Last Sunday, I thought I had woken up in Montmartre. It was raining,
the sky was grey, and the windmill was a miserable place to be. I
dreaded staying in on such a cold, rainy day, and I felt the urge to go
and cheer myself up in the company of Frédéric Mistral, the great poet
who lives a few kilometres from my precious pines, in the small village
of Maillane.
No sooner said than gone; my myrtle walking stick, my book of
Montaigne, a blanket, and off I went!
The fields were deserted.... Our beautiful catholic Provence gives the
very earth itself a day of rest on Sundays.... The dogs are abandoned
in the houses, and the farms are closed.... Here and there, was a
carter's wagon with its dripping tarpaulin, an old hooded woman in a
mantle like a dead leaf, mules dressed up for a gala, covered in blue
and white esparto, red pompoms, and silver bells, jogging along with a
cart-load of folks from the farm going to mass. Further on, there was a
small boat on the irrigation canal with a fisherman casting his net
from it....
There was no possibility of reading as I walked. The rain came down in
bucketsful, which the tramontana then obligingly threw in your face....
I walked non-stop and after three hours I reached the small cypress
woods which surround the district of Maillane and shelter it from the
frightful wind.
Nothing was stirring in the village streets; everybody was at high
mass. As I passed in front of the church, I heard a serpent playing,
and I saw candles shining through the stained glass windows. The poet's
home is on the far side of the village; it's the last house on the
left, on the road to Saint-Remy--it's a small single-storey house with
a front garden.... I went in quietly ... and saw no one. The dining
room door was shut, but I could hear someone walking about and speaking
loudly behind it ... a voice and a step that I knew only too well....
I paused in the whitewashed corridor, with my hand on the doorknob, and
feeling very emotional. My heart was thumping.--He's in. He's working.
Should I wait. Wait till he's finished.... What the hell. It can't be
helped. I went in.
* * * * *
Well, Parisians, when the Maillane poet came over to show Paris his
book, _Mireille_, and you saw him in your salons; this noble savage,
but in town clothes, with a wing collar and top hat, which disturbed
him and much as his reputation. Do you think that was Mistral? It
wasn't.
There's only one real Mistral in the world, and that's the one that I
surprised last Sunday in his village, with his felt beret, no
waistcoat, a jacket, a red Catalonian sash round his waist, and
fiery-eyed, with the flush of inspiration in his cheeks. He was superb,
with a great smile, as elegant as a Greek shepherd, bestriding the room
manfully, hands in pockets, and making poetry on the hoof....
--Well, well, well! It's you, Daudet? Mistral exclaimed, throwing
himself around my neck, delighted that you thought to come!...
Especially the day of the Maillane Fête. We've got music from Avignon,
bulls, processions, and the farandole; it will be magnificent.... When
mother comes back from the mass, we'll have lunch, and then, hey, we
shall go to see the pretty girls dancing....
As he was speaking, I was rather moved as I looked around at the little
dining room with light wallpaper, which I hadn't seen for such a long
time and where I had spent such happy hours. Nothing had changed. There
was still the yellow check sofa, the two wicker armchairs, Venus de
Milo and Venus d'Arles on the fireplace, a portrait of the poet by
Hébert, a photograph by Etienne Garjat, and his desk in a place close
to the window--a small office desk--overloaded with old books and
dictionaries. In the middle of the desk I noticed a large, open
exercise book.... On it was written the original of his new poem,
_Calendal_, which should be published on Christmas day this year.
Frédéric Mistral has worked on this poem for seven years, and it is six
months since he wrote the last verse, but he won't release it yet. You
see, there is always another stanza to polish and another even more
sonorous rhyme to find.... Even if Mistral writes his verses in true
Provencal, he works as though everybody will read it and acknowledge
his craftsmanship....
Ah, the brave poet. Montaigne must have had someone like Mistral in
mind when he wrote, _Think of those, who, when asked what is the point
of spending so much time and trouble on a work of art that can only be
seen by a few people, replied, "A few is enough. One is enough. None is
enough."_
* * * * *
The very exercise book in which _Calendal_ had been written, was in my
hands, and I leafed through it, with great emotion.... At that moment,
fifes and tambourines began playing outside the window, and there was
my hero, Mistral, rushing to the cupboard, fetching out glasses and
bottles, and dragging the table to centre of the room, before opening
the door to the musicians and confiding to me:
--Don't laugh.... They have come to give me a little concert.... I am a
Municipal Councillor.
The little room filled up with people. Tambourines were put on chairs,
the old banner placed in a corner, and the sweet wine passed round.
After several bottles had been downed, to Monsieur Frédéric's health,
the fête was seriously discussed, concerning such matters as whether
the farandole was as good as last year, and if the bulls had played
their part well. Then the musicians moved off to play concerts to other
Councillors. Just then, Mistral's mother entered.
With a flick of her wrists, she laid the table with beautiful, white
linen. But only for two. I was familiar with her household routine; I
knew that when Mistral had company, his mother wouldn't sit down at the
table.... The old dear only knows Provencal and would feel very uneasy
trying to talk to French people.... Also, she was needed in the kitchen.
Goodness! I had a great meal that day--a piece of roast goat, some
mountain cheese, jam, figs, and Muscat grapes. Everything washed down
with a good _Chateauneuf du Pape_, which has such a wonderful red
colour in the glass....
After the meal, I fetched the exercise book and put it on the table in
front of Mistral.
--We'd said we'd go out, said the poet, smiling.
--Oh, no. _Calendal! Calendal!_
Mistral resigned himself to his fate and in his sweet musical voice,
while beating the rhythm with his hand, he began the first canto:
Of a maid who fell in love and madly,
And a tale I told that turned out sadly,
Now of a child of Cassis,
If God's will it may be,
As a poor little boy casts out for anchovy...
Outside, the vesper bells ring, the fireworks explode in the square,
and the fifes play marching up and down the streets with the
tambourines. The bulls from the Camargue bellow as they are herded
along.
But I was listening to the story of the little fisherman from Provence,
with my elbows on the table cloth, and my eyes filling with tears.
* * * * *
Calendal wasn't just a fisherman; love had forged him into an heroic
figure.... To win the heart of his beloved--the beautiful Estérelle--he
took on Herculean tasks, in fact, those twelve famous labours paled by
comparison to his.
One time, having it in mind to get rich, he invented some ingenious
fishing devices to bring all the fish of the sea into port. Then there
was this terrible bandit, count Sévéran, who was going to re-launch his
evil trade amongst his cut-throats and molls....
What a tough guy our little Calendal turns out to be! One day, at
Sainte-Baume, he came across two gangs of men intent on violently
settling their hash on the grave of Master Jacques, a Provencal who did
the carpentry in the Temple of Solomon, if you please. Calendal threw
himself into the heart of the murderous mayhem, and calmed the men and
talked them down....
These were superhuman efforts!... High up in the rocks of Lure, there
was an inaccessible cedar forest, where even lumberjacks wouldn't go.
Calendal, though, does go up there, all alone, and sets up camp for
thirty days. The sound of his axe burying its head into tree trunks is
heard the whole time. The forest screams its protest, but, one by one,
the giant old trees fall and roll into the abyss, until, by the time
Calendal comes down, there isn't a single cedar left on the mountain....
At last, in reward for so many exploits, the anchovy fisherman won the
love of Estérelle and was made Consul of Cassis by its inhabitants.
That's it then, the story of Calendal.... But why all this fuss about
Calendal? The star of the poem is Provence itself--the Provence of the
sea; the Provence of the mountains--with its history, its ways, its
legends, its scenery, indeed a whole people, free and true to
themselves, who have found their poetic voice, before they die....
Nowadays, follow the roads, the railways, the telegraph poles, hunt
down the language in the schools! Provence will live for ever in
_Mireille_ and _Calendal_.
* * * * *
--That's enough poetry! said Mistral closing his notebook. To the fair!
We went out; the whole village was in the streets, as a great gust of
wind cleared the sky, which radiantly lit up the red roofs, still wet
with rain. We arrived in time to see the procession on its way back. It
took a whole hour to go past. There was an endless line of hooded,
white, blue, and grey penitents, sisterhoods of young, veiled girls;
and gold flowered, pink banners, great faded, wooden saints carried
shoulder high by four men. There was pottery saints coloured like idols
with big bouquets in their hands, copes, monstrances, green velvet
canopies, crucifixes framed in white silk; and everything waving in the
wind, in the candle light and the sunlight, amongst the Psalms, the
litanies, with the bells ringing a full peal.
Once the procession was over and the saints put back into their
chapels, we went to see the bulls and then went on the open air games.
There were men wrestling, the hop, skip and jump, and games of strangle
the cat, and pig in the middle, and all the rest of the fun events of
the Provencal fairs.... Night was falling by the time we got back to
Maillane.
A huge bonfire had been lit in the square, in front of the café where
Mistral and his friend Zidore were having a party that night... The
farandole started up. Paper cut-out lanterns lit up everywhere in the
shadows; the young people took their places; and soon, after a trill on
the tambourines, a wild, boisterous, round dance started up around the
fire. It was a dance that would last all through the night.
* * * * *
After supper, and too tired to keep going, we went into Mistral's
modest peasant's bedroom, with two double beds. The walls are bare, and
the ceiling beams are visible.... Four years ago, after the academy had
given the author of _Mireille_ a prize worth three thousand francs,
Madame Mistral had an idea:
--Why don't we wallpaper your bedroom and put a ceiling in? she said to
her son.
--Oh, no! replied Mistral.... That's poet's money that is, and not to
be touched.
And so the bedroom stayed strictly bare; but as long as the poet's
money lasted, anyone needy, knocking on Mistral's door, has always
found his purse open....
I had brought the notebook with _Calendal_ into the bedroom to read to
myself a passage of it before going to sleep. Mistral chose the episode
about the pottery. Here it is, in brief:
It is during a meal, somewhere or another. A magnificent Moustier's
crockery service is brought out and placed onto the table. At the
bottom of every plate, there is a Provencal scene, painted in blue on
the enamel. The whole history of the land is represented on them. Each
plate of this beautiful crockery has its own verse and the love in
those descriptions just has to be seen. There are just so many simple
but clever little poems, done with all the charm of the rural idylls of
Theocritus.
Whilst Mistral spoke his verses in this beautiful Provencal tongue,
more than three quarters Latin, and once spoken by queens, and now only
understood by shepherds, I was admiring this man, and considering the
ruinous state in which he found his mother tongue and what he had done
with it. I was also imagining one of those old palaces of the Princes
of Baux which can be seen in the Alpilles: there were no more roofs, no
stepped balustrades, no glass in the windows; the trefoils broken in
the ribbed vaults, and the coats of arms on the doors were eaten away
and covered in moss. Chickens were scratching around in the main
courtyard, pigs were wallowing under the fine columned galleries, an
ass was grazing in the chapel overgrown with grass, and pigeons were
drinking from the huge rain-water filled fonts. Finally, amongst the
rubble, two or three peasant families had built huts for themselves
against the walls of the old palace.
Then, one fine day, the son of one the peasants, develops a great
passion for the grand ruins and is indignant to see them thus profaned.
Quickly, he chases the livestock out of the courtyard and the muses
come to help. He rebuilds the great staircase on his own, replaces the
wood panelling on the walls, the glass in the windows, rebuilds the
towers, re-gilds the throne room, and puts the one-time immense palace,
where Popes and Emperors stayed, back on its pediments.
This restored palace: the Provencal language.
The peasant's son: Mistral.