Frédéric Mistral

Frédéric Mistral

Photo André Abbe

Mistral... like the name of the wind "the craziest and most masterful of Éole's band" *... one of the most famous figures in the whole of Occitanie ... and Passadoc's beloved poet!
He was born in Maillane - a small village in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, where he served as town councillor and which today has a population of some 2,700 - into a family of what are said to be well-off peasants; a village he would never leave... He lived there, worked there, entertained his friends there, and died there in 1814; he was 84 years old.

* G. Brassens

Mai éu restavo dins Maiano,
E lis ancian dóu terradou
L'an vist treva nòstis andano...

But he lived in Maillane,
and the local elders
saw him frequent our paths...

Moun Toumbèu - Poem by Mistral - 1907

His family wanted him to be a lawyer; having passed his baccalaureate, Mistral studied at the University of Aix and then Marseille. In 1851, he obtained a law degree. He was already 46 when he married Marie Rivière, a Dijon woman barely 20, who would always remain in her husband's shadow. They had no children.

Mistral was never to become a lawyer, but a writer, singing the praises of Provence and, more specifically, the langue d'oc.
He wrote some fifteen publications, including the drama Mireille - Mirèio - (1859): Mireille and Vincent, a poor basket-maker, fall in love and want to marry, but their parents are opposed... In despair, Mireille goes off to pray at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer; alas, the hot sun kills her: a victim of sunstroke, she dies in Vincent's arms, before the eyes of her grieving parents.

It was an instant success, a story that Mistral dedicated to Lamartine:
I dedicate Mireille to you: she is my heart and soul;
Sheis the flower of my years;
Sheis a Crau grape that, with all its leaves
, a peasant offers
you.

Lamartine is won over: A great epic poet is born! The fragrance of your book will not evaporate in a thousand years!

Charles Gounod, also seduced by the writer's story, composed an opera, which premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris in 1864.

In 1904, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Mistral for Mirèio for a work in Provençal, "a minority language in Europe and therefore an exception".

Suit Calendal - Calendou (1857), which Mistral perfected over a period of seven years. Disappointingly, the work met with no success... Georges Bizet was interested for a while, but soon gave up.

Photo Claude Boyer

Aquelo nesco s'encafourno
Dins un coumbo arebro et sourno
E vent piei un moumen que la roco subran
S'enarco amount qu'es pas de dire
Vous parle dou roucas dou cire
Ni cat ni cabro ni satire
N'en responde segur jamai l'escalaran
F. Mistral
Centenari de Calendau
1866-1966

This Nesque plunges
into an obscure combe
And then comes a moment when the rock suddenly
Widens above in an astonishing way
I'm talking about the Cire rock,
Neither cat, nor goat, nor satire
Will ever climb it.

[Translation: André Abbe]

Only his friend Daudet is relatively enthusiastic:

I held the notebook from Calendal between my hands, and I leafed through it, full of emotion...
[...]
As Mistral spoke his verses to me in that beautiful Provençal language, more than three-quarters Latin, which the queens once spoke and which now only our shepherds understand, I admired this man within myself, and, thinking of the state of ruin in which he found his mother tongue and what he had done with it *...

What did he do with it? The Félibrige , which he founded with six friends, poets like himself: Joseph Roumanille, Théodore Aubanel, Paul Giéra, Alphonse Tavan, Jean Brunet and Anselme Mathieu.

Another remarkable, even masterly work is Lou tresor doù Felibrige, a dictionary of the Oc languages (Gascon, Provençal, Limousin, Languedoc, ....). Over 2,000 pages of information (lexicon, dialects, grammar, ethnography).

* The poet Mistral - Lettres de mon moulin.

The two men enjoyed a long, long friendship, which became tarnished when Daudet published Numa Roumestana caricature of a southern man who upset Mistral.

Mistral is also the anthem of Provence!

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