There's a certain sensory appeal to Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes. The prose is at times lush and often rich in symbolism, but it can certainly be read simply as a tale of adventure and love (though with tragic consequences). For me much of the story had a sepia-toned, dreamlike quality to it. I have ambivalent feelings about it, however. In a way it's a gorgeous novel (at least the idea of what Fournier was trying to do), though ultimately I questioned the hero's intentions and actions and found him wanting. Perhaps the author intended Augustin, or Le Grand Meaulnes, to be flawed? Maybe that's just what happens when the innocence of adolescence is lost, we become flawed adults.
According to my Penguin edition the grand of, le grand Meaulnes, is one of those untranslatable words that takes on all sorts of meaning according to how it's used. It can mean "the tall, the big, the protective, the almost-grown up, even the great Meaulnes - or in the schoolboy parlance, good old Meaulnes." Newer editions of the book have been retitled The Wanderer as well as The Lost Estate. Augustin Meaulnes is an impressive figure to the other schoolboys, particularly Francois Seurel, the story's narrator. On a cold Sunday in November 189- Augustin becomes a boarder with the Seurel family. M. Seurel is a teacher of the secondary school in Sainte-Agathe, where the family resides. In no time Augustin becomes the leader of the boys who flock around him.
Although le grand Meaulnes is ostensibly our hero here, I want to mention Francois Seurel who tells us this strange story. Francois is younger, though maybe the wiser of the two by the end of the story. He's a shy, quiet boy suffering from a limp. When M. Seurel asks Francois and another boy to meet his parents who are arriving for the Christmas holiday, Meaulnes steals a horse and cart and sets off to meet them first. This is just the sort of impetuous behavior the reader comes to expect from him. He soon becomes lost and after spending a night in the rough he comes across a great estate, a chateau even, that is bustling with some sort of activity. He finds two children who lead him in to a grand meal and discovers that the youthful son of the chateau will be arriving with his fiancée. There are peasants and wealthy family alike partaking in the celebrations, so Meaulnes simply falls in with them and enjoys himself as well.
As the entertainment for the marriage celebration continues Meaulnes meets the daughter of the family, Yvonne de Galais. She's beautiful. Beyond beautiful, and despite this brief encounter he falls madly in love with her. The party takes a turn when Frantz de Galais returns without his bride. At the last moment she decides she cannot marry him feeling their marriage cannot live up to Frantz's lofty ideals. The festivities quickly break up and Meaulnes takes advantage of a ride with someone back to Sainte-Agathe. The rest of the story revolves around Augustin's search for this lost estate. He has no idea how to find Yvonne again, but that becomes his one goal, which he undertakes with a feverish intensity.
This novel is chock full of imagery and symbolism, which I don't think I'm up to trying to sort out and summarize here (it would take pages and pages surely). The first two sections read almost like a fairy tale or adventure story, but the third part is far harsher, an almost bitter reality. There are so many layers to this novel. It's a story of friendship and love, and how they can be found and how we can fail in them.
"Alain-Fournier, in a letter to Jacques Riviere, claimed that his intention in the novel was not simply to reproduce the sights, sounds, and impressions associated with his childhood home in the landlocked region of the Sologne, but to capture 'that other mysterious landscape' at which the real landscape hints or which it suggests, to 'insert the marvellous into reality' without straining credulity or surpassing the world of concrete objects and living forms. To achieve his effects, Alain-Fournier fused the idealized conventions of romance narrative with the low mimetic style of realistic fiction."
Alain-Fournier based the fictional Yvonne on a woman he met in 1905 while leaving an exhibition of contemporary art in Paris. They were part of different social circles, so we all know what that means. Apparently this was a defining moment in his life, but when he encountered her years later she had married and was the mother of two children. Le Grand Meaulnes was published in 1913. Fournier, a French lieutenant, was one of the first casualties of World War I. This was his only novel. Cornflower's Book Group is discussing it if you'd like to join in.