Banal, playful, ironic, and sarcastic, André Gide’s Marshlands is an astonishing tour de force. Gide himself describes his work as a sotie – a short, fashionable, topical and absurd play of medieval France performed in costumes combining contemporary dress and fantastic elements. The protagonist of Marshlands is an unnamed narrator obsessed with finishing a novel that is also titled Marshlands. The narrator compulsively tracks the progress of the novel every passing day over the duration of a single week. Each chapter in the book represents a day of the week.
The narrator is a bundle of contradictions. He meticulously follows the same principles against which he rails, rants and issues injunctions. For example, he professes himself to be a rebellious to the notion of status quo, yet every hour of every day in his life is accounted for like the functioning of a metronome. His friend Hubert pays him a visit every day at six; evenings are reserved visiting Angela, his girlfriend, Fridays mean a literary banquet at Angela’s house in the raucous company of many “men of letters.” Yet the narrator professes himself to be the only soul who is perfectly aware of the redundancy that is the outcome of a life led in a clockwork manner. “One really must try to vary one’s existence a little,” he laments in a journal to which he reverts in moments of spontaneity which he mistakes for clarity.
The narrator’s work is based on a Virgilian theme. The primary character in the book, named, Tityrus, “is someone who cannot travel…Marshlands is the story of a man, who possessing the field of Tityrus, does not strive to leave it, but rather contends himself with it.” The book is met with criticism, skepticism, and pessimism by all his friends. The content and context in which the book is proposed to be set, is liberally and literally panned by all those who happen to hear about it. Yet the narrator relentlessly carries on in his quest to complete his work.
While Tityrus is an inveterate recluse, the narrator himself is an incorrigible social butterfly gallivanting around the Parisian literary circles. Even while making the rounds, the narrator bemoans his life which is a never-ending loop of redundancy and a perpetual set of demoralizing self-controls. “…. Our every action is so well known that a stand-in could do it, repeating our words from yesterday to make our phrases of tomorrow,” laments the narrator, yet not deviating a single minute from conducting an existence that is enslaved at the altar of a calendar.
The narrator compels and convinces Angela to accompany him on a trip on a Saturday – the original thought for the trip being Angela’s idea in the first place), only to abandon the short journey in a hurry to keep his self-determined appointment for the Sunday service at church. Monotony is the elixir that keeps the blood running, muscles ticking and the brain working for the narrator and yet throughout the book it is this very self-imposed monotony which he vaingloriously attempts to rebuff, rebut and recant.
Marshlands is one of the finest testimonies to metafiction. It aims to dwell deep into the dilemma of whether an individual is “seeking” or is refraining from such a search. Gide himself, when asked about the book, explained, “Marshlands is the story of an idea, more than of anything else; it is the story of the spiritual malaise that that idea causes. Is an idea an aspect of life? No, it is part of a fever, part of a semblance of life. It is a succubus, feeding on us, while we exist merely to give it life. I could have made any other idea my subject in a book like this, it wouldn’t matter.”
Damion Searls does a spectacular job of translating the original work into English. If his efforts can be termed marvelous, the outcome can only be described as magisterial!
Marshlands – an absolute genius at his inimitable best!