This section contains 889 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
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SOURCE: Peyre, Henri. “Flight from Plague.” Saturday Review (23 January 1954): 17.
In the following review of the English version of Le Hussard sur le toit, Peyre, one of the first English-language commentators on Giono, notes that Giono's postwar emphasis changed to one of pure storytelling, in contrast to the symbolic, anti-modernity themes of his earlier works.
Before World War II Jean Giono enjoyed the devotion of many worshipers in Europe, who hailed him and his contemporaries Malraux, Saint-Exupéry, Montherlant as the torch-bearers of a revolt against the introspective novel of Proust and Mauriac. Giono had scored an immediate triumph as an epic novelist and as a magician whose colorful words were dynamite. He soon became the prophet of a crusade against mechanical civilization. The Song of the World, Joy of Man's Desiring, even Blue Boy, from which the celebrated episode of “The Baker's Wife” was drawn, were, and have...
This section contains 889 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
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