Faustus: How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
Mephistophilis (in the likeness of a friar): Why this is hell, nor am I out of it….
—Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Act I, scene iii
“The unconcealed and palpable influence of the devil on an important part of contemporary literature is one of the significant phenomena of the history of our time.” This strange note was written in the early Twenties at the height of the controversy over André Gide’s mounting influence (which would extend from François Mauriac, Jean Cocteau, and Henry de Montherlant to Jean-Paul Sartre and lesser lights). Its author was the neo-Thomist intellectual Jacques Maritain, who had the creator of Les Nourritures terrestres in his sights. The Catholic philosopher went to call on the Protestant-educated Gide to urge him to withhold publication of Corydon, a work that justified “Greek love,” or pederasty (hitherto the book had been printed anonymously and privately only in a very small number of copies). Maritain’s intervention failed to make Gide change his mind: indeed, it probably confirmed his resolve to go ahead.
Once a subject of scandal, Gide’s writings and influence now scarcely cause a murmur. His oeuvre has entered the literary canon. His letters have been published; the details of his daily life have become known. It is now possible to write a perfectly anodyne biography of the great modern fisher in troubled waters.[1]A revolution in manners separates us from those whose
