Gide's Goodbye

SO BE IT OR THE CHIPS ARE DOWN (165 pp.)--Andre Gide--Knopf ($3.50).

It is easy to leave the world, Santayana wrote, once we know what it is. If Santayana was suggesting a satiety of the mind, Andre Gide, in his 81st year, was more keenly aware of a flagging of the senses. He had discovered a word from the Greek for it, anorexia (lack of appetite), but he added: "I find it hard to console myself for not knowing Greek."

It is one of the few regrets in So Be It, his gentle goodbye to life. He regretted neither his homosexuality nor his lack of religious faith; indeed he took delight in flaunting both to the end. He reflected on everything from old age (it puzzled him) to shaggy-dog stories (they made him laugh) to Moliere and Cervantes (they did not make him laugh).

Like late election returns, posthumous books rarely turn the tide of opinion for or against a writer, and So Be It is no exception. It was Gide's luck and genius to do a few things extremely well. In The Counterfeiters, he wrote a novel that must rank in any top-ten list of the 20th century. The four volumes of his Journals are a matchless record of self-search and self-revelation. Renowned as a man of letters, Gide was perhaps more influential and controversial as a kind of culture hero of his time. His cult of untrammeled self-expression spawned flocks of disciples who had little self to express and even less talent for expressing it. What Gide possessed that the illegitimate cultural brood of his hobohemian descendants lacks was self-discipline and a demanding conscience for being honest with himself. It is this combination that makes So Be It's pages as unmistakably individual as a speech by Hamlet.

One paragraph, Hamlet-like in itself, sums up the strengths and the weaknesses of Andre Gide: "I hope the young man who may read me will feel on an equal footing with me. I don't bring any doctrine; I resist giving advice; and in a discussion I beat a hasty retreat. But I know that today many seek their way gropingly and don't know in whom to trust. To them I say: believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it; doubt everything, but don't doubt of yourself. There is more light in Christ's words than in any other human word. This is not enough, it seems, to be a Christian: in addition, one must believe. Well, I do not believe. Having said this, I am your brother."

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