, unpublished notes for
Si le grain ne meurt
, Gide's autobiography, indicate he had met Oscar Wilde and Lord Douglas in Florence the preceding year.
Youth of André Gide
391.
15
Youth of André Gide
391.
16
Youth of André Gide
437.
17
Ellmann 438. The card, left ten days before, read: “To Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite (sic).”
18
Ellmann 493.
19
See his books
Corydon, Voyage au Congo, Retour de l'URSS
and
Retouches au Retour de l'URSS
, also his support of the Free French and General Charles De Gaulle during World War II.
Jeanine Parisier Plottel
New York, New York 2012
J
EANINE
P
ARISIER
P
LOTTEL
, professor emeritus of French, CUNY Hunter College & The Graduate Center, is the former executive director of the New York State Conference, American Association of University Professors and former chair of the Hunter Dept. of Romance Languages. The French government has decorated her twice (Palmes Académiques) for her contribution to French language, literature and culture. She is a former trustee of Barnard College, and a trustee of the Society for French-American Cultural Exchange (FACE). She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Maison Française at Columbia University, the Institute for French Studies at New York University, and the Henri Peyre French Institute of the City University Graduate Center. An author of numerous books and articles in both English and French, the editor and publisher of
New York Literary Forum,
she is an honorary life member of the Modern Language Association. A graduate of Barnard College, she received her master's and doctoral degrees in French literature from Columbia University.
ANDRÃ GIDE QUOTES
Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourselfâand thus make yourself indispensable.
Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.
The funny thing about love is that it must continually grow or it will diminish.
It is now, and in this world, that we must live.
A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselvesâin finding themselves.
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.
Art begins with resistanceâat the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.
Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain.
It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labor of peace.
There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, “It all depends on me.”
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.
The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to sayâbecause they were too obvious.
Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.
Dare to be yourself.
Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward.
In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.
At times it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin.
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
The color of truth is grey.
Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.
The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers most from its own limitations.
Only fools don't contradict themselves.
Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you.
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.
To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.
He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands upon others.
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It's their way of falling.
The most decisive actions of our lifeâI mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our futureâare, more often than not, unconsidered.
My soul was born covered with wrinklesâwrinkles that my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.
Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.
Understanding is the beginning of approving.
Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.
Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.
The scholar seeks, the artist finds.
Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!
We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.
A work of art is an exaggeration.
Our judgments about things vary according to the time left us to liveâthat we think is left us to live.
To win one's joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.
One completely overcomes only what one assimilates.
What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer.
The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.
So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.
To what a degree the same past can leave different marksâand especially admit of different interpretations.
IMAGE GALLERY
André Gide, 1893
Oscar Wilde, 1882
Billy Rose Theater Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
Image of the Marquis of Queensberry's visiting card, left for Oscar Wilde at the Albermarle Club, London, in 1895, and which precipitated Wilde's lawsuit against him for criminal libel. Note it is marked as “Exhibit A” in the trial.
OSCAR WILDE QUOTES
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Genius is bornânot paid.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectlyâthat is what each of us is here for.
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Biography lends to death a new terror.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.