Artistry*

Two SYMPHONIES -- Andre Gide -- Knopf ($2.50). "Quietly! Quietly!" says Andre Gide. ''Is life disorderly, noisy? Art is not." In these Two Symphonies of his (published separately in Paris some ten years ago) you may hear some of the faint harmonics. No lavish diapasoner of thundering chords, Andre Gide picks out his effects with a spare but accurate choice. habelle is the story of love at first sight that withered not from Time but from a second glance. Young Student Lacase, searching materials for his thesis, visits the queer country household of La Quartfourche. They are all old people there except one crippled boy, grandson to one couple, great-nephew to the other. The boy's absent mother, Isabelle. still young, still beautiful, is never mentioned. But she is allowed to come back twice a year, at the dead of night, to see her child. Young Lacase falls in love with her, first from her picture, then from an old letter, then from a glimpse of her. His visit ends, he goes away. Months later he returns. The old people are dead, the house is to be sold, creditors are cutting down the trees, his ideal beloved Isabelle is living with the estate-agent, just for want of somebody better. The Pastoral Symphony tells how a Protestant country pastor takes home a destitute little blind girl to his astounded wife & family. The child is not only blind but apparently dumb, beastlike, filthy. With infinite patience, amazing success, the pastor teaches her to talk, educates her into a flower of intelligence and purity. Naturally she loves him. His affection for her he considers purely paternal, long after his wife & family know better. When his son falls in love with the girl the pastor sends him away. A successful operation is made on her eyes. The pastor is anxious, and with cause; for when she sees her perfect man she tries to drown herself, dies from the effects. But not without telling him a few things that leave his life a desert. The Author-- Andre Paul William Gide, reputed the most powerful figure in contemporary French literature, looks like a lean and sinister clown, loves mystery, theatrics. Bald, he often wears a skullcap, a shawl over his shoulders. His early books were such immediate failures he thought seriously of abandoning writing. At 40 (he is now 61) he learned English and translated Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, Walt Whitman into French. Gide's chief claim to notoriety is his sympathetic exposition of homosexuality. His consuming curiosity once nearly cost him his life when he followed an African native marriage procession into the forbidden chamber. Some of his (translated) books: Strait Is the Gate, The Counterfeiters, The School for Wives, Travels in the Congo, The Immoralist.

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