Lafcadio =96 the existential escapist
Lafcadio, one of the key characters in =93Les Caves du Vatican=94 by Andre
Gide, is an interesting example of the escapist, since he personifies
the dilemma of how the individual is to achieve mastery over his
actions inside a society for which that individual has no respect. Part
escapist, part motivated by transcendence, he seeks some resolution.
The same theme of arbitrary murder as an =93intellectual act=94 features in
Hitchcock=92s film =93Rope=94 (1948).

Gide, in =93Prom=E9th=E9e mal encha=EEn=E9=94 says =93that which distinguis=
hes man
from animals is the =91acte gratuite=92 a gratuitous action which is
motivated by nothing =96 not any interests, passions, nothing =96 an action
without vested interest which simply occurs. It is an act with no goal,
no master, a free act.=94 The person who thus acts without reasoning can
be called free. Such a person can accomplish anything, even an action
which is completely absurd.

In =93Les Caves du Vatican=94 Gide makes one of his characters carry out
such an act. The young Lafcadio is travelling to Rome by train and
finds himself in the same compartment as an old man called
Fleurissoire. Suddenly, as the old man is standing by the train door
the idea occurs to Lafcadio to push his travelling companion out. He
decides that if he can count up to 12 before the train passes a set of
lights on the track, he will take no action. But on the count of 10
they pass a light and he carries out his act. The action is one
accomplished without any foundation to it, as a result of an arbitrary
decision which emerges by accident out of a pure mental caprice.
The underlying philosophy of the existential movement was a lot more
profound than the tawdry and emotionally bankrupt act of Lafcadio =96 who
is as much an ante hero as a hero in a French intellectual game which
loves nothing better in life than a double paradox. Gide, the =91sombre
casuist=92 had long been accused of labyrinthine thought and while his
vision of the society that had condoned the awfulness of the First
World War was as bleak as that of the other existentialists, the acte
gratuite was more a piece of escapism than a moral solution =96 more a
grudge reaction that =93if society can be so absurd, how can its
inhabitants not be equally absurd=94.

Gide=92s belief was that =93the individuality of Man was the only thing of
intrinsic worth in the universe, and that apart from Man and his works
everything was absurd, chaotic and meaningless. Man=92s destiny,
therefore, was to revolt against the outside world, to develop to the
full his latent powers and so contribute to the uniqueness of the human
race. Man=92s function is self-creation, his aim is to release through
=91authentic living=92 the God that is within him=94 (F.J. Jones). Like
Nietzsche, Gide sees Man as his hero, his God =96 a force of nature
different in kind to animals and the rest of life. But in attempting to
deify man he runs across the familiar problem that the history of
mankind is stained through and through with absurdity, cruelty and
animal behaviour =96 not so much of an intellectual riddle to a
Darwinist, of course. Unlike Max Jacob, who postulated that man was
fundamentally absurd (=93une personalite n=92est qu=92une erreur
persistante=94) or Rimbaud who chose to live a life of absurdity =96 a
=93dereglement de tous les sens=94 - Gide was left with the attitude that
since man had to be god like, the absurdity had to come from somewhere
outside of him =96 maybe in society, or something else about the human
condition.
In the majority of escapist literature, everyday life is humdrum but
not weird, and the escapist escapes through imagination and dreams of
adventure. For Gide =96 wrapped up in his labyrinthine intellectual knots
- everyday life, though equally empty, has a more profound absurdity,
and his attempt to escape from it is a perpetual attempt to return to
some kind of authenticity. Lafcadio tries to escape, however, only to
enter a world even more disturbing and chaotic than the one he is
attempting to transcend =96 something close to the world not of the
freethinker but of the criminally insane. By this period of French
literature and the arts one thing was for sure =96 the rigidly scientific
deterministic =93reality=94 proposed by Descartes, where there was no room
for absurdity =96 was as warped and out of shape as the clocks of Dali.
(Evans A "This Virtual Life" 2003)