André Gide, Eugène Rouart, and le retour à la terre
245
row patriotism. What provoked Gide was that they were harking back,
not just to “la terre et les morts”, as Barrès put it, but to the seventeenth-century notion that “Tout a été dit”, that all that is left to us is
to repeat as elegantly as we can what the Anciens originally discovered and formulated so well. Taking up once more the agricultural
metaphor Gide parodies this doctrine thus:
O classiques grecs, latins, français! Vous avez pris les bonnes places. Le sol ingrat
qui nous demeurerait en partage risquerait d’abîmer vos outils; la moisson qu’on y
peut espérer ne paiera jamais notre peine; mieux vaut, reprenant de vos mains la
charrue, la ramener dans le sillon profond que vous traçâtes.
20
Gide likens this stance to the economic theory of David Ricardo, one
of whose premisses was that agricultural pioneers or new settlers, the
first to install themselves on the land, take possession of the most fertile parts, so that those who arrive later find only the “sol ingrat” that
has been left for them to scrape a poor living from. To this pessimistic
view Gide opposes the economics of Henry Charles Carey: no, he argues, it is not the most fertile land that is cultivated first, but the easiest. The truly rich lands are so fertile that they are massively occupied
by forests and jungles and undergrowth, often containing swamps and
marshes, which makes them impenetrable and off-putting to early settlers: “La terre la plus riche est la terreur du premier émigrant”. So the
first farmers leave them alone, and it is only the bolder ones who
come after who tackle the challenges they present – and on venturing
into these murky, overgrown, “terres peuplées d’animaux sournois et
féroces; terres marécageuses, mouvantes, aux exhalaisons délétères”,
they discover that they are “terres inéspérément fécondes”.
21
The metaphorical value of this carries considerable force. As
for the literal truth of what he is asserting, Gide is confident about it
because he has it from a book published in that year by his uncle the
economist Charles Gide, a notable pioneer and theorist of cooperative
organizations, especially in agriculture. He acknowledges however,
that the main literal application of Carey’s theory has been all but exhausted by virtue of the great progress made by agronomists – and colonials: “Si meurtrières qu’elles aient été d’abord, nos généreuses
___________________________
20 See “Nationalisme et littérature”, in, Gide, Essais critiques, pp. 195-99.
21 Gide, “Nationalisme et littérature”, p. 196.
245
row patriotism. What provoked Gide was that they were harking back,
not just to “la terre et les morts”, as Barrès put it, but to the seventeenth-century notion that “Tout a été dit”, that all that is left to us is
to repeat as elegantly as we can what the Anciens originally discovered and formulated so well. Taking up once more the agricultural
metaphor Gide parodies this doctrine thus:
O classiques grecs, latins, français! Vous avez pris les bonnes places. Le sol ingrat
qui nous demeurerait en partage risquerait d’abîmer vos outils; la moisson qu’on y
peut espérer ne paiera jamais notre peine; mieux vaut, reprenant de vos mains la
charrue, la ramener dans le sillon profond que vous traçâtes.
20
Gide likens this stance to the economic theory of David Ricardo, one
of whose premisses was that agricultural pioneers or new settlers, the
first to install themselves on the land, take possession of the most fertile parts, so that those who arrive later find only the “sol ingrat” that
has been left for them to scrape a poor living from. To this pessimistic
view Gide opposes the economics of Henry Charles Carey: no, he argues, it is not the most fertile land that is cultivated first, but the easiest. The truly rich lands are so fertile that they are massively occupied
by forests and jungles and undergrowth, often containing swamps and
marshes, which makes them impenetrable and off-putting to early settlers: “La terre la plus riche est la terreur du premier émigrant”. So the
first farmers leave them alone, and it is only the bolder ones who
come after who tackle the challenges they present – and on venturing
into these murky, overgrown, “terres peuplées d’animaux sournois et
féroces; terres marécageuses, mouvantes, aux exhalaisons délétères”,
they discover that they are “terres inéspérément fécondes”.
21
The metaphorical value of this carries considerable force. As
for the literal truth of what he is asserting, Gide is confident about it
because he has it from a book published in that year by his uncle the
economist Charles Gide, a notable pioneer and theorist of cooperative
organizations, especially in agriculture. He acknowledges however,
that the main literal application of Carey’s theory has been all but exhausted by virtue of the great progress made by agronomists – and colonials: “Si meurtrières qu’elles aient été d’abord, nos généreuses
___________________________
20 See “Nationalisme et littérature”, in, Gide, Essais critiques, pp. 195-99.
21 Gide, “Nationalisme et littérature”, p. 196.