Fruits of the Earth
by André Gide
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During the author's travels, he meets Menalcas, a caricature of Oscar Wilde, who relates his fantastic life story. But for all his brilliance, Menalcas is only Gide's yesterday self, a discarded wraith who leaves Gide free to stop exalting the ego and embrace bodily and spiritual joy. Later Fruits of the Earth, written in 1935 during Gide's short-lived spell of communism, reaffirms the doctrine of the earlier book. But now he sees happiness not as freedom, but a submission to heroism. In a show more series of 'Encounters', Gide describes a Negro tramp, a drowned child, a lunatic and other casualties of life. These reconcile him to suffering, death and religion, causing him to insist that 'today's Utopia' be 'tomorrow's reality'. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
A unique book - a confession of sorts addressed to the reader. Gide's short novel from the last decade of the nineteenth century presages the twentieth. Through the narrative of travels by one who one shares in the "fruits" of the pleasures of life as he exalts the ego and spirit of one's own personal journey.
I read this first in my 20s and loved it, but in the re-reading find it a little like undiluted cordial, fused my senses - something barely possible in a younger person perhaps. Some beautiful writing, and thought provoking ideas, but too focused on the senses, with little for the intellectual to do. But that was its intent.
I think I might have found this profound had I been younger (or high).
Reads like a bit of an anaemic Walt Whitman.
Livre de Poche, 1971
Oublier les formules apprises, rejeter les conventions pour être disponible, pour voir le monde avec des yeux neufs, pour éprouver et sentir toutes choses dans leur plénitude, c'est la leçon que veut transmettre le disciple de Ménalque.
Pendant trois ans de voyage, il a goûté les. nourritures terrestres, les fruits de la vie dont parle le Coran : ciels éblouissants d'Afrique ou d'Italie, sable tiède sous le pied nu, jardins de Mossoul ou de Biskra, splendeur incomparable des fenouils du Sahel, douceur des rencontres imprévues, des instants qui fuient et qu'il faut saisir au passage.
Ces thèmes réapparaissent dans Les Nouvelles Nourritures et s'orientent vers ce conseil final qui pourrait en résumer l'esprit : « -Camarade, show more n'accepte pas la vie telle que te la proposent les hommes. Ne cesse point de te persuader qu'elle pourrait être plus belle, la vie; la '.tienne et celle des autres hommes...ne sacrifie pas aux idoles. show less
Pendant trois ans de voyage, il a goûté les. nourritures terrestres, les fruits de la vie dont parle le Coran : ciels éblouissants d'Afrique ou d'Italie, sable tiède sous le pied nu, jardins de Mossoul ou de Biskra, splendeur incomparable des fenouils du Sahel, douceur des rencontres imprévues, des instants qui fuient et qu'il faut saisir au passage.
Ces thèmes réapparaissent dans Les Nouvelles Nourritures et s'orientent vers ce conseil final qui pourrait en résumer l'esprit : « -Camarade, show more n'accepte pas la vie telle que te la proposent les hommes. Ne cesse point de te persuader qu'elle pourrait être plus belle, la vie; la '.tienne et celle des autres hommes...ne sacrifie pas aux idoles. show less
Jun 7, 2011French
Stijl en thema hebben zekere aantrekkingskracht, maar het gaat vlug vervelen; wellicht schokkend in zijn tijd, nu opendeur. Alleen het eerste deel met de exuberante raadgevingen om te genieten van een intense zintuigelijkheid.
Jul 23, 2010Dutch
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Author Information
Gide, the reflective rebel against bourgeois morality and one of the most important and controversial figures in modern European literature, published his first book anonymously at the age of 18. Gide was born in Paris, the only child of a law professor and a strict Calvinist mother. As a young man, he was an ardent member of the symbolist group, show more but the style of his later work is more in the tradition of classicism. Much of his work is autobiographical, and the story of his youth and early adult years and the discovery of his own sexual tendencies is related in Si le grain ne meurt (If it die . . .) (1926). Corydon (1923) deals with the question of homosexuality openly. Gide's reflections on life and literature are contained in his Journals (1954), which span the years 1889--1949. He was a founder of the influential Nouvelle Revue Francaise, in which the works of many prominent modern European authors appeared, and he remained a director until 1941. He resigned when the journal passed into the hands of the collaborationists. Gide's sympathies with communism prompted him to travel to Russia, where he found the realities of Soviet life less attractive than he had imagined. His accounts of his disillusionment were published as Return from the U.S.S.R. (1937) and Afterthoughts from the U.S.S.R. (1938). Always preoccupied with freedom, a champion of the oppressed and a skeptic, he remained an incredibly youthful spirit. Gide himself classified his fiction into three categories: satirical tales with elements of farce like Les Caves du Vatican (Lafcadio's Adventures) (1914), which he termed soties; ironic stories narrated in the first person like The Immoralist (1902) and Strait Is the Gate (1909), which he called recits; and a more complex narrative related from a multifaceted point of view, which he called a roman (novel). The only example of the last category that he published was The Counterfeiters (1926). Throughout his career, Gide maintained an extensive correspondence with such noted figures as Valery, Claudel, Rilke, and others. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Fruits of the Earth
- Original title
- Les nourritures terrestres
- Original publication date
- 1897
- Epigraph
- 'Food not of angels...' MILTON, Paradise Lost, Bk v, 465
Ecco i frutti di cui
ci siamo nutriti sulla terra.
Il Corano, II, 23
I nutrimenti terrestri - Dedication
- To my friend Maurice Quillot
- First words
- Do not try, Nathaniel, to find God here or there - but everywhere.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Do not sacrifice to idols.
- Original language
- French
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 504
- Popularity
- 59,356
- Reviews
- 9
- Rating
- (3.59)
- Languages
- 12 — Danish, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Farsi/Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 22
- ASINs
- 21
