Customer Reviews

Strait Is the Gate

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Before reading Strait is the Gate, I already considered Gide one of my favorite writers. Now, I am dedicated to reading all of his work.

Strait is the Gate hit me so hard with the agony of its characters that I felt pysically ill as the novel went on. Like Gide scholars say, the book is the counterpart to The Immoralist. While in The Immoralist, Gide portrays hedonism taken to an extreme, in Strait is the Gate, he takes self sacrifice to its heart-tearing conclusion.

The story's main characters, cousins Jerome and Alissa, grow up together reading poetry aloud in the gardens of their home. They fall in love with each other--both out of admiration for the other's religious devotion. However, they are kept apart for long periods of time and their love's fervor is lost entirely to religion.

While reading the story as told by Jerome, I can't help but want to scream out "don't just sit there--do something!" But it ends up being too late, and the helpless feeling of the characters--in being unable to regain what they were once on the brink of--hurts us as we read of its effects on Jerome and Alissa.

Not only is the content of the story meaningful, but the style is smooth and image-conjuring (at least in the Dorothy Bussy translation). This is a change from what I experienced in the first pages of the Dover Thrift Edition of The Immoralist (but don't let that keep you from The Immoralist!) Instead, Strait is the Gate is nearly as clean and clear as Justin O'Brien's translation of The Stranger by Camus.

I give the book 5 stars--quite easily. About Gide's other work...

I find "The Return of the Prodigal Son" to be absolutely brilliant. In his retelling of the bible story, Gide describes the feelings of the atheist towards God (to Gide "God" was not a creator, but the goal of humanity), the church, religious friends and family, and to other religious questioners. His story is so touchingly honest and subtle that I cannot read or even think of the end without tears coming to my eyes.

Five stars for all of Gide's stuff.

You can bet that old Omar Khayyam loved a few women in his day and when he got out there under the spreading bough with his loaf of bread, a book of verse, and a jug of wine, he did not fail to eat, drink, recite, and all the rest. That's what I think life is about. Dreams are central, but if you have a chance to realize your dream, and you don't because you think you'll be happier if you don't, then your dreams are just so much junk and you are kidding yourself. Self-denial may be good for your health, but not for your soul.

Andre Gide wrote this novel back before World War I, when extreme sensibility had not been crushed by the horrors of modern war; a time when the words `holocaust' or `genocide' had not been much heard. I am not claiming that this is a bad novel---no, on the contrary---it is a very complex and finely-crafted piece of literature. However, I found it impossible to like. Jerome and Alissa, two extremely sensitive and religious young people in Normandy, fall in love early in life, but spend the rest of the novel avoiding each other, sacrificing themselves for `purity', turning to God instead of to each other, embarassed by their own passion, and other vain exercises in psychological self-mutilation. The twists and turns that Gide manages to write into this short, but extremely complex novel are breathtakingly clever and believable, but the whole effect was to make me feel somewhat nauseous and exceedingly disturbed. Alissa writes to her lover who thinks only of her, "No, don't cut short your journey for the sake of a few days' meeting. Seriously, it is better that we should not see each other again just yet. Believe me, I could not think of you more if you were with me. I should be sorry to give you pain, but I have come to the point of no longer wanting your presence---now. Shall I confess ? If I knew you were coming this evening I should fly away." And so it goes, desire, rejection, reunion, the heights of platonic passion, and again separation. A second love story underlines the first to give it the traceries of poignancy. Some years ago in Australia, there was a campaign to get people away from their television sets, out to do some healthier activity. The slogan then was "Life ! Be in it !" This couple's slogan is definitely, "Life ! Be out of it !"

If you have read Kafka's "The Castle" and enjoyed it, then this book is definitely for you. If you ever thrilled to Ring Lardner's "The Ecstasy of Owen Muir" or Kawabata Yasunari's "House of Sleeping Beauties", then I suppose you will be drawn to STRAIT IS THE GATE. I am not an expert on Gide by any means, but it may be that he wanted to write several books showing the complex depths of various human emotions. It's five star writing, but in the opinion of this reviewer, it is a twisted book that will not give you much pleasure.

I read this book long long ago when I was 15 or so. It was one of the first real literary works I have ever read, and, at that age, the purity in human relationship which this story pursuits came through naturally for me (getting ideas about human relationship through this book was definitely better than through tabloids or crappy magazines or romance novels or Hollywood movies!). I have never cried or suffered over a relationship, and been happily married for 25 yrs now.

In the Afterward in the edition I have read, the translator explained that the story reflects Gide's own marriage, or the relationship with his wife. Gide loved his wife dearly, but they hardly had a sexual relationship, or something to that effect, and throughout their marriage, Gide was tormented.

To me, at age 15, the idea, the kind of love that Alissa was looking for -- "divine" and on a higher plane, spiritual than physical, intangible than tangible, and eternal and true -- was quite attractive. It may look unhealthy, but you don't read a story and take it literally. It is a story of Gide's thoughts and ideals, not the story of literal facts. You don't really live your ideal, but to keep that ideal in your mind while you live your daily life is a great way to live.
This book's ideal doesn't go with today's trend or culture, and it is hard to understand. But I think Gide's endeaver was well worth it. It's a very good book to read, especially for young people. It will take you to a -- if not a higher plane, a different realm, and you will see love and relationship from a totally different angle.

As with most all of Gide's best novels, this one concerns the anxiety and yearning at the heart of human experience. A very young Jerome Palissier regularly spends holidays at the house of his aunt and uncle's estate in Fongueusemare in rural Normandy. One day, he happens upon his cousin Alissa, who is distraught at her aloof, hypochondriacal mother. Both desperate to rescue her and drawn by a genuine affection, Jerome takes it upon himself to sweep in and rescue her like a good, Christian knight errant. The subtle imagery of Jerome as a kind of salvific hero is only a foreshadowing of the religious unease that drives this novel forward toward its foreordained conclusion. As Jerome portentously declares, quoting Baudelaire, "Bientot nous plongerons dons les froides tenebres."

Jerome and Alissa spend irenic summers together reciting poetry, reading from books to one another in their splendid garden, and enjoying music. The appropriateness of Jerome's name jumps out at you when he mentions another of their mutual literary interests: "We had procured the Gospels in the Vulgate and knew long passages of them by heart." (It was Saint Jerome who made the first Latin translation of the Bible.) Jerome wishes to become engaged before moving off to the Ecole Normale, but Alissa refuses. He is understandably upset by her rejection, but is only more spurred on by his ecstatic vision (again, that religious imagery) of eventually marrying her. Eventually, we learn that Alissa has sacrificed Jerome so that her sister, Juliette, will be able to get married first, yet even after Juliette gets married - to a boorish, business-minded vintner - Alissa continues to push him away.

He visits her at Fongueusemare while finishing both his schooling and a military stint, but every time he mentions wanting to marry her, she rejects him and requests that he leave soon, that she cannot bear his presence. Eventually, she tells him that her love of God surpasses her love for him, even though she has always passionately loved Jerome. During their last meeting together, Alissa has grown thin and pale, presumably because of her anchorite-like existence; she has also removed the books of poetry and novels she and Jerome used to read together, and replaced them with works of cheap, vulgar piety. Even while there is room here to doubt Alissa's love for Jerome, a chapter that includes her personal journals makes it perfectly clear that she loved Jerome just as much as he loved her, if not more so. Jerome has a final meeting with Juliette while she is enceinte with her fifth child by the vintner. Seeing him calls to mind both her sister's Christ-like sacrifice and makes her reflect on her own uneventful, bourgeois life. As Flaubert said: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi."

For maximum effect, as noted above, read this right next to Gide's "The Immoralist" for a most effective couple of case studies. Considering the year of publication (1909) and the ideas considered - repression, sexuality, sublimation - it should be noted that Gide almost certainly had Freud in mind when he was writing this, though it yields wonderful insights into human psychology even without a Freudian reading.

When reading a novel, sometimes the most difficult obstacle to being able to truly and fully appreciate it is the historical change that has taken place between the time in which it was written and when you read it. Judging from some of the reviews I have seen, that seems to be the case with this novel, too. In both this and "The Immoralist," Gide looks at the tension, confusion, and repression that can often come about when romantic love is pitted against, and forced to compete with, love for the divine. Since this novel was published, this antagonism has almost completely died, which may lead some readers to accuse Alissa of being frigid. Once we are able to bridge that historical gap, however, and realize that Alissa did not see her torment as self-imposed but rather something that was required of her, this novel proves itself to be a superior meditation on both romantic passion and, what was once thought to be its opposite, sacrifice.

This novel is the tale of the romance and its beautiful abandonment.
At first a couple seems so intimate that can marry themselves. He has realized, however, that she began to detach him gradually. Naturally, he has suspected whether she has another boyfriend to be a little jealous, or has felt lonely because of her emotionless conversation. Abruptly she confessed her decision to be apart from him.
The conclusion is against my expectation. He never felt deeply heartbroken and she never loved no one except him in the world.
After finishing to read it, I felt mysterious of the fact that there was such a surprisingly pure lady in the world, who felt the world problematic. The strait gate, however, seemed strict and cool for a young school boy, while being regarding as divine and beautiful.

There can be many different ways of enjoying this book, for example, as an agonizing love story of two young people with some predicaments resembling those of Virgin Mary and Joseph, in which case, a very intense romance/dedication with impossibility of their union, however, leading to preoccupation, what I would simply call--I want it, but I shouldn't, so I won't, but I will forever think about it--syndrome.

But I read it more as constant dialogues/disputes inside of a thinking person---about the meaning/purposes/pursuit of virtues, about the existence of retraints through religious framework, about the existence of freedom both for emotions/intellect and self effacement, and all those unanswerable questions...

The point, may be not in the answers, but in the pursuits which also present dangers and agony of self denial and ultimate demise, "I felt strange contentment that filled my whole being in your presence; 'a contentment so great' you said, that I desire nothing beyond!' Alas! that is just what makes me uneasy...." then doubting, "why do you tear off your wings?", another doubts "Sometimes I doubt whether there is any other virtue than love...to love as much as possible and continually more and more...But at other times, alas! virtue appears to me to be nothing but resistance to love. What! shall I dare to call that virtue which is the most natural inclination of my heart? Oh, tempting sophism! Specious allurement! Cunning mirage of happiness!...........charms so great can be surpassed only when virtue teaches us to renounce them". A profounly philosophical book!

"Now that I have found you again, life, thought, our souls-everything seems beautiful, adorable, inexhaustibly fertile"

This is one of the most complex, heart wrenching books I've ever read. Its beautifully written too, almost poetic. I won't get into the plot, but it goes much, much deeper than religious piety; if thats all you got out of it you weren't reading close enough. It's the first and only book I've read by Gide; I'm afraid to read others in case they don't live up to the expectations this book gave me.

Subtle; powerful. The limited point of view demands much patience, but the work ends with a searing revelation of the lie that is Romanticism, in all its guises, whether it is Jerome's saintly idealization of Alissa, or Alissa's self-alienating and eventually suicidal devotion to a God that is really an aspect of her own unloved Self.

A reviewer said earlier that he became physically ill as he read on. I felt something similar. The story gripped me in my throat, and there were moments when I think I stopped breathing. The story of utmost purity and self-sacrifice (utter foolishness to cynics) cut so close that I think it tore my heart. The image painted at the end of the story was so sublime that the reader will find himself unable to utter a single word, and at the same time, a strange emptiness wells up within...

I first heard about André Gide, I believe, while reading one of Boyle's short story. It was some off handed reference but I found myself picking up Strait is the Gate and the book the proceeded to live on my shelf for quite some time before I read it. The plot is intriguing but somewhat generic: two sisters fall in love with the same man. Some interesting twists occur, the man is rejected by both women, and the book ends developing both of the sister's positions in the relationship (otherwise the book is narrated by the man). However, the book increasingly became annoying as the relationships floundered for no apparent reason. Even by the end of the novel once reasons of sacrifice and a hire calling are pursued one still stops and wonders: say what? Strait is the Gate is filled with a misogynistic tendency of consistent and regular female sacrifice for the higher calling of a man. It's interesting in its fashion and a short read but the constant referencing of the childlike love is very true - it's a very immature and over romanticized love that blossoms.