André GIDE (1869-1951). Autograph manuscript, Dieu "Fils de - Lot 19

André GIDE (1869-1951). Autograph manuscript, Dieu "Fils de l'Homme"; 7pages in-4. Manuscript with erasures, corrections and deleted passages from this text that appeared in Interviews imaginaires (Lausanne, Éd. du Haut-Pays, 1943), and was reprinted in Pages de Journal, 1939-1942 (New-York, J. Schiffrin, [1944]). In this dialogue between Moi and Lui, Gide explains his religious beliefs... "I soon came to understand that all I was once looking for in communism (in vain, for where I hoped to find love, I found only theory) was what Christ teaches us; teaches us with everything else in surplus. [...] The God Christ represents and embodies, the God of virtue, must fight against both the Zeus of natural forces and the malignity of men". He does not want to "confuse Christ with God". And, meditating on Christ's last words, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"Gide concludes: "How can we fail to see in this tragic word, not a letting go, a betrayal of God, but this: that Christ, in believing and making people believe that he was in league with God, was deceiving himself and us; that the One he called 'my Father' had never recognized him as Son, that the God he represented, that he himself was only as he sometimes says 'Son of Man'. It is only this God that I can and want to adore".