Strait Is The Gate (utgåvan 1943)

Alun perin vuonna 1909 julkaistusta teoksesta on tehty useita painoksia. Tämän painoksen alussa on kirjallisuustieteellinen johdanto Harder-Simillionin kirjoittamana. Romaani kertoo serkusten Jéromen ja Alissan tarinan.Jérome on armeijassa ja Alissa on uskonnollinen, päiväkirjaa kirjoittava nainen. Otin tänä romaanin kokoelmaan sen ranskankielisyyden ja luetteloinnin monipuolistamisen takia.

As with most all of Gide's best novels, this one concerns the anxiety and yearning at the heart of human experience. A very young Jerome Palissier regularly spends holidays at the house of his aunt and uncle's estate in Fongueusemare in rural Normandy. One day, he happens upon his cousin Alissa, who is distraught at her aloof, hypochondriacal mother. Both desperate to rescue her and drawn by a genuine affection, Jerome takes it upon himself to sweep in and rescue her like a good, Christian knight errant. The subtle imagery of Jerome as a kind of salvific hero is only a foreshadowing of the religious unease that drives this novel forward toward its foreordained conclusion. As Jerome portentously declares, quoting Baudelaire, "Bientot nous plongerons dons les froides tenebres."

Jerome and Alissa spend irenic summers together reciting poetry, reading from books to one another in their splendid garden, and enjoying music. The appropriateness of Jerome's name jumps out at you when he mentions another of their mutual literary interests: "We had procured the Gospels in the Vulgate and knew long passages of them by heart." (It was Saint Jerome who made the first Latin translation of the Bible.) Jerome wishes to become engaged before moving off to the Ecole Normale, but Alissa refuses. He is understandably upset by her rejection, but is only more spurred on by his ecstatic vision (again, that religious imagery) of eventually marrying her. Eventually, we learn that Alissa has sacrificed Jerome so that her sister, Juliette, will be able to get married first, yet even after Juliette gets married - to a boorish, business-minded vintner - Alissa continues to push him away.

He visits her at Fongueusemare while finishing both his schooling and a military stint, but every time he mentions wanting to marry her, she rejects him and requests that he leave soon, that she cannot bear his presence. Eventually, she tells him that her love of God surpasses her love for him, even though she has always passionately loved Jerome. During their last meeting together, Alissa has grown thin and pale, presumably because of her anchorite-like existence; she has also removed the books of poetry and novels she and Jerome used to read together, and replaced them with works of cheap, vulgar piety. Even while there is room here to doubt Alissa's love for Jerome, a chapter that includes her personal journals makes it perfectly clear that she loved Jerome just as much as he loved her, if not more so. Jerome has a final meeting with Juliette while she is enceinte with her fifth child by the vintner. Seeing him calls to mind both her sister's Christ-like sacrifice and makes her reflect on her own uneventful, bourgeois life. As Flaubert said: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi."

For maximum effect, as noted above, read this right next to Gide's "The Immoralist" for a most effective couple of case studies. Considering the year of publication (1909) and the ideas considered - repression, sexuality, sublimation - it should be noted that Gide almost certainly had Freud in mind when he was writing this, though it yields wonderful insights into human psychology even without a Freudian reading.

When reading a novel, sometimes the most difficult obstacle to being able to truly and fully appreciate it is the historical change that has taken place between the time in which it was written and when you read it. Judging from some of the reviews I have seen, that seems to be the case with this novel, too. In both this and "The Immoralist," Gide looks at the tension, confusion, and repression that can often come about when romantic love is pitted against, and forced to compete with, love for the divine. Since this novel was published, this antagonism has almost completely died, which may lead some readers to accuse Alissa of being frigid. Once we are able to bridge that historical gap, however, and realize that Alissa did not see her torment as self-imposed but rather something that was required of her, this novel proves itself to be a superior meditation on both romantic passion and, what was once thought to be its opposite, sacrifice. ( )

La porte était close. Le verrou n'opposait toutefois qu'une résistance assez faible et que d'un coup d'épaule j'allais briser... A cet instant j'entendis un bruit de pas; je me dissimulai dans le retrait du mur.
Je ne pus voir qui sortait du jardin ; mais j'entendis, je sentis que c'était Alissa. Elle fit trois pas en avant; appela faiblement :
—Est-ce. toi Jérôme ?...
Mon coeur, qui battait violemment, s'arrêta, et, comme de ma gorge serrée ne' pouvait sortir une parole, elle répéta plus fort :
— Jérôme! Est-ce toi?
A l'entendre ainsi m'appeler, l'émotion qui m'étreignit fut Si vive qu'elle me fit tomber à genoux.

I hated it. According to the blurb it's "a devastating exploration of the destructive force of spirituality", but it wasn't my cup of tea at all. ( )

Gide stesso non definisce questo racconto un "romanzo", svelando in una sorta di prefazione che la vicenda ha costituito parte della sua giovinezza. Vi si narra di un amore fra due cugini, Alissa e Jerome, un amore solo pre-sentito e desiderato fino allo spasimo ma non vissuto, sublimato dalla cugina in empito religioso e quindi in rinunzia, fino a morirne, sublimato dal cugino in attesa di un'apertura di lei che mai non giunse. Non so, forse la cugina aveva compreso di non essere davvero amata. La morte toglie il cugino dall'imbarazzo. Porta davvero stretta per Alissa.