Victor Carrabino

The Poetics of Fire in Jean Giono’s Le Chant du Monde

Much has been written on the power of fire. Fire imagery can be traced as far back as prehistoric times. Bachelard notes that “in our conscious lives, we have broken off direct contact with the original etymologies. But the prehistoric mind, and a fortiori the unconscious, does not detach the word from the thing. If we speak of man as full of fire, it wills something to the burning within him.”1 Fire, for example, apart from its kindling, burning and metamorphic quality has been associated by the imagination, as Northrop Frye suggests, to the internal fire: “its sparks are analogous to seeds, the unity of life; its flickering movement is analogous to vitality; its flames are phallic symbols, providing a further analogy to the sexual act, as the ambiguity of the word ‘consummation’ indicates, its transforming power is analogous to purgation.”2

Three Decades of the French New Novel

In the fall of 1982, a colloquium was held at New York University to honor the achievements of the French New Novel. Three Decades of the French New Novel is Lois Oppenheims useful edited collection of the colloquiums essays and papers. It includes good translations into English of presentations that were originally given in French by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Nathalie Sarraute, and Robert Pinget. Each authors essay is followed by one or more scholarly papers defining the significance of the writers work and of the New Novel.

Jean Giono’s Le Chant du Monde : The Harmony of the Elements

It was Giono’s ambition to write a novel in which man is one with nature. Every elemental force would have a particular value and a particular voice stronger than that of the human characters. These voices join in an harmonious song in Le Chant du Monde.

THE FRENCH NOUVEAU ROMAN: THE ULTIMATE EXPRESSION OF IMPRESSIONISM

In his Social History of Art Arnold Hauser claims that “Impressionism is the last valid European Style.” 1 A reappraisal of such a statement is in order, for it is essential to understand the method and goal of Impressionism before one can accept Hauser’s statement.