Frederic Mistral (1830-1914) was without a doubt the greatest
modern Provencal poet and the foremost champion of his native
Provence, the guiding spirit of a group of latter-day troubadours
who revived and refined the language of Southern France as a
literary medium. For this achievement and for his own poetry,
Mistral was awarded the Nobel prize in 1904--characteristically, he
gave the prize money to a folklore museum he had founded in Arles.
Two years later, at the age of seventy-six, Mistral published his
charming book of Memoirs, which is not so much an autobiography as
a recollection of the life of ordinary country people in his early
years, filled with delightful anecdotes, tales, folksongs, and
poetry. Written in the relaxed conversational style of an elderly
gentleman reminiscing about the old days, the Memoirs describe the
circumstances of Mistral's childhood and early manhood - the
Provencal landscapes, the seasonal life of the farm, the religious
observances and seasonal festivities, many clearly of pagan origin.
Although educated in the classics and law in Avignon and Aix,
Mistral felt out of place among the French-speaking bourgeois and
returned to his family farm to devote his life to writing for the
simple farming people of his region. He soon began his long poem
Mireio (eventually transformed into the opera Mireille by Gounod),
whose heroine was modeled on the peasant girls he saw and worked
with daily. At the same time, he and several other young men came
together to form the Felibrige, a society dedicated to restoring
the Provencal language and preserving local traditions. The Memoirs
concludes with the death of young Mistral's father and the success
of Mireio (1859), so quietly understated that one would hardly
suspect that the author had been hailed as a major poet while still
in his twenties. Mistral wrote his Memoirs in Provencal and himself
translated them into French. A previous English translation
(abridged and paraphrased from the French) was published in 1907
and has been out of print ever since. In his new translation,
George Wickes of the University of Oregon has mined Mistral's
monumental dictionary, Lou Tresor dou Felibrige. This illustrated
edition includes the original texts of Provencal songs and verse,
with Professor Wickes' English versions printed en face.
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