The Vatican Cellars

On a November evening in 1925, André Gide stood before a mirror in his Paris apartment, adjusting the red boutonnière that had become his trademark. At fifty-six, he was France's most controversial writer—celebrated and reviled in equal measure. Tonight, he would attend yet another literary gathering where half the room would treat him as a master, the other half as a corruptor of youth. He rather enjoyed the division.

The controversy had intensified since the publication of "Corydon" the previous year—his defense of homosexuality that scandalized even liberal Paris. His wife Madeleine had burned all his letters to her, thirty years of correspondence destroyed in revenge for his public revelations. But Gide felt liberated rather than devastated. At last, he was living without masks.

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. His secretary announced a visitor—a young man who had traveled from the provinces, claiming that "The Immoralist" had saved his life. Gide sighed. Another disciple seeking permission to live authentically. They always misunderstood, thinking his books preached hedonism when they actually explored freedom's dangers.

"Show him in," Gide said. The young man entered nervously, clutching a worn copy of "The Fruits of the Earth." His story was familiar—bourgeois family, stifling conventions, the discovery through Gide's books that another life was possible.

"Maître," the young man began, "your words about becoming who one truly is—"

"Stop," Gide interrupted gently. "I write not to provide answers but to disturb certainties. If my books have helped you question, good. But don't make me your pope. I've spent my life escaping one Vatican; I won't create another."

He gave the young man tea and ambiguous advice, then sent him away more confused than before. That was as it should be. Gide's whole career had been devoted to complicating simplicity, to showing that freedom meant anxiety as much as joy, that authenticity demanded constant vigilance against one's own tendency toward dogma.

Later that evening, at the literary salon, someone asked him about his famous phrase: "It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not." Gide smiled his enigmatic smile. "Did I write that? How foolish. It's better still to remain becoming, never quite being anything fixed at all."