Immoralist

I saw there was a Dover thrift edition for 2 dollars. Hard to argue with the price, but this translation is erudite and has a force of language that seems to me like it must mirror Gide's own impressionist force, despite my personal weakness with the French language. Gide was famous for his ability to invoke a single moment, a single image or feeling that puts the reader inside the existence of a character, even if only for a short time. This ability is translated quite well into this edition, and I must conclude (based on a fairly small sample of reading from both) that it is a superior translation. Who could fail to find some reflection of themself in the deathbed confessions of the protagonist Michel? The premise is that he is speaking in the first person to his good friends, and as the reader it feels like you have known this character for quite some time. His voice is unspecifically familiar, as if you might suspect one of your real-life friends to one day give you a similar account. You feel you have known this man for a long time, and you can't help but be fascinated by both the content of his story and in the loving, precise, and ecstatic way that he tells it. Up against this tone is a story that ends in depravity and woe, without any redemption for the character. To me, this is understandable and realistic. Life is not always an endless succession of learning experiences. At times it is the realization that some compromises cannot be avoided, and that true catharsis of ethics, morality, or emotion is only possible within very short time frames. Why not explore the life of a character who does not learn from his actions, or even repent of them at the end? He accepts his own frailties, his own limitations, and in this respect he continues to dig deep inside of our psyche for hidden insights that might have otherwise escaped us. I almost always prefer first person novels to those that occur in the third person. We live our life in the first person, and an objective narrator is always, at a certain point, a necessary fiction. This book stands with Nabokov's Lolita as a perfect example of the power that is sometimes unleashed by exploring a character through the eyes of the character himself. This is an original and well-written work, breathtaking in its use of language. Highly recommended.

This book is actually quite accessible to the student of French, compared to many of Gide's other works. It is an excellent introduction to Gide, and comprises an essential part of any student of literature's repertoire. It is still very relevant to our times, and while not as avant-garde or shocking as it must have been at the time of its publication, it is still a fascinating look at human morality and social mores.

"Knowing how to free oneself is nothing; the difficult thing is knowing how to live with that freedom"- this is the ultimate lesson that Gide gives in "The Immoralist", even though as he himself has said "I refrained from passing judgement". As a result this novel will always be open to interpretation, as it presents the classic universal problem of individual freedom, identity, and what constitutes 'life'. Michel, the novel's main character is awakened from his life-long "lethargy" with a fierce desire to change his mask, or rather to find his real self hidden behind the layers of adopted morality, education, and social obligations. He used to be a strict young scholar interested only in "ruins and books". Now he wants to be free of all obligation and inhibition to fully experience the pleasure and sensuality brought about by his late homosexual awakening. To do so, he sacrifices wife, career, and wealth. The conflict within Michel is not only that of morality v. sexuality, but mostly that of thought v. emotion, or more simplistically brain v. heart. When he sees his awakened sensuality mirrored in the beauty of nature to which he now becomes aware, Michel discovers that "what was the point of thinking? I felt extraordinarily..."What constitutes "life"? This is another important question raised in "The Immoralist". Michel is reborn when he begins questioning his life: "after all what did I mean by `living'?" Even here the flaws in Michel's philosophy are apparent. The Christian doctrine of "blessed are the poor" goes against Michel's doctrine of a leisurely, sensuous life and that "poverty makes slaves of men", and yet he strives to get rid of his possessions... Who am I? What do I want? These are the kind of questions the reader will ask himself while reading "The Immoralist". The author is too wise to give defini

The Immoralist is straightforward in language and easy to read, but more complicated, more complex are its themes: Man's sense of morality towards society, family, himself. What happens when man's values conflict with those of society's? Whose interests should be served? Gide explores these themes through one man's odyssey of self-discovery. The protagonist is the learned and conflicted Michel who yearns for something more than the stable, predictable, familiar life he has always known, but no longer finds tolerable. It is after a life-threatening bout of tuberculosis that these feelings rise to the surface, intensify, and are more keenly felt. This hunger, still unidentified, takes him on a journey, both literal and figurative, where his search for self-awareness, or self-truth, carries him to distant and exotic locales. New experiences and mysterious encounters give way to a new aestheticism in which weakness, constraint, and life's banalities play no role. Heightened senses, unsuppressed impulses erode age-old human values that were once accepted blindly. A life less checked, though, can have consequences, as is the case for Michel, and for so many others like him. As Michel becomes stronger, his wife becomes weaker. Indeed, society becomes weaker. How can the newly strong fail to quash the weak in their path? The question one must ask, then, and Gide does, is whether a life without restraint has value. Is there something admirable in the old adage, "To thine own self be true"? One of the novel's most inspired moments is found in its ending. Without giving anything away, it is the last passage, after the reader has come full-circle, where Michel's journey seemingly ends. Will Michel embrace his new truth? The reader is left to wonder. The Immoralist is told in narrative, in Michel's own voice. It is self-confessional literature at its highest, and should be read by anyone who reads to think and be moved.

Many readers of this book are inclined to compare it with the works of Camus. I grant that The Immoralist does suggest existential questions but, unlike Camus' La Chute (for instance), it simply presents the life and actions of the anti-hero without his actual and deliberate existential questioning. This is the subtle richness of Gide's writing. The Immoralist presents a unique disparity in the lavishness in description of setting, and the relatively spare characterizations. Gide does not glorify, chastise nor condemn his Michel. Michel is simply what he is, what he has become. This novel is filled with brilliant writing, lines of which one can't help but memorize. For instance, "The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task." and also, "You cannot be sincere and at the same time seem so." Having read both Bussy's pioneer translation and Howard's later one, I much prefer the latter. It's a far more exact translation.