Dear sir,
Sorry to disappoint you, but Elzéard Bouffier[1] is a fictional person. The goal was to make trees likeable, or more specifically, make planting trees likeable (this has always been one of my most fondest ideas). And if I judge based on the results, it seems to have been attained through this imaginary person. The text which you read in Trees and Life has been translated into Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, English, German, Russian, Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, Yiddish and Polish.
I freely give away my rights, for all to publish. An American has come to me recently, to ask my permission to make 100,000 copies which he would distribute freely in American (which of course, I granted).
The University of Zagreb has created a Yugoslavian translation. It is one of my works of which I am most proud. It does not bring me a cent, and this is why it is able to achieve the goal for which it was written.
I would like to meet with you, if that would be possible, to discuss practical uses of the work. I think it's time we created "Tree Politics", though the work "Political" seems very out of place.
Cordially,
- Jean Giono
- ↑ the lead character from Giono's book The Man Who Planted Trees
