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differences between the Old World and the New. But there is no wall between Giono’s spirit and my own. That is what draws me to him—the openness of his spirit. One feels it the moment one opens his books. One tumbles in drugged, intoxicated, rapt.
    Giono gives us the world he lives in, a world of dream, passion and reality. It is French, yes but that would hardly suffice to describe it. It is of a certain region of France, yes, but that does not define it. It is distinctly Jean Giono’s world and none other. If you are are a kindred spirit you recognize it immediately, no matter where you were born or raised, what language you speak, what customs you have adopted, what tradition you follow. A man does not have to be Chinese, nor even a poet, to recognize immediately such spirits as Lao Tsu and Li Po. In Giono’s work what every sensitive, full-blooded individual ought to be able to recognize at once is “the song of the world.” For me this song, of which each new book gives endless refrains and variations, is far more precious, far more stirring, far more poetic, than the “Song of Songs.” It is intimate, personal, cosmic, untrammeled—and ceaseless. It contains the notes of the lark, the nightingale, the thrush; it contains the whir of the planets and the almost inaudible wheeling of the constellations; it
contains the sobs, cries, shrieks and wails of wounded mortal souls as well as the laughter and ululations of the blessed; it contains the seraphic music of the angelic hosts and the howls of the damned. In addition to this pandemic music Giono gives the whole gamut of color, taste, smell and feel. The most inanimate objects yield their mysterious vibrations. The philosophy behind this symphonic production has no name: its function is to liberate, to keep open all the sluices of the soul, to encourage speculation, adventure and passionate worship.
    â€œBe what thou art, only be it to the utmost!” That is what it whispers.
    Is this French?
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    NOTES
    1 Politics of the Unpolitical , by Herbert Read, Routledge, London, 1946.
    2 From Democratic Vistas .
    3 The Reading of Books , Scribner’s, New York, 1947.
    4 Et bien mieux qu’ Ossendoivski!
    5 The Law of Love and the Law of Violence.

The Solitude of Compassion
    They were sitting against the gate at the station. Looking at the rattletrap coach and the rain-slick road, they did not know which way to go. The winter afternoon was right there in the white, flat mud like a piece of linen fallen from a drying rack.
    The larger of the two got up. He searched on both sides of his big velour hussard pants; then he picked with the end of his fingers at the little carpenter’s pocket. The carriage driver climbed into the seat. He clicked his tongue and the horses perked up their ears. The man cried: “Wait.” Then he said to his companion: “Come,” and the other came. He floated, all thin in a threadbare shepherd’s greatcoat. His neck stuck out of the sackcloth, emaciated like a piece of iron.
    â€œWhere’s it going?” asked the larger man.
    â€œTo town.”
    â€œHow much is it?”
    â€œTen cents.”
    â€œGet in,” said the large man.
    He bent down, spread the folds of the greatcoat, lifted the leg of the other man up onto the step:
    â€œGet in,” he told him; “Just try, old man.”

    It took time for the young lady to gather up her boxes and move herself. She had a fine, white, wide-lined nose and she knew that her nose was visible under the rice powder, so she looked a little to the side with almost an angry expression, and it was for this reason that the large man said to her: “Excuse me, Mademoiselle.” Across from him there was a chubby, delicate lady in a coat with fur on the collar and the sleeves; a travelling salesman who pressed himself against the lady, and who, to better touch her with his elbow on her lower breast, put his