THE JOURNALS OF ANDRE GIDE, VOLUME IV

The fourth and final volume of Andre Gide's Journal. covering the decade 1939-1949, is now presented in the admirable translation by Justin O'Brien. If the intellectual excitement, the provocation and often provoking spiritual struggles of the previous Journals are here moderated, the tone of wise serenity combined with a still vigorous curiosity and a beautifully disciplined intellect in this last volume makes an acceptable substitute. Between his 70's and 80's Gide has become an almost mythical figure of the literary world. Factually, we here have Gide, first stunned by the fall of France, later regaining his vitality in the Midi where he spent two years, and then in his self-imposed exile in Tunis. In Tunis he spends his time writing, reading, training his memory in herculean feats, and enduring the cruel bombing of Tunis with mingled interest, sensitivity and stoicism. And the journal of this period consists largely of purely literary notations. At last returning to France after the liberation, he continues these notes in much the same tenor with perhaps a little more emphasis on the problem of death.... This is required reading for every Gide devotee of whom there are many, as well as for students of modern literature. This complicated genius- often perverse and often noble- is perhaps the last high monument of western individualistic thought in letters.