SOURCE: Starr, William T. “Jean Giono and Walt Whitman.” French Review 14 (December 1941): 118-29.

In the following essay, Starr points out the obvious influences of Whitman's love of nature and the life-force on the works of Giono.

The influence of Walt Whitman upon certain contemporary French writers, especially those who at one time composed the “groupe de l'Abbaye”, has been frequently mentioned.¹ Perhaps it is not so well known that he also had some influence upon Jean Giono, a writer whose ideas are generally different from those of Jules Romains and Georges Duhamel. Unlike these authors, Giono does not so much insist upon the relation of men to society, as upon the relation of the individual to nature. As an example of the various ways in which Whitman's influence has been felt in France it will be of interest to study this relationship between Giono and Whitman.

The author...