_Mistral_
I started early on Monday morning to walk to Saint-Remy. It was fine
and sunny again, but there was a touch of the _mistral_. The road
winds up through the limestone crags to a _col_ from which there is a
view even more magnificent than that from Les Baux to the south. The
undulating plain, all silver and delicate green and indigo and deep
purple, stretches away on either hand, and very far away rise the snow
peaks of the Pyrenees, like mountains in a dream. The Rhône and the
Durance are at about equal distances to the right and left, the Durance
flowing on one side of the Alpilles to join her sister at Avignon, and
both these together passing the other side on their way to the sea.
Beyond Avignon are the heights of the Cevennes and the Basses-Alpes to
close in the picture, of which the foreground is the very heart of the
rich and picturesque Provençal country.
The life of the soil, as it existed for hundreds of years, and exists
still though shorn of some of its character since the days of steam,
has been immortalized by Mistral, who was born in the village of
Maillane a few miles off the road I was taking that day, spent all
his life there, and was to die two days later. All its sweet charm
is summed up in the great epic of "Mirèio," or "Mireille" published
when he was twenty-five and instantly hailed by no less a critic
than Lamartine as a work of genius. I had been reading it at Les
Baux, in a version in which a French rendering--prepared, I am told,
by Mistral himself--is printed parallel to the Provençal. It was
possible to get an idea of the swing and mastery of the original verse.
With some knowledge of Latin and French, with a few simple rules of
pronunciation, which were given in the Introduction, and with the ear
attuned somewhat to the sounds--for I had constantly heard Provençal
spoken--I could take a stanza here and there and make it out. But one
was carried along by the translation, even though it was in prose, and
I could not put it down until I had finished its twelve books.
The story is of the innocent burning loves of a youth, the son of a
wandering basket-maker, and of a young girl, the daughter of a rich
farmer. The earliest books are full of simple and beautiful feeling for
the common episodes of country life, as they unrolled themselves before
the poet's own eyes at the time he was writing of them. We see the
basket-maker and his son joining the master of the farm, his family,
and his numerous dependents, at their meal on the long stone table
under the vine-trellis in front of the house, and hear the stories they
tell; we see the girls picking the mulberry leaves from the trees, and
winding the silk from the cocoons, their hands and tongues alike busy;
and hear wise talk of seasons and crops, and of all the active pastoral
and agricultural life of the country.
There come three rich suitors for the hand of the fair Mireille; a man
of mighty flocks, who brings his sheep and goats down from the high
Alps to winter on the Crau; the owner of troops of horses running wild
on the windy marshes of the Camarque; and the strong tamer of bulls,
tales of whose strength and prowess ring through the country, who
fights a Homeric battle with the young lover, is defeated by him, but
by a stroke of malevolent cunning leaves him for dead before he goes to
his own death in the flooded river.
The after scenes have immortalized the Grotto des Fées in the Val
d'Enfer of Les Baux, and the pilgrimage church of Saintes-Maries, in
which Mireille dies, after hearing from the saints themselves the story
of their miraculous voyage and their landing in Provence. All the
scenes of the poem are laid within a few miles of Mistral's home, and
neither in this poem nor in any other has he drawn inspiration except
from the life and legends of his own Provence.
[Illustration: MISTRAL'S BIRTHPLACE, MAS DU JUGE]
[Illustration: FRESCO IN THE PALACE OF THE POPES AT AVIGNON
_Page 203_]
He has told the story of his own life in a charming book. His father
was of the old peasant aristocracy of the country of Arles, and married
his second wife, Mistral's mother, when he was already fifty-five.
"One year, on St. John's day, the master, François Mistral, was in his
cornfields, which the harvesters were cutting with their sickles. A
crowd of women followed the reapers to pick up the grain which escaped
the rake. Soon my father noticed a pretty girl who hung behind them
as if she were afraid to glean like the others. He approached her and
said:
"'Where do you come from, little one? What is your name?'
"'I am the daughter of Etienne Poulinet, Mayor of Maillane,' she
replied. 'My name is Délaïde.'
"'What!' said my father, 'the daughter of Poulinet, Mayor of Maillane,
coming out to glean!'
"'Master,' she replied, 'we are a large family, six girls and two
boys, and our father, although he is fairly well-off, when we ask him
for pin-money, says, "My dears, if you want money to make yourselves
smart go and earn it." So that is why I have come to glean.'
"Six months after this meeting, which reminds one of the old story
of Ruth and Boaz the gallant yeoman asked Master Poulinet for his
daughter, and I was born of this marriage.
"Well, then, my arrival in the world having taken place on September
8, 1830, in the afternoon, the happy mother sent for my father, who
was at that time, as usual, in his fields.
"As soon as the running messenger came within hearing, he called out:
'Come, master, for the mistress has just been delivered.'
"'How many?' asked my father.
"'One--a fine boy.'
"'A son! May the bon Dieu make him strong and wise!'
"And without more, as if nothing had happened, the good man finished
his work and returned deliberately to the farm. This showed no lack
of tenderness, but, brought up, and indoctrinated, like the old
Provençals, in the Roman tradition, his manner showed the surface
roughness of the ancient _pater familias_."[11]
The child narrowly escaped being christened Nostradamus, but was called
Frédéric instead, in memory of a poor little urchin who had carried
love-letters between Mistral's parents during their courtship and had
died shortly afterwards.
His childhood was spent in soaking in the details of the large simple
life in and about his home, and all the lore of the past that was
stored up by the country people. He went to the University of Avignon,
and to Aix to study law, and there gradually formed in him the purpose
to devote his life to the literary revival of the national tongue,
which had sunk from its proud estate as a language of high poetry
to little more than a peasant dialect. He was not alone in his love
for it. Other names were honoured throughout Provence of the joyous,
high-mettled band that formed themselves into a society to advance
their object, and made such an immense pleasure of their lives as they
worked towards their end. There were sweet singers among them--Aubanel,
Roumanille, Félix Gras, and others--although none whose names will live
as Mistral's will; for he long outlived them all, and his fame has
spread everywhere. They called themselves the "Félibres," and their
movement the "Félibrige," using a word that Mistral had found in an
old legend to designate the seven Doctors of the Law with whom Christ
disputed in the Temple; and no one who has visited Provence needs
telling how much alive the movement is. Besides his poems, and some
charming stories, Mistral has produced an exhaustive Dictionary of the
Provençal language, and if his fame had not been established half a
century ago on the publication of "Mireille," his museum at Arles, in
which he sought to gather up all the story of Provençal life, so that
what has passed or is passing away should never be forgotten, would
keep his memory green. It is a noble gift in itself, this museum housed
in one of the ancient buildings of Arles. In 1906 Mistral was awarded
the Nobel Prize for literature, and dedicated it to this purpose. He
wanted nothing for himself that money could buy. For eighty-four years
he lived among his own people the common life of the land, and came to
be supremely honoured by them all. They called him the Emperor of the
South; there was no one whose name carried more weight.
For the gift that he brought to his people, his grand old father
of whom he draws such a delightful portrait in his Memoirs, must
be accorded some of the thanks. As in the case of Ruskin and of
Browning, a parent who had no connection with literature himself
fostered the early studies of the son and left him to follow his bent,
while relieving him of the necessities which often smother talent,
though never perhaps genius. But then Mistral's father was himself an
inspiration to the work his son set himself to do when he returned to
the large liberty of his home.
"The Judge's farm was at this time a true home of pure poetry,
biblical and idyllic. Did it not live and sing around me, this poem
of Provence with its blue depths framed by the Alpilles? One had only
to go out to be dazzled by it. Did I not see Mireille passing, not
only in my young dreams, but even in person, sometimes in one of those
pretty young girls of Maillane, who came to pick mulberry leaves for
their silkworms, sometimes in the grace of those who came and went
with bare throats and white coifs among the corn and the hay, in the
olive-gardens and among the vines?
"Did not the actors in my drama, the labourers, harvesters, herdsmen
and shepherds, come and go before my eyes from dawn till dusk? Could
you have a finer old man, more patriarchal, more worthy to be the
prototype of my Master Ramon, than old François Mistral, whom no one,
not even my mother, ever called anything but the Master? My poor
father--sometimes when the work was pressing and he wanted help, either
to get in the hay or to draw up the water from the well, he would call
out: 'Where is Frédéric?' Although at that moment I might be stretched
under a willow idly pursuing some fugitive rhyme, my dear mother would
reply: 'He is writing.' And immediately the rough voice of the good
man would soften as he said: 'Don't disturb him.' For to him, who had
never read anything in his youth but the Bible and Don Quixote, writing
was almost a holy office."
As a young man Mistral's father had been requisitioned to carry corn
to Paris during the Reign of Terror, and was struck with horror at the
execution of the king.[12]
* * * * *
"He was profoundly religious. Every evening, summer as well as winter,
kneeling at his chair, head uncovered, hands to his forehead, with his
hair in a queue tied by a silk ribbon, he would pray for us aloud; and
when the evenings lengthened in the autumn he would read the Gospels to
his children and his servants....
"Although he would pick up a fagot on the road and carry it home;
although he would content himself for his ordinary fare with vegetables
and brown bread; although, in the midst of plenty, he was always
abstemious, and would mix water with his wine, yet his table was always
open, as well as his hand and his purse, to any poor wayfarer. Then, if
there was talk of any one, he would ask first: 'Is he a good worker?'
and if the answer was, yes, he would say: 'Ah, he's a good man; I'm his
friend.'"[13]
This charming book of Mistral's and his poems, give more of flavour of
Provence than anything I have read, and the link between our times and
his was not even snapped by his death on the day I walked through the
country that he more particularly wrote of.
He was never for long away from Provence during the eighty-four years
of life, but was much lionized when he did venture as far as Paris. I
very much wish that I had seen him, for his personality counted for a
great deal in the movement he spent his life in fostering, and he was
the last survivor of the original Félibres. It now remains to be seen
whether the revival will continue of itself. I have heard it compared
with other national revivals, fostered by intellectuals, but taking
no great hold of the people, and prophecies of its decay. But I think
it has life in it. Mistral would certainly not have called himself an
intellectual, and he never behaved like one. He was one of the people
himself, and they are fortunate to have found such an interpreter.