Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier

I fell in love with this novel when I studied it for French A Level, aged seventeen, and it has haunted me ever since: comme des vagues sur un rocher desert, nos aventures…les jours les plus tourmentes et les plus chers de ma vie. I loved its wistful sadness evoking a ‘land of lost content’ in the misty French countryside – a place of abandoned chateaux and dovecotes at the turn of the century.
Yvonne de Galais, loved by both the adventurous Grand Meaulnes and his gentle friend, Francois Seurel, epitomised the heroine I longed to be: a princesse lointaine. The writer was inspired seeing a beautiful girl wearing a brown cloak by the River Seine one afternoon with whom he instantly fell in love, although she was already betrothed to someone else. She became his muse for Yvonne, the unrequited love of his life until he was killed in action in 1914 near Verdun. Yvonne de Galais has remained a constant role model, although thankfully my life has not been cut short so tragically as hers.
I loved Albicocco’s film, The Wanderer, based on the novel with its hazy photography of the Sologne and have seen it many times. Years ago I managed to buy a VHS copy of the film in Paris and had it converted to the English system. Thirty years after reading Le Grand Meaulnes my husband, daughter and I visited all the places associated with the novel; we made a little film, I wrote a long article, gave a talk and finally I was able to let it go. Or so I thought because it has surfaced again.
Later this year we are staying near Verdun and I hope to visit the writer’s grave at Saint-Remy la Calonne. His body was found in a mass grave in 1991 where he had been buried by German soldiers and has since been given a proper burial. It is time to read the novel again. In French, if I am brave enough.