Frédéric Mistral / Poet and Leader in Provence

by Charles Alfred Downer

The background of the action is obtained by the simplest description, a cart casting the shadow of its great wheels, a bell now and then sounding afar off across the marshes, references to the owl adding its plaint to the song of the nightingale, to the crickets who stop to listen now and then, and the recurring verses about the "magnanarello" reminds us now and then, like a lovely leitmotiv, of the group of singing girls about the amorous pair.

The next canto is called La Descoucounado (The Opening of the Cocoons), and it must be confessed that there is a slight falling off in interest. All that describes the life of the country-folk is full of sustained charm, but Mistral has not escaped the dangers that beset the modern poet who aims at the epic style. Here begins the recounting of the numerous superstitions of the ignorant peasants, and the wonders of Provence are interpolated at every turn. The maidens, while engaged in stripping the cocoons, make known a long list of popular beliefs, and then branch off into a conversation about love. They are surprisingly well acquainted with the writings of Jean de Nostradamus, to whom the Félibres are indebted for a lot of erroneous ideas concerning the Troubadours and the Courts of Love. This literary conversation is not convincing, and we are pleased when Noro sings the pretty song of Magali, which, composed to be sung to an air well known in Provence, has become very popular. The idea is not new; the young girl sings of successive forms she will assume, to avoid the attentions of her suitor, and he, ingeniously, finds the transformation necessary to overcome her. For instance, when she becomes a rose, he changes into a butterfly to kiss her. At last the maiden becomes convinced of the love of her pursuer, and is won.

The fourth canto, Li Demandaire (The Suitors), recalls the Homeric style, and is among the finest of the poem. Alàri, the shepherd, Veran, the keeper of horses, and Ourrias, who has herds of bulls in the Camargue, present themselves successively for the hand of Mirèio. The "transhumance des troupeaux" is described in verse full of vigorous movement; the sheep are taken up into the Alps for the summer, and then in the fall brought down to the great plain of the Crau near the Delta of the Rhone. The whole description is made with bold, simple strokes of the brush, offering a vivid picture not to be forgotten. Alàri, too, offers a marvellously carved wooden cup, adorned with pastoral scenes. Veran owns a hundred white mares, whose manes, thick and flowing like the grass of the marshes, are untouched by the shears, and float above their necks, as they bound fiercely along, like a fairy's scarf. They are never subdued, and often, after years of exile from the salt meadows of the Camargue, they throw off their rider, and gallop over twenty leagues of marshes to the land of their birth, to breathe the free salt air of the sea. Their element is the sea; they have surely broken loose from the chariot of Neptune; they are still white with foam; and when the sea roars and darkens, when the ships break their cables, the stallions of the Camargue neigh with joy.

And Ramoun welcomes Veran, and hopes that Mirèio will wed him, and calls his daughter, who gently refuses. The third suitor, Ourrias, has no better fortune. The account of this man's giant strength, the narrative of his exploits in subduing the wild bulls, are quite Homeric. The story is told of the scar he bears, how one of the fiercest bulls that he had branded carried him along, threw him ahead on the ground, and then hurled him high into the air. The strong, fierce man presents his suit, describing the life the women lead in the Camargue; but before he has her love, "his trident will bear flowers, the hills will melt away like wax, and the journey to Les Baux will be by sea." This canto and the next, recounting the fierce combat between Ourrias and Vincèn, are really splendid narrative poetry. The style is marvellously compressed, and the story thrilling. The sullen anger of Ourrias, his insult that does not spare Mirèio, the indignation of Vincèn, that fires him with unwonted strength, the battle of the two men out alone in the fields near the mighty Pont du Gard, Vincèn's victory in the trial of strength, the treachery of Ourrias, who sneaks back and strikes his enemy down with the trident. "With a mighty groan the hapless boy rolls at full length upon the grass, and the grass yields, bloody, and over his earthy limbs the ants of the fields already make their way." The rapidity, the compactness of the sentences, impressed Gaston Paris as very remarkable. The assassin gallops away upon his mare, and seeks by night to cross the Rhone. A singularly felicitous use of the supernatural is made here. Ourrias is carried to the bottom of the river by the goblins and spirits that come out and hover over it at night. There is a certain terror in this termination, something that recalls parts of the Inferno. Ourrias's superstitious fears are the effect of his guilty conscience. The souls of the damned, their weird ceremonial, are but the outward rendering of the inward terror he feels.

A less legitimate use of the supernatural is made in the succeeding canto, called La Masco (The Witch). In fact, the canto is really a blemish in the beautiful poem. Vincèn is found unconscious and carried to the Mas des Micocoules, and various remedies tried. He comes to himself, but the wound is deemed too serious to be healed by natural means, and Mirèio, at the suggestion of one of her maiden friends, takes Vincèn to the abode of the witch who lives in the Fairies' Hole under the rocks of Les Baux. Besides the obvious objection that the magic cure could not have been made, there is the physical impossibility of Vincèn's having walked, in his dying condition, through the labyrinth of subterranean passages, amid the wild scenes of a sort of Walpurgis night. The poet was doubtless led into this error by his desire to preserve all the legends and superstitious lore of Provence. Possibly he was led astray also by his desire to create an epic poem, in which a visit to the lower regions is a necessity. The entire episode is impossible and uninteresting, and is a blot in the beautiful idyll. Later on, this desire to insert the supernatural leads the poet to interrupt the action of his poem, while the three Maries relate to the unconscious Mirèio at great length the story of their coming from Jerusalem to Provence. Interesting as folklore, or as an evidence of the credulity of the Provençals, this narrative of the three Maries is out of place in the poem. It does not help us out to suppose that Mirèio dreams the narrative, for it is full of theology, history, and traditions she could not possibly have conceived. The poem of Mirèio and all Mistral's work suffer from this desire to work into his poetry all the history, real and legendary, of his region.

The three Maries are Mary Magdalen, Mary, the mother of James and John, and Mary, the mother of James the Less. After the Crucifixion they embark with Saint Trophime, and successfully battling with the storms of the sea, they land finally in Provence, and by a series of miracles convert the people of Arles. This canto never would have converted Boileau from his disapproval of the "merveilleux chrétien."

The poet finds his true inspiration again in the life of the Mas, in the home-bringing of the crops, in the gathering of the workers about the table of Mèste Ramoun. This picture of patriarchal life is like a bit out of an ancient literature; we have a feeling of the archaic, of the primitive, we are amid the first elements of human life, where none of the complications of the modern man find a place. Mèste Ambroi, whom Vincèn has finally persuaded with passionate entreaties to seek the hand of Mirèio for him, comes upon this evening scene. The interview of the two old men is like a Greek play; their wisdom and experience are uttered in stately, sententious language, and many a proverb falls from their lips. Ramoun has inflexible ideas as to parental authority: "A father is a father, his will must be done. The herd that leads the herdsman, sooner or later, is crunched in the jaws of the wolf. If a son resisted his father in our day, the father would have slain him perhaps! Therefore the families were strong, united, sound, resisting the storm like a line of plane trees! Doubtless they had their quarrels, as we know, but when Christmas night, beneath its starry tent, brought together the head of the house and his descendants, before the blessed table, before the table where he presided, the old man, with his wrinkled hand, washed it all away with his benediction!"

But Mirèio and not Mèste Ambroi makes known to her father that it is her hand Vincèn seeks, and the mother and father break out in anger against the maid. Ramoun's anger leads him to speak offensively to Mèste Ambroi, who nobly maintains his dignity amid his poverty, and recounts his services to his country that have been so ill repaid. Ramoun is equally proud of his wealth, earned by the sweat of his brow, and sternly refuses. The other leaves, and then the harvesters continue their merry-making, with singing and farandoles, about a great bonfire in honor of Saint John. "All the hills were aglow as if stars had rained in the darkness, and the mad wind carried up the incense of the hills and the red gleam of the fires toward the saint, hovering in the blue twilight."

That night Mirèio grieved and wept for Vincèn, and, remembering what he had told her of the three Saint Maries, rises before the dawn and flees away. Her journey across the Crau and the island of Camargue is narrated with numerous details and descriptions; they are never extraneous to the action, and are a constant source of beauty and interest. The strange, barren plain of the Crau, covered with the stones that once destroyed a race of Giants, as the legend has it, is vividly described, as the maiden flies across it in the ardent rays of the June sun. She stops to pray to a saint that he send her a draught of water, and immediately she comes upon a well. Here she meets a little Arlesian boy who tells her "in his golden speech" of the glories of Arles. "But," says the poet, "O soft, dark city, the child forgot to tell thy supreme wonder; O fertile land of Arles, Heaven gives pure beauty to thy daughters, as it gives grapes to the autumn, and perfumes to the mountains and wings to the bird." The little fellow talks of many things and leads her to his home. From here the fisherman ferries her over the broad Rhone, and we accompany her over the Camargue, down to the sea. A mirage deceives her for a time, she sees the town and church, but it soon vanishes in air, and the maiden hurries on in the fierce heat.

Her prayer in the chapel is written in another verse form:—