“Come!’ said she at last: ‘we must wake up.”

utterly marvellous, and (in my own humble opinion) an infinitely more skilful work than his the immoralist, andré gide paints a remarkable portrait of excessive virtue and the folly of over-religiosity. it's both a stark warning and an intimate portrait of two fools in love—in love with each other, with themselves, but perhaps most dangerous of all: in love with the idea of love, for (in christian teaching and practice) Who is God but the very apotheosis of love?

this is a moving psychological portrait for all those religious out there. while most might perhaps appreciate the scandal of the immoralist better, this sanitary work—wherein no hint of scandal or impropriety even ever hits our two characters—is actually a far more dangerous flame to be kept alive.

after all, it's better to be the fool who knows he's a fool than to be a fool who thinks himself utterly, completely, wholly (perhaps holy?) justified.