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The Young Gide's Reaction to Nietzsche

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William W. Holdheim
William W. Holdheim*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University, Columbus 10
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Extract

One of the most significant aspects of the intellectual climate of the 1890's in France is undoubtedly the rapid spreading of Nietzsche's thought. Numerous fragmentary translations from his work were published in the literary reviews of the period, such as l'Ermitage, the Revue Blanche, le Banquet, and above all the Mercure de France. Articles on this philosopher were legion, and translations of complete Nietzschean works also began to appear with increasing frequency. The whole process has been described in detail by Geneviève Bianquis in her well-known study of Nietzsche's influence on French thought. By 1895 Nietzscheanism, though still in a rather vague form, was an essential part of the general intellectual atmosphere, and by the end of the decade we can speak of a true Nietzsche vogue.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , June 1957 , pp. 534 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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References

Note 1 in page 534 Nietzsche en France: L'influence de Nietzsche sur la pensée française (Paris, 1929).

Note 2 in page 534 “Lettre à Angèle, xii,” in Oeuvres complètes, ed. L. Martin-Chauffier (Paris, 1932–39). iii, 229. This edition will hereafter be referred to in the text as OC.

Note 3 in page 535 Quoted in Yvonne Davet, Autour des “Nourritures terrestres”: Histoire d'un livre (Paris, 1948), p. 57.

Note 4 in page 535 Journal 1889–1939 (Paris, 1948), pp. 858–859. Further references will appear in the text.

Note 5 in page 535 MLN, LVII (1942), 561 and 564, n. 11.

Note 6 in page 535 “Gide et Nietzsche: Etude chronologique,” RR, xxiv (1943). Mrs. Lang repeated her conclusions in her dissertation, André Gide el la pensée allemande (Paris, 1949).

Note 7 in page 537 The whole letter is quoted in Davet, pp. 61–63.

Note 8 in page 542 Examples can be found in Si le grain ne meurt... (Paris, 1928), pp. 264–265; “Souvenirs littéraires et problèmes actuels,” Feuillets d'automne (Paris, 1949), pp. 188–189; “Projet de conférence à Berlin,” OC, xv, 515.

Note 9 in page 543 L'Odyssée d'André Gide (Paris, 1951), p. 10.

Note 10 in page 543 A Journal note on Zarathuslra, although of a much later date (22 June 1930), still seems to suggest that even in his youth Gide was not primarily attracted by this excursion into dithyrambic poetry, as his “artistic” interpretation of Nietzsche might lead us to believe: “Pour la septième ou huitième fois (au moins), essayé Also sprach Zarathustra. IMPOSSIBLE. Le ton de ce livre m'est insupportable. Et toute mon admiration pour Nietzsche ne parvient pas à me le faire endurer. Enfin il me paraît, dans son oeuvre, quelque peu surérogatoire; ne prendrait de l'importance que si les autres livres n'existaient pas. Sans cesse je l'y sens jaloux du Christ; soucieux de donner au monde un livre qu'on puisse lire comme on lit l'Evangile. Si ce livre est devenu plus célèbre que tous les autres de Nietzsche, c'est que, au fond, c'est un roman. Mais, pour cela précisément, il s'adresse à la plus basse classe de ses lecteurs: ceux qui ont encore besoin d'un mythe. Et ce que j'aime surtout en Nietzsche, c'est sa haine de la fiction” (p. 990). Even though the tone of the entry is rather typical of the latter Gide's militant rationalism, we hope to have established that his admiration for the uncompromising “intellectual” Nietzsche is—to say the least—not limited to his period of maturity.