Frédéric Mistral / Poet and Leader in Provence

by Charles Alfred Downer

CHAPTER III

THE TEAGEDY, LA RÈINO JANO

The peculiar qualities and limitations of Mistral are possibly nowhere better evidenced than in this play. Full of charming passages, frequently eloquent, here and there very poetic, it is scarcely dramatic, and certainly not a tragedy either of the French or the Shakespearian type. The most striking lines, the most eloquent tirades, arise less from the exigences of the drama than from the constant desire of the poet to give expression to his love of Provence. The attention of the reader is diverted at every turn from the adventures of the persons in the play to the glories and the beauties of the lovely land in which our poet was born. The matter of a play is certainly contained in the subject, but the energy of the author has not been spent upon the invention of strong situations, upon the clash of wills, upon the psychology of his characters, upon the interplay of passions, but rather upon strengthening in the hearts of his Provençal hearers the love of the good Queen Joanna, whose life has some of the romance of that of Mary, Queen of Scots, and upon letting them hear from her lips and from the lips of her courtiers the praises of Provence.

Mistral enumerates eight dramatic works treating the life of his heroine. They are a tragedy in five acts and a verse by Magnon (Paris, 1656), called Jeanne Ire, reine de Naples; a tragedy in five acts and in verse by Laharpe, produced in 1781, entitled, Jeanne de Naples; an opéra-comique in three acts, the book by De Leuven and Brunswick, the music by Monpon and Bordèse, produced in 1840; an Italian tragedy, La Regina Griovanna, by the Marquis of Casanova, written about 1840; an Italian opera, the libretto by Ghislanzoni, who is known as the librettist of Aïda, the music by Petrella (Milan, 1875); a play in verse by Brunetti, called Griovanna I di Napoli (Naples, 1881); a Hungarian play by Rakosi, Johanna es Endre, and lastly the trilogy of Walter Savage Landor, Andrea of Hungary, Griovanna of Naples, and Fra Rupert (London, 1853). Mistral's play is dated May, 1890.

It may be said concerning the work of Landor, which is a poem in dramatic form rather than a play, that it offers scarcely any points of resemblance with Mistral's beyond the few essential facts in the lives of Andrea and Joanna. Both poets take for granted the innocence of the Queen. It is worth noting that Provence is but once referred to in the entire work of the English poet.

The introduction that precedes Mistral's play quotes the account of the life of the Queen from the Dictionnaire of Moréri (Lyons, 1681), which we here translate.

"Giovanna, first of the name, Queen of Jerusalem, Naples, and Sicily, Duchess of Apulia and Calabria, Countess of Provence, etc., was a daughter of Charles of Sicily, Duke of Calabria, who died in 1328, before his father Robert, and of Marie of Valois, his second wife. She was only nineteen years of age when she assumed the government of her dominions after her grandfather's death in 1343. She had already been married by him to his nephew, Andrea of Hungary. This was not a happy marriage; for the inclinations of both were extremely contrary, and the prince was controlled by a Franciscan monk named Robert, and the princess by a washerwoman called Filippa Catenese. These indiscreet advisers brought matters to extremes, so that Andrea was strangled in 1345. The disinterested historians state ingenuously that Joanna was not guilty of this crime, although the others accuse her of it. She married again, on the 2d of August, 1346. Her second husband was Louis of Tarento, her cousin; and she was obliged to leave Naples to avoid the armed attack of Louis, King of Hungary, who committed acts of extreme violence in this state. Joanna, however, quieted all these things by her prudence, and after losing this second husband, on the 25th of March, 1362, she married not long afterward a third, James of Aragon, Prince of Majorca, who, however, tarried not long with her. So seeing herself a widow for the third time, she made a fourth match in 1376 with Otto of Brunswick, of the House of Saxony; and as she had no children, she adopted a relative, Charles of Duras.... This ungrateful prince revolted against Queen Joanna, his benefactress.... He captured Naples, and laid siege to the Castello Nuovo, where the Queen was. She surrendered. Charles of Duras had her taken to Muro, in the Basilicata, and had her put to death seven or eight months afterward. She was then in her fifty-eighth year.... Some authors say that he caused her to be smothered, others that she was strangled; but the more probable view is that she was beheaded, in 1382, on the 5th of May. It is said that a Provençal astrologer, doubtless a certain Anselme who lived at that time, and who is very famous in the history of Provence, being questioned as to the future husband of the young princess, replied, 'Maritabitur cum ALIO.' This word is composed of the initials of the names of her four husbands, Andrea, Louis, James, and Otto. This princess, furthermore, was exceedingly clever, fond of the sciences and of men of learning, of whom she had a great many at her court, liberal and beautiful, prudent, wise, and not lacking in piety. She it is that sold Avignon to the popes. Boccaccio, Balde, and other scholars of her time speak of her with praise."

In offering an explanation of the great popularity enjoyed by Joanna of Naples among the people of Provence, the poet does not hesitate to acknowledge that along with her beauty, her personal charm, her brilliant arrival on the gorgeous galley at the court of Clement VI, whither she came, eloquent and proud, to exculpate herself, her long reign and its vicissitudes, her generous efforts to reform abuses, must be counted also the grewsome procession of her four husbands; and this popularity, he says, is still alive, after five centuries. The poet places her among such historic figures as Caius Marius, Ossian, King Arthur, Count Raymond of Toulouse, the good King René, Anne of Brittany, Roland, the Cid, to which the popular mind has attached heroic legends, race traditions, and mysterious monuments. The people of Provence still look back upon the days of their independence when she reigned, a sort of good fairy, as the good old times of Queen Joanna. Countless castles, bridges, churches, monuments, testify to her life among this enthusiastic people. Roads and ruins, towers and aqueducts, bear her name. Proverbs exist wherein it is preserved. "For us," says Mistral, "the fair Joanna is what Mary Stuart is for the Scotch,—a mirage of retrospective love, a regret of youth, of nationality, of poetry passed away. And analogies are not lacking in the lives of the two royal, tragic enchantresses." Petrarch, speaking of her and her young husband surrounded by Hungarians, refers to them as two lambs among wolves. In a letter dated from Vancluse, August, 1346, he deplores the death of the King, but makes no allusion to the complicity of the Queen.

Boccaccio proclaims her the special pride of Italy, so gracious, gentle, and kindly, that she seemed rather the companion than the queen of her subjects.