France in the twentieth century is called the century of intellectuals. We all know that Sartre ruled the world after World War II, but before World War II, it should undoubtedly be called the Gide era. Of course, this kind of success is a little late for Gide who is over 50. Although his works have been bad, they were not really known to readers until after the First World War. It was from this time that he began to indulge his personality and reputation. He occupied people's thoughts and became the headlines of various media and the talk of the public after dinner. Above all, he is an unpredictable person. Every book is written in a different way, sometimes mysterious, sometimes flashy. His change is shocking. But the most shocking things are gossip, love, incest, sexual orientation and pedophilia. After World War I, Gide tried to stand out from the shadows behind the scenes and formally lead the magazine "New France" he presided over, but this move was opposed by many writers and colleagues, especially the poet Claudel's response: "If so, I will never write a word in this magazine again. Gide's name means sodomy and anti-Catholicism. " Neither of them paid attention at that time, let alone two. In fact, he has been suffering from sexual taboos. For a long time, he planned to write a book about homosexuality, and even planned to disclose his homosexuality to the public. He feels that speaking out is not only for self-liberation, but also for liberating all those who are tortured by hypocrisy created by secular and religious prejudices.

19 10, he wrote the first edition of Coriden, 19 17, and he wrote the theme. The circulation of the second edition is low, and readers hardly know it. 1922 wrote a new preface, intending to reprint the book and defend homosexuality again. When the Catholic community heard the news, they sent people to try to persuade him not to publish it, which aroused his resistance. The new edition is reprinted 1924. For Gide, this is a "guarantee of liberation". Who can tell how many people have been liberated because of the publication of this book? "At the same time, he also published an autobiographical work" If the seeds don't die ",which he completed during the First World War. In the book, he told about his childhood, his family, his school life and his religious feelings. Of course, he also inevitably mentioned his initial homosexual tendency, his homosexual love, his impulse and his character that constantly conflicted with that Puritan belief. This open and sincere disclosure, coupled with the lyricism of "Good Food on Earth", finally pushed Gide to the throne of "the greatest writer of our time", thus making him a defender of truth.

Of course, the reputation of defenders is not so easy to get. 1932 In the summer, when Gide publicly expressed his affection for the Soviet Union, many people were still amazed. Later, when the Soviet Union was forced by fascism to get rid of isolation, when the French production party also opened its arms to sympathizers, and when all kinds of people moved closer to leftist intellectuals, Gide also joined the Soviet camp. We saw him marching in the street, signing petitions, presiding over meetings and making speeches at the meetings. As a result of this "intervention" action, 1936, Gide accepted the invitation of the Moscow government and paid a ten-week visit to the Soviet Union. After returning to Paris, he decided to publish the diary of this trip publicly, which was later called "returning from a visit to the Soviet Union". Gide euphemistically and cautiously expressed his disappointment at the gap between an imaginary Soviet Union and the real Soviet Union in his book.

What did he find in it? Rigid institutions, dogmatism, submission and fear of absolute power, attacks on non-traditions-and, of course, inhuman laws that punish homosexuality. In his original vision, the Soviet Union should be a utopia that got rid of all the shackles and taboos and the old capitalist ideas, but he finally found out that it was actually just another Puritan church. Because this book attracted a lot of abuse, offended many friends and intervened in many debates, but he never regretted doing so. In his view, bad things are bad things, and bad things need to be exposed and true. He is just defending Julian Banda's theory of intellectuals and always defending the truth, no matter how much it costs, even if he loses his prestige. As he said before his death: believe in those who seek truth and doubt those who find truth; Doubt everything, but don't doubt yourself. He used his own life to provide us with a shining example of pious practice of this method.

For me, Gide is always a confused existence, and his existence is constantly disintegrating and reorganizing, and each period is very different. He is a fickle and mysterious figure. His existence shows the process of hesitation and repetition that people must go through in self-exploration. It is in these repeated contradictions that he reveals his unswerving sincerity, endless questioning of human nature and endless thirst for truth. He firmly believes that people have many possibilities, so his motto in life is: show humanity as much as possible. It is in this sense that he became an "irreplaceable model" of human image (Sartre).