''Un jardin sur l'Oronte'' (''A Garden on the Orontes'') is a novel by
Maurice Barrès, which was first published in 1922 by
Plon-Nourrit. Barrès purportedly transcribed in it a story which an Irish archaeologist had translated to him from a manuscript one evening of June 1914, at a ''café'' in
Hama by the
Orontes River. The tale of love of "a Christian and a Sarrasin" is set in the
crusading era of the Middle Ages.
The publication triggered what would be called ''la querelle de l'Oronte''
(the Orontes Quarrel): as worded by Jane F. Fulcher, "despite the widely known conservatism of Barrès, the novel created a scandal, particularly in the Catholic press, which perceived its sensuality as an outrage to religious morality."
After Barrès' death, the work onto which Barrès "claimed to have projected a
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
ian conception" was adapted into
an opera of the same name with a libretto by
Franc-Nohain
Maurice Étienne Legrand, who published under the pseudonym Franc-Nohain (; 25 October 187218 October 1934), was a French librettist and poet. He is best known for his libretti for Maurice Ravel's opera '' L'heure espagnole'' and for numerous oper ...
and music by
Alfred Bachelet, which was created, undoubtedly delayed by the scandal, on 7 November 1932.
References
Further reading
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External links
{{Authority control
1922 French novels
French-language novels
Plon (publisher) books
Novels by Maurice Barrès