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La Symphonie Pastorale/Isabelle
La Symphonie Pastorale: In beautiful, evocative prose, Gide's short novel explores such themes as love, blindness, honor, and mortality.
170 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1931
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About the author
André Gide
857 books1,744 followersDiaries and novels, such as
The Immoralist
(1902) and
Lafcadio's Adventures
(1914), of noted French writer André Gide examine alienation and the drive for individuality in an often disapproving society; he won the Nobel Prize of 1947 for literature.
André Paul Guillaume Gide authored books. From beginnings in the symbolist movement, career of Gide ranged to anticolonialism between the two World Wars.
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes the conflict and eventual reconciliation to public view between the two sides of his personality; a straight-laced education and a narrow social moralism split apart these sides. One can see work of Gide as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and it gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of full self, even to the point of owning sexual nature without betraying values at the same time. After his voyage of 1936 to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the same ethos informs his political activity, as his repudiation of Communism suggests.
Chinese 安德烈·纪德
André Paul Guillaume Gide authored books. From beginnings in the symbolist movement, career of Gide ranged to anticolonialism between the two World Wars.
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes the conflict and eventual reconciliation to public view between the two sides of his personality; a straight-laced education and a narrow social moralism split apart these sides. One can see work of Gide as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and it gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of full self, even to the point of owning sexual nature without betraying values at the same time. After his voyage of 1936 to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the same ethos informs his political activity, as his repudiation of Communism suggests.
Chinese 安德烈·纪德
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
September 12, 2015
Two wonderful novellas, though LSP gets most of the praise. Certainly it sticks in one's mind more than Isabelle, but I think I'd rather re-read the latter: SP is a little too obvious. My rediscovery of Gide has been the reading triumph of the year for me so far, and these two only help that along: clarity, intelligence, some fun and games with forms and frame narratives, but no desire to blow the reader's mind. Most importantly of all, Gide is a dialectical novelist; each story is a careful staging of an important, intellectual opposition (here, religiosity/sensuality; idealism/realism), and each story allows us to see that the triumph of one pole is inevitably disastrous.
July 7, 2021
One of my favourite books of the year. Gide’s writing is beautiful, delectable, but lucid and precise. It reminded me of Colette’s sensual prose. And Calvino’s. Ugh I loved the writing a lot, it was such a pleasure. And the stories in these two novellas were fascinating. A character in the first novella reflects, ‘Is it not La Rochefoucauld who says that the mind is often the dupe of the heart?’ This question is at the heart of both novellas, where the protagonists are seized, mind, body and soul, by their infatuations with people they shouldn’t be involved with, because of what the culture deems nefarious, indecent, and their faith sinful. As the blurb says, ‘Gide shows the tragic effect of love’s rebellion against the confines of common morality.’ My first Gide, The Immoralist, a controversial work that would definitely not get published today, was also a fascinating, gorgeously written and disturbing story. Gide’s fiction explores the tension between the man-made laws of morality that govern the way we live, and the impulses, desires that exist within us that clashes and strains against them. I love Gide’s quest for the truth, for what these standards, conventions, rules mean to our personal freedoms, to individuality. This was my second Gide, and it elevates him to the level of my other French faves Maupassant, Colette, and Balzac.
October 5, 2016
I’m a big fan of Gide after having read 2 books of his previously but this failed to live up to the high expectations. This is 2 books in one. The first book is a really strange story about a pastor who is fairly religious who adopts a blind girl who is pretty dumb also and essentially nurtures her back into normality. Then weirdly he falls in love with her even though she is a third of his age. Gide obviously has magic at his fingertips when it comes to writing styles but this story didn’t rock me that much. As I am finding with all of Gide’s books this one also had a bit of a shocking ending which you may be able to guess!
The second story is also pretty weird. It’s about a random bloke that visits a villa somewhere in France and becomes enamoured with the portrait of the daughter of the house. Slowly he finds out more about her and the mystery around her. This time not that shocking an ending but again I didn’t feel that I could get to grips with what was going on in the story.
The second story is also pretty weird. It’s about a random bloke that visits a villa somewhere in France and becomes enamoured with the portrait of the daughter of the house. Slowly he finds out more about her and the mystery around her. This time not that shocking an ending but again I didn’t feel that I could get to grips with what was going on in the story.
March 22, 2024
“Simfonia pastorala” e inca o dovada ca tot raul din lumea asta izvoraste din rasa masculina
October 3, 2016
Two stories of men thinking women are what they would like to be, rather than what they are. Felt like the message was the point, and that's pretty uninteresting.
July 30, 2025
On the face of it, this is a story about a middle-aged country priest who brings a blind orphan girl into his home, with tragic consequences. But there is a lot more to it than that.
The pastor and his wife, Amélie, have five children. The youngest is still howling in his cradle. The oldest, Jacques is old enough to attend a theological college and later, to enter the priesthood.
The presence of pretty, blind Gertrude sets Jacques and his father against one another. They challenge each other’s behaviour by quoting the words of the Gospels. The pastor reminds himself of the words of Christ, whose divine compassion prohibits nothing. Jacques, on the other hand, invokes the words of St Paul, who interprets Christian teaching more harshly.
In the end, Jacques converts to Catholicism in retaliation against his father’s flawed spirituality. Yet the story is less concerned with the details of religious creed than with how we use rational arguments to validate moral choices that are wholly influenced by our natural inclinations.
Nor is this a simple moral fable, for the story is told with great skill and sensitivity. We are aware of the characters’ feelings for one another before they are spelled out in so many words. We especially feel Amélie’s pain from the first moment that Gertrude is brought into the house.
Gide’s skill is to make us empathise with every character’s point of view. Amélie, we are told, is often the one who is made to suffer for her husband’s charitable actions. The children are seen to have their own complex reactions. Charlotte, who is warm and affectionate, is very alive even though no more than a few sentences are used to describe her.
Gertrude, the blind orphan, is awakened to an intense and spiritual appreciation of the natural world and we can experience both her joy and frustration. The significance of Beethoven’s symphony, which the pastor takes Gertrude to as part of her education, is that it acts as an aural equivalent for the colours she cannot see, and shows her both the possibilities of what she is missing and the impossibility of replacing one sense with another.
Throughout, because the story is narrated by the pastor, we are aware of the author’s distance from his subject. There is some subtle humour due to the unconscious irony in the pastor’s words, such as when he tries to stay calm in the face of his wife’s anger at him for bringing the blind girl home:
“At the beginning of her outburst, some of Christ’s words rose from my heart to my lips; I kept them back, however, for I never think it becoming to allege the authority of the Holy Book as an excuse for my conduct.”
On the contrary, this is a man who alleges the authority of the Holy Book for his every action. His peculiar serenity of tone is due to a psychological blindness that is far more limiting in the end than Gertrude’s physical one. His duty, desire and faith exist almost independently of one another and he is unable to see cause and effect even within his own family.
But Gide’s is not a dismissive irony. You can sense that Gide is himself deeply invested in the words of the Holy Book. He takes them seriously and this is no lightweight rejection of the Christian creed but a deeply imagined narrative response which encourages close reading and careful thought.
The novella that is paired with this, Isabella, was a real delight. Once again it is presented in a sophisticated framework, this time as a narrative within a narrative; a happily married man is telling a group of friends about how he fell in love with a woman after seeing a miniature portrait of her that was shown to him by her young son.
Before we even get to that key moment, however, we are introduced to a fascinating group of characters who present a lively and humorous backdrop to the events which ultimately transpire. It's an odd little story — quite comical in the first half, poignant and sad in the second half. It’s romantic and cynical almost at the same time, and yet not so cynical that there isn’t room for kindness, generosity and even love, particularly in some of the details that frame the main story.
I enjoyed both novellas very much from the first sentence to the last and they have made me very curious about the rest of Gide’s work, which promises to be rich in sharply observed human foibles while at the same time full of hope for the potential of the human spirit.
The pastor and his wife, Amélie, have five children. The youngest is still howling in his cradle. The oldest, Jacques is old enough to attend a theological college and later, to enter the priesthood.
The presence of pretty, blind Gertrude sets Jacques and his father against one another. They challenge each other’s behaviour by quoting the words of the Gospels. The pastor reminds himself of the words of Christ, whose divine compassion prohibits nothing. Jacques, on the other hand, invokes the words of St Paul, who interprets Christian teaching more harshly.
In the end, Jacques converts to Catholicism in retaliation against his father’s flawed spirituality. Yet the story is less concerned with the details of religious creed than with how we use rational arguments to validate moral choices that are wholly influenced by our natural inclinations.
Nor is this a simple moral fable, for the story is told with great skill and sensitivity. We are aware of the characters’ feelings for one another before they are spelled out in so many words. We especially feel Amélie’s pain from the first moment that Gertrude is brought into the house.
Gide’s skill is to make us empathise with every character’s point of view. Amélie, we are told, is often the one who is made to suffer for her husband’s charitable actions. The children are seen to have their own complex reactions. Charlotte, who is warm and affectionate, is very alive even though no more than a few sentences are used to describe her.
Gertrude, the blind orphan, is awakened to an intense and spiritual appreciation of the natural world and we can experience both her joy and frustration. The significance of Beethoven’s symphony, which the pastor takes Gertrude to as part of her education, is that it acts as an aural equivalent for the colours she cannot see, and shows her both the possibilities of what she is missing and the impossibility of replacing one sense with another.
Throughout, because the story is narrated by the pastor, we are aware of the author’s distance from his subject. There is some subtle humour due to the unconscious irony in the pastor’s words, such as when he tries to stay calm in the face of his wife’s anger at him for bringing the blind girl home:
“At the beginning of her outburst, some of Christ’s words rose from my heart to my lips; I kept them back, however, for I never think it becoming to allege the authority of the Holy Book as an excuse for my conduct.”
On the contrary, this is a man who alleges the authority of the Holy Book for his every action. His peculiar serenity of tone is due to a psychological blindness that is far more limiting in the end than Gertrude’s physical one. His duty, desire and faith exist almost independently of one another and he is unable to see cause and effect even within his own family.
But Gide’s is not a dismissive irony. You can sense that Gide is himself deeply invested in the words of the Holy Book. He takes them seriously and this is no lightweight rejection of the Christian creed but a deeply imagined narrative response which encourages close reading and careful thought.
The novella that is paired with this, Isabella, was a real delight. Once again it is presented in a sophisticated framework, this time as a narrative within a narrative; a happily married man is telling a group of friends about how he fell in love with a woman after seeing a miniature portrait of her that was shown to him by her young son.
Before we even get to that key moment, however, we are introduced to a fascinating group of characters who present a lively and humorous backdrop to the events which ultimately transpire. It's an odd little story — quite comical in the first half, poignant and sad in the second half. It’s romantic and cynical almost at the same time, and yet not so cynical that there isn’t room for kindness, generosity and even love, particularly in some of the details that frame the main story.
I enjoyed both novellas very much from the first sentence to the last and they have made me very curious about the rest of Gide’s work, which promises to be rich in sharply observed human foibles while at the same time full of hope for the potential of the human spirit.
October 16, 2019
Isabelle creates expectations, but once on the plateau, it ends, not with unanswered questions, but simply a weak ending. The Pastoral Symphony is notably the real deal here. Shorter, but pungent. Also, in terms of the underlying messages, there is more to gain from this story, and some amazing lines:
p. 135 2 symphonies
"the only pleasure I can still give Amelie ( wife) is to refrain from doing the things she dislikes. These very negative signs of love are the only ones she allows me. The degree to which she has already narrowed my life is a thing she cannot realise."
p. 135 2 symphonies
"the only pleasure I can still give Amelie ( wife) is to refrain from doing the things she dislikes. These very negative signs of love are the only ones she allows me. The degree to which she has already narrowed my life is a thing she cannot realise."
November 24, 2020
Simple prose accommodates short stories exploring oppositions and morality.
Read
February 16, 2026Strongly feel Gide simply isn’t my style. There is lucid, sensitive prose and exposition of human foibles, but the *point* of the stories didn’t move me at all. My feeling is that both tales (morality stories) hinged on trite observations. But readable despite this — the realism takes you vividly to early 20th century life
June 26, 2011
I was surprised at first that La Symphonie Pastorale seems to have by far the greater amount of space in the book's reviews, but now I understand. The first story although only 62 pages to Isabelle's 95, is to my mind the better story. It deals with a priest called to a dying woman, who then takes into his family the person he finds apparently deaf, dumb and blind and totally uncomprehending of the situation she is in. His wife is not best pleased, and he takes a keen interest in attempting to educate her himself. The tale has a twist at the end but I won't give away the story.
Isabelle I found maudlin and sentimental and it did not hold my attention nearly so much.
Isabelle I found maudlin and sentimental and it did not hold my attention nearly so much.
November 10, 2014
La Symphonie is a story of forbidden love and loss of faith, and as such its themes are uncomfortably personal for me. The main character's lack of awareness of that in himself which is obvious to all around him is well drawn. In Isabelle, Gide's real interest is not Isabelle but her son Casimir - he may be a slobbering cripple, but he is still morally superior to his awful mother. I read both tales with pleasure in the course of a single afternoon.
July 10, 2015
Isabelle: "As it was, I could hardly recognize the Isabelle my imagination had fallen in love with. Her tale, it is true, was interlarded with interjections; she recriminated against fate; she lamented that in this world poetry & sentiment are always in the wrong; but it grieved me not to hear in her melodious voice any of the warm harmonics of the heart. Not a word of regret for anyone but herself! What! I thought, is that the only way she can love?..."
September 1, 2012
A chance encounter with Andre Gide on a Th. Van Rysselberghe painting, and then with this book in a second-hand shop, compelled me to read these two random 'classics' - which turn out to be quirky horror stories more notable for the literary zeitgeist they represent than for their inherent, semi-gothic quality.
September 29, 2008
Like a walk in the park. A very big park with broken statuary and deer peeking through the brush at you. And then you find a crumbling stone manor and the mist starts creeping in. That kind of walk in the park.
October 1, 2008
La Symphonie is okay, but I really like Isabelle. A love story. Should read in original French if you can.
November 26, 2012
melodrama in all of its brutal vitality
June 12, 2025
What can you say about a horrible bastard who writes brilliant books. Realistic characters, perfect (although despairing) endings, and some gorgeous writing. The plots are so original and the moral struggles in both make them so engrossing. I am going to put in a large quote because I have been thinking about it everyday for the last week.
(The girl in the passage is blind if that isn’t obvious)
“Her little universe of darkness was bounded by the walls of the single room she never left; she scarcely ventured on summer days as far as the threshold, when the door stood open to the great universe of light. She told me later that when she heard the birds' song she used to suppose it was simply the effect of light, like the gentle warmth which she felt on her cheeks and hands, and that, without precisely thinking about it, it seemed to her quite natural that the warm air should begin to sing, just as the water begins to boil on the fire. The truth is she did not trouble to think; she took no interest in anything and lived in a state of frozen numbness till the day I took charge of her. I remember her inexhaustible delight when I told her that the little voices came from living creatures, whose sole function, apparently, was to express the joy that lies broadcast throughout all nature. (It was from that day that she began to say, 'I am as joyful as a bird.) And yet the idea that these songs proclaim the splendours of a spectacle she could not behold had begun by making her melancholy.
'Is the world really as beautiful as the birds say?' she would ask. 'Why do people not tell us so oftener? Why do you never tell me so? Is it for fear of grieving me because I cannot see it? That would be wrong. I listen so attentively to the birds; I think I understand everything they say.”
So goooood like 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤
(The girl in the passage is blind if that isn’t obvious)
“Her little universe of darkness was bounded by the walls of the single room she never left; she scarcely ventured on summer days as far as the threshold, when the door stood open to the great universe of light. She told me later that when she heard the birds' song she used to suppose it was simply the effect of light, like the gentle warmth which she felt on her cheeks and hands, and that, without precisely thinking about it, it seemed to her quite natural that the warm air should begin to sing, just as the water begins to boil on the fire. The truth is she did not trouble to think; she took no interest in anything and lived in a state of frozen numbness till the day I took charge of her. I remember her inexhaustible delight when I told her that the little voices came from living creatures, whose sole function, apparently, was to express the joy that lies broadcast throughout all nature. (It was from that day that she began to say, 'I am as joyful as a bird.) And yet the idea that these songs proclaim the splendours of a spectacle she could not behold had begun by making her melancholy.
'Is the world really as beautiful as the birds say?' she would ask. 'Why do people not tell us so oftener? Why do you never tell me so? Is it for fear of grieving me because I cannot see it? That would be wrong. I listen so attentively to the birds; I think I understand everything they say.”
So goooood like 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤
February 1, 2021
La Symphonie Pastorale is a proto-Lolita exposé of a priest's infatuation with a blind teen, presented through unconvincing diary entries. Though flawed, it was a fascinating downward spiral into jealousy, religious denouncement, and submittance to sinful passion.
Isabelle started off bland but matured as sordid discoveries were made, which got the ball rolling on this mysterious, hopeless tale. Strongly reminiscent of The Pupil by Henry James, one of Hardy's Wessex Tales named The Distracted Preacher, and even Lady Chatterley's Lover at times.
Dorothy Bussy's quarter-century translation is a bit creaky, but proper crackerjack sentences pop up every once in awhile. Gidé's brilliance shines through as being both thrillingly insightful:
Many things would be easily accomplished but for the imaginary objections men sometimes take pleasure in inventing. From our childhood upwards, how often have we been prevented from doing one thing or another we should have liked to do, simply by hearing people about us repeat: 'He won't be able to!...'
and flatout hilarious:
The Abbé had screwed up his mouth till it looked like the hinder end of a hen, and was letting off a series of small explosions.
They're slight things, and will compel fans of Gidé sufficiently, but I felt the spark of emotion failed to render into a full blown flame. The casts' concerns blossom and evolve, though never involve; but don't let this put off these novellas: they're interesting, beautiful, and very much worth reading.
Isabelle started off bland but matured as sordid discoveries were made, which got the ball rolling on this mysterious, hopeless tale. Strongly reminiscent of The Pupil by Henry James, one of Hardy's Wessex Tales named The Distracted Preacher, and even Lady Chatterley's Lover at times.
Dorothy Bussy's quarter-century translation is a bit creaky, but proper crackerjack sentences pop up every once in awhile. Gidé's brilliance shines through as being both thrillingly insightful:
Many things would be easily accomplished but for the imaginary objections men sometimes take pleasure in inventing. From our childhood upwards, how often have we been prevented from doing one thing or another we should have liked to do, simply by hearing people about us repeat: 'He won't be able to!...'
and flatout hilarious:
The Abbé had screwed up his mouth till it looked like the hinder end of a hen, and was letting off a series of small explosions.
They're slight things, and will compel fans of Gidé sufficiently, but I felt the spark of emotion failed to render into a full blown flame. The casts' concerns blossom and evolve, though never involve; but don't let this put off these novellas: they're interesting, beautiful, and very much worth reading.
March 2, 2021
Gérard Lacase, în casa căruia ne-am reîntâlnit în luna august 189… ne-a dus, pe Francis Jammes şi pe mine, să vizităm castelul Quartfourche, din care nu vor mai rămâne în curând decât nişte ruine, şi vastul lui parc părăginit, în care vara îşi desfăşura fastul la întâmplare. Nimic nu te împiedica să intri: nici şanţul pe jumătate umplut, nici gardul spart, nici poarta scoasă din ţâţâni, care s-a deschis oblic la prima noastră opintire. Alei nu mai erau; pe peluzele năpădite de iarba crescută mai mult decât din abundenţă nişte vaci păşteau în voie; altele căutau răcoarea în scobiturile unor masive râpoase; ici şi colo, prin profuziunea sălbatică, abia se desluşeau câte o floare sau câte un frunziş neobişnuit, perseverentă rămăşiţă a vechilor culturi, aproape înăbuşite de speciile mai comune.
October 26, 2025
La Symphonie Pastorale ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
As a character study, this novella was fascinating, I couldn't put it down. The slippery spiral of secret sin, denial that it's anything other than normal or harmless and the devastating consequence thereof: how emotion can blind you and vision can lie. Thoroughly enjoyed - and I could easily delve into a huge theological and philosophical study of the book.
Isabelle ⭐⭐
Unfortunately, thoroughly underwhelming. Although considering I bought this book to edit and deface for the adventure challenge, there's not too much love lost on this one.
As a character study, this novella was fascinating, I couldn't put it down. The slippery spiral of secret sin, denial that it's anything other than normal or harmless and the devastating consequence thereof: how emotion can blind you and vision can lie. Thoroughly enjoyed - and I could easily delve into a huge theological and philosophical study of the book.
Isabelle ⭐⭐
Unfortunately, thoroughly underwhelming. Although considering I bought this book to edit and deface for the adventure challenge, there's not too much love lost on this one.
March 11, 2021
While the two novellas have a degree of compulsion to them, they're often incited by the actions, or mis-actions of wanton and passive women - so not a good read if you're looking for something with a bit more contemporary relevance. La Symphonie Pastorale is the more famed, and more succinct of the two, but Isabelle is no slouch in narrative - both as they are presented as recollections, and tinged with unreliability by their narrators.
October 27, 2024
Two nice works, The Pastoral Symphony being the stronger of the two by quite a bit. The theological underpinnings & central relationships of Pastoral are dramatically compelling, beautifully haunting. The narrator’s tragic, or selfish, self-obfuscated perspective on Gertrude’s humanity & free will is very well executed. Read in a single sitting.
Isabelle is entertaining, formally interesting, but there’s not much thematic meat on the bone.
Isabelle is entertaining, formally interesting, but there’s not much thematic meat on the bone.
May 2, 2020
2 novellas, the first was interesting with a profoundly implausible and disappointing ending, while the second was so beautifully written and descriptive that the contrived and unsatisfying ending barely detracted! Although first published in 1911 it feels like they were written half a century earlier.
February 28, 2022
1* to Pastoral Symphony, really weird relies on a disability in uncomfortable way, with not very nice age-gap relationships. overall probably just aged very very poorly
3* to Isabelle, enjoyable good atmosphere but very paperback-y
3* to Isabelle, enjoyable good atmosphere but very paperback-y
April 2, 2022
Un court mais bon roman. Il s'agit d'un pasteur et son rapport avec une jeune avegule.
February 25, 2023
Two great novellas, the stronger for me being the first, in which a priest helps a deaf and dumb girl reclaim her life, but with tragic results.
July 2, 2023
I read Isabelle. I found everything about it stilted, stiff. The writing style, the characters, the story, everything. I have no interest in reading anything else by this author.
December 16, 2025
Two stories about men being obsessed with women that they definitely shouldn’t be obsessed with
March 16, 2007
Another inscrutable book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews