Diary: Michael Wood on Jean Giono

A sea journey ostensibly about “Zoology, Botany, Paleontology, Oceanography” turns out to be a pursuit of the unknown

Jean Giono was arrested and imprisoned at the beginning and at the end of World War II. His ostensible offense was pacifism, but his accusers thought he might be guilty of worse, even more unpatriotic crimes. In both instances they decided there was no real case against him and released him without further charge.

Long before these occurrences Giono, by then a well-known novelist, had written that France was “the wrong name” for the country that he and his friends loved, the place composed of landscapes and weather. He continued, “When I see a river I say ‘river’ when I see a tree I say ‘tree’; I never say ‘France.’ That doesn’t exist.” We may feel the wrongly named entity existed all too concretely in its interference in Giono’s life, but his subtle argument goes deeper than surface history, as can be seen in his amazing book Fragments of a Paradise, written between the two imprisonments.

In the book, one of the reasons the captain of a vessel making a research expedition from European waters to the South Atlantic has chosen a sailing ship is that he doesn’t “want to be dependent on coal yards, which would force me to set foot in civilized countries.” He also says he thinks he and his crew “should sever all relations and ties with the civilized world.” I am certainly moved and persuaded by his reference to “the anxiety that had gripped the modern world during the few years preceding my departure.” We are not told the date of his ship’s leaving Europe but it must be close to the time of the book’s writing since one of the characters mentions the battle of Dunkirk (May to June 1940).