“MIREILLE”
The following year (1856), at the time of the fête of Sainte-Agathe,
patroness of Maillane, I received a visit from a well-known poet in
Paris. Fate, or rather the good star of the Félibres, brought him just
in the propitious hour. It was Adolphe Dumas--a fine figure of a man
some fifty years old, of an æsthetic pallor, with long hair turning grey
and a brown moustache like a lap-dog. His black eyes were full of fire,
and he had a habit of accompanying his ringing voice with a fine waving
gesture of the hand. He was tall, but lame, dragging a crippled leg as
he walked. He reminded one of a cypress of Provence agitated by the
wind.
“Is it you, then, Monsieur Mistral, who write verses in the Provençal?”
he began to me in a joking tone as he held out his hand.
“Yes, it is I,” I replied. “At your service, Monsieur.”
“Certainly, I hope that you can serve me. The Minister for Public
Instruction, Monsieur Fortoul, of Digne, has given me the commission to
come and collect the popular songs of Provence, such as ‘Le Mousse de
Marseille,’ ‘La Belle Margoton,’ ‘Les Noces du Papillon,’ and if you
know of any, I am here to collect them.”
And talking over this matter I sang to him, as it happened, the serenade
of Magali, freshly arranged for the poem of _Mireille_.
Adolphe Dumas started up all alert.
“But where did you find that pearl?” he cried.
“It is part,” I answered, “of a Provençal poem in twelve cantos to which
I am just giving the finishing touches.”
“Oh, these good Provencaux!” he laughed. “You are always the same,
determined to keep your tattered language, like the donkeys who will
walk along the borders of the roads to graze upon thistles. It is in
French, my dear friend, it is in the language of Paris that we must sing
of our Provence to-day if we wish to be heard. Now, listen to this:
“J’ai revu sur mon roc, vieille, nue, appauvrie,
La maison des parents, la première patrie,
L’ombre du vieux mûrier, le banc de pierre étroit,
Le nid de l’hirondelle avait au bord du toit,
Et la treille, à présent sur les murs égarée,
Qui regrette son maître et retombe éplorée;
Et dans l’herbe et l’oubli qui poussent sur le seuil,
J’ai fait pieusement agenouiller l’orgueil,
J’ai rouvert la fenêtre où me vint la lumière,
Et j’ai rempli de chants la couche de ma mère!”
“But come, tell me, since poem there is, tell me something of your
Provençal production.”
I then read him something out of _Mireille_, I forget what.
“Ah! if you are going to talk like that,” said Dumas after my
recitation, “I take off my hat and greet the source of a new poetry, of
an indigenous poetry hitherto unknown. It teaches me, who have left
Provence for thirty years, and who thought her language dead, that
behind this dialect used by the common people, the half-_bourgeois_ and
the half-ladies, there exists a second language, that of Dante and
Petrarch. But take care to follow their methods, which did not consist,
as some think, in using the language as they found it, or in making a
mixture of the dialects of Florence, Bologna and Milan. They collected
the oil and then constructed a language which they made perfect while
generalising it. All who preceded the Latin writers of the great time of
Augustus, with the exception of Terence, were but trash. Of the popular
tongue, use only a few white straws with the grain that may be there. I
feel certain that you have the requisite sap running in your youthful
veins to ensure success. Already I begin to see the possibility of the
rebirth of a language founded upon Latin, which shall be beautiful and
sonorous as the best Italian.”
* * * * *
The story of Adolphe Dumas was like a fairy-tale. Born of the people,
his parents kept a little inn between Orgon and Cabane. Dumas had a
sister named Laura, beautiful as the day and innocent as a spring of
fresh water. One day, lo and behold, some strolling players passed
through the village, and gave in the evening a performance at the little
inn. One of them played the part of a prince. The gold tinsel of his
costume glittering beneath the big lanterns gave him, in the eyes of
poor little Laura, the appearance of a king’s son. Innocent, alas! as
many a one before, Laura allowed herself, so the story goes, to be
beguiled and carried off by this prince of the open road. She travelled
with the company and embarked at Marseilles. Too soon she learnt her mad
mistake, and not daring to return home, in desperation she took the
coach for Paris, where she arrived one morning in torrents of rain.
There she found herself on the street, alone and destitute. A gentleman,
driving past, noticed the young Provençale in tears. Stopping his
carriage he asked her: “My pretty child, what is the matter--why do you
weep so bitterly?”
In her naïve way Laura told him her story. The gentleman, who was rich,
suddenly touched and taken with her beauty and simplicity, made her get
into his carriage, took her to a convent, had her carefully educated,
and then married her. But the beautiful bride, who had a noble heart,
did not forget her own relations. She sent for her little brother
Adolphe to Paris, and gave him a good education, and that is how Adolphe
Dumas, a poet by nature and an enthusiast, one day found himself in the
midst of the literary movement of 1830. Verses of all sorts, dramas,
comedies, poems, bubbled forth one after another from his seething
brain: “La Cité des Hommes,” “La Mort de Faust et de Don Juan,” “Le Camp
des Croisés,” “Provence,” “Mademoiselle de la Vallière,” “L’Ecole des
Familles,” “Les Servitudes Volontaires,” &c. But, just as in the army,
though all may do their duty every one does not receive the Legion of
Honour, in spite of his pluck and the comparative success of his plays
in the Paris theatres, the poet Dumas, like our drummer-boy of Arcole,
remained always the undecorated soldier. This it was, no doubt, which
made him say later on in Provençal:
“At forty years and more, when every one is angling, still I dip my
bread in the poor man’s soup. Let us be content if we have a soul at
peace, a pure heart and clean hands. ‘What has he earned?’ the world
will ask, ‘He carries his head erect.’ ‘What does he do?’ ‘He does his
duty.’”
But if Dumas had gained no special laurels, he had won the esteem of the
most distinguished brothers-in-arms, and Hugo, Lamartine, Béranger, De
Vigny, the great Dumas, Jules Janin, Mignet, Barbey d’Aurevilly were
among his friends.
Adolphe Dumas, with his ardent temperament, his experience of struggling
days in Paris, and the memory of his childhood on the Durance, came to
the determination to issue a passenger’s ticket to Félibrige between
Avignon and Paris.
My poem of Provence was at last finished, though not yet printed, when
one day my friend Frédéric Legré, a young Marseillais who formerly
frequented Font-Ségugne, said to me:
“I am going to Paris--will you come too?”
I accepted the invitation, and it was thus that on the spur of the
moment, for the first time, I visited Paris, where I stayed one week. I
had, needless to say, brought my manuscript, and after spending the
first two days in sight-seeing and admiring, from Notre-Dame to the
Louvre, and from the Place Vendôme to the great Arc de Triomphe, we
went, as was proper, and paid our respects to the good Dumas.
“Well, and that _Mireille_,” he asked me, “is she finished?”
“She is finished,” I said, “and here she is--in manuscript.”
“Come now, since you are here, you will read me a song.”
And when I had read the first canto, “Go on!” said Dumas.
I read the second, then the third, then the fourth canto.
“That is enough for to-day,” said the good man. “Come to-morrow at the
same time, we will continue the reading; but this much I may assure
you,” he added, “if your work keeps up to this level, you may win finer
laurels than at present you have any idea of.”
I returned the next day and read four more cantos, and the day after we
finished the poem.
That same day (August 26, 1856) Adolphe Dumas wrote to the editor of the
_Gazette de France_ the following letter:
“The _Gazette du Midi_ has already made known to the _Gazette de France_
the arrival in Paris of young Mistral, the poet of Provence. Who is
this Mistral? No one knows anything of him. When I am asked, I answer
fearing my words should find no credence, so surprising will be my
statements at a time when the prevalence of imitation poetry makes one
believe that all true poetry and poets are dead. In ten years’ time the
Academy will, when all the world has already done so, recognise another
glory to French literature. The clock of the Institute is often an hour
behind the century, but I wish to be the first to discover one who may
be truly called the Virgil of Provence, and who, like the shepherd of
Mantua, sings to his countrymen songs worthy of Gallus and of Scipio.
Many have long desired for our beautiful country of the south, Roman
both in speech and religion, the poem which shall express in her own
tongue the sacred beliefs and pure customs of our land. I have the poem
in my hands, it consists of twelve songs. It is signed Frédéric Mistral,
of the village of Maillane, and I countersign it with my word of honour,
which I have never given falsely, and with the full weight of my
responsibility.”
This letter was received with jeers by certain papers. “The mistral is
incarnated, it appears, in a poem. We shall see if it will be anything
except wind.”
But Dumas, content with the effect of the bomb, said, clasping my hand:
“Now, my dear fellow, return to Avignon and get your _Mireille_ printed.
We have thrown down the glove, now let the critics talk. They must each
one have their say in turn.”
Before I left Paris my devoted compatriot wished to present me to
Lamartine, his friend, and this is how the great man recounts the visit
in his “Cours familier de Littérature” (quarantième entretien, 1859):
“As the sun was setting, Adolphe Dumas entered my room, followed by a
fine, modest-looking young man, dressed with a sober elegance which
recalled the lover of Laura, when he brushed his black tunic and combed
his smooth hair in the city of Avignon. It was Frédéric Mistral, the
young village poet, destined to become in Provence, what Burns the
ploughman was in Scotland, the Homer of his native land.
“His expression was straightforward, modest and gentle, with nothing in
it of that proud tension of the features or of that vacancy of the eye
which too often characterises those men of vanity rather than genius,
styled popular poets. He had the comeliness of sincerity, he pleased, he
interested, he touched; one recognised in his masculine beauty the son
of one of those beautiful Arlesiennes, living statues of Greece, who
still move in our south.
“Mistral sat down without ceremony at my dinner-table in Paris,
according to the laws of ancient hospitality, as I would have seated
myself at the farm table of his mother at Maillane. The dinner was
quiet, the conversation intimate and frank. The evening passed quickly
and pleasantly in my little garden about the size of the kerchief of
Mireille, to the song of blackbirds in the fresh cool night air.
“The young man recited some verses in the sweet nervous idiom of
Provence, which combines the Latin pronunciation with the grace of
Attica and the serenity of Tuscany. My knowledge of the Latin dialects,
which I spoke up to the age of twelve in the mountains of my country,
made these fine idioms intelligible to me. The verses of Mistral were
liquid and melodious, they pleased without intoxicating me. The genius
of the young man was not there, the medium was too restricted for his
soul; he needed, as did Jasmin, that other singer of indigenous growth,
his epic poem in which to spread his wings. He returned to his village,
there at his mother’s hearth and beside the flocks to find his last
inspirations. On taking leave, he promised to send me the first printed
copy of his _Mireille_.”
After this memorable occasion I paid my farewell respects to Lamartine.
He lived at that time on the ground floor in the Rue de la
Ville-l’Evêque. It was evening. Burdened with his debts and somewhat
forsaken, the great man drowsed on a sofa, smoking a cigar, while some
visitors spoke in low voices around him.
All at once a servant came to announce that a Spaniard, a harpist called
Herrera, asked permission to play some of the music of his country
before Monsieur de Lamartine.
“Let him come in,” said the poet.
When the harpist had played his tunes, Lamartine, in a whisper to his
niece, Madame de Cessia, asked if there was any money in the drawers of
his bureau.
“There are still two louis,” she replied.
“Give them to Herrera,” said the kind-hearted Lamartine.
I returned to Provence to get my poem printed, and so soon as it issued
from the printing office of Seguin at Avignon, I directed the first
proof to Lamartine, who wrote to Reboul[17] the following letter:
“I have read _Mirèio_. Nothing until now has appeared of such national,
vital, inimitable growth of the South. There is a virtue in the sun of
Provence. I have received such a thrust both in the spirit and the heart
that I was impelled to write a discourse on the poem. Tell this to
Monsieur Mistral. Since the Homerics of Archipel, no such spring of
primitive poetry has gushed forth. I cried, even as you did, ‘It is
Homer!’”
Adolphe Dumas wrote me:
_March, 1859._
“Another joyful letter for you, my dear friend. I went, last
evening, to Lamartine. On seeing me enter, he received me with
exclamations of enthusiasm, using much the same expressions as I
did in my letter to the _Gazette de France_. He has read and
understood, he says, your poem from one end to the other. He read
it and re-read it three times; he cannot leave it, and reads
nothing else. His niece, that beautiful person whom you saw, added
that she has been unable to steal it from him for one instant to
read it herself, and he is going to devote an entire lecture to you
and _Mirèio_. He asked me for biographical notes on you and on
Maillane. I sent them to him this morning. You were the subject of
general conversation all the evening, and your poem was rehearsed
by Lamartine and by me from the first word to the last. If this
lecture speaks thus of you, your fame is assured throughout the
world. He says you are ‘A Greek of the Cyclades.’ He has written of
you to Reboul, ‘He is a Homer.’ He charges me to write you _all
that I will_, and he added I cannot say too much, he is so entirely
delighted. So be very happy, you and your dear mother, of whom I
retain a charming remembrance.”
I wish to record here a very singular fact of maternal intuition. I had
given to my mother a copy of _Mirèio_, but without having spoken to her
of Lamartine’s opinion, of which I was still ignorant. At the end of the
day, when I thought she had made acquaintance with the work, I asked her
what she thought of it, and she answered me, deeply moved:
“A very strange thing happened to me when I opened thy book: a flash of
light, like a star, dazzled me suddenly, and I was obliged to delay the
reading until later!”
One may believe it or no, but I have always thought that this vision of
my beloved and sainted mother was a very real sign of the influence of
Sainte-Estelle, otherwise of the star that had presided at the
foundation of Félibrige.
The fortieth discourse of the “Cours familier de Littérature” appeared a
month later (1859) under the title of “The Appearance of an Epic Poem in
Provence.” Lamartine devoted eighty pages to the poem of _Mireille_, and
this glorification was the crowning event of the numberless articles
which had welcomed the rustic epic in the press of Provence, of
Languedoc, and of Paris. I testified my gratitude in the Provençal
quatrain, which I inscribed at the head of the second edition.
TO LAMARTINE.
To thee alone _Mireille_ I dedicate;
My heart, my soul, my flower, the best of me,
A bunch of Crau’s sweet grapes and leaves, that late
A peasant offers thee.
_September 8, 1859._
And the following is the elegy that I published on the death of the
great man, ten years later (1869).
ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF LAMARTINE.[18]
When the day-star draws near to the hour of his setting,
When dusk clothes the hills, and the shepherds are letting
Their sheep and their herds and their dogs go free,
Then up from the marshlands, all groaning together,
Come the wails of the toilers through sweltering weather:
“That sunshine was nearly the death of me!”
Thou, of God’s holy words the magnanimous preacher,
Even so, Lamartine, O my father, my teacher,
When by song, and by deed, and consoling tear,
Thou did’st lavish thy love and thy light unsparing,
Till the world had its fill, and the world, not caring,
Grew weary and sated, and would not hear:
Then each one his taunt through the mist must needs fling thee,
And each one a stone from his armoury sling thee:
Thy splendour but hurt us, and tired our sight;
For a star that grows dim and no longer can light them,
And a crucified god--these will ever delight them,
The ignorant crowd--and the toads love night.
Oh, then were there seen things prodigious, by Heaven!
Fresh youth to the soul of the world had he given,
He, of purest poesy mighty source;
Yet the new young rhymesters were moved to laughter
O’er his sadness prophetic, and said thereafter
“That he knew not the poet’s art, of course!”
High-Priest of the great Adonaï, he raises
The soul of our creeds by the heavenly praises
He hymns on the strings of Sion’s golden harp!
Yet, calling to witness the Scriptures proudly,
“A man irreligious” they dub him loudly,
The Pharisee bigots who mouth and carp.
He, the great, tender heart who has sung the disaster
Of our monarchs ancestral, and he, the master
Who with pomp of marble has built their tomb,
On him all the gapers who vow adoration
To the Royalist cause, have pronounced condemnation;
They call him insurgent--and give him room.
He, the voice apostolic, while all men wondered,
The great word “Republic” hath hurled and thundered
Across the world’s skies, till the peoples thrilled!
Yet him, by a frenzy unspeakable smitten,
Have all the mad dogs of Democracy bitten,
And growled at him, snarled at him as they willed!
To the crater of fire, he, great patriot, had given
Wealth, body and soul, and his country had striven
To save from the burning volcano’s flame;
Yet when, poor, he was begging his bread, all denied him,
The bigwigs and burghers as spendthrift decried him,
And, shut up in ease, to their boroughs came.
When he saw himself then in disaster forsaken--
With his cross, and by anguish and suffering shaken,
Alone he ascended his Calvary;
And at dusk some good souls heard a long, long sighing,
And then, through the spaces, this cry undying
Rang out: “Eloi, lama sabachthani.”
But none dared draw nigh to that hill-top lonely,
So he waited in patience and silence only,
With his deep eyes closed and his hands spread wide;
Till, calm as the mountains at heaven’s high portal,
Amidst his ill-fortune, and fame immortal,
Without ever speaking a word, he died.
(Trans. Alma Strettell.)