Frédéric Mistral (1830-1914) is a French poet, fervent supporter of the revival of the Occitan language. Bearing the name of this cool wind blowing in the south of France, he was the father of the essential work Mireille, but also lexicographer, ethnographer, poet, great defender of culture and the Provençal language. He is at the origin of the Félibrige literary movement, with other Occitan poets, including Joseph Roumanille and Théodore Aubanel. Nobel Prize for Literature, Frédéric Mistral had the motto "Lou Soulèu me fai canta" (the Sun makes me sing). In 1906 he founded the Museon Arlatan de la Provence in Arles.
The life of Frédéric Mistral
Frédéric Mistral was born on September 8, 1830 in Maillane, at the Mas du Juge, into a family of well-to-do peasants. He spent his childhood in the open air, accustomed to working the land. He passed the baccalaureate in Nîmes then studied law in Aix en Provence and Avignon, obtaining his diploma in 1851.
He quickly makes several resolutions and thinks "first to raise, to revive in Provence the feeling of belonging that I saw being annihilated under the false and unnatural education of all schools; secondly, to bring about this resurrection by the restoration of the natural and historical language of the country, against which the schools are all waging war to the death, thirdly, to restore the vogue to Provençal by the influx and the flame of divine poetry”.
Frédéric Mistral was a founding member of the félibrige in 1854, a sort of Academy with six poets, in order to defend and safeguard “everything that counstituïs l'èime naciounau” (everything that constitutes the national soul); then set about writing "Lou Tresor dóu felibrige » his great dictionary on the language of Oc while composing his greatest poem « Mirèio ". He became the friend of Stéphane Mallarmé and Alphonse Daudet, and became friends with Catalan writers to whom he dedicated his ode To Catalan poets .
Married in 1876 to Marie Louise Aimée Rivière, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904 for all of his work and devoted part of the gains obtained to the foundation of the Museum Arlaten. In the same year, he published My Origins:Memoirs and Stories . In 1912, the Olivades (lis Oulivadou) , which designate the last olive harvest before winter, brings together in a final collection of various pieces (songs, madrigals, sonnets).
On March 26, 1914, he died at his home in Maillane at the age of 84. His house, which became "Museon Frederi Mistral", was listed as a historical monument in 1930.
The lexicographer and the poet
In his dictionary “Lou Tresor dóu felibrige » Completed in 1886, it succeeded in bringing together the dialects of all the Oc countries with 80,000 entries, presenting all the vocabulary of speaking the modern Oc language. This work aroused the admiration of the cultural world and is still in use today.
Loving to sing about his Provence, he finished writing “Mirèio” (Mireille) in 1859 after eight years of work. This poem of 6123 verses remains of an eternal youth, holding the idyll and the epic where the two main interested parties Vincent and Mireille can be considered as Romeo and Juliet or Paul and Virginia . This world famous work retraces the daily life of the Provençals, their work, their living environment, their festivals, their traditions. The tribute was great:Charles Gounod will make an opera of it, Lamartine will devote his 40th interview to it.
Among his most beautiful poems, we note “Lou pouèmo dóu Rose” (the Poem of the Rhône) in 1897 in which he reveals the life of the boatmen, and "La Coupo Santo" (the Holy Cup) , taken up in chorus by all the assemblies during the bullfighting demonstrations. Thus, in 1904, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature for all of his work, in particular his lyrical poems such as "Lis Isclo d'or" (the golden islands) and for his “Lou Tresor dóu Felibrige” . He is the only Frenchman to win a Nobel Prize for a work written in a regional language, assuming that translating his poems into French is an offense. However, he will be criticized for the translation of "Mirèio in French, which has become a heavy and outdated text.
And yet today, Mistral is translated into around thirty languages, and the langue d'Oc is taught in 180 universities around the world. Frédéric Mistral will devote part of the money received (100,000 gold francs) to financing the Arlaten Museum.
The defender of traditions
Defender of the traditions and culture of the Provençal country, he created a museum where objects, texts and testimonies of Provençal daily life from the 19th century to the present day are presented. . The "Museon Arlaten" becomes the true sanctuary of Provençal civilisation.
Frédéric Mistral does not just maintain the language of Oc. He is also attached to the customs, to the way of life of the people of his country, to the protection of nature, to the safeguarding of the architectural and environmental heritage and founds the "Félibrige", which can be considered as the first great movement regionalist claim. In order to defend the traditions and the costume, Mistral created in Arles in 1903 the “Fèsto vierginenco” (the feast of the Virgins) bringing together 400 young girls, taken up each year thanks to the “Coumitat Vierginien” at the Saintes Maries de la Mer. The same year in October, Raymond Poincaré, President of the Republic and on an official tour of the region, had his train stop to visit the poet and invite him to lunch in his wagon.
In 1895, when the municipality of Avignon voted almost unanimously to demolish the city's ramparts, he ardently defended the heritage and protested in his newspaper l' Aioli “this proves the complete deformation that has gradually taken place in people's brains, by force-feeding them with a banal, anti-provincial and anti-artistic education, which for so long has dulled the nation. And this also demonstrates the decline into which the passing generation has fallen”... Avignon has kept its ramparts.
A national commemoration for Frédéric Mistral
The year 2014 will have been an opportunity to celebrate the memory of this great poet for his work recognized nationally and internationally, thanks to events supported by the Ministry of Culture and Communications. Frédéric Mistral had only one goal in life:to illuminate the future. He would have been happy on January 28, 2014 when the proposed constitutional law to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages was adopted in the National Assembly, with a large majority!
Bibliography
- Illustrious and misunderstood Frédéric Mistral, by Gérard Baudin. HC Editions, 2010.
- My origins, memories and stories, by F. Mistral. Auberon, 2000.