ABSTRACT
Every summer Gide used to reread Les Caractères et les mœurs de ce siècle (The Characters and Manners of This Century) by Jean de La Bruyère. Although he did not consider that little collection of portraits and reflections as one of the greatest of French seventeenth-century works, he admired it for its simplicity and reasonableness. “So clear is the water in these basins,” he wrote in his Journals, “that one must lean over them for some time to appreciate their depth.” Remaining closer to concrete life than do Pascal and La Rochefoucauld, the moralist La Bruyère ridicules current abuses and judges without indulgence, but always in a highly personal manner according to his own changing moods. Probably it was his supple style, taking advantage of all the resources of rhetoric, that caused Gide to be “tormented” by the desire to re-do the Caractères.
