There are many signs that poetry is coming into its own again--even
here in America, which, while actually one of the most romantic and
sentimental of countries, fondly imagines itself the most prosaic.
Kipling, to name but one instance, has, by his clarion-tongued
quickening of the British Empire, shown so convincingly what dynamic
force still belongs to the right kind of singing, and the poet in
general seems to be winning back some of that serious respect from his
fellow-citizens which, under a misapprehension of his effeminacy and
general uselessness, he had lost awhile. The poet is not so much a joke
to the multitude as he was a few years ago, and the term "minor poet"
seems to have fallen into desuetude.
Still for all this, I doubt if it is in the Anglo-Saxon blood, nowadays
at all events, to make a national hero of a poet, one might say a
veritable king, such as Frédéric Mistral is today in Provence. In our
time, Björnson in Norway was perhaps the only parallel figure, and he
held his position as actual "father of his people" for very much the
same reasons. At once a commanding and lovable personality, he and his
work were absolutely identified with his country and his countrymen. He
was simply Norway incarnate.
So, today in Provence, it is with Frédéric Mistral. He is not only a
poet of Provence. He is Provence incarnate, and, apart from the noble
quality of his work, his position as the foremost representative of his
compatriots is romantically unique. No other country today, pointing to
its greatest man, would point out--a poet; whereas Mistral, were he not
as unspoiled as he is laurelled, might, with literal truth, say:
"_Provence--c'est moi!_"
We had hardly set foot in Provence this last spring, my wife and I,
before we realized, with grateful wonder, that we had come to a country
that has a poet for a king.
On arriving at Marseilles almost the first word we heard was
"Mistral"--not the bitter wind of the same name, but the name of the
honey-tongued "Master." Our innkeeper--O the delightful innkeepers of
France!--on our consulting him as to our project of a walking trip
through the Midi--as Frenchmen usually speak of Provence--said, for his
first aid to the traveller: "Then, of course, you will see our great
poet, Mistral." And he promptly produced a copy of _Mirèio_, which he
begged me to use till I had bought a copy for myself.
"Ah! Mistral," he cried, with Gallic enthusiasm, using the words I have
borrowed from his lips, "Mistral is the King of Provence!"
Marseilles had not always been so enthusiastic over Mistral and his
fellows. And Mistral, in his memoirs, gives an amusing account of a
philological battle fought over the letter "s" in a room behind one of
the Marseilles bookshops between "the amateurs of trivialities, the
rhymers of the white beard, the jealous, the grumblers," and the young
innovators of the "félibrige."
But that was over fifty years ago, and the battle of those young
enthusiasts has long since been won. What that battle was and what an
extraordinary victory came of it must needs be told for the significance
of Mistral in Provence to be properly understood.
The story is one of the most romantic in the history of literature.
Briefly, it is this:
The Provençal language, the "langue d'oc," was, of course, once the
courtly and lettered language of Europe, the language of the great
troubadours, and through them the vehicle of the culture and refinement
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. From it may be said to have
sprung the beginnings of Italian literature.
But, owing to various historical vicissitudes, the language of Northern
France, the "langue d'oil," gradually took its place, and when Mistral
was born, in 1830, Provençal had long been regarded as little more than
a _patois_.
Now it was the young Mistral's dream, as a school-boy in the old convent
school of Saint Michael de Frigolet, at Avignon, to restore his native
tongue to its former high estate, to make it once more a literary
language, and it chanced that one of his masters, Joseph Roumanille, was
secretly cherishing the same dream.
The master, looking over his pupil's shoulder one day, found that,
instead of working at his prescribed task, he was busily engaged in
translating the Penitential Psalms into Provençal. Instead of punishing
him, the master gratefully hailed a kindred spirit, and presently
confided Provençal verses of his own making. From that moment, though
there was a dozen years' difference between their ages, Mistral and
Roumanille began a friendship which was to last till Roumanille's death,
a friendship of half a century.
Soon their dream attracted other recruits, and presently seven friends,
whose names are all famous now, and most of whom have statues in Arles
or in Avignon--Roumanille, Mistral, Aubanel, Mathieu, Giéra, Brunet, and
Tavan--after the manner of Ronsard's "Pléiade," and Rossetti's
"P.R.B."--formed themselves into a brotherhood to carry on the great
work of regeneration.
They needed a name to call themselves by. They had all met together to
talk things over in the old castle of Font-Ségugne, or, as Mistral more
picturesquely puts it: "It was written in heaven that one blossoming
Sunday, the twenty-first of May, 1854, in the full springtide of life
and of the year, seven poets should come to meet together in the castle
of Font-Ségugne." Several suggestions were made for a name for this
brotherhood, but presently Mistral announced that in an old folk-story
he had collected at his birthplace, Maillane, he believed that he had
found the word they were in search of. In this folk-story the boy Christ
is represented as discoursing in the temple with "the seven félibres of
the Law."
"Why, that is us!" exclaimed the enthusiastic young men as Mistral
finished, and there on the spot "félibre" was adopted as the password of
their order, Mistral coining the word "félibrige" to represent the work
they aimed to do, and also their association. The name stuck, and has
now for many years been the banner-word for the vigorous school of
Provençal literature and the allied arts of painting and sculpture which
has responded with such eager vitality to Mistral's rallying cry.
But, excellent as are the other poets which the school has produced--and
one need only glance through a recent _Anthologie du Félibrige_ to
realize what a wealth of true poetry the word "félibrige" now stands
for--there can be no question that its greatest asset still remains
Mistral's own work, as it was his first great poem, _Mirèio_, which
first drew the eyes of literary Paris, more than inclined to be
contemptuous, to the Provençal renaissance.
Adolphe Dumas had been sent to Provence in the year 1856 by the Minister
of Public Instruction to collect the folk-songs of the people, and
calling on Mistral (then twenty-six), living quietly with his widowed
mother at Maillane, he had found him at work on _Mirèio_. Mistral read
some passages to him, with the result that the generous Dumas returned
to Paris excitedly to proclaim the advent of a new poet. Presently,
Mistral accepted his invitation to visit Paris, was introduced to the
great Lamartine--who has left some charming pages descriptive of his
visit,--read some of _Mirèio_ to him, and was hailed by him as "the
Homer of Provence."
The press, however, had its little fling at the new-comer. "The Mistral
it appears," said one pitiful punster, "has been incarnated in a poem.
We shall soon see whether it is anything else but wind." Such has been
the invariable welcome of great men in a small world.
But Mistral had no taste for Paris, either as a lion or a butt, and,
after a few days' stay, we find him once more quietly at home at
Maillane. Yet he had brought back with him one precious trophy--the
praise of Lamartine; and when, in the course of a year or two (1859),
_Mirèio_ came to be published at Avignon, it bore, as it still bears,
this heart-felt dedication to Lamartine:
"To thee I dedicate _Mirèio_; it is my heart and my soul; it is the
flower of my years; it is a bunch of grapes from Crau with all its
leaves--a rustic's offering."
With the publication of _Mirèio_ Mistral instantly "arrived," instantly
found himself on that throne which, as year has followed year, has
become more securely his own. Since then he has written much noble
poetry, all embodying and vitalizing the legendary lore of his native
land, a land richer in momentous history, perhaps, than any other
section of Europe. But in addition to his poetry he has, single-handed,
carried through the tremendous scholarly task of compiling a dictionary
of the Provençal language--a _Thesaurus of the Félibrige_, for which
work the Institute awarded him a prize of ten thousand francs.
In 1904, he was awarded the Nobel prize of 100,000 francs, but such is
his devotion to his fellow-countrymen that he did not keep that prize
for himself, but used it to found the Musée Arlésien at Arles, a museum
designed as a treasure house of anything and everything pertaining to
the history and life of Provence--antiquities, furniture, costumes,
paintings, and so forth.
It was in Arles in 1909, the fiftieth birthday of _Mirèio_, that
Mistral, then seventy-nine years old, may be said to have reached the
summit of his romantic fame. A great festival was held in his honour, in
which the most distinguished men of France took part. A dramatized
version of his _Mirèio_ was played in the old Roman amphitheatre, and a
striking statue of him was unveiled in the antique public square, the
Place du Forum, with the shade of Constantine looking on, one might
feel, from his mouldering palace hard by.
In Arles Mistral is a well-known, beloved figure, for it is his custom,
every Saturday, to come there from Maillane, to cast his eye over the
progress of his museum, the pet scheme of his old age. One wonders how
it must seem to pass that figure of himself, pedestaled high in the old
square. To few men is it given to pass by their own statues in the
street. Sang a very different poet--
They grind us to the dust with poverty,
And build us statues when we come to die.
But poor Villon had the misfortune to be a poet of the "langue d'oil,"
and the Montfaucon gibbet was the only monument of which he stood in
daily expectation. Could the lines of two poets offer a greater
contrast? Blessed indeed is he who serves the rural gods, Pan and Old
Sylvanus and the sister nymphs--as Virgil sang; and Virgilian indeed has
been the golden calm, and sunlit fortunes, as Virgilian, rather than
Homeric, is the gracious art, of the poet whom his first Parisian
admirer, Adolphe Dumas, called "the Homer of Provence"--as Virgilian,
too, seemed the landscape through which at length, one April afternoon,
we found ourselves on pilgrimage to the home of him whose name had been
on the lips of every innkeeper, shopkeeper, and peasant, all the way
from Marseilles to Tarascon.
Yes! the same golden peace that lies like a charm across every page
of his greatest poem lay across that sun-steeped, fertile plain,
with its walls of cypress trees, its lines of poplars, its delicate,
tapestry-like designs of almond trees in blossom, on a sombre background
of formal olive orchards, its green meadows, lit up with singing
water-courses, or gleaming irrigation canals, starred here and there
with the awakening kingcup, or sweet with the returning violet--here
and there a farmhouse ("mas," as they call them in Provence) snugly
sheltered from the mistral by their screens of foliage--and far aloft in
the distance, floating like a silver dream, the snow-white shoulder of
Mont Ventoux--the Fuji Yama of Provence.
At last the old, time-worn village came in sight--it lies about ten
miles north-east of Tartarin's Tarascon--and we entered it, as was
proper, with the "Master's" words on our lips: "Maillane is beautiful,
well-pleasing is Maillane; and it grows more and more beautiful every
day. Maillane is the honour of the countryside, and takes its name from
the month of May.
"Who would be in Paris or in Rome? Poor conscripts! There is nothing to
charm one there; but Maillane has its equal nowhere--and one would
rather eat an apple in Maillane than a partridge in Paris."
It was Sunday afternoon, and the streets were full of young people in
their Sunday finery, the girls wearing the pretty Arlésien caps. At
first sight of us, with our knapsacks, they were prepared to be amused,
and saucy lads called out things in mock English; but when it was
understood that we were seeking the house of the "Master" we inspired
immediate respect, and a dozen eager volunteers put themselves at our
service and accompanied us in a body to where, at the eastern edge of
the village, there stands an unpretentious square stone house of no
great antiquity, surrounded by a garden and half hidden with trees.
We stood silently looking at the house for a few minutes, trying to
realize that there a great poet had gone on living and working, in
single-minded devotion to his art and his people, for full fifty
years--there in that green, out-of-the-way corner of the world. The
idea of a life so rooted in contentment, so continuously happy in the
lifelong prosecution of a task set to itself in boyhood, and so
independent of change, is one not readily grasped by the hurrying
American mind.
Then we pushed open the iron gate and passed into the garden. A paved
walk led up to the front door, but that had an unused look, and, gaining
no response there, we walked through a shrubbery around the side of the
house, and as we turned the corner came on what was evidently the real
entrance, facing a sunny slope of garden where hyacinths and violets
told of the coming of spring. Here we were greeted by some half a dozen
friendly dogs, whose demonstrations brought to the door a neat little,
keen-eyed peasant woman, with an expression in her face that suggested
that she was the real watch dog, on behalf of her master, standing
between him and an intrusive world. As a matter of fact, as we afterward
learned, that is one of her many self-imposed offices, for, having been
in the Mistral household for many years, she has long since been as much
a family friend as a servant, and generally looks after the Master and
Mme. Mistral as if they were her children, nursing and "bossing" them by
turns. "Elise"--I think her name is--is a "character" almost as well
known in Provence as the Master himself.
So she looked sharply at us, while I produced a letter to M. Mistral
which had been given me by a humble associate of the "félibres," a
delightful _chansonnier_ we had met at Les Baux. With this she went
indoors, presently to return with a face of still cautious welcome, and
invited us in to a little square hall hung with photographs of various
distinguished friends of the poet and two bronze medallions of himself,
one representing him with his favourite dog.
Then a door to the right opened, revealing a typical scholar's study,
lined with books from ceiling to floor, books and papers on tables and
chairs, and framed photographs again on the free wall space. The spring
sunshine poured in through long windows, and in this characteristic
setting stood a tall old man, astonishingly erect, his distinguished
head, with its sparse white locks, its keen eyes, and strong yet
delicate aquiline features, pointed white beard and mustache,
suggesting pictures of some military grand seigneur of old time. His
carriage had the same blending of soldier and nobleman, and the stately
kindliness with which he bade us welcome belonged, alas! to another day.
At his side stood a tall, handsome lady, with remarkable, dark, kind
eyes, evidently many years his junior. This was Mme. Mistral, in her day
one of those "queens of beauty" whom the "félibres" elect every seven
years at their floral fêtes. Mme. Mistral was no less gracious to us
than her husband, and joined in the talk that followed with much
animation and charm.
We had a little feared that M. Mistral, as he declines to write in
anything but Provençal, might carry his artistic creed into his
conversation too. To our relief, however, he spoke in the most polished
French--for you may know French very well, but be quite unable to
understand Provençal, either printed or spoken. This had sometimes made
our journeying difficult, as we inquired our way of peasants along the
road.
It was natural to talk first to Mistral of literature. We inquired
whether he read much English. He shook his head, smiling. No! outside of
one or two of the great classics, Shakespeare and Milton, for example,
he had read little. Yes! he had read one American author--Fenimore
Cooper. _Le Feu-Follet_ had been a favourite book of his boyhood. This
we identified as _The Fire-Fly_.
He seemed to wish to talk about America rather than literature, and
seemed immensely interested in the fact that we were Americans, and he
raised his eyes, with an expression of French wonderment, at the fact
of our walking our way through the country--as also at the length of
the journey from America. Evidently it seemed to him a tremendous
undertaking.
"You Americans," he said, "are a wonderful people. You think nothing of
going around the world."
We were surprised to find that he took the keenest interest in American
politics.
"It must be a terribly difficult country to govern," he said. And then
he asked us eagerly for news of our "extraordinary President." We
suggested Mr. Wilson.
"Oh, no! no!" he explained. "The extraordinary man who was President
before him."
"Colonel Roosevelt?"
Yes, that was the man--a most remarkable man that! So Colonel Roosevelt
may be interested to hear that the poet-king of Provence is an
enthusiastic Bull Mooser.
Of course, we talked too of the "félibrige," and it was beautiful to see
how M. Mistral's face softened at the mention of his friend Joseph
Roumanille, and with what generosity he attributed the origin of the
great movement to his dead friend.
"But you must by all means call on Mme. Roumanille," said he, "when you
go to Avignon, and say that I sent you"--for Roumanille's widow still
lives, one of the most honoured muses of the "félibrige."
When it was time for us to go on our way, nothing would satisfy M. and
Mme. Mistral but that we drink a glass of a cordial which is made by
"Elise" from Mistral's own recipe; and as we raised the tiny glasses of
the innocent liqueur in our hands, Mistral drank "A l'Amérique!"
Then, taking a great slouch hat from a rack in the hall, and looking as
though it was his statue from Aries accompanying us, the stately old man
led us out into the road, and pointed us the way to Avignon.
On the 30th of this coming September that great old man--the memory of
whose noble presence and beautiful courtesy will remain with us
forever--will be eighty-three.
February, 1913.