If It Die… (French: Si le grain ne meurt, literally “If the grain does not die,” from John 12:24) was published by Gallimard in 1926, first in a limited edition and then commercially. The autobiography covers Gide’s life from childhood in a strict Protestant household through his travels in North Africa in the 1890s, his encounter with Oscar Wilde in Algeria, his sexual awakening, and his marriage to his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux.
The North African chapters are the book’s most famous and most controversial. Gide describes his first sexual experiences with young Arab men — encounters arranged, in some cases, by Wilde himself — with a directness that scandalized French literary society. The scenes are rendered without guilt or apology but also without prurience; Gide writes about sex with the same analytical precision he brings to everything else, treating his desires as facts to be examined rather than sins to be confessed.
The account of his marriage is painful. Gide loved Madeleine deeply — spiritually, intellectually, emotionally — but could not desire her sexually. The marriage was unconsummated, and Madeleine’s suffering, which Gide acknowledges with a guilt that informs all his subsequent writing, haunts the autobiography. When Madeleine discovered the extent of Gide’s extramarital life, she burned all his letters to her — an act that Gide described as the destruction of the best part of himself.
The title — “If the grain does not die, it remains alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit” — suggests that the autobiography is itself an act of self-destruction undertaken in the hope of producing something of value. The death Gide enacts is the death of his public persona: the respectable man of letters, the Protestant moralist. What he hoped to produce was honesty.
Collecting If It Die…
First edition (Gallimard, Paris, 1926, in French): Paperback wrappers.
Market values:
- French first edition, fine: $200–$500
- English first edition (Random House, 1935): $60–$150