Its themes and view on nature were heavily inspired by Walt Whitman's poetry collection Leaves of Grass.

[1] It was adapted into the 1965 film Le Chant du monde, directed by Marcel Camus.

Even if you can't stand Homeric madmen you should be able to find much to your taste in The Song of the World."

Chamberlain continued: "The real idiocy is not the story, but Giono's attitude towards his own product and his own world.

He seems to be telling us that primitive man lived a much less conventional and inhibited life than we moderns; he also implies, somewhat paradoxically, that values and order both exist for primitive people, whereas confusion and disorder make the world a hell for the people of 1937.