The White Notebook

by André Gide, Wade Baskin (Translator)

This work lays bare the early brilliance and philosophical conflicts of André Gide, a towering figure in French literature Nobel Prize–winning writer André Gide lays bare his adolescent psyche in this early work, first conceived and published as part of his novel The Notebooks of André Walter, completed when he was just twenty years old. This profoundly personal work draws heavily on his religious upbringing and private journals to tell the story of a young man who, like the author, pines for his forbidden love, cousin Emmanuelle. This unique portrait of Gide as a young man presents the passions and conflicts, temptations and anguish he would explore in maturity.

Genres: Classics, 19th Century, France, Philosophy, Love, Nonfiction, Religion

80 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Diaries 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

Reviews

[Eadweard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

The more I read Gide the more I like him.

" Nothing happens. Always the quiet life—and yet such a turbulent life. Everything happens deep in the soul. Nothing appears on the surface. "
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" I would fashion a soul, shape it deliberately—a loving soul, a beloved soul, similar to my own—in order that it might understand and yet from such a distance that nothing could ever separate the two. Slowly I would tie such intricate knots, weave such a network of sympathetic bonds, that separation would be impossible and shared patterns would forever keep them side by side. "
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" They will never understand this book, those who search for happiness. The soul remains unsatisfied; it falls asleep amid happy surroundings. It becomes inert rather than alert. The soul should remain alert, active. It should find happiness not in HAPPINESS but in the awareness of its violent activity.

It follows that sorrow is to be preferred over joy, for it quickens the soul; when it does not vanquish it stimulates. It causes suffering, but pride of undaunted living compensates for minor lapses. Supreme arrogance is the mark of intense living. I would not exchange the intense life for any other; I have lived several lives, and the least of these was the real one."
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" Multiply emotions. Not just one life in one isolated body; make your soul the host of several bodies. Feel it vibrate to the emotions of others as well as to your own and it will forget its own griefs when it ceases to think only of itself. The outer life is not violent enough; more poignant tremors result from inner surges of rapture. "
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" Suffering consists in being unable to reveal oneself and, when one happens to succeed in doing so, in having nothing more to say.”

[lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

sparse, scattered, spat-out. a desperate sort of purging of all the things a young writer needs to say, needs to feel—and all as if it is what he feels he needs to do before “allowing” himself to Become a Real Writer.

a little nuts definitely, but I was consistently just so moved by the prose, and the desperate dance to think himself through.

[Eddie Rosato · Rating 4 out of 5]

The introduction was almost more compelling than the book itself

[Andy Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I must be a masochist to keep trying to find Gide interesting. And I wish I had started with one of his more famous works like Counterfeiters that is on the Le Monde Top 100. Here, warned off from marrying his first cousin by his Mum (on her death bed) and being a bit of a Mummy's boy, he promises to lay off his efforts to accomplish. Then duly writes her this long romantic manuscript. We are meant to believe that the mother who has helped raised the cousin wanted that relationship to remain a sibling one. And indeed the lovers to be rather creepily call each other brother and sister. It is autobiographical and possibly the mother in real life saw some signs that her boys sexual interests might eventually lie elsewhere (he was a self-confessed pederast going around out to North Africa with Oscar Wilde to pick up boys in his journals). The romance between the cousins is not underpinned by more than one or two actual events (they meet at the house of a woman whose child had died at some point). Instead it is rendered highly philosophical and intellectual. The Gide character (Andre Walther) remembers the books they have read together like Spinoza, learning German together, theological differences of opinion and the fact that passion between them is not important (there's a surprise). It's all slightly tedious. I gather he wrote some interesting anti-colonial stuff on a journey to the Congo. Maybe I should look at that.

[yergali14 · Rating 5 out of 5]

the world can only separate bodies.
nothing can stand in the way of the loving soul, for love has conquered all.

[Tatyana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Some evening, turning back, I shall repeat these words of sorrow; now it sickens me to write. Words are not for these things, not for emotions too pure to be spoken, I am afraid that empty, high-sounding words are blasphemous; hating the words that I have loved too much, I wish to write badly by design. I wish to disrupt harmonies wherever they happen to exist."



"When tears are shed
cherished hopes will blossom anew.
Now you must sleep."

"We learned everything together. I thought only of joys shared with you, and you took pleasure in following my lead. Your vagabond mind also sought companionship".

"Wait till your sadness is assuaged, poor soul, wearied by the struggle of yesterday.
Wait"

"I tried to read, to think ... Exhaustion soothed my sadness, which now seems but dream.
Now beneath the trees
The darkness is comforting.
How silent is the night.I am almost afraid to fall asleep, I am alone"

"The air so radiant this morning that in spite of myself my soul hopes – and sings, and worships prayerfully."