Anthony Howell

In his introduction, Anthony Costello says that Alain-Fournier's poems were rejected for publication during his lifetime as they were considered juvenile and unfashionably romantic and sentimental. As most of them were written in a period when the poet was between eighteen and nineteen years old, the juvenile tag was an easy label to fix onto him, however either I'm unnaturally juvenile (being in my fifties) or, as I feel is more correct, Alain-Fournier showed a maturity beyond his years.

As for romantic and sentimental, those aren't insults in my vocabulary, and Alain-Fournier's poetry is steeped in these qualities, with an aching nostalgia remarkable in one so young. That he should have died in the first month of WWI at the age of twenty-seven makes the nostalgic quality of his poems that much more poignant.

The poems are bathed in sunlight, amid flower-strewn fields and gardens, or infused with dusky, moonlit rain, gently playing against bedroom windows. There is love, unrequited and dreamed of, childhood scenes remembered with fondness and joy, and the are intimations of war, loss and grief. There are tragically few poems, but enough and of sufficient quality to know that the Great War wasted the potential of yet another young writer whose great promise was only partially realised.

The Notes on Translation by Anthony Costello, telling briefly of his relationship with co-translator, Anita Marsh, is touching and affectively in keeping with the tone of Alain-Fournier's poetry. His suggestion in the introduction to read the poems while listening to Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'aprés-midi d'un faune was well made, as it forms the perfect accompaniment to Alain-Fournier's verse.

This edition gives all the poems first in English translation, then in the original French, so it's possible for the English speaker to get the feel of Alain-Fournier's rhyme and metre even if (like myself) the translation is required for the meaning.

I'm definitely inspired to track down a copy of Alain-Fournier's prose work, The Lost Estate, or Le Grand Meaulnes.… (meer)