In the 1940s, there was a "Gide craze" in the Chinese literary world, and Gide's thoughts were highly sought after. Recently, Shanghai Translation Publishing House published four important works by André Gide, a classic French writer of the 20th century and winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize for Literature: "Food of the Earth", "The Counterfeiter", "The Narrow Gate", "The Vatican" cellar". This is the first time in China that a series of Gide's works has been published in the form of a single volume, which has attracted the attention of the literary world.

After all, the French are anti-perfection from the bottom of their hearts. Their romance includes strong love, and also includes the embarrassment and ambiguity of circuitous trials. In Gide's writings, it also contains The sorrow of faith that runs through life is entangled with emotions and fights to the death.

Alyssa in "The Narrow Gate" is a typical example of abiding by Shinto and suppressing the sincerity and true feelings in her heart. Facing her childhood sweetheart cousin Jér?me, she accepted lonely invitations several times but... Then she put on reserved makeup and sent letters full of love to every foreign country where Jér?me wrote, but she was silent every time they met. When Jerome came to the house for the last time, she "took out a small bag wrapped in fine paper." In the bag was Jerome's favorite amethyst cross, but she failed to persuade Jerome to accept it. , but soon after, he left the world and him forever.

Gide’s choice of this cross to end the last meeting undoubtedly solidified the religious “paper shackles” throughout the novel into a specific object, causing Alyssa’s holy utopia to sink to the ground and turn into a real tragedy. part of. All of Alyssa's silence and the endless love-making in her letters are the intense anxiety of repression and rebellion. Most of the entire story of "The Narrow Gate" is from Gér?me's perspective, starting from Gér?me's first person and unhurriedly narrating their childhood, family, and love. However, it is through Gér?me that the real advancement of the plot is made. Letters narrated by Mu and finally Alyssa’s diary. If we look at it through the eyes of the young Jér?me, he heard Pastor Vautier read in the church, "You must strive to enter through the narrow gate. Because the door is wide and the road is broad, which leads to destruction, and those who enter will also "The gate is narrow and the road is small that leads to eternal life, and there are few who find it." When he looked at the silhouette of Alyssa who was sitting a few seats in front of him, it was the beginning of their fateful tragedy. Then in the years to come, whether Alyssa suppressed herself in order to fulfill her sister Juliette, or whether she made a promise with Jér?me that "the day you take off the amethyst cross from your neck is the day when we will die", it was Alyssa who Shakespeare concretely and resolutely pursued his unremitting pursuit toward the narrow door that "leads to eternal life." She pursued the "narrow gate" because of her firm belief, and fell into trouble because of her passionate love for Jerome. In the end, all her words and deeds became the self-destruction that pushed Jerome to the narrow gate.

Throughout Gide's other masterpieces, such as "The Immoral" or "The Counterfeiter", they are all about breaking away from the world in isolation, breaking away from family, breaking away from old ideas, and breaking away from moral shackles, and "Narrow" is about breaking away from the world. "The Door" fully depicts a Daiyu-style lady who suffered a lot and died in depression. Alyssa's unrequited love and yearning for the holy land seem to prove: this time, the name of rebellion is Lonely. But in fact, this is not the case. Alyssa’s character and the threads entangled in her heart are exactly Gide’s own spiritual self-portrait. As a young man deeply bound by Protestant moral values, rebellion is certainly an expression, but Rebellion itself is also part of his struggle. In Alyssa's life of seeking, she gave up love for the doctrine at first, but later she gave up herself for her lover to obtain the doctrine, and she returned to the original point. At this time, love and bondage were entangled. It's unclear, her choice is still based on love. As for Gide's rebellion, it was not just the claustrophobic nature of his youth that he wanted to rebel against, but his entire attitude towards life. Choosing to burn away his years was in itself the greatest apostasy.

The story of "The Narrow Gate" is quite similar to "In the Mood for Love", but it has a lot more tragedy of fate, which is deeply buried under the calm narrative. It suddenly occurred to me that the original soundtrack of "In the Mood for Love" was published in a double-disc version, which completely included all the musical materials composed by Shigeru Umebayashi, and it was the Frenchman who was the lover of love. The Cannes Film Festival's recognition of Tony Leung's acting skills undoubtedly also reflected It shows a little bit of the romantic people's potential inner interest in this tug of war. As André Gide reached middle age, it was the beginning of his golden period of creation. "The Narrow Gate" undoubtedly inherited and carried forward the reflective factors of "The Immoral" in a disguised way, and also laid the foundation for a series of works in the future. A foreshadowing of Gide's "wandering" or "deviant" style.

This may not be his best work, but it tells the truth: "The door to heaven is too narrow to accommodate two people." Moreover, even if there is only one person left, he definitely does not want to have eternal life.