THE LOVE LETTERS of JEAN GIONO to BLANCHE MEYER Patricia A. Le Page, Doctor O
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: SPACE OF PASSION: THE LOVE LETTERS OF JEAN GIONO TO BLANCHE MEYER Patricia A. Le Page, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation Directed By: Professor Joseph Brami, Department of French and Italian This dissertation offers a first analysis of a collection containing more than one thousand letters that Jean Giono wrote to Blanche Meyer over a thirty year period from 1939-1969. The correspondence, which was first opened to the public in January 2000, is housed at Yale University’s Beinecke Library. It has never been mentioned by Giono’s biographer or critics in spite of the light it sheds on his creative process. The liaison revealed by the letters leads to a discovery of the extraordinary role that Blanche played in Giono’s creative life. She was the only person to be so profoundly involved in his writing as the idealized image with whom he shared his internal dialogue. As the beloved “other” who inspired Giono’s lover’s discourse, she allowed him to express and examine his ideas and thus to clarify his thinking and move forward with his work. What strikes the reader upon reading the letters in conjunction with Giono’s novels, is the extent to which Giono’s life and his fiction were inspired by the myth of courtly love and how deeply his life and work were intertwined. Identifying and explicating the myth is significant because it provides an essential key to a renewed understanding and appreciation of Giono as a writer, a reinterpretation of the conception of love and sexuality he expresses in his novels, and a resolution of several important contradictions in his life and work. All of this leads to a reassessment of the legend invented by the writer himself and disseminated by his critics, that Giono was a self-taught provincial writer whose work was outside the intellectual mainstream. The letters reveal that Giono was a complex man of letters whose life was informed by the reading of literature and centered around writing and reflection. Moreover, the correspondence read as a meta-discourse along with his novels, provides a unique portrait of the artist engaged in the experience of passionate love which was for him the penultimate human experience and the apotheosis of the myth. SPACE OF PASSION: THE LOVE LETTERS OF JEAN GIONO TO BLANCHE MEYER By Patricia A. Le Page Thesis or Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy] 2004 Advisory Committee: Professor Joseph Brami Professor Sandra Cypess Professor Hervé Campagne Professor Madeleine Hage Professor Pierre Verdaguer © Copyright by Patricia A. Le Page 2004 Dedication For my son, William Le Page who discovered the collection of letters and for Didier Bertaud who taught me to use and appreciate the French language. ii Acknowledgements I would especially like to express my gratitude and appreciation to my advisor and the chair of my dissertation committee, Joseph Brami, who gave generously of his time, never failed to encourage me but even more importantly, showed me that a task worth doing is worth doing well. I also thank Madeleine Hage who was my original advisor and who, even after her retirement, read everything I wrote and shared her ideas and insights with me. And I thank Pierre Verdaguer who was always ready to help me with administrative details and who gently encouraged me to finish the project when it seemed that the end was a long way off. I am also grateful to Hervé Campagne who agreed to serve on very short notice and still managed to find the time to read the material, and to Sandra Cypess for her support both during the process and during the defense. I am grateful to my family for their enthusiasm and never-wavering support even when my own courage flagged. I especially thank my mother, Paule Allard, for encouraging me every step of the way and for teaching me from childhood to believe in my dreams and to work to make them come true. I thank my daughter, Lise Le Page, who read portions of the manuscript and whose background in English literature made her comments especially meaningful; my son, Bill, whose careful and intelligent search led him to the collection of letters from Jean Giono to Blanche Meyer and who was always ready to send me materials from the Columbia University Library where he was employed; my son, Leo for listening to me, sharing his own ideas and encouraging me; my sisters, Jacqueline Morgan and Cynthia Mendez who iii accompanied me through this project and were always willing to share their intelligent and helpful insights with me; my brother, Jeffrey Allard, who was the first Ph.D. in the family, for all of his encouragement and for generously taking his time to discuss literature with me; my brother John Allard for believing in me even though my choice of a career path is very different from his. For everything he taught me about the French language, for generously giving his time to read and edit papers I wrote during my tenure as a graduate student and for his untiring support and friendship, I am eternally grateful to Didier Bertaud. I also thank all of my friends who patiently and kindly accepted my absence from social events and from life in general and yet kept encouraging me to go on with my work . I especially thank Sandra Waters who called often and never ceased to encourage me while I was out of state and away from the familiar circle, and Jane Tabb and Friedrun Sullivan who were equally supportive. And finally, I thank my husband, Leo Le Page, for his patience and encouragement during the past ten years and for generously giving not only moral but also financial support. He was willing to allow me the space I needed to write and research and yet he was always there for me at the end of the day. iv Table of Contents Dedication........................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements............................................................................................................iii Table of Contents................................................................................................................ v Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I: The love letters as examples of the epistolary genre ....................................... 15 Chapter II: The love letters as the self-expression of a writer ......................................... 36 Chapter III: The creation of the Muse: Blanche, Adelina White and Pour saluer Melville ............................................................................................................................. 60 Chapter IV: A portrait of the artist: Giono, Angelo and Le Hussard sur le toit as a novel of chivalry ............................................................................................................... 92 Chapter V: The metamorphosis of the myth: Le moulin de Pologne and L'iris de Suse ................................................................................................................................. 126 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 177 Works Consulted............................................................................................................. 187 v Introduction This dissertation consists of two parts: a first edition of the unpublished love letters that Jean Giono wrote to Blanche Meyer over a 30-year period between 1939 and 1969,1 and an interpretation of the letters read in conjunction with the novels. The collection of over 1200 letters is housed in the General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.2 I began my work on the letters on January 6, 2000, as soon as the collection was opened to the public. The letters have never been studied nor even mentioned by Giono’s critics up to this date nor has Giono’s relationship with Blanche Meyer ever been made public. The only mention of Blanche or the correspondence occurs in an article written by Jolaine Meyer, Blanche’s daughter.3 The Yale collection of letters, as large as it is, is not exhaustive however. There is a smaller collection housed at Laval University, Province of Québec, Canada, which I have not yet read. In addition, according to the curator of the collection at the Beinecke Library, Blanche had begun selling the letters to various collectors before her friend Jean Gaudon, former member of the Yale University French Department, persuaded her to allow Yale to acquire the collection. Therefore it is likely that in addition to the Laval collection, there are 1 The letters are not included with this manuscript. They will be filed with the dissertation when permission is obtained from the copyright owner. 2 In her notes that accompany the letters Blanche made a slight error in stating that there are 1307 letters totaling 3300 pages. See Giono Gen. MSS 457, box 2. 3 “Sur un personnage de Giono: Adelina White ou Blanche?” Pratiques d’écriture 1994. 375-386. 1 letters still in the hands of individual collectors. This reading offers a new interpretation of Giono’s work and illustrates the way in which both his life and his whole creative opus were inspired by the myth of courtly love. Paradoxically, the letters also reveal the importance of