The Solitude of Compassion (3 page)

I noticed, in reading the Introduction to
Hill of Destiny
, that the translator expressed apprehension that the book might offend certain “squeamish” American readers. It is curious how askance French authors are regarded by Anglo-Saxons. Even some of the good Catholic writers of France are looked upon as “immoral.” It always reminds me of my father's anger when he caught me reading
The Wild Ass' Skin
. All he needed was to see the name Balzac. That was enough to convince him that the book was “immoral.” (Fortunately he never caught me reading
Droll Stories
!) My father, of course, had never read a line of Balzac. He had hardly read a line of any English or American author, indeed. The one writer he confessed to reading—
c'est inoui, mais c'est vrai!
—was John Ruskin.
Ruskin!
I nearly fell off the chair when he blurted this out. I did not know how to account for such an absurdity, but later I discovered that it was the minister who had (temporarily) converted him to Christ who was responsible. What astounded me even more was his admission that he had enjoyed reading Ruskin. That still remains inexplicable to me. But of Ruskin another time…

In Giono's books, as in Cendrars' and so many, many French books, there are always wonderful accounts of eating and drinking. Sometimes it is a feast, as in
The Joy of Man's Desiring
, sometimes it is a simple repast. Whatever it be, it makes one's mouth water. (There still remains to be written, by an American for Americans, a cookbook based on the recipes gleaned from the pages of French literature.) Every cinéaste has observed the prominence given by French film directors to eating and drinking. It is a feature conspicuously
absent in American movies. When we have such a scene it is seldom real, neither the food nor the participants. In France, whenever two or more come together there is sensual as well as spiritual communion. With what longing American youths look at these scenes. Often it is a repast al fresco. Then are we even more moved, for truly we know little of the joy of eating and drinking outdoors. The Frenchman “loves” his food. We take food for nourishment or because we are unable to dispense with the habit. The Frenchman, even if he is a man of the cities, is closer to the soil than the American. He does not tamper with or refine away the products of the soil. He relishes the homely meals as much as the creations of the gourmet. He likes things fresh, not canned or refrigerated. And almost every Frenchman knows how to cook. I have never met a Frenchman who did not know how to make such a simple thing as an omelette, for example. But I know plenty of Americans who cannot even boil an egg.

Naturally, with good food goes good conversation, another element completely lacking in our country. To have good conversation it is almost imperative to have good wine with the meal. Not cocktails, not whisky, not cold beer or ale. Ah, the wines! The variety of them, the subtle, indescribable effects they produce! And let me not forget that with good food goes beautiful women—women who, in addition to stimulating one's appetite, know how to inspire good conversation. How horrible are our banquets for men only! How we love to castrate, to mutilate ourselves! How we really loathe all that is sensuous and sensual! I believe most earnestly that what repels Americans more than immorality is the pleasure to be derived from the enjoyment of the five senses. We are not a “moral” people by any means. We do not need to read
La Peau
by Malaparte to discover what beasts are hidden beneath our chivalric uniforms. And when
I say “uniforms” I mean the garb which disguises the civilian as well as that which disguises the soldier. We are men in uniform through and through. We are not individuals, neither are we members of a great collectivity. We are neither democrats, communists, socialists nor anarchists. We are an unruly mob. And the sign by which we are known is vulgarity.

There is never vulgarity in even the coarsest pages of Giono. There may be lust, carnality, sensuality—but not vulgarity. His characters may indulge in sexual intercourse occasionally, they may even be said to “fornicate,” but in these indulgences there is never anything horripilating as in Malaparte's descriptions of American soldiers abroad. Never is a French writer obliged to resort to the mannerisms of Lawrence in a book such as
Lady Chatterley's Lover
. Lawrence should have known Giono, with whom he has much in common, by the way. He should have travelled up from Vence to the plateau of Haute-Provence where describing the setting of
Colline
, Giono says: “an endless waste of blue earth, village after village lying in death on the lavender tableland. A handful of men, how pitifully few, how ineffectual! And, crouching amid the grasses, wallowing in the reeds—the hill, like a bull.” But Lawrence was then already in the grip of death, able nevertheless to give us
The Man Who Died
or
The Escaped Cock
. Still enough breath in him, as it were, to reject the sickly Christian image of a suffering Redeemer and restore the image of man in flesh and blood, a man content just to live, just to breathe. A pity he could not have met Giono in the early days of his life. Even the boy Giono would have been able to divert him from some of his errors. Lawrence was forever railing against the French, though he enjoyed living in France, it would seem. He saw only what was sick, what was “decadent,” in the French. Wherever he went he saw that first—his nose was too
keen. Giono so rooted in his native soil, Lawrence so filled with wanderlust. Both proclaiming the life abundant: Giono in hymns of life, Lawrence in hymns of hate. Just as Giono has anchored himself in his “region,” so has he anchored himself in the tradition of art. He has not suffered because of these restrictions, self-imposed. On the contrary, he has flowered. Lawrence jutted out of his world and out of the realm of art. He wandered over the earth like a lost soul, finding peace nowhere. He exploited the novel to preach the resurrection of man, but himself perished miserably. I owe a great debt to D. H. Lawrence. These observations and comparisons are not intended as a rejection of the man, they are offered merely as indications of his limitations. Just because I am also an Anglo-Saxon, I feel free to stress his faults. We have all of us a terrible need of France. I have said it over and over again. I shall probably do so until I die.

Vive la France! Vive Jean Giono!

It was just five months ago that I put aside these pages on Jean Giono, knowing that I had more to say but determined to hold off until the right moment came. Yesterday I had an unexpected visit from a literary agent whom I knew years ago in Paris. He is the sort of individual who on entering a house goes through your library first, fingering your books and manuscripts, before looking at you. And when he does look at you he sees not
you
but only what is exploitable in you. After remarking, rather asininely, I thought, that his one aim was to be of help to writers, I took the cue and mentioned Giono's name.

“There's a man you could do something for, if what you say is true,” I said flatly. I showed him
Pour Saluer Melville
. I explained that Viking seemed to have no desire to publish any more of Giono's books.

“And do you know why?” he demanded.

I told him what they had written me.

“That's not the real reason,” he replied, and proceeded to give me what he “knew” to be the real reason.

“And even if what you say is true,” said I, “though I don't believe it, there remains this book which I want to see published. It is a beautiful book. I love it.”

“In fact,” I added, “my love and admiration for Giono is such that it doesn't matter a damn to me what he does or what he is said to have done. I know my Giono.”

He looked at me quizzically and, as if to provoke me, asserted: “There are
several
Gionos, you know.”

I knew what he was implying but I answered simply: “I love them all.”

That seemed to stop him in his tracks. I was certain, moreover, that he was not as familiar with Giono as he pretended to be. What he wanted to tell me, undoubtedly, was that the Giono of a certain period was much better than the Giono of another. The “better” Giono would, of course, have been
his
Giono. This is the sort of small talk which keeps literary circles in a perpetual ferment.

When
Colline
appeared it was as if the whole world recognized this man Giono. This happened again when
Que ma joie demeure
came out. It probably happened a number of times. At any rate, whenever this happens, whenever a book wins immediate universal acclaim, it is somehow taken for granted that the book is a true reflection of the author. It is as though until that moment the man did not exist. Or perhaps it is admitted that the man existed but the writer did not. Yet the writer exists even before the man, paradoxically. The man would never have become what he did unless there was in him the creative germ. He lives the life which he will record
in words. He dreams his life before he lives it; he dreams it
in order to live it
.

In their first “successful” work some authors give such a full image of themselves that no matter what they say later this image endures, dominates, and often obliterates all succeeding ones. The same thing happens sometimes in our first encounter with another individual. So strongly does the personality of the other register itself in such moments that ever afterwards, no matter how much the person alters, or reveals his other aspects, this first image is the one which endures. Sometimes it is a blessing that one is able to retain this original full image; other times it is a rank injustice inflicted upon the one we love.

That Giono is a man of many facets I would not think of denying. That, like all of us, he has his good side and his bad side, I would not deny either. In Giono's case it happens that with every book he produces he reveals himself fully. The revelation is given in every sentence. He is always himself and he is always giving of himself. This is one of the rare qualities he possesses, one which distinguishes him from a host of lesser writers. Moreover, like Picasso, I can well imagine him saying: “Is it necessary that everything I do prove a masterpiece?” Of him, as of Picasso, I would say that the “masterpiece” was the creative act itself and not a particular work which happened to please a large audience and be accepted as the very body of Christ.

Supposing you have an image of a man and then one day, quite by accident, you come upon him in a strange mood, find him behaving or speaking in a way you have never believed him capable of. Do you reject this unacceptable aspect of the man or do you incorporate it in a larger picture of him? Once he revealed himself to you completely, you thought. Now you find him quite other. Are
you
at fault or is
he?

I can well imagine a man for whom writing is a life's task revealing so many aspects of himself, as he goes along, that he baffles and bewilders his readers. And the more baffled and bewildered they are by the protean character of his being, the less qualified are they, in my opinion, to talk of “masterpieces” or of “revelation.” A mind open and receptive would at least wait until the last word had been written. That at least. But it is the nature of little minds to kill a man off before his time, to arrest his development at that point which is most comfortable for one's peace of mind. Should an author set himself a problem which is not to the liking or the understanding of your little man, what happens? Why, the classic avowal: “He's not the writer he used to be!” Meaning, always, “he's not the writer
I know
.”

As creative writers go, Giono is still a comparatively young man. There will be more ups and downs, from the standpoint of carping critics. He will be dated and re-dated, pigeonholed and re-pigeonholed, resurrected and re-resurrected—until the final dead line. And those who enjoy this game, who identify it with the art of interpretation, will of course undergo many changes themselves—in themselves. The diehards will make sport of him until the very end. The tender idealists will be disillusioned time and again, and will also find their beloved again and again. The skeptics will always be on the fence, if not the old one another one, but on the fence.

Whatever is written about a man like Giono tells you more about the critic or interpreter than about Giono. For, like the song of the world, Giono goes on and on and on. The critic perpetually pivots around his rooted, granulated self. Like the girouette, he tells which way the wind is blowing—but he is not of the wind nor of the airs. He is like an automobile without spark plugs.

A simple man who does not boast of his opinions but who is
capable of being moved, a simple man who is devoted, loving and loyal is far better able to tell you about a writer like Giono than the learned critics. Trust the man whose heart is moved, the man whose withers can still be wrung. Such men are with the writer when he orders his creation. They do not desert the writer when he moves in ways beyond their understanding. Becoming is their silence and instructive. Like the very wise, they know how to hold themselves in abeyance.

“Each day,” says Miguel de Unamuno, “I believe less and less in the social question, and in the political question, and in the moral question, and in all the other questions that people have invented in order that they shall not have to face resolutely the only real question that exists—the
human
question. So long as we are not facing this question, all that we are now doing is simply making a noise so that we shall not hear it.”

Giono is one of the writers of our time who faces this human question squarely. It accounts for much of the disrepute in which he has found himself. Those who are active on the periphery regard him as a renegade. In their view he is not playing the game. Some refuse to take him seriously because he is “only a poet.” Some admit that he has a marvellous gift for narrative but no sense of reality. Some believe that he is writing a legend of his region and not the story of our time. Some wish us to believe that he is only a dreamer. He is all these things and more. He is a man who never detaches himself from the world, even when he is dreaming. Particularly the world of human beings. In his books he speaks as father, mother, brother, sister, son and daughter. He does not depict the human family against the background of nature, he makes the human family a part of nature. If there is suffering and punishment, it is because of the operation of divine law through
nature. The cosmos which Giono's figures inhabit is strictly ordered. There is room in it for all the irrational elements. It does not give, break or weaken because the fictive characters who compose it sometimes move in contradiction of or defiance to the laws which govern our everyday world. Giono's world possesses a reality far more understandable, far more durable than the one we accept as world reality. Tolstoy expressed the nature of this other deeper reality in his last work: