Q2 2022 Group Read – Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier

Here is the thread for our 2022 Q2 group read. This quarter, we will focus on a French classic from the 20th century.

Le Grand Meaulnes (French: [lə ɡʁɑ̃ molnə]) is the only novel by French author Alain-Fournier. The novel was published in 1913, a year before the author's death in the first month of World War I.
It has been translated in English under numerous titles: The Wanderer, The Lost Domain, The Lost Estate, Big Meaulnes...

This novel is the second most translated French book in the world, after The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. At the end of the 20th century, more than 4 millions paperback copies had been sold worldwide.

Here is the cover of the 1st edition, by Emile-Paul Frères, after the novel had been published in instalments in the NRF (Nouvelle Revue Française) between July and October 1913.


(Data taken from wikipedia in English and in French)

A few words about the author, again, taken wikipedia in English and in French.

Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Fournier (3 October 1886 – 22 September 1914).
He was born in the Cher département, in central France (where the novel is set), the son of a school teacher (similar to the narrator of his novel, François Seurel). He wrote some essays, poems and stories and became a literary critic in Paris.
In 1913 (he was 27 years old), his only novel, Le Grand Meaulnes was published and then nominated for the Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious literary prize in France, but did not win.
In 1914, Alain-Fournier started working on a second novel but this remained unfinished when he joined the army, as he was enlisted at the very beginning of World War I. He was then killed in action one month latter, the 22 September 1914.

Most of Alain-Fournier writings were then published posthumously.
The legend of a writer who died for his country in full youth after having written a single novel undoubtedly contributed to ensuring the literary fortune of Alain-Fournier. His name appears on the walls of the Panthéon, in Paris, in the list of writers who died in the field of honour during the First World War.

Two photos from Alain-Fournier.
The first one, taken in September 1905 in La-Chapelle d’Angillon (where he was born and lived all his childhood) definitely has a Grand Meaulnes atmosphere. The second one, taken in 1913, is a reminder of how he died.

The thread is now open for discussion. Enjoy your reading!

As I am French, I'll obviously read the book in French. I have a child paperback edition that I rescued from one of my brother's shelves before a moving a few months ago, and that's the one I'll read.
I've actually started yesterday evening and I am half way through part one.

I can't remember if I have already read the book. I marked it as read on LT (although during pre-LT time), but I'm not sure I read it cover to cover. I don't have fond memories of the book or the excerpt I read. I was not fond of those dreamy stories as a teen.
This time, I am enjoying it much more, and I can make connections with other books, which is wonderful. I do enjoy as well the way Alain-Fournier writes.

I'm looking forward to reading what others make of this book!

I've read the book recently, looking forward to the discussion.

I just read this too and enjoyed it a lot, will be eavesdropping at the very least.

I downloaded it from a French ebook site and hope to start it tomorrow.

Whelp! I've been in a reading slump for maybe over a month now. I don't know when I will get to Le Grand Meaulnes, but if I manage to before the next quarter, I'll try to add my thoughts then.

What a strange book. Three parts, all very different, offering a dreamlike coming of age vision.
I did not manage to comment while reading, as it's difficult to comment in English a book that I read in French, but I'll be happy to chip in if someone decides to initiate the discussion.

I've written my review, in French. For those who are interested, it's here.

I am a bit outside of my confort zone with this novel, but I'm glad I read this classic I had heard so much about (even thinking that I had already read it, but I don't think it was the case) and, despite some uneasiness, it was a good read.

I've lost my reading mojo over the Easter holiday, but I hope to get back to this next week.

It's interesting that it was published the same year as Swann's Way, the start of Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time". The intro to my edition of Meaulnes points out how it was marking the end of one era of French fiction just as Proust was launching another.

I have finally finished it, from an ebook provided by a French site which had quite a few OCR errors. Just the raw text, no notes or introduction, so I went in knowing only that it is on many must-read lists.
I was surprised to find myself in a French school somewhere in the deepest country, and then swept off into a mysterious encounter that felt like some medieval romance. All in all, odd, and the plotting is uneven, but I enjoyed this. And I did wonder at the name of La Ferté-L'Angillon as Meaulnes' home-town. Wasn't Dumas' Athos actually Le comte de La Ferté?

I read the 'mysterious encounter' as symbolic of the aura that surrounds first love. Part of that initial encounter that's impossible to recreate.

I somehow missed the last posts on this thread. So I'm answering late, but as they say, better late than never...

>12 MissWatson: >12 MissWatson: Interesting connection between Le Grand Meaulnes and Les Trois Mousquetaires, but I’m not sure there is a literary filiation between both La Ferté.
I’m quoting Wikipedia here:

La Ferté is a French toponym meaning a fortress or bastion, derived from Gallo-Roman firmitate, ultimately from Latin firmus, meaning 'stable or strong.'

There are many small towns and villages which are called La Ferté in France. There are 21 included in the English wikipedia (here).
I’d rather say that La Ferté-L’Angillon is named after La Chapelle-d’Angillon, Alain-Fournier’s birthplace. There are only 2 villages in France with “L’Angillon” (that seems to come from Saint Benedict’s tooth…), both in the same area. “La Chapelle” (Chapel) is also very common in the names of French small towns and villages.
I guess Alain-Fournier wanted to root deeply his book in this part of rural France he knew so well. He did not want to use his village real name but disguised it in a very transparent way, using the common “La Ferté” to replace the common “La Chapelle”.

Such a proximity between reality and fiction makes me wonder to which extend Meaulnes’s domain actually exist… I like that type of day-dream...

>14 raton-liseur: Thanks for the explanation!

The school in which Alain-Fournier sets much of the story is the school where his father was head teacher, and so where A-F himself lived and studied.

It survives and is a frequent destination for tourists and school groups:
https://www.le-grand-meaulnes.fr/

It is also interesting, and possibly relevant, that Alain-Fournier and his friend Jacques Rivière were in the audience on May 29, 1913 for the first performance of Le Sacre du printemps, which they reviewed at length very enthusiastically.

>17 librorumamans:, wait, it says that somewhere? How did I miss that??

In the July, 1913 issue of La Nouvelle Revue Française Rivière proclaimed the death of symbolism and wrote:

Nous sommes à un de ces moments où I’on s’aperçoit tout à coup que quelque chose
a bougi. Comme un bateau qui, pendant la nuit, tourne sur son ancre et au matin
la proue qui regardait le port est pointée vers le large–, la littérature a pris une orientation nouvelle.’
[My translation: We are at one of those points where we suddenly notice that something has shifted. As a ship that, during the night, turns on its anchor so that in the morning the bow that had faced the port now faces the main — literature has taken a new orientation.]

Immediately following this declaration appeared the first six chapters of Le Grand Meaulnes.

In August he wrote that he was still unable to discuss Le Sacre coherently but that it "marque une date, non pas seulement dans l'histoire de la danse et de la musique, mais dans celle de tous les arts." [defines an era, not only in the history of dance and music, but in the history of all the arts]

In November his twenty-four page essay on Diagelev's ballet included this: "Le Sacre du Printemps est le premier chef-d'oeuvre que nous puissions opposer à ceux de l'impressionnism." Once again, the following page began the last installment of Le Grand Meaulnes. [The Rite of Spring is the first masterpiece that we can set against the masterpieces of impressionism.]

The closeness of the two men (they were brothers-in-law as well as collaborators), and the juxtaposition of Rivière's comments with the installments of the novel, suggest to me that Alain-Fournier was not writing something like a late romantic love story. We are invited to read beyond the surface story line.

Paul Claudel wrote to Rivière "Le grand Meaulnes m'intéresse beaucoup. On dirait une illustration de vos articles sur le 'Roman d'aventure'." [Le Grand Meaulnes interests me a great deal. One could call it an illustration of your articles on the Adventure Novel.]

My source for this material is Edward Ford's 1997 article "The Primitivist Structure of Alain-Fournier's Le grand Meaulnes"
https://doi.org/10.1080/08831159709604194

ETA: translations (that others may find imperfect)

>19 librorumamans: This is fascinating. Thanks.

In 1906 H. G. Wells published his short story "The Door in the Wall". It is interesting to read in conjunction with Le Grand Meaulnes because of both its strong similarities and significant differences.

I wonder, for example, if Wells' story illustrates the kind of symbolism that Rivière reacted against in his remarks on The Rite of Spring.

Wells' story is available many places on line – here, for one:
https://www.classicshorts.com/stories/tditw.html

>19 librorumamans: That's a really interesting angle to approach Le Grand Meaulnes, especially when it is many time refered to as a novel that is marking the end of an era.

>21 librorumamans: Thanks for this reference.

I've watched The Great Gatsby again a few days ago, and I remembered reading that the title might have been inspired by The Great Meaulnes (one of the possible title translations for). That's right that, as M'sieur Raton put it, both are about a dreamed and hopeless love, a dream of love that is more important than love itself.
The novels are different in their settings, but there are definitely some paralells that can be made.

>22 raton-liseur:

I've read about that link as well. Personally — and this solely my own speculation — I see James Hilton's Lost Horizon as a riff, a retelling, almost a plagiarism, of Le grand Meaulnes.

But Alain-Fournier's is much the better book.

>23 librorumamans: Never heard of this book or this author., but it seems it's a classic as well.
If time allows, I'll try the HG Wells reference you gave in >21 librorumamans: rather than this one.

>24 raton-liseur:

Well, sure: the Wells story is only 7500 words, or so. Lost Horizon was a massive bestseller in its day, and to my fourteen-year-old self an easy and gripping read.

>23 librorumamans:, that's an interesting comparison I wouldn't have made. I see Meulnes as a reflection on first loves and coming-of-age, while Horizon is focussed on place and its all-things-in-moderation theme.