SURPRISED BY GIDE

André Gide, portrait by Matzneff

I was surprised to hear the marvellous voice of the bilingual actor Michael Lonsdale murmuring, on my car's stereo, a touching passage of faith by the austere and sometimes caustic Andre Gide. It comes from a notebook of diary-like jottings, Le Cahier vert (1916), and I offer it here in my own translation:

Lord, it is not because they tell me that you are the Son of God that I listen to your word; but your word is beautiful beyond all human words, and that is how I recognise that you are the Son of God. 

Through what absurd modesty, through what humility, what shame,  have I put off until today to write that which for so many years has yearned in me…

I always waited for more wisdom, reading, knowledge, as if the wisdom of men were not folly before God. 


Lord, I come to you as a child; as the child that  you want me to become, as the child that whoever abandons himself to you becomes. I resign all that was my pride and which near you would be my shame. I listen, and my heart is yours.