One of 15 copies on vélin de Hollande (no. 8).
For Giono, who had become drawn to darker subjects after the war, the Dominici affair arrived at just the right moment. Not only had the atrocious and unsolved murder of three English tourists taken place in the Haute-Provence he knew better than anyone, but the courtroom also offered him an exceptional vantage point for observing character. When André Parinaud, editor of the weekly Arts, asked him to cover the trial, Giono agreed; and when Gallimard proposed turning the coverage into a book, he supplemented his notes with an Essai sur le caractère des personnages.
Giono’s depth of insight is striking: he denounces a judicial process based on confessions rather than evidence, and stresses the gulf between the language of the courts and the extreme poverty of vocabulary of the patriarch, Gaston Dominici. As the spiritual descendant of a Carbonaro and of Stendhal, Giono finds a certain grandeur — even stature — in duplicity and monstrosity.
A fine copy.