Editing André Gide (section)

==The middle years==
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[[File:Gide 1920 cropped.jpg|thumb|Gide photographed by [[Ottoline Morrell]] in 1924.]]
[[Image:Gide by Laurens.jpg|thumb|André Gide by [[Paul Albert Laurens]] (1924)]]
In 1895, after his mother's death, Gide married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.museeprotestant.org/en/notice/andre-gide1869-1951/|title=André Gide (1869–1951) – Musée virtuel du Protestantisme|website=www.museeprotestant.org|access-date=20 March 2018}}</ref> but the marriage remained unconsummated. In 1896, he was elected mayor of [[La Roque-Baignard]], a [[Communes of France|commune]] in Normandy.

Gide spent the summer of 1907 in [[Jersey]], with friends [[Jacques Copeau]] and [[Théo van Rysselberghe]] and their families. He rented a room in La Valeuse Cottage in [[St Brelade]]. Whilst there he worked on the second chapter of ''[[Strait Is the Gate]]'' (French: ''La Porte étroite''), and van Rysselberghe painted his portrait.<ref>{{cite book |last=Moore |first=Diane Monier |year=2024 |title=Immoralists and Drama Queens: André Gide, Théo Van Rysselberghe and their colourful entourage, Jersey 1907-1909 |publisher=Blue Ormer |url=https://blueormer.gg/product/immoralists-and-drama-queens/ |isbn=978-1-915786-12-8}}</ref>

In 1908, Gide helped found the literary magazine ''[[Nouvelle Revue Française]]'' (''The New French Review'').<ref name="Nobel">{{Nobelprize}}</ref>

During World War I, Gide visited England. One of his friends there was artist [[William Rothenstein]]. Rothenstein described Gide's visit to his Gloucestershire home in his autobiography:

{{blockquote|text=André Gide was in England during the war...He came to stay with us for a time, and brought with him a young nephew, whose English was better than his own. The boy made friends with my son [[John Rothenstein|John]], while Gide and I discussed everything under the sun. Once again I delighted in the range and subtlety of a Frenchman's intelligence; and I regretted my long severance from France. Nobody understood art more profoundly than Gide, no one's view of life was more penetrating. ...

Gide had a half satanic, half monk-like mien; he put one in mind of portraits of [[Baudelaire]]. Withal there was something exotic about him. He would appear in a red waistcoat, black velvet jacket and beige-coloured trousers and, in lieu of collar and tie, a loosely knotted scarf. ...

The heart of man held no secrets for Gide. There was little that he didn't understand, or discuss. He suffered, as I did, from the banishment of truth, one of the distressing symptoms of war. The Germans were not all black, and the Allies all white, for Gide.<ref>William Rothenstein, ''Men and Memories'', Faber & Faber, 1932, p. 344</ref>}}

In 1916, Gide was about 47 years old when he took [[Marc Allégret]], age 15, as a lover. Marc  was one of five children of [[Élie Allégret]] and his wife. Gide had become friends with the senior Allégret during his own school years when Gide's mother had hired Allégret as a tutor for her son. Élie Allégret had been best man at Gide's wedding. After Gide fled with Marc to London, his wife Madeleine burned all his correspondence in retaliation– "the best part of myself," Gide later commented.

In 1918, Gide met and befriended [[Dorothy Bussy]]; they were friends for more than 30 years, and she translated many of his works into English.

Gide also became close friends with the critic [[Charles Du Bos]].<ref>{{cite encyclopaedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nOwBEsoNiUMC|first=Servanne|last=Woodward|title=Du Bos, Charles|page=233|encyclopaedia=Encyclopedia of the Essay|editor-first=Tracy|editor-last=Chevalier|publisher=Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers|year=1997|isbn=978-1-135-31410-1}}</ref> Together they were part of the ''Foyer Franco-Belge'', in which capacity they worked to find employment, food and housing for Franco-Belgian refugees who arrived in Paris following the 1914 [[German invasion of Belgium (1914)|German invasion of Belgium]].<ref>{{cite journal|jstor=40925953|first=Katherine Jane|last=Davies|title=A 'Third Way' Catholic Intellectual: Charles Du Bos, Tragedy, and Ethics in Interwar Paris|journal=Journal of the History of Ideas|volume=71|issue=4|year=2010|page=655|doi=10.1353/jhi.2010.0005|s2cid=144724913}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CLAYDAAAQBAJ|first=Alan|last=Price|title=The End of the Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton and the First World War|publisher=St. Martin's Press|year=1996|isbn=978-1-137-05183-7|pages=28–9}}</ref> Their friendship later declined, due to Du Bos's perception that Gide had disavowed or betrayed his spiritual faith, in contrast to Du Bos's own return to faith.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Herbert|last=Dieckmann|title=André Gide and the Conversion of Charles Du Bos|journal=Yale French Studies|year=1953|issue=12|page=69|doi=10.2307/2929290|jstor=2929290}}</ref>{{sfn|Woodward|1997|p=233}} 

Du Bos's essay ''Dialogue avec André Gide'' was published in 1929.<ref>{{cite book |last=Einfalt |first=Michael |year=2010 |title=The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism |publisher=Leuven University Press |page=160 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tmArx-Qak5QC |editor-first1=Rajesh|editor-last1=Heynickx|editor-first2=Jan|editor2-last=De Maeyer|chapter=Debating Literary Autonomy: Jacques Maritain versus André Gide|isbn=978-90-5867-714-3 }}</ref> The essay, informed by Du Bos's Catholic convictions, condemned Gide's homosexuality.{{sfn|Einfalt|2010|p=158}} Gide and Du Bos's mutual friend Ernst Robert Curtius criticised the book in a letter to Gide, writing that "he [Du Bos] judges you according to Catholic morals suffices to neglect his complete indictment. It can only touch those who think like him and are convinced in advance. He has abdicated his intellectual liberty."{{sfn|Einfalt|2010|p=160}}

In the 1920s, Gide became an inspiration for such writers as [[Albert Camus]] and [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]. In 1923, he published a book on [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]]. When he defended homosexuality in the public edition of ''[[Corydon (book)|Corydon]]'' (1924), he received widespread condemnation, so much so that he was blocked from being nominated to the [[Académie Française]].<ref name="copley1989">{{cite book | last=Copley | first=Antony R. H. | title=Sexual moralities in France, 1780-1980 : new ideas on the family, divorce, and homosexuality : an essay on moral change | publisher=Routledge | date=1989 |page=173 |quote=After receiving the Nobel Prize in 1947, Gide told a Swedish journalist that ''Corydon'' was the most important of his books; clearly this was not so much a literary judgement as a statement of his faith in the importance of the cause of homosexuality.  .... Gide remained considerably anxious about its reception; the climate of post-war France in the 1920s remained hostile to homosexuality, and ''Corydon'' was to block Gide’s access to that highest academic honour in France, election to the Académie Française.}}</ref> He later considered this his most important work.<ref name="copley1989"/>

In 1923, Gide sired a daughter, [[Catherine Gide|Catherine]], by [[Elisabeth van Rysselberghe]], a much younger woman. He had known her for a long time, as she was the daughter of his friends Maria Monnom and [[Théo van Rysselberghe]], a Belgian neo-impressionist painter. This caused the only crisis in the long-standing relationship between Allégret and Gide, and damaged his friendship with Théo van Rysselberghe. This was possibly Gide's only sexual relationship with a woman,<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n24/edmund-white/on-the-chance-that-a-shepherd-boy|title=On the chance that a shepherd boy …|first=Edmund|last=White|date=10 December 1998|issue=24|pages=3–6|access-date=20 March 2018|journal=London Review of Books|volume=20}}</ref> and it was brief in the extreme. Catherine was his only descendant by blood. He liked to call Elisabeth ''"La Dame Blanche"'' ("The White Lady"). 

Elisabeth eventually left her husband to move to Paris and manage the practical aspects of Gide's life (they had adjoining apartments built on the rue Vavin). She worshipped him, but evidently they no longer had a sexual relationship.{{Citation needed|reason=Elisabeth's mother Maria was called La Petite Dame. Never heard about La Dame blanche as a name for Elisabeth. Also not sure that Elisabeth was married during their brief affair.|date=April 2019}}

In 1924, he published an autobiography ''If it Die...'' (French: ''[[Si le grain ne meurt]]''). In the same year, he produced the first French-language editions of [[Joseph Conrad]]'s ''[[Heart of Darkness]]'' and ''[[Lord Jim]]''.

After 1925, Gide began to campaign for more humane conditions for convicted criminals. His legal wife, Madeleine Gide, died in 1938. Later he explored their unconsummated marriage in ''Et nunc manet in te'', his memoir of Madeleine, published in English in the United States in 1952.