Bastille Day: A Great French Novel

Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier

translated by Frank Davison

published 1913

Meaulnes was feeling his way towards further inquiries when a charming couple appeared in the doorway: a girl of sixteen in a velvet bodice and flounced skirt, and a young man in a coat with a high collar and trousers with foot-straps. They danced their way across the room; others followed them; then more came running, screaming, chased by a tall pierrot with whitened face in trailing sleeves, wearing a black cap, his toothless mouth stretched in a grin. He ran with long clumsy strides, half leaping, waving his empty sleeves. The girls seemed a little afraid of him, but the young men shook hands with him, while the younger children, thrilled ran ater him with piercing cries…

In the passages groups were forming for round dances and farandoles. Somewhere strings were playing a minuet…

observations: To mark France’s national day, Bastille Day, a French classic of the last century.

On a recent trip to Paris I came across something I had

never seen before: the Square des Ecrivains-Combattants Morts-pour-La France – a little garden in the 16th arrondissement created to honour the French writers who died while fighting in the First World War. (I had also never come across this French use of the word ‘square’, which is similar to the English.) It’s a pretty spot, beautifully looked-after though not apparently much used. I was expecting a list of the dead writers, perhaps pictures or statues, but there is just a noticeboard, and a tree that was planted in their honour in 2010. Only a couple of writers are mentioned at all: the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and this author, Alain-Fournier. Le Grand Meaulnes is his only substantial work, and he died in the early days of the war (September 1914) aged 27.

It’s quite difficult to describe the book, which I read and loved as a teenager. Le Grand Meaulnes (it’s a bit like being called The Great Gatsby) is the 17-year-old Augustin Meaulnes, friend of the self-effacing narrator, both at school in a small French town. One day he takes off, disappears for a couple of days. When he gets back he is mysterious and restless, he is searching for something. Eventually he tells the narrator: while lost and disorientated, he came upon a country estate, where a fete champetre was going on. It was a young people’s party with music, entertainers, fancy dress costumes. He fell in love with a young woman, spent some time with her, became involved in the story of her brother. He would like to return to this magical place, and see the magical woman again, but he never succeeds in finding it.

You never know with these things: sometimes a book you loved in youth will be shockingly bad when re-read at an elderly age. I did not have very high hopes when I started it on my return from Paris. It has to be said that the CiB chief Guest Blogger, noted for his delicate touch with a literary phrase, has this to say about the book:

I read it about once a year for good while. Never read it again after the scales fell from my grown up eyes - over the course of two or three rereadings - and I realised the narrator's normal and Meaulnes is a selfish irresponsible dickhead, rather than Meaulnes being great and the narrator being a bit of a wimp, as one feels when one's a teenager.

But I absolutely loved it (while still rather agreeing with the GB) – it completely entranced me and pulled me in, I couldn’t put it down, read the whole thing. It has such a strange and memorable atmosphere.

In fact, there’s so much to say about this book that it’s going to spill over into another entry…

With thanks to PW, the perfect Parisienne hostess, who took the modern photo.

The painting is by Jules-Alexandre Grun from the Athenaeum website.