Northern Africa in André Gide's Writings

Abstract

Fundamental characteristics of André Gide are his acute sense of the diversity of man and nature and his fervent desire to apprehend the infinitely varied manifestations of life which seem to him the essence of reality. Nowhere in his writings are these chracteristics more readily perceived than in the works inspired by his contact with the land and peoples of Northern Africa. For Jean Hytier, however, author of an excellent analysis of Gide's art, the sincerity and force of the writer's sympathy with diversity explain a certain lack of provocative, picturesque qualities in his African exoticism; indeed, thinks this critic, “Gide a . . . renouvelé l'exotisme en l‘éliminant, à force d'adhérer de tout son cœur, et sans faire la petite bouche, sans discriminations qui rétablissent l‘étrangeté, avec précisément une volonté, ou plutôt un don, de ne pas rester étranger.”