«Je cherche l’Italie, ma patrie» : Giono lecteur de Virgile

Abstract

In 1943, the publisher Corrêa commissioned Jean Giono to write the preface to a selection of translations of Virgil; he chose the entire Bucolics, extracts from the Georgics and the Aeneid. At this point in his life, the French writer was in the midst of questioning himself, and he was soon to commit his work to the tragic vein of his so-called ‘Stendhalian’ period. If Virgil was for Giono an initiator in his youth, he became during the Second World War a companion of joy and exile. He proved to be a peer in the realm of Belles Lettres, allowing him to devote himself to the exploration of his imagined Italy, that of his magnied grandfather, full of idealism but also of darkness. Giono’s ambition, at this time, was to be a living author singing the force of life, joyful and/or terrible, and Virgil becomes the very example of this program.