Jean Giono (30 March 1895 – 8 October 1970) was a French writer who wrote works of fiction mostly set in the Provence region of France.

First period

Jean Giono was born to a family of modest means, his father a cobbler of Piedmontese descent and his mother a laundry woman. He spent the majority of his life in Manosque,

Alpes-de-Haute-Provence Alpes-de-Haute-Provence or sometimes abbreviated as AHP (; oc, Aups d'Auta Provença; ) is a department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of France, bordering Alpes-Maritimes and Italy to the east, Var to the south, Vaucluse to the west ...

. Forced by family needs to leave school at the age of sixteen and get a job in a bank, he nevertheless continued to read voraciously, in particular the great classic works of literature including the Bible, Homer's '' Iliad'', the works of Virgil, and the ''Tragiques'' of Agrippa d'Aubigné. He continued to work at the bank until he was called up for military service at the outbreak of World War I, and the horrors he experienced on the front lines turned him into an ardent and lifelong

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...

. In 1919, he returned to the bank, and a year later, married a childhood friend with whom he had two children. Following the success of his first published novel, '' Colline'' (1929) (which won him the

Prix Brentano The Prix Brentano was a literary award given annually by the American bookstore chain Brentano's to a French novel that "illustrate eminently the French cultural ideal". The first award (with a check for $1000) was given in 1929. The prize was inst ...

earned $1,000, and drew an English translation of the book), he left the bank in 1930 to devote himself to writing on a full-time basis. ''Colline'' was followed by two more novels heavily influenced by Virgil and Homer, ''

Un de Baumugnes ''Lovers Are Never Losers'' () is a 1929 novel by the French writer Jean Giono. It tells a love story set in rural France in the early 20th century. It is the standalone second entry in Giono's Pan trilogy; it was preceded by ''Colline'' and follo ...

'' (1929) and '' Regain'' (1930), the three together comprising the famous “ Pan trilogy”, so-called because in it Giono depicts the natural world as being imbued with the power of the Greek god Pan. The other novels Giono published during the nineteen-thirties on the whole continued in the same vein—set in Provence, with peasants as protagonists, and displaying a pantheistic view of nature. Marcel Pagnol based three of his films on Giono's work of this period: ''Regain'', starting Fernandel and with music by

Honegger Arthur Honegger (; 10 March 1892 – 27 November 1955) was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. A member of Les Six, his best known work is probably '' Antigone'', composed between 1924 and 1927 ...

; ''Angèle'', and ''La Femme du boulanger'', with the actor Raimu. Throughout the nineteen-thirties, Giono expressed the pacifism he had adopted as a result of his experiences during World War I in novels such as ''Le grand troupeau'' (1931), and pamphlets such as ''Refus d’obéissance'' (1937), and the ''Lettre aux paysans sur la pauvreté et la paix'' (1938). This in turn resulted in his forming a relationship with a group of like-minded people including

Lucien Jacques Lucien is a male given name. It is the French form of Luciano or Latin ''Lucianus'', patronymic of Lucius. Lucien, Saint Lucien, or Saint-Lucien may also refer to: People Given name * Lucien of Beauvais, Christian saint *Lucien, a band member ...

and

Henri Fluchère Henri Fluchère (1898–1987) was a chairman of the Société Française Shakespeare and a notable literary critic. He played an important role in the establishment of an Elizabethan research centre in Aix-en-Provence and contributed to the Gol ...

among others, who gathered each year in the hamlet of Contadour, and whose pacifist writings were published as the ''Cahiers du Contadour''. In 1937, he famously asked, "What is the worst that can happen if Germany invades France?"

Transition

The end of the nineteen-thirties brought a crisis in Giono's life. As far as his writing was concerned, he had come to feel that it was time to stop “doing Giono” (''faire du Giono''), and to take his work in a new direction. At the same time it was becoming apparent that his work for pacifism was a failure, and that another war was inevitable and fast approaching. The declaration of war on 1 September 1939 came while the Contadoureans were assembled for their annual reunion. The result of Giono's former peace-making efforts was that he was briefly imprisoned as a Nazi sympathiser before the proceedings were dropped without any charges being laid. The subsequent period of renewal saw the self-educated Giono now turn to

Stendhal Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, ; ), was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' (''The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de P ...

as a literary model in the same way as previously he had been influenced by the Classics. His novels thus began to be set in a specific time and place, confronting the protagonists with specific politics, issues, causes and events, in contrast with the timelessness of his earlier work. He also adopted the Stendhalian narrative technique of letting the reader into the experience of the protagonist by means of the interior monologue, whereas the dominant technique of his earlier novels had been that of the omniscient narrator. He similarly formed the ambition of writing a sequence of ten novels inspired by Balzac’s '' Comédie humaine'', in which he would depict characters from all strata of society rather than peasants, and compare and contrast different moments in history by depicting the experiences of members of the same family in times a hundred years apart. This project was never realised, with only the four ''Hussard'' novels, (''Angelo'' (1958), ''Le Hussard sur le Toit'' (1951), ''Le Bonheur fou'' (1957), ''Mort d’un personnage'' (1948)) actually completed according to plan, but it is echoed in Giono's postwar work in the dichotomy between historical novels set in the mid-nineteenth century, and contemporary novels set in the mid-twentieth. His newfound interest in history even led to his writing an actual history book, ''Le Désastre de Pavie'' (1963). As he began to focus on the human being rather than the natural world, his understanding of psychology and motivation was also influenced by the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, whose analysis helped him to articulate a much darker view of human nature in his later years, and about whom he wrote the article "''Monsieur Machiavel, ou le coeur humain dévoilé''" (1951). In 1944, when France was liberated, Giono was again accused of collaboration with the Nazis, and was again imprisoned for five months before he was freed without charges ever being made. This led to his being blacklisted, so that for three years he was barred from publication. It was during this period of ostracism that he began in 1945 to write ''Angelo'', metaphorically the laboratory in which he experimented, tested and attempted to integrate his new approach to his work. It contains not only a first version of the story of Angélo Pardi that took its final form in ''Le Hussard sur le toit'' and ''Le Bonheur fou'', but also the nucleus of many other works of his second period, and makes use of new narrative techniques he developed further in other novels. He ultimately set it aside, no doubt considering it too derivative, and moved on to the other projects it gave rise to.

Second period

The first major novel of his second period to be published was '' Un roi sans divertissement'' (published in 1947, and made into a successful

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

for which Giono himself wrote the screenplay, in 1963). It takes the form of a detective story set in Haute Provence in the early nineteenth century, and reveals Giono's new pessimism about human nature in that the policeman is forced to the realisation that he himself is capable of being as evil as the murderer he is tracking. Stylistically brilliant, it consists of the juxtaposed accounts of events as told by the different people affected, devoid of explanation, from which the reader must piece together the meaning. The most famous novel of his second period is ''Le Hussard sur le toit'', the first part of the definitive version of the story of Angélo Pardi he had sketched in ''Angelo''. It was published in 1951, and made into a film by Jean-Paul Rappeneau starring Juliette Binoche in 1995. Angélo, like Stendhal's Fabrice del Dongo'' ( La Chartreuse de Parme)'' on whom he is modeled, is a chivalrous romantic whose quest constitutes an inquiry into the nature of happiness, while the cholera epidemic he finds himself confronted with in Provence in 1832 is an allegory for the wars that had so deeply affected Giono. In structure it is a picaresque series of episodes, full of evocative descriptions of the country. Its sequel, ''Le Bonheur fou'' (The Straw Man) (1957) follows Angélo in the Italy of the

1848 revolution The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in Europea ...

. ''Les Ames fortes'' (1950), filmed by Raoul Ruiz in 2001, is another of the masterpieces of this period. As dark as ''Un Roi sans divertissement'', it examines the depths a person can sink to in greed, grasping self-interest and the exploitation of others. Also as in ''Un Roi sans divertissement'', the story is again told purely in the words of the protagonists, without the intervention of a narrator or comment from the author, thus forcing readers to reach their own conclusions. ''Les Grands chemins'' (1951), considerably less dark, deals with the nature of the road, gambling, the lie, and friendship, again in a first-person narration entirely in the voice of the protagonist and devoid of explanation or elucidation from the author. Also worthy of mention is his ''Voyage en Italie'' (1953). Neither a travel guide nor a straightforward account of a trip as the name suggests, this is a highly personal account of Giono's experiences and of the people he meets and sees that tells the reader more about Giono than about Italy. Outside France, Giono's best-known work is probably the short story '' The Man who Planted Trees'' (and 1987

version). This optimistic tale of a man who brings a deserted valley back to life by planting trees reflects Giono's long-standing love of the natural world, an attitude that made him a precursor to the modern ecological movement. He thus declined to receive any royalties from this text, and granted free use to anyone who wanted to distribute or translate it. In his later years, Giono was honoured with the Prince Rainier of Monaco literary prize in 1953, awarded for his lifetime achievements, was elected to the Académie Goncourt in 1954, and became a member of the ''Conseil Littéraire'' of Monaco in 1963. Giono died of a heart attack in 1970. The Collège Jean Giono in Nice is named after him, as are streets in Cannes and

Fréjus Fréjus (; ) is a commune in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in Southeastern France. In 2019, it had a population of 54,458. It neighbours Saint-Raphaël, effectively forming one urban agglomeration. The north of ...

Works

References

External links

*
Jean Giono biography
* Goslan, Richard J
" Jean Giono: From Pacifism to Collaboration "
''TELOS'' 139 (Summer 2007). New York
Telos Press

Université McGill: le roman selon les romanciers (French)
Inventory and analysis of Jean Giono's non-novelistic writings
Jean Giono biography (French)

Giono biography (French)

Tables of contents of the Cahiers du Contadour (French)

Centre Jean Giono - Manosque (French)
* Jean Giono Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Giono, Jean 1895 births 1970 deaths People from Manosque French people of Italian descent People of Piedmontese descent French pacifists 20th-century French novelists Writers from Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur French military personnel of World War I French male novelists French male short story writers French short story writers 20th-century short story writers 20th-century French male writers