Lafcadio's Adventures by André Gide

First published:Les Caves du Vatican, 1914 (The Vatican Swindle, 1925; better known as Lafcadio’s Adventures, 1927)

Type of work: Psychological satire

Time of work: The 1890’s, during the pontificate of Leo XIII

Locale: Various locales in France and Italy

Principal Characters:

• Lafcadio Wluiki, the bastard son of Juste-Agenor de Baraglioul
• Julius de Baraglioul, a writer, Lafcadio’s half brother
• Juste-Genor De Baraglioul, a wealthy aristocrat, the father of Julius and Lafcadio
• Marguerite de Baraglioul, the wife of Julius
• Genevieve de Baraglioul, the daughter of Julius and Marguerite
• Anthime Armand-Dubois, Julius’ brother-in-law
• Veronica, Anthime’s pious wife
• Amedee Fleurissoire, a simple, pious man
• Arnica, his wife, the youngest sister of Veronica and Marguerite
• Gaston Blafaphas, the lifelong friend of Amedee Fleurissoire
• Protos, an adventurer and former schoolmate of Lafcadio (also known as
• Defouqueblize, a professor of law)
• Carola Venitequa, Protos’ accomplice

The Novel

A complex novel of contrapuntal development, Lafcadio’s Adventures is divided into four interrelated parts. In the first book, André Gide introduces the reader to a scholarly—indeed pedantic—freethinker and would-be scientist. Anthime Armand-Dubois, crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, is physically grotesque yet intellectually vigorous. Because of his misshapen body, he retreats into abstruse scientific research. Unlike his pious Catholic wife, Veronica, Anthime is driven in his studies to demolish the religious superstructure that, in his judgment, obscures reason and promotes superstition. A Freemason, he plans to publish in scientific journals his minor, often cruel, experiments involving animal vivisection and abuse. Then suddenly, he experiences a religious conversion. After his young niece prays for the forgiveness of his sins, Anthime has a vision of the Virgin; coming to his senses, he appears to be healed from his pain, throws away his crutch, and swears devotion to the Church.

In book 2, Gide treats the sophisticated, somewhat smug novelist, Julius de Baraglioul, who has just received a troubling letter from his distinguished father, Juste-Agenor de Baraglioul. The dying gentleman wants Julius to report to him information concerning the actions and intentions of a young stranger, Lafcadio Wluiki. With some misgivings, Julius visits Lafcadio’s shabby lodgings, reads the youth’s enigmatic diary, then is startled by the arrival of Lafcadio himself. Shortly thereafter, the two men, of vastly different temperaments and stations in life, discover their link to each other: They are half brothers.

In book 3, Gide introduces Julius’ gentle and ingenuous brother-in-law Amedee Fleurissoire. Quite comfortable with the routines of his bourgeois life and his bland marriage to Arnica (Marguerite de Baraglioul’s younger sister) Amedee is startled into heroic enterprise after learning a terrible secret. Through the intervention of Father Salus and the Countess de Saint-Prix, Arnica passes on to her husband the information that Pope Leo XIII has been imprisoned and that a false Pope has taken His Holiness’ place.

In book 4, Amedee, flushed with religious enthusiasm, begins his absurd journey to discover for himself the truth. With great discomfort, he travels to Rome, then—convinced by Protos (an adventurer who earlier disguised himself as Father Salus) into believing that the plot is a true conspiracy—agrees to secure from his wealthy brother-in-law letters of credit to ransom or release the supposed captive.

Lafcadio, the young adventurer, who has just inherited an annual income of forty thousand francs from his father’s estate, happens upon Amedee in a train compartment. To Lafcadio, Amedee is a complete stranger who nevertheless inspires a sudden thought: Why not commit a perfect crime—a gratuitous act for which there is no logical explanation—by pushing this innocent man from the train? Cool and emotionless except for the exhilaration of having committed an unprovoked, motiveless crime, Lafcadio later reads an account, while in Naples, of a mysterious accident that occurred recently near Capua, of a “Crime, Suicide...or Accident?” according to the newspaper headline. While in Naples, he also meets his half brother Julius, and the two discuss the import of the event. For Julius, the theme of an unmotivated crime would be perfect for his new novel. For Lafcadio, the game of discussing the subject but not revealing his own role in it is dangerous but entertaining. The game becomes truly dangerous, however, when Protos, disguised now as a pedantic law professor named Defouqueblize, confronts Lafcadio with incriminating cuff links that connect him with the crime; Protos blackmails the youth into cooperation.

Fortunately for Lafcadio, Protos himself is vulnerable: He has murdered his mistress Carola Venitequa, and the police soon have him in custody and charged with Amedee’s murder as well. Now Lafcadio has a moral dilemma. Should he confess to his part in the crime, or should he follow the advice of Julius’ daughter Genevieve (who is in love with him), and allow Protos to pay a double penalty, since he is already doomed? The choice is life with dishonor but with the promise of love and redemption, or death. The reader must guess which one Lafcadio will choose.

The Characters

Most of the characters in this ironic novel of deception and betrayal are either simpletons or sophisticates. Chief among the first group are the “wise fools,” Amedee Fleurissoire and his friend Gaston Blafaphas. Because of their innocence, they are easy victims of knavery. Nevertheless, they are “wise,” for their simple piety protects them from cynicism in a world of ambiguous moral choice.

Similarly, most of the sheltered women in Lafcadio’s Adventures are innocent to the point of simplicity: Veronica Armand-Dubois, Marguerite de Baraglioul (and her daughter Genevieve), and Arnica Fleurissoire. All are conventionally religious, unimaginative, and complaisant in the round of their domestic obligations. They are also notably lacking in sexual passion, with the possible exception of Genevieve, who is romantic yet untried. More sexually experienced, though also inherently simple in spirit, is Carola Venitequa, who sacrifices herself in defense of her unlikely hero, Amedee. Also included, with some qualifications, among the wise fools is Anthime Armand-Dubois. A fanatic, whether of science or of religion, he is a true believer in absolutes. He sways back and forth between extreme intellectual positions, mistaking absolute reality for the temporary resiliency of his bones and joints. He muddles through life, never fully comprehending a reality apart from his own prejudices and superstitions.

At the opposite pole are the sophisticates, among them, Julius de Baraglioul, a novelist with a shrewd sense of human psychology who nevertheless cannot understand reality when he confronts it; Lafcadio Wluiki, the truly “free” man of the novel, capable of nearly every excess but also a victim of his own calculation; and finally, Protos, a confidence man utterly unscrupulous when he thinks logically but also careless in his passion. These sophisticates are thus “foolish” despite (or because of) their cunning. Masters of expediency, they are betrayed by inner weaknesses: Julius by vanity, Lafcadio by self-confidence, Protos by cruelty. In the end, the test of reality exposes their weaknesses: Julius, who steals Lafcadio’s concept of the “gratuitous crime” for the purposes of his fiction, fails to recognize in his half brother the actual criminal; Lafcadio, who has imagined himself to be superior to other men because of his disinterested isolation, finally recognizes that he is the least of men, a murderer; finally, Protos, who has always defined people as being of two types, the “slim” (the tricksters who carry no moral baggage) and the “crusted” (the tricked), ends up in the hands of the police, charged with a murder—that of Amedee—he observed but did not commit.

Critical Context

Published in 1914, Lafcadio’s Adventures presented for the first time in Western literature the concept of a “gratuitous act,” a motiveless crime for which the perpetrator suffers neither a guilty conscience nor a sense of moral responsibility. Previously, important writers had described crimes of passion and violence; crimes committed for flimsy or even absurd reasons; crimes premeditated or sudden. Before Gide’s novel, writers had not concerned themselves with a crime committed solely for caprice, for no purpose except amusement—an act against a victim hitherto unknown to the criminal, simply to satisfy a curiosity about what might happen as a consequence. In Fyodor Dostoevski’s classic analysis of murder in Prestupleniye i nakazaniye (1866; Crime and Punishment, 1886), the student Raskolnikov imagines himself to be a superior person who can commit a crime with impunity, but he later suffers from guilt and is punished for his crime, as much through his own conscience as through imprisonment. In another classic crime, that exposed in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (1907), Mr. Verloc attempts to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, an utterly absurd action that would create havoc among civilized people. At least Verloc’s intended crime has a motive: He is an anarchist and has been ordered by his superiors to commit the act.

Lafcadio’s crime, in contrast, is motiveless as well as meaningless. Although he believes himself to be morally superior in committing murder, he suffers no subsequent guilt. Thus his action is philosophical as well as capricious. Only within the framework of a society lacking a moral law can such a gratuitous act be imagined. Because Gide’s novel takes place in such a society which operates according to loose principles of ethical relativism, his protagonist’s actions are pre-existential. Lafcadio makes a decision that he believes is a correct one for him, no matter what other people may think. In a sense, he is a perfectly “free” man—one bound neither to circumstances of birth nor to nationality; neither to religious affections nor moral principles. Because he is a bastard who feels equally at home in any nation, he is not tied to place or condition of class; because he lacks religious or moral scruples, he is free to act as he wishes. He defines his own morality.

In addition, as a comic character who is mobile within a closed society, he counterpoints his respectable, conventional half brother, the humorless Julius. As a writer, Julius is concerned with art and life, but he confuses the two. After he learns from Lafcadio the concept of a gratuitous crime, Julius wishes to apply that theme to his next novel, but he fails to connect Lafcadio with the crime itself. Thus Julius’ projected novel is a parody of a metafiction: a novel that tells the reader how the author wrote his book.

Indeed, the whole of Lafcadio’s Adventures is a parody of the traditional novel. Unlike conventional fiction of the time, Gide’s novel lacks a genuine hero, lacks romantic involvement, lacks a “moral.” Lafcadio is at best a rogue-hero; his romance with Genevieve is contrived; and his fate is left up in the air. Will he agree to marry Genevieve, burying the evidence of his crime in order to live the life of a reconstructed bourgeois? The reader is free to draw his own conclusion—but beware Lafcadio’s leer.

Bibliography

Bree, Germaine. Gide, 1963.

Cordle, Thomas. André Gide, 1969.

Fowlie, Wallace. André Gide: His Life and Art, 1965.

Guerard, Albert Joseph. André Gide, 1969 (revised edition).

Perry, Kenneth. The Religious Symbolism of André Gide, 1969.