Jump to content

Un jardin sur l'Oronte

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Un jardin sur l'Oronte
AuthorMaurice Barrès
LanguageFrench
Publication date
1922
Publication placeFrance

Un jardin sur l'Oronte (A Garden on the Orontes) is a novel by Maurice Barrès, which was first published in 1922 by Plon-Nourrit. Barrès purportedly transcribed in it a story which an Irish archaeologist had translated to him from a manuscript one evening of June 1914, at a café in Hama by the Orontes River. The tale of love of "a Christian and a Sarrasin" is set in the crusading era of the Middle Ages.[1][2]

The publication triggered what would be called la querelle de l'Oronte[3][4] (the Orontes Quarrel): as worded by Jane F. Fulcher, "despite the widely known conservatism of Barrès, the novel created a scandal, particularly in the Catholic press, which perceived its sensuality as an outrage to religious morality."[2] After Barrès' death, the work onto which Barrès "claimed to have projected a Wagnerian conception" was adapted into an opera of the same name with a libretto by Franc-Nohain and music by Alfred Bachelet, which was created, undoubtedly delayed by the scandal, on 7 November 1932.[2]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ The London Mercury. Vol. 6. 1922. p. 645.
  2. ^ a b c Fulcher, Jane F. (2005). The Composer as Intellectual: Music and Ideology in France, 1914–1940. Oxford University Press.
  3. ^ Cavet, Jean (1927). D'une critique catholique (in French).
  4. ^ Frandon, Ida-Marie (1952). L'Orient de Maurice Barrès (in French).

Further reading

[edit]
[edit]