The Vatican Cellars

NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 1947

André Gide (1869-1951) is one of the most important French writers of the twentieth century. Born into a French Protestant family, Gide grew up and was educated mainly in Normandy, in great social isolation. From an early age he began to write, having published his first novel in 1891.
On a trip to North Africa, he was surprised by a world of freedom that, given his education, he had never imagined before, eventually admitting his attraction to the healthy bodies of young boys.
Gide met Oscar Wilde in Paris in 1895. The author of The Picture of Dorian Gray thought that his homosexuality had been revealed to him, but judging by the diaries of the French writer we know that at that time he was already fully aware of his condition. Gide's drama was, therefore, the reconciliation between his rigorous Protestant upbringing with a freedom that he felt necessary to assume his sexuality.
Despite being married, Gide became involved with a young man and both fled to England, which brought him criticism from both Catholic and Protestant France. And if it is true that his work is admired and has a clear influence on the formation of young writers such as Camus or Sartre, whenever Gide addressed his sexual orientation, critics with Catholic and Protestant affinities did not give him respite.
As a translator, he introduced the works of Joseph Conrad to France. His activity as a critic and writer was continuous, but he added to it a human rights defense of which he is a pioneer. For a brief period he was sympathetic to communist ideals, but, invited to visit and speak in the Soviet Union, he returned disillusioned with the censorship of his speeches and the general state of culture in the country.
In 1939 he became the first living writer to be included in the famous Bibliothèque de La Pléiade collection. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He died in 1951. A year later, the Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the Index Prohibitorum.
Gide's fiction and autobiographical writings have been translated into more than 40 languages and the author is today recognized not only for his literary genius, but also as one of the first personalities to come out as homosexual, openly discussing his position with prevailing morality.