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Le Grand Meaulnes

Alain-Fournier,

Frank Dalby Davison (Translation)

3.74 · Rating details · 11,169 ratings · 873 reviews

In a small village in the Sologne, Fifteen-year-old François Seurel narrates the story of his relationship with seventeen-year-old Augustin Meaulnes. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood.

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Paperback, 206 pages

Published July 1st 1994 by Penguin Classics (first published 1913)

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Jul 23, 2016 Steven Godin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classic-fiction, france

Alain-Fournier's one and only novel due to his tragic death during the first world war evokes dreamlike memories of a bygone era, with an evocative and moving friendship all surrounding a long lost love. Set in a small French commune and the lush, pleasant countryside Fifteen year old François Seurel narrates his close relationship with slightly older boy Augustin Meaulnes, also known as "Le Grand Meaulnes" because of his natural charisma and physical presence with fellow students during their t
Alain-Fournier's one and only novel due to his tragic death during the first world war evokes dreamlike memories of a bygone era, with an evocative and moving friendship all surrounding a long lost love. Set in a small French commune and the lush, pleasant countryside Fifteen year old François Seurel narrates his close relationship with slightly older boy Augustin Meaulnes, also known as "Le Grand Meaulnes" because of his natural charisma and physical presence with fellow students during their time at school. And it's during this time that Meaulnes apparently goes missing for a few days only to return with a fascinating story of how he got lost one night and ended up in a seemingly abandoned estate in the middle of nowhere in which sits a Chateau that appears to be hosting some sort of party. With avid curiosity François eventually finds out that there was a beautiful girl hidden within, and for Meaulnes it was indeed love at first sight, so they both decide to try and discover just where abouts this mysterious place could be?, and this is just a beginning that will see their lives changed forever, both for better and worse.

Who knows what Fournier could have gone on to achieve, he had the potential to be a very special writer, and as a first written work of fiction it certainly is a lavish one and has at times the feel of a fairytale that children would get read at bedtime, the narrative is superb and the book on the whole is easy to read so for younger readers looking for a good place to start with classic French literature this would qualify as doesn't contain the complexities and deep character studies of some of the other renowned classic French writers. Although there is a story to an extent, the main factors for me were the universal feelings that would arouse the senses, with a nostalgic youthful spirit and the true meaning of an adolescent friendship shining through. I was left partially with a sad yearning for it's three main characters but also for myself, as your left with a strong feeling for your own treasured memories and loves from years gone by. ...more

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May 13, 2010 Esteban del Mal rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommends it for: people who wonder what Cirque du Soleil would sound like if they talked

Shelves: donated, night-of-the-living-unread, novel, fiction

Dear Henri Alain-Fournier,

Some people claim you had great talent as a novelist. Many more would claim I don't. Is it fair that you died in World War I while I live, free to write this review and feeling like I'm having a bad morning because I didn't have all the usual ingredients for my breakfast shake? Your remains weren't identified until 1991, true, but do you know that without yogurt, steel cut oatmeal, goji berries and banana congeal like pond scum when blended with almond milk? I guess in Dear Henri Alain-Fournier,

Some people claim you had great talent as a novelist. Many more would claim I don't. Is it fair that you died in World War I while I live, free to write this review and feeling like I'm having a bad morning because I didn't have all the usual ingredients for my breakfast shake? Your remains weren't identified until 1991, true, but do you know that without yogurt, steel cut oatmeal, goji berries and banana congeal like pond scum when blended with almond milk? I guess in a way translated works of fiction are like that, lacking an ingredient. Not really fair of me to judge you then, is it? And on top of that, I read somewhere that the Robin Buss translation I have isn't the best.

I don't know. Maybe I've been prejudiced against anything French because there's been a creepy mime wandering around the farmers' market on Saturdays. With the summer heat, its face make-up starts to melt and peel and it scares my kid and me. Or maybe, having discovered Woody Allen before James Dean, it's because I'm sentimental for my own sort of coming-of-age story. But the truth is, I found your novel sappy. Sappy to the nth degree.

"And that evening, sobbing, he asked Mademoiselle de Galais for her hand in marriage."

Barf.

Some folks describe it as dream-like. Well, I'll meet them halfway and say that it is conducive to a dream-like state, in as much as I found myself wanting to fall asleep as I read it. God! Germany probably invaded France so often to keep from nodding off. Can you blame them? They had all those big philosophical treatises to write, but then kept getting distracted by the latest Twilight prequel. And they would've even read it in the original French because all you Continentals speak five languages!

I tried to make excuses for you, thinking, "Look at it this way: it's a parable for post-colonial France. They were just coming off that Napoleonic high and had to simultaneously deal with the onset of modernity. It's a simple case of British/penis envy." But even my credulity can only stretch so far.

Goodbye, Alain-Fournier. Sorry your life was cut short by one of history's celebrated mistakes. Maybe this book will mean something to somebody else. It's going to have the opportunity, because I'm donating it to my library. ...more

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May 13, 2015 [P] rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: bitchin

Some time after leaving university I was in a club; and at one point in the, er, festivities I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned around, and there was an attractive blonde girl. She spoke my name; I stared back at her blankly. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ she asked. I had to confess that I didn’t. ‘Nicole,’ she said. I was about to embarrass myself further, and admit that I still could not place her, when it came to me. Ah, Nicole! Of course! She had been in the same halls of residence as I. We d ...more

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May 31, 2019 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 20th-century, novel, read-in-translation, france

I read this purely because it was recommended by Penelope Fitzgerald, in truth since she is dead this was not a personal recommendation but it was one of her books of the century as mentioned in Hermione Lee's Penelope Fitzgerald: a life.

The appeal to Fitzgerald seems clear. It is a strange little tale akin to a fable, it conjures up a dream like atmosphere, it takes the lives of adolescents with one foot in the adult world and one foot in childhood very seriously and captures their state of min I read this purely because it was recommended by Penelope Fitzgerald, in truth since she is dead this was not a personal recommendation but it was one of her books of the century as mentioned in Hermione Lee's Penelope Fitzgerald: a life.

The appeal to Fitzgerald seems clear. It is a strange little tale akin to a fable, it conjures up a dream like atmosphere, it takes the lives of adolescents with one foot in the adult world and one foot in childhood very seriously and captures their state of mind and allows it to command the story, perhaps she too might have noticed that it is at once shy of and explicit about adult sex and sexuality, with characters who are running, but whether towards it or away from it they could not say (view spoiler). In a final classic Fitzgerald touch it has an ambiguous ending which depending on your point of view can be read as more unhappy than happy - (if you are really optimistic you might find the glass of happiness certainly half full).

It reminded me of a countryside version of Wedekind's play Spring Awakening, or to express it differently it is roughly mid way between Peter Pan and Logan's Run. It also dug out memories for me of Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, and as I have read, the story is very similar to that of the slightly later The Great Gatsby just in that case the story is played out by people who are adults in years.

The story relies a lot on the grossly improbable, but sinking into the atmosphere of the story these I found acceptable and they did not make me laugh though some of the improbabilities are quite silly - one boy does not recognise another who he is sitting in the same classroom with simply because the other boy has a bandage round his forehead - and not like the invisible man - just a single strip of bandage. Such a dasterdly mastery of disguise!

Anyhow the tale is narrated by the son of a village school master, when one day Le Grand Meaules - a big strapping adventurous boy - joins the school. All the boys are in awe of him if not at least a little in love with him. Le Grand Meaules - or Augustin by first name is the opposite of the narrator Francois(view spoiler), tall, strong, and outgoing compared to the narrator with his gammy knee who barely is bold enough to leave his house. Augustin casually takes a break from school one day and vanishes for three days (that's the kind of boy he is) when he comes back he relates a strange adventure that swallows up the emotional lives of both Augustin and Francois.

The story seems to be constructed from mirrors, Augustin and Francois are mirror images of each other, and the relationship between Augustin and Yvonne is the mirror image of that between Franz and Valentine. The mirror image is maybe the central idea of the book as characters gaze with longing on something that they can no longer touch: their past, indeed as readers we know that each day carries them further from the moments of perfection that they could not entirely enter into at he time - like those knights of the Round table who caught sight of the Holy Grail and don't know what question they are supposed to ask.

In short this is an utterly Romantic tale of longing, loss and impossibility, the lost, or departing, world of childhood, a literal estate that is nearby, mysterious, and almost impossible to find. It is compellingly dreamy, but WWI is just round the corner and will provide a harsh awakening. ...more

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May 14, 2008 Eddie Watkins rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dreamy, french-fiction

When I was about 10 I spent what felt like an entire summer playing in a marsh with a friend. The marsh was a gradual discovery. Each day, as our courage increased, we penetrated deeper into it, crawling and hopping from tree mound to tree mound, until we had mapped out quite a large area in our imaginations. And of course we were the only two who knew about it. This area of the marsh became our sprawling fort, with significant crossings and islands given names from my primary reading matter of When I was about 10 I spent what felt like an entire summer playing in a marsh with a friend. The marsh was a gradual discovery. Each day, as our courage increased, we penetrated deeper into it, crawling and hopping from tree mound to tree mound, until we had mapped out quite a large area in our imaginations. And of course we were the only two who knew about it. This area of the marsh became our sprawling fort, with significant crossings and islands given names from my primary reading matter of the time, The Book of Lists. So the longest "bridge” (a downed tree) was dubbed Verrazano Narrows, and the crossing that required the longest leap was called Bob Beamon Way. There was also Edison’s Isle, where we found a light bulb; and The Sewer, where we pissed. Every day I dreamed about this place, and every day that I could I returned to it. It was a wonderful time in a secret world.

By the next summer my friend had moved, but that didn’t deter me; I returned to it alone. But just one year had wrought irreversible changes – plants were so overgrown I couldn’t even find my way in, let alone make it back to Edison’s Isle. I was devastated, but being 11 or so I quickly recovered and moved on to other adventures, though in many ways the adventures in that secret marsh were never replicated, never surpassed, so it became a place in my imagination, a fertile place representing the unselfconscious mysteries and adventures of youth.

Many years later I spoke to this friend, now far along in a life fairly antithetical to my own, and I mentioned the marsh, hoping to recapture some of its magic by tapping into his memories, but he had little or no recollection of the place. I was newly devastated, as I had wanted for years to ask him about it, and I felt a hard lump of sadness drop to the bottom of my being, but in some ways this sadness fortified even further the magical significance of the marsh in my imagination.

This book, too, is about a “secret domain” discovered by chance and never found again, and the spell the experience casts on the children involved. But its secret domain was also populated by a beautiful girl (the children being not 10 or 11 but 15 or 16), and so there’s the added tragic element of lost love permeating Le Grand Meaulnes’ life, infecting it with an ideal that can never be realized, making of him a wanderer on this earth.

But what is it about this book that is so affecting, so haunting and magical? The subject matter, sure, is one reason: the end of youth as precipitated by life-long obsession with unattainable beauty and mystery encountered in one’s youth, bringing on the realization that one peaked early, that those early wonders will never be experienced again. This is always a powerful theme, and in one way or another is the emotional substratum of much literature. But why does this book in particular pack such a wallop? I have now read it twice, the first time being many years ago, but I still don’t know exactly. One possibility that struck me this time is the odd hybrid nature of the sensibility expressed in its pages. There’s an enchanted wistfulness, a Romantic sensitivity to very delicate natural mysteries and adolescent relations, but coupled with this is an almost blunt and matter-of-fact rusticity that is somewhat detached. In other words the sensibility is that of a sensitive rustic intellectual; a character type I always find intriguing. And then there’s the writing itself which had every opportunity to launch into floweriness and mystical indulgence, yet didn’t, instead it steered a steady course of basic description, which enhanced even more the aching unresolved mystery of the subject matter.

I love this book and its impact on me was no less than the first time around, and upon finishing it I’m having some difficulty moving on to another novel.
...more

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Mar 20, 2020 fourtriplezed rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: france, my-fiction

‘But you have read Madame Bovary?’
(I’d heard of the book.) ‘No.’
‘Not even,’ she looked ratty now, ‘Hermann Hesse?’
‘No.’ Unwisely I tried to dampen Madame Crommelynck’s disgust. ‘I only really did English literature at school…’
‘“English”? Australia was part of the English Empire, England is European! No French? No German? You are Australian, you illiterate monkey of puberty! Thomas Mann, Rilke, Gogol! Proust, Bulgakov, Victor Hugo! This should be your culture, your inheritance, your skeleton! You ‘But you have read Madame Bovary?’
(I’d heard of the book.) ‘No.’
‘Not even,’ she looked ratty now, ‘Hermann Hesse?’
‘No.’ Unwisely I tried to dampen Madame Crommelynck’s disgust. ‘I only really did English literature at school…’
‘“English”? Australia was part of the English Empire, England is European! No French? No German? You are Australian, you illiterate monkey of puberty! Thomas Mann, Rilke, Gogol! Proust, Bulgakov, Victor Hugo! This should be your culture, your inheritance, your skeleton! You are ignorant even of Kafka?’
I flinched. ‘I’ve heard of him. I’ve even discussed him on Goodreads’
“Goodreads?” she shrieked ‘This?’ She held up Le Grand Meaulnes.
‘Yes, I’ve just finished it.’
‘Is one of my bibles. I read it every year. So!’ She frisbeed her copy at me, hard. It hurt. ‘Alain-Fournier is your first true master. He is nostalgic and tragic and enchantible and he aches and you would have ached too and, best of everything, he is true.’

As I opened it up a cloud of foreign words blew out. Il arriva chez nous un dimanche de novembre 189…
‘Your copy. It’s in French!’
‘Translations are incourteous between Europeans.’ She detected the guilt in my silence. ‘Oho? Australian schoolboys in the less than enlightened 1970s never read a book in a foreign language?’
‘We never had French at school…’ (Madame Crommelynck made me go on.) ‘…but we had Citizenship Education.’ I said brightly.
‘Pfffffffffffft! Citizenship Education? What is that? When I was thirteen I spoke French and Dutch fluently! I could converse in German, in English, in Italian! Ackkk, for your schoolmasters, for your minister of education, execution is too good! Is not even arrogance! It is a baby who is too primitive to know its nappy is stinking and bursting! You Australians, Queenslanders especially, you deserve the government of Monster Joh Bjelke Peterson! I curse you with twenty years of Bjelke Peterson! Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is prison! You have a French dictionary and a grammar, anyhow?’
‘No but I have read and now finished Le Grand Meaulnes as translated into English by Frank Davidson’ ‘And you like?’ Madame Crommelynck asked. ‘Kinda’ I said.
“”Kinda, kinda’” Madame Crommelynck sneered. ‘Is that this strine that you antipodean halfwits speak? What do you mean Kinda?’ ‘It all seemed kinda clunky in parts of the translation’ I replied and caught the outrage in Madame Crommelynck eyes. ‘And the story was just a little too sweet and cloying, saccharine one might say. For my tastes anyway but I do understa…’
‘sweet, cloying, saccharine?’ roared the good Madame “out of my sight now and read….and read… read that David Mitchell……. Onzin!”

As I slunk away feeling a great sense of guilt that I could only give a French classic 3 stars I heard an exasperated ‘Ackkk’ deep in the throat of Madame Crommelynck. ...more

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Jul 10, 2019 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, 20th-century, france, novels, french, literature, culture, fiction, romance

Le Grand Meaulnes = The Lost Estate, Alain-Fournier
Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (3 October 1886 – 22 September 1914), a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature. Le Grand Meaulnes is the only novel by French author Alain-Fournier, who was killed in the first month of World War I. The novel, published in 1913, a year before the author's death, i Le Grand Meaulnes = The Lost Estate, Alain-Fournier
Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (3 October 1886 – 22 September 1914), a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature. Le Grand Meaulnes is the only novel by French author Alain-Fournier, who was killed in the first month of World War I. The novel, published in 1913, a year before the author's death, is somewhat biographical – especially the name of the heroine Yvonne, for whom he had a doomed infatuation in Paris. Fifteen-year-old François Seurel narrates the story of his friendship with seventeen-year-old Augustin Meaulnes as Meaulnes searches for his lost love. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood.
عنوانها: دوست من مون؛ مون بزرگ؛ مُلن بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1970 میلادی
عنوان: مُلن بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: محمدمهدی داهی؛ زیر نظر: احسان یارشاطر؛ تهران، بنگاه ترجمه و نشر کتاب، 1343؛ در 359 ص؛ چاپ دوم 1347؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، انتشارات علمی فرهنگی، 1394؛ در هفده، و 292 ص؛ شابک: 9786001219573؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسوی - سده 20 م
عنوان: دوست من مون؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: مهدی سحابی؛ بابل، کتابسرای بابل، 1368؛ در 272 ص؛ چاپ چهارم 1368؛
عنوان: مون بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: مهدی سحابی؛ تهران، نشر مرکز، 1381؛ در هشت و 293 ص؛ شابک: 9643056600؛ چاپ دوم 1389؛ چاپ سوم 1392؛
عنوان: مون بزرگ؛ نویسنده: آلن فورنیه؛؛ مترجم: فائژه خداوردی؛ ویراستار: فرناز ساسانی؛ تهران، کتابسرای وصال؛ 1398؛ در 120 ص؛ مصور، شابک: 9786226454148؛
مولن بزرگ یا «مون بزرگ» تنها اثر داستانی نویسنده فرانسوی: «آلن فورنیه» است. راوی داستان، نوجوانی دبیرستانی است، که قصه ی دوستش «اگوستن مون» را، بازگو می‌کند. او در جستجوی عشق خویش، در مکانی گمشده است. این کتاب برای استواری سبک، و ساختار داستان، و پیشرفت آهسته ی رمز و راز، و رخدادهای فوق طبیعی، که رنگی از متافیزیک شاعرانه نیز، چاشنی آن است، کتابی کاملاً پخته و هنرمندانه به شمار می‌رود. «مولن بزرگ»، سرشار از رؤیاها، و جهانهای جوانی ست؛ و به گونه‌ ای خیال انگیز، رویاهای سالهای جوانی، و میل ناشکیبایی انسانها، در به دست آوردن، و هستی بخشیدن به رؤیاهای خویش را، به نگاره می‌کشد. این رمان در میان یکصد کتاب سده ی بیست میلادی «لوموند»، که فهرستی از کتابهای برگزیده سده ی بیستم میلادی ست، در رتبه نهم آرام گرفته. «مولن بزرگ» نخستین بار در سال 1343 هجری خورشیدی ، با عنوان «مُلن بزرگ»؛ توسط جناب آقای «محمدمهدی داهی»، به فارسی ترجمه شد. جناب آقای: «مهدی سحابی» نیز، این کتاب را بار دیگر ترجمه کرده اند، که در چاپ نخست به سال 1368 هجری خورشیدی، با عنوان: «دوست من، مون»، و در چاپهای بعدی با عنوان: «مون بزرگ»، منتشر شده‌ است. ا. شربیانی ...more

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Aug 24, 2014 Nigeyb rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Most French people read this book at school and a recent poll in France made it the sixth best book of the 20th century.

Unlike the average French person, I came to this story of adolescent love in my early 50s. Would the book's charms work for the older reader? The answer is an emphatic yes. It perfectly captures that magical period when emotions are at their most intense.

Le Grand Meaulnes, the protagonist, is an adventurous, charismatic wanderer who stumbles across a lost chateau where partyg ...more

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Feb 16, 2015 Jim Fonseca rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: french-authors

This is the Centenary Edition of the French classic Le Grand Meaulnes, a coming of age story of a boy and the companion he looks up to, nicknamed Le Grand Meaulnes. So we have all the usual boyhood stuff of bullies, juvenile delinquent episodes, boring school days, awkwardness around girls. One day Le Grand Meaulnes, very much the leader, while our narrator is the follower, gets lost and finds himself in an exotic costumed adventure in a fairyland, beautiful girl and all. The story becomes a sea ...more

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Nov 30, 2020 Luís rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: g-romance, n-frança, g-classics, g-queer-lgbt, e-3

By wanting to grab the wings of a butterfly, you can reduce its shimmering colours to dust. So I will only touch "Le Grand Meaulnes" for fear of removing the magic ...
This remarkable love story and friendship, published in 1913, symbolizes in my eyes the passage from adolescence to adulthood, with all the heartbreaks and tragedies that implies. Tragedy crystallized the following year by the author's death, broke on the eve of his 28 years during the first frighteningly deadly battles of the Grea ...more

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Jul 16, 2011 K.D. Absolutely rated it liked it

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books

Shelves: classics, 501, french, ya

Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Alban-Fournier (1886-1914), a French author and soldier. Le Grand Meaulnes (1913) was his only novel, filmed twice and is now considered one of the greatest works of French literature. He was a friend to Andre Gide (1869-1951) who wrote The Fruits of the Earth (1897), Strait is the Gate (1909), The Counterfeiters (1927) among many others. Alain-Fournier started work on a second novel Colombe Blanchet in 1914. However, that same year, he joined the army a ...more

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Mar 29, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, pernod-and-gauloises, penguin-classics

Le Grand Meaulnes is supposed to be untranslatable, and this translation by French classics legend Robin Buss doesn’t convince me otherwise. The novel hinges upon the titular Meaulnes being such a charming force of character in a lower-class school, his name echoes down the ages and his antics and adventures make him a much-beloved geezer in the province. Doesn’t quite work. But the narrator François is certainly smitten and describes Meaulnes’s first love in fits of florid descriptive prose wor ...more

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Apr 03, 2020 Chrissie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audible-uk, hf, 2020-read, relationships, classics, france, life-stages

The Lost Estate by Alain-Fournier goes by two titles. The second is Le Grand Meaulnes. “Grand”, being a French word with different connotations, it is best to avoid a direct translation and so the English title is completely different. The French author, Henri-Alban Fournier (1886-1914), went by the pseudonym Alain-Fournier. The book was published in 1913. The author died in 1914 at the age of twenty seven, killed in action, at the start of the First World War.

I like the ending of this book. I The Lost Estate by Alain-Fournier goes by two titles. The second is Le Grand Meaulnes. “Grand”, being a French word with different connotations, it is best to avoid a direct translation and so the English title is completely different. The French author, Henri-Alban Fournier (1886-1914), went by the pseudonym Alain-Fournier. The book was published in 1913. The author died in 1914 at the age of twenty seven, killed in action, at the start of the First World War.

I like the ending of this book. I like how the author ties up the plot. There is a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming. I also think the character portrayal of the two central protagonists is very well done. You cannot judge the book until the very end. Only at the end does what the book is really about hit you with a smack. It is about (view spoiler). It is also about the transition from adolescence to adulthood. You won’t understand this until the end. I do not want to tell you too much; it is realizing this yourself that is fun.

As a bit of introduction, I will just say this. The story is set in the village of Sainte Agathe, in the Sologne region of central France. There is a Sainte Agathe chapel that does exist. The tale starts in the year 1890 and covers events of a few years, about five. The story circles around two friends, one is fifteen, the other is seventeen. Actually, it is best to say three! The younger boy tells the story. Girls come into the tale too, in a very important way! I am not going to tell you anymore.

Why not more stars? I cannot properly judge the writing, the prose. The book is translated into English. The audio I listened to is translated by Françoise Delisle and has been revised for the audio recording. I have not compared line by line the French versus the English, but improvements are needed. Incorrect prepositions are used. The language is not fluid. The choice of words is often clumsy—“occupiers” is used, “occupants” would have been better. Rather than being told the town is quiet and still, we are told “everything is sleeping”. Things do not sleep! In French, adjectives are usually placed after the noun they modify. In English, adjectives precede the noun. This error is made multiple times. The translation is so bad I cannot judge the prose, and prose is important to me. I want to enjoy the lines as I read, I didn’t here. This explains why I have not given the book more stars.

The tone of the novel has a special feel—mysterious, dreamlike. This intrigues me. I am guessing I would have enjoyed the book more had I been given a better translation.

John Hollingworth narrates the audiobook I listened to. I did not enjoy his narration, and I do not recommend it. He mumbles words; he does not enunciate clearly. The pacing is off; he pauses where it is not necessary. This makes the tempo jerky. Not all lines are read in this staccato fashion, but all too many are. The narration performance I have give one star. ...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Antonomasia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: y, 2007, j, 2012, aesthetes-decadents-and-romantics, france, early-20th-century, francophonie

Never have I found it more difficult to finish a lovelier book. My first attempt was derailed five years ago; the second was ultimately successful only after a three-month hiatus. And this little volume carried so much weight by now, as a favourite of several people - exes, friends, the hard-to-label - from different times and places in my life ... all of which have something of the partially-lost domain about them.

I started reading it again in a sunny May garden surrounded by birdsong - the fir ...more

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Apr 26, 2015 Ben Winch rated it really liked it

Shelves: french

A few moments later a strange equipage drew up in front of the glass doors: an outlandish old farm wagon with rounded panels and moulded ornaments; an aged white horse with head bent so low that he seemed to be hoping to find grass in the road; and in the driving seat―I say it in the simplicity of my heart, well knowing what I say―perhaps the most beautiful young woman that ever existed in the whole world.

For the first half of Le Grand Meaulnes I was well-nigh intoxicated by the air of romance a

A few moments later a strange equipage drew up in front of the glass doors: an outlandish old farm wagon with rounded panels and moulded ornaments; an aged white horse with head bent so low that he seemed to be hoping to find grass in the road; and in the driving seat―I say it in the simplicity of my heart, well knowing what I say―perhaps the most beautiful young woman that ever existed in the whole world.

For the first half of Le Grand Meaulnes I was well-nigh intoxicated by the air of romance as it’s only breathed in youth: from the arrival of the singleminded adventurous Meaulnes (a less angry proto-James Dean as Jim Stark) in the cloistered village schoolroom to his inadvertent discovery of the mysterious “domain” where he meets the abovementioned beautiful young woman, despite challenges to credibility that a lesser story would have collapsed under, I bought it all, surprised and touched by my own softheartedness. But from the moment (p142 in my Penguin edition) when the narrator’s aunt meets a “young man” with “face so white and so pretty that it was frightening” I began, rapidly, to wake from the trance, having guessed the “dark secret” around which the book kept circling. Which isn’t to say I didn’t like it, only that where earlier I’d wondered how Alain-Fournier, at age 27, could possibly have conceived it, by its end I’d relegated its sorceror-author back to the realm of mortals, able to enchant through a rare mix of lucidity and young ardour but constrained by the young man’s love of mystery stories to make of his modern fairytale a convoluted puzzle with pat ending. Still, I’ll take Meaulnes over Werther, over Raymond Radiguet, over Hamsun’s Victoria, because when Meaulnes is on he’s every young man’s fearless alter ego, and his Lost Domain the ultimate young man’s dream―a masked ball where children rule over adults and a never-to-be-forgotten young woman presides―but one from which he never awakes. At first, as I delved deeper into that domain, I feared that Alain-Fournier would pull the ground from under me (“It was all a dream,” he’d say), or that he’d strain my faith in him too far. But no, he brought me down gently, and for that alone he’s a genius. So he then contorts himself in plot-twists? I forgive him, because somewhere in here is an archetype awaiting (re?)birth. Whether its author knew it or not, Le Grand Meaulnes strays magically close to perfection. In the relationship of its hero to its narrator, in the mirror-images of Meaulnes/Frantz and Yvonne/Valentine, in its tightrope straddling of the line between childhood and adulthood, fantasy and realism, this flawed novel hints at a deep well of intuited meaning. That its young author chose a mystery story to convey that essence doesn’t bother me; that he let the form distort the essence does. Never mind! One day, I’ll read just the first half. Until then, long live the Lost Domain! Long live Yvonne de Galais! Long live le grand Meaulnes! ...more

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Jun 30, 2009 Helynne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Although Le Grand Meaulnes (sometimes translated as The Wanderer or The Lost Estate) was written in 1913, which was more in the decadent or modernism era, this lovely, mysterious novel falls definitely into the category of late Romanticism. Just one year after publishing his one and only novel, young Henri Alain-Fournier was killed in a World War I battle at Epargnes in 1914. The literary world is so much the poorer for his loss as well as for the loss of many more novels he surely would have w Although Le Grand Meaulnes (sometimes translated as The Wanderer or The Lost Estate) was written in 1913, which was more in the decadent or modernism era, this lovely, mysterious novel falls definitely into the category of late Romanticism. Just one year after publishing his one and only novel, young Henri Alain-Fournier was killed in a World War I battle at Epargnes in 1914. The literary world is so much the poorer for his loss as well as for the loss of many more novels he surely would have written.
The title character in Le Grand Meaulnes is a 17-year-old student, Augustin Meaulnes, who arrives at a boys' school in rural France, about 1910. Meaulnes is worldly and charismatic, and soon has all the boys wanting to be his friend. The narrator of the story is Meanlnes's best friend Francois Seurel, a sickly 15-year-old boy upon whom Meaulnes seems to have a healing effect. Francois carefully chronicles all the elated and brooding emotions of his moody new friend. One day, Meaulnes takes a cart and horse from the school and disappears for three days without explanation. When he returns, Meaulnes seems dazed and forlorn. He relates to Francois how he accidentally stumbled upon a beautiful old house--what he will later call "the lost domain" --in the middle of a forest. Meaulnes sneaked into an engagement party that was going on there. The party had a dreamy, surrealistic feel to it until Meaulnes heard from the sad, young groom that the wedding was off because the fiancee fled. Meaulnes also met and talked to beautiful Yvonne de Galais, the sister of the would-be groom. But before he could really get to know her, she disappeared and he had to stumble his way back to the school. The original 1960s film version of this novel is a beautiful tribute to the spirit of Alain-Fournier's story. As Meaulnes tells in flashback his experience at the lost domaine, the footage is shot in a blurred style, like a Monet painting, to indicate his dreaminess and confusion during his disoriented and ethereal state. (I have also read that the 2006 film version is disappointing; too bad!) The events that subsequently continue to bring together and pull apart Meanlnes, Yvonne, Franz, and his would-be bride Valentine, and various "bohemian" youth of the region continue in Francois's narrative for the next three years until the story comes to its melancholic conclusion. This is beautiful piece of writing in terms of coming-of-age, adolescent angst, and the typical Romantic search for the unattainable ideal. Highly recommended. ...more

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Apr 24, 2018 Roger Brunyate rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-surreal, sui-generis, bildungsroman

The End of Childhood

Augustin Meaulnes, the larger-than-life hero of Alain-Fournier's charming French classic of 1913, is a curious mixture of tormented adolescent and knight errant. The soubriquet "grand" that is always associated with him refers perhaps to his size (large, tall) but also to the power of his dreams (grandiose, or even great). As told by the fifteen-year-old teacher's son François Seurel, the impact of this lad of seventeen who arrives as a boarder in his father's school has the The End of Childhood

Augustin Meaulnes, the larger-than-life hero of Alain-Fournier's charming French classic of 1913, is a curious mixture of tormented adolescent and knight errant. The soubriquet "grand" that is always associated with him refers perhaps to his size (large, tall) but also to the power of his dreams (grandiose, or even great). As told by the fifteen-year-old teacher's son François Seurel, the impact of this lad of seventeen who arrives as a boarder in his father's school has the transformative magic of Nick Carraway's first encounter with Jay Gatsby, only transferred to the world of schoolboys in provincial France. The comparison with The Great Gatsby is only one of many brilliant insights by Adam Gopnik, who wrote the introduction to this excellent Penguin Classics translation by Robin Buss (I have been checking the book in the original also). The text now seems slightly dated, with characters who are more ideas than real people, but Gopnik places those ideas within a clear literary, historical, and Freudian context; this edition is almost worth buying for his essay alone.

Monsieur Seurel and his pupils seem to spend as much time in the countryside as they do in the classroom, and the life of that countryside is precisely situated in the Cher region of France, not far from Bourges. But in the midst of it there is a lost estate that is almost like a dream, never to be found again. Meaulnes arrives there by accident one night, after falling asleep in a horse-drawn wagon, and finds himself in the midst of preparations for a wedding. It is a passage of sheer magic: a Watteauesque fête champêtre populated by extravagantly-dressed children and figures from a harlequinade. He meets the daughter of the manor and falls instantly in love. But the wedding is called off and the guests disperse. Meaulnes spends the next years trying to find the way back again, eventually following his distant beloved Yvonne to Paris. The waking dream is not unlike the mysterious chivalric world of Maurice Maeterinck's Pelléas et Mélisande of 1892, seen here through the eyes of childhood as a lament for childhood's end.

As Gopnik observes, Alain-Fournier places "what is essentially a medieval allegory of love in the terms of a late nineteenth-century realist novel." The realist element is always there even at the beginning—the routine of the school, the peasant life of the region. As the book moves on, however, the realism becomes stronger, not weaker. The lady setting out for the enchanted isle will become a housewife and mother; the absent bride at the wedding feast threatens to become a prostitute in Paris. Fantasy butts heads with life. Gopnik again: "The intensity of the romance of childhood—and the attempt to marry it (literally) to an erotic-romantic dream—glow bright for Fournier with the light of something not quite real, a flare not a fire." A flare, certainly, for within a year of publication, France would enter the Great War; and within a month of that, Alain-Fournier would be dead. ...more

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Dec 20, 2020 Vlad Kovsky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, in-french

I knew nothing about Alain-Fournier when Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck strongly recommended to read this book. A feeble complaint that the book was in French was dismissed on the basis that all books should be read in their original languages. While this presents a formidable obstacle to an aspiring reader, specifically for this book she was quite right.

I am not sure if many agree with this personal observation but I found that books written in French can rarely be translated well into English. I knew nothing about Alain-Fournier when Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck strongly recommended to read this book. A feeble complaint that the book was in French was dismissed on the basis that all books should be read in their original languages. While this presents a formidable obstacle to an aspiring reader, specifically for this book she was quite right.

I am not sure if many agree with this personal observation but I found that books written in French can rarely be translated well into English. Into Russian - yes, into English - no. A case in point, a fine French writer Eric-Emmanuel Shmitt, when translated into English reads like a pretentious bore, which cannot be further away from his actual style of writing. He is anything but pretentious. Ok, this digression is over, I will pick it up and expand on it elsewhere.

Finally, I braved Le Grand Meaulnes in French assisted by a fabulous reading of the novel by William Mesguich and I was not disappointed. The writing was inspired, almost transcending into poetry at times, the music of the words adding palpably to the emotions overwhelming the children in the story.

The book is a Bildungsroman of a kind but its unique attribute is the feeling of loss accompanying the graduation into adulthood. Some intangible property of childhood, some magical feature of life is forever lost when one regrettably grows up. The wonderous celebration, 'la fete étrange' once witnessed, can never be relived, can never be returned. One can look to substitute this wonder with love or with friendship but 'la fete étrange' of the childhood is no more.

Not all aspects of the story will be appreciated by contemporary readers. Perched on an ivory tower of our present knowledge and understanding of the world, we cannot help but look down on some trivial psychological mistakes of an aspiring writer of the age before modernism. It's fitting to not say anything else about the book and just thank once more the person who insistently recommended it.

Eva, a troubled and an almost silent adolescent in Zedelghem chapter of Cloud Atlas reappears as an unlikely mentor in Black Swan Green. It is there that she mentions Le Grand Meaulnes as an absolute must read. Everything is connected, a thin thread attaches this reader nostalgic for his own lost childhood to David Mitchell and his characters, to François and his great friend Meaulnes, to Alain-Fournier himself, who never got to write another book. He was killed in the first month of the war. ...more

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Jun 12, 2015 Elham rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, france, classics

In a boring afternoon of one of these days of June, I chose Le Grand Meaulnes immediately in the local library right after the librarian's alarm that they were closing. It was French and I thought I had a glance on a review before. By reading a few pages of it, I realized that it was a young adult story of two boys François and his best friend Meaulnes who lived in a lower-class school in a village. Narrating in a first person, I thought despite its title there was no trace of Meaulnes himself. In a boring afternoon of one of these days of June, I chose Le Grand Meaulnes immediately in the local library right after the librarian's alarm that they were closing. It was French and I thought I had a glance on a review before. By reading a few pages of it, I realized that it was a young adult story of two boys François and his best friend Meaulnes who lived in a lower-class school in a village. Narrating in a first person, I thought despite its title there was no trace of Meaulnes himself. I thought "No, I don't feel like reading this", I even wanted to interrupt. But because I did not have any other fiction unread in my bookshelves I continued reading. Well...is it a Tim Burton transcription? Mysterious abandoned house in the middle of a jungle… kids…girls dancing...a mysterious party. I kept reading and then again came back to the little preface and read it carefully to find out what kind of French classic it was:

This little mysterious masterpiece with its astounding simplicity and purity, and its deep sensitivity that is used for showing the feelings and emotions of a little mysterious world full of hope and sadness, has influenced strongly many works after itself.

It is going to be a love story? Although the blurb says another The catcher in the rye but I thought maybe The great Gatsby too, unless it is not historical at all. In the middle of the book I thought that it was going to find its shape and kind of unputdownable because everything seemed to be finished and still half of the book remained. Well, he finds a mysterious house and a mysterious girl. Then all his life he searches for that house and girl. He becomes a wanderer. The magic and mysteriousness of that house and atmosphere unconsciously form his feelings. He searches maybe not to find the girl but to find that feeling again.

By finishing the book I had this feeling that it had that message of Gustave Flaubert in Sentimental Education. By depicting that this book declares the end of romanticism and its possible natural consequences, the protagonist, the great Meaulnes is the symbol of a transition.

It is said that a poll of French readers some years ago placed this book sixth of all 20th-century books, just behind Proust and Camus and also it has been twice filmed.
...more

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Jan 25, 2018 Nick rated it liked it

I really enjoyed this book when I read it way back when. Who knows what other strange novels the author may have written were his life not cut short in another pointless war.

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Dec 05, 2012 Lizzy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 19th-century, 2012-reads, the-french, translation

THIS BOOK GIVES ME FEELINGS. UGH. *sobs with abandon*

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Nov 22, 2012 Bogna rated it it was amazing

I read "Le Grand Meaulnes" at school when I was ca 16, the book stood in its own category, the impression it left hard to describe. And then it disappeared - from my life, but strangely enough, also from public interest in Poland. I remembered it again after coming back home from a boarding school in Duino two years later, and wanted to get it, to go back, to decipher it better, but nobody I asked knew it. I kept looking in libraries and book-shops, in vain, not even on the internet for a long d I read "Le Grand Meaulnes" at school when I was ca 16, the book stood in its own category, the impression it left hard to describe. And then it disappeared - from my life, but strangely enough, also from public interest in Poland. I remembered it again after coming back home from a boarding school in Duino two years later, and wanted to get it, to go back, to decipher it better, but nobody I asked knew it. I kept looking in libraries and book-shops, in vain, not even on the internet for a long dozen of years did anything appear.

And then, I entered perchance into one of these book-exchange bazaars here in Warsaw a few years ago, and there it was: "Le Grand Meaulnes", by Alain-Fournier, waiting for me! A Polish edition from 1938, thick, yellow, and stamped all around by various libraries it had belonged to over 70 years of its existence.

I was afraid to read it again, afraid of a disappointment and disenchantment. It took me nearly half a year to start. But my anxiety was needless, it got me even more enchanted - "Le Grand Meaulnes" has the capacity to grow with the reader.

The book's own fate seems to go along the mystery it presents, drawn slowly and with delicate sincerity by the Author. The tragedy of the main character, though painted in pastel colours, reveals in fact a different tragedy, quiet and even more pastel, of the narrator. Enough said.

A few months after I had read it for the second time, I turned on the Polish radio, Programme 2, and heard Iwona Smolka, a well known middle-aged literary critic, starting the programme she has every week with Tomasz Burek and Piotr Matywiecki, also critics and writers, more less thus: "the book we are going to discuss today is not just a classic novel that one has read at the age of 17 and was fascinated though one could not understand, this narrative stayed in memory and has been carried there until one needed to go back and live the adventure of the characters again, seeking to understand. And one does go back and the adventure revives". I trembled, and I was not mistaken. ...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Frances rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: san-francisco, literature

I, ok. I don't think I am smart enough to have enjoyed this book. To see the beauty in this novel.

Is it because it's the quintessential French novel, and I'm not French? Like, at all?

Is it because I CANNOT STAND BOOKS WHERE A SIMPLE CONVERSATION WOULD HAVE SOLVED EVERYTHING?

This, at the end of the day, was just dull. "The Great Meaulnes" was, in fact, just a boy who refused to commit and instead gloried in wallowing in self-pity.

Yawn. ...more

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Jul 16, 2017 John Farebrother rated it it was amazing

I read this book because it is so famous, and because I was hoping to improve my French. It's a charming tale about the transition from boyhood to manhood, when you discover girls and the magic kids' world gives way to the real world, with even more promise. It's written in a delightful old-world prose, and set in a provincial market town in northern France. As it is, it would have been appreciated as a book in its own right, capturing as it does the idyll of quiet country life, before the adven ...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Lisa rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 501-book-list

Is this an ironic title? Not sure what was so magnificent about Augustin Meaulnes. Let's see some of the magnificent thing this guy did shall we. Takes off from school which his mother is bordering him to go to, gets lost with a borrowed horse and buggy, crashes a party for three days, falls "in love" with a girl he met for like 30 seconds, then loses touch with her and pines for her for years, then he falls in love with the girl's brother's ex-fiancee but wait a minute he finds the first girl a ...more

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Aug 07, 2018 Rosina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

For the first half of this book, I really was not enjoying it, but the second half I loved, so I would give the first half a 2 and the second 5.

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May 28, 2012 Rozzer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, france, own, fiction, reviewed

This book, along with a few others in various languages, is a real test of the very idea of translation. A challenge to those who believe in the inherent capacity of any language to absorb and present the feelings, impressions, beliefs and atmosphere of works originally expressed in another language. Myself, I only have two languages: English and French. I was raised with both and have some idea how each of them works. I read Le grand Meaulnes in French, of course. (No one should read anything i This book, along with a few others in various languages, is a real test of the very idea of translation. A challenge to those who believe in the inherent capacity of any language to absorb and present the feelings, impressions, beliefs and atmosphere of works originally expressed in another language. Myself, I only have two languages: English and French. I was raised with both and have some idea how each of them works. I read Le grand Meaulnes in French, of course. (No one should read anything in translation if they don't have to.) And, for me at least, it's really, really hard to believe that this novel can be translated into any other language.

And you must understand: there's no way at all for anyone to be able to resolve this conflict. There's no one who both knows French (or any language) very well indeed who at the same time can appreciate what does and doesn't come through in a translation. Think about it. If you can (as I can) read the book in French and "get it," as the saying goes, then for you (certainly for me) at least it will be impossible to read the book in translation and fully understand whether or not (and if so, how much) the book loses in translation. Even if I read the translation first (which usually doesn't happen). It's like sex with rubbers and without. It really does make a difference.

It's (to me) Schrodinger's Cat or some other weird, quantum paradox. If you can read and truly appreciate any book in the original language, how can you honestly judge the value of a translation? And if you have to read a translated book, how can you have any idea whether or not the real, original meaning and tone of the book has gotten through to you? Myself, I'd very much like to read an awful lot more about the very idea of translation, of the concept of translation. Is translation really possible, other than for phrases like "Where is the men's room?" or "How much does it cost?"

"Le Grand Meaulnes" is available free, gratis and for nothing here: (in French) http://archive.org/details/legrandmea.... Haven't been able to find a free English translation.
...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: zz1911-1915, literature, fantasy, aa-francelit, penguin-modern, translation, romanticlit, penguin-classics, fitzgerald-f-scott, aa-europelit

much later read this may have possibly/partly inspired The Great Gatsby

.??? 2000s: i do not know what to say of this book. beautiful translation, beautiful romantic story, beautiful melancholy. i give it a 4 because i have only read it in english and so much has been lost in translation- so i read- and that this book is probably best read when you are 15 and open to romantic idealism, rather than much older, much more skeptical, less easily romantic. i wish i had read this at 15... ...more

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Jun 08, 2012 David Rain rated it it was amazing

Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of a French writer, real name Henri Alban, who died in the First World War at the age of twenty-seven. The narrator of this, his only novel, is a young boy, the son of a schoolmaster in provincial France in the late nineteenth century. The story begins when a new pupil comes to the school, the extraordinary Augustin Meaulnes. Taller than the other boys, stronger, more daring, Meaulnes seems destined for adventure, and adventure soon comes when he absconds from sc ...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Realini rated it it was amazing

Le Grande Meaulnes, by Alain –Fournier

I loved this book, which will make me pay more attention to The Le Monde top of 100 best novels…up to know I placed emphasis on the Anglo-Saxon critics’ lists of The Guardian and TIME…

Le Grande Meaulnes is “one of France’s most popular novels…much loved yet little read”
F. Scott Fitzgerald borrowed its title for The Great Gatsby (some think even the characters).

All the life of the author was influenced, moved round a single afternoon, when he met Yvonne, whic ...more

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About Alain-Fournier

Alain-Fournier

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Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (1886 – 1914), a French author and soldier. He wrote a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which was adapted into two feature films and is considered a classic of French literature.

Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher département, in central France, the son of a school teacher. He studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (1886 – 1914), a French author and soldier. He wrote a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which was adapted into two feature films and is considered a classic of French literature.

Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher département, in central France, the son of a school teacher. He studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris, where he prepared for the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure, but without success. He then studied at the merchant marine school in Brest. At the Lycée Lakanal he met Jacques Rivière, and the two became close friends. In 1909, Rivière married Alain-Fournier's younger sister Isabelle.

Alain-Fournier interrupted his studies in 1907 and from 1908 to 1909 he performed his military service. At this time he published some essays, poems and stories which were later collected and re-published under the name Miracles. Throughout this period he was mulling over what would become his celebrated novel, Le Grand Meaulnes.

On the first of June 1905, Ascension day, while Alain-Fournier was talking a stroll along banks of the Seine, he had met Yvonne de Quiévrecourt, with whom he became deeply enamoured. The two spoke, but he did not manage to win her favours. The following year on the same day he waited for her at the same place, but she did not appear. That night he told Rivière, "She did not come. And even if she had, she would not have been the same". They did not meet again until eight years later, when she was married with two children. Yvonne de Quiévrecourt would become Yvonne de Galais in his novel.

Alain-Fournier returned to Paris in 1910 and became a literary critic, writing for the Paris-Journal. There he met André Gide and Paul Claudel. In 1912, he quit his job to become the personal assistant of the politician Casimir Perrier.

'Le Grand Meaulnes' was finished in early 1913, and was first published in the Nouvelle Revue Française (from July to October 1913), and then as a book. 'Le Grand Meaulnes' was nominated for, but did not win, the Prix Goncourt. It is available in English in a widely-admired 1959 translation by Frank Davison for Oxford University Press.

In 1914, Alain-Fournier started work on a second novel, 'Colombe Blanchet', but this remained unfinished when he joined the army as a Lieutenant in August. He died fighting near Vaux-lès-Palameix (Meuse) one month later, on the 22nd of September 1914. His body remained unidentified until 1991, at which time he was interred in the cemetery of Saint-Remy-la-Calonne.

Most of the writing of Alain-Fournier was published posthumously: Miracles (a volume of poems and essays) in 1924, his correspondence with Jacques Rivière in 1926 and his letters to his family in 1930. His notes and sketches for Colombe Blanchet have also been published. From Wikipedia ...more

Books by Alain-Fournier

Le Grand Meaulnes, or the Lost Domain, and Miracles

Le Grand Meaulnes / Choix de lettres, de documents et d'esquisses (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade)

Le Grand Meaulnes. Il Grande Meaulnes (IT/FR Edition 2014 - Illustrated) et La Femme Empoisonnée

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“This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who have entrusted all their hopes to it, all their love and their last efforts. There are dying men or others who are waiting for a debt to come due, who wish that tomorrow would never come. There are others for whom the day will break like a pang of remorse; and others who are tired, for whom the night will never be long enough to give them the rest that they need. And I - who have lost my day - what right do I have to wish that tomorrow comes?” — 41 likes

“Je pensais de meme que notre jeunesse etait finie et le bonheur manqué.

I thought too that our youth was over and we had failed to find happiness.” — 20 likes

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