In this blog post, I’d like to share my thoughts on ‘The Ways of the World’ by André Gide, focusing on the significance the work held for Gide’s own literary world and for the younger generations that followed.
‘The Ways of the World’ is not only the most famous of André Gide’s works but is also said to be a work he himself regarded as so important that he expressed dissatisfaction with it. However, according to the preface to the 1927 edition, the book sold only 500 copies in the first ten years after its initial publication. Nevertheless, its influence on subsequent generations over the next 50 years was truly astonishing. This influence left a mark that was more distinct and profound in the moral realm than in the aesthetic. Even though the author told his fictional reader, Nathaniel, “Now throw my book away. Free yourself from it. Leave me,” it was striking to realize that nearly every generation following Gide—from Martin du Gard and Montérand to Camus and Sartre—was secretly influenced by this book of youth.
What Gide hoped to achieve through this book was not simply to arouse the reader’s interest in his work. Rather, it was to make the reader take an interest in themselves—more than in the book itself—and then to take an interest in everything surrounding them rather than just themselves. In that sense, ‘The Earthly Paradise’ felt like a book that fosters an unreserved and broad interest in everything and opens up new horizons for action. It also holds special significance as a book of youth that enables readers to discover their own rich and diverse worlds.
‘Food of the Earth’ is composed of poetic prose, much like the Bible or Laozi’s ‘Tao Te Ching’, and the ideas revealed within are by no means unrelated to those works. What stands out most is the uninhibited expression of passion, desire, and instinct, along with the ecstatic, heretical sensuality that celebrates the fulfillment of the “moment.” At the same time, the work also features odes to abstinence, waiting, hunger, and thirst—elements that amplify the joy of that fulfillment. Therefore, I felt that the spontaneity, freedom, wandering, and curiosity and passion for everything without distinction described in this work should not be interpreted merely as a celebration of licentiousness.
Underlying all this are the “defense of nakedness” and “unwavering fidelity to nakedness.” I interpreted this as an attitude that allows one to set out with a light heart toward new wonders and unknown mysteries at any moment—by shedding not only material comforts but also all mental and intellectual burdens. This pantheistic wonder frees one from the things that bind humanity, allowing one to view everything in the world with fresh eyes. As critics have pointed out, this work reveals not only the influence of Nietzsche and Goethe but also traces of 16th-century humanism.
However, even as the significance of this work was increasingly recognized, Gide himself seemed to adopt an attitude of suppressing and limiting its meaning as a writer. He described ‘The Earthly Style’ as “the work of a patient in recovery,” written during “an era when literature reeked of ostentatious artifice and insularity,” and stated that, for him, it was merely a stage of life he had left behind long ago. Yet it was precisely within these humble words that one could feel even more strongly the profound and serious personal and historical significance of this work.
In particular, the irrepressible cry to “let literature once again tread the earth barefoot” in such an era felt like the voice of a pioneer heralding a turning point in history, much like Rousseau’s call to “return to nature.” The “patient” referred to here was not just Gide himself. His contemporaries and the young people of the next generation who devoured this work were also suffering from that same illness. That illness was not confined to “artificial and closed-off” literature that had lost touch with the vitality of the earth. The entire culture of an era—marked by heteronomous and hypocritical bourgeois morality, a spirit afflicted with sclerosis, and filled with pretense and self-division—was stricken by that illness.
Amidst this, the ailing Gide, drawing on the revelations gained from several trips to North Africa, finally burst forth with a song of escape and liberation. While reading ‘Earthly Delights’, I realized that this work is not merely a book that celebrates nature and the sensory life. By examining Gide’s life—from fantasy to reality, from wandering to purposeful travel and observation, from nature to humanity, and from the inner self to social issues—alongside his works, I was able to appreciate anew the immense breadth of his talent that transcends any single work.
