"Le Grand Meaulnes," of which the title literally means "The Great Meaulnes" (like the "Great Gatsby"), but which in English is also known as "The Lost Domain" and "The Wanderer," is the only work written by the French author Alain-Fournier before he was killed at age 27 in one of the early battles of WWI. It is a true masterpiece of nostalgia.
The novel is narrated by François Seurel, son of a village schoolmaster in a small village in the Sologne, a region of pools and marshes in north-central France. François (age 15) is captivated by the charismatic new schoolboy Augustin Meaulnes (17 years old), who is known as “the great Meaulnes" not only for his large stature, but also the daring feats he pulls off. He may be called an embodiment of the romantic ideal: a wanderer, a pathfinder.
On a solitary excursion through the countryside, Meaulnes looses his way and stumbles upon a mysterious country estate where some kind of fête champêtre is going on, with the party goers dressed in costume from the 1830s. There Meaulnes meets the son of the chateau, Franz de Galais, a wilder and destructive version of himself, and Franz's sister, a young woman of otherworldly beauty, Yvonne de Galais, for whom Meaulnes conceives a transcendent love. It is as if he has stumbled right into a fairy tale... But abruptly, the party breaks up and Meaulnes has to return to the village, where he takes François in his confidence.
He remembers Yvonne's last words, that they are two children and have been foolish. It is indeed an impossible dream to enjoy adult love while remaining a child at heart. It is in that lost borderland between child and adult that the dreamland of this novel is situated. The love that Meaulnes feels for Yvonne is a union of souls and not of bodies, a state of perfect purity and innocence.
The novel is narrated by François Seurel, son of a village schoolmaster in a small village in the Sologne, a region of pools and marshes in north-central France. François (age 15) is captivated by the charismatic new schoolboy Augustin Meaulnes (17 years old), who is known as “the great Meaulnes" not only for his large stature, but also the daring feats he pulls off. He may be called an embodiment of the romantic ideal: a wanderer, a pathfinder.
On a solitary excursion through the countryside, Meaulnes looses his way and stumbles upon a mysterious country estate where some kind of fête champêtre is going on, with the party goers dressed in costume from the 1830s. There Meaulnes meets the son of the chateau, Franz de Galais, a wilder and destructive version of himself, and Franz's sister, a young woman of otherworldly beauty, Yvonne de Galais, for whom Meaulnes conceives a transcendent love. It is as if he has stumbled right into a fairy tale... But abruptly, the party breaks up and Meaulnes has to return to the village, where he takes François in his confidence.
He remembers Yvonne's last words, that they are two children and have been foolish. It is indeed an impossible dream to enjoy adult love while remaining a child at heart. It is in that lost borderland between child and adult that the dreamland of this novel is situated. The love that Meaulnes feels for Yvonne is a union of souls and not of bodies, a state of perfect purity and innocence.
[UN World Heritage site, the Chateau de Chambord is situated in the Sologne -
could this be the model for the "mysterious estate"?]
To his dismay, Meaulnes discovers that he cannot retrace the route to the country estate, which has become "lost," an unobtainable romantic ideal, and a symbol of perfect happiness on the borderline of childhood and adulthood. He keeps hopelessly trying with the help of François, and it is the narrator who a few years later succeeds in locating the castle after Meaulnes has already left the village - it is much closer than they thought possible. Meaulnes is called back, he revisits the estate and even marries Yvonne - but the perfect happiness he believed to find has evaporated due to the experiences he himself has had in the meantime.
The book is filled with a haunting atmosphere, the sounds and colors of the countryside and the different seasons. It is also permeated by a feeling of irrevocable loss: the loss of the pure dreams of charmed youth to cruel experience, the loss of idealized love to the sordid reality of the flesh, and the realization of the evanescence of the world around us - and even our memories of that world.
"Le Grand Meaulnes" was one of the favorite books of the British author John Fowles (The French Lieutenant's Woman) - he called it "the greatest novel of adolescence in European literature" - and he wrote The Magus under its influence. Of course, you have to be grown up to fully appreciate this novel because adolescents don't yet know what it is they are going to lose by growing up. Another author who writes in the same vein of the loss of magic worlds is the today so popular Japanese author Haruki Murakami. But Alain-Fournier is purer than these postmodern authors, he writes exactly in the adolescent spirit of the story, honest and without any cynicism. "Le Grand Meaulnes" is a most beautiful book that deserves to better known.
It may be impossible to find our dreams, but we must keep trying.
The book is filled with a haunting atmosphere, the sounds and colors of the countryside and the different seasons. It is also permeated by a feeling of irrevocable loss: the loss of the pure dreams of charmed youth to cruel experience, the loss of idealized love to the sordid reality of the flesh, and the realization of the evanescence of the world around us - and even our memories of that world.
"Le Grand Meaulnes" was one of the favorite books of the British author John Fowles (The French Lieutenant's Woman) - he called it "the greatest novel of adolescence in European literature" - and he wrote The Magus under its influence. Of course, you have to be grown up to fully appreciate this novel because adolescents don't yet know what it is they are going to lose by growing up. Another author who writes in the same vein of the loss of magic worlds is the today so popular Japanese author Haruki Murakami. But Alain-Fournier is purer than these postmodern authors, he writes exactly in the adolescent spirit of the story, honest and without any cynicism. "Le Grand Meaulnes" is a most beautiful book that deserves to better known.
It may be impossible to find our dreams, but we must keep trying.