45 Pierre Louis achieved fame (as Pierre Louys) before Gide and knew him during the period of the writing of the Notebooks but not during the year assigned to it in the While Notebook.
46 In the Black Notebook (the Manichean twin of the White Notebook) we learn that he does lose his mind but not before entrusting his notebooks to a friend for possible publication.
47 The enigmatic conclusion may express doubt — conscious or unconscious — on the part of the author. In this section and others we find parallels to Manicheism, based on the doctrine of the two contending principles of good (spirit) and evil (the body).
48 Soon after his arrival at Menthon, where he was writing the Notebooks, Gide installed a piano. Though he was an accomplished pianist, he is said to have played his best when no one was in the room and when he suspected that someone outside was listening.
49 Highly significant in that it anticipates Gide’s conduct toward his wife after their marriage, this passage suggests both her role as the mother-sister image and the presentiment of his inability to consummate a physical union with Madeleine, “the only woman he ever loved.”
50 Alissa, André Walter’s feminine counterpart in Strait Is the Gate, also practices humility and self-denial in pursuit of Christian glory; as in the case of all other Gidean heroines, she succeeds. She dies and Jerome finally possesses her, recalling again the Tristan legend and the tradition of fulfillment through denial.
51 This entry strongly suggests that Gide blamed his mother for interfering with his plan to marry Madeleine and extricated himself from the painful situation by idealizing his love for both. Blinded by his own emotions, he was unable to appreciate the soundness of his mother’s advice to her niece or the perceptiveness of the latter in rejecting his proposal.