ABSTRACT
Andre Gide’s association with Jean Cocteau began in 1912 with the tatter’s third volume of verse at the age of twenty-three. Gide followed his young friend’s work with interest as Cocteau’s ballets, poems, and plays established him more and more as a leader of the avant-garde. But this open letter hurt the younger writer who retorted with an “open reply” that Riviere refused to publish, despite Gide’s urging, because it simply attacked Gide on personal grounds. Gide’s correspondence with the poet Francis Jammes began in 1893, although the two writers did not meet until 1896, and continued until Jammes’s death in 1938, after the relationship had progressively cooled as a result of incidents such as those discussed in this open letter. On his return to Paris in 1919, he became editor-in-chief of the N.R.F., to which he devoted himself unstintingly until his untimely death in 1925.
