Gide on Rousseau, in “Dostoyevsky“
“In my opinion Rousseau, from the very beginning of his life, was poisoned, as it were, by Plutarch, though whom he fashioned for himself a somewhat rhetorical and pompous notion of a ‘great man.’ He set up before himself the image of a fancied hero, and his life was one prolonged effort to be like it. He tried hard to be what he wanted to seem, I allow that his painting of his own character may be sincere, but he is ever thinking of his pose, which pride alone dictates.”
Gide on Nietzsche, in “Dostoyevsky“.
“I find it highly interesting to observe and compare in two natures akin in so many respects, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, the very different reactions to contact with the Gospels. With Nietzsche the reaction, immediate and marked, was, we may as well admit, jealousy. It does not seem to me possible to understand Nietzsche’s works without taking account of this feeling. Nietzsche was jealous of Jesus Christ, jealous to the point of madness. In writing his Zarathustra, Nietzsche is ever harassed by his desire to write a counterpart to the Gospels. He even adopts at times the form of the Beatitudes the better to make mockery of them. He wrote the Anti-Christ, and in his last work, Ecce Homo, he poses as the adversary triumphant of Him he sought to oust.”
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