Les Nourritures terrestres

“Nathanaël, I will teach you fervor”: because it ran against the current, belonged to no genre and openly dispensed with any label, this book met with discouragement at first. Only Paul Valéry and a young critic at L’Ermitage, Henri Ghéon, valued this lyrical manual of education. But within André Gide’s own circle of friends, and even within his family, these all-too-earthly “nourishments” caused a scandal. In the preface to the second edition, the author reflected on this reception: “When my Nourritures appeared, Symbolism was at its height; I believed that art ran great risks in separating itself so resolutely from nature and from life.”

Further on, he answers those who saw in it only a “glorification of desire and instinct: for my part, when I reopen it, it is even more an apology for renunciation that I find there.” Taking the opposite stance from conventional morality, Gide constantly emphasizes the necessity of personal effort and of self-giving. The sense of wonder, the invitation to travel and to exaltation offered here would exert a profound influence on the minds of younger generations for half a century.

A cult book.