Structure intentionnelle du Grand Meaulnes: vers le poème romancé by H.-A. Bouraoui (review)

452 LETTERS IN CANADA 1976 dices qui rendront d'inestimables services aux chercheurs. Ces derniers trouveront assun"ment tres utile la 'Genealogy of Andre Gide for the Period relevant to Si Ie grain ne meurt'; ils sauront tout particulierement gre aTolton de ses 'Notes on the Manuscript of Si Ie grain ne meurt: qui constituent la meilleure source de renseignements que naus possedions actuellement sur Ie sujet et qui ne peuvent que nOilS faire souhaiter la preparation prochaine d'une edition ,ritique de Si Ie grain ne meurt. Pourquoi Tolton ne se chargerait-il pas d'etablir lui-meme cette edition critique? Philippe Lejeune, pour sa part, qui affirme tout d'abord qu'il a voulu 'prendre Gide comme il desirait etre pris par la critique: du point de vue de l'art: nous propose dans Exereices d'ambiguite une brillante analyse 'au niveau des traits stylistiques et des procedes narratifs' de cinq textes extraits de Si Ie grain ne meurt, 'textes brefs et importants, dans lesquels Ie narrateur resume, oriente, Oll commente son propre fecit' et tout particulierement reveiateurs de la personnalite ambigiie d'Andre Gide. (Rappelons que dans 'Gide et l'autobiographie' (Andre Gide 4, La Revue des Iettres modernes, nos 374--<) [Paris: Minard 1973], pp 31-69), p, Lejeune a etudie Ie role de ['espace autobiographique dans I'oeuvre d'Andre Gide.) 'Le discours ambigu n'est pas un discours trompeur: observe-til , 'il represente la complication, il en fait I'objet d'une ceuvre d'art.' Usant du personnage du diable, que ['on retrouve frequemment dans Si Ie grain ne meurt, a la fa,on d'un fil conducteur a travers les textes choisis, Lejeune tente, par ses lectures, de reconstituer Ie discours gidien et d'en expliquer la fonction, 'en decelant ses failles, les moments ou il sonne faux, les distorsions au peut se lire I'inscription de l'inconscient.' II parvient ainsi amontrer comment 'derriere Ie drame de 1893-18<)5, it faut lire la periode 1893- 1921' ... et comment Gide parvient adesarmerle lecteur. 'Si Ie grain ne meurt: concluait CO.E. Tolton, 'has the lasting freshness of a classic; and it is time to acknowledge that it is not to its daring subject matter or to its biographical usefulness that it owes its durability, but to the unique personality and literary deftness of the artist who lived its story and recorded it.' Que Si Ie grain ne meurt est effectivement une rel/vre d'art, Philippe Lejeune nous en a fourni une preuve supplementaire . (JACQUES COTNAM) H.-A. Bouraoui. Structure intentionnelle du Grand Meaulnes: vers le poeme romance. Nizet.224 H.-A. Bouraoui's analysis of Le Grand Meaulnes is a valuable addition to the growing list of books and articles about Alain-Fournier and his only novel. As set out in an introductory chapter, Professor Bouraoui's pur- HUMANITIES 453 pose in writing is twofold: 'de faire une analyse structuraliste de l'oeuvre .. .' (p 13); 'de mettre surtout en lumiere les valeurs esthetiques du roman ... etudiant en detaill'agencement des images et des symboles dans la structure totale de l'oeuvre dans Ie but de mettre en lumiere la position exacte qu'occupe Alain4 Fournier dans la tradition du roman moderne ...' (p 16). The critical method proposed is equally direct and undogmatic: 'Nous avons developpe notre methode critique au fur et amesure que les traits caracteristiques principaux de chaque partie se sont reveles ala lecture methodique .. .' (p 27). 'Ainsi, nous avons echelonne notre plan d'etude selon les repetitions dans la premiere partie, la structure generale dans la deuxieme et la technique narrative dans la troisieme' (p 28). 'Aussi avons-nous evite d'utiliser Ie jargon de la critique structuraliste au litteraire' (p 28). The analysis, in other words, will derive from the elements of the text itself and an examination of the similarities, symmetries , and repetitions therein without the direct use oftheoretical scaffolding . Having clearly stated his aims and his critical method, if not some of the premises behind his 'lecture methodique: Bouraoui sketches an overview of the thematic and structural relationships in the work before passing to an analysis of the coherence of the major sections of the novel (p 59). For each of the three parts he proposes to use a specific 'foyer' as his entree en analyse: 'Ia chambre de Wellington' for the first, 'Ia pantomime de Ganache' for the second, but a more complex time/narration structure which is not centred in a single scene for the third. The study of structures, themes, and leitmotifs which follows relates the speCific characteristics examined in each part of the novel to their place and importance in the work as a whole. While he uses and responds to other critics of Le Grand Meaulnes, Bouraoui goes beyond what they have said in his meticulous attention to the repetitions, modulations, and parallels of the text ('la technique sur laquelle Fournier base son roman etant celie de la repetition et de la modulation ...: p 159). This careful study of the details is accompanied by an intelligent although not always original interpretation which will certainly bring some new inSights to most readers of the novel. What we have in fact is an exegesis of Le Grand Meaulnes which hides its rather eclectic methodological apparatus very well: literary history and the Correspondanee, the myth of the Eternal Return (pp 43-5)' a bit of Bachelard and the four elements (p 77), the theme of the hero as clown (Fowlie, p 91), 'motifs' and 'leitmotifs: etc (pp 98-<)), all very smoothly put together. Bouraoui's examination of the text borrows in this way from many methods - historical, thematic, structural , archetypal, linguistic, psychocritical - without using the jargon and the sometimes oppressive theoretical framework which we have come to expect in such studies. On the other hand, the curiously brief and 454 LETTERS IN CANADA 1976 completely out-dated bibliography, with one exception, shows not a single reference to the many books and articles about Alain-Fournier published since 1965, nor to any of the theoretical works which have preoccupied most critics for more than a decade. This exclusion of current material makes easier the refusal of any specific methodology other than that dictated by the novel itself, but it raises questions and creates a certain unease in the reader who apprehends the shadowy form of a thesis or manuscript left forgotten in a drawer for the past ten years. When I turn to Bouraoui's second declared intention, that is to say, to place Le Grand Meaulnes within the history and the development of the novel as a genre, and when I combine this with the way in which he interprets the novel as a whole, I find the analysis and the placing of the text within the tradition of the 'poeme en prose' through Baudelaire to Joyce (pp 201-208) much less convincing than the close reading which precedes it. The references to Dujardin, Proust, and others, and the extremely sketchy comparison of Le Grand Meaulnes to joyce's Portrait of the Artist and Gide's Faux-monnayellrs, are insufficient to justify the claim that 'Ia position exacte qu'occupe Alain-Fournier dans la tradition du roman moderne' has been established. From the other side, the presentation of Meaulnes (and Ganache, pp "5- 19) as artist, and the novel as portrait of the artist, seems overblown, too conditioned by Fournier's correspondence and the critic's polemical stance (Tintention de I'oeuvre correspond a I'intention de I'auteur: p 216), that is to say, the need to prove that Alain-Fournier has created 'un nouveau genre' which is neither a 'poeme en prose' (ii la symboliste) nor a novel, but a 'poeme romance,' The weaknesses in this argument show in a number of ways, in particular when extra-textual elements intrude unduly: the placing of Fournier and his characters on the same footing (pp 142-3), hypothetical considerations about what would have happened if Fran~ois or Meaulnes had done this rather than that (pp 167, 172, 186), a heavy reliance upon matching up the aesthetic pronouncements in the Correspondanee and the life of Fournier (p 163) with various elements in the text, and so on. Perhaps others will find these arguments concerning the 'poeme romance' more compelling than I did, and the double claim that Alain-Fournier created a new genre in Le Grand Meaulnes and that Bouraoui gave it a name ('une projection veTS ce que naus appellerons Ie poeme romance: p 19) less arbitrary. For all that, the certain value of Bouraoui's study lies in the close analysis of the three parts of the novel rather than in the attempts to wed author and text within an interpretation which will coincide with the broader literary context of his day and the exegetical point to be made. (JOHN A. FLEMING) ...