Meetings of Contadour

the Meetings of Contadour are annual meetings which proceeded, of September 1935 at September 1939, on the initiative of Jean Giono, with the Contadour locality, on the Montagne of Lure, with ten kilometers of Banon, into High Provence. Although having known an end abrupt and disillusioned with the advertisement of the war, these Meetings marked part of the life and work of the writer.

Context: genesis of a new company

In 1935, Jean Giono publishes That my joy remains . In this book, the hero, Bobi, transform the turned sour community of the Grémone plate into their bringing simple happiness. This novel very quickly finds a positive feedback near part of the youth which, in parallel, is recognized quickly in the thoughts of the author: opposition between the simple and pure life to the countryside, the craft industry, and the city with its factories and its machine tools which destroy the man.

In order to make discover with a group of amateurs the places which inspired it, Jean Giono takes them along to make an excursion on the mountain of Lure. He admires much this rough area which he traversed when he was young bank clerk. He knows well, also, the simple life that one carries out to it, in contact with nature.

Arrived at the locality Contadour, Jean Giono is wounded and it group is immobilized. They choose by mutual agreement to remain with the hamlet. During several days, the group resource, “philosophizes” too. Also fascinated by the place, they decide to buy an old mill that they will repair, to be able to find themselves in the future and find this happiness which they have just known. The Meetings of Contadour were born. The “Contadouriens” will be found from now on each year, at Easter and in September.

Utopia

Contadour, it is the Grémone plate of Which my joy remains . It is “the place where breath the spirit”.

Contadour becomes a place of wellbeing, one saw there in the open air, one discusses there, one reads there (poetries until the outlines of future works of Giono), one listens to there music, one walks on the desert extents of the plate by remaking the world.

This ideal world, dreamed by all, is finally real, in the middle of the hills, of the forests of pines, the lavender and tall grasses. The fifteen days which these meetings last make it possible to leave the vibrating life usually carried out by the group, composed mainly of Parisian intellectuals.

Between these Meetings, Jean Lescure in 1936 for the first numbers then Lucien Jacques, the close friend of Giono, publish the Cahiers of Contadour (one will thus find there the first paragraphs of Moby Dick inter alia). These publications of various texts, poetries, drawings, are the memory of the meetings.

Disillusion

Contadour is also a place of reflection. Jean Giono becomes gradually, without to have too much wanted it, a kind of intellectual guide, to have surrounded disciples always ready to listen to it and take his advice.

This time is, for Giono, that of the pacifist militancy . In these Meetings, “the only point on which it is impossible to compromise, it is the love of Peace” (Pierre Citron, Giono , the Threshold, 1995). The threats of war bring to reflections on the action to be taken if the conflict starts. One thinks of cutting off oneself from the low-alpine heights, with living in autarky, one wishes actions but Jean Giono avoids giving done everything answers. He does not want to be the spiritual adviser as of his friends, even if he is deeply pacifist. Its trade, it is initially to write…

In September 1939, the meeting is seen stopped by the declaration of war. It will be the last, with at the end of the day a disenchantment and a strong disillusion.

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