“Gide et Stravinski: une correspondance impossible”

Résumé 0

“Gide et Stravinski: une correspondance impossible” [“Gide and Stravinsky: An Impossible Correspondence”], Régine Battiston, Nikol Dziub and Augustin Voegele (Eds.), L’Inimitié dans les correspondances d’écrivains [Enmity in Writers’ Correspondence], Reims, Éditions et Presses Universitaires de Reims, 2023, p. 139-156. (Symposium. University of Haute-Alsace, 25-26/11/2021.) We can observe a multiple “rupture of correspondence” between Gide and Stravinsky: 1) when they worked together on the melodrama Persephone, they already had a past in the form of a liability, since during the attempt to create Antony and Cleopatra together, their correspondence went through the intermediary of Ida Rubinstein, who organised its temporality and directed its content – yet once again, it was her who gave the initial impetus to this second part of their correspondence; 2) Gide used letters to delay enmity as long as possible, while Stravinsky sometimes seemed to want to avoid the epistolary channel so as not to have to be too civil; 3) in addition, their visions of the relationship between the work and its theory did not coincide; 4) their respective visions of the common work therefore no longer agreed; 5) as a result, Gide made a very clear distinction between the text of the libretto and its dramatic realisation; 6) as a further consequence, he disengaged himself from the dramatic work, while Stravinsky continued to contribute to its improvement; 7) Stravinsky thus no longer wished to work on the common epistolary construction of friendship, whereas Gide did not give it up; 8) in such a way that Stravinsky behaved, in his last letters, simply as a commentator on Gide’s letters; 9) which caused the correspondence to dry up.