Letters from My Windmill

by Alphonse Daudet

THE POET, FREDERIC MISTRAL

Last Sunday, I thought I had woken up in Montmartre. It was raining, the sky was grey, and the windmill was a miserable place to be. I dreaded staying in on such a cold, rainy day, and I felt the urge to go and cheer myself up in the company of Frédéric Mistral, the great poet who lives a few kilometres from my precious pines, in the small village of Maillane.

No sooner said than gone; my myrtle walking stick, my book of
Montaigne, a blanket, and off I went!

The fields were deserted…. Our beautiful catholic Provence gives the very earth itself a day of rest on Sundays…. The dogs are abandoned in the houses, and the farms are closed…. Here and there, was a carter's wagon with its dripping tarpaulin, an old hooded woman in a mantle like a dead leaf, mules dressed up for a gala, covered in blue and white esparto, red pompoms, and silver bells, jogging along with a cart-load of folks from the farm going to mass. Further on, there was a small boat on the irrigation canal with a fisherman casting his net from it….

There was no possibility of reading as I walked. The rain came down in bucketsful, which the tramontana then obligingly threw in your face…. I walked non-stop and after three hours I reached the small cypress woods which surround the district of Maillane and shelter it from the frightful wind.

Nothing was stirring in the village streets; everybody was at high mass. As I passed in front of the church, I heard a serpent playing, and I saw candles shining through the stained glass windows. The poet's home is on the far side of the village; it's the last house on the left, on the road to Saint-Remy—it's a small single-storey house with a front garden…. I went in quietly … and saw no one. The dining room door was shut, but I could hear someone walking about and speaking loudly behind it … a voice and a step that I knew only too well….

I paused in the whitewashed corridor, with my hand on the doorknob, and feeling very emotional. My heart was thumping.—He's in. He's working. Should I wait. Wait till he's finished…. What the hell. It can't be helped. I went in.

* * * * *

Well, Parisians, when the Maillane poet came over to show Paris his book, Mireille, and you saw him in your salons; this noble savage, but in town clothes, with a wing collar and top hat, which disturbed him and much as his reputation. Do you think that was Mistral? It wasn't.

There's only one real Mistral in the world, and that's the one that I surprised last Sunday in his village, with his felt beret, no waistcoat, a jacket, a red Catalonian sash round his waist, and fiery-eyed, with the flush of inspiration in his cheeks. He was superb, with a great smile, as elegant as a Greek shepherd, bestriding the room manfully, hands in pockets, and making poetry on the hoof….

—Well, well, well! It's you, Daudet? Mistral exclaimed, throwing himself around my neck, delighted that you thought to come!… Especially the day of the Maillane Fête. We've got music from Avignon, bulls, processions, and the farandole; it will be magnificent…. When mother comes back from the mass, we'll have lunch, and then, hey, we shall go to see the pretty girls dancing….

As he was speaking, I was rather moved as I looked around at the little dining room with light wallpaper, which I hadn't seen for such a long time and where I had spent such happy hours. Nothing had changed. There was still the yellow check sofa, the two wicker armchairs, Venus de Milo and Venus d'Arles on the fireplace, a portrait of the poet by Hébert, a photograph by Etienne Garjat, and his desk in a place close to the window—a small office desk—overloaded with old books and dictionaries. In the middle of the desk I noticed a large, open exercise book…. On it was written the original of his new poem, Calendal, which should be published on Christmas day this year. Frédéric Mistral has worked on this poem for seven years, and it is six months since he wrote the last verse, but he won't release it yet. You see, there is always another stanza to polish and another even more sonorous rhyme to find…. Even if Mistral writes his verses in true Provencal, he works as though everybody will read it and acknowledge his craftsmanship….

Ah, the brave poet. Montaigne must have had someone like Mistral in mind when he wrote, Think of those, who, when asked what is the point of spending so much time and trouble on a work of art that can only be seen by a few people, replied, "A few is enough. One is enough. None is enough."

* * * * *

The very exercise book in which Calendal had been written, was in my hands, and I leafed through it, with great emotion…. At that moment, fifes and tambourines began playing outside the window, and there was my hero, Mistral, rushing to the cupboard, fetching out glasses and bottles, and dragging the table to centre of the room, before opening the door to the musicians and confiding to me:

—Don't laugh…. They have come to give me a little concert…. I am a
Municipal Councillor.

The little room filled up with people. Tambourines were put on chairs, the old banner placed in a corner, and the sweet wine passed round. After several bottles had been downed, to Monsieur Frédéric's health, the fête was seriously discussed, concerning such matters as whether the farandole was as good as last year, and if the bulls had played their part well. Then the musicians moved off to play concerts to other Councillors. Just then, Mistral's mother entered.

With a flick of her wrists, she laid the table with beautiful, white linen. But only for two. I was familiar with her household routine; I knew that when Mistral had company, his mother wouldn't sit down at the table…. The old dear only knows Provencal and would feel very uneasy trying to talk to French people…. Also, she was needed in the kitchen.

Goodness! I had a great meal that day—a piece of roast goat, some mountain cheese, jam, figs, and Muscat grapes. Everything washed down with a good Chateauneuf du Pape, which has such a wonderful red colour in the glass….

After the meal, I fetched the exercise book and put it on the table in front of Mistral.

—We'd said we'd go out, said the poet, smiling.

—Oh, no. Calendal! Calendal!

Mistral resigned himself to his fate and in his sweet musical voice, while beating the rhythm with his hand, he began the first canto:

Of a maid who fell in love and madly,
And a tale I told that turned out sadly,
Now of a child of Cassis,
If God's will it may be,
As a poor little boy casts out for anchovy…

Outside, the vesper bells ring, the fireworks explode in the square, and the fifes play marching up and down the streets with the tambourines. The bulls from the Camargue bellow as they are herded along.

But I was listening to the story of the little fisherman from Provence, with my elbows on the table cloth, and my eyes filling with tears.

* * * * *

Calendal wasn't just a fisherman; love had forged him into an heroic figure…. To win the heart of his beloved—the beautiful Estérelle—he took on Herculean tasks, in fact, those twelve famous labours paled by comparison to his.

One time, having it in mind to get rich, he invented some ingenious fishing devices to bring all the fish of the sea into port. Then there was this terrible bandit, count Sévéran, who was going to re-launch his evil trade amongst his cut-throats and molls….

What a tough guy our little Calendal turns out to be! One day, at Sainte-Baume, he came across two gangs of men intent on violently settling their hash on the grave of Master Jacques, a Provencal who did the carpentry in the Temple of Solomon, if you please. Calendal threw himself into the heart of the murderous mayhem, and calmed the men and talked them down….

These were superhuman efforts!… High up in the rocks of Lure, there was an inaccessible cedar forest, where even lumberjacks wouldn't go. Calendal, though, does go up there, all alone, and sets up camp for thirty days. The sound of his axe burying its head into tree trunks is heard the whole time. The forest screams its protest, but, one by one, the giant old trees fall and roll into the abyss, until, by the time Calendal comes down, there isn't a single cedar left on the mountain….

At last, in reward for so many exploits, the anchovy fisherman won the love of Estérelle and was made Consul of Cassis by its inhabitants. That's it then, the story of Calendal…. But why all this fuss about Calendal? The star of the poem is Provence itself—the Provence of the sea; the Provence of the mountains—with its history, its ways, its legends, its scenery, indeed a whole people, free and true to themselves, who have found their poetic voice, before they die…. Nowadays, follow the roads, the railways, the telegraph poles, hunt down the language in the schools! Provence will live for ever in Mireille and Calendal.

* * * * *

—That's enough poetry! said Mistral closing his notebook. To the fair!

We went out; the whole village was in the streets, as a great gust of wind cleared the sky, which radiantly lit up the red roofs, still wet with rain. We arrived in time to see the procession on its way back. It took a whole hour to go past. There was an endless line of hooded, white, blue, and grey penitents, sisterhoods of young, veiled girls; and gold flowered, pink banners, great faded, wooden saints carried shoulder high by four men. There was pottery saints coloured like idols with big bouquets in their hands, copes, monstrances, green velvet canopies, crucifixes framed in white silk; and everything waving in the wind, in the candle light and the sunlight, amongst the Psalms, the litanies, with the bells ringing a full peal.

Once the procession was over and the saints put back into their chapels, we went to see the bulls and then went on the open air games. There were men wrestling, the hop, skip and jump, and games of strangle the cat, and pig in the middle, and all the rest of the fun events of the Provencal fairs…. Night was falling by the time we got back to Maillane.

A huge bonfire had been lit in the square, in front of the café where Mistral and his friend Zidore were having a party that night… The farandole started up. Paper cut-out lanterns lit up everywhere in the shadows; the young people took their places; and soon, after a trill on the tambourines, a wild, boisterous, round dance started up around the fire. It was a dance that would last all through the night.

* * * * *

After supper, and too tired to keep going, we went into Mistral's modest peasant's bedroom, with two double beds. The walls are bare, and the ceiling beams are visible…. Four years ago, after the academy had given the author of Mireille a prize worth three thousand francs, Madame Mistral had an idea:

—Why don't we wallpaper your bedroom and put a ceiling in? she said to her son.

—Oh, no! replied Mistral…. That's poet's money that is, and not to be touched.

And so the bedroom stayed strictly bare; but as long as the poet's money lasted, anyone needy, knocking on Mistral's door, has always found his purse open….

I had brought the notebook with Calendal into the bedroom to read to myself a passage of it before going to sleep. Mistral chose the episode about the pottery. Here it is, in brief:

It is during a meal, somewhere or another. A magnificent Moustier's crockery service is brought out and placed onto the table. At the bottom of every plate, there is a Provencal scene, painted in blue on the enamel. The whole history of the land is represented on them. Each plate of this beautiful crockery has its own verse and the love in those descriptions just has to be seen. There are just so many simple but clever little poems, done with all the charm of the rural idylls of Theocritus.

Whilst Mistral spoke his verses in this beautiful Provencal tongue, more than three quarters Latin, and once spoken by queens, and now only understood by shepherds, I was admiring this man, and considering the ruinous state in which he found his mother tongue and what he had done with it. I was also imagining one of those old palaces of the Princes of Baux which can be seen in the Alpilles: there were no more roofs, no stepped balustrades, no glass in the windows; the trefoils broken in the ribbed vaults, and the coats of arms on the doors were eaten away and covered in moss. Chickens were scratching around in the main courtyard, pigs were wallowing under the fine columned galleries, an ass was grazing in the chapel overgrown with grass, and pigeons were drinking from the huge rain-water filled fonts. Finally, amongst the rubble, two or three peasant families had built huts for themselves against the walls of the old palace.

Then, one fine day, the son of one the peasants, develops a great passion for the grand ruins and is indignant to see them thus profaned. Quickly, he chases the livestock out of the courtyard and the muses come to help. He rebuilds the great staircase on his own, replaces the wood panelling on the walls, the glass in the windows, rebuilds the towers, re-gilds the throne room, and puts the one-time immense palace, where Popes and Emperors stayed, back on its pediments.

This restored palace: the Provencal language.

The peasant's son: Mistral.