David H. Walker
244
to do so; and the insight into the travails it cost him to be so closely
associated with farming may alert us to a peculiarly personal dimension of a literary-ideological polemic Gide pursued during this same
period. We began by pointing out that a dialectic between nomadism
and sedentary farming informs Les Nourritures terrestres. However,
far from equivocating on this theme, Gide reacted vigorously when
Maurice Barrès, one of the most celebrated figures of the era, published his novel Les Déracinés several months after the appearance of
Les Nourritures terrestres. In a blunt rebuttal of the doctrine that
young people, instead of moving to Paris and other foreign parts
where they become subject to deleterious influences, should remain
attached to their native soil, Gide began his article “A propos des
Déracinés de Maurice Barrès”, in L’Ermitage of February 1898, with
the words: “Né à Paris, d’un père uzétien et d’une mère normande, où
voulez-vous, monsieur Barrès, que je m’enracine?”.
18 This ringing
challenge would continue to resound, as nationalists and reactionaries
sought to dispute the horticultural data on which Gide based his ethical argument in favour of uprooting, transplanting, and disponibilité as
the secret of robust growth in humans as well as plants. What came to
be known as “La Querelle du Peuplier” rumbled on for over six years,
and by 1905 Gide was arguing the point with Charles Maurras
19 after
Rémy de Gourmont, Émile Faguet, and an aristocratic farmer called
Le baron de Beaucorps had had their say. Eugène Rouart himself had
weighed in with an article in 1903, following the republication of
Gide’s piece in his volume Prétextes; it was in debating the issues
again with his farmer friend that Gide rehearsed his concluding argument (GR, II, pp. 159-68).
Although Gide had hoped to be free of his responsibilities as a
gentleman farmer, the saga of La Roque would not be completely liquidated till 1909; and perhaps it is no coincidence that at this point,
Gide wrote one of his most telling instances of looking to the earth
primarily for pretexts for literary and intellectual undertakings. In November 1909 he published in La Nouvelle Revue Française an article
(the last of a series of three) taking to task the reactionary outlook of a
group of Nationalists who were seeking to reformulate the principles
of French art and culture in terms of traditional classicism and a nar___________________________
18 See André Gide, Essais critiques (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,
1999), p. 4.
19 See Gide, Essais critiques, pp. 121-26.
244
to do so; and the insight into the travails it cost him to be so closely
associated with farming may alert us to a peculiarly personal dimension of a literary-ideological polemic Gide pursued during this same
period. We began by pointing out that a dialectic between nomadism
and sedentary farming informs Les Nourritures terrestres. However,
far from equivocating on this theme, Gide reacted vigorously when
Maurice Barrès, one of the most celebrated figures of the era, published his novel Les Déracinés several months after the appearance of
Les Nourritures terrestres. In a blunt rebuttal of the doctrine that
young people, instead of moving to Paris and other foreign parts
where they become subject to deleterious influences, should remain
attached to their native soil, Gide began his article “A propos des
Déracinés de Maurice Barrès”, in L’Ermitage of February 1898, with
the words: “Né à Paris, d’un père uzétien et d’une mère normande, où
voulez-vous, monsieur Barrès, que je m’enracine?”.
18 This ringing
challenge would continue to resound, as nationalists and reactionaries
sought to dispute the horticultural data on which Gide based his ethical argument in favour of uprooting, transplanting, and disponibilité as
the secret of robust growth in humans as well as plants. What came to
be known as “La Querelle du Peuplier” rumbled on for over six years,
and by 1905 Gide was arguing the point with Charles Maurras
19 after
Rémy de Gourmont, Émile Faguet, and an aristocratic farmer called
Le baron de Beaucorps had had their say. Eugène Rouart himself had
weighed in with an article in 1903, following the republication of
Gide’s piece in his volume Prétextes; it was in debating the issues
again with his farmer friend that Gide rehearsed his concluding argument (GR, II, pp. 159-68).
Although Gide had hoped to be free of his responsibilities as a
gentleman farmer, the saga of La Roque would not be completely liquidated till 1909; and perhaps it is no coincidence that at this point,
Gide wrote one of his most telling instances of looking to the earth
primarily for pretexts for literary and intellectual undertakings. In November 1909 he published in La Nouvelle Revue Française an article
(the last of a series of three) taking to task the reactionary outlook of a
group of Nationalists who were seeking to reformulate the principles
of French art and culture in terms of traditional classicism and a nar___________________________
18 See André Gide, Essais critiques (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,
1999), p. 4.
19 See Gide, Essais critiques, pp. 121-26.