ABSTRACT
Andre Gide never ceased exploring the relationship between literature and nationalism. Literature will be satisfied with exploiting the plateau lands: elevated thoughts, elevated feelings, and noble passions; with the result that the earliest heroes of the novel or of tragedy, deprived of depth and complication of character, appear, in the book and on the stage. The inquiry that La Phalange has just terminated after several months was bound to degenerate into a quarrel. To be sure, the questionnaire appeared quite harmless. But the word “national” had been enunciated, and everybody knows the exclusivism that goes with that word. The illustrious English Jew thought only of tangible harvests. The double meaning of the word “culture” invites such treatment, as does M. Barres with his theory of uprooting and his eloquent phrase, only half metaphorical: “The soil and the dead.” Other land, rich areas, low-lying areas, man will consider only later.
