Frédéric Mistral / Poet and Leader in Provence

by Charles Alfred Downer

The stanza used by Mistral throughout Mirèio and Calendau is his own invention. Here is the first stanza of the second canto of Mirèio:—

"Cantas, cantas, magnanarello,
Que la culido es cantarello!
Galant soun li magnan e s'endormon di tres:
Lis amourié soun plen de fiho
Que lou bèu tèms escarrabiho,
Coume un vòu de blóundis abiho
Que raubon sa melico i roumanin dóu gres."

This certainly is a stanza of great beauty, and eminently adapted to the language. Mistral is exceedingly skilful in the use of it, distributing pauses effectively, breaking the monotony of the repeated feminine verses with enjambements, and continuing the sense from one stanza to the next. This stanza, like the language, is pretty and would scarcely be a suitable vehicle for poetic expression requiring great depth or stateliness. Provençal verse in general cannot be said to possess majesty or the rich orchestral quality Brunetière finds in Victor Hugo. Its qualities are sweetness, daintiness, rapidity, grace, a merry, tripping flow, great smoothness, and very musical rhythm.

Mirèio contains one ballad and two lyrics in a measure differing from that of the rest of the poem. The ballad of the Bailiff Suffren has the swing and movement a sea ballad should possess. The stanza is of six lines, of ten syllables each, with the cæsura after the fifth syllable, the rhymes being abb, aba.

"Lou Baile Sufrèn | que sus mar coumando."

In the third canto occurs the famous song Magali, so popular in Provence. The melody is printed at the end of the volume. Mirèio's prayer in the tenth canto is in five-syllable verse with rhymes abbab.

The poems of the Isclo d'Or offer over eighty varieties of strophe, a most remarkable number. This variety is produced by combining in different manners the verse lengths, and by changes in the succession of rhymes. Whatever ingenuity Mistral has exercised in the creation of rhythms, the impression must not be created that inspiration has suffered through attention to mechanism, or that he is to be classed with the old Provençal versifiers or those who flourished in northern France just before the time of Marot. Artifice is always strictly subordinated, and the poet seems to sing spontaneously. No violence is ever done to the language in order to force it into artificial moulds, there is no punning in rhymes, there is nothing that can be charged against the poet as beneath the real dignity of his art.

Let us look at some of the more striking of these verse forms. The second of Li Cansoun, Lou Bastimen, offers the following form:—

"Lou bastimen vèn de Maiorco
Emé d'arange un cargamen:
An courouna de vèrdi torco
L'aubre-mestre dón bastimen:
Urousamen
Vèn de Maiorco
Lou bastimen."[7]

This stanza reproduces in the sixth line the last word of the first, and in the seventh the last word of the fourth.