The Great Writer as Adolescent: Re-reading Andre Gide's Journals

Re-reading Gide's journals tonight, I am struck by how he obsessed over his image, over how others saw him. It is a little jejune for Gide to fret over what impressions his ideas and books make on others AFTER he has won public notoriety with his sex life. And how could it have been otherwise - I admit he was in a sore spot with Corydon and his autobiography - but still the overall impression of the journals is of adolescent angst.

Gide's introduction to Montaigne is a case in point. Andre Gide thinks he adds sharpness to Michel de Montaigne when all he is adding to Montaigne is Gide. Gide's Montaigne is 'risky' and 'impudent' because Gide has failed to discern his good taste from his ego.

Then there are Gide's assays into fields he is ignorant of. Three specific great writers he mentions in his journals he has signally failed to come to grips with.

First there is Marx. Gide's flirtation with communism is embarrassing because it reveals his adolescent-level political consciousness, limited (as politics should be with adolescents) to a passing enthusiasm.

Then William James. He thinks James' 'Psychology' is boring after a few pages, because he cannot understand the way James has reinvented the human soul along scientific lines without any loss of humanity or grandeur.

Finally in Freud he can see only the value of Freud as a de-mystifyer of sexual matters. About Freud's compulsive prose and striking insight into inner realities, not a word. He likes Freud because he is 'impudent'.

Gide consistently gets these great writers in a nutshell but misses the nut. And it's not simply a failure of his time or place, but a failure of imagination. Gide is too busy being 'impudent' to read these serious writers for adults.

I love Gide's work and personality, but the truth is he is basically an adolescent playing at being an adult much of the time. And it is a bitter pleasure to have outgrown his tutelage, and seen his limitations for what they are. Andre Gide is no less a great writer for the truth about him being less than complimentary. In fact, the pleasure of seeing the truth about him has inspired me to read his novels again.

New Insights on the Good Life of Aristotle and Adler

I've spent the afternoon in the state library reading Mortimer Adler's book 'Aristotle For Everybody'. I'm pretty excited about my reading: it demonstrates to me that I've discovered some new knowledge, something new under the sun.

Here's how: I informed Aristotle and Adler's views on the ethical and good life with the philosophical views of Vedanta, the teachings on skillful means in the Dhamma-Vinyana, and the basic view of not-self (Buddhist) or the non-linear Self (Hindu). The result is something new and pleasing, and to my mind a more accurate description of the constituents of the good life heretofore created. Sadly, it is not appropriate to go into it here. But I do love this stuff!

I also read two books on autodidacticism. From Adler's book on the topic (very slight!) I picked the following fruit: poetry and philosophy are the two transcendent Goods of life, because one has to do with making things to the ultimate degree (that is, poetry makes meaning), and the other has to do with knowing to the ultimate degree (that is, philosophy answers all valid questions, and refutes all invalid or pseudo-philosophical questions). Marvellous insight!

I found nothing new in Adler's 'Ten Philosophical Mistakes' beyond a moment of existential vertigo at reading the summary of the first philosophical error - the notion that the stuff of mind is a representation of mind, and mind is not accessible to consciousness. This staggered me for a second: I cannot know my own mind!

Then I remembered Freud, and Proust, and Jung, and I understood the need for this indirection, and the possibility of direct knowledge nevertheless through poetic means.

I learnt today that philosophy cannot disclose direct experience, but poetry can. Thus the great sages like Freud and Proust and Jung are best read as poet-shamans, conducing one into a realm which if not for their assistance would remain inaccessible - that is, into one's own self.