Biography of Jean-Paul Sartre

Author: Erik De Schauensee
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: André Gide spent his entire life writing his own biography. Tens of thousands of pages of diaries and novels revolve around a single theme: their author, André Gide. Perhaps no one, except for Amiel, has ever built such a monumental paper testament. This monument is less unique than it is profoundly lonely. This book will not be a biography in the true sense of the word; it is rather an essay in biographical form on the phenomenon of André Gide. André Gide was both a workaholic and a perfectionist, and through writing, he devoted unprecedented attention to his peculiar and vast self. He was relentless like a workaholic and insistent like a perfectionist. In his youth, Gide wrote, "I write to be remembered for centuries." In the preface to French Poems published three years before his death, Gide renounced this wish: "What matters is only the instant, there will be no future, no possibility of being remembered for centuries."