MADELEINE

by Andre Gide ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

The last, and most intimate, of Gide's personal papers, this letter to his wife, and extracts from his journals pertaining to her and previously unpublished, was deliberately withheld by Gide until after his death- save for a privately printed edition limited to thirteen of his friends Madeleine Rondeaux, his first cousin for whom he sustained a protective love since his childhood, was to become the Emmanuele of his writings as well as the wife who was always a refuge ""against everything in himself that he feared""- the homosexuality which he hoped that his marriage would delete. This is a portrait not only of Madelaine- (whom one friend called Madame Sainte Gide)- reserved, self-effacing, devout, renunciatory, and to an extent masochistic; but it is also a self-portrait, filled with remorse and self-recrimination, aware of the tragedy that he imposed upon her and equally mindful of the tragedy of her withdrawal from him..... For followers of Gide, this has of course a particularly personal implication and imprint.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 0929587197

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1952

Categories: NONFICTION