Black humour is the veritable bone of contention between two generations that could, in some respect, claim to have taken their inspiration from the works of André Gide. For better or worse, we must recognize that the publication of Lafcadio’s Adventures, just before the war, marked the apogee of the misunderstanding between these generations. From the moment of its appearance in La Nouvelle Revue Française, the novel provoked two violently opposed currents of opinion. Whereas most of the author’s old friends and admirers hastened in their dismay to claim he had taken a wrong turn (they accused him of indulging in ‘serial novels,’ of sacrificing to parody nobody really knew what, but at all events to parody; they resented him for being, for the first time, less than serious), young people were ecstatic – not so much over the plot, if truth be told, though its frivolity was actually quite tolerable; or over the style, which had its share of preciousness; but over the creation of the main character, Lafcadio. This character, who was totally unintelligible to the first group, seemed full of meaning to the second, the forebear of a remarkable lineage. For the latter, he represented a temptation and a justification of the highest order. In the years of intellectual and moral debacle that saw the War of 1914, this character did not stop growing in significance; he incarnated nonconformism in all its guises, with a smile that even the ‘dromedaries’ found rather seductive, though it was imperceptibly sidelong and cruel. From Lafcadio came a sort of ‘unconscientious objection,’ much more dangerous than the other kind, that has by no means had its final say. The ideas of family, fatherland, religion, and even society emerged somewhat the worse for wear from the assault that this latest form of resigned adolescent boredom, of wandering adolescent idleness, had waged on them.
‘For me, a work of art is only a last resort,’ a young German who had come to visit M. Gide would declare in 1919: ‘I prefer life … Look here’ – and, notes the author of The Fruits of the Earth, he stretched out his arm in an admirable gesture. ‘I feel more joy simply from extending my arm than from writing the most beautiful book in the world. Action is what I want; yes, the most intense action … intense … to the point of murder …’ One can easily see in this attitude, and in Lafcadio’s, the logical, active, modern outgrowth of the concept of dandyism. At the ‘front,’ Jacques Vaché (who in some respects was very hostile toward Gide) dreamed of setting up his easel between French and German lines to draw Lafcadio’s portrait. Several years earlier, Arthur Cravan, nephew of Oscar Wilde and partial Lafcadio before the fact, had – as harshly and amusingly as could be, moreover – measured the gap between André Gide and his protagonist. But the reality principle was nonetheless given a rest by Gide on a few occasions. And since among our contemporary authors he is also – all humour aside – the one most concerned with lasting, there are several of us who believe this to be the least perishable segment of his work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Paludes, 1895. Le Prométhée mal enchainé, 1899. Les Caves du Vatican, 1914, etc.
BIBLIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH: Marshlands. Prometheus Misbound. Lafcadio’s Adventures.
At eight o’clock sharp the crowd entered the Hall of Blue Moons.
Cocles sat in the centre on the left, Camocles in the centre on the right; the rest of the public between them.
A thunder of applause greeted the entry of Prometheus; he ascended the steps of the platform, put down his eagle at his side, and gathered himself together. In the hall there was a thrilling silence …
‘Gentlemen,’ began Prometheus, ‘having, alas, no expectation of interesting you in what I am about to say, I have taken the precaution of bringing this eagle with me. After every tedious portion of my discourse, it will be so kind as to perform a few tricks for us. Moreover, I have with me some obscene photographs and some sky-rockets; at the most serious parts of my lecture I shall take care to amuse the public with them. I venture, therefore, gentlemen, to hope for some attention on your part.
At each new point in my speech, I shall have the honour, gentlemen, of inviting you to witness my eagle taking a meal; for my lecture, gentlemen, has three points; (I felt there was no need to reject this style of construction, which suits my classical turn of mind.) – And with this as an exordium, I will now announce, in advance and without meretricious disguise, the first two points of my discourse:
‘First point: Everyone should have an eagle.
‘Second point: We all have one anyway.
‘Fearing lest you should accuse me of making up my mind in advance, gentlemen, fearing also lest I should impair the liberty of my thought, I have not prepared my discourse beyond this stage; my third point will devolve naturally from the two others; in arriving at it I mean to let the passion of the moment have full play. – And by way of conclusion, the eagle, gentlemen, will take the collection.’
‘Bravo! Bravo!’ cried Cocles.
Prometheus drank a mouthful of water. The eagle pirouetted three times round Prometheus, and then bowed. Prometheus looked at the audience, smiled at Damocles and Cocles, and then, as no sign of boredom was visible as yet, postponed his rockets till later, and continued:
‘Whatever rhetorical skill I brought to bear, gentlemen, I should never succeed in concealing from your perspicacious intelligence the fatal begging of the question, which lies in wait for me at the very beginning of my discourse.
‘Gentlemen, whatever our efforts, we shall never escape from begging the question. What does it mean, to beg the question? Gentlemen, if I may venture to say so, begging the question is always an assertion of temperament; for it is unprincipled to beg, and where principles are lacking, assertion of temperament steps in.
‘When I declare: everyone should have an eagle, all of you might well exclaim: Why? – Now, is there any answer I could give you, which might not be reduced to this formula, in which my temperament asserts itself: I do not love men: I love what devours them.
‘Temperament, gentlemen, may be defined as “that which must be asserted.” He’s begging the question again, you will say. But I have just declared that begging the question is always an assertion of temperament; and as I say that temperament must be asserted, I repeat: I do not love Man; I love what devours him – Now, what devours Man? – His eagle. Therefore, gentlemen, everyone should have an eagle. This point, I think, needs no further demonstration.
‘… Alas! I see, gentlemen, that I am boring you; certain persons are beginning to yawn. I could, it is true, make a few jokes at this point; but you would feel they were being dragged in; I have an incurably serious turn of mind. I prefer to distribute some indecent photographs; they will cause those of you who are being bored by my words to hold their peace: and that will permit me to continue.’
Prometheus drank a mouthful of water. The eagle pirouetted three times round Prometheus, and then bowed. Prometheus went on:
‘Gentlemen, I have not always known my eagle. That is what makes me infer, by a form of reasoning which has a special name that I can’t recall for the moment, as I have only been studying logic during the past week – that, I was saying, is what makes me infer, although the only eagle to be seen here is my own, that an eagle, gentlemen, is something all of you have.
‘Up till now I have kept silence concerning my story – besides, until now I did not quite understand it myself. And if I now decide to speak of it to you, it is because, thanks to my eagle, it now seems to me miraculously wonderful.’
‘Gentlemen, as I have told you, I have not always seen my eagle. Before I saw it, I was careless and handsome, happy and naked without knowing it. Delightful days! On the gushing flanks of Caucasus, happy and naked as myself, the voluptuous Asia embraced me. Together we tumbled in the valleys; our senses were filled with the singing of the air, the laughter of the water, the fragrance of the meanest flowers that blow. Often we lay together under the spreading branches, among flowers where murmuring swarms brushed wing with wing. Asia, full of laughter, became my bride; and then the sounds of humming swarms and rustling leaves, mingling with the ripple of innumerable streams, invited us softly to the softest of slumbers. Everything around us gave permission and protection to our inhuman solitude. – Suddenly, one day, Asia said to me: “You ought to pay some attention to human beings.”
‘First of all I had to go and find them.
‘I was only too willing to pay attention to them; but all I could do was pity them.
‘They were extremely unenlightened; I invented various forms of fire for them; and from that day forth my eagle began. Ever since then I have been aware of my nakedness.’
At these words applause broke out in different parts of the hall. Prometheus abruptly burst into tears. The eagle clapped its wings and cooed. With a terrible gesture Prometheus unbuttoned his waistcoat and offered his wincing liver to the bird. The applause was redoubled. Then the eagle pirouetted three times round Prometheus; the latter drank a mouthful of water, gathered himself together, and continued his discourse in the following terms:
‘Gentlemen, my modesty carried me away; forgive me: this is the first time I have spoken in public. But now it is my candour that carries me away: gentlemen, I have paid far more attention to men than I told you just now. Gentlemen, I have done a very great deal for men. Gentlemen, I have loved men passionately, desperately, and deplorably. – And I have given them so much, that I might just as well say that I have given them their being; for what were they previously? – They existed, but they weren’t conscious of existing. Like a fire for their enlightenment, gentlemen, out of all my love for them I made them this consciousness. – The first conscience they ever had was that of their beauty. That is what made possible the propagation of the species. Man prolonged himself in his posterity. The beauty of the forerunners repeated itself, equal, indifferent, and without history. That might have gone on indefinitely. Then I became anxious; already bearing within me, without knowing it, the egg of my eagle, I wanted something more, or something better. This propagation, this piecemeal prolongation seemed to me to indicate in them a state of waiting – whereas in reality it was only my eagle that was waiting. I knew nothing of this; I believed this state of waiting was inside man; in fact, it was I that put it inside them. Now, of course, because I had made man in my own image, I understand that in each man something that hadn’t yet opened out was lying in wait; in each one of them there was the eagle’s egg … And yet, I don’t know; I can’t quite explain all that. – What I do know is that, not satisfied with giving them consciousness of their existence, I wanted to give them also a reason for existing. I gave them fire, flame, and all the arts whose nutriment is a flame. Warming their spirits within them, gentlemen, I brought into existence the devouring belief in progress. And I rejoiced strangely, that man’s health should be spent in producing it. – No more belief in good, but a sick hope for better. Belief in progress, gentlemen, was their eagle. Our eagle is our reason for existing, gentlemen.
‘Man’s happiness grew less and less, and it was all one to me: the eagle was born. Gentlemen, I loved men no more, it was what lived through and on them that I loved. I had finished with a humanity without a history … The history of mankind is the history of eagles, gentlemen …’
– from Prometheus Misbound
(translated by George D. Painter)