André Gide, Eugène Rouart and
le retour à la terre
David H. Walker
Abstract: The Third Republic not only revolutionized France’s education system, but also sought to radically reform land-use practices. To
this end, agronomists such as André Gide’s friend and correspondent,
the future Sénateur Eugène Rouart pioneered agricultural education
and engaged in small-scale agricultural research across France. This
chapter considers the extent to which their reformist zeal contrasted
with the chauvinistic blood-and-soil regionalism of Maurice Barrès,
as well as the importance of agricultural metaphor in Gide’s writing.
In 1897 André Gide famously published Les Nourritures terrestres, a
book whose title indicates eloquently enough its aim of encouraging
the reader to celebrate earthly delights. In the Preface for a re-edition
in 1927 Gide explains that his purpose had been to bring literature
back from the abstractions of the fin-de-siècle – symbolism, decadentism, and the like: “la littérature sentait furieusement le factice et le
renfermé … il me paraissait urgent de la faire à nouveau toucher
terre”.
1 The work consists of eight “Livres” and an “Envoi”, and the
significance of this structure is underlined via the Gidean device of the
mise en abyme, whereby at the heart of the volume is reproduced an
image in miniature of the shape and substance of the volume as a
whole. This mise en abyme is a section entitled “La Ferme”, in which
the narrator successively opens eight doors and takes us on a tour of
___________________________
1 “Postface” to a re-edition in 1927, in André Gide, Romans, récits et soties, œuvres
lyriques (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1958), p. 249. Hereafter referred to in the text as RRS.
le retour à la terre
David H. Walker
Abstract: The Third Republic not only revolutionized France’s education system, but also sought to radically reform land-use practices. To
this end, agronomists such as André Gide’s friend and correspondent,
the future Sénateur Eugène Rouart pioneered agricultural education
and engaged in small-scale agricultural research across France. This
chapter considers the extent to which their reformist zeal contrasted
with the chauvinistic blood-and-soil regionalism of Maurice Barrès,
as well as the importance of agricultural metaphor in Gide’s writing.
In 1897 André Gide famously published Les Nourritures terrestres, a
book whose title indicates eloquently enough its aim of encouraging
the reader to celebrate earthly delights. In the Preface for a re-edition
in 1927 Gide explains that his purpose had been to bring literature
back from the abstractions of the fin-de-siècle – symbolism, decadentism, and the like: “la littérature sentait furieusement le factice et le
renfermé … il me paraissait urgent de la faire à nouveau toucher
terre”.
1 The work consists of eight “Livres” and an “Envoi”, and the
significance of this structure is underlined via the Gidean device of the
mise en abyme, whereby at the heart of the volume is reproduced an
image in miniature of the shape and substance of the volume as a
whole. This mise en abyme is a section entitled “La Ferme”, in which
the narrator successively opens eight doors and takes us on a tour of
___________________________
1 “Postface” to a re-edition in 1927, in André Gide, Romans, récits et soties, œuvres
lyriques (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1958), p. 249. Hereafter referred to in the text as RRS.