Jean Giono

Jean Giono (Manosque, March 30th 1895 - ibid, October 9th 1970) is a writer French, of a family of Piedmontese origin, whose novel mainly has as a framework the country world of Provence. Inspired by its imagination and its visions of the ancient Greece, it depicts the condition of the Man in the world, vis-a-vis the questions morals and metaphysics, and has a universal range: Jean Giono is far from being the regionalistic author whom one could believe. Unclassable, self-educated (cf biography), he became the friend of Lucien Jacques, André Gide and Jean Guéhenno. It remained nevertheless in margin of all the currents of literature of its time.

The work of Jean Giono

The work of Jean Giono mingles a natural humanism with a revolt violent against the company with the 20th century, crossed by totalitarianism and corroded by the mediocrity. It is divided into two parts: the first books are written in a very lyric way (these works are often known as in “first manner”) and their style is very different from more worked out late works and more narrations, such as the romantic Chroniques and the Cycle of Hussard (works known as in “second manner”). Nature is in a certain way the main character of the first books, while the Man is that of the seconds.

Soldier during the First World War, Jean Giono objectively approaches this period of his life only in Refusal to obey , i.e. well after his first publications. The influence of the war is however very strong throughout its work. If it is unclassable, Giono is without question a humanistic and a pacifist .

The first works

The first three books of Jean Giono ( Hill , One of Baumugnes and Renewal ) constitute the trilogy of Pan . The god Pan is an important figure in the books of Giono. He is explicitly present at the whole beginning, and will remain until the end in filigree. He represents the nature unified in a single being. Although few follower philosophical discussions, Giono make some short allusions to the Panthéisme (cf Spinoza, Parménide), that it briskly develops in a lyric way in his first books. Nature is presented there in a way quite different from idyllic and benevolent the Provence of Pagnol. At Giono, nature is beautiful, but it is also cruel, destroying and purifying: the Man in fact part, but it is not the Man. Thus, in Hussard on the roof , nature appears by the Choléra which devastates Provence and kills blindly without worrying about the political concerns which agitate the men. (One finds remainder this design of nature, particularly absent from the ideas of this time, in a contemporary text of Albert Camus, entitled the Exile of Helene).

The Balzac heritage

Following the example Balzac, and very impressed by the human Comedy, Giono at the head had the project of a romantic cycle in ten volumes with the manner of Balzac . The first volume of the series, written in six days, has as a title Angelo . (one saw wrongly an outline of there Hussard on the roof. This was to be the first volume of ten works which would have recalled to reinvent the 19th century, for better emphasizing the tares of the 20th century . Angelo I, written in 1934, published in 1958, is undoubtedly considered wrongly as the unmethodical of the Hussard on the roof it was to be followed by a series of Angelos whose grandson Angelo III would be resistant in 1940. Perhaps frightened by the width of the task, Giono renonça with the preliminary draft and only three novel of the cycle " published; Hussard on the roof " , " insane Happiness " and " Died of a character ".

The Cycle of Hussard is composed of four books: Angelo , Hussard on the roof , insane Happiness (the hero of these the last two books is Angelo Pardi) and finally Mort of a character (the character in question is the marchioness Pauline de Théus in its old age).

Biography

Giono was born with Manosque on March 30th 1895. It is only sons. His/her father was an anarchistic shoe-maker of Italian origin which spent much time to read the Bible; his/her mother directed a workshop of sharpening. Giono evoked its childhood in Jean Blue . In 1911, the bad health of his/her father and the scanty means of its family obliged it to stop the studies. It had to inform in self-educated to appease its thirst for knowing. In 1915, during the First World War, it was incorporated in Briançon, then was sent to the face with Verdun and the Mont Kemmel, in Flanders-Western (Belgium). This experiment of the war, in the middle of one of the most terrible battles of the conflict, goes the traumatiser. His/her best friend and much of its comrades are killed at his sides. He will be only “slightly” gauze. There remains shocked by the horror of the war, the massacres, the cruelty, the atrocity of what lived in this hell, and he will become a pacifist convinced.

Later, the reading of the traditional writers (in particular Virgile) brought it to the writing; a pastime which took more and more importance, so that it decided, after the liquidation of the bank which employed it in 1929 and the success of its first work Colline , to stop any community activity to devote itself exclusively to its work. It accepted in 1929, the American price Brentano for Colline , as well as the Northcliffe price the following year for its novel Regain . It was also named knight of the Légion of honor in 1932.

The events of the beginning of the year 1930 pushed it to begin politically. It adhered to Association writers and revolutionary artists (communist mobility), but, by mistrust, released themselves some very quickly.

In April 1935, it published That my joy particularly remains which was a great success, near youth. Blocked accidentally in the hamlet of Contadour at the time of an excursion on the mountain of Lure, Giono and some friends, subjugated by the places, decided to meet there regularly: they were the Meetings of Contadour. It is the time of the publication of the test the True Richnesses , dedicated to those of Contadour.

The first steps of the war appeared soon. Jean Giono then wrote his petitions Refusal to obey , Lettre with the peasants on poverty and peace , Précision and Recherche of the purity . The declaration of war stopped the ninth meeting. " disciples" awaited the reaction of Giono. It was difficult for this free man who did not want to be a spiritual adviser and which wrote “only Go, that your clearness is enough for you”. It joined, like each and everyone, the center of mobilization of Worthy. However, because of its pacifism, it was stopped on September 14th 1939. It was slackened after a Non-lieu and was released from its military obligations. At the end of the Second world war, although it never gave an opinion in favor of the Régime of Vichy and even less in favor of the Nazi Germany, it was shown to have collaborated and was again imprisoned, in September 1944. It was released only in January 1945, without to be accused. Nevertheless, the National committee of the writers , organization resulting from Resistance, registered it on its black list, which prohibited in fact any publication of its work in France. This setting with the index ended only in 1947, with the publication of a king without entertainment , first in date of the Chronic . In the years which followed, Giono published in particular Mort of a character (1948), the strong Hearts (1950), Hussard on the roof (1951), the Mill of Poland (1953). With the success of these books, especially that of the Hussard on the roof , adapted thereafter longitudinally measuring, Giono fully finds the place which is his, that of the one of the French great writers of the 20th century. In 1953, the Literary prize of Prince Pierre of Monaco is decreed to him for the whole of its work. He is elected the following year within the Académie Goncourt. Interested more and more by the cinema (its film Crésus leaves in 1960), it chairs the jury of the Cannes festival 1961. Its last novel, the Iris of Suse , appears the year of its death: carried by an heart attack on October 9th 1970, Jean Giono is buried in Manosque.

Giono and Manosque

Giono called “the motionless traveller”. In fact, its work often evokes long voyages or routes, whereas itself almost did not travel. Before living with Appear, who overhangs Manosque, starting from 1929, Jean Giono lived with Manosque even: 1, rue Torte, where it was born on March 30th, 1895; 14, rue Grande, where his/her parents moved little time afterwards; 8, rue Grande, where it moved in 1920, after its marriage.

On the circular boulevard of Manosque the Agricultural credit is, which was the Counter of discount, when Giono worked there.

It also often remained in the Trièves where it spent its holidays, before the war (with Tréminis) and after (with Lalley). This beautiful mountainous region, located at the north of the collar Cross-High and that it described as “cloister of mountains”, in particular inspired to him the Song of the world , Bataille in the mountain (located at Tréminis), a king without entertainment (of which the action is held in a village corresponding to the situation of Lalley), the True richnesses and Triomphe of the life , tests which borrow much from the bucolic serenity of Trièves.

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