Poussin (a painter whom Gide particularly admired)
the realities of physical violence are subordinated to
the grand, overmastering instincts of order and design.
The Œdipus whom Gide evokes is not the Œdipus
of Freudian legend. To this Œdipus the disasters of
his family history are merely incidental to a greater
misfortune--the failure, as it seems, of his ambition
to make Man independent of the gods. It is this theme
that recurs in Theseus; and it was at André Gide's
suggestion that the two compositions were brought
together.

Theseus was the last of Gide's works, but it was
one that had been long projected. For more than
thirty years the idea had possessed him, from time to
time, of committing to paper a new manipulation of
this ancient legend. Other images of Theseus rever-
berate, as is natural, within this new version. The
Theseus of Plutarch is here, even down to the feathery
branches of asparagus among which the beardless
hero carried out the first of his summary but apprecia-
tive sexual experiments. The Theseus of Racine is
here, forever aghast at the murderous favors accorded
to him by the gods. But Gide's Theseus is a different,
more constructive character. He discourses to us in
the cloudless evening of his life, with the motiveless
lechery of his early manhood quite laid aside, and the
more disreputable episodes (so carefully husbanded
by Plutarch) discounted as fables. Nor do we see him
reduced, like the Theseus of Racine, to the point at
which an anonymous exile alone offers the possibility
of requital. It is rather for Œdipus to propose this
point of view, in the dialogue that closes the book.
This Theseus eventually surmounts his private griefs,
and sets himself to found a great city, governed by an

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