Abstract EN:

This study is an attempt to set forth under the diversity of giono's romantic work, "the essence" of what a specifically "gionian" being is. We thought that imagining such an investigation was justified by the fact that the characters'main features recur all along the work as well as by the heroes'unvarying way of behaving. Moreover, giono's deep interest in the absurdity of life and its obvious absence of meaning is such that in each novel the main character happens to be a metaphorical endeavour to answer it. This absence of meaning is mainly put in concrete form in the distressing vision of man's fragility opposite universalness as well as opposite the frightening emptiness that surrounds us. Emptiness is not only around us, it's in ourselves and living is surviving it. The whole work is thus a representation of the struggle of man against "both infinites": the monstrous infinite of nature and the monstrous infinite man bears in himself. The way of facing the world, of welcoming life and achieving it organise the narration. Joy would be in peace and harmony but the hero's destiny can be achieved but in the loneliness of desire, in the mobility of search and will. "sharp movements" drive every"gionian" narration, absolute love or absolute hate irremediatly move towards destruction: murder,suicide, vanishing, or silence. All these "excesses", as far as the common herd is concerned, express in the gionian world life at its best and everything is an invitation to read it in the greatness of the soul which has overcome the artificiallity of gregarious speeches and thus has rediscovered the true terms of freedom. We thought the flashing nietzschean metaphor could throw a light on "the heart of things" where from life and its becoming originate.