SOURCE: Bieber, Konrad. “Jean Giono's Greece: A Kinship Between Distant Ages.” In The Persistent Voice: Essays on Hellenism in French Literature Since the 18th Century in Honor of Professor Henri M. Peyre, edited by Walter G. Langlois, pp. 131-42. New York: New York University Press, 1971.

In the following essay, Bieber notes the ways in which Giono's works evoke the ambience of ancient Greece and the style of its epic writers.

Stripped of Greek influences and sources, much of Western tragedy would either collapse or be missing altogether. The same may not be true to the same extent in poetry, or in the field of the novel. To be sure, our time is witnessing an emancipation from tradition which, more often than not, takes the form of an outright rebellion against the past. It is not yet clear whether such revolts will lead to valid art or are merely...