The Fruits of the Earth

The Fruits of the Earth (French: Les nourritures terrestres) is a prose-poem by André Gide, published in France in 1897.

Gide admitted to the intellectual influence of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra[1] but the true genesis was the author's own journey from the deforming influence of his puritanical religious upbringing to liberation in the arms of North African boys.

Tidings about the meaning of life addressed to a dearly loved disciple whom Gide calls Nathanael.

The second is to seek adventure, excess, fervor; one should loathe the lukewarm, security, all tempered feelings.

"Not affection, Nathanael: love ..." A subtly structured collection of lyrical fragments, reminiscences, poems, travel notes, and aphorisms, the book came to command such a following after World War I that Gide wrote a preface stressing the work's self-critical dimension.