Second Harvest

Trilogie de Pan #3

by Jean Giono, Henri Fluchère (Translator), Geoffrey Myers (Translator)

Tous sont partis. Panturle se retrouve seul dans ce village de Haute-Provence battu par les vents au milieu d’une nature âpre et sauvage. Par la grâce d’une simple femme, la vie renaîtra.
Jean Giono, un de nos plus grands conteurs, exalte dans Regain , avec un lyrisme sensuel, les liens profonds qui lient les paysans à la nature.
Jean Giono est né à Manosque en 1895. Il y fait ses études secondaires, puis travaille dans une banque. Après la guerre, il reprend son emploi et le garde jusqu’à ses premiers succès littéraires, en 1929, avec des poèmes et des romans qui expriment toute la poésie de la Haute-Provence : Colline , Un de Baumugnes , Regain , Jean le Bleu , Que ma joie demeure , Le Serpent d’étoiles , etc. Regain est le dernier roman de la «Trilogie de Pan», les deux autres étant Colline et Un de Baumugnes . Membre de l’Académie Goncourt en 1954, Jean Giono est mort à Manosque en octobre 1970.  

Genres: Fiction, France, Roman, Classics, French Literature, 20th Century, Literature

122 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Jean Giono, the only son of a cobbler and a laundress, was one of France's greatest writers. His prodigious literary output included stories, essays, poetry, plays, film scripts, translations and over thirty novels, many of which have been translated into English.

Giono was a pacifist, and was twice imprisoned in France at the outset and conclusion of World War II.

He remained tied to Provence and Manosque, the little city where he was born in 1895 and, in 1970, died.

Giono was awarded the Prix Bretano, the Prix de Monaco (for the most outstanding collected work by a French writer), the Légion d'Honneur, and he was a member of the Académie Goncourt.

Reviews

[Dame Silent]

Encore un récit très dense, pour ce dernier volume de la trilogie de Pan, entre fantastique et naturalisme. La première partie est difficile, noire et tendue, alors que la lumière revient dans la seconde. Je suis fascinée par le style de Giono, et sa capacité à faire parler la terre et les gens avec beaucoup de richesse et de subtilité. C'est vraiment unique !

[Max Carmichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

If all books were to be destroyed and I had the ability to save just one, this is the one I would save. Like all of Giono's early works, it's a parable set outside of historical time, evoking the deepest mysteries of human nature and ecology, showing how people work together with each other and their natural communities to renew life on earth. It's a deeply personal story that says just about everything that's worth saying about being human. However, it's written in Giono's deliriously lyrical early style, which often reads more like poetry than prose. When I first encountered his descriptions of nature, the metaphors seemed far-fetched, until I reflected on my own experiences in the natural world, and realized that they weren't metaphors at all, they were literal renderings of sensory experience. Self-taught, immersed in nature from childhood, Giono developed his own totally unique voice.

Note: The French original is Regain, and this book has been published in English under the titles Harvest and Second Harvest. I prefer the latter for the woodcuts!

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to the handy intro to Melville by the ever-dandy Edmund White, whom I must get back to someday, I now know that Giono's career can be roughly split into two distinct eras. Let's call the second era, everything post-Melville, The Bark, and the second The Below It. One will find Harvest as a keystone text of The Below It. Apparently, having felt he had reached the end of what he could do with this distinctly animist, folkloric, and generally ooky-spooky art novel for the trench-damaged, Giono embarked on that noble (and exhausting) quest that so many writers of his era did: the psychological whatdoesitallmean-a-ma-call-it. I prefer the woods, and I prefer them haunted.

This is a pretty much perfect distillation of The Below It Giono, and the rare goddamn hyper-romantic novel I can throw myself behind. It works purely by its total suspension of logic. Once again Nature is the principal character doing Her thing to those paltry little human assholes skirmishing and squishing against one another atop Mother. We deserve whatever we receive.

[[Sidebar: "The Bark and Below It" is the musique concrete offering on Olivia Tremor Control's second and final opus, Black Foliage (Animation Music). Them Olivias traded in some beautifully animist psychedelic musings themselves before they died far too young. Sadly, those deaths were not allegorical or symbolic as in Giono, but all too physical. Shelf this book next to OTC in cross-disciplinary concordance: "We're only made of water, sand, and stone/We're made of joy and make-believe." I mean, shit, how’s the fucking alternative looking these days?!?]]

[Maëllys · Rating 4 out of 5]

j'étais en train de déprimer parce que je me disais qu'il fallait que je lise plus de livres..... mais qu'il fallait aussi que je travaille pour l'agreg.... et ce livre est littéralement apparu sur mon étagère j'étais même pas au courant que je l'avais je pense que c'est un message venu du ciel

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5*
I wish I could've read this in the original language. Giono has a unique voice, even in translation, so I can only imagine what he would read like in French.

It was almost like an Adam and Eve story, except backwards - the couple go from savagery and desolation into peace and fertility. I might have liked it more if it wasn't so glib about the latter. Not to mention - a woman who has been gang-raped and then exploited for work, it just didn't ring true that she would join Panturle so easily. In fact, all the scenes of their initial meeting are bizarre, as if Giono was describing animals in heat - unthinking and entirely instinctual. Perhaps that was Giono's intent. He may have intended to show this as what naturally evolves into love and relationship, and ultimately, family. That this deserted village is the seed of civilization and rebirth. It didn't work for me. But I admire his skill with setting and mood. My favorite part was about the plateau. Not far from the village of Aubignane is a 40 mile long plateau, higher than the surrounding countryside.

"Flat as a threshing-floor, it was a meadow of clouds. The path was nothing more than a tiny rill, dried up to the bone.
As far as the eye could percieve, it was like a great sea, darkened by a surge of juniper shrubs. Junipers, junipers, junipers. Broad-winged, silent crows soared up from the bush and the wind carried them away...Then suddenly, they emerged from that sea of junipers. Just on the outskirts of the wood the great, grassy solitude began. A cloud had just alighted on the grass yonder, in the depths. It rose. They began to see a slight strip of sky between the grass and it. And thus, low as it was, it came on. It passed over, only ten metres up, unfeeling and powerful...they stood in the midst of the open country, the very midst. There was nothing more. The transparent brim of the sky rested all round on the grass...They were sitting in the long grass. The wind gathered speed and leapt over them. They were sheltered. All was well. On that plateau which was so flat, so extensive, and so well spread out under the sun and the wind, you could be comfortable only when seated. The warmth of the earth stole up into your loins; the grass was all round like a warm, sheltering sheepskin. When you walked, it was just the opposite: you felt naked and weak. It seemed as if, over that great stretch, everywhere eyes were watching you and things spying on you. But when sitting you were comfortable."

There is something compelling about Giono's writing. I've read 3 of his books now, and only liked 1, but I know I will be reading more.

[Keen Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s one thing claiming that a novel has x amount of beautiful description and detail, but it is another thing entirely in transporting that safely into a totally different language. French is so different to English in so many ways I just can’t see how you are ever going to get the fine detail across in such a novel, but there we go.

This did absolutely nothing for me, and whatever charms this possesses, it seems that each and every one of them passed me by. It was flat, dull and almost totally uneventful. Ah well each to their own, I suppose.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to say about Jean Giono’s writing. His story is tend to be simple, but he uses words like a poet. The words gentle, visceral, pagan, primal and bucolic spring to mind, but beyond that I can’t really tell you much. A wonderful read this one.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second Harvest centres around Panturle who lives in a small Provençal village, Aubignane; a village that is on the decline and near to extinction as it only has three inhabitants. We initially find out about the inhabitants of Aubignane from some members of a nearby town, one of whom used to live in Aubignane. One of its inhabitants is Panturle (Panturle was a huge man. He looked like a piece of wood walking along.) He is in his forties and, since his mother died, lives alone . He relies on hunting for his food by setting traps and snares. He often talks to himself. Gaubert (Gaubert was a little man and all moustache) is a retired cartwright who used to make the finest ploughs but now, in his eighties, he is all skin and bone. When he gets bored he strikes his anvil to relive better days.

Whenever Gaubert felt bored, he took hold of the hammer with both hands, raised it, and struck the anvil. He went on like that, for no purpose, just for the sound, to hear the sound. His life was in each of those strokes. The sound of the anvil echoed through the countryside and sometimes came upon Panturle while he was hunting.

The third inhabitant is Mamèche, 'the Piedmontese' (She used to sit and sing at the edge of a bank. Then her husband died. Then her child died.). Her story is, indeed, sad; her husband was a well-digger and he died when a well collapsed in on him. Her little boy died from eating hemlock. But it's not long before Gaubert decides to leave, taking his anvil with him, to live with his son in a nearby village. Panturle and Mamèche help each other out but Mamèche begins to act strangely—he would often find her outside standing still and talking to herself. One day Mamèche offers to find Panturle a wife and bring her to him. Then one day Panturle discovers that Mamèche has left. He is now alone in the village. Has Mamèche gone to find him a wife? He does not know.

The story now switches to two other characters: Gédémus, a travelling knife-grinder, and his young wife, Arsule, whom he treats as his servant. Gédémus is not brutal, he loves Arsule, but in a limited way. Before long Gédémus and Arsule arrive at Aubignane to find it apparently abandoned. When they stop outside Panturle's house no-one answers.

Giono's style of writing is beguiling, with its tales of peasants and farmers. He often anthropomorphises the natural world, where trees sing, streams grumble and the sun jumps; he also compares humans to non-human entities, such as comparing Panturle to a piece of wood (see above), or when Arsule's body is described as 'fermenting like new wine'. The Wikipedia page on Giono describes this period of his writing as displaying a pantheistic view of nature. It is a charming way of writing but Giono does not ignore the brutal side of nature as well.

The story has reached a pivotal moment with Gédémus and Arsule outside Panturle's house. Rather than describe much more of the plot I wish to quote rather a long piece at this point which perfectly displays Giono's style.

Soft green grass grew in front of the house. There stood the cypress too, and, as if on purpose, it was singing with its tree-voice, its sweet-sounding voice, inviting to the ear. Then there were bees which had lived under a tile and were humming in the air. And then, like a miracle, so unexpected that it made them rub their eyes, there was a small lilac tree in full blossom.
   "Let's rest, Arsule, let's rest."
   Gédémus, lying on the ground, stretched himself out like a dog. "One could almost sleep."
   No, she would not be able to sleep with that longing within her, like water carrying everything away. Her heart was like a crumbling clod of earth. She sat in the grass, with daisies between her legs. She was only an empty bag of skin; she listened to that bitter water, like fire, singing deep down within her.
   She opened her bodice and took out her breasts. They were hard and hot and she had one in either hand...
   Just at that moment she saw a pool of blood, thick as a peony, on the white threshold of the door.

Ok, I'm not quite sure why Arsule takes her breasts out when she's having a rest, but maybe it was a common thing then. The blood is coming from Panturle butchering a fox he had hunted earlier. If you wish to find out more then you will have to read the book. Second Harvest is the third part in a trilogy called the 'Pan Trilogy': the first part is Hill of Destiny (Colline) and the second part is Lovers Are Never Losers (Un de Baumugnes). My understanding is that they can be read as stand alone novels as it is the style or theme of the novels that is the connection. I am certainly looking forward to reading the others.

[tomasawyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dans le fond, je l'ai trouvé plus intéressant à lire que Colline, mais quand il y a si peu d'action dans un livre, on en devient plus attentif au style et il m'a paru moins bien écrit, moins fluide à lire et surtout moins poétique. Reste le message du livre auquel je suis assez réceptif. La vie habite tout ce qui nous entoure, prête à rejaillir au milieu d'un champs de ruine, elle attend juste qu'on l'ensemence avec nos yeux, nos mains et tout le reste.

Bon, je suis pas non plus devenu fan de Giono en relisant Colline et Regain mais je serai moins dans l'angoisse lorsque je croiserai son nom dans une librairie. Giono ne donne pas que envie de se pendre. ^^ Il y a une dimension humaine et poétique qu'on ne peut pas saisir quand on est ado. On le trouve juste ennuyeux et moisi. J'ai un peu la même angoisse à la vue du nom de Zola depuis le collège, peut-être que je lui redonnerai sa chance, un jour...

[Max Eichelberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book in front of a small fire, a large cat and on a full stomach. My sister’s house has an overstuffed leather armchair and a bank of glass windows that look out to the street. Whenever I finished a chapter I tried think about what I just read (and avoid staring too long at the spry looking dogs that dragged their owners down the hill). Unfortunately this is a book that can only be experienced, and related from one human to another does little justice to the book.

Perhaps it is enough to say it is secular Adam and Eve. Perhaps we might say it is a story of plants, and the humans merely acting out their parts. Perhaps we might say it is none of those things, and it is a small French author trying to tell us something about the dark, wilderness and things we don’t see when we sit on chairs, in front of fires, staring at dogs.

[Eustache]

Une écriture sensuelle qui tisse le lien entre le corps, son environnement et le cycle des saisons.
Mon plaisir a cependant un peu souffert d'un rapport à la femme assez arriéré pour un regard contemporain.

[Patrik Andersson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fin berättelse om en man samklang med den plats han bor.
Detta är den första bok jag läst av Jean Giono och den gav mersmak.
Giono beskrivs som att han var en naturromantiker - och det är nästan en underdrift.

[Aurélie Lilie-C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnifique récit naturel et humaniste

[Talal Najjar · Rating 4 out of 5]

بسيطة جميلة و تنتهي ب جلسة واحدة
مفعمة بالأمل و حب الطبيعة
هي جزء من ثلاثيته
رجل من بومين
و رواية تلة
استخدامه للطبيعة ظاهر بشكل واضح جدا

[Swann · Rating 3 out of 5]

bon c'est tout ce que j'ai trouvé à lire chez mes grands-parents là
sympa mais les paysans chelous quand même vivement que je retrouve le macadam

[ADMIRATEUR DE MAYAAA · Rating 4 out of 5]

ct pas mal du tout

[Robert Wechsler]

Often beautiful, but after putting it aside for a while, I found it too dull to proceed to the second of two parts.

[corentin · Rating 4 out of 5]

une narration très poétique

[paperborn · Rating 1 out of 5]

La plume poétique pleine de métaphores imagées de Giono donne vie à la Nature et plus particulièrement à la Provence, en faisant un personnage à part entière. En revanche, le récit qui tourne quasi entièrement autour de la "chasse à la femelle", très peu pour moi. Pas du tout le style de lecture que j'apprécie.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing, in the most low-key of ways. It's short. It's also truly time traveling back to a place that had thrived, became barren, and was made to thrive again through the hard work of simple daily living. It touches and teaches about life, about living, about relationships, everything, simply by showing. What a great writer.

[Paul Hartzog · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Jean Giono in general but I particularly like this one. His use of "the wind" throughout the book is really effective. His capacity to write about the sensuous world and the eroticism of the natural through Pan's presence is amazing.

A wonderful story about sacrifice and change and healing.

[Crystal Morningstar Kinistino · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yawn. mediocre prose at best. maybe it was better in the mother tongue, but en anglais, it is pale. Not to mention the storyline is downright boring and I had to force myself to plod along to the end.

[Dahlia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dakle, ujače, tu prijeko leži Aubignone, tu prijeko, gdje sve kao mrtvo izgleda?

Objavljen davne 1930. godine, roman "Žetva" Jeana Gionoa je smješten u napušteno selo Aubignane u Francuskoj. U selu su samo ostala tri stanovnika: Mamèche, Gaubert i Panturle. Uskoro i Gaubert odlazi, a Mamèche tajanstveno nestaje u potrazi za ženom koja bi mogla ostati s Panturleom.

I tako Arsule, mlada žena s problematičnom prošlošću, dolazi u Aubignane a njena prisutnost unosi čudesne promjene na bolje u srca ljudi i samu prirodu koja ih okružuje...

Sav njen život gori još samo u ognju njenih očiju.

„Žetva“ je pravi cottagecore roman. Svaka stranica pršti živim slikama neopisivih ljepota francuske provincije. Roman slavi neraskidivu vezu čovjeka i prirode, jednostavan život i važnost zajednice.

Zemlja cvokoće od zime, usred potpune tišine.

U tu idilu autor je smjestio dva glavna lika, Arsuleu i Panturlea, a njihova ljubavna priča okosnica je cijelog romana.

Novembarski vjetar tjera pred sobom hrastovo lišće kao preplašeno stado. Vrlo je hladan ovaj vjetar, do same svoje srži, ali hladnoća je njegova ipak nekako lijepa i zdrava. Od jednog jedinog njegovog naleta zanijemiše svi izvori; i samo njegovo hujanje vlada šumom.

Ako volite prirodu i jednostavne, nekomplicirane ljubavne priče, ovo je roman za vas.3.5/5

[Laurence Zimmermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Premier roman que je lis de cet auteur dit classique.
Même si l'usage (l'abus ? ) de métaphores donne un ton parfois "daté" à l'histoire, ça reste une très jolie découverte et une belle lecture. Une plongée dans la campagne provençale qui se meurt. Un hymne à la nature et à ce lien qui unit l'homme et la terre.
L'auteur décrit tellement bien les lieux et surtout l'ambiance qu'il règne sur cette colline et dans ce village quasi-mort qu'on s'y croirait. La nature prend littéralement vie.
C'est la force de ce roman d'ailleurs et ça pourrait être pour certain son défaut.
Il ne s'y passe pas grand chose si ce n'est la rencontre entre Paturle, le dernier habitant d'Aubignane et Arsule, cette fille dite de peu de vertu que le destin (dixit la Mamèche) met sur son chemin.
Leur couple est atypique et pourtant ils se donnent une chance sans chercher à comprendre et ça marche. Ils sont touchants tous les deux dans leurs silences et leurs partages.
Ils redonnent vie à ces terres abandonnées et par la même à ce village. J'ai beaucoup aimé la fin qui résume bien le roman.

Contente d'avoir pu enfin faire connaissance avec Giono. Maintenant est-ce que je vais poursuivre le voyage ? Je ne sais pas. Qui sait... mais une chose est sûre, ce voyage-ci m'a bien plu

[Gianluca Micchi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Regain est un livre écrit avec passion, évidemment pour des exigences personnelles intimes. On voit que l'auteur aime le sujet de son roman et le traite avec soin. Toutefois, c'est juste pas trop mon type de roman. Tout d'abord pour le style, qui essaie d'être poétique grâce à des métaphores symboliques un peu trop pathétiques, qui montrent la faiblesse de leurs analogies si on y refléchit juste un peu. D'après pour le contenu : les situations me semblent s'arranger pour que la morale de l'histoire soit claire. C'est un livre écrit avec un message, un message conservateur de retour à l'antiquité et au travail dans les champs, et tout semble construit non pas pour suivre une logique en soi, mais pour demontrer cette thèse.

C'est quand même un livre bien écrit, qui se fait lire sans souci. C'est deux étoiles et demi, j'en lui donne trois.

[Steve Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reads less like a novel than like a myth. It is obsessed with elemental things--earth, soil, sky, weather, growth, birth, rebirth, love, cruelty, kindness, redemption. It moves slowly like the seasons, but builds and builds. Some of the sensual descriptions are breathtaking. It is a very traditional book about very traditional conceptions of men and women and their place in what the author seems to be arguing is an ideal relationship to each other and to the world. In that sense it doesn't feel as if the narrative questions its own ideas but rather presents a fully formed example of how the world ought to work, if humans were virtuous and we all focused on only the most important things. I'm not sure myths should necessarily question themselves. That's not really their role. But as much as I loved this book and its world, its certainty about its premises felt like an artifact of an earlier time.

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un petit bijou de littérature qui fait revivre la culture paysanne des environs de Manosque dans l'entre-deux-guerres.

La langue de Giono incarne un rapport au monde, à la nature que nous avons oublié et que certains de ma génération ont approché encore par leurs liens familiaux, par les dialogues avec nos Anciens, ce monde paysan qui fut tout et qui a sombré avec l'oubli de nos racines.

Giono embellit mais ne cache rien de la méchanceté, de la dureté et de la simplicité des échanges, de l'adversité face aux caprices de la nature qui se trouve ici magnifiquement humanisée.
La solitude bestiale du Panturle, la pythie Mamèche, l'Arsule, le vieillissant Gédémus, la foire, l'espoir qui renaît dans les villages abandonnés dans les hauteurs d'Aubignane, le Provençal qui colore enrichit le Français vernaculaire.

[Kathia Rakoto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Première lecture de Giono de ma vie (il faut un début à tout et d'ailleurs j'apprend maintenant que c'est le dernier roman d'une trilogie... oups!).
Son écriture si particulière, presque orale participe vraiment au dépaysement, on est plutôt bien transportés et on s'attache rapidement aux personnages. L'histoire est celle de la banalité de la vie rurale dans sa beauté presque magique car il y a définitivement une main bien intentionnée sur le destin de Panturle. J'avoue mon plaisir de voir une fin heureuse sans ombrage.
si je devais donner un défaut : le dernier tiers du livre manque d'enjeu.

[Alealea · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'ai projeté une tension à chaque pause de l'action, une tension comme si quelque chose d'horriblement violent et triste aller se produire. Une violence sous-jacente, une promesse, dans la sauvagerie initiale du personnage principale, qui demeure dans l'image de son couteau et dans sa façon de se mouvoir.
Une oeuvre que je relirais peut-être pour en apprécier la saveur sans le sentiment d'oppression qui m'a accompagné à cette première lecture.

[Mathilde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il y aurait beaucoup à décortiquer et analyser dans ce livre. C'est très plaisant de découvrir une lecture française avec de belles couches et de profondeur.
J'ai apprécié le style très métaphorique et imagé de l'auteur. Un livre sur les humains, ce qu'ils sont, et la nature dans son ensemble.
Une très jolie lecture.