GIDE André (1869-1951).

2 autograph MANUSCRIPTS from the Diary: 1934 and July '35-December '35; 2 notebooks, 137 pages in-8 (18 x 12 cm) and 43 pages in-12 (16.5 x 10 cm), The Canvas, in original soft beige cloth bindings. Two precious notebooks by André Gide for his Diary, partly unpublished. "1934" notebook. It consists of 137 numbered pages, plus the back covers and unnumbered end-papers. It is written in black ink on the front of the lined sheets of paper, with notes and additions written on the facing page; from 23 July onwards, as the notebook is full, Gide uses the head-to-tail notebook on pages 136 to 70. It follows on from notebook 64 (gamma 1629) kept at the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, and corresponds to pages 448-477 of volume II of the Journal in the Sagaert edition of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. There are numerous variants with the text published and revised by Gide for the edition, as well as erasures and corrections, and passages marked in red pencil, as well as many unpublished pages. This notebook was begun on February 6 in Syracuse, and the last entry is noted in Cuverville on October 1. Gide tells of his stay in Syracuse; notes are added in Cuverville, Manosque, Nice (evening with Paul Valéry), Cabris, Paris, Karlsbad (cure in the water city), Prague (August 5, impressions of this "very strange city"), Ascona ("Everything here is bathed in a splendid azure") and Arona, Nice and Bormes, and finally Cuverville. He talks about his work on his novel Geneviève puis Robert ; He notes his readings (Dos Passos, Shakespeare, Hölderlin, Voltaire, Racine, Lamennais, Zola, Goethe, Platen, Schiller, Descartes, Balzac), reflections on music (Bach and Chopin) and on literature (Goethe and Voltaire, the diction of verse, Baudelaire), reactions to politics (a visit to the Mostra fascista, the execution of the person responsible for the Reichstag fire, the February days, Hitler's Germany, communism, nationalism, the situation in the U.R.S.S.); he reacts to the rumours about his suicide... Many thoughts and reflections, aphorisms... Several pages are unpublished and have not been included in the text of the Journal. "But inadmissible are all, almost all, the pages written in view of my Nouvelles Nourritures. A project that I am definitely abandoning. While I thought, on the contrary, that I should abandon Geneviève. I will be able to pour this into that. (6 February) About the young pupils of a "priests' college" on a walk: "I can imagine what instruction we will be able to give to these dunces; what seeds to germinate in this soil..." (8 February). "Mephisto plays Goethe's game; but it is Goethe who holds the cards, and he does not rely on Mephisto to play" (February 11, 3 lines crossed out at the end). Following the entry concerning the execution of Van der Lubbe (alleged arsonist of the Reichstag): "Doesn't this strengthen all the suspicions one might have, and would nothing else explain Van der Lubbe's enigmatic attitude throughout the trial, his prostration, his mutism, his downcast looks, and even this abundant salivation [...] that a slow arsenic poisoning"... (February 21). Notes on Racine and the phrase "To others!" (id.). The entry concerning the suicide rumour (30 March) continues with a long unpublished development relating his discussion in the evening with Marc Allégret, about this rumour, about remarks attributed to him in a pseudo-interview, and about false news in the newspapers, ending thus: "I have enough enemies in the press to be fairly certain that only those who can hope to harm me will be given wind. His schedule and itinerary from 18 to 28 April, from Cabris to Tende, Sermione, Verona, Riva, Merano and then Zurich. May 18, reaction to an article about him in L'Action française. 22 May, in Cuverville, development about a veronica flower; then long entry (pp. 79-85) about an "embryonic dialogue" with Paul Valéry, reported in the newspapers, in which Gide is said to have declared: "If I were prevented from writing, I would kill", and then about an article written in support of The Brothers Karamazov, staged by Copeau, which concludes: "Have I not exposed myself to the reproach of having wanted to 'knock off' Balzac simply for having written that I preferred him Dostoiewsky? And that, I believe, by Thibaudet himself. In these conditions it is better to keep quiet; or, at least, not to give his prose to the newspapers." The entry "Wednesday, July 11. Karlsbad 10 p.m." tells of his train journey from Basel, and the first relationships made on the train with a "Swedish rabbi" and "a couple of Russian-Swedish Jews"... Another account of the beginning of the stay in Karlsbad (July 13, then July 17) was not retained, nor was a reaction to an "anti-Christian" letter from Ruyt