"The epigraph, echoing Saba's "ancient" spring and, intertextually, Eliot's "cruel" April and Valéry's "maledetta primavera", sets the solemn yet celebratory tone of Jean-Claude Masson 's song to youth, his ode to first life experiences. From the perspective of experience, of one who has learned to "merit exile" and accept the necessary and inevitable banishment from a state of simplicity and innocence, the poet undertakes a poetic and nostalgic voyage back to a lost garden." (Cf. : Sergio Villani, *World Literature Today*, Summer, 1992).

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