La Tentative amoureuse

In composing the story of the love between Rachel and Luc, André Gide said he had “wanted to show […] the influence of the book upon the one who writes it.” This text, he announced, was that of “our plaintive desires, the wish for other lives forever forbidden, for every impossible gesture: here, I write a dream that troubled my thoughts too much and demanded an existence.” This was an outlet for the young Gide, who was twenty-four when he wrote it. Les Nourritures terrestres still lay ahead.

When reissued in 1899, the text was given the subtitle “Traité du vain désir”; it indeed belongs to the series of “traités” written by Gide, from his first work, Le Traité du Narcisse, published in 1892, to El Hadj, le traité du faux prophète, published in 1899.

A fine copy; a small blue ink stain in the margin of the front cover.

Naville, Bibliographie des écrits d’André Gide, no. 17.