From the diary to the essays of André Gide: between archive of creation and literary values

Abstract

The private diaries of writers have started to gain public interest because they contain the genesis of their literary works. Even though most of the time these diaries do not reveal a stage of the creative process, many function as a testimony of the work. This is the case with André Gide's diary, which brings various comments about the preparation of his literary works. Besides containing comments about his fictional works, the diary carries testimonies of the author's essayistic production, which leads us to direct our attention to the genre. Given Gide's concern with associating critical work with literary work, the very reflective nature of his essays, and the importance of writers' criticism for understanding their literary productions, we chose to work with excerpts from the diary and some essays written between 1919 and 1925, the period during which the novel The Counterfeiters was produced. From these, we will present some values present in the writer's thought—patience, work, inspiration, and impersonality—which point to a concern regarding literary production and to a modern author's affiliation with the principles of Romantic judgment.