GIDE (André). - Lot 140

GIDE (André). Amyntas. Mopsus. Travel Itineraries. From Biskra to Touggourt. The Renunciation of Travel. Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1906. — In-16, 164 x 110: 291 pp., (2 ff.), printed cover. Black box, horizontal rectangular piece of purple box inlaid in the center of the covers, decorated with curved gilt fillets and a piece of orange box on the front cover, and three curved gilt fillets on the back cover, gilt headband, untrimmed, cover and spine preserved, with a spine and overlapping flaps, and a bordered slipcase (Gertrude Lénore). First edition—with the exception of *Feuilles de route*—printed in a run of 350 copies on Arches laid paper, unnumbered. Under this title, Gide compiled travel notes written between 1896 and 1904 in Africa. As Diana Lefter (Centre d’études gidiennes) points out, “he is not merely a vacationer in search of the exotic, but an experienced traveler, seeking sensations by choice, not by surprise.” These impressions, both enduring and almost reasoned, oscillate between a taste for the strange—fueled by the mystery and oriental charm of the alleys and squares—and sensual delight, evoked in an imaginary dialogue between Mopsus and Menalque on the ecstasy aroused by “the nuanced emptiness of the desert.” This ecstasy echoes that of rest, when Gide compares the African land to Virgil’s Arcadia, the promised land of peace. Amyntas, finally, becomes both a tribute to and a challenge to the sun: no longer a destructive celestial body, but an invitation to life, to turmoil. It is Gide’s victorious cry; like Amyntas, the shepherd from Virgil’s *Bucolics*, he dares to measure himself against Phoebus, his master.” A very fine copy bound by Gertrude Lénore. Light water stain on pages 9 through 15.