ABSTRACT
For admirers of Alain-Fournier's unique combination of unsettling symbolism and vivid imagery, of exact autobiographical recollection and dreamy romanticism, it is as frustrating to speed by that obscure turn-off as it would be, mutatis mutandis, to consistently by-pass Hannibal, Missouri. Alain-Fournier's deepest-running philosophical theme, and his novel in this respect is not just a haunting fiction about coming-of-age and first love, but also a sort of melancholic spiritual autobiography implicitly defining his ontological separation from the presence of the world. Alain-Fournier greatly miniaturizes French geography so that he can bring together his two beloved childhood sites: as has already been made clear, Vierzon is near La Chapelle-d'Angillon and thus also, oddly, the Theillay whistle-stop. Alain-Fournier has pulled off a tantalizing tour de force resembling the way in which Joseph Conrad's equally ambiguous main characters in The Secret Sharer revolve around each other like double stars, their respective energies flowing back and forth between each other through mutual gravitational attraction.
