Jean Giono Critical Essay | Critical Review by Henri Peyre

Critical Review by Henri Peyre

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...
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