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[Illustration: FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL]
Columbia University
_STUDIES IN ROMANCE PHILOLOGY AND LITERATURE_
FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
POET AND LEADER IN PROVENCE
BY
CHARLES ALFRED DOWNER
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE COLLEGE
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
NEW YORK
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, AGENTS
66 FIFTH AVENUE
1901
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
PREFACE
This study of the poetry and life-work of the leader of the modern
Provençal renaissance was submitted in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Columbia
University. My interest in Mistral was first awakened by an article from
the pen of the great Romance philologist, Gaston Paris, which appeared
in the _Revue de Paris_ in October, 1894. The idea of writing the book
came to me during a visit to Provence in 1897. Two years later I visited
the south of France again, and had the pleasure of seeing Mistral in his
own home. It is my pleasant duty to express here once again my gratitude
for his kindly hospitality and for his suggestions in regard to works
upon the history of the Félibrige. Not often does he who studies the
works of a poet in a foreign tongue enjoy as I did the privilege of
hearing the verse from the poet's own lips. It was an hour not to be
forgotten, and the beauty of the language has been for me since then as
real as that of music finely rendered, and the force of the poet's
personality was impressed upon me as it scarcely could have been even
from a most sympathetic and searching perusal of his works. His great
influence in southern France and his great personal popularity are not
difficult to understand when one has seen the man.
As the striking fact in the works of this Frenchman is that they are not
written in French, but in Provençal, a considerable portion of the
present essay is devoted to the language itself. But it did not appear
fitting that too much space should be devoted to the purely linguistic
side of the subject. There is a field here for a great deal of special
study, and the results of such investigations will be embodied in
special works by those who make philological studies their special
province. In the first division of the present work, however, along with
the life of the poet and the history of the Félibrige, a description of
the language is given, which is an account at least of its distinctive
features. A short chapter will be found devoted to the subject of the
versification of the poets who write in the new speech. This subject is
not treated in Koschwitz's admirable grammar of the language.
The second division is devoted to the poems. The epics of Mistral, if we
may venture to use the term, are, with the exception of Lamartine's
_Jocelyn_, the most remarkable long narrative poems that have been
produced in France in modern times. At least one of them would appear to
be a work of the highest rank and destined to live. Among the short
poems that constitute the volume called _Lis Isclo d'Or_ are a number of
masterpieces.
This book aims to present all the essential facts in the history of this
astonishing revival of a language, and to bring out the chief aspects of
Mistral's life-work. In our conclusions we have not yielded to the
temptation to prophesy. The conflicting tendencies of cosmopolitanism
and nationalism abroad in the world to-day give rise to fascinating
speculations as to the future. In the Felibrean movement we have a very
interesting problem of this kind, and no one can terminate a study of
the subject without asking himself the question, "What is going to come
out of it all?" No one can tell, and so we have not ventured beyond the
attempt to present the case as it actually exists.
Let me here also offer an expression of gratitude to Professor Adolphe
Cohn and to Professor Henry A. Todd of Columbia University for their
advice and guidance during the past six years. Their kindness and the
inspiration of their example must be reckoned among those things that
cannot be repaid.
NEW YORK, March, 1901.
CONTENTS
PART FIRST
THE REVIVAL OF THE PROVEÇAL LANGUAGE
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Introduction. Life of Mistral 3
II. The Félibrige 24
III. The Modern Provençal, or, more accurately,
The Language of the Félibres 43
IV. The Versification of the Félibres 75
V. Mistral's Dictionary of the Provençal Language.
(Lou Tresor dóu Félibrige) 92
PART SECOND
THE POETICAL WORKS OF MISTRAL
I. The Four Longer Poems 99
1. Mirèio 99
2. Calendau 127
3. Nerto 151
4. Lou Pouèmo dóu Rose 159
II. Lis Isclo d'Or 181
III. The Tragedy, La Rèino Jano 212
PART THIRD
CONCLUSIONS 237
APPENDIX. Translation of the Psalm of Penitence 253
BIBLIOGRAPHY 259
INDEX 265
PART FIRST
THE REVIVAL OF THE PROVENÇAL LANGUAGE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The present century has witnessed a remarkable literary phenomenon in
the south of France, a remarkable rebirth of local patriotism. A
language has been born again, so to speak, and once more, after a sleep
of many hundred years, the sunny land that was the cradle of modern
literature, offers us a new efflorescence of poetry, embodied in the
musical tongue that never has ceased to be spoken on the soil where the
Troubadours sang of love. Those who began this movement knew not whither
they were tending. From small beginnings, out of a kindly desire to give
the humbler folk a simple, homely literature in the language of their
firesides, there grew a higher ambition. The Provençal language put
forth claims to exist coequally with the French tongue on French soil.
Memories of the former glories of the southern regions of France began
to stir within the hearts of the modern poets and leaders. They began to
chafe under the strong political and intellectual centralization that
prevails in France, and to seek to bring about a change. The movement
has passed through numerous phases, has been frequently misinterpreted
and misunderstood, and may now, after it has attained to tangible
results, be defined as an aim, on the part of its leaders, to make the
south intellectually independent of Paris. It is an attempt to restore
among the people of the Rhone region a love of their ancient customs,
language, and traditions, an effort to raise a sort of dam against the
flood of modern tendencies that threaten to overwhelm local life. These
men seek to avoid that dead level of uniformity to which the national
life of France appears to them in danger of sinking. In the earlier
days, the leaders of this movement were often accused at Paris of a
spirit of political separatism; they were actually mistrusted as
secessionists, and certain it is that among them have been several
champions of the idea of decentralization. To-day there are found in
their ranks a few who advocate the federal idea in the political
organization of France. However, there seems never to have been a time
when the movement promised seriously to bring about practical political
changes; and whatever political significance it may have to-day goes no
farther than what may be contained in germ in the effort at an intense
local life.
The land of the Troubadours is now the land of the Félibres; these
modern singers do not forget, nor will they allow the people of the
south to forget, that the union of France with Provence was that of an
equal with an equal, not of a principal with a subordinate. Patriots
they are, however, ardent lovers of France, and proofs of their strong
affection for their country are not wanting. To-day, amid all their
activity and demonstrations in behalf of what they often call "_la
petite patrie_," no enemies or doubters are found to question their
loyalty to the greater fatherland.
The movement began in the revival of the Provençal language, and was at
first a very modest attempt to make it serve merely better purposes than
it had done after the eclipse that followed the Albigensian war. For a
long time the linguistic and literary aspect of all this activity was
the only one that attracted any attention in the rest of France or in
Provence itself. Not that the Provençal language had ever quite died out
even as a written language. Since the days of the Troubadours there had
been a continuous succession of writers in the various dialects of
southern France, but very few of them were men of power and talent.
Among the immediate predecessors of the Félibres must be mentioned
Saboly, whose _Noëls_, or Christmas songs, are to-day known all over the
region, and Jasmin, who, however, wrote in a different dialect. Jasmin's
fame extended far beyond the limited audience for which he wrote; his
work came to the attention of the cultured through the enthusiastic
praise of Sainte-Beuve, and he is to-day very widely known. The
English-speaking world became acquainted with him chiefly through the
translations of Longfellow. Jasmin, however, looked upon himself as the
last of a line, and when, in his later years, he heard of the growing
fame of the new poets of the Rhone country, it is said he looked upon
them with disfavor, if not jealousy. Strange to say, he was, in the
early days, unknown to those whose works, like his, have now attained
well-nigh world-wide celebrity.
The man who must justly be looked upon as the father of the present
movement was Joseph Roumanille. He was born in 1818, in the little town
of Saint-Rémy, a quaint old place, proud of some remarkable Roman
remains, situated to the south of Avignon. Roumanille was far from
foreseeing the consequences of the impulse he had given in arousing
interest in the old dialect, and, until he beheld the astonishing
successes of Mistral, strongly disapproved the ambitions of a number of
his fellow-poets to seek an audience for their productions outside of
the immediate region. He had no more ambitious aim than to raise the
patois of Saint-Rémy out of the veritable mire into which it had sunk;
it pained him to see that the speech of his fireside was never used in
writing except for trifles and obscenities. Of him is told the touching
story that one day, while reciting in his home before a company of
friends some poems in French that he had written, he observed tears in
his mother's eyes. She could not understand the poetry his friends so
much admired. Roumanille, much moved, resolved to write no verses that
his mother could not enjoy, and henceforth devoted himself ardently to
the task of purifying and perfecting the dialect of Saint-Rémy. It has
been said, no less truthfully than poetically, that from a mother's tear
was born the new Provençal poetry, destined to so splendid a career.
We of the English-speaking race are apt to wonder at this love of a
local dialect. This vigorous attempt to create a first-rate literature,
alongside and independent of the national literature, seems strange or
unnatural. We are accustomed to one language, spoken over immense areas,
and we rejoice to see it grow and spread, more and more perfectly
unified. With all their local color, in spite of their expression of
provincial or colonial life, the writings of a Kipling are read and
enjoyed wherever the English language has penetrated. In Italy we find
patriots and writers working with utmost energy to bring into being a
really national language. Nearly all the governments of Europe seek to
impose the language of the capital upon the schools. Unification of
language seems a most desirable thing, and, superficially considered,
the tendency would appear to be in that direction. But the truth is that
there exists all over Europe a war of tongues. The Welsh, the Basques,
the Norwegians, the Bohemians, the Finns, the Hungarians, are of one
mind with Daudet and Mistral, who both express the sentiment, "He who
holds to his language, holds the key of his prison."
So Roumanille loved and cherished the melodious speech of the Rhone
valley. He hoped to see the _langue d'oc_ saved from destruction, he
strove against the invasion of the northern speech that threatened to
overwhelm it. He wrote sweet verses and preached the gospel of the
home-speech. One day he discovered a boy whom he calls "l'enfant
sublime," and the pupil soon carried his dreams to a realization far
beyond his fondest hopes. Not Roumanille, but Frédéric Mistral has made
the new Provençal literature what it is. In him were combined all the
qualities, all the powers requisite for the task, and the task grew with
time. It became more than a question of language. Mistral soon came to
seek not only the creation of an independent literature, he aimed at
nothing less than a complete revolution, or rather a complete rebirth,
of the mental life of southern France. Provence was to save her
individuality entire. Geographically at the central point of the lands
inhabited by the so-called Latin races, she was to regain her ancient
prominence, and cause the eyes of her sisters to turn her way once more
with admiration and affection. The patois of Saint-Rémy has been
developed and expanded into a beautiful literary language. The inertia
of the Provençals themselves has been overcome. There is undoubtedly a
new intellectual life in the Rhone valley, and the fame of the Félibres
and their great work has gone abroad into distant lands.
The purpose, then, of the present dissertation, will be to give an
account of the language of the Félibres, and to examine critically the
literary work of their acknowledged chief and guiding spirit, Frédéric
Mistral.
The story of his life he himself has told most admirably in the preface
to the first edition of _Lis Isclo d'Or_, published at Avignon in 1874.
He was born in 1830, on the 8th day of September, at Maillane. Maillane
is a village, near Saint-Rémy, situated in the centre of a broad plain
that lies at the foot of the Alpilles, the westernmost rocky heights of
the Alps. Here the poet is still living, and here he has passed his life
almost uninterruptedly. His father's home was a little way out of the
village, and the boy was brought up at the _mas_,[1] amid farm-hands and
shepherds. His father had married a second time at the age of
fifty-five, and our poet was the only child of this second marriage.
The story of the first meeting of his parents is thus told by the
poet:--
"One year, on St. John's day, Maître François Mistral was in the midst
of his wheat, which a company of harvesters were reaping. A throng of
young girls, gleaning, followed the reapers and raked up the ears that
fell. Maître François (Mèste Francés in Provençal), my father, noticed a
beautiful girl that remained behind as if she were ashamed to glean like
the others. He drew near and said to her:--
"'My child, whose daughter are you? What is your name?'
"The young girl replied, 'I am the daughter of Etienne Poulinet, Maire
of Maillane. My name is Délaïde.'
"'What! the daughter of the Maire of Maillane gleaning!'
"'Maître,' she replied, 'our family is large, six girls and two boys,
and although our father is pretty well to do, as you know, when we ask
him for money to dress with, he answers, "Girls, if you want finery,
earn it!" And that is why I came to glean.'
"Six months after this meeting, which reminds one of the ancient scene
of Ruth and Boaz, Maître François asked Maître Poulinet for the hand of
Délaïde, and I was born of that marriage."
His father's lands were extensive, and a great number of men were
required to work them. The poem, _Mirèio_, is filled with pictures of
the sort of life led in the country of Maillane. Of his father he says
that he towered above them all, in stature, in wisdom, and in nobleness
of bearing. He was a handsome old man, dignified in language, firm in
command, kind to the poor about him, austere with himself alone. The
same may be said of the poet to-day. He is a strikingly handsome man,
vigorous and active, exceedingly gracious and simple in manner. His
utter lack of affectation is the more remarkable, in view of the fact
that he has been for years an object of adulation, and lives in constant
and close contact with a population of peasants.
His schooling began at the age of nine, but the boy played truant so
frequently that he was sent to boarding-school in Avignon. Here he had a
sad time of it, and seems especially to have felt the difference of
language. Teachers and pupils alike made fun of his patois, for which he
had a strong attachment, because of the charm of the songs his mother
sung to him. Later he studied well, however, and became filled with a
love of Virgil and Homer. In them he found pictures of life that
recalled vividly the labors, the ways, and the ideas of the Maillanais.
At this time, too, he attempted a translation, in Provençal, of the
first eclogue of Virgil, and confided his efforts to a school-mate,
Anselme Mathieu, who became his life-long friend and one of the most
active among the Félibres.
It was at this school, in 1845, that he formed his friendship with
Roumanille, who had come there as a teacher. It is not too much to say
that the revival of the Provençal language grew out of this meeting.
Roumanille had already written his poems, _Li Margarideto_ (The
Daisies). "Scarcely had he shown me," says Mistral, "in their
spring-time freshness, these lovely field-flowers, when a thrill ran
through my being and I exclaimed, 'This is the dawn my soul awaited to
awaken to the light!'" Mistral had read some Provençal, but at that time
the dialect was employed merely in derision; the writers used the speech
itself as the chief comic element in their productions. The poems of
Jasmin were as yet unknown to him. Roumanille was the first in the Rhone
country to sing the poetry of the heart. Master and pupil became firm
friends and worked together for years to raise the home-speech to the
dignity of a literary language.
At seventeen Mistral returned home, and began a poem in four cantos,
that he has never published; though portions of it are among the poems
of _Lis Isclo d'Or_ and in the notes of _Mirèio_. This poem is called
_Li Meissoun_ (Harvest). His family, seeing his intellectual
superiority, sent him to Aix to study law. Here he again met Mathieu,
and they made up for the aridity of the Civil Code by devoting
themselves to poetry in Provençal.
In 1851 the young man returned to the _mas_, a _licencié en droit_, and
his father said to him: "Now, my dear son, I have done my duty; you know
more than ever I learned. Choose your career; I leave you free." And the
poet tells us he threw his lawyer's gown to the winds and gave himself
up to the contemplation of what he so loved,--the splendor of his native
Provence.
Through Roumanille he came to know Aubanel, Croustillat, and others.
They met at Avignon, full of youthful enthusiasm, and during this period
Mistral, encouraged by his friends, worked upon his greatest poem,
_Mirèio_. In 1854, on the 21st of May, the Félibrige was founded by the
seven poets,--Joseph Roumanille, Paul Giéra, Théodore Aubanel, Eugène
Garcin, Anselme Mathieu, Frédéric Mistral, Alphonse Tavan. In 1868,
Garcin published a violent attack upon the Félibres, accusing them, in
the strongest language, of seeking to bring about a political separation
of southern France from the rest of the country. This apostasy was a
cause of great grief to the others, and Garcin's name was stricken from
the official list of the founders of the Félibrige, and replaced by that
of Jean Brunet. Mistral, in the sixth canto of _Mirèio_, addresses in
eloquent verse his comrades in the Provençal Pléiade, and there we still
find the name of Garcin.
Tù' nfin, de quau un vènt de flamo
Ventoulo, emporto e fouito l'amo
Garcin, o fiéu ardènt dóu manescau d'Alen!
(And finally, thou whose soul is stirred and swept and whipped by a
wind of flame, Garcin, ardent son of the smith of Alleins.)
This attack upon the Félibrige was the first of the kind ever made. Many
years later, Garcin became reconciled to his former friends and in 1897
he was vice-president of the _Félibrige de Paris_.
The number seven and the task undertaken by these poets and literary
reformers remind us instantly of the Pléiade, whose work in the
sixteenth century in attempting to perfect the French language was of a
very similar character. It is certain, however, that the seven poets
who inaugurated their work at the Château of Font-Ségugne, had no
thought of imitating the Pléiade either in the choice of the number
seven or in the reformation they were about to undertake.
They began their propaganda by founding an annual publication called the
_Armana Prouvençau_, which has appeared regularly since 1855, and many
of their writings were first printed in this official magazine. Of the
seven, Aubanel alone besides Mistral has attained celebrity as a poet,
and these two with Roumanille have been usually associated in the minds
of all who have followed the movement with interest as its three
leaders.
Mistral completed _Mirèio_ in 1859. The poem was presented by Adolphe
Dumas and Jean Reboul to Lamartine, who devoted to it one of the
"Entretiens" of his _Cours familier de littérature_. This article of
Lamartine, and his personal efforts on behalf of Mistral, contributed
greatly to the success of the poem. Lamartine wrote among other things:
"A great epic poet is born! A true Homeric poet in our own time; a poet,
born like the men of Deucalion, from a stone on the Crau, a primitive
poet in our decadent age; a Greek poet at Avignon; a poet who has
created a language out of a dialect, as Petrarch created Italian; one
who, out of a vulgar _patois_, has made a language full of imagery and
harmony delighting the imagination and the ear.... We might say that,
during the night, an island of the Archipelago, a floating Delos, has
parted from its group of Greek or Ionian islands and come silently to
join the mainland of sweet-scented Provence, bringing along one of the
divine singers of the family of the Melesigenes."
Mistral went to Paris, where for a time he was the lion of the literary
world. The French Academy crowned his poem, and Gounod composed the
opera Mireille, which was performed for the first time in 1864, in
Paris.
The poet did not remain long in the capital. He doubtless realized that
he was not destined to join the galaxy of Parisian writers, and it is
certain that if he had remained there his life and his influence would
have been utterly different. He returned home and immediately set to
work upon a second epic; in another seven years he completed _Calendau_,
published in Avignon in 1866. The success of this poem was decidedly
less than that of _Mirèio_.
During these years he published many of the shorter poems that appeared
in one volume in 1875, under the title of _Lis Isclo d'Or_ (The Golden
Islands). Meanwhile the idea of the Félibrige made great progress. The
language of the Félibres had now a fixed orthography and definite
grammatical form. The appearance of a master-work had given a wonderful
impulse. The exuberance of the southern temperament responded quickly to
the call for a manifestation of patriotic enthusiasm. The Catalan poets
joined their brothers beyond the Pyrenees. The Floral games were
founded. The Félibrige passed westward beyond the Rhone and found
adherents in all south France. The centenary of Petrarch celebrated at
Avignon in 1874 tended to emphasize the importance and the glory of the
new literature.
The definite organization of the Félibrige into a great society with its
hierarchy of officers took place in 1876, with Mistral as _Capoulié_
(Chief or President). In this same year also the poet married Mdlle.
Marie Rivière of Dijon, and this lady, who was named first Queen of the
Félibrige by Albert de Quintana of Catalonia, the poet-laureate of the
year 1878 at the great Floral Games held in Montpellier, has become at
heart and in speech a Provençale.
A third poem, _Nerto_, appeared in 1884, and showed the poet in a new
light; his admirers now compared him to Ariosto. This same year he made
a second journey to Paris, and was again the lion of the hour. The
_Société de la Cigale_, which had been founded in 1876, as a Paris
branch of the Félibrige, and which later became the _Société des
Félibres de Paris_, organized banquets and festivities in his honor, and
celebrated the Floral Games at Sceaux to commemorate the four hundredth
anniversary of the day when Provence became united, of her own
free-will, with France. Mistral was received with distinction by
President Grévy and by the Count of Paris, and his numerous Parisian
friends vied in bidding him welcome to the capital. His new poem was
crowned by the French Academy, receiving the Prix Vitet, the
presentation address being delivered by Legouvé. Four years later, _Lou
Tresor dóu Felibrige_, a great dictionary of all the dialects of the
_langue d'oc_, was completed, and in 1890 appeared his only dramatic
work, _La Rèino Jano_ (Queen Joanna). In 1897 he produced his last long
poem, epic in form, _Lou Pouèmo dóu Rose_ (the Poem of the Rhone). At
present he is engaged upon his _Memoirs_.
Aside from his rare journeys to Paris, a visit to Switzerland, and
another to Italy, Mistral has rarely gone beyond the borders of his
beloved region. He is still living quietly in the little village of
Maillane, in a simple but beautiful home, surrounded with works of art
inspired by the Felibrean movement. He has survived many of his
distinguished friends. Roumanille, Mathieu, Aubanel, Daudet, and Paul
Arène have all passed away; a new generation is about him. But his
activity knows no rest. The Felibrean festivities continue, the numerous
publications in the Provençal tongue still have in him a constant
contributor. In 1899 the Museon Arlaten (the Museum of Aries) was
inaugurated, and is another proof of the constant energy and enthusiasm
of the poet. He is to-day the greatest man in the south of France,
universally beloved and revered.
His life after all has been less a literary life than one of direct and
unceasing personal action upon the population about him. The
resurrection of the language, the publication of poems, magazines, and
newspapers, are only part of a programme tending to raise the people of
the south to a conception of their individuality as a race. He has
striven untiringly to communicate to them his own glowing enthusiasm for
the past glories of Provence, to fire them with his dream of a great
rebirth of the Latin races, to lay the foundation of a great ideal Latin
union. Wonderful is his optimism. Some of the Félibres about him are
somewhat discouraged, many of them have never set their aspirations as
high as he has done, and some look upon his dreams as Utopian. Whatever
be the future of the movement he has founded, Mistral's life in its
simple oneness, and in its astonishing success, is indeed most
remarkable. Provence, the land that first gave the world a literature
after the decay of the classic tongues, has awakened again under his
magic touch to an active mental life. A second literature is in active
being on the soil of France, a second literary language is there a
reality. Whether permanent or evanescent, this glorification of poetry,
this ardent love of the beautiful and the ideal, is a noble and
inspiring spectacle amid the turmoil and strife of this age of material
progress.
[Footnote 1: The word _mas_, which is kin with the English _manse_ and
_mansion_, signifies the home in the country with numerous outbuildings
grouped closely about it.]