#andré gide

On the docket for December are new translations of Guido Morselli’s eerily prescient tale of the last man standing after humanity disappears without a trace and André Gide’s pioneering metafiction classic, Marshlands.

Guido Morselli, Dissipatio H.G.: The Vanishing

From the author of The Communist comes this postapocalyptic novel about a man who drives down to the capital from his retreat in the mountains only to find he’s the last person left on earth. As he travels around searching for provisions and any sign of humanity, he finds that the rest of nature is flourishing.

André Gide, Marshlands

This metafictional masterpiece and send-up of writerly pretension packs a punch in its ninety-six pages. Its narrator, a social butterfly of the Parisian literati, needs everyone to know about his new novel, Marshlands, about a recluse living in a stone tower. His literary friends aren’t too impressed—and their feedback becomes as much a part of Marshlands as the novel itself.

“What frightens me, I admit, is that I am still very young. It seems to me sometimes that my real life has not begun. Take me away from here and give me some reason for living. I have none left. I have freed myself. That may be. But what does it signify? This objectless liberty is a burden to me.”

— André Gide,from“The Immoralist”, tr. Dorothy Bussy and published c. 1930.

original text: “Ce qui m'effraie c'est, je l'avoue, que je suis encore très jeune. Il me semble parfois que ma vraie vie n'a pas encore commencé. Arrachez moi d'ici à présent, et donnez moi des raisons d'être. Moi, je ne sais plus en trouver, je me suis délivré, c'est possible; mais qu'importe? Je souffre de cette liberté sans emploi.”

“And suddenly I was seized with a desire, a craving, something more furious and more imperious than I had ever felt before—to live! I want to live! I will live. I clenched my teeth, my hands, concentrated my whole being in this wild, grief-stricken endeavour towards existence.”

— André Gide, from “The Immoralist”, tr. Dorothy Bussy and published c. 1930.

original text: “Et soudain me prit un désir, une envie, quelque chose de plus furieux, de plus impérieux que tout ce que j'avais ressenti jusqu'alors: vivre ! je veux vivre. Je veux vivre. Je serrai les dents, les poings, me concentrai tout entier éperdument, désolément, dans cet effort vers l'existence.”

“What frightens me, I admit, is that I am still very young. It seems to me sometimes that my real life has not begun. Take me away from here and give me some reason for living. I have none left. I have freed myself. That may be. But what does it signify? This objectless liberty is a burden to me.”

— André Gide,from“The Immoralist”, tr. Dorothy Bussy and published c. 1930.

original text: “Ce qui m'effraie c'est, je l'avoue, que je suis encore très jeune. Il me semble parfois que ma vraie vie n'a pas encore commencé. Arrachez moi d'ici à présent, et donnez moi des raisons d'être. Moi, je ne sais plus en trouver, je me suis délivré, c'est possible; mais qu'importe? Je souffre de cette liberté sans emploi.”

“And suddenly I was seized with a desire, a craving, something more furious and more imperious than I had ever felt before—to live! I want to live! I will live. I clenched my teeth, my hands, concentrated my whole being in this wild, grief-stricken endeavour towards existence.”

— André Gide, from “The Immoralist”, tr. Dorothy Bussy and published c. 1930.

original text: “Et soudain me prit un désir, une envie, quelque chose de plus furieux, de plus impérieux que tout ce que j'avais ressenti jusqu'alors: vivre ! je veux vivre. Je veux vivre. Je serrai les dents, les poings, me concentrai tout entier éperdument, désolément, dans cet effort vers l'existence.”

• André Gide