Dr Tony Shaw: Jean Giono: Regain | Second Harvest (1930)

3 May 2019

**Jean Giono: Regain | Second Harvest (1930)**

Libellés : French Literature, Giono (Jean), Provence

The cover shows Arsule on the banks of a stream that she and Gédémus have pulled him from after a fall. She's been working like a slave for Gédémus, who has a knife-grinding machine he wanders around Provence with, earning very little. But Gédémus in a sense saved Arsule (whose real name might be Irène but Arsule seems to fit better) far from being a singing slave to Tony, playing the bars after walking to various places until she's fit to drop.

While Gédémus is sleeping they go to Panturle's house in Aubignane (modelled on Redortiers), a small village where he's the only person left after Gaubert and la Mamèche have gone. The title Regain can refer to a second harvest, or to a renewal, and is a very apt title because the book is about a number of different kinds of renewal: the life of both Arsule and Panturle are renewed, in the end the couple have new neighbours and the village is renewed, life is coming to it and Arsule is pregnant.

Arsule changes Panturle, renews the man who cared little for his appearance, who brought dirty wood into the house but now leaves it outside, and lived by killing wild animals but now is given a plough by the dying Gaubert and has a horse and a large quantity of corn seed borrowed from a friend from a nearby village. And soon Panturle grows the best (virtually only, but nevertheless very superior quality) corn, which he sells for a good price in town.

Marcel Pagnol made a film of Giono's Regain, although somehow it was a bit too comical, played for laughs as it (almost) could only be with the huge toothed, usually smiling, optimistic Fernandel as Gédémus. The two are rather different stories, but Giono's is the more powerful. It marks the final part of the author's Pan trilogy after Colline (1928) and Un de Baumugnes (1929).

My Jean Giono posts: