Roumanille was born in 1818 and was | song which contained the names of the twelve apostles. She proclaimed them one by one, and thus ended her song: "Grands apôtres, grands félibres! " (Great apostles, great félibres !). Mistral, Roumanille, and others sought in vain for this word in their memories. The woman was told she must be mis sent to school and to college. At the age of twenty he wrote some verses to his mother, but when he came to read them to her he found she had long since forgotten the little French she had learned at school, and understood no word of the tender poem. The youth, sad and disappointed, thus ex- taken, but she insisted that the word pressed his feelings : So my mother is deprived of all the intellectual pleasures which delight me. When her day's work is done she cannot listen to beautiful thoughts and melodious words. In the centre and the north of France the words of our poets penetrate into the workshop of the mechanic and into the hut of the laborer. By song, verse or psalm a joyous or a noble thought may be engraven in their memories. But here, what is the poetry of the poor? Our Provençal language has been dishonored for centuries past by coarse and flippant writers who use it as the medium for their vulgar jokes fit only for the ears of drunkards. And this is all our popular literature! Well, since our mothers do not know French enough to understand the songs inspired by the tenderness of their children, let us sing in the language of our mothers, and place within their reach a literature at once healthy, free, and pure, yet joyous and gay and truly of the people. This ambition he fulfilled. félibre really formed part of the song. All philological research proved useless. And then the Provençal poets agreed to adopt the poor lost word, a true waif of language." It has been conjectured that its real etymology is "homme de foi libre." Another suggestion is "faiseur de livres," but this seems less probable. On May 21, 1854, was held the first formal meeting of the association of Félibres or Félibrige at the Castle of Fontségugne, near Avignon. The poets were seven in number: Roumanille, Anselme Mathieu, Aubanel, Tavan, Giéra, Brunet, and Frédéric Mistral all these sharing with Roumanille the enthusiastic desire to take up again the lute of the troubadours, and by their singing to give fresh life to their native idiom. chosen to be Capoulié, or head of the At this meeting Roumanille was Félibres, and it was decided to begin the publication of the "Almanach Provençal," which should contain verses and stories in dialect. Et la mer aux flots bleus, la mer harmonieuse, Sur le rivage d'or, où depuis cinq cents From 1835 to 1838 his first poems were published in L'Echo du Rhône, and afterwards, in 1847, republished in a collection, "Li Margarideto" (Les Roumanille and his friends were Marguerites). In 1847 he gathered truly apostles, and the good news of together the works of several Provençal the Provençal renaissance spread rappoets in a volume, which was published idly through the south of France and under the title of "Les Provençales." the Catalau provinces. In 1852 was held the Congress of Arles mentioned in the letter quoted above; and from that time the Provençal poets met together regularly in a kind of informal academy. For a long while they hesitated as to what name they should take. "Trouvère " seemed commonplace, and "Troubadour" grotesque. Often the peasants of the neighborhood would come at the conclusion of their feasts and sing the local songs during the dessert. One day an old woman stood out from the ranks of her companions, and sang a strange ans L'âme de la Provence était silencieuse, Se tut, pour écouter un choeur de pay sans. And the blue-billowed sea hushed its A melody sweet, On the fair golden shore where five centuries long silence of death held the soul of Pro vence, To list to a chorus of peasants in song. Pour out for us the knowledge of truth and beauty, and those lofty delights which defy the tomb. Holy etc. Pour out for us sweet poesy, to sing all that has life; for poetry is the nectar which renders man divine. Holy etc. Since the first meeting at Arles, of youth, the memories of the past, and there have been over fifteen hundred faith in the year to come. Holy etc. poets writing in Provençal and more than three thousand works published in that language. Among these poets was Bonaparte Wyse, an Irishman who was warmly welcomed as a Félibre, and who died last year. Elizabeth, For the glory of our country, you our queen of Roumania was for some time helpers, O Catalonians, from afar, O broththe queen of the Félibres, and has ers, let us take counsel together. Holy taken a vivid interest in the movement. cup, filled to overflowing, pour out from She has herself contributed, under her thy fulness, pour out in a flowing stream nom de guerre of Carmen Sylva, many the enthusiasm and the energy of the charming poems and stories to the Pro- brave. vençal literature. The movement now Frédéric Mistral, the author of this flourishes in four provinces (Provence, stirring song, is the greatest of the Catalonia, Aquitaine and Languedoc) Provençal poets. He has written a where the Félibrige has taken the form charming autobiographical sketch as a of a large academy. Each province preface to his volume of poems entihas a maintenance presided over by a tled "Les Iles d'Or," from which I syndicate. The number of the mainte- translate some passages. neurs is over two thousand. The more I was born at Maillane in September, distinguished among the poets obtain 1830. Maillane is a village near Arles, the title of félibre majoral. Every year fêtes are held in each of the provinces, and situated in the centre of a vast plain numbering about fifteen hundred souls, when the poets gather together in bounded on the south by the blue Alps. brotherly union from all parts, and the My parents lived in the country and manloving cup is passed from hand to hand aged their own family estate. My father the celebrated cup which was given lost his first wife and was fifty-five years by the Catalonians to their brother old when he married for the second time. poets of Provence. The cup is of This is how he made the acquaintance of graceful and antique form, the stem my mother. One year at midsummer, imitating that of a palm-tree; on either Maître François Mistral was in the midst side stands the figure of a young girl, of his fields of corn, which a band of tall, slender, and smiling. The one reapers were cutting down with the sickle. A crowd of gleaners followed the men, and represents Provence, the other Catalonia. It is this cup that Mistral cele-picked up the stray ears which had escaped brates in his well-known song, Coupe," which is now, as it were, the Marseillaise of the South, and of which the following is a translation : "La Provençaux, this is the cup that we have from the Catalonians. Let us drink, each in turn, the pure wine of our vintage. Holy cup, filled to overflowing, pour out from thy fulness, pour out in a flowing stream the enthusiasm and the energy of the brave! Of an ancient people, proud and free, we are perhaps the last, and if the Félibres fall, then will fall our nation. Holy etc. Of a new springing race we are perhaps the first shoots, of our country we are the pillars and the chiefs. Holy etc. Pour out to us the hopes and the dreams the rake. Maître François, my father, noticed a beautiful young girl who remained behind the others, seeming ashamed to glean as they did. He went up to her and said: แ Mignonne, whose child are you? What is your name?" The young girl answered, "I am the daughter of Etienne Poulinet, the mayor of Maillane. They call me Délaïde." "What!" cried my father, "the daughter of Poulinet, mayor of Maillane, goes a-gleaning!" "Master," replied she, we are a large family, six girls and two boys, and though our father is fairly well-to-do, as you know, when we ask him for money to buy ribbons, he answers, 'My children, if you want pretty things to wear, earn them.' And that is why I have come a-gleaning." Six months after this meeting, which Maître François asked Maître Poulinet for the hand of his daughter Délaïde, and I am their child. even as Petrarch created Italian, who trans recalls. the scene between Ruth and Boaz, | thanks be to Heaven! A great epic poet is born-the nations of the West can produce such no more, but nature in the South continues to give them to mankind — there is virtue in the sun! A true Homeric poet in these times, a primitive poet in our age of decadence, a Greek poet at Avignon, a poet who creates a language from a dialect forms a vulgar patois into a classic tongue full of imagery and harmony, delighting the ear and the imagination -a poet who plays on his village harp a symphony of Mozart or of Beethoven- a poet of twentyfive who, at the first outpouring of his genius, gives to the world, in a flood of pure melody, a rustic epic where the descriptive scenes of the Odyssey and the innocently passionate scenes of the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus, mingled with the holiness and sadness of Christianity, are sung with the grace of Longus and the majestic simplicity of the blind Bard of Chio. Mistral goes on to describe his free and happy childhood, spent on his father's farm, which seemed to him an earthly paradise. At the age of nine or ten he was put to school in the neighborhood, but he so often played truant, that his parents thought it best to send him away to a small boarding school in Avignon. At first, the change from the freedom of the fields to the constraint of a lycée, and the necessity, under pain of ridicule, of speaking French instead of his native Provençal, made the boy very unhappy; but gradually the love of study grew stronger, and in the descriptions of Virgil and Homer he recognized a vivid picture of the peasant life of his beloved home. His first literary attempt was a translation of Virgil's "First Eclogue." In 1845 Roumanille came as a master to the school where Mistral had been placed. A warm friendship sprang up between teacher and pupil-a friendship which proved a lasting one, and which had a great influence on Mistral's career, and also on the future of the Provençal renaissance. In 1847, Frédéric left school, and the following year went to Aix to study law. He took his degree in 1851; but when his father told him to choose a career, he threw aside his lawyer's gown and decided to live a life of contemplation amid the country scenes he loved, writing his beautiful poems at leisure and "far from the madding crowd." His first great work (perhaps his greatest) was Mirèio," which was dedicated to Lamartine in the following words : I offer thee Mirèio, it is my heart and my soul, And the blossom of my years, to Mirèio is the daughter of a rich fariner A cluster of Crau grapes with all its green there to ask the help of the saints, who mance languages, had been asked to be one of the vice-presidents on this occasion, and my sister and I went with him. It was in May; the weather was perfect, and everything was in the first freshness of spring. The singing of birds, the profusion of lovely flowers, the beauty of the scenery, and the strong impression produced on me by the enthusiasm of the poets of Provence, all combined to make the memory of this time ineffaceable. We passed through Avignon, the city of the popes, where we had our first sight of the rapid Rhône; Arles, where, in the silvery moonlight, we first saw the Roman arena, rising white and stately like a pouring down on her unprotected head | My brother-in-law, Arsène Darme(for in her haste she had forgotten her steter, who had given many years to sun-bonnet) are all too much for her, the study of old French and the Roand close within reach of her goal she is stricken down. She just manages to creep into the chapel of the Saints, and her father and mother, who have spent two nights and days in agonized search for her, find Mirèio unconscious at the foot of the altar. Full of grief and remorse, they consent to her marriage with Vincent. But it is too late! The story of Mirèio's death is full of exquisite touches. In her delirium she sees visions of angels and hears heavenly music, and she fancies that a boat has come to fetch her to another world, "where two may love in peace.' The poem of Mirèio was awarded a prize by the French Academy in 1861, and forms the subject of one of Gounod's ghost from the past — Arles, with its most beautiful operas.1 Mistral himself | translated the poem into French, following the original very closely, but he has been accused of having purposely made the French somewhat poor (though the reproach does not seem to us a just one), in order the better to show the richness and sonority of the Provençal. Besides Mirèio, Mistral has written "Calendau,' 66 'Nerto," and a volume of poems entitled "Les Пles d'Or." But he himself considers that the great work of his life is the "Trésor du Félibrige," a dictionary of the Provençal dialects. Writing of "Les Iles d'Or," he says: The title may seem ambitious, I own; but I may be forgiven when it is known that it is the name of that small group of rocky islands, golden in the sunlight, which are seen from the shore at Hyères. And then, those divine moments in which love, enthusiasm, or sorrow makes poets of us all, are they not in truth the oases, the golden islands of our existence ? It is my good fortune to have the honor of a personal acquaintance with this great poet, and to have witnessed one of the annual fêtes de Félibres, or maintenances, as they are called. The celebration was held at Montpellier, a university town, and one of the most beautiful cities of Provence. 1 Best known by its French name, "Mireille." beautiful old Cathedral of St. Trophime and its smiling, peaceful Aliscamps, or Champs Elysées, where so many of the old Romans lie at rest. Then through Nîmes, with its striking contrast between the bright, bustling, modern town, and the remains of the old Roman life the gardens with their marble baths, the Arena, and the Maison Carrée; and thence to Montpellier, which was the goal of our pilgrimage. On the first evening we met Frédéric Mistral, the chief of the Félibres (Roumanille having some time before his death resigned this honor in his favor), and the hero of the hour. His appearance is most impressive; he is tall, broad, and manly looking, with a face singularly handsome and intellectual, and still youthful in its fire and vigor; dark eyes, keen yet kindly and regular features, the habitual expression of which is a bright and genial gaiety. Add to this the most musical of voices, a chivalrous courtesy of manner, and you have, perhaps, some slight idea of his personality. Mistral told us much about the movement, and the evening passed all too quickly. On the following day we drove to the Villa Louise-a few miles from the town. Passing through a large garden, we came to an oval space surrounded by magnificent elms. In this space seats were arranged in a semicircle for my friend the Comte de Toulouse, and the guests, some five hundred in num- he pointed out to me that no plant ber; and facing them was the Cour grows in its neighborhood but absinthe d'Amour. This consisted of seven (wormwood), the plant of bitterness. Félibres and seven ladies (of whom It seems as though nature herself still my sister was one) and was presided over by M. Laforgue. After Mistral's 66 Hymn to the Sun" had been sung, all present joining in the chorus, the president gave an account of the year's literary work and announced the names of the prize-winners. One of these was a young girl of twenty, Mlle. Brémond, a farmer's daughter, who had written a beautiful poem. She was unable to be present to receive her prize, because she had literally to "make hay while the sun shone," and help in her father's fields. The successful competitors were crowned with wreaths of laurel which had been gathered near the tomb of Virgil at Naples and conveyed to France as Laurus Virgilii, plantes médicinales, in order to avoid their confiscation through fear of the phylloxera, by which the French vineyards were at that time being devastated. Songs, speeches, and recitations completed the proceedings, and we drove back to Montpellier in time to dress for the banquet in the evening. mourns the cruel death of her heroic child, and cries aloud for vengeance.” This speech was followed by one from Arsène Darmesteter. "In poetry and song all men are brothers. But the idiom which is natural to a land is the one in which the thoughts of its people are best expressed; in another language they would lose their character and individuality," so he drank to the prosperity of the Félibriges and the poetry of the people. The speeches were followed by songs - Mistral singing his own "Magali "" (from "Mirèio "), after which a young Marseillais poet sang a fine patriotic song of his own composition, and became so excited and moved that he jumped up on his chair, as it were to dominate the audience. The enthusiasm was intense and really thrilling. One felt it was no mere affectation or fashion, but a deep and real emotion. There has been a strong opposition in France to the whole movement, on the ground that it is separatist and antipatriotic in its tendency, but this is, I think, well answered in the words of Félix Gras: "J'aime mon village plus que tou village; j'aime ma Provence plus que ta province. J'aime la France plus que tout." CECILE HARTOG. From Macmillan's Magazine. THE REFORMER'S WIFE. A SKETCH FROM LIFE. There were about a hundred guests present, of whom only seven were ladies; and after the necessary but less interesting business of dinner was over, there were several speeches. Mistral proposed to drink to the women of France, the living and the dead; to those who had inspired men with faith and courage to serve their country, and to those other noble women who had themselves given their lives for their native land. With this toast he coupled the name of the Lady Giralda HE was a dreamer of dreams, with of Laval, who during her husband's the look in his large dark eyes which absence conducted the defence of her Botticelli put into the eyes of his castle against the Crusaders. When at Moses; that Moses in doublet and last, after a long and hard struggle, she hose whose figure, isolated from its was forced to surrender, the besiegers surroundings, reminds one irresistibly were so furious at having been held at of Christopher Columbus, or Vasco da bay by a woman, that they seized the Gama, of those, in fact, who dream unfortunate Giralda, and threw her of a promised land. And this man down a dry well which they covered dreamed as wild a dream as any; he with a heap of stones. "I was walk-hoped, before he died, to change the ing near this spot," said Mistral," with social customs of India. |