Sheridan presents a literary biography of one of the most important writers of the 20th century--an intimate portrait of the reluctantly public man, whose work was deeply and inextricably entangled with his life. 35 halftones.

Andre Gide, renowned French essayist, novelist, and playwright, was also a homosexual apologist whose sexuality was central to the whole of his literary and political discourse. This book by Patrick Pollard--the first serious study of homosexuality in Gide's theater and fiction--analyzes his ideas and traces the philosophical, anthropological, scientific, and literary movements that influenced his thought. Pollard begins by discussing Corydon, a defense of pederasty that Gide felt was his most important book. He then provided a historical and analytical survey of books that contributed to Gide's perception of homosexuality, including works on philosophy, social theory, natural history, and medicolegal questions. Pollard goes on to investigate works of fiction--ancient and modern, European and Oriental--in which Gide saw homosexual elements. He concludes by considering the homosexual themes in Gide's own works, analyzing the ways that Gide constantly tried to resolve conflicts between nature and culture, hypocrisy and honesty, corruption and sound moral judgment, anomaly and conformity, and sexual freedom and religious constraint. The book provides a new perspective on Gide's work, a reconstruction of the moral and intellectual climate in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, and a substantial contribution to the cultural history of homosexuality.

A travelling hedonist attempts to transcend the limitations of conventional morality by surrendering to his appetites in this well-known work by a master of modern French literature. Much acclaimed for his perception and purity of style, André Gide (1869-1951) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947. In The Immoralist, his classic examination of individual freedom and identity, he fuses autobiographical elements with both biblical and classical symbolism. Stanley Appelbaum skillfully preserves the passion and intensity of the original in his new English translation.

First published in 1902 and immediately assailed for its themes of omnisexual abandon and perverse aestheticism, The Immoralist is the novel that launched André Gide’s reputation as one of France’s most audacious literary stylists, a groundbreaking work that opens the door onto a universe of unfettered impulse whose possibilities still seem exhilarating and shocking. Gide’s protagonist is the frail, scholarly Michel, who, shortly after his wedding, nearly dies of tuberculosis. He recovers only through the ministrations of his wife, Marceline, and his sudden, ruthless determination to live a life unencumbered by God or values. What ensues is a wild flight into the realm of the senses that culminates in a remote outpost in the Sahara—where Michel’s hunger for new experiences at any cost bears lethal consequences. The Immoralist is a book with the power of an erotic fever dream—lush, prophetic, and eerily seductive.

In 1907 Andre Gide began work on a series of Socratic dialogues on the subject of homosexuality and its place in society. These were published piecemeal, without the author's name, in private editions of twelve copies (1911) and twenty-one copies (1920) before a signed, commercial edition finally appeared in France in 1924. In his preface to the first American edition--published in 1950, the year before his death--Gide says: "Corydon remains in my opinion the most important of my books."

DIVAn inspiring discourse on the power of music from one of the twentieth century’s most important figures, André Gide/divDIV /divDIVAndré Gide, one of the great intellectuals of the twentieth century and a devoted pianist, invites readers to reevaluate Frédéric Chopin as a composer “betrayed . . . deeply, intimately, totally violated” by a music community that had fundamentally misinterpreted his work. As a profound admirer of Chopin’s “promenade of discoveries,” Gide intersperses musical notation throughout the text to illuminate his arguments, but most moving is Gide’s own poetic expression for the music he so loved./divDIV /divDIVThis edition includes rare pages and fragments from Gide’s journals, which relate to Chopin and music./div

These are the diaries from 1889-1913 of the French author André Gide.

Andre Gide's lifelong fascination with the conventions of society led naturally to a strong interest in France's judicial system. At the age of sixty Gide published Judge Not, a collection of writings detailing his own experiences with the law as well as his thoughts on truth, justice, and judgment.Gide's obsession with crime and punishment was not just a morbid hobby; rather, it struck at the heart of his themes as a writer. In the literary tradition of Dostoyevsky and Conrad, Gide frequently used criminals as central characters to explore human nature and the individual's place in society.In the first essay in Judge Not, "A Memoir of the Assize Court," Gide writes about his experience as a juror in several trials, including that of an arsonist (Gide actively sought jury duty, so great was his interest in legal matters). In "The Redureau Case" and "The Confined Woman of Poitiers" Gide analyzes two famous crimes of his day, an inexplicable slaughter by Marcel Redureau, a docile fifteen-year-old vineyard laborer who violently murdered his employer's family, and the respected Monnier family's confinement of their daughter, Blanche. Both cases fascinated Gide--elements of each would appear in his later fiction--and he looks closely at the facts of each as they came out in court. In addition, in "News Items" Gide analyzes the way newspapers present crime narratives, drawing from the hundreds of press clippings he collected throughout his life.Andr Gide (1869-1951) wrote The Counterfeiters; several brief works of fiction including Strait Is the Gate and The Immoralist; a number of plays; and several works of literary criticism. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1947 and in 1950 was made an honorary corresponding member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.Benjamin Ivry has translated from the French Vanished Splendors: The Memoirs of Balthus, Raoul Dufy's My Doctor, Wine, and Jules Verne's Magellania, among other books. He is the author of the poetry collection Paradise for the Portuguese Queen as well as the biographies Francis Poulenc, Arthur Rimbaud, and Maurice Ravel: A Life.

A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France.