CHAPTER V

MISTRAL'S DICTIONARY OF THE PROVENÇAL LANGUAGE

AU MIEJOUR

Sant Jan, vèngue meissoun, abro si fiò de joio;

Amount sus l'aigo-vers lou pastre pensatiéu,

En l'ounour dóu païs, enausso uno mount-joio

E marco li pasquié mounte a passa l'estiéu.

Emai iéu, en laurant--e quichant moun anchoio,

Per lou noum de Prouvenço ai fa ço que poudiéu;

E, Diéu de moun pres-fa m'aguent douna la voio,

Dins la rego, à geinoui, vuei rènde gràci à Diéu.

En terro, fin qu'au sistre, a cava moun araire;

E lou brounze rouman e l'or dis emperaire

Treluson au soulèu dintre lou blad que sort....

O pople dóu Miejour, escouto moun arengo:

Se vos recounquista l'empèri de ta lengo,

Pèr t'arnesca de nòu, pesco en aquéu Tresor.

"Saint John, at harvest time, kindles his bonfires; high up on the

mountain slope the thoughtful shepherd places a pile of stones in honor

of the country, and marks the pastures where he has passed the summer.

"I, too, tilling and living frugally, have done what I could for the

fame of Provence; and God having permitted me to complete my task,

to-day, on my knees in the furrow, I offer thanks to Him.

"My plough has dug into the soil down to the rock; and the Roman bronze

and the gold of the emperors gleam in the sunlight among the growing

wheat.

"Oh, people of the South, heed my saying: If you wish to win back the

empire of your language, equip yourselves anew by drawing upon this

Treasury."

Such is the sonnet, dated October 7, 1878, which Mistral has placed at

the beginning of his vast dictionary of the dialects of southern France.

The title of the work is _Lou Tresor dóu Felibrige_ or _Dictionnaire

provençal-français_. It is published in two large quarto volumes,

offering a total of 2361 pages. This great work occupied the poet some

ten years, and is the most complete and most important work of its kind

that has been made. The statement that this work represents for the

Provençal dialect what Littré's monumental dictionary is for the

French, is not exaggerated. Nothing that Mistral has done entitles him

in a greater degree to the gratitude of students of Romance philology,

and the fact that the work has been done in so masterful a fashion by

one who is not first of all a philologist excites our wonder and

admiration. And let us not forget that it was above all else a labor of

love, such as probably never was undertaken elsewhere, unless the work

of Ivar Aasen in the Old Norse dialects be counted as such; and there is

something that appeals strongly to the imagination in the thought of

this poet's labor to render imperishable the language so dear to him.

Years were spent in journeying about among all classes of people,

questioning workmen and sailors, asking them the names they applied to

the objects they use, recording their proverbial expressions, noting

their peculiarities of pronunciation, listening to the songs of the

peasants; and then all was reduced to order and we have a work that is

really monumental.

The dictionary professes to contain all the words used in South France,

with their meaning in French, their proper and figurative acceptations,

augmentatives, diminutives, with examples and quotations. Along with

each word we have all its various forms as they appear in the different

dialects, its forms in the older dialects, the closely related forms in

the other Romance languages, and its etymology. A special feature of the

work in view of its destination is the placing of numerous synonyms

along with each word. The dictionary almost contains a grammar, for the

conjugation of regular and of irregular verbs in all the dialects is

given, and each word is treated in its grammatical relations. Technical

terms of all arts and trades; popular terms in natural history, with

their scientific equivalents; all the geographical names of the region

in all their forms; proper historical names; family names common in the

south; explanations as to customs, manners, institutions, traditions,

and beliefs; biographical, bibliographical, and historical facts of

importance; and a complete collection of proverbs, riddles, and popular

idioms--such are the contents of this prodigious work.

If any weakness is to be found, it is, of course, in the etymological

part. Even here we can but pay tribute to Mistral. If he can be accused,

now and then, of suggesting an etymology that is impossible or

unscientific, let it be gratefully conceded that his desire is to offer

the etymologist all possible help by placing at his disposal all the

material that can be found. The pains Mistral has taken to look up all

possibly related words in Greek, Arabic, Basque, and English, to say

nothing of the Old Provençal and Latin, would alone suffice to call

forth the deepest gratitude on the part of all students of the subject.

This dictionary makes order out of chaos, and although the language of

the Félibres is justly said to be an artificial literary language, we

have in this work along with the form adopted or created by the poet an

orderly presentation of all the speech-forms of the _langue d'oc_ as

they really exist in the mouths of the people.

PART SECOND

THE POETICAL WORKS OF MISTRAL

CHAPTER I

THE FOUR LONGER POEMS

I. MIRÈIO (MIREILLE)

The publication of this poem in 1859 is an event of capital importance

in the history of modern Provençal literature. Recognized immediately as

a master-work, it fired the ambitions of the Félibres, enlarged the

horizon of possibilities for the new speech, and earned for its author

the admiration of critics in and out of France. Original in language and

in conception, full of the charm of rustic life, containing a pathetic

tale of love, a sweet human interest, and glowing with pictures of the

strange and lovely landscapes of Provence, the poem charmed all readers,

and will doubtless always rank as a work that belongs to general

literature. Of no other work written in this dialect can the same be

asserted. Mistral has not had an equal success since, and in spite of

the merit of his other productions, his literary fame will certainly

always be based upon this poem. Whatever be the destiny of this revival,

the author of _Mirèio_ has probably already taken his place among the

immortals of literature.

He has incarnated in this poem all that is sweetest and best, all that

is most typical in the life of his region. The tale is told, in general,

with complete simplicity, sobriety, and conciseness. The poet's heart

and soul are in his work from beginning to end, and it seems more

genuinely inspired than any of the long poems he has written

subsequently.

In the first canto the author says,--

"Car cantan que pèr vautre, o pastre e gènt di mas."

For we sing for you alone, O shepherds and people of the farms,

and when he wrote this verse, he was doubtless sincere. Later, however,

he must have become conscious that a work of great artistic beauty was

growing under his hand, and that it would find a truly appreciative

public more probably among the cultivated classes than among the

peasants of Provence. Hence the French prose translation; and hence,

furthermore, a paradox in the position Mistral assumed. Since those who

really appreciate and admire his poetry are the cultivated classes who

know French, and since the peasants who use the dialect cannot feel the

artistic worth of his literary production, or even understand the

elevated diction he is forced to employ, should he not, after all, have

written in French? The idea of Roumanille was simpler and less ambitious

than that of Mistral; he aimed to give the humble classes about him a

literature within their reach, that should give them moral lessons, and

appeal to the best within them. Mistral, developing into a poet of

genius while striving to attain the same object, could not fail to

change the object, and this contradiction becomes apparent in _Mirèio_,

and constitutes a problem in any discussion of his literary work.

The story of _Mirèio_ may be told in a few words. She is a beautiful

young girl of fifteen, living at the _mas_ of her father, Ramoun. She

falls in love with a handsome, stalwart youth, Vincèn, son of a poor

basket-maker. But the difference in worldly wealth is too great, her

father and mother violently oppose their union, and so, one night, the

maiden, in despair, rushes away from home, across the great plain of

the Crau, across the Rhone, across the island of Camargue, to the church

of the three Maries. Vincèn had told her to seek their aid in any time

of trouble. Here she prays to the three saints to give Vincèn to her,

but the poor girl has been overcome by the terrible heat of the sun in

crossing the treeless plains and is found by her parents and friends

unconscious before the altar. Vincèn comes also and joins his

lamentations to theirs. The holy caskets are lowered from the chapel

above, but no prayers avail to save the maiden's life. She expires, with

words of hope upon her lips.

This simple tale is told in twelve cantos; it aims to be an epic, and in

its external form is such. It employs freely the _merveilleux chrètien_,

condemned by Boileau, and in one canto, _La Masco_ (The Witch), the

poet's desire to embody the superstitions of his ignorant landsmen has

led him entirely astray. The opening stanza begins in true epic

fashion:--

"Cante uno chato de Prouvènço

Dins lis amour de sa jouvènço."

I sing a maiden of Provence

In her girlhood's love.

The invocation is addressed to Christ:--

Thou, Lord God of my native land,

Who wast born among the shepherd-folk,

Fire my words and give me breath.

The epic character of the poem is sustained further than in its mere

outward form; the manner of telling is truly epic. The art of the poet

is throughout singularly objective, his narrative is a narrative of

actions, his personages speak and move before us, without intervention

on the part of the author to analyze their thoughts and motives. He is

absent from his work even in the numerous descriptions. Everything is

presented from the outside.

From the outset the poem enjoyed great success, and the enthusiastic

praise of Lamartine contributed greatly thereto. In gratitude for this,

Mistral dedicated the work to Lamartine in one of his most happy

inspirations, and these dedicatory lines appear in _Lis Isclo d'Or_ and

in all the subsequent editions of _Mirèio_. Mistral had professed great

admiration for the author of _Jocelyn_ even before 1859, but as poets

they stand in marked contrast. We may partly define Mistral's art in

stating that it is utterly unlike that of Lamartine. Mistral's

inspiration is not that of a Romantic; his art sense is derived

directly from the study of the Greek and Roman classics. In all that

Mistral has written there is very little that springs from his personal

sorrows. The great body of his poetry is epic in character, and the best

of his work in the lyric form gives expression not to merely personal

emotion, but to the feeling of the race to which he belongs.

The action of the poem begins one day that Vincèn and his father Mèste

Ambroi, the basket-makers, were wandering along the road in search of

work. Their conversation makes them known, and depicts for us the old

_Mas des Micocoules_, the home of the prosperous father of Mirèio. We

learn of his wealth in lands, in olives, in almonds, and in bees. We

watch the farm-hands coming home at evening. When the basket-makers

reach the gate, they find the daughter of the house, who, having just

fed her silkworms, is now twisting a skein. The man and the youth ask to

sleep for the night upon a haystack, and stop in friendly talk with

Mirèio. The poet describes Vincèn, a dark, stalwart youth of sixteen,

and tells of his skill at his trade. Mèste Ramoun invites them in to

supper. Mirèio runs to serve them. In exquisite verse the poet depicts

her grace and beauty.

When all have eaten, at the request of the farm-hands, to which Mirèio

adds hers, Mèste Ambroi sings a stirring ballad about the naval

victories of Suffren, and the gallant conduct of the Provençal sailors

who whipped the British tars.

"And the old basket-maker finished his naval song in time, for his voice

was about to break in tears, but too soon, surely, for the farm-hands,

for, without moving, with their heads intent and lips parted, _long

after the song had ceased, they were listening still_."

And then the men go about their affairs and leave Vincèn and Mirèio

alone together. Their talk is full of charm. Vincèn is eloquent, like a

true southerner, and tells his experiences with flashing eye and

animated gestures. Here we learn of the belief in the three Maries, who

have their church in the Camargue. Here Vincèn narrates a foot-race in

which he took part at Nimes, and Mirèio listens in rapt attention.

"It seems to me," said she to her mother, "that for a basket-maker's

child he talks wonderfully. O mother, it is a pleasure to sleep in

winter, but now the night is too bright to sleep, but let us listen

awhile yet. I could pass my evenings and my life listening to him."

The second canto opens with the exquisite stanza beginning,--

"Cantas, cantas, magnanarello

Que la culido es cantarello!"

and the poet evidently fell in love with its music, for he repeats it,

with slight variations, several times during the canto. This second

canto is a delight from beginning to end; Mistral is here in his

element; he is at his very best. The girls sing merrily in the lovely

sunshine as they gather the silkworms, Mirèio among them. Vincèn passes

along, and the two engage in conversation. Mistral cannot be praised too

highly for the sweetness, the naturalness, the animation of this scene.

Mirèio learns of Vincèn's lonely winter evenings, of his sister, who is

like Mirèio but not so fair, and they forget to work. But they make good

the time lost, only now and then their fingers meet as they put the

silkworms into the bag. And then they find a nest of little birds, and

the saying goes that when two find a nest at the top of a tree a year

cannot pass but that Holy Church unite them. So says Mirèio; but Vincèn

adds that this is only true if the young escape before they are put into

a cage. "Jesu moun Diéu! take care," cries the young girl, "catch them

carefully, for this concerns us." So Vincèn gets the young birds, and

Mirèio puts them carefully into her bodice; but they dig and scratch,

and must be transferred to Vincèn's cap; and then the branch breaks, and

the two fall together in close embrace upon the soft grass. The poet

breaks into song:--

"Fresh breezes, that stir the canopy of the woods, let your merry murmur

soften into silence over the young couple! Wandering zephyrs, breathe

softly, give time to dream, give them time at least to dream of

happiness! Thou that ripplest o'er thy bed, go slowly, slowly, little

brook! Make not so much sound among the stones, make not so much sound,

for the two souls have gone off, in the same beam of fire, like a

swarming hive--let them hover in the starry air!"

But Mirèio quickly releases herself; the young man is full of anxiety

lest she be hurt, and curses the devilish tree "planted a Friday!" But

she, with a trembling she cannot control, tells of an inner torment

that takes away hearing and sight, and keeps her heart beating. Vincèn

wonders if it may not be fear of a scolding from her mother, or a

sunstroke. Then Mirèio, in a sudden outburst, like a Wagnerian heroine,

confesses her love to the astonished boy, who remains dazed, and

believes for a time that she is cruelly trifling with him. She reassures

him, passionately. "Do not speak so," cries the boy, "from me to you

there is a labyrinth; you are the queen of the Mas, all bow before you;

I, peasant of Valabrègue, am nothing, Mirèio, but a worker in the

fields!" "Ah, what is it to me whether my beloved be a baron or a

basket-weaver, provided he is pleasing to me. Why, O Vincèn, in your

rags do you appear to me so handsome?"

And then the young man is as inspired, and in impassioned, well-nigh

extravagant language tells of his love for Mirèio. He is like a fig tree

he once saw that grew thin and miserable out of a rock near Vaucluse,

and once a year the water comes and the tree quenches its thirst, and

renews its life for a year. And the youth is the fig tree and Mirèio the

fountain. "And would to Heaven, would to Heaven, that I, poor boy, that

I might once a year, as now, upon my knees, sun myself in the beams of

thy countenance, and graze thy fingers with a trembling kiss." And then

her mother calls. Mirèio runs to the house, while he stands motionless

as in a dream.

No résumé or even translation can give the beauty of this canto, its

brightness, its music, its vivacity, the perfect harmony between words

and sense, the graceful succession of the rhymes and the cadence of the

stanzas. Elsewhere in the chapter on versification a reference is made

to the mechanical difficulties of translation, but there are

difficulties of a deeper order. The Félibres put forth great claims for

the richness of their vocabulary, and they undoubtedly exaggerate. Yet,

how shall we render into English or French the word _embessouna_ when

describing the fall of Mirèio and Vincèn from the tree. Mistral

writes:--

"Toumbon, embessouna, sus lou souple margai."

_Bessoun_ (in French, _besson_) means a twin, and the participle

expresses the idea, _clasped together like twins_. (Mistral translates,

"serrés comme deux jumeaux.") An expression of this sort, of course,

adds little to the prose language; but this power, untrammelled by

academic traditions, of creating a word for the moment, is essential to

the freshness of poetic style.

What is to be praised above all in these two exquisite cantos is the

pervading naturalness. The similes and metaphors, however bold and

original, are always drawn from the life of the speakers. Mèste Ambroi,

declining at first to sing, says "_Li mirau soun creba!_" (The mirrors

are broken), referring to the membranes of the locust that make its

song. "Like a scythe under the hammer," "Their heads leaning together

like two marsh-flowers in bloom, blowing in the merry wind," "His words

flowed abundantly like a sudden shower on an aftermath in May," "When

your eyes beam upon me, it seems to me I drink a draught of perfumed

wine," "My sister is burned like a branch of the date tree," "You are

like the asphodel, and the tanned hand of Summer dares not caress your

white brow," "Slender as a dragon-fly," are comparisons taken at random.

Of Mirèio the poet says, "The merry sun hath hatched her out," "Her

glance is like dew, her rounded bosom is a double peach not yet ripe."

The background of the action is obtained by the simplest description, a

cart casting the shadow of its great wheels, a bell now and then

sounding afar off across the marshes, references to the owl adding its

plaint to the song of the nightingale, to the crickets who stop to

listen now and then, and the recurring verses about the "magnanarello"

reminds us now and then, like a lovely leitmotiv, of the group of

singing girls about the amorous pair.

The next canto is called _La Descoucounado_ (The Opening of the

Cocoons), and it must be confessed that there is a slight falling off in

interest. All that describes the life of the country-folk is full of

sustained charm, but Mistral has not escaped the dangers that beset the

modern poet who aims at the epic style. Here begins the recounting of

the numerous superstitions of the ignorant peasants, and the wonders of

Provence are interpolated at every turn. The maidens, while engaged in

stripping the cocoons, make known a long list of popular beliefs, and

then branch off into a conversation about love. They are surprisingly

well acquainted with the writings of Jean de Nostradamus, to whom the

Félibres are indebted for a lot of erroneous ideas concerning the

Troubadours and the Courts of Love. This literary conversation is not

convincing, and we are pleased when Noro sings the pretty song of

Magali, which, composed to be sung to an air well known in Provence, has

become very popular. The idea is not new; the young girl sings of

successive forms she will assume, to avoid the attentions of her suitor,

and he, ingeniously, finds the transformation necessary to overcome her.

For instance, when she becomes a rose, he changes into a butterfly to

kiss her. At last the maiden becomes convinced of the love of her

pursuer, and is won.

The fourth canto, _Li Demandaire_ (The Suitors), recalls the Homeric

style, and is among the finest of the poem. Alàri, the shepherd, Veran,

the keeper of horses, and Ourrias, who has herds of bulls in the

Camargue, present themselves successively for the hand of Mirèio. The

"transhumance des troupeaux" is described in verse full of vigorous

movement; the sheep are taken up into the Alps for the summer, and then

in the fall brought down to the great plain of the Crau near the Delta

of the Rhone. The whole description is made with bold, simple strokes of

the brush, offering a vivid picture not to be forgotten. Alàri, too,

offers a marvellously carved wooden cup, adorned with pastoral scenes.

Veran owns a hundred white mares, whose manes, thick and flowing like

the grass of the marshes, are untouched by the shears, and float above

their necks, as they bound fiercely along, like a fairy's scarf. They

are never subdued, and often, after years of exile from the salt meadows

of the Camargue, they throw off their rider, and gallop over twenty

leagues of marshes to the land of their birth, to breathe the free salt

air of the sea. Their element is the sea; they have surely broken loose

from the chariot of Neptune; they are still white with foam; and when

the sea roars and darkens, when the ships break their cables, the

stallions of the Camargue neigh with joy.

And Ramoun welcomes Veran, and hopes that Mirèio will wed him, and calls

his daughter, who gently refuses. The third suitor, Ourrias, has no

better fortune. The account of this man's giant strength, the narrative

of his exploits in subduing the wild bulls, are quite Homeric. The

story is told of the scar he bears, how one of the fiercest bulls that

he had branded carried him along, threw him ahead on the ground, and

then hurled him high into the air. The strong, fierce man presents his

suit, describing the life the women lead in the Camargue; but before he

has her love, "his trident will bear flowers, the hills will melt away

like wax, and the journey to Les Baux will be by sea." This canto and

the next, recounting the fierce combat between Ourrias and Vincèn, are

really splendid narrative poetry. The style is marvellously compressed,

and the story thrilling. The sullen anger of Ourrias, his insult that

does not spare Mirèio, the indignation of Vincèn, that fires him with

unwonted strength, the battle of the two men out alone in the fields

near the mighty Pont du Gard, Vincèn's victory in the trial of strength,

the treachery of Ourrias, who sneaks back and strikes his enemy down

with the trident. "With a mighty groan the hapless boy rolls at full

length upon the grass, and the grass yields, bloody, and over his earthy

limbs the ants of the fields already make their way." The rapidity, the

compactness of the sentences, impressed Gaston Paris as very remarkable.

The assassin gallops away upon his mare, and seeks by night to cross the

Rhone. A singularly felicitous use of the supernatural is made here.

Ourrias is carried to the bottom of the river by the goblins and spirits

that come out and hover over it at night. There is a certain terror in

this termination, something that recalls parts of the Inferno. Ourrias's

superstitious fears are the effect of his guilty conscience. The souls

of the damned, their weird ceremonial, are but the outward rendering of

the inward terror he feels.

A less legitimate use of the supernatural is made in the succeeding

canto, called _La Masco_ (The Witch). In fact, the canto is really a

blemish in the beautiful poem. Vincèn is found unconscious and carried

to the Mas des Micocoules, and various remedies tried. He comes to

himself, but the wound is deemed too serious to be healed by natural

means, and Mirèio, at the suggestion of one of her maiden friends, takes

Vincèn to the abode of the witch who lives in the Fairies' Hole under

the rocks of Les Baux. Besides the obvious objection that the magic

cure could not have been made, there is the physical impossibility of

Vincèn's having walked, in his dying condition, through the labyrinth of

subterranean passages, amid the wild scenes of a sort of Walpurgis

night. The poet was doubtless led into this error by his desire to

preserve all the legends and superstitious lore of Provence. Possibly he

was led astray also by his desire to create an epic poem, in which a

visit to the lower regions is a necessity. The entire episode is

impossible and uninteresting, and is a blot in the beautiful idyll.

Later on, this desire to insert the supernatural leads the poet to

interrupt the action of his poem, while the three Maries relate to the

unconscious Mirèio at great length the story of their coming from

Jerusalem to Provence. Interesting as folklore, or as an evidence of the

credulity of the Provençals, this narrative of the three Maries is out

of place in the poem. It does not help us out to suppose that Mirèio

dreams the narrative, for it is full of theology, history, and

traditions she could not possibly have conceived. The poem of _Mirèio_

and all Mistral's work suffer from this desire to work into his poetry

all the history, real and legendary, of his region.

The three Maries are Mary Magdalen, Mary, the mother of James and John,

and Mary, the mother of James the Less. After the Crucifixion they

embark with Saint Trophime, and successfully battling with the storms of

the sea, they land finally in Provence, and by a series of miracles

convert the people of Arles. This canto never would have converted

Boileau from his disapproval of the "merveilleux chrétien."

The poet finds his true inspiration again in the life of the Mas, in the

home-bringing of the crops, in the gathering of the workers about the

table of Mèste Ramoun. This picture of patriarchal life is like a bit

out of an ancient literature; we have a feeling of the archaic, of the

primitive, we are amid the first elements of human life, where none of

the complications of the modern man find a place. Mèste Ambroi, whom

Vincèn has finally persuaded with passionate entreaties to seek the hand

of Mirèio for him, comes upon this evening scene. The interview of the

two old men is like a Greek play; their wisdom and experience are

uttered in stately, sententious language, and many a proverb falls from

their lips. Ramoun has inflexible ideas as to parental authority: "A

father is a father, his will must be done. The herd that leads the

herdsman, sooner or later, is crunched in the jaws of the wolf. If a son

resisted his father in our day, the father would have slain him perhaps!

Therefore the families were strong, united, sound, resisting the storm

like a line of plane trees! Doubtless they had their quarrels, as we

know, but when Christmas night, beneath its starry tent, brought

together the head of the house and his descendants, before the blessed

table, before the table where he presided, the old man, with his

wrinkled hand, washed it all away with his benediction!"

But Mirèio and not Mèste Ambroi makes known to her father that it is her

hand Vincèn seeks, and the mother and father break out in anger against

the maid. Ramoun's anger leads him to speak offensively to Mèste Ambroi,

who nobly maintains his dignity amid his poverty, and recounts his

services to his country that have been so ill repaid. Ramoun is equally

proud of his wealth, earned by the sweat of his brow, and sternly

refuses. The other leaves, and then the harvesters continue their

merry-making, with singing and farandoles, about a great bonfire in

honor of Saint John. "All the hills were aglow as if stars had rained in

the darkness, and the mad wind carried up the incense of the hills and

the red gleam of the fires toward the saint, hovering in the blue

twilight."

That night Mirèio grieved and wept for Vincèn, and, remembering what he

had told her of the three Saint Maries, rises before the dawn and flees

away. Her journey across the Crau and the island of Camargue is narrated

with numerous details and descriptions; they are never extraneous to the

action, and are a constant source of beauty and interest. The strange,

barren plain of the Crau, covered with the stones that once destroyed a

race of Giants, as the legend has it, is vividly described, as the

maiden flies across it in the ardent rays of the June sun. She stops to

pray to a saint that he send her a draught of water, and immediately she

comes upon a well. Here she meets a little Arlesian boy who tells her

"in his golden speech" of the glories of Arles. "But," says the poet,

"O soft, dark city, the child forgot to tell thy supreme wonder; O

fertile land of Arles, Heaven gives pure beauty to thy daughters, as it

gives grapes to the autumn, and perfumes to the mountains and wings to

the bird." The little fellow talks of many things and leads her to his

home. From here the fisherman ferries her over the broad Rhone, and we

accompany her over the Camargue, down to the sea. A mirage deceives her

for a time, she sees the town and church, but it soon vanishes in air,

and the maiden hurries on in the fierce heat.

Her prayer in the chapel is written in another verse form:--

"O Santi Mario

Que poudès en flour

Chanja nòsti plour

Clinas lèu l'auriho

De-vers ma doulour!"

O Holy Maries, who can change our tears to blossoms, incline

quickly an ear unto my grief!

Before the prayer is ended, there begins the vision of the three Maries,

descending to her from Heaven.

Mèste Ramoun discovers the flight of the unhappy maiden, and with all

his family starts in pursuit. After the first outburst of grief, he

sends out a messenger.

"Let the mowers and the ploughmen leave the scythes and the ploughs! Say

to the harvesters to throw down their sickles, bid the shepherds leave

their flocks, bid them come to me!"

The boy goes out into the fields, among the mowers and gleaners, and

everywhere solemnly delivers his message in the selfsame words. He goes

down to the Crau, among the dwarf oaks, and summons the shepherds. All

these toilers gather about the head of the farm and his wife, who await

them in gloomy silence. Mèste Ramoun, without making clear what

misfortune has overtaken him, entreats the men to tell him what they

have seen. And the chief of the haymakers, father of seven sons, tells

of an evil omen, how, for the first time in thirty years, at the

beginning of his day's work, he had cut himself. The parents moan the

more. Then a mower from Tarascon tells how as he began his work he had

discovered a nest wherein the young birds had been done to death by a

myriad of invading ants. Again "the tale of woe was a lance-thrust for

the father and mother." A third had been taken as with epilepsy, a

shudder had passed over him, and through his dishevelled hair as through

the heads of thistles he had felt Death pass like a wind. A fourth had

seen Mirèio just before the dawn, and had heard her say, "Will none

among the shepherds come with me to the Holy Maries?" And then while the

mother laments, preparations are made to follow the maiden to the

shrines out yonder by the sea.

This poem, then, depicts for us the rustic life of Provence in all its

outward aspects. The pretty tale and the description of the life of the

Mas and of the Provençal landscapes are inseparably woven together,

forming an harmonious whole. It is not a tragedy, all the characters are

too utterly lacking in depth. Vincèn and Mirèio are but a boy and a

girl, children just awakening to life. The reader may be reminded of

Hermann and Dorothea, of Gabriel and Evangeline, but the creations of

the German and the American poet are greatly superior in all that

represents study of the human mind and heart.

Goethe's poem and Mistral's have several points of likeness. Hermann

seeks to marry against his father's wish, and the objection is the

poverty of Dorothea. The case is merely inverted. Both poems imitate the

Homeric style, Goethe's more palpably than Mistral's, since the German

poet has adopted the Homeric verse. He affects, also, certain recurring

terms of expression, "Also sprach sie" and the like, and there is a

rather artificial seeking after simplicity of expression. Goethe's poem

is more interesting because of the greater solidity of the characters,

and because of the more closely knitted plot. The curiosity of the

reader is kept roused as in a well-constructed romance. Mistral's poem

has, after all, scarcely any more real local color; the rustic life of

the two poems is similar, allowing for geographical differences, and we

carry away quite as real a picture of Hermann's home and the fields

about it as of the Mas of Mèste Ramoun. Mistral's idyll terminates

tragically in that Mirèio dies of sunstroke, leaving her lover to mourn,

but the tenor of the German poem is more serious and moves us more

deeply; the background of war contributes to this, but the source of

our emotion is in the deep seriousness of the characters themselves.

Vincèn and Mirèio are charming in their naïveté, they are unspoiled and

unreflecting. They are children, and lacking in well-defined

personality. They have no knowledge of anything beyond the customs and

superstitions of the simple folk about them. Their religion, which is so

continually before us, furnishing the very mainspring of the fatal

dénouement, is of the most superficial sort, if it can be called

religion at all. Whether you are bitten by a dog, a wolf, or a snake, or

lose your eyesight, or are in danger of losing your lover, you run to

the shrine of some saint for help. The religious feeling really runs no

deeper. In his outburst of grief upon seeing Mirèio prone upon the floor

of the chapel, the unhappy boy asks what he has done to merit such a

blow. "Has he lit his pipe in a church at the lamp? or dragged the

crucifix among thistles, like the Jews?" Of the deeper, nobler

consolations of religion, of the problems of human destiny, of the

relations of religious conviction to human conduct, there is no inkling.

All the characters are equally on the surface. They are types rather

than individuals. They have in common the gift of eloquence. They have

no thought-life, no meditation. They are eminently sociable, frequently

loquacious. They make you think of Daudet's statement concerning the man

of the south, "When he is not talking, he is not thinking." But they

talk well, and have to an eminent degree the gift of narrative. Vincèn's

stories of what he knows and has seen are told most beautifully, and the

poet never forgets himself by making the boy utter thoughts he could not

have conceived. The boy is merely a child of his race. In any rustic

gathering in southern France you may hear a man of the people speak

dramatically and thrillingly, with resonant voice and vivid gestures,

with a marvellous power of mimicry, and the faces of the listeners

reflect all the emotions of the speaker. The numerous scenes, therefore,

wherein a group of listeners follow with keenest interest a tale that is

told, are eminently true to life. The supreme merit of Mirèio lies in

this power of narration that its author possesses. It is all action from

beginning to end, and even the digressions and episodes, which

occasionally arrest the flow of the narrative, are in themselves

admirable pieces of narrative. Most critics have found fault with these

episodes and the frequent insertion of legends. In defence of the

author, it may be said, that he must have feared while writing _Mirèio_

that it might be his last and only opportunity to address his countrymen

in their own dialect, and in his desire to bring them back to a love of

the traditions of Provence, he yielded to the temptation to crowd his

poem rather more than he would otherwise have done.

Mirèio, then, is a lovely poem, an idyll, a charming, vivid picture of

life in the rural parts of the Rhone region. It is singularly original.

Local color is its very essence. Its thought and action are strictly

circumscribed within the boundaries of the Crau and the Camargue, and

its originality consists in this limitation, in the fact that a poet of

this century has written a work that comes within the definition of an

epic, with all the primitive simplicity of Biblical or Classic writers,

without any agitation of the problems of modern life, without any new

thought or feeling concerning love or death, or man's relation to the

universe, using a dialect unknown at the time beyond the region

described. Its success could scarcely have been attained without the

poet's masterly prose translation, and yet it is evident that the poem

could not have been conceived and carried out in French verse. The

freshness, the artlessness, the lack of modernity, would have suffered

if the poet had bent his inspiration to the official language. Using a

new idiom, wherein he practically had no predecessor, he was free to

create expression as he went along, and was not compelled to cast his

thought in existing moulds.

The poem cannot place its author among the very great poets of the

world, if only because of this limitation. It lacks the breadth and

depth, the everlasting interest. But it is a work of great beauty, of

wonderful purity, a sweet story, told in lovely, limpid language, and

will cause many eyes to turn awhile from other lands to the sunny

landscapes of southern France.

II. CALENDAU. (CALENDAL.)

Mistral spent seven years in elaborating his second epic, as he did in

writing his first. The poem had not a popular success, and the reason

is not far to seek. The most striking limitation of the poet is his

failure to create beings of flesh and blood. Even in Mirèio this lack of

well-defined individuality in the characters begins to be apparent, but,

in general, the action of the earlier poem is confined to the world of

realities, whereas in _Calendau_ the poet has given free play to a

brilliant and vivid imagination, launching forth into the heroic and

incredible, yet without abandoning the world of real time and real

places. Allegory and symbolism are the web and woof of _Calendau_. The

poem, again, is overburdened with minute historic details and

descriptions, which are greatly magnified in the eye of his imagination.

A poet, of course, must be pardoned for this want of a sense of

proportion, but even a Provençal reader cannot be kept in constant

illusion as to the greatness of little places that can scarcely be found

upon the map, or dazzled by the magnificence of achievements that really

have left little or no impress upon the history of the world. As we

follow the poet's work in its chronological development, we find this

trait growing more and more pronounced. He sees his beloved Provence,

its past and present, and its future, too, in a magnifying mirror that

embellishes all it reflects with splendid, glowing colors, and exalts

little figures to colossal proportions. The reader falls easily under

the spell of this exuberant enthusiasm and is charmed by the poetic

power evinced. The wealth of words, the beauty of the imagery with

which, for example, the humble, well-nigh unknown little port of Cassis

and its fishing industry are described, carry us along and hold us in

momentary illusion. We see them in the poet's magic mirror for the time.

To the traveller or the sober historian all these things appear very,

very different.

With the Félibres the success of the poem was much greater; it is a kind

of patriotic hymn, a glorification of the past of Provence, and a song

of hope for its future. Its allegory, its learned literary allusions,

its delving into obscure historic events, preclude any hope of popular

success.

Like _Mirèio_, the poem is divided into twelve cantos, and the form of

stanza employed is the same. The heroic tone of the poem might be

thought to have required verse of greater stateliness; the recurrence of

the three feminine rhymes in the shorter verses often seems too pretty.

Like _Mirèio_, the poem has the outward marks of an epic. Unlike

_Mirèio_, it reminds us frequently of the _Chansons de geste_, and we

see that the author has been living in the world of the Old Provençal

poets. This is apparent not merely in the constant allusions, in the

reproductions of episodes, but in the manner in which the narrative

moves along. Lamartine would not have been reminded of the ancient Greek

poets had _Calendau_ preceded _Mirèio_. The conception of courtly love,

the guiding, elevating inspiration of Beatrice, leading Dante on to

greater, higher, more spiritual things, are the sources of the chief

ideas contained in _Calendau_. Vincèn and Mirèio remain throughout the

simple youth and maiden they were, but Calendau, "the simple fisherman

of Cassis," develops into a great hero, performing Herculean tasks, like

a knight of the days of chivalry, and rises higher and higher until he

wins "the empire of pure love"--his lady's hand.

Very beautiful is the invocation addressed to the "soul of his country

that radiates, manifest in its language and in its history--that through

the greatness of its memories saves hope for him." It is the spirit

that inspired the sweet Troubadours, and set the voice of Mirabeau

thundering like the mistral. The poet proclaims his belief in his race.

"For the waves of the ages and their storms and horrors mingle the

nations and wipe out frontiers in vain. Mother Earth, Nature, ever feeds

her sons with the same milk, her hard breast will ever give the fine oil

to the olive; Spirit, ever springing into life, joyous, proud, and

living spirit that neighest in the noise of the Rhone and in the wind

thereof! spirit of the harmonious woods, and of the sunny bays, pious

soul of the fatherland, I call thee! be incarnate in my Provençal

verse!"

We are plunged in orthodox fashion _in medias res_. The young fisherman

is seated upon the rocky heights above the sea before the beautiful

woman he loves. He does not know who she is; he has performed almost

superhuman exploits to win her; but there is an obstacle to their union.

She relates that she is the last of the family of the Princes des Baux,

who had their castle and city hewn out of the solid rock in the strange

mountains that overlook the plain of Arles. She tells the marvellous

history of the family, evoking a vision of the days of courtly love when

the Troubadours sang at the feet of the fair princesses. A panorama of

the life of those days of poetry and song moves before us. The princess

even describes and defines in poetic language the forms of verse in

vogue in the ancient days, the _Tenson_, the _Pastoral_, the _Ballad_,

the _Sirventés_, the _Romance_, the _Congé_, the _Aubade_, the _Solace

of Love_. She relates her marriage with the Count Sévéran, who

fascinated her by some mysterious power. At the wedding-feast she learns

that he is a mere bandit, leader of a band of robbers that infests the

country. She fled away through the mountains and found the grotto where

she now lives. The fishermen, seeing her appear and vanish among the

cliffs, take her to be the fairy Esterello, who is a sort of Loreley.

Calendau determines that either Sévéran or he shall die, and seeks him

out. His splendid physical appearance and bold, defiant manner arouse in

the bandit a desire to get Calendau to join his company, and the women

of the band are charmed with him. They ask to hear the story of his

life, and the great body of the poem consists of the narrative by

Calendau of his exploits. After the last one Calendau has risen to the

loftiest conception of pure love through the guidance of Esterello, like

Dante inspired by Beatrice. Then the Count holds an orgy and tries to

tempt the virtue of the hero. Calendau, after witnessing the lascivious

dances, challenges the Count to mortal combat. The latter knows now who

he is, and that Esterello is none other than the bride who fled after

the marriage-feast. Calendau is overpowered and imprisoned, and the

Count and his men set off in search of Esterello. But Calendau is freed

by Fourtuneto, one of the women, and journeys by sea from Cannes to

Cassis to defend the Princess. Here a great combat takes place with the

Count, who fires the pine-woods and perishes miserably, uttering

blasphemous imprecations. The Cassidians fight the fire, and Calendau

and the blond Princess are saved.

"The applause of two thousand souls salutes them and acclaims them.

'Calendau, Calendau, let us plant the May for the conqueror of

Esterello. He glorifies, he brings to the light our little harbor of

fishermen, let us make him Consul, Consul for life!' So saying the

multitude accompanies the generous, happy pair of lovers, and the sun

that God rules, the great sun, rises, illumines, and procreates

endlessly new enthusiasms, new lovers."

The poem clearly symbolizes the Provençal renascence; Calendau typifies

the modern Provençal people, rising to an ideal life and great

achievements through the memory of their traditions, and this ideal,

this memory, are personified in the person of the beautiful Princess.

The time of the action is the eighteenth century, before the Revolution.

This is a deliberate choice of the poet who has a temporal symbolism in

mind. "I shall thus combine in my picture the three aspects of Provence

on the eve of the Revolution: in the background, the noble legends of

the past; in the foreground the social corruption of the evil days; and

before us the better future, the future and the reparation personified

in the son of the working classes, guardians of the tradition of the

country."

As regards the execution, it is masterly, and cannot be ranked below

_Mirèio_. There is the same enthusiastic love of nature, the same

astonishing resources of expression, the same novelty and originality.

In place of the rustic nature of Mirèio, we have the wild grandeur of

mountains and sea. There is the same, nay, even greater, eloquence of

the speakers, the same musical verse.

"Car, d'aquesto ouro, ounto es la raro

Que di delice nous separo,

Jouine, amourous que siam, libre coume d'aucèu?

Regardo: la Naturo brulo

A noste entour, e se barrulo

Dins li bras de l'Estiéu, e chulo

Lou devourant alen de soun nòve roussèu.

"Li serre clar e blu, li colo

Palo de la calour e molo,

Boulegon trefouli si mourre.... Ve la mar:

Courouso e lindo coumo un vèire,

Dòu grand soulèu i rai bevèire

Enjusqu'au founs se laisso vèire,

Se laisso coutiga pèr lou Rose e lou Var."

"For now, where is the limit that separates us from joy, young, amorous

as we are, free as birds! Look: Nature burns around us and rolls in the

arms of Summer, and drinks in the devouring breath of her ruddy spouse.

The clear, blue peaks, the hills, pale and soft with the heat, are

thrilled and stir their rounding summits. Behold the sea, glistening and

limpid as glass; in the thirsty rays of the great sun, she allows

herself to be seen clear to the bottom, to be caressed by the Rhone and

the Var."

These are the words of Calendau when, seeking his reward after his final

exploit, he learns that he has won the love of Esterello. The poet never

goes further in the voluptuous strain, and the mere music of the words,

especially beginning "Ve la mar" is exquisite. They are found in the

first canto. This scene wherein the Princess refuses to wed Calendau is

typical of the poet. The northern temperament is not impressed with

these long tirades, full of ejaculations and apostrophes; they are apt

to seem unnatural, insincere, and theatrical. Intense feeling is not so

verbose in the north. In this particular Mistral is true to his race. We

quote entire the words of Calendau after the refusal of Esterello,

itself full exclamation and apostrophizing:--

"Then I have but won the thirst, the weariness of the midshipman, when

he is about to reach the summit of the mainmast, and sees gleaming at

the limit of the liquid plain naught but water, water eternally! Well,

if thou wilt hear it, listen! and let the heath resound with it! It is

thou, false woman that thou art, it is thou that hast deceived me,

luring me on to believe that at the summit of the peaks I should find

the splendor of a sublime dawn, that after winter spring would come,

that there is nothing so good as the food earned by labor. Thou hast

deceived me, for in the wilderness I found naught but drought; and the

wind of this world and its idle noise, the embarrassment of luxury, and

the din of glory, and what is called the enjoyment of triumph, are not

worth a little hour of love beneath a pine tree! See, from my hand the

bridle escapes, my skull is bursting, and I am not sure now that the

people in their fear are not right in dreading thee like a ghost, now

that I feel, as my reward, thy burning poison streaming through my

heart. Yes, thou art the fairy Esterello, and thou art unmasked at last,

cruel creature! In the chill of thy refusal I have known the viper. Thou

art Esterello, bitter foe to man, haunting the wild places, crowned with

nettles, defending the desert against those who clear the land. Thou art

Esterello, the fairy that sends a shudder through the foliage of the

woods and the hair of the terrified hermit; that fires with the desire

of her perfumed embrace her suitors and in malevolence drives them to

despair with infernal longings.

"My head is bursting, and since from the heights of my supernatural love

a thunderbolt thus hurls me down, since, nothing, nothing henceforth,

from this moment on, can give me joy, since, cruel woman, when thou

couldst throw me a rope, thou leavest me, in dismay, to drink the bitter

current--let death come, black hiding-place, bottomless abyss! let me

plunge down head first!"

And when Esterello, fearing he will slay himself, clasps him about the

neck, they stand silently embraced, "the tears, in tender mingling, rain

from their eyes; despair, agitation, a spell of happiness, keep their

lips idle, and from hell, at one bound, they rise to paradise."

Like the creations of Victor Hugo's poetry, those of Mistral speak the

language of the author. They have his eloquence, his violent energy of

figurative speech, his love of the wild, sunny landscapes about them;

they thrill as he does, at the memories of the past; they love, as he

does, enumerations of trees and plants; they have his fondness for

action.

The poem is filled with interesting episodes. One that is very striking

in the narrative of Esterello we shall here reproduce.

We are at the wedding feast of Count Sévéran and the Princess des Baux.

The merry-making begins to be riotous, and the Count has made a speech

in honor of his bride, promising to take her after the melting of the

snows to his Alpine palaces, where the walls are of steel, the doors of

silver, the locks of gold, and when the sun shines their crystal roofs

glitter like flame.

"Scarcely from his lips had fallen these wild words, when the door of

the banquet hall opens, and we see the head of an old man, wearing a

bonnet and a garment of rough cloth; we see the dust and sweat trickling

down his tanned cheeks. The bridegroom, with a terrible glance, like the

lightning flash of a fearful storm, turns suddenly pale, and seeks to

stop him; but he, whom the glance cannot harm, calmly, impassively, like

God when he clothes himself like a poor man, to confound sometimes some

rich evil-doer, slowly advances toward the bridegroom, crosses his arms,

and scans his countenance. And he says not a word to any one, and all

are afraid; a weight of lead lies upon every heart, and from without

there seems to blow in upon the lamps an icy wind.

"Finally, a few of them, shaking off their oppression, 'If there come

not soon a famine to wipe out this hideous tribe, we shall be eaten by

beggars within four days! To the merry bridal pair, what hast thou to

say, old scullion?' And they continue to taunt him cruelly. The outraged

peasant holds his peace. 'With his blear eyes, his white pate, his

limping leg, whither comes he trudging? Pelican, bird of ill omen, go to

thy hole and hide thy sorry face.' The stranger swallows their insults,

and casts toward the bridegroom a beseeching glance.

"But others cry: 'Come on, old man, come on! Come on, fear not the

company, the laughing and joking of these pretty gentlemen. Hunt about

the tables for the dainties and the carcasses. Hast thou a good jaw?

Here, catch this piece of pork and toss off a glass of wine!'

"'No,' at length comes an answer from the old man, in a tone of deep

sadness, 'gentlemen, I do not beg, and have never desired what others

leave: I seek my son.'--'His son! What is he saying--the son of this

seller of eelskins hovering about the Baroness of Aiglun?'

"And they look at each other in doubt, in burning scorn. I listened.

Then they said: 'Where is thy son? Show thy son, come on! and beware.

If, to mock us, thou lie, wretch, at the highest gargoyle of the towers

of Aiglun, without mercy, we'll hang thee!'

"'Well, since I am disowned, and relegated to the sweepings,' the old

man begins, draped in his _sayon_, and with a majesty that frightens us,

'you shall hear the crow sing!' Then the Count, turning the color of the

wall, cold as a bench of stone, said, 'Varlets, here, cast out this

dismal phantom!' Two tears of fire, that pierced the ground, and that I

still see shining, streamed down the countenance of the poor old man,

ah! so bitter, that we all became white as shrouds.

"'Like Death, I come where I am forgotten, without summons. I am wrong!'

broke out the unhappy man, 'but I wished to see my daughter-in-law.

Come on, cast out this dismal phantom, who is, however, thy father, O

splendid bridegroom!'

"I uttered a cry; all the guests rose from their chairs. But the

relentless old man went on: 'My lords, to tear from the evil fruit its

whole covering, I have but two words to say. Be seated, for I still see

on the table dishes not yet eaten.'

"Standing like palings, silent, anxious, the guests remained with hearts

scarce beating. I trembled, my eyes in mist. We were like the dead of

the churchyard about some funeral feast, full of terror and mystery. The

Count grinned sardonically.

"'Thou shalt run in vain, wretch,' said the venerable father, 'the

vengeance of God will surely reach thee! To-day thou makest me bow my

head; but thy bride, if she have some honor, will presently flee from

thee as from the pest, for thou shalt some day hang, accursed of God!' I

rush to the arms of my father-in-law. 'Stop, stop;' but he, leaning down

to my ear, said: 'Without knowing the vine or measuring the furrows,

thou hast bought the wine, mad girl! Go, thou didst not weep all thy

tears in thy swaddling clothes! Knowest thou whom thou hast? a

robber-chief!'"

And the scene continues, weirdly dramatic, like some old romantic tale

of feudal days. Such scenes of gloom and terror are not frequent in

Mistral. This one is probably the best of its kind he has attempted.

On his way to seek Count Sévéran in his fastness, Calendau "enters,

awestruck, into the stupendous valley, deep, frowning, cold, saturnine,

and fierce; the daylight darts into this enclosure an instant upon the

viper and the lizard, then, behind the jagged peaks, it vanishes. The

Esteron rolls below. Now, Calendau feels a shudder in his soul, and

winds his horn. The call resounds in the depths of the gorges. It seems

as though he calls to his aid the spirits of the place. And he thinks of

the paladin dying at Roncevaux."

For the sake of greater completeness, we summarize briefly the exploits

of the hero. As has been stated, they compose the great body of the

poem, and are narrated by him to the Count and his company of thieves

and women. The narrative begins with the account of the little port of

Cassis, his native place; and one of the stanzas is a setting for the

surprising proverb:--

"Tau qu'a vist Paris,

Se noun a vist Cassis,

Pòu dire: N'ai rèn vist!"

He who has seen Paris, and has not seen Cassis, may say, "I have

seen nothing."

No less than forty stanzas are taken up with the wonders of Cassis, and

more than half of those are devoted to naming the fish the Cassidians

catch. It is to be feared that other than Provençal readers and students

of natural history will fail to share the enthusiasm of the poet here.

Calendau's father used to read out of an ancient book; and the hero

recounts the history of Provence, going back to the times of the

Ligurians, telling us of the coming of the Greeks, who brought the art

of sculpture for the future Puget. We hear of the founding of

Marseilles, the days of Diana and Apollo, followed by the coming of the

Romans. The victory of Caius Marius is celebrated, the conquest of

Julius Cæsar deplored. We learn of the introduction of Christianity. We

come down to the glorious days of Raymond of Toulouse.

"And enraptured to be free, young, robust, happy in the joy of living,

in those days a whole people was seen at the feet of Beauty; and singing

blame or praises a hundred Troubadours flourished; and from its cradle,

amid vicissitudes, Europe smiled upon our merry singing."

"O flowers, ye came too soon! Nation in bloom, the sword cut down thy

blossoming! Bright sun of the south, thou shonest too powerfully, and

the thunder-storms gathered. Dethroned, made barefoot, and gagged, the

Provençal language, proud, however, as before, went off to live among

the shepherds and the sailors."

"Language of love, if there are fools and bastards, ah! by Saint Cyr,

thou shalt have the men of the land upon thy side, and as long as the

fierce mistral shall roar in the rocks, sensitive to an insult offered

thee, we shall defend thee with red cannon-balls, for thou art the

fatherland, and thou art freedom!"

This love of the language itself pervades all the work of our poet, but

rarely has he expressed it more energetically, not to say violently,

than here.

Calendau reaches the point where he first catches a glimpse of the

Princess. He tells of the legends concerning the fairy Esterello, and of

the _Fada_ (Les Enfées). This last is a name given to idiots or to the

insane, who are supposed to have come under her spell.

"E degun auso

Se trufa d'éli, car an quicon de sacra!"

And none dares mock them, for they have in them something sacred.

The fisherman makes many attempts to find her again, and at last

succeeds. She haughtily dismisses his suit.

"Vai, noun sies proun famous, ni proun fort, ni proun fin."

Go, thou art not famous enough, nor strong enough, nor fine enough.

He realizes her great superiority, and, after a time of deep

discouragement, rouses himself and sets about to deserve and win her by

deeds of daring, by making a great name for himself.

His first idea is to seek wealth, so he builds a great boat and captures

twelve hundred tunny fish. The fishing scenes are depicted with all the

glow of fancy and brilliant word-painting for which Mistral is so

remarkable. Calendau is now rich, and brings jewels to his lady. She

haughtily refuses them, and the fisherman throws them away.

"--Eh! bèn, ié fau, d'abord, ingrato,

Que toun cor dur ansin me trato

E que de mi presènt noun t'enchau mai qu' acò,

Vagon au Diable!--E li bandisse

Pataflòu! dins lou precepice."...

"Well," said I to her, "since, ungrateful woman, thy hard heart

treats me thus, and thou carest no more about my presents than

that, let them go to the devil!" and I hurled them, _pataflòu_,

into the precipice....

Here the tone is not one that an English reader finds serious; the

sending the jewels to the Devil, in the presence of the beautiful lady,

and the interjection, seem trivial. Evidently they are not so, for the

Princess is mollified at once.

"He was not very astute, he who made thee believe that the love of a

proud soul can be won with a few trinkets! Ah, where are the handsome

Troubadours, masters of love?"

She tells the love-stories of Geoffroy Rudel, of Ganbert de Puy-Abot, of

Foulquet of Marseilles, of Guillaume de Balaün, of Guillaume de la

Tour, and her words fall upon Calendau's heart like a flame. He catches

a glimpse of an existence of constant ecstasy.

His second exploit is a tournament on the water, where the combatants

stand on boats, and are rowed violently against one another, each

striking his lance against the wooden breastplate of his adversary. His

victory wins for him the hatred of the Cassidians, for his enemy accuses

him of cornering the fish. Esterello consoles him with more stories from

the _Chansons de geste_ and the songs of the Troubadours.

In the seventh canto is described in magnificent language Calendau's

exploit on the Mont Ventoux. This is a remarkable mountain, visible all

over the southern portion of the Rhone valley, standing in solitary

grandeur, like a great pyramid dominating the plain. Its summit is

exceedingly difficult of access. It appears to be the first mountain

that literature records as having been ascended for pleasure. This

ascent is the subject of one of Petrarch's letters.

During nine days Calendau felled the larches that grew upon the flanks

of the mighty mountain, and hurled the forest piecemeal into the

torrent below. At the Rocher du Cire he is frightfully stung by myriads

of bees, during his attempt to obtain as a trophy for his lady a

quantity of honey from this well-nigh inaccessible place. The kind of

criticism that is appropriate for realistic literature is here quite out

of place. It must be said, however, that the episode is far from

convincing. Calendau compares his sufferings to those of a soul in hell,

condemned to the cauldron of oil. Yet he makes a safe escape, and we

never hear of the physical consequences of his terrible punishment.

The canto, in its vivid language, its movement, its life, is one of the

most astonishing that has come from the pen of its author. It offers

beautiful examples of his inspiration in depicting the lovely aspects of

nature. He finds words of liquid sweetness to describe the music of the

morning breezes breathing through the mass of trees:--

"La Ventoureso matiniero,

En trespirant dins la sourniero

Dis aubre, fernissié coume un pur cantadis,

Ounte di colo e di vallado,

Tóuti li voues en assemblado,

Mandavon sa boufaroulado.

Li mèle tranquilas, li mèle mescladis," etc.

The morning breeze of the Mont Ventoux, breathing into the mass of

trees, quivered like a pure symphony of song wherein all the voices

of hill and dale sent their breathings.

In the last line the word _tranquilas_ is meant to convey the idea "in

tranquil grandeur."

This ruthless destruction of the forest brings down upon Calendau the

anger of his lady; he has dishonored the noble mountain. "Sacrilegious

generation, ye have the harvest of the plains, the chestnut and the

olives of the hillsides, but the beetling brows of the mountains belong

to God!" and the lady continues an eloquent defence of the trees, "the

beloved sons, the inseparable nurslings, the joy, the colossal glory of

the universal nurse!" and pictures the vengeance Nature wreaks when she

is wronged. Calendau is humbled and departs.

His next exploit is the settling of the feud between two orders of

Masons. He displays marvellous bravery in facing the fighting crowds,

and they choose him to be umpire. He delivers a noble speech in favor of

peace, full of allusions to the architectural glories of Provence, that

grew up when "faith and union lent their torch." He tells the story of

the building of the bridge of Avignon. "Noah himself with his ark could

have passed beneath each of its arches." He touches their emotions with

his appeal for peace, and they depart reconciled.

And now Esterello begins to love him. She bids him strive for the

noblest things, to love country and humanity, to become a knight, an

apostle; and after Calendau has performed the feat of capturing the

famous brigand Marco-Mau, after he has been crowned in the feasts at

Aix, and resisted victorious the wiles of the women that surround the

Count Sévéran, and saved his lady in the fearful combat on the

fire-surrounded rock, he wins her.

III. NERTO

In spite of its utter unreality _Nerto_ is a charming tale, written in a

sprightly vein, with here and there a serious touch, reminding the

reader frequently of Ariosto. The Devil, the Saints, and the Angels

figure in it prominently; but the Devil is not a very terrible personage

in Provence, and the Angels are entirely lacking in Miltonic grandeur.

The scene of the story is laid in the time of Benedict XIII, who was

elected Pope at Avignon in 1394. The story offers a lively picture of

the papal court, reminding the reader forcibly of the description found

in Daudet's famous tale of the Pope's mule. It is filled throughout with

legends relating to the Devil, and with superstitious beliefs of the

Middle Age. It is not always easy to determine when the poet is serious

in his statement of religious belief, occasionally he appears to be so,

and then a line or so shows us that he has a legend in mind. In the

prologue of the poem he says:--

"Crèire, coundus à la vitòri.

Douta, vaqui l' endourmitòri

E la pouisoun dins lou barriéu

E la lachuslo dins lou riéu."

To believe leads to victory. Doubt is the narcotic, and the poison

in the barrel, and the euphorbia in the stream.

"E, quand lou pople a perdu fe,

L'infèr abrivo si boufet."

And when the people have lost faith,

Hell sets its bellows blowing.

Then later we read: "What is this world? A wager between Christ and the

Demon. Thousands of years ago he challenged God, and when the great game

began, they played with great loose rocks from the hills, at quoits, and

if any one is unwilling to believe this, let him go to Mount Léberon and

see the stone thrown by Satan."

So we see that the theology was merely a means of leading up to a local

legend.

The story is briefly as follows: Nerto, like all Mistral's heroines, is

exceedingly young, thirteen years of age. Her father, the Baron Pons,

had gambled away everything he owned in this world, when she was a very

little child, and while walking along a lonely road one night he met the

Devil, who took advantage of his despair to tempt him with the sight of

heaps of money. The wretched father sold his daughter's soul to the Evil

One. Now on his death-bed he tells his child the fearful tale; one means

of salvation lies open for her--she must go to the Pope. Benedict XIII

is besieged in the great palace at Avignon, but the Baron knows of a

secret passage from his castle leading under the river Durance to one of

the towers of the papal residence. He bids Nerto go to seek deliverance

from the bond, and to make known to the Pope the means of escape. Nerto

reaches the palace at the moment when all is in great commotion, for the

enemy have succeeded in setting it on fire. She is first seen by the

Pope's nephew Don Rodrigue, an exceedingly wicked young man, a sort of

brawling Don Juan, who seems to have been guilty of numerous

assassinations. He immediately begins to talk love to the maiden, as the

means of saving her from the Devil, "the path of love is full of flowers

and leads to Paradise." But Nerto has been taught that the road to

Heaven is full of stones and thorns, and her innocence saves her from

the passionate outburst of the licentious youth. And Nerto is taken to

the Pope, whom she finds sadly enthroned in all his splendor, and brings

him the news of a means of escape. The last Pope of Avignon bearing the

sacred elements, _pourtant soun Diéu_, follows the maiden through the

underground passage, and escapes with all his followers. At

Château-Renard he sets up his court with the King of Forcalquier,

Naples, and Jerusalem and Donna Iolanthe his Queen. Nerto asks the Pope

to save her soul, but he is powerless. Only a miracle can save a soul

sold to Satan. She must enter a convent, and pray to the Saints

continually. The Court is about to move to Arles, she shall enter the

convent there. On the way, Don Rodrigue makes love to her assiduously,

but the young girl's heart seems untroubled.

At Arles we witness a great combat of animals, in which the lion of

Arles, along with four bulls, is turned loose in the arena. The lion

kills all but one of the bulls. The fourth beast, enraged, gores the

lion. The royal brute rushes among the spectators and makes for the

King's throne. Nerto and the Queen are crouching in terror before him,

when Don Rodrigue slays the animal, saving Nerto's life. Nay, he saves

more than her life, for had she died then she would have been a prey to

the flames of Hell.

Nerto becomes a nun, but Don Rodrigue, with a band of ribald followers,

succeeds in carrying her off with all the other nuns. They are all

driven by the King's soldiers into the cemetery of the Aliscamps. Nerto

wanders away during the battle and is lost among the tombs. At dawn the

next day she strays far out to a forest, where she finds a hermit. The

old man welcomes her, and believes he can save her soul. The Angel

Gabriel visits him frequently, and he will speak to him. But the Angel

disapproves, condemns the pride of the anchorite, and soars away to the

stars without a word of hope or consolation, and so in great anxiety the

pious man bids her go back to the convent, and prays Saint Gabriel,

Saint Consortia, Saint Tullia, Saint Gent, Saint Verdème, Saint Julien,

Saint Trophime, Saint Formin, and Saint Stephen to accompany her.

Don Rodrigue is living in a palace built for him in one night by the

Devil, wherein are seven halls, each devoted to one of the seven mortal

sins. Hither Nerto wanders; here Rodrigue finds her, and begins his

passionate love-making afresh. But Nerto remains true to her vows,

although the germ of love has been in her heart since the day Rodrigue

saved her from the lion. On learning that she is in the Devil's castle,

she is filled with terror, believing the fatal day has arrived. She

confesses her love. The maiden cries: "Woe is me, Nerto loves you, but

if Hell should swallow us up, would there be any love for the damned?

Rodrigue, no, there is none. If you would but break the tie that binds

you, if, with one happy wing-stroke, you could soar up to the summits

where lives last forever, where hearts vanish united in the bosom of

God, I should be delivered, it seems to me, in the same upward impulse;

for, in heaven or in the abyss, I am inseparable from you." Rodrigue

replies sadly, that his past is too dreadful, that only the ocean could

wipe it out. "Rodrigue, one burst of repentance is worth a long penance.

Courage, come, only one look toward Heaven!" The Devil appears. He

swells with pride in this, his finest triumph; black souls he has in

plenty, but since the beginning of his reign over the lower regions he

has never captured an immaculate victim like this soul. Rodrigue inverts

his sword, and at the sign of the cross, a terrific hurricane sweeps

away the palace, Don Rodrigue, and the Devil, and nothing is left but a

nun of stone who is still visible in the midst of a field on the site of

the château. In an Epilogue we learn from the Archangel who visits the

hermit that the knight and the maiden were both saved.

It is difficult to characterize the curious combination of levity and

seriousness that runs through this tale. There is no illusion of reality

anywhere; there is no agony of soul in Baron Pon's confession; Nerto's

terror when she learns that she is the property of the Devil is far from

impressive, because she says too much, with expressions that are too

pretty, perhaps because the rippling octosyllabic verse, in Provençal at

least, cannot be serious; it is hardly worth while to mention the

objection that if the Devil can be worsted at any time merely by

inverting a sword, especially when the sword is that of an assassin and

a rake, whose repentance is scarcely touched upon and is by no means

disinterested, it is clear that the Demon has wasted his time at a very

foolish game; a religious mind might feel a deeper sort of reverence for

the Archangels than is evinced here. Yet it cannot be said that the poem

parodies things sacred and sublime, and it appears to be utterly without

philosophical intention. Mistral really has to a surprising degree the

naïveté of writers of former centuries, and as regards the tale itself

and its general treatment it could almost have been written by a

contemporary of the events it relates.

IV. LOU POUÈMO DÓU ROSE

The _Poem of the Rhone_, the third of the poems in twelve cantos that

Mistral has written, appeared in 1897. It completes the symmetry of his

life work; the former epics extolled the life of the fields, the

mountains, and the sea, the last glorifies the beautiful river that

brings life to his native soil. More than either of the other long

poems, it is an act of affection for the past, for the Rhone of the poem

is the Rhone of his early childhood, before the steam-packets churned

its waters, or the railroads poured up their smoke along its banks.

Although the poet has interwoven in it a tale of merest fancy, it is

essentially realistic, differing notably in this respect from Calendau.

This realism descends to the merest details, and the poetic quality of

the work suffers considerably in many passages. The poet does not shrink

from minute enumeration of cargoes, or technical description of boats,

or word-for-word reproduction of the idle talk of boatwomen, or the

apparently inexhaustible profanity of the boatmen. The life on the river

is vividly portrayed, and we put down the book with a sense of really

having made the journey from Lyons to Beaucaire with the fleet of seven

boats of Master Apian.

On opening the volume the reader is struck first of all with the novel

versification. It is blank verse, the line being precisely that of

Dante's _Divina Commedia_. Not only is there no rhyme, but assonance is

very carefully avoided. The effect of this unbroken succession of

feminine verses is slightly monotonous, though the poet shifts his

pauses skilfully. The rhythm of the lines is marked, the effect upon the

ear being quite like that of English iambic pentameters hypercatalectic.

The absence of rhyme is the more noteworthy in that rhyme offers little

difficulty in Provençal. Doubtless the poet was pleased to show an

additional claim to superiority for his speech over the French as a

vehicle for poetic thought; for while on the one hand the rules of rhyme

and hiatus give the poet writing in Provençal less trouble than when

writing in French, on the other hand this poem proves that splendid

blank verse may be written in the new language.

The plan of the poem is briefly as follows: it describes the departure

of a fleet of boats from Lyons, accompanies them down the river to

Beaucaire, describes the fair and the return up the river, the boats

being hauled by eighty horses; narrates the collision with a steamboat

coming down the stream, which drags the animals into the water, setting

the boats adrift in the current, destroying them and their cargo, and

typifying as it were the ruin of the old traffic on the Rhone. The river

itself is described, its dangerous shoals, its beautiful banks, its

towns and castles. We learn how the boats were manœuvred; the life on

board and the ideas of the men are set before us minutely. Legends and

stories concerning the river and the places along the shores abound, of

course; and into this general background is woven the tale of a Prince

of Orange and a little maiden called the Anglore, two of the curiously

half-real, half-unreal beings that Mistral seems to love to create. The

Prince comes on board the fleet, intending to see Orange and Provence;

some day he is to be King of Holland, but has already sickened of court

ceremonies and intrigues.

"Uno foulié d'amour s'es mes en tèsto."

This dreamy, imaginative, blond Prince is in search of a Naïade and the

mysterious "swan-flower," wherein the fair nymph is hidden. This flower

he wears as an emblem. When the boatmen see it, they recognize it as the

_fleur de Rhône_ that the Anglore is so fond of culling. The men get

Jean Roche, one of their number, to tell the Prince who this mysterious

Anglore is, and we learn that she is a little, laughing maiden, who

wanders barefoot on the sand, so charming that any of the sailors, were

she to make a sign, would spring into the water to go and print a kiss

upon her little foot. Not only is the Prince in search of a nymph and a

flower, not only does he wish to behold Orange, he wishes also to learn

the language in which the Countess of Die sang lays of love with

Raimbaud of Orange. He is full of thoughts of the olden days, he feels

regret for the lost conquests. "But why should he feel regret, if he may

recover the sunny land of his forefathers by drinking it in with eager

eyes! What need is there of gleaming swords to seize what the eye shows

us?" He cares little for royalty.

"Strongholds crumble away, as may be seen on all these hills;

everything falls to ruin and is renewed. But on thy summits, unchanging

Nature, forever the thyme shall bloom, and the shepherds and

shepherdesses frolic on the grass at the return of spring."

The Prince apostrophizes the "empire of the sun," bordering like a

silver hem the dazzling Rhone, the "poetic empire of Provence, that with

its name alone doth charm the world," and he calls to mind the empire of

the Bosonides, the memory of which survives in the speech of the

boatmen; they call the east shore "empire," the west shore "kingdom."

The journey is full of episodes. The owner of the fleet, Apian, is a

sententious individual. He is devoted to his river life, full of

religious fervor, continually crossing himself or praying to Saint

Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors. This faith, however, is not

entire. If a man falls into the water, the fellows call to him,

"Recommend thyself to Saint Nicholas, but swim for dear life." As the

English expression has it, "Trust to God, but keep your powder dry."

Master Apian always says the Lord's Prayer aloud when he puts off from

shore, and solemnly utters the words, "In the name of God and the Holy

Virgin, to the Rhone!" His piety, however, does not prevent him from

interrupting his prayer to swear at the men most vigorously. Says he,

"Let whoever would learn to pray, follow the water," but his arguments

and experiences rather teach the vanity of prayer. He is full of

superstitious tales. He has views of life.

"Life is a journey like that of the bark. It has its bad, its good days.

The wise man, when the waves smile, ought to know how to behave; in the

breakers he must go slow. But man is born for toil, for navigation. He

who rows gets his pay at the end of the month. He who is afraid of

blistering his hands takes a dive into the abyss of poverty." He tells a

story of Napoleon in flight down the Rhone, of the women who cried out

at him, reviling him, bidding him give back their sons, shaking their

fists and crying out, "Into the Rhone with him." Once when he was

changing horses at an inn, a woman, bleeding a fowl at the door,

exclaimed: "Ha, the cursed monster! If I had him here, I'd plant my

knife into his throat like that!" The emperor, unknown to her, draws

near. "What did he do to you?" said he. "I had two sons," replied the

bereaved mother wrathfully, "two handsome boys, tall as towers. He

killed them for me in his battles."--"Their names will not perish in the

stars," said Napoleon sadly. "Why could I not fall like them? for they

died for their country on the field of glory."--"But who are you?"--"I

am the emperor."--"Ah!" The good woman fell upon her knees dismayed,

kissed his hands, begged his forgiveness, and all in tears--Here the

story is interrupted.

Wholly charming and altogether original is the tale of the little maiden

whom the boatmen name L'Anglore, and whom Jean Roche loves. The men have

named her so for fun. They knew her well, having seen her from earliest

childhood, half naked, paddling in the water along the shore, sunning

herself like the little lizard they call _anglore_. Now she had grown,

and eked out a poor living by seeking for gold in the sands brought down

by the Ardèche.

The little maid believed in the story of the Drac, a sort of merman,

that lived in the Rhone, and had power to fascinate the women who

ventured into the water. There was once a very widespread superstition

concerning this Protean creature; and the women washing in the river

often had a figure of the Drac, in the form of a lizard, carved upon the

piece of wood with which they beat the linen, as a sort of talisman

against his seduction. The mother of the Anglore had told her of his

wiles; and one story impressed her above all--the story of the young

woman who, fascinated by the Drac, lost her footing in the water and was

carried whirling down into the depths. At the end of seven years she

returned and told her tale. She had been seized by the Drac, and for

seven years he kept her to nurse his little Drac.

The Anglore was never afraid while seeking the specks of gold in the

sunlight. But at night it was different. A gem of poetry is the scene in

the sixth canto, full of witchery and charm, wherein the imagination of

the little maid, wandering out along the water in the mysterious

moonlight, causes her to fancy she sees the Drac in the form of a fair

youth smiling upon her, offering her a wild flower, uttering sweet,

mysterious words of love that die away in the water. She often came

again to meet him; and she noticed that if ever she crossed herself on

entering the water, as she had always done when a little girl, the Drac

would not appear. These three or four pages mark the genuine poet and

the master of language. The mysterious night, oppressively warm, the

moonlight shining on the little white figure, the deep silence, broken

only by the faint murmur of the river and the distant singing of a

nightingale, the gleam of the glowworms, compose a scene of fantastic

beauty. The slightest sounds startle her, whether it be a fish leaping

at the surface of the water to seize a fly, the gurgling of a little

eddy, or the shrill cry of a bat. There is a certain voluptuous beauty

in the very sound of the words that describe the little nymph, kissed by

the moonbeams:--

"alusentido

Pèr li rai de la luno que beisavon

Soun fin coutet, sa jouino car ambrenco,

Si bras poupin, sis esquino rabloto

E si pousseto armouniouso e fermo

Que s'amagavon coume dos tourtouro

Dins l'esparpai de sa cabeladuro."

The last three lines fall like a caress upon the ear. Mistral often

attains a perfect melody of words with the harmonious succession of

varied vowel sounds and the well-marked cadence of his verse.

When Apian's fleet comes down the river and passes the spot where the

little maid seeks for gold, the men see her and invite her on board. She

will go down to Beaucaire to sell her findings. Jean Roche offers

himself in marriage, but she will have none of him; she loves the vision

seen beneath the waves. When the Anglore spies the blond-haired Prince,

she turns pale and nearly swoons. "'Tis he, 'tis he!" she cries, and she

stands fascinated. William, charmed with the little maid, says to her,

"I recognize thee, O Rhone flower, blooming on the water--flower of good

omen that I saw in a dream." The little maid calls him Drac, identifies

the flower in his hand, and lives on in this hallucination. The boatmen

consider that she has lost her reason, and say she must have drunk of

the fountain of Tourne. The little maid hears them, and bids them speak

low, for their fate is written at the fountain of Tourne; and like a

Sibyl, raising her bare arm, she describes the mysterious carvings on

the rock, and the explanation given by a witch she knew. These carvings,

according to Mistral's note, were dedicated to the god Mithra. The

meaning given by the witch is that the day the Drac shall leave the

river Rhone forever, that day the boatmen shall perish. The men do not

laugh, for they have already heard of the great boats that can make

their way against the current without horses. Apian breaks out into

furious imprecations against the men who would ruin the thousands that

depend for their living upon the river. One is struck by this

introduction of a question of political economy into a poem.

During the journey to Avignon the Prince falls more and more in love

with the little Anglore, whom no sort of evidence can shake out of her

belief that the Prince is the Drac, for the Drac can assume any form at

pleasure. Her delusion is so complete, so naïve, that the prince,

romantic by nature, is entirely under the spell.

There come on board three Venetian women, who possess the secret of a

treasure, twelve golden statues of the Apostles buried at Avignon. The

Prince leaves the boat to help them find the place, and the little maid

suffers intensely the pangs of jealousy. But he comes back to her, and

takes her all about the great fair at Beaucaire. That night, however, he

wanders out alone, and while calling to mind the story of Aucassin and

Nicolette, he is sandbagged, but not killed. The Anglore believes he has

left his human body on the ground so as to visit his caverns beneath the

Rhone. William seems unhurt, and at the last dinner before they start to

go up the river again, surrounded by the crew, he makes them a truly

Felibrean speech:--

"Do you know, friends, to whom I feel like consecrating our last meal in

Beaucaire? To the patriots of the Rhodanian shores, to the dauntless men

who, in olden days, maintained themselves in the strong castle that

stands before our eyes, to the dwellers along the riverbanks who

defended so valiantly their customs, their free trade, and their great

free Rhone. If the sons of those forefathers who fell bravely in the

strife, to-day have forgotten their glory, well, so much the worse for

the sons! But you, my mates, you who have preserved the call, Empire!

and who, like the brave men you are, will soon go and defend the Rhone

in its very life, fighting your last battle with me, a stranger, but

enraptured and intoxicated with the light of your Rhone, come, raise

your glasses to the cause of the vanquished!"

The love scenes between the Prince and the Anglore continue during the

journey up the river. Her devotion to him is complete; she knows not

whither she goes, if to perish, then let it be with him. In a moment of

enthusiasm William makes a passionate declaration.

"Trust me, Anglore, since I have freely chosen thee, since thou hast

brought me thy deep faith in the beautiful wonders of the fable, since

thou art she who, without thought, yields to her love, as wax melts in

the sun, since thou livest free of all our bonds and shams, since in thy

blood, in thy pure bosom, lies the renewal of the old sap, I, on my

faith as a Prince, I swear to thee that none but me, O my Rhone flower,

shall have the happiness to pluck thee as a flower of love and as a

wife!"

But this promise is never kept. One day the boats meet the steamer

coming down the river. Apian, pale and silent, watches the magic bark

whose wheels beat like great paws, and, raising great waves, come down

steadily upon him.

The captain cries, "One side!" but, obstinate and angry, Apian tries to

force the steamer to give way. The result is disastrous. The steamer

catches in the towing cables and drags the horses into the water. The

boats drift back and are hurled against a bridge. William and the

Anglore are thrown into the river and are lost. All the others escape

with their lives. Jean Roche is not sure but that he was the Drac after

all, who, foreseeing the shipwreck, had thus followed the boats, to

carry the Anglore at last down into the depths of the river. Maître

Apian accepts his ruin philosophically. Addressing his men, he says:

"Ah, my seven boats! my splendid draught horses! All gone, all ruined!

It is the end of the business! Poor fellow-boatmen, you may well say,

'good-by to a pleasant life.' To-day the great Rhone has died, as far as

we are concerned."

The idea of the poem is, then, to tell of the old life on the Rhone.

To-day the river flows almost as in the days when its shores were untrod

by men. Rarely is any sort of boat seen upon its swift and dangerous

current. Mistral portrays the life he knew, and he has done it with

great power and vividness. The fanciful tale of the Prince and the

Anglore, suggested by the beliefs and superstitions of the humble folk,

was introduced, doubtless, as a necessary love story. The little maid

Anglore, half mad in her illusion, is none the less a very sympathetic

creation, and surely quite original. This tale, however, running through

the poem like a thread, is not the poem, nor does it fill

proportionately a large place therein. The poem is, as its title

proclaims, the Poem of the Rhone, a poem of sincere regret for the good

old days when the muscular sons of Condrieu ruled the stream, the days

of jollity, of the curious boating tournaments of which one is described

in _Calendau_, when the children used to watch the boats go by with a

Condrillot at the helm, and the Rhone was swarming like a mighty

beehive. The poet notes in sorrow that all is dead. The river flows on,

broad and silent, and no vestige of all its past activity remains, but

here and there a trace of the cables that used to rub along the stones.

As we said at the outset, what is most striking about this poem is its

realism. The poet revels in enumerating the good things the men had to

eat at the feast of Saint Nicholas; he describes with a wealth of

vocabulary and a flood of technical terms quite bewildering every sort

of boat, and all its parts with their uses; he reproduces the talk of

the boatmen, leaving unvarnished their ignorance and superstition,

their roughness and brutality; he describes their appearance, their

long hair and large earrings; he explains the manner of guiding the

boats down the swirling, treacherous waters, amid the dangers of shoals

and hidden rocks; he describes all the cargoes, not finding it beneath

the dignity of an epic poem to tell us of the kegs of foamy beer that is

destined for the thirsty throats of the drinkers at Beaucaire; as the

boats pass Condrieu, he reproduces the gossip of the boatmen's wives; he

does not omit the explanations of Apian addressed to the Prince

concerning fogs and currents; he is often humorous, telling us of the

heavy merchants who promenade their paunches whereon the watch-charms

rattle against their snug little money carried in a belt; he describes

the passengers, tells us their various trades and destinations, is even

cynical; tells of the bourgeois, who, once away from their wives, grow

suddenly lavish with their money, and like pigs let loose in the street,

take up the whole roadway; he does not shrink from letting us know that

the men chew a cud of tobacco while they talk; he mentions the price of

goods; he puts into the mouth of Jean Roche's mother a great many

practical and material considerations as to the matter of taking a

wife, and a very wise and practical old lady she is; he treats as

"joyeusetés" the conversation of the Venetian women who inform the

Prince that in their city the noblewoman, once married, may have quite a

number of lovers without exciting any comment, the husband being rather

relieved than otherwise; he allows his boatmen to swear and call one

another vile names, and a howling, brawling lot they frequently become;

and when at last we get to the fair at Beaucaire, there are pages of

minute enumerations that can scarcely be called Homeric. In short, a

very large part of the book is prose, animated, vigorous, often

exaggerated, but prose. Like his other long poems it is singularly

objective. Rarely does the author interrupt his narrative or description

to give an opinion, to speak in his own name, or to analyze the

situation he has created. Like the other poems, too, it is sprinkled

with tales and legends of all sorts, some of them charming.

Superstitions abound. Mistral shares the fondness of the Avignonnais for

the number seven. Apian has seven boats, the Drac keeps his victim seven

years, the woman of Condrieu has seven sons.

The poem offers the same beauties as the others, an astonishing power of

description first of all. Mistral is always masterly, always poetic in

depicting the landscape and the life that moves thereon, and especially

in evoking the life of the past. He revives for us the princesses and

queens, the knights and troubadours, and they move before us, a

fascinating, glittering pageant. The perfume of flowers, the sunlight on

the water, the great birds flying in the air, the silent drifting of the

boats in the broad valley, the reflection of the tall poplars in the

water, the old ruins that crown the hilltops--all these things are

exquisitely woven into the verse, and more than a mere word-painting

they create a mood in the reader in unison with the mood of the person

of whom he is reading.

In touching truly deep and serious things Mistral is often superficial,

and passes them off with a commonplace. An instance in this poem is the

episode of the convicts on their way to the galleys at Toulon. No

terrible indignation, no heartfelt pity, is expressed. Apian silences

one of his crew who attempts to mock at the unhappy wretches. "They are

miserable enough without an insult! and do not seem to recognize them,

for, branded on the shoulder, they seek the shade. Let this be an

example to you all. They are going to eat beans at Toulon, poor fellows!

All sorts of men are there,--churchmen, rascals, nobles, notaries, even

some who are innocent!"

And the poet concludes, "Thus the world, thus the agitation, the stir of

life, good, evil, pleasure, pain, pass along swiftly, confusedly,

between day and night, on the river of time, rolling along and fleeing."

The enthusiasm of the poet leads him into exaggeration whenever he comes

to a wonder of Provence. Things are relative in this world, and the same

words carry different meanings. Avignon is scarcely a colossal pile of

towers, and would not remind many of Venice, even at sunset, and we must

make a discount when we hear that the boats are _engulfed_ in the

_fierce_ (_sic_) arch of the _colossal_ bridge of stone that Benezet,

the shepherd, erected seven hundred years ago. A moment later he refers

daintily and accurately to the chapel of Saint Nicholas "riding on the

bridge, slender and pretty." The epithets sound larger, too, in

Provençal; the view of Avignon is "espetaclouso," the walls of the

castle are "gigantesco."

Especially admirable in its sober, energetic expression is the account

of the _Remonte_, in the eleventh canto, wherein we see the eighty

horses, grouped in fours, tug slowly up the river.

"The long file on the rough-paved path, dragging the weighty train of

boats, in spite of the impetuous waters, trudges steadily along. And

beneath the lofty branches of the great white poplars, in the stillness

of the Rhone valley, in the splendor of the rising sun, walking beside

the straining horses that drive a mist from their nostrils, the first

driver says the prayer."

With each succeeding poem the vocabulary of Mistral seems to grow, along

with the boldness of expression. All his poems he has himself translated

into French, and these translations are remarkable in more than one

respect. That of the _Poem of the Rhone_ is especially full of rare

French words, and it cannot be imputed to the leader of the Provençal

poets that he is not past master of the French vocabulary. Often his

French expression is as strange as the original. Not many French

writers would express themselves as he does in the following:--

"Et il tressaille de jumeler le nonchaloir de sa jeunesse au renouveau

de la belle ingénue."

In this translation, also, more than in the preceding, there is

occasionally an affectation of archaism, which rather adds to than

detracts from the poetic effect of his prose, and the number of lines in

the prose translation that are really ten-syllable verses is quite

remarkable. On one page (page 183 of the third edition, Lemerre) more

than half the lines are verses.

Is the _Poem of the Rhone_ a great poem? Whether it is or not, it

accomplishes admirably the purpose of its author, to fix in beautiful

verse the former life of the Rhone. That much of it is prosaic was

inevitable; the nature of the subject rendered it so. It is full of

beauties, and the poet who wrote _Mirèio_ and completed it before his

thirtieth year, has shown that in the last decade of his threescore

years and ten he could produce a work as full of fire, energy, life, and

enthusiasm as in the stirring days when the Félibrige was young. In this

poem there occurs a passage put into the mouth of the Prince, which

gives a view of life that we suspect is the poet's own. He here calls

the Prince a young sage, and as we look back over Mistral's life, and

review its aims, and the conditions in which he has striven, we incline

to think that here, in a few words, he has condensed his thought.

"For what is life but a dream, a distant appearance, an illusion gliding

on the water, which, fleeing ever before our eyes, dazzles us like a

mirror flashing, entices and lures us on! Ah, how good it is to sail on

ceaselessly toward one's desire, even though it is but a dream! The time

will come, it is near, perhaps, when men will have everything within

their reach, when they will possess everything, when they will know and

have proved everything; and, regretting the old mirages, who knows but

what they will not grow weary of living!"

CHAPTER II

LIS ISCLO D'OR

The lover of poetry will probably find more to admire and cherish in

this volume than in any other that has come from the pen of its author,

excepting, possibly, the best passages of _Mirèio_. It is the collection

of his short poems that appeared from time to time in different

Provençal publications, the earliest dating as far back as 1848, the

latest written in 1888. They are a very complete expression of his

poetic ideas, and contain among their number gems of purest poesy. The

poet's lyre has not many strings, and the strains of sadness, of pensive

melancholy, are almost absent. Mistral has once, and very successfully,

tried the theme of Lainartine's _Lac_, of Musset's _Souvenir_, of Hugo's

_Tristesse d'Olympio_; but his poem is not an elegy, it has not the

intensity, the passion, the deep undertone of any of the three great

Romanticists. _La Fin dóu Meissounié_ is a beautiful, pathetic, and

touching tale, that easily brings a tear, and _Lou Saume de la

Penitènci_ is without doubt one of the noblest poems inspired in the

heart of any Frenchman by the disaster of 1870. But these poems, though

among the best according to the feeling for poetry of a reader from

northern lands, are not characteristic of the volume in general. The

dominant strain is energy, a clarion-call of life and light, an appeal

to his fellow-countrymen to be strong and independent; the sun of

Provence, the language of Provence, the ideals of Provence, the memories

of Provence, these are his themes. His poetry is not personal, but

social. Of his own joys and sorrows scarce a word, unless we say what is

doubtless the truth, that his joys and sorrows, his regrets and hopes,

are identical with those of his native land, and that he has blended his

being completely with the life about him. The volume contains a great

number of pieces written for special occasions, for the gatherings of

the Félibres, for their weddings. Many of them are addressed to persons

in France and out, who have been in various ways connected with the

Félibrige. Of these the greeting to Lamartine is especially felicitous

in expression, and the following stanza from it forms the dedication of

_Mirèio_:--

"Te counsacre Mirèio: eo moun cor e moun amo,

Es la flour de mis an;

Es un rasin de Crau qu' emé touto sa ramo

Te porge un païsan."

The entire poem, literally translated, is as follows:--

If I have the good fortune to see my bark early upon the waves,

Without fear of winter,

Blessings upon thee, O divine Lamartine,

Who hast taken the helm!

If my prow bears a bouquet of blooming laurel,

It is thou hast made it for me;

If my sail swelleth, it is the breath of thy glory

That bloweth it.

Therefore, like a pilot who of a fair church

Climbeth the hill

And upon the altar of the saint that hath saved him at sea

Hangeth a miniature ship.

I consecrate Mirèio to thee; 'tis my heart and my soul,

'Tis the flower of my years;

'Tis a cluster of grapes from the Crau that with all its leaves

A peasant offers thee.

Generous as a king, when thou broughtest me fame

In the midst of Paris,

Thou knowest that, in thy home, the day thou saidst to me,

"Tu Marcellus eris!"

Like the pomegranate in the ripening sunbeam,

My heart opened,

And, unable to find more tender speech,

Broke out in tears.

It is interesting to notice that the earliest poem of our author, _La

Bella d'Avoust_, is a tale of the supernatural, a poem of mystery; it is

an order of poetic inspiration rather rare in his work, and this first

poem is quite as good as anything of its kind to be found in _Mirèio_ or

_Nerto_. It has the form of a song with the refrain:--

Ye little nightingales, ye grasshoppers, be still!

Hear the song of the beauty of August!

Margaï of Val-Mairane, intoxicated with love, goes down into the plain

two hours before the day. Descending the hill, she is wild. "In vain,"

she says, "I seek him, I have missed him. Ah, my heart trembles."

The poem is full of imagery, delicate and pretty. Margaï is so lovely

that in the clouds the moon, enshrouded, says to the cloud very softly,

"Cloud, beautiful cloud, pass away, my face would let fall a ray on

Margaï, thy shadow hinders me." And the bird offers to console her, and

the glow-worm offers his light to guide her to her lover. Margaï comes

and goes until she meets her lover in the shadow of the trees. She tells

of her weeping, of the moon, the birdling, and the glow-worm. "But thy

brow is dark, art thou ill? Shall I return to my father's house?"