Gide's Immoralist and Nietzsche's Metamorphoses

This refers to the Dover Dual-Language 2003 edition of The Immoralist / L'Immoraliste.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes a parable of metamorphosis. The metamorphosis is not of the body, but of the spirit. The spirit begins as a camel “that would bear much” and transforms into a lion “who would conquer his freedom and be master in his own desert”. The lion's power is “the creation of freedom for oneself and a sacred ‘No’ even to duty”. Then finally the lion must become a child, “innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred “yes”. Nietzsche seems to be talking about these changes as a process of development in the human spirit, both individual (probably one that he himself underwent) and historical. The camel finds meaning inside the bounds of an accepted system. The camel is dutiful and shoulders every difficulty in order to do what he “shalt” do. What, particularly, one should do of course varied, but the idea that there were particular thing went relatively unquestioned until the 20th century. In modern times, old values still assert their power over us, but they are no longer appropriate, no longer conducive to the highest aspirations of man.

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In André Gide's The Immoralist, a brilliant young scholar named Michel gets married, travels to northern Africa and contracts tuberculosis. The experiences he has during his recovery leave him in a hedonistic mode, unable to depend on the values of his upbringing. Before becoming ill, Michel was like the camel. He performed the most difficult and exacting scholarly work he could find for himself, did not enjoy himself physically, and conformed to the standards of middle class morality. He lived with a sort of puritan asceticism and work ethic. “That sort of austerity, a taste for which my mother had left to me while inculcating its principles, I transferred in its entirety to my studies.” (p. 17/pt. I). As a camel, Michel was also very shortsighted: “Not for a moment did it ever occur to me that I might have been able to lead a different life, or that a different life was even possible.” (ibid.). This unawareness that “God is dead” is essential to maintain oneself as a camel. Once one realizes that he is trapped by old, hollow values, he will soon desire to become a lion and free himself from them.

When Michel first became sick he did not believe he had tuberculosis. He thought his illness had “a different cause; or rather, [he] didn't search for any cause” (pg. 35). It only seemed as if his body was conforming to the affliction of his spirit. Michel's physical illness appeared as a sign of his lack of what Nietzsche called “the great health”, which has little to do with physicality. Michel had never before noticed that he was quite imprisoned by his upbringing (“I did not yet suspect what great power that early childish morality has over us” pg. 17). As he recovered physically, he also wished to recover mentally, spiritually. This is when he began the transition from camel to lion. He renounces his academic pursuits, giving himself over to the sensual, which he had previously denied. Unlike Nietzsche, however, Michel is not able to continue on to the final stage of development. He is stuck as a lion, victorious over the dragon of values, but incapable of becoming the babe. “I've won freedom,” he tells his friends, “but for what?” (p. 185/pt. III). He does not know how to move on from the lion. He desire is to become like the child, “I'd like to start afresh” (pg. 187/pt. III), but he does not know how. This is why, ultimately, he calls on his friends to help him. He is unable to create meaning on his own.