The Counterfeiters (French:
Les faux-monnayeurs) is a 1925 novel by
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
author
André GideAndré Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, first published in
Nouvelle Revue FrançaiseLa Nouvelle Revue Française is a literary magazine founded in 1909 by André Gide. In 1911, Gaston Gallimard became editor of the revue, which led to the founding of the publishing house, Éditions Gallimard.Established writers such as Paul Bourget and Anatole France contributed to the magazine...
. With many characters and crisscrossing plotlines, its main theme is that of the original and the copy, and what differentiates them – both in the external plot of the counterfeit
gold coinA gold coin is a coin made mostly or entirely of gold. Gold has been used for coins practically since the invention of coinage, originally because of gold's intrinsic value...
s and in the portrayal of the characters' feelings and their relationships.
The Counterfeiters is a
novel-within-a-novelA story within a story is a literary device or conceit in which one story is told during the action of another story. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
, with Edouard (the alter ego of Gide) intending to write a book of the same title.
The Counterfeiters (French:
Les faux-monnayeurs) is a 1925 novel by
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
author
André GideAndré Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, first published in
Nouvelle Revue FrançaiseLa Nouvelle Revue Française is a literary magazine founded in 1909 by André Gide. In 1911, Gaston Gallimard became editor of the revue, which led to the founding of the publishing house, Éditions Gallimard.Established writers such as Paul Bourget and Anatole France contributed to the magazine...
. With many characters and crisscrossing plotlines, its main theme is that of the original and the copy, and what differentiates them – both in the external plot of the counterfeit
gold coinA gold coin is a coin made mostly or entirely of gold. Gold has been used for coins practically since the invention of coinage, originally because of gold's intrinsic value...
s and in the portrayal of the characters' feelings and their relationships.
The Counterfeiters is a
novel-within-a-novelA story within a story is a literary device or conceit in which one story is told during the action of another story. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
, with Edouard (the alter ego of Gide) intending to write a book of the same title. Other stylistic devices are also used, such as an omniscient narrator that sometimes addresses the reader directly, weighs in on the characters' motivations or discusses alternate realities. Therefore, the book has been seen as a precursor of the
nouveau romanThe nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...
.
The novel features a considerable number of bisexual or
gayThe term gay was originally used, until well into the mid-20th century, primarily to refer to feelings of being "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy"; it had also come to acquire some connotations of "immorality" as early as 1637....
male characters – the adolescent Olivier and at least to a certain unacknowledged degree his friend Bernard, in all likeliness their schoolfellows Gontran and Philippe, and finally the adult writers Comte de Passavant (who represents an evil and corrupting force) and the benevolent Edouard. An important part of the plot is its depiction of various possibilities of positive and negative homoerotic or homosexual relationships.
Initially received coldly on its appearance, perhaps because of its homosexual themes and its unusual composition,
The Counterfeiters has gained reputation in the intervening years and is now generally counted among the
Western CanonThe Western canon is a term used to denote a canon of books, and, more widely, music and art, that has been the most influential in shaping Western culture...
of literature.
The making of the novel, with letters, newspaper clippings and other supporting material, was documented by Gide in his 1926
Journal of The Counterfeiters.
Plot summary
The plot revolves around Bernard – a schoolfriend of Olivier's who is preparing for his
bacThe baccalauréat , often known in France colloquially as le bac, is an academic qualification which French and international students take at the end of the lycée . It was invented under Napoleon I in 1808...
– discovering he is a bastard and taking this as a welcome pretext for running away from home. He spends a night in Olivier's bed (where they discuss sexuality with Olivier recounting a recent visit to a prostitute and how he did not find the experience very enjoyable). After Bernard steals the suitcase belonging to Edouard, Olivier's uncle, and the ensuing complications, he is made Edouard's
secretaryA secretary is an administrative assistant in business office administration.The executive secretary has a myriad of administrative duties. Traditionally, these duties were mostly related to correspondence, such as the typing out of letters...
. Olivier is jealous and ends up in the hands of the cynical and downright diabolical Comte de Passavant, who travels with him to the Mediterranean.
Eventually, Bernard and Edouard decide they do not fit as well together as anticipated, and Bernard leaves to take a job at a newspaper, then finally decides to return to his father's home. Olivier is now made Edouard's secretary, and after an eventful evening on which he embarrasses himself grossly, Olivier ends up in bed together with Edouard, finally fulfilling the attraction they have felt for each other all along but were unable to express.
Other plotlines are woven around these elements, such as Olivier's younger brother Georges and his involvement with a ring of counterfeiters, or his older brother Vincent and his relationship with Laura, a married woman, with whom he has a child. Perhaps the most suspenseful scene in the book revolves around Boris, another illegitimate child, grandson of La Pérouse, who is tempted to commit suicide in front of the assembled class by Ghéridanisol, another of Passavant's cohorts.
In some regards, such as the way in which the adolescents act and speak in a way beyond their years and the incompetence of the adults (especially the fathers), as well as its motives of developing and confused adolescent sexuality, the novel has common ground with
Frank WedekindBenjamin Franklin Wedekind , usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright...
's (at the time scandalous) 1891 drama
Spring AwakeningSpring Awakening is the German dramatist Frank Wedekind's first major play and a seminal work in the modern history of theatre. It was written sometime between autumn 1890 and spring 1891, but did not receive its first performance until 20 November 1906, when it premiered at the Deutsches Theater...
.
The Counterfeiters also shares with that play the vision of homosexual relationships as under certain conditions being "better" than heterosexual ones, with the latter ones leading inevitably to destructive outcomes in both works.
The characters and their relationships
As the novel unfolds, many different characters and plotlines intertwine. This
social networkA social network is a social structure made of individuals called "nodes," which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social network analysis...
graph shows how the most important characters in
The Counterfeiters are related to each other:
Possible identification of characters with real-life persons
Besides bearing the character traits of Gide himself, some of his characters have also been identified with actual persons: in this view, Comte de Passavant is seen as alluding to
Jean CocteauJean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, artist and filmmaker...
, Olivier to
Marc AllégretMarc Allégret was a French screenwriter and film director.Born in Basel, Basel-Stadt, Switzerland, he was the elder brother of Yves Allégret. Marc was educated to be a lawyer. Allégret became André Gide's lover when he was fifteen and Gide was forty-seven...
, and Laura to Gide's cousin and eventual wife Madeleine.
Alfred JarryAlfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
is also present in the party scene under his real name and his
Ubu RoiUbu Roi is a play by Alfred Jarry, premiered in 1896. It is one of the precursors to the Theatre of the Absurd and the greater surrealist art movement of the early twentieth century...
is mentioned, meaning that the plot must be set between 1896 (the premiere of
Ubu Roi) and 1907 (Jarry's death). Édouard's journal entry in chapter 12 of the third part, which makes mention of a 1904 vintage wine, seems to confirm this supposition with a more specific range of time in which the novel is likely to be set.
Further reading
- André Gide: The Counterfeiters. ISBN 0394718429
- André Gide: Journal of The Counterfeiters.
External links