Memoirs of Mistral

“Thunder! but we must give them one back,” cried Daudet. And he burst out with a chorus which referred to the time of the Civil War with the Vaulois:

Then the men of the river, not to be outdone, responded with a chorus:

“Together now, boys,” we cried to the singers. And in unison, making castanets of our fingers, we shouted with such full lungs that the one-eyed interrupted us:

“Shut up,” said she, “if the police pass by they will have you up for brawling at nights.”

“The police,” we cried; “we snap our fingers at them. “Here,” added Daudet, “go and fetch the visitors’ book.”

The “Counënque” brought the book in which all who passed the night at the inn inscribed their names, and the polite secretary of Monsieur de Morny wrote in his best hand:

“And if any one,” he continued, “if any one, O Counënque, should ever dare make trouble, be he commissioner, policeman or sub-prefect, thou hast only to place these inky spider’s legs under his moustache. If after that he is not quieted, write to me in Paris and I wager I will make him dance.”

We settled our bill, and accompanied by the admiring glances of all, we left with the air of princes who had just revealed their identity. Arrived at the footpath of the bridge of Trinquetaille:

“What if we danced a bit of a farandole?” proposed the indefatigable and charming novelist of the “Mule du Pape.” “The bridges of Provence are only made for that.”

So forward. In the clear, limpid light of the September moon, which was reflected in the water, behold us stepping gaily and singing on the bridge.

About midway across we saw advancing a procession of Arlesiennes, of delicious Arlesiennes, each one with her cavalier, walking and bowing, laughing and talking. The rustling of petticoats, the frou-frou of silk, the soft murmurs of the happy couples as they spoke together in the peaceful night with the thrill of the Rhône that glided between the boats, was an emotional experience never to be forgotten.

“A wedding!” cried the fat Gafet, who had not yet left us.

“A wedding,” echoed Daudet, who, with his short sight, only just perceived the advancing party. “An Arlesienne wedding! A moonlight wedding! A wedding in the middle of the Rhône!”

And taken with a sudden mad impulse, our buck sprang forward, threw himself on the neck of the bride, and kissed her with a will.

Then followed a pretty row! We were all in for it, and if ever we were hard put to it in our lives, it was certainly on that occasion. Twenty fellows with raised sticks surrounded us:

“To the Rhône with the rascals!”

“What is it all about?” cried Master Gafet, pushing back the crowd. “Can’t you see we have been drinking? Drinking to the health of the bride in the Trinquetaille, and that to commence drinking again would do us harm?”

“Long live the bridal couple!” we all exclaimed. And thanks to the valiant Gafet, whom every one knew, and to his presence of mind, the thing ended there.

The next question was where to go next? The Man of Bronze had just struck eleven o’clock. We decided to make the tour of the Aliscamps.[19]

Passing down the Lice d’Arles we went the round of the ramparts, and by the light of the moon descended the avenue of poplars leading to the cemetery of the old Arles of the Romans. And while wandering amongst the tombs and sarcophagi, showing white on either side in long rows, we solemnly chaunted the fine ballad by Camille Reybaud:

Suddenly, from a yawning tomb three paces from us, we heard in dolorous sepulchral tones these words:

“Let sleep in peace those who sleep!”

We remained petrified, and all around us in the moonlight a deep silence reigned.

At last Mathieu said softly to Grivolas:

“Didst thou hear?”

“Yes,” replied the painter, “it is down there, in that sarcophagus.”

“Eh,” cried Master Gafet, bursting into laughter, “that is a ‘dressed sleeper,’ as we call them in Arles, one of those vagrants who come to lodge at night in the empty tombs.”

“What a pity,” cried Daudet, “that it was not a real ghost! Some beautiful vestal, who at the voice of the poets was roused from her sleep, and, Oh, my Grivolas, wished to rise up and embrace thee!”

Then in a resounding voice he sang, and we all joined in:

After which we all shook hands with Master Gafet and made our way quickly to the railway station, there to take the train for Avignon.

Seven years later, the year, alas! of the great catastrophe, I received this letter:

And then they dare to say that Daudet is not a good Provençal! Just because he jokes and ridicules the Tartarins, the Roumestans, and Tante Portals, and other imbeciles of this country, who try to Frenchify the language of our Provence. For that Tartarin owes him a grudge!

No! The mother lioness is not angry, and will never be angry, with the young lion who, in fighting, sometimes gives her a scratch.

APPENDIX

The unanimity of votes accorded to Mireille[20] by the members of the French Academy set the seal of sanction to the Provençal Renaissance, and reinforced Mistral himself with faith and resolution to carry out his mission. Up till that time he had said truly, as in the opening strophe of Mireille, that he “sang only for the shepherds and people of the soil!”—“What will they say at Arles?” was his one thought as he wrote Mireille. But before the completion of his epic his ambition for his native tongue had widened. The notes in the Appendix and the French translation published with the Provençal testify to this fact. Already he was beginning to realise the leading part he was about to play in the society founded at Font-Ségugne. The school of Roumanille, of which, in virtue of Mireille, Mistral was now chief, added to its members daily.

The rules of the language were now fixed, the language of the Félibres, and thanks to L’Armana (an annual publication initiated and edited by Roumanille) were little by little adopted by the people. This classic vulgate—with which Mistral, by pruning and enriching his native dialect, had, like another Dante, dowered his country—had become immortal, having given birth to a masterpiece. It now remained to give a national tendency to the movement. It was by raising the ambitions of a race, and annexing the sympathy of the “Félibres” among them, by showing them their ancestry from remotest times, and bringing to light their inalienable rights, that Mistral evolved out of a literary renaissance a great patriotic cause.

With his Ode aux Catalans (1859) and his Chant de la Coupe, Mistral sealed the alliance between the Provençals and the Catalans, their brethren both of race and tongue. This was ratified when in 1868 Mistral, together with Roumieux, Paul Meyer, and Bonaparte Wyse, met at the Barcelona fête in response to the call of the Catalonians.

SONG OF THE CUP.[21]

Thus little by little the Félibrige, first started by Roumanille and promoted by his political pamphlets, his Christmas Songs and Popular Tales, was developed by Mistral into a national movement. This was shown clearly in his second important work, Calandal, a poem in twelve cantos (1867), which from that time divided the honours with Mireille.

The two poems were in striking contrast one to the other. Mireille depicted the Provence of the Crau and the Camargue, Calandal the Provence of the mountains and the sea. Mireille was virgin honey, Calandal the lion’s mane. In the latter poem, Mistral attempted to give perhaps too much local colour to please the general public, in spite of the incomparable style. The reception of this work by the Félibres, however, was enthusiastic, the heroic symbolism and eloquence of the poet, speaking in the name of all vindicators of his race, gave birth to a set of mystic patriots and created the Félibréen religion.

Little by little, thanks to the vital impulse given by Mistral, Félibrige crossed the Rhône. After having aroused some fervent proselytes, such as Louis Roumieux and Albert Arnavielle at Nîmes and Alais, it resulted at Montpellier in the inauguration of the “Society for studying Ancient Languages,” under the auspices of Baron de Tourtoulon. The work of this group scientifically justified the raising and purifying of the Oc language. Strengthened by the support of the learned and lettered officials, up to that period refractory, the Félibrige movement, already Provençal and Catalan, now became Latin also.

The memorable occasion of the Centenary Fête of Petrarch in 1874 at Avignon, presided over by Aubanel and initiated by Monsieur de Berluc-Perussis, was the first international consecration of the new literature and of the glory of Mistral.

A large assembly of the philological Société Romane in 1875, followed by the Latin Fêtes at Montpellier in 1876, at which the young wife of the poet was elected Queen of the Félibres, definitely confirmed the importance of a poetic renaissance which the author of Mireille and Calandal had developed from a small intimate society into a wide social movement.

Three years previously (1875) the intellectual sovereignty of Mistral had impressed itself on all the south of France by the publication of his collected poems “Lis Isclo d’Or” (“The Golden Isles”) which revealed the serene genius of the master, his extraordinary versatility and his unquestionable title to represent his race.

Shortly after, at Avignon, the poet was proclaimed Grand Master (Capoulié) of the literary federation of the Meridional provinces, and became the uncontested chief of a crusade of the Oc country for the reconquest of its historic dignity and position.

The sort of pontificate with which Mistral was from henceforth invested in no way arrested the outflowing of his songs. A new poem, Nerto, lighter in form than hitherto, in the style of the romantic epics of the renaissance, suddenly drew the attention of the critics again to the poet of Provence, and the charm and infinite variety of his genius.

Having already compared him to Homer, to Theocritus, and to Longus, they now found in his work the illusive seduction of Ariosto. A visit that he paid to Paris in 1884, after an absence of twenty years, sealed his fame in France and his glory in Provence. He was surrounded by an army of followers. Paris, which knew hitherto only the poet, now recognised a new literature in the person of its chief. The French Academy crowned Nerto as before they had crowned Mireille. Mistral celebrated there in the French capital the fourth centenary of the union of Provence and France; “as a joining together of one principality to another principality,” according to the terms of the ancient historical contract.

He returned to his Provence consecrated chief of a people. The Provençal Renaissance continued to extend daily. Mistral endowed the movement at last with the scientific and popular weapon essential for its defence, a national dictionary. It was the crowning work of his life, “The Treasury of Félibrige.” All the various dialects of the Oc language are represented in this vast collection of an historic tongue, rich, melodious, vital, rescued and reinstated by its indefatigable defenders at a moment when all conspired to hasten its decrepitude.

All the meanings and acceptations, accompanied by examples culled from every writer in the Oc language, every idiom and proverb, are patiently collected together in this encyclopædic tresaurus which could never be replaced.

The Institute awarded him a prize of four hundred francs.

In 1890 Mistral published a work he had for some time contemplated, La Rèino Jano (Queen Joan) a Provençal tragedy. In spite of the rare beauty and picturesque eloquence of many of the cantos, this poem, evoking as it does the Angevine Provence of the fourteenth century, obtained only half the success of Nerto from the public. The French do not share with the Félibres the cult of Queen Joan.

If this essentially national tragedy was judged in Paris a merely moderately good drama, it must be remembered that the Parisians did not take into account the familiar popularity which Mistral knew to exist for his heroine among his own people.

While awaiting the production of Queen Joan at the Roman Theatre of Orange, restored by the Félibres, Mistral continued the active side of his work.

The spreading of the movement on all sides called for more influential organs than either the Almanac or the annual publication. After having contributed for forty years to the Armana and having presided at the inauguration of the Félibréen Review in 1885, he became principal editor in 1890 of a Provençal paper in Avignon, L’Aioli, which under his auspices became the quarterly monitor of Félibrige.

While still retaining the leadership of the movement, Mistral published here and there sundry chapters of his Memoirs, also exhortations to his people, lectures, poems, and chronicles.

In 1897 he published another poem, like the former seven years in the making, Le Poème du Rhône. It is the most delicate and most ingenuously epic of his productions. Above all, he showed in this work his profound symbolism, revealed not only in the depth and breadth of his thought, but in the originality of his versification. Taking the traditions of the country, he has woven them into the winding silk cord of the living, glistening, eternal Rhône, this poem of the river’s course. He has inspired his people to restore the honour of these traditions by the radiant example and fruitful labour of his own life.

The Memoirs best reveal the deep roots of his patriotism. In describing his harmonious existence, the master relates his experience both as a celebrated writer and as a Provençal farmer. Portraits of great men and of great peasants stand out in his record. One can judge of him as a prose writer by the Tales and Addresses appearing here and there during a period of forty years, pages which often equalled in beauty the finest songs of the poet. His letters also, which sowed unceasingly the good grain of the Renaissance, will, when published one day, show even better than the translation of his verse what a great writer the French have in Mistral.

His life after all has been his finest poem. In order to bring about the realisation of his ideal, the raising of his country, he has in turn shown himself poet, orator, philologist, and, above all, patriot. The “new life” that his work has infused into the body of Félibrige has not only regenerated his own Provence by erecting a social ideal, it has also promoted the diffusion of a patriotic sentiment which has become general throughout France, and which may be defined as federalism or simply decentralisation. The ideas of Mistral on this subject of local centres permitting the free expansion of individual energies are well known. It can only be accomplished, according to his theory, by a new constituency, the electors of the existing system being too taken up organising the redivision of the departments to enter into other questions. But he has always refused to become the leader of a political movement. “He who possesses his language holds the key which shall free him from his chains,” Mistral has always said, meaning thereby that in the language dwells the soul of a people. Thus restricting himself to the leadership of a linguistic movement he desired to remain always a poet. It is the purity of his fame which has given such power to his position. By the charm of his personality he won large crowds, just as by his writings he charmed the lettered and the educated. For he was always possessed by a profound belief in the vitality of his language and faith in a renewal of its glory, and absolutely opposed in this respect to Jasmin, who invariably proclaimed himself as the last of the poets of the Oc tongue. If Mistral is not the only worker in the Provençal Renaissance, it is at all events owing to his genius that the movement took wing and lived. Before he arose the ancient and illustrious Oc language was in the same deplorable condition as were the Arenas of Nîmes and of Arles at the beginning of the century. Degraded, unsteady, enveloped by parasite hovels, their pure outline was being obliterated by the disfiguring leprosy. One day came reform, and, taking control, swept away the hovels and rubbish, restoring to their bygone splendour these amphitheatres of the old Romans.

Even so, barbarous jargons had defaced the idiom of Provence. Then with his following of brilliant and ardent patriots Mistral came and dispersed the degenerating patois, restoring to its former beauty the Greek purity of form belonging to the edifice of our ancestors and fitting it for present use.

Paul Marieton.

Every year in May, on the Feast of Sainte-Estelle, the four branches of Félibrige are convoked to important assizes at some place on Provençal soil. At the end of the banquet which follows the floral sports, and after the address of the chief, the latter raises high the Grail of the poetic mysteries, and intones the Song of the Cup. The hymn of the faith and cause of the race is taken up gravely

and the refrain joined in by all the company. Then the cup goes round fraternally and each member, before touching it with his lips, in turn rehearses his vow of fidelity.

The assizes of Sainte-Estelle are followed by a meeting of the consistory, who elect the new members. The consistory is composed of a chief or capoulié, of a chancellor, and fifty senior members chosen from among the four branches. Every branch, Provence, Languedoc, Aquitaine, and the affiliated branch of La Catalogne, is presided over by its own syndicate, and nominates an assistant to the capoulié. Félibrige numbers to-day many thousand members, without counting the foreign associations in other parts of France, such as the Félibres of the west, inaugurated by Renan in 1884, and the Cigales of Paris, first started by the Provenceaux of that city, as Paul Arène declared:

“Pour ne pas perdre l’accent, nous fondâmes la Cigale....”

The classic cicada is now the badge of the Order and is worn by all members at their fêtes.

Every seven years takes place a great meeting and floral feast, on which occasion three first prizes are awarded for poetry, prose, and Félibréen work, and a Queen of Félibrige is elected.

Their queen presides at the principal assizes of the cause. The first to be chosen was Madame Mistral, the young wife of the chief, at Montpellier in 1878. The second was Mademoiselle Thérèse Roumanille (Madame Boissière), daughter of the poet. The third was Madame Gasquet, née Mademoiselle Girard; and the fourth and present queen is Madame Bischoffsheim, née Mademoiselle de Chevignè. A procession of Félibresses form an escort to the reigning queen.

The Provençal Renaissance has counted many distinguished women writers and poets among its members. Among the first of these trouveresses were Madame Roumanille, wife of the poet, whose work was crowned at the Fête of Apt in 1863; Madame d’Arband (1863); Mademoiselle Riviére, whose “Belugo” was sung by all our leaders (1868); Madame Lazarin Daniel, Félibresse of the Crau; Madame Gautier-Brémond of Tarascon, celebrated for her “Velo-blanco” (1887); not to mention the many whose names in recent years have been an honour to the cause.

It was on the occasion of the Fête at Montpellier, May 25, 1878, that the “Hymne à la Race Latine” was recited on the Place du Peyron, that song which has since become a national possession and pride.

TO THE LATIN RACE.[22]

To conclude with the words of Mistral quoted from one of his addresses:

“If thou wouldst that the blood of thy race maintain its virtue, hold fast to thy historic tongue.... In language there lies a mystery, a precious treasure.... Every year the nightingale renews his feathers, but he changes not his note.”

C. E. Maud.

MISTRAL’S POEMS IN THE PROVENÇAL

GREVANÇO

II

(From “Lis Isclo d’Or.”)

LES SAINTES-MARIES (Mireille).

MAGALI.

SOULOMI.

SUS LA MORT DE LAMARTINE.