"And with heart and hand did the angels applaud,--a tremor of joy shot
through the stars of heaven,--and, unfolding his pinions, with the
rapidity of lightning the angel descended. The road-side smiled with
flowers, as he passed,--and mothers trembled for joy; for infant-asylums
arose wherever the child-angel trod."
One of the first to respond to the call of Roumanille for the
composition of the selection "Li Prouvençalo" was Th. Aubanel, also of
Avignon. The "Segaire" (Mowers) and "Lou 9 Thermidor" made it plain,
that, of the thirty names, that of the young printer would soon take a
prominent place among the revivers of Southern letters. And now, eight
years later, the promise of M. René Taillandier, in his introduction to
the selection, has become reality.
"La Miougrano Entreduberto" (The Opened Pomegranate) is printed with an
accompanying French translation. Mistral, the brother-poet and friend of
the author, thus announces the poems:--
"The pomegranate is of its nature wilder than other trees. It loves to
grow in pebbly elevations (_clapeirolo_) in the full sun-rays, far from
man and nearer to God. There alone, in the scorching summer-beams, it
expands in secret its blood-red flowers. Love and the sun fecundate
its bloom. In the crimson chalices thousands of coral-grains germ
spontaneously, like a thousand fair sisters all under the same roof.
"The swollen pomegranate holds imprisoned as long as it can the roseate
seeds, the thousand blushing sisters. But the birds of the moor speak to
the solitary tree, saying,--'What wilt thou do with the seeds? Even now
comes the autumn, even now comes the winter, that chases us beyond the
hills, beyond the seas.....And shall it be said, O wild pomegranate,
that we have left Provence without seeing thy beautiful coral-grains,
without having a glimpse of thy thousand virgin daughters?'
"Then, to satisfy the envious birdlings of the moor, the pomegranate
slowly half-opens its fruit; the thousand vermeil seeds glitter in the
sun; the thousand timorous sisters with rosy cheeks peep through the
arched window: and the roguish birds come in flocks and feast at ease on
the beautiful coral-grains; the roguish lovers devour with kisses the
fair blushing sisters.
"Aubanel--and you will say as I do, when you have read his book--is a
wild pomegranate-tree. The Provençal public, whom his first poems had
pleased so much, was beginning to say,--'But what is our Aubanel doing,
that we no longer hear him sing?'"
Then follows an exposition of the hopeless passion of the poet,--how he
took for motto,
"Quau canto,
Soun mau encanto."
Hence the three books of poems now before us,--"The Book of Love,"
"Twilight," and "The Book of Death." "The Book of Love," "a thing
excessively rare," as we are told in the Preface, "but this one written
in good faith," opens with a couplet that is a key to the whole
volume:--
"I am sick at heart,
And _will_ not be cured."