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Le Grand Meaulnes
In a small village in the Sologne, Fifteen-year-old François Seurel narrates the story of his relationship with seventeen-year-old Augustin Meaulnes. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood.
206 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1913
About the author
Alain-Fournier
45 books111 followersAlain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (1886 – 1914), a French author and soldier. He wrote a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which was adapted into two feature films and is considered a classic of French literature.
Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher département, in central France, the son of a school teacher. He studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris, where he prepared for the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure, but without success. He then studied at the merchant marine school in Brest. At the Lycée Lakanal he met Jacques Rivière, and the two became close friends. In 1909, Rivière married Alain-Fournier's younger sister Isabelle.
Alain-Fournier interrupted his studies in 1907 and from 1908 to 1909 he performed his military service. At this time he published some essays, poems and stories which were later collected and re-published under the name Miracles. Throughout this period he was mulling over what would become his celebrated novel, Le Grand Meaulnes.
On the first of June 1905, Ascension day, while Alain-Fournier was talking a stroll along banks of the Seine, he had met Yvonne de Quiévrecourt, with whom he became deeply enamoured. The two spoke, but he did not manage to win her favours. The following year on the same day he waited for her at the same place, but she did not appear. That night he told Rivière, "She did not come. And even if she had, she would not have been the same". They did not meet again until eight years later, when she was married with two children. Yvonne de Quiévrecourt would become Yvonne de Galais in his novel.
Alain-Fournier returned to Paris in 1910 and became a literary critic, writing for the Paris-Journal. There he met André Gide and Paul Claudel. In 1912, he quit his job to become the personal assistant of the politician Casimir Perrier.
'Le Grand Meaulnes' was finished in early 1913, and was first published in the Nouvelle Revue Française (from July to October 1913), and then as a book. 'Le Grand Meaulnes' was nominated for, but did not win, the Prix Goncourt. It is available in English in a widely-admired 1959 translation by Frank Davison for Oxford University Press.
In 1914, Alain-Fournier started work on a second novel, 'Colombe Blanchet', but this remained unfinished when he joined the army as a Lieutenant in August. He died fighting near Vaux-lès-Palameix (Meuse) one month later, on the 22nd of September 1914. His body remained unidentified until 1991, at which time he was interred in the cemetery of Saint-Remy-la-Calonne.
Most of the writing of Alain-Fournier was published posthumously: Miracles (a volume of poems and essays) in 1924, his correspondence with Jacques Rivière in 1926 and his letters to his family in 1930. His notes and sketches for Colombe Blanchet have also been published. From Wikipedia
Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher département, in central France, the son of a school teacher. He studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris, where he prepared for the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure, but without success. He then studied at the merchant marine school in Brest. At the Lycée Lakanal he met Jacques Rivière, and the two became close friends. In 1909, Rivière married Alain-Fournier's younger sister Isabelle.
Alain-Fournier interrupted his studies in 1907 and from 1908 to 1909 he performed his military service. At this time he published some essays, poems and stories which were later collected and re-published under the name Miracles. Throughout this period he was mulling over what would become his celebrated novel, Le Grand Meaulnes.
On the first of June 1905, Ascension day, while Alain-Fournier was talking a stroll along banks of the Seine, he had met Yvonne de Quiévrecourt, with whom he became deeply enamoured. The two spoke, but he did not manage to win her favours. The following year on the same day he waited for her at the same place, but she did not appear. That night he told Rivière, "She did not come. And even if she had, she would not have been the same". They did not meet again until eight years later, when she was married with two children. Yvonne de Quiévrecourt would become Yvonne de Galais in his novel.
Alain-Fournier returned to Paris in 1910 and became a literary critic, writing for the Paris-Journal. There he met André Gide and Paul Claudel. In 1912, he quit his job to become the personal assistant of the politician Casimir Perrier.
'Le Grand Meaulnes' was finished in early 1913, and was first published in the Nouvelle Revue Française (from July to October 1913), and then as a book. 'Le Grand Meaulnes' was nominated for, but did not win, the Prix Goncourt. It is available in English in a widely-admired 1959 translation by Frank Davison for Oxford University Press.
In 1914, Alain-Fournier started work on a second novel, 'Colombe Blanchet', but this remained unfinished when he joined the army as a Lieutenant in August. He died fighting near Vaux-lès-Palameix (Meuse) one month later, on the 22nd of September 1914. His body remained unidentified until 1991, at which time he was interred in the cemetery of Saint-Remy-la-Calonne.
Most of the writing of Alain-Fournier was published posthumously: Miracles (a volume of poems and essays) in 1924, his correspondence with Jacques Rivière in 1926 and his letters to his family in 1930. His notes and sketches for Colombe Blanchet have also been published. From Wikipedia
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December 8, 2023
Lost love… Lost friendship… Lost youth… The Lost Estate appears to be a simple story… And its seeming simplicity is its irresistible charm…
The raconteur of the tale – the son of the teacher in the small provincial school – was a shy and lonely boy… But when the new pupil arrived and is taken as their boarder they become friends… The new schoolboy is seventeen… He is open and possesses a lively temperament so he is nicked The Great Meaulnes…
Wishing to make a surprise Meaulnes secretly goes to meet at the railway station the narrator’s grandparents but not knowing the road he gets lost and in the end finds himself in the fete at the very strange estate… There he sees a young beautiful girl and it is love at first sight…
He manages to talk to the girl and promises to visit her again… He leaves the estate in the cart and when he returns home he suddenly understands that he has no slightest notion where he has been… He looks in the atlas, he tries to draw a map and he goes looking for the road but all in vain… When he is told the address in Paris where he might find her he goes to Paris but to no avail… After a time the narrator accidentally learns what estate it was and he hurries to tell his friend… So at last they meet…
They met… But destiny is blind…
Sentimentality of youth is of a special kind – it is permeated with nostalgic pathos.
The raconteur of the tale – the son of the teacher in the small provincial school – was a shy and lonely boy… But when the new pupil arrived and is taken as their boarder they become friends… The new schoolboy is seventeen… He is open and possesses a lively temperament so he is nicked The Great Meaulnes…
As soon as he came to board with us, that is, from the first days of December, school was no longer empty in the evening, after four. Despite the cold coming through the open door and the shouts of the sweepers with their buckets of water, there were always some twenty of the older boys after school in the classroom, boys from the country as well as from the village, pressing around Meaulnes. And there were long debates and endless arguments, and I would slip into the group, with a feeling of pleasurable anxiety.
Wishing to make a surprise Meaulnes secretly goes to meet at the railway station the narrator’s grandparents but not knowing the road he gets lost and in the end finds himself in the fete at the very strange estate… There he sees a young beautiful girl and it is love at first sight…
What were Meaulnes’ feelings afterwards as he recalled this moment when, on the banks of the lake, he had so near to his own the face of this girl – a face that was then lost to him! He had stared at that exquisite profile with every atom of his eyes until they were ready to fill with tears. And he remembered seeing, like a tender secret that she had entrusted to him, a little powder remaining on her cheek…
He manages to talk to the girl and promises to visit her again… He leaves the estate in the cart and when he returns home he suddenly understands that he has no slightest notion where he has been… He looks in the atlas, he tries to draw a map and he goes looking for the road but all in vain… When he is told the address in Paris where he might find her he goes to Paris but to no avail… After a time the narrator accidentally learns what estate it was and he hurries to tell his friend… So at last they meet…
It was about to be my friend’s turn, and I felt as anxious as he must have been. I was getting ready to do the introduction myself. But before I could say anything, the girl went over to him with surprising gravity and firmness.
‘I recognize you, Augustin Meaulnes,’ she said. And she held out her hand.
They met… But destiny is blind…
Sentimentality of youth is of a special kind – it is permeated with nostalgic pathos.
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January 28, 2023
ALLA RICERCA DEL SENTIERO PERDUTO
Nicolas Duvauchelle (a dx) è Augustin Meaulnes, e Jean-Baptiste Maunier è François Seurel nel film di Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe del 2006, scipita trasposizione cinematografica.
È un romanzo che ben presto sgattaiola via dalle reti delle letture critiche, si sottrae alle analisi e diventa qualcosa di più, qualcosa d’altro... Questa capacità di riecheggiare forte, di trovare la muta sintonia con una sensibilità acuminata, è la vera profonda grandezza del romanzo, che non sta nell’intreccio, a tratti debole, con soluzioni talora improbabili, non sta nella psicologia, dickensianamente poco approfondita, ma in una sorta di finissima eppure possente costruzione mitica di cui vogliamo cogliere tre motivi chiave: l’infanzia, l’avventura, il meraviglioso.
Mai parole furono più giuste.
Yasmina Melaouah (che solo per aver tradotto “Bussola” di Mathias Enard meriterebbe un monumento) fa seguire alla sua traduzione di quest’unico romanzo di Alain-Fournier una preziosa profonda densa postfazione.
Nella quale affronta subito il motivo principale della fama dell’opera in questione: fama che, appunto, evade letture critiche e analisi, esula da un intreccio a tratti debole, con soluzioni talora improbabili, da psicologia dei personaggi dickensianamente poco approfondita, supera di gran lunga il suo valore letterario (nello stesso anno in cui fu pubblicato, 1913, uscì il primo volume della Recherche proustiana, e non ci sono confronti che tengano, meglio neppure azzardarli).
Il Pierrot nel film.
La grandezza, e bellezza, di questo romanzo, è proprio nella capacità di riecheggiare forte, di trovare la muta sintonia con una sensibilità acuminata… È uno di quei casi in cui l’esperienza stessa della lettura prolunga, amplifica, sdoppia la suggestione dell’opera .
Per questo motivo il paragone che Melaouah propone con “Siddartha” di Hesse e “On the Road - Sulla strada” di Kerouac regge perfettamente: sono tutte opere che hanno superato il confine del loro tempo (e forse del tempo tout court) per meriti principalmente extra letterari.
[Per la cronaca, Sal Paradise l’alter ego letterario di Kerouac, si porta dietro nei suoi vagabondaggi proprio una copia di “Le Grande Meaulnes”.]
Holden Caufield, che Melaouah aggiunge agli esempi, lo lascerei fuori, lo lascerei stare: Holden è un capolavoro letterario, fu una rivoluzione letteraria, resiste ed esiste ben oltre il mito, ben oltre le corde dell’immaginario collettivo che ha saputo comunque far suonare.
Meaulnes è tutto meno che il padre di Holden, come sostiene invece Gian Luca Favetto.
Il castello della festa.
E allora, considerati i limiti di trama e di approfondimento dei personaggi, palesi da subito, considerato che il libro mostra i suoi cento e passa anni, considerato il simbolismo per me eccessivo, cos’è che mi ha catturato, che mi ha riempito di immagini e suggestioni?
Melaouah dice che Meaulnes è la poesia misteriosa della giovinezza. Vero.
E, la natura, il paesaggio, il clima riflettono gli stati d’animo dei personaggi, li anticipano, li amplificano, con rara maestria.
E, l’apparizione di Meaulnes all’inizio del romanzo è da leggenda.
Sua madre si presenta ai genitori del narratore perché vuole che suo figlio vada a scuola presso di loro e sia un loro pensionante: ma dov’è questo figlio, perché non si presenta come un ragazzo normale, dov’è fuggito?
Meaulnes è arrivato e se ne è andato in esplorazione per fatti suoi: con un pizzico di maleducazione, ma soprattutto sfrontatezza, una buona dose di coraggio e di voglia d’avventura, se ne è andato a esplorare le soffitte della casa che non conosce, dove non è mai stato prima. Si sentono rumori venire dall’ultimo piano, una parte della casa dove non dovrebbe esserci nessuno.
Ed eccolo apparire: indifferente, come se niente fosse, come se fosse la cosa più normale, appare, non si presenta, non saluta, non si giustifica, ma si rivolge subito al narratore, l’unico suo coetaneo presente, e gli mostra cos’ha trovato in soffitta: i fuochi d’artificio inutilizzati dalla festa del 14 luglio. Dai, andiamo a farli esplodere!
Nascita immediata di un’amicizia che durerà tutta la vita.
Amicizia senza gelosia, osannanell’altodeicieli, perché quando il narratore scopre nel diario di Meaulnes che il suo amico chiama “il mio migliore amico” non lui, François, ma Frantz de Galais, accetta il fatto come naturale, senza rancore, con comprensione e partecipazione.
La festa: gli invitati si avviano ai battelli.
Meaulnes sa scovare meraviglie, sa vedere (e trovare) dove gli altri si fermano, dove gli altri non vedono.
Pagine sul tempo (interiore) e le illusioni. Ma ancora di più, focalizzate sulla folle inclinazione dell’uomo ad amare solo ciò che è perduto, o mai posseduto, solo le spietate rose non colte, a trovare pace solo nella prossima avventura, ancora da venire.
L’irrequietezza… Le esperienze iniziatiche…
Soddisfare un desiderio vuol dire soffocarlo, realizzare un sogno vuol dire ucciderlo (Perché realizzare un’opera quando è così bello sognarla soltanto? dice Pasolini nel suo Decamerone)…
Le ombre di e in queste pagine…
Meaulnes e Yvonne/Clémence Poésy.
Henri-Alban Fournier (in arte Alain-Fournier) ebbe un incontro come quello descritto nel suo unico romanzo (per il resto, e tutto antecedente, solo una raccolta di racconti, una di poesie, qualche critica/recensione, più le lettere che ci sono arrivate) a Parigi quando aveva 18 anni e mezzo: la ragazza si chiamava Yvonne come nel romanzo, e anche il dialogo tra lui e lei si svolse in modo molto simile a quello tra Meaulnes e Yvonne de Galais.
Alain-Fournier morì in guerra un anno dopo la pubblicazione di questo suo unico romanzo, poco prima di compiere 28 anni.
O meglio, fu dato disperso, mai ritrovato: i suoi resti comparvero nel maggio del 1991, in una fossa comune dove i tedeschi l’avevano sepolto con altri venti compagni d’armi. Sei mesi dopo il suo corpo fu identificato e sepolto nel cimitero militare di Saint-Remy-la-Calonne nel dipartimento della Mosa.
Cimitero militare di Saint-Remy-la-Calonne.
PS
Alla ricerca del sentiero perduto è il titolo del capitolo IX della seconda parte.
”La sagra della primavera” di Igor Stravinskij messa in scena dai Balletti Russi di Djagilev rappresentata a Parigi il 29 maggio 1913.
PPSS
Nel 1913, anno di pubblicazione di “Le Grand Meaulnes” (prima a puntate sulla Nouvelle Revue Française, poi in volume unico) Marcel Proust pubblica a sue spese, dopo il rifiuto di Gide, “Dalla parte di Swann”, il primo dei sette romanzi della Recherche; Thomas Mann pubblica “Morte a Venezia”, Braque dipinge “Femme à la guitare”, Apollinaire pubblica la raccolta di poesie “Alcools”. Stravinskij mette in scena la “Sagra della primavera” con i Balletti Russi di Djagilev.
E pochi mesi dopo inizia la Grande Guerra.
Georges Braque: Femme à la guitare. 1913 (Centre Pompidou, Parigi)
Nicolas Duvauchelle (a dx) è Augustin Meaulnes, e Jean-Baptiste Maunier è François Seurel nel film di Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe del 2006, scipita trasposizione cinematografica.
È un romanzo che ben presto sgattaiola via dalle reti delle letture critiche, si sottrae alle analisi e diventa qualcosa di più, qualcosa d’altro... Questa capacità di riecheggiare forte, di trovare la muta sintonia con una sensibilità acuminata, è la vera profonda grandezza del romanzo, che non sta nell’intreccio, a tratti debole, con soluzioni talora improbabili, non sta nella psicologia, dickensianamente poco approfondita, ma in una sorta di finissima eppure possente costruzione mitica di cui vogliamo cogliere tre motivi chiave: l’infanzia, l’avventura, il meraviglioso.
Mai parole furono più giuste.
Yasmina Melaouah (che solo per aver tradotto “Bussola” di Mathias Enard meriterebbe un monumento) fa seguire alla sua traduzione di quest’unico romanzo di Alain-Fournier una preziosa profonda densa postfazione.
Nella quale affronta subito il motivo principale della fama dell’opera in questione: fama che, appunto, evade letture critiche e analisi, esula da un intreccio a tratti debole, con soluzioni talora improbabili, da psicologia dei personaggi dickensianamente poco approfondita, supera di gran lunga il suo valore letterario (nello stesso anno in cui fu pubblicato, 1913, uscì il primo volume della Recherche proustiana, e non ci sono confronti che tengano, meglio neppure azzardarli).
Il Pierrot nel film.
La grandezza, e bellezza, di questo romanzo, è proprio nella capacità di riecheggiare forte, di trovare la muta sintonia con una sensibilità acuminata… È uno di quei casi in cui l’esperienza stessa della lettura prolunga, amplifica, sdoppia la suggestione dell’opera .
Per questo motivo il paragone che Melaouah propone con “Siddartha” di Hesse e “On the Road - Sulla strada” di Kerouac regge perfettamente: sono tutte opere che hanno superato il confine del loro tempo (e forse del tempo tout court) per meriti principalmente extra letterari.
[Per la cronaca, Sal Paradise l’alter ego letterario di Kerouac, si porta dietro nei suoi vagabondaggi proprio una copia di “Le Grande Meaulnes”.]
Holden Caufield, che Melaouah aggiunge agli esempi, lo lascerei fuori, lo lascerei stare: Holden è un capolavoro letterario, fu una rivoluzione letteraria, resiste ed esiste ben oltre il mito, ben oltre le corde dell’immaginario collettivo che ha saputo comunque far suonare.
Meaulnes è tutto meno che il padre di Holden, come sostiene invece Gian Luca Favetto.
Il castello della festa.
E allora, considerati i limiti di trama e di approfondimento dei personaggi, palesi da subito, considerato che il libro mostra i suoi cento e passa anni, considerato il simbolismo per me eccessivo, cos’è che mi ha catturato, che mi ha riempito di immagini e suggestioni?
Melaouah dice che Meaulnes è la poesia misteriosa della giovinezza. Vero.
E, la natura, il paesaggio, il clima riflettono gli stati d’animo dei personaggi, li anticipano, li amplificano, con rara maestria.
E, l’apparizione di Meaulnes all’inizio del romanzo è da leggenda.
Sua madre si presenta ai genitori del narratore perché vuole che suo figlio vada a scuola presso di loro e sia un loro pensionante: ma dov’è questo figlio, perché non si presenta come un ragazzo normale, dov’è fuggito?
Meaulnes è arrivato e se ne è andato in esplorazione per fatti suoi: con un pizzico di maleducazione, ma soprattutto sfrontatezza, una buona dose di coraggio e di voglia d’avventura, se ne è andato a esplorare le soffitte della casa che non conosce, dove non è mai stato prima. Si sentono rumori venire dall’ultimo piano, una parte della casa dove non dovrebbe esserci nessuno.
Ed eccolo apparire: indifferente, come se niente fosse, come se fosse la cosa più normale, appare, non si presenta, non saluta, non si giustifica, ma si rivolge subito al narratore, l’unico suo coetaneo presente, e gli mostra cos’ha trovato in soffitta: i fuochi d’artificio inutilizzati dalla festa del 14 luglio. Dai, andiamo a farli esplodere!
Nascita immediata di un’amicizia che durerà tutta la vita.
Amicizia senza gelosia, osannanell’altodeicieli, perché quando il narratore scopre nel diario di Meaulnes che il suo amico chiama “il mio migliore amico” non lui, François, ma Frantz de Galais, accetta il fatto come naturale, senza rancore, con comprensione e partecipazione.
La festa: gli invitati si avviano ai battelli.
Meaulnes sa scovare meraviglie, sa vedere (e trovare) dove gli altri si fermano, dove gli altri non vedono.
Pagine sul tempo (interiore) e le illusioni. Ma ancora di più, focalizzate sulla folle inclinazione dell’uomo ad amare solo ciò che è perduto, o mai posseduto, solo le spietate rose non colte, a trovare pace solo nella prossima avventura, ancora da venire.
L’irrequietezza… Le esperienze iniziatiche…
Soddisfare un desiderio vuol dire soffocarlo, realizzare un sogno vuol dire ucciderlo (Perché realizzare un’opera quando è così bello sognarla soltanto? dice Pasolini nel suo Decamerone)…
Le ombre di e in queste pagine…
Meaulnes e Yvonne/Clémence Poésy.
Henri-Alban Fournier (in arte Alain-Fournier) ebbe un incontro come quello descritto nel suo unico romanzo (per il resto, e tutto antecedente, solo una raccolta di racconti, una di poesie, qualche critica/recensione, più le lettere che ci sono arrivate) a Parigi quando aveva 18 anni e mezzo: la ragazza si chiamava Yvonne come nel romanzo, e anche il dialogo tra lui e lei si svolse in modo molto simile a quello tra Meaulnes e Yvonne de Galais.
Alain-Fournier morì in guerra un anno dopo la pubblicazione di questo suo unico romanzo, poco prima di compiere 28 anni.
O meglio, fu dato disperso, mai ritrovato: i suoi resti comparvero nel maggio del 1991, in una fossa comune dove i tedeschi l’avevano sepolto con altri venti compagni d’armi. Sei mesi dopo il suo corpo fu identificato e sepolto nel cimitero militare di Saint-Remy-la-Calonne nel dipartimento della Mosa.
Cimitero militare di Saint-Remy-la-Calonne.
PS
Alla ricerca del sentiero perduto è il titolo del capitolo IX della seconda parte.
”La sagra della primavera” di Igor Stravinskij messa in scena dai Balletti Russi di Djagilev rappresentata a Parigi il 29 maggio 1913.
PPSS
Nel 1913, anno di pubblicazione di “Le Grand Meaulnes” (prima a puntate sulla Nouvelle Revue Française, poi in volume unico) Marcel Proust pubblica a sue spese, dopo il rifiuto di Gide, “Dalla parte di Swann”, il primo dei sette romanzi della Recherche; Thomas Mann pubblica “Morte a Venezia”, Braque dipinge “Femme à la guitare”, Apollinaire pubblica la raccolta di poesie “Alcools”. Stravinskij mette in scena la “Sagra della primavera” con i Balletti Russi di Djagilev.
E pochi mesi dopo inizia la Grande Guerra.
Georges Braque: Femme à la guitare. 1913 (Centre Pompidou, Parigi)
August 12, 2021
Alain-Fournier's one and only novel due to his tragic death during the first world war evokes dreamlike memories of a bygone era, with an evocative and moving friendship all surrounding a long lost love. Set in a small French commune and the lush, pleasant countryside Fifteen year old François Seurel narrates his close relationship with slightly older boy Augustin Meaulnes, also known as "Le Grand Meaulnes" because of his natural charisma and physical presence with fellow students during their time at school. And it's during this time that Meaulnes apparently goes missing for a few days only to return with a fascinating story of how he got lost one night and ended up in a seemingly abandoned estate in the middle of nowhere in which sits a Chateau that appears to be hosting some sort of party. With avid curiosity François eventually finds out that there was a beautiful girl hidden within, and for Meaulnes it was indeed love at first sight, so they both decide to try and discover just where abouts this mysterious place could be?, and this is just a beginning that will see their lives changed forever, both for better and worse.
Who knows what Fournier could have gone on to achieve, he had the potential to be a very special writer, and as a first written work of fiction it certainly is a lavish one and has at times the feel of a fairytale that children would get read at bedtime, the narrative is superb and the book on the whole is easy to read so for younger readers looking for a good place to start with classic French literature this would qualify as doesn't contain the complexities and deep character studies of some of the other renowned classic French writers. Although there is a story to an extent, the main factors for me were the universal feelings that would arouse the senses, with a nostalgic youthful spirit and the true meaning of an adolescent friendship shining through. I was left partially with a sad yearning for it's three main characters but also for myself, as your left with a strong feeling for your own treasured memories and loves from years gone by.
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May 16, 2015
Some time after leaving university I was in a club; and at one point in the, er, festivities I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned around, and there was an attractive blonde girl. She spoke my name; I stared back at her blankly. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ she asked. I had to confess that I didn’t. ‘Nicole,’ she said. I was about to embarrass myself further, and admit that I still could not place her, when it came to me. Ah, Nicole! Of course! She had been in the same halls of residence as I. We didn’t take any of the same classes, and we hadn’t spoken all that often, but our paths had crossed once or twice in the corridor or at parties.
As the night wore on we danced and we chatted and we kissed; and when the club closed we set out on a walk, with Nicole in the lead. I know my home city well, but being drunk, with my attention elsewhere, I had no real idea how we came to be in the place where we ended up. As I remember it now, and as I remembered it the next day, it resembled some kind of stone arena, with high walls, and lights all around, some of them hanging from trees. Of course I doubt this was the case, but that is what I see when I cast back into the past to try and dredge up that night. I don’t know exactly how long we were there; it felt like hours, but it could only have been thirty minutes or so.
In any case, before Nicole and I parted, she asked for my telephone number. Unfortunately, I did not know it by heart [I still don’t] and I have never carried my mobile with me on nights out. ‘Tell me your number,’ I said, gallantly, ‘and I’ll remember it.’ Foolish boy! Of course, when I woke up the next day the number was entirely lost to me; it was as much an irretrievable part of the night as the kisses and the fantastic stone arena had been. Yet I didn’t initially let it bother me too much, being used to hooking up in clubs and also being of the belief that I would sooner or later bump into her again.
However, over the following months, even though I frequented various clubs in the city, including the one in which we had met, and although I kept something of an eye out for her, I found no trace of Nicole, by which I mean that she never herself turned up, and nor did any of the people I had seen her with that night. The longer this continued, the more interested I became in the situation, the more mental energy I devoted to it. Who is this girl, I thought to myself, whose life briefly merged with mine only to suddenly disappear? At the end of each night I would leave the club and go in search of the arena, hoping that being in the same state [i.e. very drunk] would somehow jog my memory and lead me there. By this stage, the whole incident had taken on the qualities of a dream – I felt as though I was searching for someone and a place, for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate to myself, which had, in fact, never existed anywhere except in my imagination.
Now when I think back to that time and wonder why I so wanted to see Nicole again it strikes me that it wasn’t the girl herself that I was chasing, that I was looking for, but a part of myself, the part that had only been possible when I was with this particular girl in that extraordinary place; I found it hard to let that go.* This is not, of course, unique to me; many of us want to reclaim or relive our pasts, many of us hanker nostalgically after certain experiences, and this, at least partly, is what Le Grand Meaulnes, Alain-Fournier’s beautiful French novel, is about.
Le Grand Meaulnes begins with the arrival of a young boy, Francois Seurel, in Sainte-Agathe. He is accompanied by his father, a teacher, and his mother, who he describes as the ‘the most meticulous housewife ever known.’ It is, then, made immediately clear that Francois’ home-life is rather conventional, and, well, perhaps a little boring. Moreover, the boy himself is both ‘timid’ and, due to a problem with his knee, ‘weak,’ and so does not, or cannot, play with other children. Then one day Augustin Meaulnes – who is, of course, the great or grand Meaulnes of the title – enters his life. The circumstances behind their first meeting are significant: it is a Sunday, a day traditionally of rest, the dullest of dull days, when one would not expect anything exciting to happen. However, when Francois returns from church he finds a woman gazing through the window of his house. It turns out that she has ‘lost’ her boy, who is, well, I think you’ve probably worked that out already.
It was clever on Alain-Fournier’s part to introduce Meaulnes in this way, not with his presence, but by the absence of it, thereby revealing an important, or the defining aspect of his behaviour or character without him even being ‘on stage.’ Having given his mother the slip one understands straight away that this is an adventuresome boy, who does things his own way, who is, in contrast to Francois, unconventional. Indeed, his physical entrance into the novel confirms this impression, as he comes down the Seurel’s stairs to announce that he has been rooting around in their attic, quite without permission of course, and has found some unused fireworks. He then takes Francois outside and sets them off. This is, in effect, the symbolic and literal start of a more exciting existence for Francois.
In order to be able to enjoy Le Grand Meaulnes one must accept its limitations. There is, for example, no character depth; everyone is ‘one dimensional,’ is, essentially, a symbol, or a type, of one sort or another. Meaulnes is shown in the beginning to be adventurous and brave and independent, and that is how he remains; all of his actions – like taking Fromentin’s horse and cart on a long drive in order to pick up Francois’ Grandparents – are further proof of these qualities. Francois does not develop either; sure, he gets into more scrapes than he would have done without Meaulnes’ friendship, but he does not take a very active part in them; he is, in effect, an observer or bystander or, at best, a sidekick. Indeed, no one behaves in a way that would surprise you, and no one’s thought processes, aside from the narrator’s, are engaged with; all of the characters are straight forward and predictable [even Meaulnes, whose unpredictability is itself predictable].
I also ought to mention that the plot is often derided as unbelievable and silly and too reliant upon coincidences, particularly in the second half. Responding to these specific criticisms is difficult, because silly and unbelievable are subjective terms. All I can say in that regard is that I don’t agree or that all literature is unbelievable if you bring a cynical attitude to it [and this book more than most requires you to be open-minded, because, for the greater part, the prevailing atmosphere is one of awe and wonder]. In terms of coincidences, yes, there are some, but I have never understood why this bothers readers as much as does. Life is full of coincidences, so it I not as though we have no experience of them ourselves. Besides, I would argue that, flawed or not, the plot is tremendously gripping and moving.
Superficially, Le Grand Meaulnes is a kind of fast-paced mystery novel. As noted, Augustin one day leaves to pick up Francois’ Grandparents, but he fails to meet them, and doesn’t come back for three days. When he does return, he fails to provide an explanation, seems distracted and aloof, and appears to be working on some sort of map. Naturally, if one has not read the book before, all of this is intriguing. Where has Meaulnes been? What is the map for? What happened to him? Whatever the boy experienced clearly had a profound effect upon him and one is eager for an explanation. [Furthermore, even once the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, there continues to be twists and surprises, such as the identity of the gypsy boy, and the nature of the relationship between Frantz, Valentine and Meaulnes].
One is always told to avoid spoilers in one’s reviews, but, as far as I am concerned, this is absurd, that any review that avoids spoilers isn’t actually worth reading because it cannot have engaged with the book in any meaningful way. With that said, I have no qualms about revealing that when Meaulnes leaves with the horse and carriage to pick up Francois’ Grandparents he gets lost and eventually comes upon a remote house, where a fete is taking place. He infiltrates the party and subsequently meets a beautiful girl, Yvonne. Now, what is so brilliant about this idea is that, for a novel about adolescence and adolescents, it actually taps into so many popular, seemingly immortal and universal, aspects of adolescent fantasy, such as the idea of getting lost, the prospect of discovering some magical place hitherto unknown, the opportunity to pretend to be someone other than yourself and, in the process, meeting a beautiful girl [or boy, depending on your preference, of course] with whom you fall in love.
However, to give the impression that Le Grand Meaulnes is nothing more than a kind of teenage fantasy or fairy-tale, or even a pacey mystery, is to undersell it. What elevates it to the level of a masterpiece is that it is, much like Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, a perfect synthesis of gripping plot and philosophy, adventure and romance and ideas; it is, despite its apparently simple characters and whimsical story, a sneakily complex little novel. It is important to remember that Francois, from some distance in years, in narrating the tale, is, with fondness and some sorrow, looking back to his own childhood. Le Grand Meaulnes is, then, like Marcel Proust’s opus, on one level about memory, about how we remember important events or periods in our lives. Indeed, he admits within the first couple of pages that his memories are somewhat confused or have, in a way, merged, so that what may have been numerous days or experiences seem like, have become, only one.
I think this is subtly profound writing, because it is exactly how memory works – memories do not come to you in a linear fashion, as a straightforward or precise narrative; days do not follow in sequence; and so what you remember is likely to be an amalgamation of various memories or days. If you try to picture an event, let’s say your first day at school, certain aspects may be as it was then – that it was a Monday, say – but it is also likely that you will misremember or confuse certain details, that, for example, you will recall the walls of the classroom being grey when they were actually cream, that it was, in fact, the walls of a different classroom, years later, that were grey. Moreover, one sometimes cannot help but place important people in places where they cannot have been, or one feels their presence hanging over certain incidents that they were not part of. On this, perhaps my favourite passage in the book is when Francois tries to conjure up the first night in the new house in Sainte-Agathe, and sees Meaulnes’ tall shadow moving across the wall, to and fro, ‘restless and friendly,’ even though it would be ten years before they would actually meet.
As one progresses through the novel one comes to realise that there is a satisfying mirroring going on vis-à-vis Meaulnes and Francois, that while one is trying to go back to the place where he met Yvonne, the other is trying to go back in his memories [in fact, both could be said to be going back in their heads]. Bearing this in mind, one could see the lost domain as not only a real, physical place, but as childhood itself. This is given further weight when one considers that the domain was characterised by a kind of gaiety or freedom, and was full of children who, on at least one of the days, were in sole charge. Throughout the book both the older Francois and the young Meaulnes are trying to recapture something ephemeral, something that therefore cannot be recaptured.
One might argue that this interpretation overlooks the love relationship between Meaulnes and Yvonne, that it was her who he was desperate to reclaim or rediscover, not some mythical idea of childhood, but I don’t see that. It is telling, for me, that Meaulnes, once he and Yvonne are reunited, feels deflated or disappointed and actually leaves at the first opportunity. Of course, his leaving is explained as being part of some promise or pact, but Isn’t it really the case that Meaulnes was more in love with the idea of Yvonne and the lost domain, than with the real woman and the real place? Let’s face it, he did not have to abandon her; he had a choice and he chose to go, to follow the dream rather than live with reality. To return to Nicole and my introduction, like me it was not the woman that he wanted, but how she made him feel, what she was part of.
*For anyone interested in my story, I never saw Nicole again, but I think I may one day have stumbled upon the stone arena, which, if I am correct, is part of a large park or botanical garden that is roughly ten minutes walk from the club. It does not, except in the most vague or rudimentary fashion, align with my memory of it.
As the night wore on we danced and we chatted and we kissed; and when the club closed we set out on a walk, with Nicole in the lead. I know my home city well, but being drunk, with my attention elsewhere, I had no real idea how we came to be in the place where we ended up. As I remember it now, and as I remembered it the next day, it resembled some kind of stone arena, with high walls, and lights all around, some of them hanging from trees. Of course I doubt this was the case, but that is what I see when I cast back into the past to try and dredge up that night. I don’t know exactly how long we were there; it felt like hours, but it could only have been thirty minutes or so.
In any case, before Nicole and I parted, she asked for my telephone number. Unfortunately, I did not know it by heart [I still don’t] and I have never carried my mobile with me on nights out. ‘Tell me your number,’ I said, gallantly, ‘and I’ll remember it.’ Foolish boy! Of course, when I woke up the next day the number was entirely lost to me; it was as much an irretrievable part of the night as the kisses and the fantastic stone arena had been. Yet I didn’t initially let it bother me too much, being used to hooking up in clubs and also being of the belief that I would sooner or later bump into her again.
However, over the following months, even though I frequented various clubs in the city, including the one in which we had met, and although I kept something of an eye out for her, I found no trace of Nicole, by which I mean that she never herself turned up, and nor did any of the people I had seen her with that night. The longer this continued, the more interested I became in the situation, the more mental energy I devoted to it. Who is this girl, I thought to myself, whose life briefly merged with mine only to suddenly disappear? At the end of each night I would leave the club and go in search of the arena, hoping that being in the same state [i.e. very drunk] would somehow jog my memory and lead me there. By this stage, the whole incident had taken on the qualities of a dream – I felt as though I was searching for someone and a place, for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate to myself, which had, in fact, never existed anywhere except in my imagination.
Now when I think back to that time and wonder why I so wanted to see Nicole again it strikes me that it wasn’t the girl herself that I was chasing, that I was looking for, but a part of myself, the part that had only been possible when I was with this particular girl in that extraordinary place; I found it hard to let that go.* This is not, of course, unique to me; many of us want to reclaim or relive our pasts, many of us hanker nostalgically after certain experiences, and this, at least partly, is what Le Grand Meaulnes, Alain-Fournier’s beautiful French novel, is about.
Le Grand Meaulnes begins with the arrival of a young boy, Francois Seurel, in Sainte-Agathe. He is accompanied by his father, a teacher, and his mother, who he describes as the ‘the most meticulous housewife ever known.’ It is, then, made immediately clear that Francois’ home-life is rather conventional, and, well, perhaps a little boring. Moreover, the boy himself is both ‘timid’ and, due to a problem with his knee, ‘weak,’ and so does not, or cannot, play with other children. Then one day Augustin Meaulnes – who is, of course, the great or grand Meaulnes of the title – enters his life. The circumstances behind their first meeting are significant: it is a Sunday, a day traditionally of rest, the dullest of dull days, when one would not expect anything exciting to happen. However, when Francois returns from church he finds a woman gazing through the window of his house. It turns out that she has ‘lost’ her boy, who is, well, I think you’ve probably worked that out already.
It was clever on Alain-Fournier’s part to introduce Meaulnes in this way, not with his presence, but by the absence of it, thereby revealing an important, or the defining aspect of his behaviour or character without him even being ‘on stage.’ Having given his mother the slip one understands straight away that this is an adventuresome boy, who does things his own way, who is, in contrast to Francois, unconventional. Indeed, his physical entrance into the novel confirms this impression, as he comes down the Seurel’s stairs to announce that he has been rooting around in their attic, quite without permission of course, and has found some unused fireworks. He then takes Francois outside and sets them off. This is, in effect, the symbolic and literal start of a more exciting existence for Francois.
In order to be able to enjoy Le Grand Meaulnes one must accept its limitations. There is, for example, no character depth; everyone is ‘one dimensional,’ is, essentially, a symbol, or a type, of one sort or another. Meaulnes is shown in the beginning to be adventurous and brave and independent, and that is how he remains; all of his actions – like taking Fromentin’s horse and cart on a long drive in order to pick up Francois’ Grandparents – are further proof of these qualities. Francois does not develop either; sure, he gets into more scrapes than he would have done without Meaulnes’ friendship, but he does not take a very active part in them; he is, in effect, an observer or bystander or, at best, a sidekick. Indeed, no one behaves in a way that would surprise you, and no one’s thought processes, aside from the narrator’s, are engaged with; all of the characters are straight forward and predictable [even Meaulnes, whose unpredictability is itself predictable].
I also ought to mention that the plot is often derided as unbelievable and silly and too reliant upon coincidences, particularly in the second half. Responding to these specific criticisms is difficult, because silly and unbelievable are subjective terms. All I can say in that regard is that I don’t agree or that all literature is unbelievable if you bring a cynical attitude to it [and this book more than most requires you to be open-minded, because, for the greater part, the prevailing atmosphere is one of awe and wonder]. In terms of coincidences, yes, there are some, but I have never understood why this bothers readers as much as does. Life is full of coincidences, so it I not as though we have no experience of them ourselves. Besides, I would argue that, flawed or not, the plot is tremendously gripping and moving.
Superficially, Le Grand Meaulnes is a kind of fast-paced mystery novel. As noted, Augustin one day leaves to pick up Francois’ Grandparents, but he fails to meet them, and doesn’t come back for three days. When he does return, he fails to provide an explanation, seems distracted and aloof, and appears to be working on some sort of map. Naturally, if one has not read the book before, all of this is intriguing. Where has Meaulnes been? What is the map for? What happened to him? Whatever the boy experienced clearly had a profound effect upon him and one is eager for an explanation. [Furthermore, even once the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, there continues to be twists and surprises, such as the identity of the gypsy boy, and the nature of the relationship between Frantz, Valentine and Meaulnes].
One is always told to avoid spoilers in one’s reviews, but, as far as I am concerned, this is absurd, that any review that avoids spoilers isn’t actually worth reading because it cannot have engaged with the book in any meaningful way. With that said, I have no qualms about revealing that when Meaulnes leaves with the horse and carriage to pick up Francois’ Grandparents he gets lost and eventually comes upon a remote house, where a fete is taking place. He infiltrates the party and subsequently meets a beautiful girl, Yvonne. Now, what is so brilliant about this idea is that, for a novel about adolescence and adolescents, it actually taps into so many popular, seemingly immortal and universal, aspects of adolescent fantasy, such as the idea of getting lost, the prospect of discovering some magical place hitherto unknown, the opportunity to pretend to be someone other than yourself and, in the process, meeting a beautiful girl [or boy, depending on your preference, of course] with whom you fall in love.
However, to give the impression that Le Grand Meaulnes is nothing more than a kind of teenage fantasy or fairy-tale, or even a pacey mystery, is to undersell it. What elevates it to the level of a masterpiece is that it is, much like Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, a perfect synthesis of gripping plot and philosophy, adventure and romance and ideas; it is, despite its apparently simple characters and whimsical story, a sneakily complex little novel. It is important to remember that Francois, from some distance in years, in narrating the tale, is, with fondness and some sorrow, looking back to his own childhood. Le Grand Meaulnes is, then, like Marcel Proust’s opus, on one level about memory, about how we remember important events or periods in our lives. Indeed, he admits within the first couple of pages that his memories are somewhat confused or have, in a way, merged, so that what may have been numerous days or experiences seem like, have become, only one.
I think this is subtly profound writing, because it is exactly how memory works – memories do not come to you in a linear fashion, as a straightforward or precise narrative; days do not follow in sequence; and so what you remember is likely to be an amalgamation of various memories or days. If you try to picture an event, let’s say your first day at school, certain aspects may be as it was then – that it was a Monday, say – but it is also likely that you will misremember or confuse certain details, that, for example, you will recall the walls of the classroom being grey when they were actually cream, that it was, in fact, the walls of a different classroom, years later, that were grey. Moreover, one sometimes cannot help but place important people in places where they cannot have been, or one feels their presence hanging over certain incidents that they were not part of. On this, perhaps my favourite passage in the book is when Francois tries to conjure up the first night in the new house in Sainte-Agathe, and sees Meaulnes’ tall shadow moving across the wall, to and fro, ‘restless and friendly,’ even though it would be ten years before they would actually meet.
As one progresses through the novel one comes to realise that there is a satisfying mirroring going on vis-à-vis Meaulnes and Francois, that while one is trying to go back to the place where he met Yvonne, the other is trying to go back in his memories [in fact, both could be said to be going back in their heads]. Bearing this in mind, one could see the lost domain as not only a real, physical place, but as childhood itself. This is given further weight when one considers that the domain was characterised by a kind of gaiety or freedom, and was full of children who, on at least one of the days, were in sole charge. Throughout the book both the older Francois and the young Meaulnes are trying to recapture something ephemeral, something that therefore cannot be recaptured.
"Weeks went by, then months. I am speaking of a far-away time - a vanished happiness. It fell to me to befriend, to console with whatever words I could find, one who had been the fairy, the princess, the mysterious love-dream of our adolescence."
"I'm sure now that when I discovered the nameless domain I was at some peak of perfection, of purity, to which I shall never again attain."
One might argue that this interpretation overlooks the love relationship between Meaulnes and Yvonne, that it was her who he was desperate to reclaim or rediscover, not some mythical idea of childhood, but I don’t see that. It is telling, for me, that Meaulnes, once he and Yvonne are reunited, feels deflated or disappointed and actually leaves at the first opportunity. Of course, his leaving is explained as being part of some promise or pact, but Isn’t it really the case that Meaulnes was more in love with the idea of Yvonne and the lost domain, than with the real woman and the real place? Let’s face it, he did not have to abandon her; he had a choice and he chose to go, to follow the dream rather than live with reality. To return to Nicole and my introduction, like me it was not the woman that he wanted, but how she made him feel, what she was part of.
*For anyone interested in my story, I never saw Nicole again, but I think I may one day have stumbled upon the stone arena, which, if I am correct, is part of a large park or botanical garden that is roughly ten minutes walk from the club. It does not, except in the most vague or rudimentary fashion, align with my memory of it.
September 21, 2010
Dear Henri Alain-Fournier,
Some people claim you had great talent as a novelist. Many more would claim I don't. Is it fair that you died in World War I while I live, free to write this review and feeling like I'm having a bad morning because I didn't have all the usual ingredients for my breakfast shake? Your remains weren't identified until 1991, true, but do you know that without yogurt, steel cut oatmeal, goji berries and banana congeal like pond scum when blended with almond milk? I guess in a way translated works of fiction are like that, lacking an ingredient. Not really fair of me to judge you then, is it? And on top of that, I read somewhere that the Robin Buss translation I have isn't the best.
I don't know. Maybe I've been prejudiced against anything French because there's been a creepy mime wandering around the farmers' market on Saturdays. With the summer heat, its face make-up starts to melt and peel and it scares my kid and me. Or maybe, having discovered Woody Allen before James Dean, it's because I'm sentimental for my own sort of coming-of-age story. But the truth is, I found your novel sappy. Sappy to the nth degree.
"And that evening, sobbing, he asked Mademoiselle de Galais for her hand in marriage."
Barf.
Some folks describe it as dream-like. Well, I'll meet them halfway and say that it is conducive to a dream-like state, in as much as I found myself wanting to fall asleep as I read it. God! Germany probably invaded France so often to keep from nodding off. Can you blame them? They had all those big philosophical treatises to write, but then kept getting distracted by the latest Twilight prequel. And they would've even read it in the original French because all you Continentals speak five languages!
I tried to make excuses for you, thinking, "Look at it this way: it's a parable for post-colonial France. They were just coming off that Napoleonic high and had to simultaneously deal with the onset of modernity. It's a simple case of British/penis envy." But even my credulity can only stretch so far.
Goodbye, Alain-Fournier. Sorry your life was cut short by one of history's celebrated mistakes. Maybe this book will mean something to somebody else. It's going to have the opportunity, because I'm donating it to my library.
Some people claim you had great talent as a novelist. Many more would claim I don't. Is it fair that you died in World War I while I live, free to write this review and feeling like I'm having a bad morning because I didn't have all the usual ingredients for my breakfast shake? Your remains weren't identified until 1991, true, but do you know that without yogurt, steel cut oatmeal, goji berries and banana congeal like pond scum when blended with almond milk? I guess in a way translated works of fiction are like that, lacking an ingredient. Not really fair of me to judge you then, is it? And on top of that, I read somewhere that the Robin Buss translation I have isn't the best.
I don't know. Maybe I've been prejudiced against anything French because there's been a creepy mime wandering around the farmers' market on Saturdays. With the summer heat, its face make-up starts to melt and peel and it scares my kid and me. Or maybe, having discovered Woody Allen before James Dean, it's because I'm sentimental for my own sort of coming-of-age story. But the truth is, I found your novel sappy. Sappy to the nth degree.
"And that evening, sobbing, he asked Mademoiselle de Galais for her hand in marriage."
Barf.
Some folks describe it as dream-like. Well, I'll meet them halfway and say that it is conducive to a dream-like state, in as much as I found myself wanting to fall asleep as I read it. God! Germany probably invaded France so often to keep from nodding off. Can you blame them? They had all those big philosophical treatises to write, but then kept getting distracted by the latest Twilight prequel. And they would've even read it in the original French because all you Continentals speak five languages!
I tried to make excuses for you, thinking, "Look at it this way: it's a parable for post-colonial France. They were just coming off that Napoleonic high and had to simultaneously deal with the onset of modernity. It's a simple case of British/penis envy." But even my credulity can only stretch so far.
Goodbye, Alain-Fournier. Sorry your life was cut short by one of history's celebrated mistakes. Maybe this book will mean something to somebody else. It's going to have the opportunity, because I'm donating it to my library.
May 9, 2024
If you want to grab a butterfly's wings, you can reduce its shimmering colors to dust. So I will only touch "Le Grand Meaulnes" for fear of removing the magic.
This remarkable love story and friendship, published in 1913, symbolizes, in my eyes, the passage from adolescence to adulthood, with all the heartbreaks and tragedies that implies. Tragedy crystallized the following year with the author's death, broke on the eve of his 28 years during the first frighteningly deadly battles of the Great War.
I love the romanticism of the characters, the delicate charm of Yvonne de Galais, the excessiveness of her brother Frantz, and the quest for the absolute by Augustin Meaulnes, this heroic double of the wise narrator, François Seurel. Meaulnes' adventure at the strange feast of the Unknown Domain preserves the magic of a dream. And nature, so present in the description of the landscapes of Sologne, is its accomplice.
I open an initiatory novel from time to time to breathe in its pages, which have yellowed with the scent of adolescence. I found a four-leaf clover, now as translucent and light as a butterfly's wing.
This remarkable love story and friendship, published in 1913, symbolizes, in my eyes, the passage from adolescence to adulthood, with all the heartbreaks and tragedies that implies. Tragedy crystallized the following year with the author's death, broke on the eve of his 28 years during the first frighteningly deadly battles of the Great War.
I love the romanticism of the characters, the delicate charm of Yvonne de Galais, the excessiveness of her brother Frantz, and the quest for the absolute by Augustin Meaulnes, this heroic double of the wise narrator, François Seurel. Meaulnes' adventure at the strange feast of the Unknown Domain preserves the magic of a dream. And nature, so present in the description of the landscapes of Sologne, is its accomplice.
I open an initiatory novel from time to time to breathe in its pages, which have yellowed with the scent of adolescence. I found a four-leaf clover, now as translucent and light as a butterfly's wing.
February 19, 2019
مولن (مون) بزرگ از آن کتابهایی بود که خودش مرا یافت تا بخوانمش و عجب تجربهی شیرینی هم بود. ماجرا از این قرار بود که میخواستم مولن کوچک ژان لویی فورنیه را بخوانم که متوجه ارتباطش با مولن بزرگ آلن فورنیه شدم و چنین شد که حالا بجای مون کوچک، در مورد مولن بزرگ مینویسم
داستان شروعی نوستالژیک داشت و از همان چند سطر ابتدایی مرا مسحور خودش کرد: راوی (سورل) داستانی مربوط به سالها پیش را روایت میکند و بوی حسرت و روزهای از دست رفته از آن به مشام میرسد. در آغاز یک فلشبک به پانزده سال پیش و حالا راوی ناگهان دانشاموز یک مدرسه در روستایی پرت است. در ادامه با وارد شدن شخصیت مون بزرگه و برقرار ییوند دوستی میان او و سورل، داستان خشت به خشت پر و بال میگیرد و این در کنار توصیف دقیق و زیبای راوی از محیط روستایی ،ات��سفر مهآلود داستان که تا پایان فصل دو لحظه به لحظه بر غلظتش افزوده میشد باعث میشود سادهترین وقایع داستان حالتی رازآلود و سورئال پیدا کنند و البته این رازآلودی بزرگترین نقطه قوت داستان است: هرلحظه بر عطش کنجکاوی خواننده میافزاید ولیکن سیراب نی! تمام وقایع داستان حول یک اتفاق میچرخد: مون در حین یک ماجراجویی به طور اتفاقی در ضیافتی در یک کوشک بهظاهر اسرارآمیز شرکت میجوید از این پس تا پایان ماجرا او تحت تاثیر این تجربه قرار میگیرد. در واقع تمام پیرنگ داستان در این ماجرا نهفته است: آدمی یک بار، به طرفةالعینی خوشبختی را تجربه میکند و چون آن لحظه گذشت، دگربار بازش نمییابد. این داستانِ سه بخشی در نگاه اول ممکن است خستهکننده یا بیمزه بنظر برسد، اما خواننده باید به داستان فرصت کافی دهد و در آخر هم قطعا پاداش این صبوری را خواهد گرفت
برای درک هرچه بیشتر پیام مون بزرگ، باید نگاهی به زندگی نویسنده انداخت و از ارتباطش با جزئیات داستان پرده برداری کرد. پدر و مادر فورنیه معلم بودند و او کودکی را در محیطی روستایی گذرانده (پدر راوی سورل هم معلم است و بستر مکانی داستان تماما در روستاست). در نوجوانی برای ادامه تحصیل به پاریس فرستاده شد (بخشی از ماجرای مون نوجوان در پاریس می گذرد) و در آنجا در یک نگاه عاشق مادمازل دیکیو شد (عشق مون به مادمازل ایون در یک نگاه)، اما عشقش به سرانجام نمیرسد و از این پس تا پایان عمر کوتاهش در جستجوی خوشبختی دست و پا میزند (مون در روز نخست ازدواج با ایون، این حجم خوشبختی را برنمیتابد و به سفری بیبازگشت میرود). فورنیه در سال 1914، یک سال بعد از نگارش رمان مون بزرگ در جبهه جنگ کشته و جنازهاش برای همیشه ناپدید میشود. شایعهای که در مورد نحوه مرگ اگزوپری گفته اند، سرانجام واقعی زندگی آلن فورنیه است
کاراکتر راوی و مون در این کتاب شباهت بسیاری به کاراکتر راوی و بارون در بارون درخت نشین کالوینو دارند. در هر دو کتاب آنکه مانده و وقایع را روایت میکند برادری کوچک و مطیع است و آنکه طغیان کرده و از دست رفته، برادر بزرگتر. ناگفته نماند که بنظر میرسد تمام کاراکترهای این کتاب، نه ساخته و پرداختهی نویسنده یا نتیجه نبوغ او، بلکه بخشی از شخصیت و عواطف او باشند. فورنیه گاهی در سورل حلول میکند و گاهی در مون بزرگ، گاهی در فرانتس و گاهی در ایون. در میان کاراکترها مون، فرانتس و ایون بیشترین شباهت را بههم دارند، هر سه در برزخ میان دنیای رئال و دنیای سورئال اسیرند، جایی بین خواب و بیداری، رویا و واقعیت، دنیای بیرحم و سرزمین عجایب. چنانکه خود فورنیه هم در هنگام نوشتن این رمان هنوز اسیر دنیای خیالانگیز کودکی خود است. فوریه با مرگ به رستگاری از این این برزخ دنیای میانه رسید، مانند شخصیتهای داستانش که آن ها هم هر کدام بهنحوی با سفر به یک سوی این برزخ رستگار میشوند
آنچه داستان را بسیار دوست داشتنی میکند، جنبهی نوستالژیک و به تصویر کشیدن احساسات و تفکرات دنیای کودکیهایمان است، مشترک میان همهی آنها که کودکی کردهاند، معصومیتی از دست رفته متعلق به دنیایی دور و دیگر ناموجود
پینوشت: مون بزرگ یک داستان کلاسیک نیست! داستان تنها در معنای عام یک اثر کلاسیک (اثر فاخر ملی) فرانسوی محسوب میشود وگرنه این اثر را میتوان به صراحت در جرگه آثار رمانتیک (همراه با المانهای رئالیستی) دستهبندی کرد، یک فانتزی رمانتیک در شمایل یک داستان رئال
داستان شروعی نوستالژیک داشت و از همان چند سطر ابتدایی مرا مسحور خودش کرد: راوی (سورل) داستانی مربوط به سالها پیش را روایت میکند و بوی حسرت و روزهای از دست رفته از آن به مشام میرسد. در آغاز یک فلشبک به پانزده سال پیش و حالا راوی ناگهان دانشاموز یک مدرسه در روستایی پرت است. در ادامه با وارد شدن شخصیت مون بزرگه و برقرار ییوند دوستی میان او و سورل، داستان خشت به خشت پر و بال میگیرد و این در کنار توصیف دقیق و زیبای راوی از محیط روستایی ،ات��سفر مهآلود داستان که تا پایان فصل دو لحظه به لحظه بر غلظتش افزوده میشد باعث میشود سادهترین وقایع داستان حالتی رازآلود و سورئال پیدا کنند و البته این رازآلودی بزرگترین نقطه قوت داستان است: هرلحظه بر عطش کنجکاوی خواننده میافزاید ولیکن سیراب نی! تمام وقایع داستان حول یک اتفاق میچرخد: مون در حین یک ماجراجویی به طور اتفاقی در ضیافتی در یک کوشک بهظاهر اسرارآمیز شرکت میجوید از این پس تا پایان ماجرا او تحت تاثیر این تجربه قرار میگیرد. در واقع تمام پیرنگ داستان در این ماجرا نهفته است: آدمی یک بار، به طرفةالعینی خوشبختی را تجربه میکند و چون آن لحظه گذشت، دگربار بازش نمییابد. این داستانِ سه بخشی در نگاه اول ممکن است خستهکننده یا بیمزه بنظر برسد، اما خواننده باید به داستان فرصت کافی دهد و در آخر هم قطعا پاداش این صبوری را خواهد گرفت
برای درک هرچه بیشتر پیام مون بزرگ، باید نگاهی به زندگی نویسنده انداخت و از ارتباطش با جزئیات داستان پرده برداری کرد. پدر و مادر فورنیه معلم بودند و او کودکی را در محیطی روستایی گذرانده (پدر راوی سورل هم معلم است و بستر مکانی داستان تماما در روستاست). در نوجوانی برای ادامه تحصیل به پاریس فرستاده شد (بخشی از ماجرای مون نوجوان در پاریس می گذرد) و در آنجا در یک نگاه عاشق مادمازل دیکیو شد (عشق مون به مادمازل ایون در یک نگاه)، اما عشقش به سرانجام نمیرسد و از این پس تا پایان عمر کوتاهش در جستجوی خوشبختی دست و پا میزند (مون در روز نخست ازدواج با ایون، این حجم خوشبختی را برنمیتابد و به سفری بیبازگشت میرود). فورنیه در سال 1914، یک سال بعد از نگارش رمان مون بزرگ در جبهه جنگ کشته و جنازهاش برای همیشه ناپدید میشود. شایعهای که در مورد نحوه مرگ اگزوپری گفته اند، سرانجام واقعی زندگی آلن فورنیه است
کاراکتر راوی و مون در این کتاب شباهت بسیاری به کاراکتر راوی و بارون در بارون درخت نشین کالوینو دارند. در هر دو کتاب آنکه مانده و وقایع را روایت میکند برادری کوچک و مطیع است و آنکه طغیان کرده و از دست رفته، برادر بزرگتر. ناگفته نماند که بنظر میرسد تمام کاراکترهای این کتاب، نه ساخته و پرداختهی نویسنده یا نتیجه نبوغ او، بلکه بخشی از شخصیت و عواطف او باشند. فورنیه گاهی در سورل حلول میکند و گاهی در مون بزرگ، گاهی در فرانتس و گاهی در ایون. در میان کاراکترها مون، فرانتس و ایون بیشترین شباهت را بههم دارند، هر سه در برزخ میان دنیای رئال و دنیای سورئال اسیرند، جایی بین خواب و بیداری، رویا و واقعیت، دنیای بیرحم و سرزمین عجایب. چنانکه خود فورنیه هم در هنگام نوشتن این رمان هنوز اسیر دنیای خیالانگیز کودکی خود است. فوریه با مرگ به رستگاری از این این برزخ دنیای میانه رسید، مانند شخصیتهای داستانش که آن ها هم هر کدام بهنحوی با سفر به یک سوی این برزخ رستگار میشوند
آنچه داستان را بسیار دوست داشتنی میکند، جنبهی نوستالژیک و به تصویر کشیدن احساسات و تفکرات دنیای کودکیهایمان است، مشترک میان همهی آنها که کودکی کردهاند، معصومیتی از دست رفته متعلق به دنیایی دور و دیگر ناموجود
پینوشت: مون بزرگ یک داستان کلاسیک نیست! داستان تنها در معنای عام یک اثر کلاسیک (اثر فاخر ملی) فرانسوی محسوب میشود وگرنه این اثر را میتوان به صراحت در جرگه آثار رمانتیک (همراه با المانهای رئالیستی) دستهبندی کرد، یک فانتزی رمانتیک در شمایل یک داستان رئال
Read
April 5, 2020I read this purely because it was recommended by Penelope Fitzgerald, in truth since she is dead this was not a personal recommendation but it was one of her books of the century as mentioned in Hermione Lee's Penelope Fitzgerald: a life.
The appeal to Fitzgerald seems clear. It is a strange little tale akin to a fable, it conjures up a dream like atmosphere, it takes the lives of adolescents with one foot in the adult world and one foot in childhood very seriously and captures their state of mind and allows it to command the story, perhaps she too might have noticed that it is at once shy of and explicit about adult sex and sexuality, with characters who are running, but whether towards it or away from it they could not say . In a final classic Fitzgerald touch it has an ambiguous ending which depending on your point of view can be read as more unhappy than happy - (if you are really optimistic you might find the glass of happiness certainly half full).
It reminded me of a countryside version of Wedekind's play Spring Awakening, or to express it differently it is roughly mid way between Peter Pan and Logan's Run. It also dug out memories for me of Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, and as I have read, the story is very similar to that of the slightly later The Great Gatsby just in that case the story is played out by people who are adults in years.
The story relies a lot on the grossly improbable, but sinking into the atmosphere of the story these I found acceptable and they did not make me laugh though some of the improbabilities are quite silly - one boy does not recognise another who he is sitting in the same classroom with simply because the other boy has a bandage round his forehead - and not like the invisible man - just a single strip of bandage. Such a dasterdly mastery of disguise!
Anyhow the tale is narrated by the son of a village school master, when one day Le Grand Meaules - a big strapping adventurous boy - joins the school. All the boys are in awe of him if not at least a little in love with him. Le Grand Meaules - or Augustin by first name is the opposite of the narrator Francois, tall, strong, and outgoing compared to the narrator with his gammy knee who barely is bold enough to leave his house. Augustin casually takes a break from school one day and vanishes for three days (that's the kind of boy he is) when he comes back he relates a strange adventure that swallows up the emotional lives of both Augustin and Francois.
The story seems to be constructed from mirrors, Augustin and Francois are mirror images of each other, and the relationship between Augustin and Yvonne is the mirror image of that between Franz and Valentine. The mirror image is maybe the central idea of the book as characters gaze with longing on something that they can no longer touch: their past, indeed as readers we know that each day carries them further from the moments of perfection that they could not entirely enter into at he time - like those knights of the Round table who caught sight of the Holy Grail and don't know what question they are supposed to ask.
In short this is an utterly Romantic tale of longing, loss and impossibility, the lost, or departing, world of childhood, a literal estate that is nearby, mysterious, and almost impossible to find. It is compellingly dreamy, but WWI is just round the corner and will provide a harsh awakening.
The appeal to Fitzgerald seems clear. It is a strange little tale akin to a fable, it conjures up a dream like atmosphere, it takes the lives of adolescents with one foot in the adult world and one foot in childhood very seriously and captures their state of mind and allows it to command the story, perhaps she too might have noticed that it is at once shy of and explicit about adult sex and sexuality, with characters who are running, but whether towards it or away from it they could not say . In a final classic Fitzgerald touch it has an ambiguous ending which depending on your point of view can be read as more unhappy than happy - (if you are really optimistic you might find the glass of happiness certainly half full).
It reminded me of a countryside version of Wedekind's play Spring Awakening, or to express it differently it is roughly mid way between Peter Pan and Logan's Run. It also dug out memories for me of Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, and as I have read, the story is very similar to that of the slightly later The Great Gatsby just in that case the story is played out by people who are adults in years.
The story relies a lot on the grossly improbable, but sinking into the atmosphere of the story these I found acceptable and they did not make me laugh though some of the improbabilities are quite silly - one boy does not recognise another who he is sitting in the same classroom with simply because the other boy has a bandage round his forehead - and not like the invisible man - just a single strip of bandage. Such a dasterdly mastery of disguise!
Anyhow the tale is narrated by the son of a village school master, when one day Le Grand Meaules - a big strapping adventurous boy - joins the school. All the boys are in awe of him if not at least a little in love with him. Le Grand Meaules - or Augustin by first name is the opposite of the narrator Francois, tall, strong, and outgoing compared to the narrator with his gammy knee who barely is bold enough to leave his house. Augustin casually takes a break from school one day and vanishes for three days (that's the kind of boy he is) when he comes back he relates a strange adventure that swallows up the emotional lives of both Augustin and Francois.
The story seems to be constructed from mirrors, Augustin and Francois are mirror images of each other, and the relationship between Augustin and Yvonne is the mirror image of that between Franz and Valentine. The mirror image is maybe the central idea of the book as characters gaze with longing on something that they can no longer touch: their past, indeed as readers we know that each day carries them further from the moments of perfection that they could not entirely enter into at he time - like those knights of the Round table who caught sight of the Holy Grail and don't know what question they are supposed to ask.
In short this is an utterly Romantic tale of longing, loss and impossibility, the lost, or departing, world of childhood, a literal estate that is nearby, mysterious, and almost impossible to find. It is compellingly dreamy, but WWI is just round the corner and will provide a harsh awakening.
November 17, 2014
When I was about 10 I spent what felt like an entire summer playing in a marsh with a friend. The marsh was a gradual discovery. Each day, as our courage increased, we penetrated deeper into it, crawling and hopping from tree mound to tree mound, until we had mapped out quite a large area in our imaginations. And of course we were the only two who knew about it. This area of the marsh became our sprawling fort, with significant crossings and islands given names from my primary reading matter of the time, The Book of Lists. So the longest "bridge” (a downed tree) was dubbed Verrazano Narrows, and the crossing that required the longest leap was called Bob Beamon Way. There was also Edison’s Isle, where we found a light bulb; and The Sewer, where we pissed. Every day I dreamed about this place, and every day that I could I returned to it. It was a wonderful time in a secret world.
By the next summer my friend had moved, but that didn’t deter me; I returned to it alone. But just one year had wrought irreversible changes – plants were so overgrown I couldn’t even find my way in, let alone make it back to Edison’s Isle. I was devastated, but being 11 or so I quickly recovered and moved on to other adventures, though in many ways the adventures in that secret marsh were never replicated, never surpassed, so it became a place in my imagination, a fertile place representing the unselfconscious mysteries and adventures of youth.
Many years later I spoke to this friend, now far along in a life fairly antithetical to my own, and I mentioned the marsh, hoping to recapture some of its magic by tapping into his memories, but he had little or no recollection of the place. I was newly devastated, as I had wanted for years to ask him about it, and I felt a hard lump of sadness drop to the bottom of my being, but in some ways this sadness fortified even further the magical significance of the marsh in my imagination.
This book, too, is about a “secret domain” discovered by chance and never found again, and the spell the experience casts on the children involved. But its secret domain was also populated by a beautiful girl (the children being not 10 or 11 but 15 or 16), and so there’s the added tragic element of lost love permeating Le Grand Meaulnes’ life, infecting it with an ideal that can never be realized, making of him a wanderer on this earth.
But what is it about this book that is so affecting, so haunting and magical? The subject matter, sure, is one reason: the end of youth as precipitated by life-long obsession with unattainable beauty and mystery encountered in one’s youth, bringing on the realization that one peaked early, that those early wonders will never be experienced again. This is always a powerful theme, and in one way or another is the emotional substratum of much literature. But why does this book in particular pack such a wallop? I have now read it twice, the first time being many years ago, but I still don’t know exactly. One possibility that struck me this time is the odd hybrid nature of the sensibility expressed in its pages. There’s an enchanted wistfulness, a Romantic sensitivity to very delicate natural mysteries and adolescent relations, but coupled with this is an almost blunt and matter-of-fact rusticity that is somewhat detached. In other words the sensibility is that of a sensitive rustic intellectual; a character type I always find intriguing. And then there’s the writing itself which had every opportunity to launch into floweriness and mystical indulgence, yet didn’t, instead it steered a steady course of basic description, which enhanced even more the aching unresolved mystery of the subject matter.
I love this book and its impact on me was no less than the first time around, and upon finishing it I’m having some difficulty moving on to another novel.
By the next summer my friend had moved, but that didn’t deter me; I returned to it alone. But just one year had wrought irreversible changes – plants were so overgrown I couldn’t even find my way in, let alone make it back to Edison’s Isle. I was devastated, but being 11 or so I quickly recovered and moved on to other adventures, though in many ways the adventures in that secret marsh were never replicated, never surpassed, so it became a place in my imagination, a fertile place representing the unselfconscious mysteries and adventures of youth.
Many years later I spoke to this friend, now far along in a life fairly antithetical to my own, and I mentioned the marsh, hoping to recapture some of its magic by tapping into his memories, but he had little or no recollection of the place. I was newly devastated, as I had wanted for years to ask him about it, and I felt a hard lump of sadness drop to the bottom of my being, but in some ways this sadness fortified even further the magical significance of the marsh in my imagination.
This book, too, is about a “secret domain” discovered by chance and never found again, and the spell the experience casts on the children involved. But its secret domain was also populated by a beautiful girl (the children being not 10 or 11 but 15 or 16), and so there’s the added tragic element of lost love permeating Le Grand Meaulnes’ life, infecting it with an ideal that can never be realized, making of him a wanderer on this earth.
But what is it about this book that is so affecting, so haunting and magical? The subject matter, sure, is one reason: the end of youth as precipitated by life-long obsession with unattainable beauty and mystery encountered in one’s youth, bringing on the realization that one peaked early, that those early wonders will never be experienced again. This is always a powerful theme, and in one way or another is the emotional substratum of much literature. But why does this book in particular pack such a wallop? I have now read it twice, the first time being many years ago, but I still don’t know exactly. One possibility that struck me this time is the odd hybrid nature of the sensibility expressed in its pages. There’s an enchanted wistfulness, a Romantic sensitivity to very delicate natural mysteries and adolescent relations, but coupled with this is an almost blunt and matter-of-fact rusticity that is somewhat detached. In other words the sensibility is that of a sensitive rustic intellectual; a character type I always find intriguing. And then there’s the writing itself which had every opportunity to launch into floweriness and mystical indulgence, yet didn’t, instead it steered a steady course of basic description, which enhanced even more the aching unresolved mystery of the subject matter.
I love this book and its impact on me was no less than the first time around, and upon finishing it I’m having some difficulty moving on to another novel.
January 17, 2023
[Revised, pictures and shelves added]
I read the Centenary Edition of the French classic Le Grand Meaulnes, a coming-of-age story of a boy and the companion he looks up to, nicknamed Le Grand Meaulnes. We have all the usual boyhood stuff of bullies, juvenile delinquent episodes, boring school days, awkwardness around girls.
One day Le Grand Meaulnes, very much the leader, while our narrator is the follower, gets lost and finds himself in an exotic costumed adventure in a fairyland, beautiful girl and all. The story becomes a search for this Lost Domain and the lost girl.
The main theme is shifting memory, and I thought at first that theme in French novels was owed to Proust, but Proust’s famous works started to be published the same year, so there must be an earlier source for the concern for memory that pervades many modern French novels. (And, of course, many novels in general.)
The book has a lot of local color of rural France – place names are real or barely disguised. The schoolhouse of the story is at the author’s birthplace in La Chapelle-d'Angillon in central France.
You might want to read the Introduction after the book because it gives away much of the plot.
This is the only novel published by this author. Surprisingly, the novel is semi-autobiographical. Alain-Fournier, the author, spent much of his life looking for a girl he fell in love with at first sight. It was a short life because he was killed in WW I, at age 28, the same year the book was published, 1914.
Top photo of a French country estate from nytimes.com
Photo of the author from Wikipedia
I read the Centenary Edition of the French classic Le Grand Meaulnes, a coming-of-age story of a boy and the companion he looks up to, nicknamed Le Grand Meaulnes. We have all the usual boyhood stuff of bullies, juvenile delinquent episodes, boring school days, awkwardness around girls.
One day Le Grand Meaulnes, very much the leader, while our narrator is the follower, gets lost and finds himself in an exotic costumed adventure in a fairyland, beautiful girl and all. The story becomes a search for this Lost Domain and the lost girl.
The main theme is shifting memory, and I thought at first that theme in French novels was owed to Proust, but Proust’s famous works started to be published the same year, so there must be an earlier source for the concern for memory that pervades many modern French novels. (And, of course, many novels in general.)
The book has a lot of local color of rural France – place names are real or barely disguised. The schoolhouse of the story is at the author’s birthplace in La Chapelle-d'Angillon in central France.
You might want to read the Introduction after the book because it gives away much of the plot.
This is the only novel published by this author. Surprisingly, the novel is semi-autobiographical. Alain-Fournier, the author, spent much of his life looking for a girl he fell in love with at first sight. It was a short life because he was killed in WW I, at age 28, the same year the book was published, 1914.
Top photo of a French country estate from nytimes.com
Photo of the author from Wikipedia
May 9, 2024
A timeless coming of age story, which despite being told from a 15 year olds perspective is full of melancholy and fear of not being able to overcome the happiness of youth
But can the past come to life again?
This classic, which inspired The Great Gatsby has a lot of crying, emotional men and I found it remarkably quite like Wuthering Heights in terms of extreme feelings and mood swings characters go through. The narrator, 15 year old, is the child of two teachers. He grows enamored by a visitor, the Le Grand Meaulnes from the title. An almost magical wedding crashing scene in the countryside of France and a battle for school ground popularity and dominance unfold, followed by yearning and a glimpse of an answer to what happens to someone when he gets everything he wants.
Teens trying suicide in this pre-World War I classic was something I hadn't expected.
I was drawn to this book by how the main character in David Mitchell his coming of age novel Black Swan Green is inspired by this book, and a lot of the themes about growing up and finding oneself beyond the confines of school and popularity (and even gypsies making an appearance) come back.
The key question that is haunting Le Grand seems to be How to surpass happiness of youth, which gives the latter parts of the book a wistful, melancholy feel But can the past come to life again?, almost like a quarter-life crisis avant le lettre.
The main character really is just a terminal to tell Grand Meaulnes his story, which besides an attitude of dread in respect to growing up, and what it means to have everything one thought one desired (quite a forward theme in 1913) also features a lot of side effects of too much pride: So much pride had ended in this?
Reproach him for absurdly playing the romantic hero is something that goes through the mind of the narrator, but he decides against it. This is a kindness, with so much potential unrealised in Le Grand Meaulnes, a subtle capturing of the impending, rough awakening which was set to unfold in the real world in 1914. Rich, with overtures of The Phantom of the Opera and Charles Dickens in terms of family relationships, dramatic confrontations and coincidences driving the narrative forward, while the modern world and disillusionment are never far away. Sadly we haven't more of Alain-Fournier his work to enjoy.
But can the past come to life again?
This classic, which inspired The Great Gatsby has a lot of crying, emotional men and I found it remarkably quite like Wuthering Heights in terms of extreme feelings and mood swings characters go through. The narrator, 15 year old, is the child of two teachers. He grows enamored by a visitor, the Le Grand Meaulnes from the title. An almost magical wedding crashing scene in the countryside of France and a battle for school ground popularity and dominance unfold, followed by yearning and a glimpse of an answer to what happens to someone when he gets everything he wants.
Teens trying suicide in this pre-World War I classic was something I hadn't expected.
I was drawn to this book by how the main character in David Mitchell his coming of age novel Black Swan Green is inspired by this book, and a lot of the themes about growing up and finding oneself beyond the confines of school and popularity (and even gypsies making an appearance) come back.
The key question that is haunting Le Grand seems to be How to surpass happiness of youth, which gives the latter parts of the book a wistful, melancholy feel But can the past come to life again?, almost like a quarter-life crisis avant le lettre.
The main character really is just a terminal to tell Grand Meaulnes his story, which besides an attitude of dread in respect to growing up, and what it means to have everything one thought one desired (quite a forward theme in 1913) also features a lot of side effects of too much pride: So much pride had ended in this?
Reproach him for absurdly playing the romantic hero is something that goes through the mind of the narrator, but he decides against it. This is a kindness, with so much potential unrealised in Le Grand Meaulnes, a subtle capturing of the impending, rough awakening which was set to unfold in the real world in 1914. Rich, with overtures of The Phantom of the Opera and Charles Dickens in terms of family relationships, dramatic confrontations and coincidences driving the narrative forward, while the modern world and disillusionment are never far away. Sadly we haven't more of Alain-Fournier his work to enjoy.
March 23, 2020
‘But you have read Madame Bovary?’
(I’d heard of the book.) ‘No.’
‘Not even,’ she looked ratty now, ‘Hermann Hesse?’
‘No.’ Unwisely I tried to dampen Madame Crommelynck’s disgust. ‘I only really did English literature at school…’
‘“English”? Australia was part of the English Empire, England is European! No French? No German? You are Australian, you illiterate monkey of puberty! Thomas Mann, Rilke, Gogol! Proust, Bulgakov, Victor Hugo! This should be your culture, your inheritance, your skeleton! You are ignorant even of Kafka?’
I flinched. ‘I’ve heard of him. I’ve even discussed him on Goodreads’
“Goodreads?” she shrieked ‘This?’ She held up Le Grand Meaulnes.
‘Yes, I’ve just finished it.’
‘Is one of my bibles. I read it every year. So!’ She frisbeed her copy at me, hard. It hurt. ‘Alain-Fournier is your first true master. He is nostalgic and tragic and enchantible and he aches and you would have ached too and, best of everything, he is true.’
As I opened it up a cloud of foreign words blew out. Il arriva chez nous un dimanche de novembre 189…
‘Your copy. It’s in French!’
‘Translations are incourteous between Europeans.’ She detected the guilt in my silence. ‘Oho? Australian schoolboys in the less than enlightened 1970s never read a book in a foreign language?’
‘We never had French at school…’ (Madame Crommelynck made me go on.) ‘…but we had Citizenship Education.’ I said brightly.
‘Pfffffffffffft! Citizenship Education? What is that? When I was thirteen I spoke French and Dutch fluently! I could converse in German, in English, in Italian! Ackkk, for your schoolmasters, for your minister of education, execution is too good! Is not even arrogance! It is a baby who is too primitive to know its nappy is stinking and bursting! You Australians, Queenslanders especially, you deserve the government of Monster Joh Bjelke Peterson! I curse you with twenty years of Bjelke Peterson! Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is prison! You have a French dictionary and a grammar, anyhow?’
‘No but I have read and now finished Le Grand Meaulnes as translated into English by Frank Davidson’ ‘And you like?’ Madame Crommelynck asked. ‘Kinda’ I said.
“”Kinda, kinda’” Madame Crommelynck sneered. ‘Is that this strine that you antipodean halfwits speak? What do you mean Kinda?’ ‘It all seemed kinda clunky in parts of the translation’ I replied and caught the outrage in Madame Crommelynck eyes. ‘And the story was just a little too sweet and cloying, saccharine one might say. For my tastes anyway but I do understa…’
‘sweet, cloying, saccharine?’ roared the good Madame “out of my sight now and read….and read… read that David Mitchell……. Onzin!”
As I slunk away feeling a great sense of guilt that I could only give a French classic 3 stars I heard an exasperated ‘Ackkk’ deep in the throat of Madame Crommelynck.
(I’d heard of the book.) ‘No.’
‘Not even,’ she looked ratty now, ‘Hermann Hesse?’
‘No.’ Unwisely I tried to dampen Madame Crommelynck’s disgust. ‘I only really did English literature at school…’
‘“English”? Australia was part of the English Empire, England is European! No French? No German? You are Australian, you illiterate monkey of puberty! Thomas Mann, Rilke, Gogol! Proust, Bulgakov, Victor Hugo! This should be your culture, your inheritance, your skeleton! You are ignorant even of Kafka?’
I flinched. ‘I’ve heard of him. I’ve even discussed him on Goodreads’
“Goodreads?” she shrieked ‘This?’ She held up Le Grand Meaulnes.
‘Yes, I’ve just finished it.’
‘Is one of my bibles. I read it every year. So!’ She frisbeed her copy at me, hard. It hurt. ‘Alain-Fournier is your first true master. He is nostalgic and tragic and enchantible and he aches and you would have ached too and, best of everything, he is true.’
As I opened it up a cloud of foreign words blew out. Il arriva chez nous un dimanche de novembre 189…
‘Your copy. It’s in French!’
‘Translations are incourteous between Europeans.’ She detected the guilt in my silence. ‘Oho? Australian schoolboys in the less than enlightened 1970s never read a book in a foreign language?’
‘We never had French at school…’ (Madame Crommelynck made me go on.) ‘…but we had Citizenship Education.’ I said brightly.
‘Pfffffffffffft! Citizenship Education? What is that? When I was thirteen I spoke French and Dutch fluently! I could converse in German, in English, in Italian! Ackkk, for your schoolmasters, for your minister of education, execution is too good! Is not even arrogance! It is a baby who is too primitive to know its nappy is stinking and bursting! You Australians, Queenslanders especially, you deserve the government of Monster Joh Bjelke Peterson! I curse you with twenty years of Bjelke Peterson! Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is prison! You have a French dictionary and a grammar, anyhow?’
‘No but I have read and now finished Le Grand Meaulnes as translated into English by Frank Davidson’ ‘And you like?’ Madame Crommelynck asked. ‘Kinda’ I said.
“”Kinda, kinda’” Madame Crommelynck sneered. ‘Is that this strine that you antipodean halfwits speak? What do you mean Kinda?’ ‘It all seemed kinda clunky in parts of the translation’ I replied and caught the outrage in Madame Crommelynck eyes. ‘And the story was just a little too sweet and cloying, saccharine one might say. For my tastes anyway but I do understa…’
‘sweet, cloying, saccharine?’ roared the good Madame “out of my sight now and read….and read… read that David Mitchell……. Onzin!”
As I slunk away feeling a great sense of guilt that I could only give a French classic 3 stars I heard an exasperated ‘Ackkk’ deep in the throat of Madame Crommelynck.
May 17, 2024
Título original: «Le Grand Meaulnes»
Alain-Fournier nasceu em França. Era amigo íntimo de Jacques Rivière, Henri Régnier, Francis Jammes e Jules Laforgue; foi, no entanto, Charles Péguy quem o influenciou a escrever:«Haverás de ir longe, Fournier, e haverás de lembrar que fui eu que o disse.»
Numa carta dirigida a Jacques Rivière, Fournier escreveu:
Encontrei a minha estrada de Damasco: pus-me simplesmente a escrever, directamente, como nas minhas cartas, em pequenos parágrafos, densos e voluptuosos
O caminho de Damasco é um trajecto que cada um terá um dia de fazer para o bem ou para o mal: não há como deixar de percorrê-lo.
As personagens deste livro também percorrem o bosque, a floresta poética onde decorre grande parte da acção em busca do tempo das ilusões perdidas.
A escrita é belíssima mas o ambiente misterioso e quase onírico dificultou-me a leitura; mas a seu favor a opção por um narrador não protagonista, François Seurel, à semelhança do Grande Gatsby, encantou-me. Na vida e na literatura tenho um fascínio por amizades masculinas e pelas recordações do passado (alguns capítulos estão escritos no presente do indicativo pois algumas memórias da infância e da adolescência estão tão claras na memória que podem ser transformadas em presente)
Num grupo de amigos há sempre um mais admirado pelas suas características pessoais.
François Surrel vivia medroso e infeliz nas instalações da Escola Primária de Sainte-Agathe onde o seu pai era simultaneamente director do Curso Superior e do Curso Médio. Num certo Domingo de Novembro de 189...receberam um aluno interno, Augustin Meaulnes que rapidamente começou a ser tratado pelo Grande Meaulnes - foi o começo de uma nova vida para François. O grande Meaulnes tinha ar de viajante, aventureiro, triste e distraido e gerou em todos uma sensação de prazer e curiosidade. Um dia esteve desaparecido durante três dias e conheceu uma rapariga, Yvonne de Galais, numa mansão para onde (depois do seu regresso à escola) não sabe o caminho.
Viajante é talvez a palavra mais usada neste livro...se encontrar aquela mansão só contará com tempos felizes.
É difícil ser adolescente ou jovem adulto e pensar que a felicidade está próxima e que basta caminhar para a alcançar (faltam sempre algumas léguas...nada é tão perto como se pensa); há frustrações, medos,desolações, angústias mas também camaradagem, amores, amizades e remorsos.
«A nossa aventura terminou. O inverno deste ano está morto, sepultado. Talvez ao morrermos, talvez então a morte, apenas ela, nos possa mostrar o significado, o seguimento e o fim desta aventura falhada.»
«Le Grand Meaulnes» transporta-nos para um mundo de sonhos, buscas de amores perdidos e nostalgia da juventude. A viagem de Augustin Meaulnes é repleta de altos e baixos. Não direi que é um fracasso absoluto mas tomou decisões que o afastaram dos seus desejos iniciais como comprovado no epílogo. Quem nunca? Há amores vividos pela metade.
Alain-Fournier nasceu em França. Era amigo íntimo de Jacques Rivière, Henri Régnier, Francis Jammes e Jules Laforgue; foi, no entanto, Charles Péguy quem o influenciou a escrever:«Haverás de ir longe, Fournier, e haverás de lembrar que fui eu que o disse.»
Numa carta dirigida a Jacques Rivière, Fournier escreveu:
Encontrei a minha estrada de Damasco: pus-me simplesmente a escrever, directamente, como nas minhas cartas, em pequenos parágrafos, densos e voluptuosos
O caminho de Damasco é um trajecto que cada um terá um dia de fazer para o bem ou para o mal: não há como deixar de percorrê-lo.
As personagens deste livro também percorrem o bosque, a floresta poética onde decorre grande parte da acção em busca do tempo das ilusões perdidas.
A escrita é belíssima mas o ambiente misterioso e quase onírico dificultou-me a leitura; mas a seu favor a opção por um narrador não protagonista, François Seurel, à semelhança do Grande Gatsby, encantou-me. Na vida e na literatura tenho um fascínio por amizades masculinas e pelas recordações do passado (alguns capítulos estão escritos no presente do indicativo pois algumas memórias da infância e da adolescência estão tão claras na memória que podem ser transformadas em presente)
Num grupo de amigos há sempre um mais admirado pelas suas características pessoais.
François Surrel vivia medroso e infeliz nas instalações da Escola Primária de Sainte-Agathe onde o seu pai era simultaneamente director do Curso Superior e do Curso Médio. Num certo Domingo de Novembro de 189...receberam um aluno interno, Augustin Meaulnes que rapidamente começou a ser tratado pelo Grande Meaulnes - foi o começo de uma nova vida para François. O grande Meaulnes tinha ar de viajante, aventureiro, triste e distraido e gerou em todos uma sensação de prazer e curiosidade. Um dia esteve desaparecido durante três dias e conheceu uma rapariga, Yvonne de Galais, numa mansão para onde (depois do seu regresso à escola) não sabe o caminho.
Viajante é talvez a palavra mais usada neste livro...se encontrar aquela mansão só contará com tempos felizes.
É difícil ser adolescente ou jovem adulto e pensar que a felicidade está próxima e que basta caminhar para a alcançar (faltam sempre algumas léguas...nada é tão perto como se pensa); há frustrações, medos,desolações, angústias mas também camaradagem, amores, amizades e remorsos.
«A nossa aventura terminou. O inverno deste ano está morto, sepultado. Talvez ao morrermos, talvez então a morte, apenas ela, nos possa mostrar o significado, o seguimento e o fim desta aventura falhada.»
«Le Grand Meaulnes» transporta-nos para um mundo de sonhos, buscas de amores perdidos e nostalgia da juventude. A viagem de Augustin Meaulnes é repleta de altos e baixos. Não direi que é um fracasso absoluto mas tomou decisões que o afastaram dos seus desejos iniciais como comprovado no epílogo. Quem nunca? Há amores vividos pela metade.
July 11, 2019
Le Grand Meaulnes = The Lost Estate, Alain-Fournier
Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (3 October 1886 – 22 September 1914), a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature. Le Grand Meaulnes is the only novel by French author Alain-Fournier, who was killed in the first month of World War I. The novel, published in 1913, a year before the author's death, is somewhat biographical – especially the name of the heroine Yvonne, for whom he had a doomed infatuation in Paris. Fifteen-year-old François Seurel narrates the story of his friendship with seventeen-year-old Augustin Meaulnes as Meaulnes searches for his lost love. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood.
عنوانها: دوست من مون؛ مون بزرگ؛ مُلن بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1970 میلادی
عنوان: مُلن بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: محمدمهدی داهی؛ زیر نظر: احسان یارشاطر؛ تهران، بنگاه ترجمه و نشر کتاب، 1343؛ در 359 ص؛ چاپ دوم 1347؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، انتشارات علمی فرهنگی، 1394؛ در هفده، و 292 ص؛ شابک: 9786001219573؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسوی - سده 20 م
عنوان: دوست من مون؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: مهدی سحابی؛ بابل، کتابسرای بابل، 1368؛ در 272 ص؛ چاپ چهارم 1368؛
عنوان: مون بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: مهدی سحابی؛ تهران، نشر مرکز، 1381؛ در هشت و 293 ص؛ شابک: 9643056600؛ چاپ دوم 1389؛ چاپ سوم 1392؛
عنوان: مون بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: فائژه خداوردی؛ ویراستار: فرناز ساسانی؛ تهران، کتابسرای وصال؛ 1398؛ در 120 ص؛ مصور، شابک: 9786226454148؛
مولن بزرگ یا «مون بزرگ» تنها اثر داستانی نویسنده فرانسوی: «آلن فورنیه» است. راوی داستان، نوجوانی دبیرستانی است، که قصه ی دوستش «اگوستن مون» را، بازگو میکند. او در جستجوی عشق خویش، در مکانی گمشده است. این کتاب برای استواری سبک، و ساختار داستان، و پیشرفت آهسته ی رمز و راز، و رخدادهای فوق طبیعی، که رنگی از متافیزیک شاعرانه نیز، چاشنی آن است، کتابی کاملاً پخته و هنرمندانه به شمار میرود. «مولن بزرگ»�� سرشار از رؤیاها، و جهانهای جوانی ست؛ و به گونه ای خیال انگیز، رویاهای سالهای جوانی، و میل ناشکیبایی انسانها، در به دست آوردن، و هستی بخشیدن به رؤیاهای خویش را، به نگاره میکشد. این رمان در میان یکصد کتاب سده ی بیست میلادی «لوموند»، که فهرستی از کتابهای برگزیده سده ی بیستم میلادی ست، در رتبه نهم آرام گرفته. «مولن بزرگ» نخستین بار در سال 1343 هجری خورشیدی ، با عنوان «مُلن بزرگ»؛ توسط جناب آقای «محمدمهدی داهی»، به فارسی ترجمه شد. جناب آقای: «مهدی سحابی» نیز، این کتاب را بار دیگر ترجمه کرده اند، که در چاپ نخست به سال 1368 هجری خورشیدی، با عنوان: «دوست من، مون»، و در چا��های بعدی با عنوان: «مون بزرگ»، منتشر شده است. ا. شربیانی
Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (3 October 1886 – 22 September 1914), a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature. Le Grand Meaulnes is the only novel by French author Alain-Fournier, who was killed in the first month of World War I. The novel, published in 1913, a year before the author's death, is somewhat biographical – especially the name of the heroine Yvonne, for whom he had a doomed infatuation in Paris. Fifteen-year-old François Seurel narrates the story of his friendship with seventeen-year-old Augustin Meaulnes as Meaulnes searches for his lost love. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood.
عنوانها: دوست من مون؛ مون بزرگ؛ مُلن بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1970 میلادی
عنوان: مُلن بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: محمدمهدی داهی؛ زیر نظر: احسان یارشاطر؛ تهران، بنگاه ترجمه و نشر کتاب، 1343؛ در 359 ص؛ چاپ دوم 1347؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، انتشارات علمی فرهنگی، 1394؛ در هفده، و 292 ص؛ شابک: 9786001219573؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسوی - سده 20 م
عنوان: دوست من مون؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: مهدی سحابی؛ بابل، کتابسرای بابل، 1368؛ در 272 ص؛ چاپ چهارم 1368؛
عنوان: مون بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: مهدی سحابی؛ تهران، نشر مرکز، 1381؛ در هشت و 293 ص؛ شابک: 9643056600؛ چاپ دوم 1389؛ چاپ سوم 1392؛
عنوان: مون بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: فائژه خداوردی؛ ویراستار: فرناز ساسانی؛ تهران، کتابسرای وصال؛ 1398؛ در 120 ص؛ مصور، شابک: 9786226454148؛
مولن بزرگ یا «مون بزرگ» تنها اثر داستانی نویسنده فرانسوی: «آلن فورنیه» است. راوی داستان، نوجوانی دبیرستانی است، که قصه ی دوستش «اگوستن مون» را، بازگو میکند. او در جستجوی عشق خویش، در مکانی گمشده است. این کتاب برای استواری سبک، و ساختار داستان، و پیشرفت آهسته ی رمز و راز، و رخدادهای فوق طبیعی، که رنگی از متافیزیک شاعرانه نیز، چاشنی آن است، کتابی کاملاً پخته و هنرمندانه به شمار میرود. «مولن بزرگ»�� سرشار از رؤیاها، و جهانهای جوانی ست؛ و به گونه ای خیال انگیز، رویاهای سالهای جوانی، و میل ناشکیبایی انسانها، در به دست آوردن، و هستی بخشیدن به رؤیاهای خویش را، به نگاره میکشد. این رمان در میان یکصد کتاب سده ی بیست میلادی «لوموند»، که فهرستی از کتابهای برگزیده سده ی بیستم میلادی ست، در رتبه نهم آرام گرفته. «مولن بزرگ» نخستین بار در سال 1343 هجری خورشیدی ، با عنوان «مُلن بزرگ»؛ توسط جناب آقای «محمدمهدی داهی»، به فارسی ترجمه شد. جناب آقای: «مهدی سحابی» نیز، این کتاب را بار دیگر ترجمه کرده اند، که در چاپ نخست به سال 1368 هجری خورشیدی، با عنوان: «دوست من، مون»، و در چا��های بعدی با عنوان: «مون بزرگ»، منتشر شده است. ا. شربیانی
February 19, 2022
واقعا خوندنِ این کتاب یه توهینه😂
واقعا دوس ندارم که کتابارو دوس نداشته باشم، اول میخواستم به این ۳ بدم ولی واقعا حقش نیست حتی یه ستارم زیادیشه
خب اول از همه بگم که این کتابو تو یه ریدینگ اسلامپ طولانی شروع کردم، یعنی خرداد۱۴۰۰شروعش کردم...شاید بپرسین خب چرا انقد طولش دادی؟ اول اینکه وسطِ خوندنش ایام امتحاناتم شروع شد و حضوری بود...خب کی میتونه کتاب بخونه؟باید یه سااااال درسِ نخونده رو جمع میکردم:)))
بعدشم که خواستم بخونم ولی حوصلم نکشید، بعد دیگه امروز دیدم توی بخش در حال خوندنه، اعصابم خورد شد(چون بخش کارنتلی ریدینگ مرتب نبود😦) و آوردمش که تمومش کنم اینو
حقیقتش از بخش اول کتاب خوشم میومد، شیطنتاشون خیلی جالب بود، اصن همه چیِ بخش اول کتاب خیلی خوب بود، برای من یکی که جالب بود
ولی واقعا بعدِ اینکه بزرگتر شدن واقعا مسخره شد داستانشون:/
پایان بندیشم که افتصاح(من میگم افتضاح شما بخونید فاجعه، وحشتناک، رقت انگیز)
هعیی کاش انقد فاصله نمیوفتاد بین خوندن این...دیگه اشکال نداره جوانی است و خامی🗿😂
همین که بالاخره تموم شد خودش یه نعمته...
واقعا دوس ندارم که کتابارو دوس نداشته باشم، اول میخواستم به این ۳ بدم ولی واقعا حقش نیست حتی یه ستارم زیادیشه
خب اول از همه بگم که این کتابو تو یه ریدینگ اسلامپ طولانی شروع کردم، یعنی خرداد۱۴۰۰شروعش کردم...شاید بپرسین خب چرا انقد طولش دادی؟ اول اینکه وسطِ خوندنش ایام امتحاناتم شروع شد و حضوری بود...خب کی میتونه کتاب بخونه؟باید یه سااااال درسِ نخونده رو جمع میکردم:)))
بعدشم که خواستم بخونم ولی حوصلم نکشید، بعد دیگه امروز دیدم توی بخش در حال خوندنه، اعصابم خورد شد(چون بخش کارنتلی ریدینگ مرتب نبود😦) و آوردمش که تمومش کنم اینو
حقیقتش از بخش اول کتاب خوشم میومد، شیطنتاشون خیلی جالب بود، اصن همه چیِ بخش اول کتاب خیلی خوب بود، برای من یکی که جالب بود
ولی واقعا بعدِ اینکه بزرگتر شدن واقعا مسخره شد داستانشون:/
پایان بندیشم که افتصاح(من میگم افتضاح شما بخونید فاجعه، وحشتناک، رقت انگیز)
هعیی کاش انقد فاصله نمیوفتاد بین خوندن این...دیگه اشکال نداره جوانی است و خامی🗿😂
همین که بالاخره تموم شد خودش یه نعمته...
October 2, 2017
دوستانِ گرانقدر، داستانِ این کتاب از زبانِ پسری به نامِ <فرانسوا سورِل> روایت میشود... فرانسوا در روستایی کوچک و زیبا به نامِ "سولونی" زندگی میکند و پدر و مادرش آموزگارانِ مدرسهٔ همان روستا هستند... شخصیت دیگری به نامِ <اگوستن مولن> نیز در داستان حضور پیدا میکند که او نیز آموزگار است و همکارِ پدر و مادر فرانسوا میباشد و از طرفی در منزلِ آنها نیز زندگی میکند... از آنجایی که مولن شخصیتی جالب و عجیب دارد و اخلاق و آدابِ وی خوب و نیکوست، از این رو مردم او را <مولن بزرگ> صدا میزنند
روزی از روزهای سرد زمستانی، مولن راهِ خود را گم کرده و آنقدر سرگردان میشود که ناخودآگاه به جایی میرسد که در آن جشنی برگزار شده است و همه ماسک بر چهره زده اند و رقص و پایکوبی میکنند... مولن به همراه چند تن دیگر سوار بر قایق شده و از تماشای جشن و منظره هایِ اطرافِ رودخانه لذت میبرد... در همان جشن، مولن با دختری زیباروی به نامِ <ایون دوگاله> آشنا میشود و یک دل نه صد دل، عاشق او شده و به وی دل میبازد.... پس از پایانِ جشن، همه به سمتِ کاخ کوچکی رفته تا در مراسمِ نامزدیِ <والانتین> شرکت کنند... امّا پس از گذشتِ ساعتی، همه متوجه میشوند که <والانتین> ناپدید شده است... همان لحظه همه جا تاریک شده و صدایِ شلیک به گوش میرسد
مولن در رویا فرو رفته و زمانی که به دنبالِ راه رسیدن به شهرِ "سنت آگات" میباشد، ناگهان در تاریکی <فرانس دوگاله> را میبیند که به دنبالِ نامزدش والانتین میگردد.. فرانس زمانی که ناامید شده است قصد خودکشی داشته که تیر به خطا رفته و آن صدایِ شلیکی که در تاریکیِ جشن شنیده شده بود، همان صدایِ تفنگِ فرانس بوده است... لازم به ذکر است که فرانس دوگاله برادرِ ایون دوگاله، همان دخترِ زیباست که معشوقهٔ مولن نیز میباشد
مولن پس از چند روز، با ایون دوگاله، ازدواج میکند و چند ماه بعد، همراه با برادر زنش یعنی فرانس، سفری را آغاز میکنند تا بلکه والانتین را در این جستجو، بیابند
عزیزانم، بهتر است خودتان این کتاب را بخوانید و از سرنوشتِ این داستانِ پیچ در پیچ، آگاه شوید
-----------------------------------------
امیدوارم این ریویو در جهتِ شناختِ این کتاب، کافی و مفید بوده باشه
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
روزی از روزهای سرد زمستانی، مولن راهِ خود را گم کرده و آنقدر سرگردان میشود که ناخودآگاه به جایی میرسد که در آن جشنی برگزار شده است و همه ماسک بر چهره زده اند و رقص و پایکوبی میکنند... مولن به همراه چند تن دیگر سوار بر قایق شده و از تماشای جشن و منظره هایِ اطرافِ رودخانه لذت میبرد... در همان جشن، مولن با دختری زیباروی به نامِ <ایون دوگاله> آشنا میشود و یک دل نه صد دل، عاشق او شده و به وی دل میبازد.... پس از پایانِ جشن، همه به سمتِ کاخ کوچکی رفته تا در مراسمِ نامزدیِ <والانتین> شرکت کنند... امّا پس از گذشتِ ساعتی، همه متوجه میشوند که <والانتین> ناپدید شده است... همان لحظه همه جا تاریک شده و صدایِ شلیک به گوش میرسد
مولن در رویا فرو رفته و زمانی که به دنبالِ راه رسیدن به شهرِ "سنت آگات" میباشد، ناگهان در تاریکی <فرانس دوگاله> را میبیند که به دنبالِ نامزدش والانتین میگردد.. فرانس زمانی که ناامید شده است قصد خودکشی داشته که تیر به خطا رفته و آن صدایِ شلیکی که در تاریکیِ جشن شنیده شده بود، همان صدایِ تفنگِ فرانس بوده است... لازم به ذکر است که فرانس دوگاله برادرِ ایون دوگاله، همان دخترِ زیباست که معشوقهٔ مولن نیز میباشد
مولن پس از چند روز، با ایون دوگاله، ازدواج میکند و چند ماه بعد، همراه با برادر زنش یعنی فرانس، سفری را آغاز میکنند تا بلکه والانتین را در این جستجو، بیابند
عزیزانم، بهتر است خودتان این کتاب را بخوانید و از سرنوشتِ این داستانِ پیچ در پیچ، آگاه شوید
-----------------------------------------
امیدوارم این ریویو در جهتِ شناختِ این کتاب، کافی و مفید بوده باشه
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
November 21, 2020
Most French people read this book at school and a recent poll in France made it the sixth best book of the 20th century.
Unlike the average French person, I came to this story of adolescent love in my early 50s. Would the book's charms work for the older reader? The answer is an emphatic yes. It perfectly captures that magical period when emotions are at their most intense.
Le Grand Meaulnes, the protagonist, is an adventurous, charismatic wanderer who stumbles across a lost chateau where partygoers, dressed in period costumes from the 1830s are gathered to celebrate a wedding. At the chateau Meaulnes falls in love with Yvonne.
What follows is an enchanting story of tragedy, intensity, dreams and love. The plot doesn't bear too much scrutiny however that is not the point. The point is to simply surrender to this delightful and atmospheric book and (re)discover your inner adolescent.
4/5
Unlike the average French person, I came to this story of adolescent love in my early 50s. Would the book's charms work for the older reader? The answer is an emphatic yes. It perfectly captures that magical period when emotions are at their most intense.
Le Grand Meaulnes, the protagonist, is an adventurous, charismatic wanderer who stumbles across a lost chateau where partygoers, dressed in period costumes from the 1830s are gathered to celebrate a wedding. At the chateau Meaulnes falls in love with Yvonne.
What follows is an enchanting story of tragedy, intensity, dreams and love. The plot doesn't bear too much scrutiny however that is not the point. The point is to simply surrender to this delightful and atmospheric book and (re)discover your inner adolescent.
4/5
March 31, 2012
Le Grand Meaulnes is supposed to be untranslatable, and this translation by French classics legend Robin Buss doesn’t convince me otherwise. The novel hinges upon the titular Meaulnes being such a charming force of character in a lower-class school, his name echoes down the ages and his antics and adventures make him a much-beloved geezer in the province. Doesn’t quite work. But the narrator François is certainly smitten and describes Meaulnes’s first love in fits of florid descriptive prose worthy of Huysmans. Alain-Fournier (who died in the First War after this was published) seeks to capture the end of adolescence in a wistful and romantic way, and many passages in this short-chapter novel succeed at creating a dreamy forgotten arcadian paradise that might raise a tear or two, depending how pleasant your past was. But the novel lacks cohesion or credible characters, so the end result is a hotchpotch of moments within a sentimental bildungsroman frame, with a lapse or two into melodrama.
July 21, 2011
Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Alban-Fournier (1886-1914), a French author and soldier. Le Grand Meaulnes (1913) was his only novel, filmed twice and is now considered one of the greatest works of French literature. He was a friend to Andre Gide (1869-1951) who wrote The Fruits of the Earth (1897), Strait is the Gate (1909), The Counterfeiters (1927) among many others. Alain-Fournier started work on a second novel Colombe Blanchet in 1914. However, that same year, he joined the army and died while in the battlefront. It was World War I.
Le Grand Meaulnes, also known as The Wanderer when translated and published in the US, is a semi-autobiographical novel. It is about a 17-y/o boy Augustin Meaulnes, who got lost in a forest and meets a girl of his dreams, Yvonne de Galais. This fictional female character was based on Alain-Fournier’s crush, Yvonne de Quievrecourt who agreed to meet with him a year after along the Seine riverbanks. However, de Quievrecourt did not show up and it broke Alain-Fournier’s young heart. The narrator of the story, 15-y/o Francois Seurel is like a boy who is having an awakening while witnessing the older boy’s first lesson on love. What makes the dreamlike narration captivating is the fact that both of them are young boys who are innocent in the ways of love. When Meaulnes disappears in search of his lost or should I say mysterious love, I felt his loss too and thought of the first time my first crush broke my heart. It is a bittersweet story that everyone, young and old, can identify with. Meaulnes determination to find his love back proves to us that romantic idealism is still something that can sweep our feet off. Even in this era of cyberspace, still… nothing can replace the impact of a true and heartfelt story of young love.
Critics compare this to F. Scott-Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby (1925), one of the greatest work of American literature. I can see the similarities: enchanted estate, the guests, the festivities and the use of the third-person narrator. Fitzgerald was in France when he wrote his masterpiece and did not deny being influenced by this Alain-Fournier’s work.
Finally, like Gatsby, Le Grand Meaulnes is also a sad love story. In fact, this is one of the saddest love story that I’ve ever read that can compete with Eric Segal’s Love Story. The fact that broken-hearted Alain-Fournier died while fighting for his country a year later adds to the appeal of the novel.
Come to think of it, Alain-Fournier’s lost or unrequited love for de Quievrecourt did not go to waste. In fact, he made it immortal by putting his experience – of that loving and hurting – by writing this novel, Le Grand Meaulnes.
Glad to have read a Alain-Fournier. No wonder French people are known to be romantic. They have this book as a required reading in their schools.
Le Grand Meaulnes, also known as The Wanderer when translated and published in the US, is a semi-autobiographical novel. It is about a 17-y/o boy Augustin Meaulnes, who got lost in a forest and meets a girl of his dreams, Yvonne de Galais. This fictional female character was based on Alain-Fournier’s crush, Yvonne de Quievrecourt who agreed to meet with him a year after along the Seine riverbanks. However, de Quievrecourt did not show up and it broke Alain-Fournier’s young heart. The narrator of the story, 15-y/o Francois Seurel is like a boy who is having an awakening while witnessing the older boy’s first lesson on love. What makes the dreamlike narration captivating is the fact that both of them are young boys who are innocent in the ways of love. When Meaulnes disappears in search of his lost or should I say mysterious love, I felt his loss too and thought of the first time my first crush broke my heart. It is a bittersweet story that everyone, young and old, can identify with. Meaulnes determination to find his love back proves to us that romantic idealism is still something that can sweep our feet off. Even in this era of cyberspace, still… nothing can replace the impact of a true and heartfelt story of young love.
Critics compare this to F. Scott-Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby (1925), one of the greatest work of American literature. I can see the similarities: enchanted estate, the guests, the festivities and the use of the third-person narrator. Fitzgerald was in France when he wrote his masterpiece and did not deny being influenced by this Alain-Fournier’s work.
Finally, like Gatsby, Le Grand Meaulnes is also a sad love story. In fact, this is one of the saddest love story that I’ve ever read that can compete with Eric Segal’s Love Story. The fact that broken-hearted Alain-Fournier died while fighting for his country a year later adds to the appeal of the novel.
Come to think of it, Alain-Fournier’s lost or unrequited love for de Quievrecourt did not go to waste. In fact, he made it immortal by putting his experience – of that loving and hurting – by writing this novel, Le Grand Meaulnes.
Glad to have read a Alain-Fournier. No wonder French people are known to be romantic. They have this book as a required reading in their schools.
September 9, 2023
Literatur, die mit Schmerz versöhnt, ohne ihn zu verleugnen oder wegzuerklären.
„Der große Meaulnes“ (1913) blieb Alain-Fournier einziger fertiggestellter Roman, bevor er 27-jährig im 1. Weltkrieg fiel. Er schrieb an diesem acht Jahre lang, um eine unglückliche Verliebtheit zu überwinden, die ihn mit 18 Jahren überkam, als er im Grand Palais in Paris einem Mädchen begegnete. Zwar gehen das Leben des Autors mit den Ereignissen in „Der große Meaulnes“ Hand in Hand, dennoch schiebt sich zwischen diese und jene eine ausgefeilte, für sich bestehende Erzähllogik, die den Text abschließt und unabhängig von jedweder Referenz für sich bestehen lässt. Es bedarf keines Wissens über die Zeit, der Umstände, über das Leben des Autors, um in „Der große Meaulnes“ in der Übersetzung von Arthur Seiffhart, ursprünglich als „Der große Kamerad“ 1930 erschienen, abtauchen zu können:
„Hinter den Hecken der Wiese verborgen weideten Kühe, und ich hörte ihre Glocken, während ich, vom Rad gestiegen, beide Hände am Lenker, die Gegend betrachtete, in die ich eine so schwerwiegende Nachricht bringen sollte. Die Häuser, zu deren Eingängen kleine Holzbrücken führten, waren am Rande eines Grabens entlang der Straße aneinandergereiht wie Barken, die mit gerefften Segeln im Hafen in der Abendruhe ankern. Es war die Stunde, in der in jeder Küche das Feuer entzündet wird.“
In den 1890er Jahren lernt der Ich-Erzähler einen älteren Mitschüler, besagten Meaulnes, kennen, der eines Tages ausbüchst und völlig verändert, nämlich verliebt, wiederkehrt. Von diesem Moment an versucht Meaulnes seine große Liebe wiederzufinden. Nach vielem Hin und Her bekommt er die Nachricht, dass diese in Paris weilt. Er reist nach, verpasst sie aber, verstrickt sich in eine Affäre, kehrt verdrossen und mit schlechtem Gewissen zurück. Unterdessen schließt der Ich-Erzähler seine Ausbildung ab, wird Lehrer und bleibt dem Freund behilflich seinen Lebenstraum zu verwirklichen, nämlich mit der Angebeteten eine Familie zu gründen und ein beschauliches Leben auf dem Lande zu führen.
„Von draußen dringt jetzt kein Geräusch mehr zu den jungen Leuten, nur ein entblätterter Rosenzweig schlägt ab und zu gegen das Fenster zur Heide hin. Wie zwei Insassen eines dahintreibenden Bootes sind die beiden Liebenden, während der Winterwind braust, eingeschlossen mit ihrem Glück.“
Was wie eine Schmonzette auszuarten droht, bleibt dicht und poetisch im Nachempfinden und Nacherleben eines Erzählers, der dem Leben die volle Aufmerksamkeit widmet. Nichts scheint ihm unbedeutend. Alles nimmt teil an der Freundschaft, der Verliebtheit, an dem Abenteuer Leben, Lieben, am Sein im Hier und Jetzt, mit dem Freund, den Wolken, den Hoffnungen und Träumen und alles zusammen:
„Dann gingen wir der Reihe nach zum Brunnen, den wir zuerst verschmäht hatten, und näherten langsam das Gesicht der Oberfläche des klaren Wassers. Aber nicht alle waren an die Sitten der Landleute gewöhnt. Vielen, wie mir selbst, gelang es nicht, den Durst zu stillen: den einen, weil sie Wasser nicht mochten, anderen, weil ihnen die Furcht, eine Assel zu verschlucken, die Kehle zuschnürte, wieder anderen, weil sie, durch die starke Durchsichtigkeit des Wassers getäuscht, die Oberfläche nicht richtig einschätzen konnten und daher gleichzeitig mit dem Mund die Hälfte des Gesichts eintauchten, sodass ihnen beim Atmen stechend das Wasser in die Nase drang und ihnen heiß vorkam, anderen gelang es aus allen diesen Gründen zugleich nicht … Aber was schadete das? – Uns schien, als ob dieser Ort an den unfruchtbaren Ufern des Cher die ganze irdische Kühle enthielte. Und heute noch, wenn ich irgendwo das Wort «Brunnen» höre, denke ich lange nur an diesen Brunnen.“
Alain-Fourniers „Der große Meaulnes“ erzählt eine Geschichte, aber die Erzählweise steht im Vordergrund. In ihr belebt sich das Empfindungsvermögens des Erzählers. Angstlos, sich rückhaltlos den eigenen Assoziationen und Erinnerungen überlassend, steht „Der große Meaulnes“ im direkten Zusammenhang mit Marcel Prousts „Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit“, Robert Musils „Die Verwirrung des Zöglings Törleß“ und Rainer Maria Rilkes „Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge“. Traum, Hoffnungen, Poesie und Prosa mischen sich und erschaffen eine Textwelt für sich, nach der Stéphane Mallarmé in der absoluten Dichtung suchte. Im Gegensatz zu diesem, der alle Bezüge zur Realität unterbinden wollte, taucht Alain-Fournier aber in ihnen ein, lässt sich emporheben und erschafft die ganze Welt neu, nur bunter, intensiver, friedlicher, bar jedweder Gewalt oder Brutalität.
„Der große Meaulnes“ (1913) blieb Alain-Fournier einziger fertiggestellter Roman, bevor er 27-jährig im 1. Weltkrieg fiel. Er schrieb an diesem acht Jahre lang, um eine unglückliche Verliebtheit zu überwinden, die ihn mit 18 Jahren überkam, als er im Grand Palais in Paris einem Mädchen begegnete. Zwar gehen das Leben des Autors mit den Ereignissen in „Der große Meaulnes“ Hand in Hand, dennoch schiebt sich zwischen diese und jene eine ausgefeilte, für sich bestehende Erzähllogik, die den Text abschließt und unabhängig von jedweder Referenz für sich bestehen lässt. Es bedarf keines Wissens über die Zeit, der Umstände, über das Leben des Autors, um in „Der große Meaulnes“ in der Übersetzung von Arthur Seiffhart, ursprünglich als „Der große Kamerad“ 1930 erschienen, abtauchen zu können:
„Hinter den Hecken der Wiese verborgen weideten Kühe, und ich hörte ihre Glocken, während ich, vom Rad gestiegen, beide Hände am Lenker, die Gegend betrachtete, in die ich eine so schwerwiegende Nachricht bringen sollte. Die Häuser, zu deren Eingängen kleine Holzbrücken führten, waren am Rande eines Grabens entlang der Straße aneinandergereiht wie Barken, die mit gerefften Segeln im Hafen in der Abendruhe ankern. Es war die Stunde, in der in jeder Küche das Feuer entzündet wird.“
In den 1890er Jahren lernt der Ich-Erzähler einen älteren Mitschüler, besagten Meaulnes, kennen, der eines Tages ausbüchst und völlig verändert, nämlich verliebt, wiederkehrt. Von diesem Moment an versucht Meaulnes seine große Liebe wiederzufinden. Nach vielem Hin und Her bekommt er die Nachricht, dass diese in Paris weilt. Er reist nach, verpasst sie aber, verstrickt sich in eine Affäre, kehrt verdrossen und mit schlechtem Gewissen zurück. Unterdessen schließt der Ich-Erzähler seine Ausbildung ab, wird Lehrer und bleibt dem Freund behilflich seinen Lebenstraum zu verwirklichen, nämlich mit der Angebeteten eine Familie zu gründen und ein beschauliches Leben auf dem Lande zu führen.
„Von draußen dringt jetzt kein Geräusch mehr zu den jungen Leuten, nur ein entblätterter Rosenzweig schlägt ab und zu gegen das Fenster zur Heide hin. Wie zwei Insassen eines dahintreibenden Bootes sind die beiden Liebenden, während der Winterwind braust, eingeschlossen mit ihrem Glück.“
Was wie eine Schmonzette auszuarten droht, bleibt dicht und poetisch im Nachempfinden und Nacherleben eines Erzählers, der dem Leben die volle Aufmerksamkeit widmet. Nichts scheint ihm unbedeutend. Alles nimmt teil an der Freundschaft, der Verliebtheit, an dem Abenteuer Leben, Lieben, am Sein im Hier und Jetzt, mit dem Freund, den Wolken, den Hoffnungen und Träumen und alles zusammen:
„Dann gingen wir der Reihe nach zum Brunnen, den wir zuerst verschmäht hatten, und näherten langsam das Gesicht der Oberfläche des klaren Wassers. Aber nicht alle waren an die Sitten der Landleute gewöhnt. Vielen, wie mir selbst, gelang es nicht, den Durst zu stillen: den einen, weil sie Wasser nicht mochten, anderen, weil ihnen die Furcht, eine Assel zu verschlucken, die Kehle zuschnürte, wieder anderen, weil sie, durch die starke Durchsichtigkeit des Wassers getäuscht, die Oberfläche nicht richtig einschätzen konnten und daher gleichzeitig mit dem Mund die Hälfte des Gesichts eintauchten, sodass ihnen beim Atmen stechend das Wasser in die Nase drang und ihnen heiß vorkam, anderen gelang es aus allen diesen Gründen zugleich nicht … Aber was schadete das? – Uns schien, als ob dieser Ort an den unfruchtbaren Ufern des Cher die ganze irdische Kühle enthielte. Und heute noch, wenn ich irgendwo das Wort «Brunnen» höre, denke ich lange nur an diesen Brunnen.“
Alain-Fourniers „Der große Meaulnes“ erzählt eine Geschichte, aber die Erzählweise steht im Vordergrund. In ihr belebt sich das Empfindungsvermögens des Erzählers. Angstlos, sich rückhaltlos den eigenen Assoziationen und Erinnerungen überlassend, steht „Der große Meaulnes“ im direkten Zusammenhang mit Marcel Prousts „Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit“, Robert Musils „Die Verwirrung des Zöglings Törleß“ und Rainer Maria Rilkes „Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge“. Traum, Hoffnungen, Poesie und Prosa mischen sich und erschaffen eine Textwelt für sich, nach der Stéphane Mallarmé in der absoluten Dichtung suchte. Im Gegensatz zu diesem, der alle Bezüge zur Realität unterbinden wollte, taucht Alain-Fournier aber in ihnen ein, lässt sich emporheben und erschafft die ganze Welt neu, nur bunter, intensiver, friedlicher, bar jedweder Gewalt oder Brutalität.
August 21, 2018
Alain-Fournier nasceu em França em 1886. O Grande Meaulnes, publicado em 1913, é o seu único romance. Estava a trabalhar numa segunda obra quando foi mobilizado para combater na Primeira Guerra Mundial. Desapareceu, em 22 de Setembro de 1914, durante uma batalha. Em 1991, uma equipa de historiadores encontrou uma vala comum com vinte e um esqueletos e supõe-se ser um deles de Alain-Fournier.
Sempre que me cruzava com este livro vinha ao Goodreads e ao ver a média de estrelas (3,77) perdia o interesse. Este ano na Feira do Livro disseram-me que de certeza era um livro de que eu gostaria muito. Pelo sim, pelo não, comprei-o mas arrumei-o no monte "não me parece...". Há dias, vi a lista dos 50 livros preferidos de um leitor que tenho em grande conta. Li-o e já está na minha estante dos 100 livros favoritos. Na lista do Le Monde dos 100 livros do século XX está em nono lugar.
Sobre o conteúdo do livro, e as minhas emoções ao lê-lo, não me apetece dizer nada. Apenas que gosto muito do título da edição brasileira: O Bosque das Ilusões Perdidas...
Sempre que me cruzava com este livro vinha ao Goodreads e ao ver a média de estrelas (3,77) perdia o interesse. Este ano na Feira do Livro disseram-me que de certeza era um livro de que eu gostaria muito. Pelo sim, pelo não, comprei-o mas arrumei-o no monte "não me parece...". Há dias, vi a lista dos 50 livros preferidos de um leitor que tenho em grande conta. Li-o e já está na minha estante dos 100 livros favoritos. Na lista do Le Monde dos 100 livros do século XX está em nono lugar.
Sobre o conteúdo do livro, e as minhas emoções ao lê-lo, não me apetece dizer nada. Apenas que gosto muito do título da edição brasileira: O Bosque das Ilusões Perdidas...
April 8, 2020
The Lost Estate by Alain-Fournier goes by two titles. The second is Le Grand Meaulnes. “Grand”, being a French word with different connotations, it is best to avoid a direct translation and so the English title is completely different. The French author, Henri-Alban Fournier (1886-1914), went by the pseudonym Alain-Fournier. The book was published in 1913. The author died in 1914 at the age of twenty seven, killed in action, at the start of the First World War.
I like the ending of this book. I like how the author ties up the plot. There is a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming. I also think the character portrayal of the two central protagonists is very well done. You cannot judge the book until the very end. Only at the end does what the book is really about hit you with a smack. It is about . It is also about the transition from adolescence to adulthood. You won’t understand this until the end. I do not want to tell you too much; it is realizing this yourself that is fun.
As a bit of introduction, I will just say this. The story is set in the village of Sainte Agathe, in the Sologne region of central France. There is a Sainte Agathe chapel that does exist. The tale starts in the year 1890 and covers events of a few years, about five. The story circles around two friends, one is fifteen, the other is seventeen. Actually, it is best to say three! The younger boy tells the story. Girls come into the tale too, in a very important way! I am not going to tell you anymore.
Why not more stars? I cannot properly judge the writing, the prose. The book is translated into English. The audio I listened to is translated by Françoise Delisle and has been revised for the audio recording. I have not compared line by line the French versus the English, but improvements are needed. Incorrect prepositions are used. The language is not fluid. The choice of words is often clumsy—“occupiers” is used, “occupants” would have been better. Rather than being told the town is quiet and still, we are told “everything is sleeping”. Things do not sleep! In French, adjectives are usually placed after the noun they modify. In English, adjectives precede the noun. This error is made multiple times. The translation is so bad I cannot judge the prose, and prose is important to me. I want to enjoy the lines as I read, I didn’t here. This explains why I have not given the book more stars.
The tone of the novel has a special feel—mysterious, dreamlike. This intrigues me. I am guessing I would have enjoyed the book more had I been given a better translation.
John Hollingworth narrates the audiobook I listened to. I did not enjoy his narration, and I do not recommend it. He mumbles words; he does not enunciate clearly. The pacing is off; he pauses where it is not necessary. This makes the tempo jerky. Not all lines are read in this staccato fashion, but all too many are. The narration performance I have give one star.
I like the ending of this book. I like how the author ties up the plot. There is a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming. I also think the character portrayal of the two central protagonists is very well done. You cannot judge the book until the very end. Only at the end does what the book is really about hit you with a smack. It is about . It is also about the transition from adolescence to adulthood. You won’t understand this until the end. I do not want to tell you too much; it is realizing this yourself that is fun.
As a bit of introduction, I will just say this. The story is set in the village of Sainte Agathe, in the Sologne region of central France. There is a Sainte Agathe chapel that does exist. The tale starts in the year 1890 and covers events of a few years, about five. The story circles around two friends, one is fifteen, the other is seventeen. Actually, it is best to say three! The younger boy tells the story. Girls come into the tale too, in a very important way! I am not going to tell you anymore.
Why not more stars? I cannot properly judge the writing, the prose. The book is translated into English. The audio I listened to is translated by Françoise Delisle and has been revised for the audio recording. I have not compared line by line the French versus the English, but improvements are needed. Incorrect prepositions are used. The language is not fluid. The choice of words is often clumsy—“occupiers” is used, “occupants” would have been better. Rather than being told the town is quiet and still, we are told “everything is sleeping”. Things do not sleep! In French, adjectives are usually placed after the noun they modify. In English, adjectives precede the noun. This error is made multiple times. The translation is so bad I cannot judge the prose, and prose is important to me. I want to enjoy the lines as I read, I didn’t here. This explains why I have not given the book more stars.
The tone of the novel has a special feel—mysterious, dreamlike. This intrigues me. I am guessing I would have enjoyed the book more had I been given a better translation.
John Hollingworth narrates the audiobook I listened to. I did not enjoy his narration, and I do not recommend it. He mumbles words; he does not enunciate clearly. The pacing is off; he pauses where it is not necessary. This makes the tempo jerky. Not all lines are read in this staccato fashion, but all too many are. The narration performance I have give one star.
July 29, 2019
A few moments later a strange equipage drew up in front of the glass doors: an outlandish old farm wagon with rounded panels and moulded ornaments; an aged white horse with head bent so low that he seemed to be hoping to find grass in the road; and in the driving seat―I say it in the simplicity of my heart, well knowing what I say―perhaps the most beautiful young woman that ever existed in the whole world.
For the first half of Le Grand Meaulnes I was well-nigh intoxicated by the air of romance as it’s only breathed in youth: from the arrival of the singleminded adventurous Meaulnes (a less angry proto-James Dean as Jim Stark) in the cloistered village schoolroom to his inadvertent discovery of the mysterious “domain” where he meets the abovementioned beautiful young woman, despite challenges to credibility that a lesser story would have collapsed under, I bought it all, surprised and touched by my own softheartedness. But from the moment (p142 in my Penguin edition) when the narrator’s aunt meets a “young man” with “face so white and so pretty that it was frightening” I began, rapidly, to wake from the trance, having guessed the “dark secret” around which the book kept circling. Which isn’t to say I didn’t like it, only that where earlier I’d wondered how Alain-Fournier, at age 27, could possibly have conceived it, by its end I’d relegated its sorceror-author back to the realm of mortals, able to enchant through a rare mix of lucidity and young ardour but constrained by the young man’s love of mystery stories to make of his modern fairytale a convoluted puzzle with pat ending. Still, I’ll take Meaulnes over Werther, over Raymond Radiguet, over Hamsun’s Victoria, because when Meaulnes is on he’s every young man’s fearless alter ego, and his Lost Domain the ultimate young man’s dream―a masked ball where children rule over adults and a never-to-be-forgotten young woman presides―but one from which he never awakes. At first, as I delved deeper into that domain, I feared that Alain-Fournier would pull the ground from under me (“It was all a dream,” he’d say), or that he’d strain my faith in him too far. But no, he brought me down gently, and for that alone he’s a genius. So he then contorts himself in plot-twists? I forgive him, because somewhere in here is an archetype awaiting (re?)birth. Whether its author knew it or not, Le Grand Meaulnes strays magically close to perfection. In the relationship of its hero to its narrator, in the mirror-images of Meaulnes/Frantz and Yvonne/Valentine, in its tightrope straddling of the line between childhood and adulthood, fantasy and realism, this flawed novel hints at a deep well of intuited meaning. That its young author chose a mystery story to convey that essence doesn’t bother me; that he let the form distort the essence does. Never mind! One day, I’ll read just the first half. Until then, long live the Lost Domain! Long live Yvonne de Galais! Long live le grand Meaulnes!
May 23, 2012
Never have I found it more difficult to finish a lovelier book. My first attempt was derailed five years ago; the second was ultimately successful only after a three-month hiatus. And this little volume carried so much weight by now, as a favourite of several people - exes, friends, the hard-to-label - from different times and places in my life ... all of which have something of the partially-lost domain about them.
I started reading it again in a sunny May garden surrounded by birdsong - the first time I'd had a garden to myself; it proved the perfect place and bestowed the magic for the book to take on its own life.
It's so delicately perfect that I hesitate to describe it and review it in my clumsy words. I was in the vicinity of the verge of tears for most of the story, yet not upset.
The descriptions of the seasons are some of the prettiest I can recall.
Most of this book is a beautiful bittersweet dream. Occasionally, it is like waking in a sweat and wondering, cursing, why the hell one did something. Though being characters in a highly romanticised novel, these people do take some of their actions to extremes.
Meaulnes contains elements of many - more recently written - books I've already read, yet it never palled. As Augustin and Francois glimpse an enchanting place, reading this felt like seeing a source of favourite stories and ideas.
I started reading it again in a sunny May garden surrounded by birdsong - the first time I'd had a garden to myself; it proved the perfect place and bestowed the magic for the book to take on its own life.
It's so delicately perfect that I hesitate to describe it and review it in my clumsy words. I was in the vicinity of the verge of tears for most of the story, yet not upset.
The descriptions of the seasons are some of the prettiest I can recall.
Most of this book is a beautiful bittersweet dream. Occasionally, it is like waking in a sweat and wondering, cursing, why the hell one did something. Though being characters in a highly romanticised novel, these people do take some of their actions to extremes.
Meaulnes contains elements of many - more recently written - books I've already read, yet it never palled. As Augustin and Francois glimpse an enchanting place, reading this felt like seeing a source of favourite stories and ideas.
November 22, 2021
I knew nothing about Alain-Fournier when Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck strongly recommended to read this book. A feeble complaint that the book was in French was dismissed on the basis that all books should be read in their original languages. While this presents a formidable obstacle to an aspiring reader, specifically for this book she was quite right.
I am not sure if many agree with this personal observation but I found that books written in French can rarely be translated well into English. Into Russian - yes, into English - no. A case in point, a fine French writer Eric-Emmanuel Shmitt, when translated into English reads like a pretentious bore, which cannot be further away from his actual style of writing. He is anything but pretentious. Ok, this digression is over, I will pick it up and expand on it elsewhere.
Finally, I braved Le Grand Meaulnes in French assisted by a fabulous reading of the novel by William Mesguich and I was not disappointed. The writing was inspired, almost transcending into poetry at times, the music of the words adding palpably to the emotions overwhelming the children in the story.
The book is a Bildungsroman of a kind but its unique attribute is the feeling of loss accompanying the graduation into adulthood. Some intangible property of childhood, some magical feature of life is forever lost when one regrettably grows up. The wonderous celebration, 'la fete étrange' once witnessed, can never be relived, can never be returned. One can look to substitute this wonder with love or with friendship but 'la fete étrange' of the childhood is no more.
Not all aspects of the story will be appreciated by contemporary readers. Perched on an ivory tower of our present knowledge and understanding of the world, we cannot help but look down on some trivial psychological mistakes of an aspiring writer of the age before modernism. It's fitting to not say anything else about the book and just thank once more the person who insistently recommended it.
Eva, a troubled and an almost silent adolescent in Zedelghem chapter of Cloud Atlas reappears as an unlikely mentor in Black Swan Green. It is there that she mentions Le Grand Meaulnes as an absolute must read. Everything is connected, a thin thread attaches this reader nostalgic for his own lost childhood to David Mitchell and his characters, to François and his great friend Meaulnes, to Alain-Fournier himself, who never got to write another book. He was killed in the first month of the war.
I am not sure if many agree with this personal observation but I found that books written in French can rarely be translated well into English. Into Russian - yes, into English - no. A case in point, a fine French writer Eric-Emmanuel Shmitt, when translated into English reads like a pretentious bore, which cannot be further away from his actual style of writing. He is anything but pretentious. Ok, this digression is over, I will pick it up and expand on it elsewhere.
Finally, I braved Le Grand Meaulnes in French assisted by a fabulous reading of the novel by William Mesguich and I was not disappointed. The writing was inspired, almost transcending into poetry at times, the music of the words adding palpably to the emotions overwhelming the children in the story.
The book is a Bildungsroman of a kind but its unique attribute is the feeling of loss accompanying the graduation into adulthood. Some intangible property of childhood, some magical feature of life is forever lost when one regrettably grows up. The wonderous celebration, 'la fete étrange' once witnessed, can never be relived, can never be returned. One can look to substitute this wonder with love or with friendship but 'la fete étrange' of the childhood is no more.
Not all aspects of the story will be appreciated by contemporary readers. Perched on an ivory tower of our present knowledge and understanding of the world, we cannot help but look down on some trivial psychological mistakes of an aspiring writer of the age before modernism. It's fitting to not say anything else about the book and just thank once more the person who insistently recommended it.
Eva, a troubled and an almost silent adolescent in Zedelghem chapter of Cloud Atlas reappears as an unlikely mentor in Black Swan Green. It is there that she mentions Le Grand Meaulnes as an absolute must read. Everything is connected, a thin thread attaches this reader nostalgic for his own lost childhood to David Mitchell and his characters, to François and his great friend Meaulnes, to Alain-Fournier himself, who never got to write another book. He was killed in the first month of the war.
July 13, 2009
Although Le Grand Meaulnes (sometimes translated as The Wanderer or The Lost Estate) was written in 1913, which was more in the decadent or modernism era, this lovely, mysterious novel falls definitely into the category of late Romanticism. Just one year after publishing his one and only novel, young Henri Alain-Fournier was killed in a World War I battle at Epargnes in 1914. The literary world is so much the poorer for his loss as well as for the loss of many more novels he surely would have written.
The title character in Le Grand Meaulnes is a 17-year-old student, Augustin Meaulnes, who arrives at a boys' school in rural France, about 1910. Meaulnes is worldly and charismatic, and soon has all the boys wanting to be his friend. The narrator of the story is Meanlnes's best friend Francois Seurel, a sickly 15-year-old boy upon whom Meaulnes seems to have a healing effect. Francois carefully chronicles all the elated and brooding emotions of his moody new friend. One day, Meaulnes takes a cart and horse from the school and disappears for three days without explanation. When he returns, Meaulnes seems dazed and forlorn. He relates to Francois how he accidentally stumbled upon a beautiful old house--what he will later call "the lost domain" --in the middle of a forest. Meaulnes sneaked into an engagement party that was going on there. The party had a dreamy, surrealistic feel to it until Meaulnes heard from the sad, young groom that the wedding was off because the fiancee fled. Meaulnes also met and talked to beautiful Yvonne de Galais, the sister of the would-be groom. But before he could really get to know her, she disappeared and he had to stumble his way back to the school. The original 1960s film version of this novel is a beautiful tribute to the spirit of Alain-Fournier's story. As Meaulnes tells in flashback his experience at the lost domaine, the footage is shot in a blurred style, like a Monet painting, to indicate his dreaminess and confusion during his disoriented and ethereal state. (I have also read that the 2006 film version is disappointing; too bad!) The events that subsequently continue to bring together and pull apart Meanlnes, Yvonne, Franz, and his would-be bride Valentine, and various "bohemian" youth of the region continue in Francois's narrative for the next three years until the story comes to its melancholic conclusion. This is beautiful piece of writing in terms of coming-of-age, adolescent angst, and the typical Romantic search for the unattainable ideal. Highly recommended.
The title character in Le Grand Meaulnes is a 17-year-old student, Augustin Meaulnes, who arrives at a boys' school in rural France, about 1910. Meaulnes is worldly and charismatic, and soon has all the boys wanting to be his friend. The narrator of the story is Meanlnes's best friend Francois Seurel, a sickly 15-year-old boy upon whom Meaulnes seems to have a healing effect. Francois carefully chronicles all the elated and brooding emotions of his moody new friend. One day, Meaulnes takes a cart and horse from the school and disappears for three days without explanation. When he returns, Meaulnes seems dazed and forlorn. He relates to Francois how he accidentally stumbled upon a beautiful old house--what he will later call "the lost domain" --in the middle of a forest. Meaulnes sneaked into an engagement party that was going on there. The party had a dreamy, surrealistic feel to it until Meaulnes heard from the sad, young groom that the wedding was off because the fiancee fled. Meaulnes also met and talked to beautiful Yvonne de Galais, the sister of the would-be groom. But before he could really get to know her, she disappeared and he had to stumble his way back to the school. The original 1960s film version of this novel is a beautiful tribute to the spirit of Alain-Fournier's story. As Meaulnes tells in flashback his experience at the lost domaine, the footage is shot in a blurred style, like a Monet painting, to indicate his dreaminess and confusion during his disoriented and ethereal state. (I have also read that the 2006 film version is disappointing; too bad!) The events that subsequently continue to bring together and pull apart Meanlnes, Yvonne, Franz, and his would-be bride Valentine, and various "bohemian" youth of the region continue in Francois's narrative for the next three years until the story comes to its melancholic conclusion. This is beautiful piece of writing in terms of coming-of-age, adolescent angst, and the typical Romantic search for the unattainable ideal. Highly recommended.
March 2, 2024
دو تا عنصر اصلی در ادبیات فرانسه نظر من رو به خودش جلب کرده و میکنه همیشه:
1. تخیل متفاوتشون
2. حس نوستالژیشون
تخیل متفاوتشون لزوماً به این معنا نیست که محتواها یا فُرم های خیلی متفاوت و رادیکال خلق میکنن - هرچند میکنن و اصولاً از این وجه به نظرم پیشتاز هستن - بلکه یعنی روایت های پیش پا افتاده و روزمره رو با تخیلی روایت میکنن که سرشارش میکنه از نوعی حس اعجاب؛ اگه توصیفه، اونقدر تأثیرگذاره که اعجاب انگیز میشه، اگه شرح رخداد یا شخصیته، متفاوت از آب در میاد؛ و در کل تخیل قدرتمندی رو به ما نشون میده.
دو حس نوستالژیه؛ حس یه جور گذشتۀ از دست رفته؛ حس یه جور حرمان جبران ناپذیر؛ لزوماً هم در گذشته نه؛ بلکه نوعی غیاب؛ نوعی نبودن که جای خالیش حس میشه؛
ترکیب این دو تا رو در این رمان دیدم. رمان از اونهاست که خیلی راحت میشه همه چیزش رو لو داد. پس از محتواش چیزی نمیگم. اما زبان و توصیف های بینهایت زیبایی داره؛ و کمی تا قسمتی غم انگیزه؛ و شایسته س که عنوان کلاسیک فرانسوی رو در موردش به کار ببریم.
1. تخیل متفاوتشون
2. حس نوستالژیشون
تخیل متفاوتشون لزوماً به این معنا نیست که محتواها یا فُرم های خیلی متفاوت و رادیکال خلق میکنن - هرچند میکنن و اصولاً از این وجه به نظرم پیشتاز هستن - بلکه یعنی روایت های پیش پا افتاده و روزمره رو با تخیلی روایت میکنن که سرشارش میکنه از نوعی حس اعجاب؛ اگه توصیفه، اونقدر تأثیرگذاره که اعجاب انگیز میشه، اگه شرح رخداد یا شخصیته، متفاوت از آب در میاد؛ و در کل تخیل قدرتمندی رو به ما نشون میده.
دو حس نوستالژیه؛ حس یه جور گذشتۀ از دست رفته؛ حس یه جور حرمان جبران ناپذیر؛ لزوماً هم در گذشته نه؛ بلکه نوعی غیاب؛ نوعی نبودن که جای خالیش حس میشه؛
ترکیب این دو تا رو در این رمان دیدم. رمان از اونهاست که خیلی راحت میشه همه چیزش رو لو داد. پس از محتواش چیزی نمیگم. اما زبان و توصیف های بینهایت زیبایی داره؛ و کمی تا قسمتی غم انگیزه؛ و شایسته س که عنوان کلاسیک فرانسوی رو در موردش به کار ببریم.
April 25, 2018
The End of Childhood
Augustin Meaulnes, the larger-than-life hero of Alain-Fournier's charming French classic of 1913, is a curious mixture of tormented adolescent and knight errant. The soubriquet "grand" that is always associated with him refers perhaps to his size (large, tall) but also to the power of his dreams (grandiose, or even great). As told by the fifteen-year-old teacher's son François Seurel, the impact of this lad of seventeen who arrives as a boarder in his father's school has the transformative magic of Nick Carraway's first encounter with Jay Gatsby, only transferred to the world of schoolboys in provincial France. The comparison with The Great Gatsby is only one of many brilliant insights by Adam Gopnik, who wrote the introduction to this excellent Penguin Classics translation by Robin Buss (I have been checking the book in the original also). The text now seems slightly dated, with characters who are more ideas than real people, but Gopnik places those ideas within a clear literary, historical, and Freudian context; this edition is almost worth buying for his essay alone.
Monsieur Seurel and his pupils seem to spend as much time in the countryside as they do in the classroom, and the life of that countryside is precisely situated in the Cher region of France, not far from Bourges. But in the midst of it there is a lost estate that is almost like a dream, never to be found again. Meaulnes arrives there by accident one night, after falling asleep in a horse-drawn wagon, and finds himself in the midst of preparations for a wedding. It is a passage of sheer magic: a Watteauesque fête champêtre populated by extravagantly-dressed children and figures from a harlequinade. He meets the daughter of the manor and falls instantly in love. But the wedding is called off and the guests disperse. Meaulnes spends the next years trying to find the way back again, eventually following his distant beloved Yvonne to Paris. The waking dream is not unlike the mysterious chivalric world of Maurice Maeterinck's Pelléas et Mélisande of 1892, seen here through the eyes of childhood as a lament for childhood's end.
As Gopnik observes, Alain-Fournier places "what is essentially a medieval allegory of love in the terms of a late nineteenth-century realist novel." The realist element is always there even at the beginning—the routine of the school, the peasant life of the region. As the book moves on, however, the realism becomes stronger, not weaker. The lady setting out for the enchanted isle will become a housewife and mother; the absent bride at the wedding feast threatens to become a prostitute in Paris. Fantasy butts heads with life. Gopnik again: "The intensity of the romance of childhood—and the attempt to marry it (literally) to an erotic-romantic dream—glow bright for Fournier with the light of something not quite real, a flare not a fire." A flare, certainly, for within a year of publication, France would enter the Great War; and within a month of that, Alain-Fournier would be dead.
Augustin Meaulnes, the larger-than-life hero of Alain-Fournier's charming French classic of 1913, is a curious mixture of tormented adolescent and knight errant. The soubriquet "grand" that is always associated with him refers perhaps to his size (large, tall) but also to the power of his dreams (grandiose, or even great). As told by the fifteen-year-old teacher's son François Seurel, the impact of this lad of seventeen who arrives as a boarder in his father's school has the transformative magic of Nick Carraway's first encounter with Jay Gatsby, only transferred to the world of schoolboys in provincial France. The comparison with The Great Gatsby is only one of many brilliant insights by Adam Gopnik, who wrote the introduction to this excellent Penguin Classics translation by Robin Buss (I have been checking the book in the original also). The text now seems slightly dated, with characters who are more ideas than real people, but Gopnik places those ideas within a clear literary, historical, and Freudian context; this edition is almost worth buying for his essay alone.
Monsieur Seurel and his pupils seem to spend as much time in the countryside as they do in the classroom, and the life of that countryside is precisely situated in the Cher region of France, not far from Bourges. But in the midst of it there is a lost estate that is almost like a dream, never to be found again. Meaulnes arrives there by accident one night, after falling asleep in a horse-drawn wagon, and finds himself in the midst of preparations for a wedding. It is a passage of sheer magic: a Watteauesque fête champêtre populated by extravagantly-dressed children and figures from a harlequinade. He meets the daughter of the manor and falls instantly in love. But the wedding is called off and the guests disperse. Meaulnes spends the next years trying to find the way back again, eventually following his distant beloved Yvonne to Paris. The waking dream is not unlike the mysterious chivalric world of Maurice Maeterinck's Pelléas et Mélisande of 1892, seen here through the eyes of childhood as a lament for childhood's end.
As Gopnik observes, Alain-Fournier places "what is essentially a medieval allegory of love in the terms of a late nineteenth-century realist novel." The realist element is always there even at the beginning—the routine of the school, the peasant life of the region. As the book moves on, however, the realism becomes stronger, not weaker. The lady setting out for the enchanted isle will become a housewife and mother; the absent bride at the wedding feast threatens to become a prostitute in Paris. Fantasy butts heads with life. Gopnik again: "The intensity of the romance of childhood—and the attempt to marry it (literally) to an erotic-romantic dream—glow bright for Fournier with the light of something not quite real, a flare not a fire." A flare, certainly, for within a year of publication, France would enter the Great War; and within a month of that, Alain-Fournier would be dead.
July 5, 2015
In a boring afternoon of one of these days of June, I chose Le Grand Meaulnes immediately in the local library right after the librarian's alarm that they were closing. It was French and I thought I had a glance on a review before. By reading a few pages of it, I realized that it was a young adult story of two boys François and his best friend Meaulnes who lived in a lower-class school in a village. Narrating in a first person, I thought despite its title there was no trace of Meaulnes himself. I thought "No, I don't feel like reading this", I even wanted to interrupt. But because I did not have any other fiction unread in my bookshelves I continued reading. Well...is it a Tim Burton transcription? Mysterious abandoned house in the middle of a jungle… kids…girls dancing...a mysterious party. I kept reading and then again came back to the little preface and read it carefully to find out what kind of French classic it was:
It is going to be a love story? Although the blurb says another The catcher in the rye but I thought maybe The great Gatsby too, unless it is not historical at all. In the middle of the book I thought that it was going to find its shape and kind of unputdownable because everything seemed to be finished and still half of the book remained. Well, he finds a mysterious house and a mysterious girl. Then all his life he searches for that house and girl. He becomes a wanderer. The magic and mysteriousness of that house and atmosphere unconsciously form his feelings. He searches maybe not to find the girl but to find that feeling again.
By finishing the book I had this feeling that it had that message of Gustave Flaubert in Sentimental Education. By depicting that this book declares the end of romanticism and its possible natural consequences, the protagonist, the great Meaulnes is the symbol of a transition.
It is said that a poll of French readers some years ago placed this book sixth of all 20th-century books, just behind Proust and Camus and also it has been twice filmed.
This little mysterious masterpiece with its astounding simplicity and purity, and its deep sensitivity that is used for showing the feelings and emotions of a little mysterious world full of hope and sadness, has influenced strongly many works after itself.
It is going to be a love story? Although the blurb says another The catcher in the rye but I thought maybe The great Gatsby too, unless it is not historical at all. In the middle of the book I thought that it was going to find its shape and kind of unputdownable because everything seemed to be finished and still half of the book remained. Well, he finds a mysterious house and a mysterious girl. Then all his life he searches for that house and girl. He becomes a wanderer. The magic and mysteriousness of that house and atmosphere unconsciously form his feelings. He searches maybe not to find the girl but to find that feeling again.
By finishing the book I had this feeling that it had that message of Gustave Flaubert in Sentimental Education. By depicting that this book declares the end of romanticism and its possible natural consequences, the protagonist, the great Meaulnes is the symbol of a transition.
It is said that a poll of French readers some years ago placed this book sixth of all 20th-century books, just behind Proust and Camus and also it has been twice filmed.
January 15, 2024
Gettò a terra il cappello e vidi che aveva la testa rasata come un contadino. Mi mostrò i due razzi con le micce di carta che la fiamma prima di spegnersi aveva in parte consumato e annerito. Conficcò nella ghiaia il mozzo della ruota, estrasse di tasca – con mio grande stupore, giacché per noi era qualcosa di assolutamente vietato – una scatola di fiammiferi. Chinandosi con precauzione, diede fuoco alla miccia. Poi mi prese per mano e subito mi trascinò indietro.
Un attimo dopo mia madre usciva sulla soglia con la madre di Meaulnes, dopo aver discusso e stabilito il prezzo della pensione, e vide partire da sotto il portico, con un rumore di mantice, due fasci di stelle rosse e bianche; per un breve istante poté scorgermi ritto e immobile nel bagliore magico, per mano al nuovo arrivato …
“Il mio credo in arte e in letteratura: l’infanzia. Riuscire a renderla senza alcuna puerilità, con la sua profondità che sfiora i misteri. Il mio libro futuro sarà un perenne andirivieni impercettibile dal sogno alla realtà. ‘Sogno’ inteso come l’immensa e imprecisa vita infantile che plana al di sopra dell’altra e in cui instancabilmente riecheggiano gli echi dell’altra.” (da una lettera di Alain-Fournier a Jacques Riviere)
Alla ricerca di un tempo perduto che la scrittura permette di ritrovare. Che coincidenza: “Dalla parte di Swann” di Proust esce nello stesso anno de “Il grande Meaulnes”, il 1913. Qui ad essere malinconicamente rievocata è la giovinezza mitica, magica, irrequieta, avventurosa, sanguinosa. Il tempo dell’amicizia e dell’amore.
Fu allora che, levando il capo, la vidi a due passi da me. Sulla ghiaia le sue scarpe facevano un rumore lieve che avevo scambiato per quello delle gocce d’acqua sulla siepe.
Un attimo dopo mia madre usciva sulla soglia con la madre di Meaulnes, dopo aver discusso e stabilito il prezzo della pensione, e vide partire da sotto il portico, con un rumore di mantice, due fasci di stelle rosse e bianche; per un breve istante poté scorgermi ritto e immobile nel bagliore magico, per mano al nuovo arrivato …
“Il mio credo in arte e in letteratura: l’infanzia. Riuscire a renderla senza alcuna puerilità, con la sua profondità che sfiora i misteri. Il mio libro futuro sarà un perenne andirivieni impercettibile dal sogno alla realtà. ‘Sogno’ inteso come l’immensa e imprecisa vita infantile che plana al di sopra dell’altra e in cui instancabilmente riecheggiano gli echi dell’altra.” (da una lettera di Alain-Fournier a Jacques Riviere)
Alla ricerca di un tempo perduto che la scrittura permette di ritrovare. Che coincidenza: “Dalla parte di Swann” di Proust esce nello stesso anno de “Il grande Meaulnes”, il 1913. Qui ad essere malinconicamente rievocata è la giovinezza mitica, magica, irrequieta, avventurosa, sanguinosa. Il tempo dell’amicizia e dell’amore.
Fu allora che, levando il capo, la vidi a due passi da me. Sulla ghiaia le sue scarpe facevano un rumore lieve che avevo scambiato per quello delle gocce d’acqua sulla siepe.
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