Historical Figure
André Gide
1869–1951
French author and Nobel laureate (1869–1951)
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Biography
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author whose writing spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide's career ranged from his beginnings in the symbolist movement to criticising imperialism between the two World Wars. Author of more than 50 books, he was described in his New York Times obituary as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti."
Timeline
The story of André Gide, told in moments.
Published Les Nourritures terrestres (The Fruits of the Earth), a prose poem celebrating sensual liberation. It sold poorly at first but later became a bible for 1920s French youth.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Catholic Church had placed his complete works on the Index of Forbidden Books the year before.
In Their Own Words (20)
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
Autumn Leaves, Philosophical eLibraryhttps://books.google.com/books?id=xUtdDnEhkMMC&pg=PT12&lpg=PT12#v=onepage&q&f=false, 2012, (Feuillets d'automne, 1941, trans. Jeanine Parisier Plottel), 2012
At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.
“An Unprejudiced Mind,” pp. 319-320, 1964
There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.
“An Unprejudiced Mind,” p. 317, 1964
Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. The artist's business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to provide him.
“Characters,” p. 299, 1964
The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.
“Characters,” p. 306, 1964
Artifacts (15)
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