Autumn

Use in the book

On October 1, rising mist resumes an unfinished recollection. Its clearing recalls mountains seen a year earlier and eventually the passage of a beloved figure in blue. The present act of writing is then interrupted by the evening sky itself. Autumn is not merely remembered; it breaks into the sentence as a current perception demanding notice.

Trees in twilight acquire characters and almost faces, while their immobility invites speculation about silent passions beneath bark. Later in October a pond, paling woods, grey sky, and silent birds give rise to gentle sadness and a childhood scene of watching birds find their night shelter. These are carefully differentiated kinds of melancholy, tied to visual and temporal relationships.

The coastal December evening is also called an autumn evening. Its dominant effect is not seasonal barrenness but the temporary silencing of inward noise through the ocean’s harmonies. Autumn’s subdued landscape can deepen participation even as it makes departure and passing time more perceptible.

Places to read

1. 1 October 1833 · ¶1Mist and current twilight interleave remembered and present scenes
2. 24 October 1833 · ¶1Fading woodland colour and birds at dusk reconnect the walker to childhood
3. 9 December 1833 · ¶4The text calls the December coastal reverie an autumn evening

Translation in this edition

Les bois qui commencent à se dépouiller becomes woods beginning to shed their leaves. The English specifies the leaves implicit in the French undressing image, making the botanical action explicit while softening its personification.

Use in the book

René returns to the paternal château each autumn. His happiest companionship with Amélie is consequently already inseparable from falling leaves, muted sounds and the pleasure of sadness. The later autumn of solitary wandering does not introduce a wholly new mood; it enlarges a pattern learned in childhood, now without the sister whose presence once made it bearable.

At p. 161 autumn surprises him amid uncertainties, and he welcomes the storm months with rapture. Decline becomes a stimulus to renewed life: the barren landscape feeds creative power rather than merely expressing exhaustion. The migratory birds then suggest a passage out of earthly existence, but the apparent heavenly voice delays departure. Natural recurrence offers an image of transition without authorizing self-destruction.

The narrative moves from this solitary autumn to Amélie's intervention and then to the end of winter, when she begins losing the health she has restored to him. The seasonal sequence is not an automatic progress toward springtime healing. Restoration is unequal: one person's recovery coincides with another's decline. Likewise the outer scene begins at dawn in the “moon of flowers” and ends under a forecast storm. Different temporal scales resist a single seasonal allegory.

Places to read

1. p. 143Chaque automne, je revenois au château paternel — Annual return makes autumn the season of attachment before it becomes solitary yearning.
2. p. 161L'automne me surprit au milieu de ces incertitudes — Weather gives unsettled feeling a rhythm.
3. p. 163la saison de ta migration n'est pas encore venue — The season becomes an ethical limit on departure.
4. p. 168L'hiver finissoit — Amélie begins to decline as winter ends.

Translation in this edition

At p. 143 the supplied apparatus reports an 1802 “silence of autumn” where 1826 has its dull roaring. At p. 161 “dark months” becomes “months” of tempests. These changes alter acoustic and tonal colouring; they do not remove the underlying seasonal structure.