The Immoralist

by André Gide

I wanted to write this book neither as an indictment nor as an apology, and I have taken care not to pass judgment. Today’s public no longer forgives an author for failing, after the action he describes, to give his verdict; indeed, in the very course of the drama he is told to take sides, to declare himself for Alceste or Philinte, for Hamlet or Ophelia, for Faust or Marguerite, for Adam or Jehovah. I do not claim, of course, that neutrality (I was about to say: indecision) is a sure sign of a great mind; but I do believe that many great minds have been greatly disinclined to … conclude—and that to state a problem properly is not to suppose it solved in advance. I am reluctant to use the word “problem” here. To tell the truth, in art there are no problems—for which the work of art is not the sufficient solution.

If certain distinguished minds have chosen to regard this drama as no more than the account of a strange case, and its hero as a sick man; if they have failed to see that some very urgent ideas of very general interest may nonetheless be found in it—that is not the fault of these ideas nor of this drama, but of the author, and I mean: of his clumsiness—though he has put into this book all his passion, all his tears, and all his care. But the real interest of a work and the interest taken in it by the public of the moment are two very different things. One may without too much conceit, I think, prefer the risk of failing to interest the moment by what is genuinely interesting—to beguiling momentarily a public fond of trash. Be that as it may, I have tried to prove nothing, but to paint my picture well and light it properly.