Product Description

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 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'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1007995 in Books
• Published on: 1990-04-26
• Original language: French
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From the Publisher
Gide wrote Fruits of the Earth in 1897, when he was suffering from tuberculosis. Addressed to the reader, ‘I will teach you fervour’, it is a hymn to the pleasures of life that Gide came so near to losing: travel, touch, hearing, smell, sight and, above all, taste.

From the Back Cover
Andre Gide is one of the giants of modern French literature. Fruits of the Earth is one of Gide's most popular works, and it had a strong influence on the early thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.
Gide wrote Fruits of the Earth in 1897, while suffering from tuberculosis. It is a hymn to the pleasures of life that Gide came so close to losing forever: touch, hearing, smell, sight and, more than anything, taste. In this paean to the senses, Gide advocates the rejection of banal preconceptions and moral rules, in order to taste life and the world's joys at their fullest. This exaltation requires not imitation but freedom, and emotional, physical and sexual self-exploration.

About the Author
Gide was born in Paris on 22 November 1869. He had an irregular and lonely upbringing. He became devoted to literature and music, and began his literary career as an essayist, moving on to poetry, biography, fiction, drama, criticism, reminiscence and translation. By 1917 he had emerged as a prophet to French youth, and his unorthodox views were a source of endless debate and attack. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. Gide died in Paris in 1951.

Customer Reviews

unique
This is a unique piece of work and unique also for Gide who wrote it when he was suffering life threatening TB. Written in a romantic style it is a celebration of youth and life and every page is a feast of experience. I have for many years always kept a copy of this close by for whenever life seems bleak because it restores faith in living. It reminds us as the years pass by of the headiness of being young. A perfect book to pick up and put down, to open at random, to read on hot afternoons in a shady peaceful spot and to soak up the cornucopia of juicy wine, sunny days, love in the moonlight and exotic gardens of Arabia and the rebelliousness of youth. A book that has the rare ability to remain unfinished precisely because it is always open to constant perusal. Pick out a paragraph here or a chapter there. It is immaterial in so many ways to read it in order but it is always open to inspiring and profound thoughts for the day.As Gide says, 'We cannot plan our joys'!!!!