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Henri Alain-Fournier (1886–1914)

Author of Le Grand Meaulnes

20+ Works 3,489 Members 81 Reviews 6 Favorited

About the Author

Alain-Fournier was born Henri Alban Fournier, on October 3, 1886, in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, France. His untimely death in action during World War I came just before his twenty-eighth birthday, barely one year after the publication of his first and only novel, the minor classic, Le Grand Meaulnes. show more Published in English translation in 1928 as The Wanderer, and in a new translation in 1959 as The Lost Domain, this single testament to Fournier's artistic promise influenced writers between the World Wars and still inspires admiration. Suffused with elements of symbolism and surrealism, Le Grand Meaulnes recreates with dreamlike richness the lost "land without a name" of Alain-Fournier's happy childhood in the French countryside. Alain-Fournier's novel was the result of a series of disappointments. He was haunted for years by an obsession for a beautiful blonde woman whom he barely knew. He failed to pass the entrance examination to the prestigious Ecole Normale and a licence examination in English. While in a stormy relationship with a new love in 1910, Le Grand Meaulnes began to take form. In the summer of 1913 Le Grand Meaulnes was serialized in La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, edited by Jacques Riviere, Alain-Fournier's life-long friend and brother-in-law. Le Grand Meaulnes was published in book form in October 1913, nearly winning the Goncourt Prize. Called up to serve with his former regiment at the outbreak of World War I, Alain-Fournier was killed on September 22, 1914, in battle near Vaux-les-Palameix, France. His body was not recovered. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Disambiguation Notice:

(fre) Ne pas confondre l'auteur français avec le sportif canadien Fournier (Alain)

Do not confuse with the Canadian Alain Fournier (note the lack of hyphen)

Image credit: Le Lieutenant Fournier en 1913 aux manoeuvres de Caylus

Works by Henri Alain-Fournier

Associated Works

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Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Alain-Fournier, Henri
Legal name
Fournier, Henri-Alban
Other names
Fournier, Alain
Birthdate
1886-10-03
Date of death
1914-09-22
Burial location
Saint-Remy-la-Calonne, Meuse, France
Gender
male
Nationality
France
Country (for map)
France
Birthplace
La Chapelle-d'Angillon, Cher, France
Place of death
Vaux-lès-Palameix, Meuse, France
Cause of death
Fait de guerre (WW1)
Places of residence
Paris, France
Education
merchant marine school
Lycée Lakanal
Occupations
literary critic
soldier
Relationships
Riviere, Jacques (brother-in-law)
Rivière, Isabelle (sister)
Organizations
French Army
Disambiguation notice
Do not confuse with the Canadian Alain Fournier (note the lack of hyphen)

Members

Discussions

Q2 2022 Group Read – Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier in Geeks who love the Classics (July 2022)
Le Grand Meaulnes in Literary Centennials (August 2013)

Reviews

Going to start splitting my reviews of French lit into two sections, first part for the book itself and second for my reading experience.

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Le Grand Meaulnes is the first and really the only major work of Alain-Fournier, a young French writer who died in the early days of WW1 thus cutting short a promising talent who showed a panache for combining and contrasting romanticist eloquence and realist portraiture of French life that put him in the lineage of greats like Balzac and Flaubert. It's not a particularly well known French classic in the Anglosphere but it still enjoys important place in the French canon and its influence is wider outside there than seems to often be acknowledged (that F. Scott Fitzgerald called his masterpiece on lost love and shattered illusions The Great Gatsby, a title with the same resonance as the French language title of this book, is no coincidence).

It seems to be something of a love-it-or-hate-it online with many people proclaiming their love for it and many saying they don't see the fuss - my rating and description so far probably gives away that I'm much closer to the first camp. You probably do have to have some affinity with the Meaulnes of the title in this intensely mysterious and evocative depiction of bygone youth, longing after the dreams, places and people of our distant and possibly imagined pasts. At the same time it's equally an early kind of coming-of-age novel, potentially attractive to those in their own adolescence as well as those looking back on it. My favourite sections were probably those of the Domain itself which is really where the novel kicks into full gear after a slow-ish start, though the third part picks up serious steam even if I'd argue it emotionally climaxes a little too early and the last few chapters feel like an after-note to how devastating that moment is. Some gorgeous writing in here that often inspired my own wistful feelings as well as leaving me in suspense enough that I devoured the last 10 chapters at breakneck speed and felt the full emotional impact of a certain vivid event even through the barrier of my still incomplete understanding of French.

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Speaking of which, my experience with the language itself - this was a huge step up in difficulty from Le Petit Prince as I expected and my Kindle dictionary got a regular workout for the first five or so chapters. The uses of the conditional and subjunctive still gave me occasional trouble though this might be the first time I really understood a few uses of the latter fully - otherwise once the basic vocabulary had been laid out I found my reading speed picking up throughout until I practically did extensive reading for the last 4-5 chapters and still felt like I didn't miss out on too much. My first time seeing a lot of words here, and this feels like my gateway into more formal, classical French - but it was a gentle one and the vocabulary remained fairly set after the first part which meant I felt like I'd learned a lot by the end. I'll vividly remember the experience and though my sometimes tricky understanding may have made an already dreamy and hazy novel even more so it's one I look forward to returning to one day when I'm more at ease.
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franderochefort | 78 other reviews | Aug 5, 2023 |
... l'opera simbolica procede per irradiazioni e, diciamo cosi', per effusioni; in essa lo scrittore vuol rendere sensibile non una cosa ma la vibrazione che la cosa comunica all'anima. (copertina)

Ah, fratello mio, compagno di vagabondaggi, come eravamo convinti, tutti e due, che la felicita' era a portata di mano e che bastava mettersi in cammino per raggiungerla!... (124)

Uscendo dal bosco, sostammo a scrostarci sulla strada secca il fango delle scarpe, mentre il sole cominciava a picchiare sodo. Quel mattino di primavera, cosi' fresco e brillante, era svanito, eran cominciati i soliti rumori del pomeriggio, nelle masserie deserte nei pressi della strada, echeggiava, ogni tanto, il grido desolato di un gallo. (141)… (more)
 
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NewLibrary78 | 78 other reviews | Jul 22, 2023 |
 
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jean-sol | 78 other reviews | Mar 2, 2023 |
Started strong, but went out with a whimper. Elegiac, romantic (decidedly not in the Harlequin / Mills & Boon way, but in the capital-R Romanticism way), Proustian (published the same year as Remembrance of Things Past) in its nostalgic descriptions of the memories, times, and landscapes of the narrator's youth. Fifteen-year-old François recalls a slightly older boy, Augustin Meaulnes (pronounced like "moan"), who disturbs the equilibrium of the local school and small community. Le grand Meaulnes, as the other boys dub him, borrows a horse and carriage, gets lost on the road, and finds himself in a strange, dreamy "domain" (a manor house) where a wedding is about to take place. There he sees an enchanting girl, and falls instantly and irretrievably in love, but she wanders off sighing "It's no use... we are just children." He fumbles his way back home again, but is not able to figure out where this out-of-the-way place is or how to get back, to find the girl again. He becomes gloomily, drearily obsessed with finding her, and François wants to help. But Augustin hies himself to Paris where the girl purportedly makes occasional visits, and pines. There is a muddle of classmates, townsfolk, and the thwarted groom of the wedding that never came off after all. Everyone is at cross-purposes; lovers are redirected, reunited, weep, desert one another, die, reappear... it's all very melodramatic and I won't offer any spoilers. The thing is, after all this drama, I kept expecting some kind of dark secret to finally emerge, something big and terrible - a murder, an illicit gay passion, something that would explode and explain the mess. But it never does. Even the death is not particularly tragic - more bathos than pathos.

Alain-Fournier has written this tale to wallow in (and maybe exorcise?) his own sad adolescent crush, and couches it in quite sweet and lovely memories of his schoolboy years in places he clearly loved deeply. The saddest part of this whole story is his own: killed within weeks of the outbreak of La Grande Guerre at Verdun at the age of twenty-eight. Very much a period piece, and very much subject to your own literary tastes. But kind of fun, if you like this sort of thing - I often do, but this one petered out and left a vague disappointment in its wake.
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1 vote
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JulieStielstra | 78 other reviews | Oct 25, 2022 |

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Associated Authors

Anita Marsh Translator
Anthony Costello Translator
Anthony Howell Translator
Auguste Renoir Cover artist
Daniel Leuwen Foreword
Alvin Lustig Cover designer
Han Mes Illustrator
Laura Carlin Illustrator
Frederika Blair Introduction
Adam Gopnik Introduction
Frank Davison Translator
Max Nord Translator
Walter Widmer Ãœbersetzer
Havelock Ellis Introduction
Robin Buss Translator
Edward Gorey Cover artist
Jean-Noël Leblanc Notes et carnet de lecture

Statistics

Works
20
Also by
2
Members
3,489
Popularity
#7,289
Rating
3.8
Reviews
81
ISBNs
257
Languages
18
Favorited
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