Jean Giono: The personal ethics of an author writing under the occupation

Abstract

The recently published Journal de l'Occupation (1995), written by Jean Giono from September 1943 to September 1944, allows a privileged view of the French author who was subsequently blacklisted for collaboration. Contemporary critics generally consider Giono guilty of literary collaboration. In this article, I inquire into the legitimacy of these claims through a close reading of his occupation diary and other publications of the occupation period. In the end, I reject this commonly held notion in favour of the portrait that the diary provides: that of a disillusioned French author and French citizen, who is unwilling to take sides in the civil conflict beyond his local allegiances, and thus refuses to submit his vision to an overarching political project. Moreover, his total belief in an individual's freedom of conscience makes him subversive in his refusal to submit to one doctrine or another.