If It Die…

memoir by Gide

Also known as: “Si le grain ne meurt”

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

If It Die…, autobiographical work by André Gide, published as Si le grain ne meurt. It was initially printed privately in 1920 and was published commercially in 1924. The work is a memoir of Gide’s childhood and of his emotional and psychosexual development.

Gide described his father as a solicitous, gentle person who was devoted to him as a child but who relegated his rearing to his mother, a severe and authoritarian woman who controlled her son’s life until her death when he was 25. Although largely incapable of sexual relationships with women, Gide maintained a lifelong emotional and intellectual attachment to his cousin Madeleine, whom he married in 1895. He wrote about their relationship obsessively, almost always portraying the character who represents her as an idealized, saintlike woman. If It Die… also contains accounts of two trips Gide made to North Africa in the 1890s and of his sexual experiences there.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.