Since his first works, and first among them Silbermann, the author — one of the best novelists of the age — has shown himself a great writer. He has not fallen short of himself. Olivier, the hero of "Le Pour et le Contre," is, I think, one of his faces. The novel has the sincerity of an autobiography, and nothing is more moving than this effort of a scrupulous conscience lying in wait for the instincts and the currents that lead it.
The subject — the plot, I mean — is attractive enough to interest any class of reader, but it wants readers of choice.
Olivier is an intellectual whom his select ancestry — the father a Consul of France in various foreign countries, the mother devoted to her son and to the cult of the departed — has prepared for the taste for travel, ardent curiosity, and scruples. Endowed with talent, with charm, and with a middling fortune, Olivier wavers between the joys of life and the need to approve of himself.
This theme is the guiding thread of the work, in which, as in a mirror, there file past women and temptations, and faults and consequences.
One of its attractions is that all the confessed lapses are plausible and all the characters engaging.
I do not know why "Le Pour et le Contre" reminded me of Aldous Huxley's "Point Counter Point" — which is certainly no criticism.
The work reads from one end to the other without effort and with interest, like a good detective novel. I do not say this in a disparaging sense — quite the contrary — and because the novel opens with a crime.
An author's talent is revealed by the faculty of making his readers accept the points of view he defends.
Here, it is the possible innocence of a refined woman who succumbs to the pull of the senses. A
pull in which the senses alone took part, and which nonetheless reveals to her the fullness of joy.
A point of view that many women will judge debatable, but which men deserve some credit for accepting.
The workmanship of the book is excellent. It should not, however, be read after works like "Le Pour et le Contre."
Despite the bad taste and the ineffectiveness of peremptory epithets, one may, without exaggeration, declare this publication thrilling. Not only because of the renown of Paul Claudel and of André Gide, but because of all the literary, ideological, and psychological curiosities it satisfies. Letters that not only shed light on all the subjects that set these two great souls against each other, but disclose them in their intimacy, revealing their literary judgments on all the thinkers who, for a century, have nourished the last three generations.
Not the least curious thing is Claudel's irreverence toward geniuses such as Goethe, Nietzsche, Renan, Anatole France, etc. He is known to be more devoted to his duty as a Christian than to the service of his own glory. His grandeur and his typhoon's power are for him means of serving the Church.
One would like him more tender toward Christ. "The Church" he places before the Gospel, which he incidentally calls the "biographer" of a dead "man." His humility, however, surprises as much as his violence: the latter somewhat taints his literary judgments. In a letter replying to André Gide's confession, he ex-
...cuses himself for condemning him