Frédéric Mistral | Page 5

Poulinet, Maire
of Maillane. My name is Délaïde.'
"'What! the daughter of the Maire of Maillane gleaning!'
"'Maître,' she replied, 'our family is large, six girls and two boys, and
although our father is pretty well to do, as you know, when we ask him
for money to dress with, he answers, "Girls, if you want finery, earn it!"
And that is why I came to glean.'

"Six months after this meeting, which reminds one of the ancient scene
of Ruth and Boaz, Maître François asked Maître Poulinet for the hand
of Délaïde, and I was born of that marriage."
His father's lands were extensive, and a great number of men were
required to work them. The poem, _Mirèio_, is filled with pictures of
the sort of life led in the country of Maillane. Of his father he says that
he towered above them all, in stature, in wisdom, and in nobleness of
bearing. He was a handsome old man, dignified in language, firm in
command, kind to the poor about him, austere with himself alone. The
same may be said of the poet to-day. He is a strikingly handsome man,
vigorous and active, exceedingly gracious and simple in manner. His
utter lack of affectation is the more remarkable, in view of the fact that
he has been for years an object of adulation, and lives in constant and
close contact with a population of peasants.
His schooling began at the age of nine, but the boy played truant so
frequently that he was sent to boarding-school in Avignon. Here he had
a sad time of it, and seems especially to have felt the difference of
language. Teachers and pupils alike made fun of his patois, for which
he had a strong attachment, because of the charm of the songs his
mother sung to him. Later he studied well, however, and became filled
with a love of Virgil and Homer. In them he found pictures of life that
recalled vividly the labors, the ways, and the ideas of the Maillanais. At
this time, too, he attempted a translation, in Provençal, of the first
eclogue of Virgil, and confided his efforts to a school-mate, Anselme
Mathieu, who became his life-long friend and one of the most active
among the Félibres.
It was at this school, in 1845, that he formed his friendship with
Roumanille, who had come there as a teacher. It is not too much to say
that the revival of the Provençal language grew out of this meeting.
Roumanille had already written his poems, Li Margarideto (The
Daisies). "Scarcely had he shown me," says Mistral, "in their
spring-time freshness, these lovely field-flowers, when a thrill ran
through my being and I exclaimed, 'This is the dawn my soul awaited
to awaken to the light!'" Mistral had read some Provençal, but at that

time the dialect was employed merely in derision; the writers used the
speech itself as the chief comic element in their productions. The
poems of Jasmin were as yet unknown to him. Roumanille was the first
in the Rhone country to sing the poetry of the heart. Master and pupil
became firm friends and worked together for years to raise the
home-speech to the dignity of a literary language.
At seventeen Mistral returned home, and began a poem in four cantos,
that he has never published; though portions of it are among the poems
of Lis Isclo d'Or_ and in the notes of Mirèio_. This poem is called Li
Meissoun (Harvest). His family, seeing his intellectual superiority, sent
him to Aix to study law. Here he again met Mathieu, and they made up
for the aridity of the Civil Code by devoting themselves to poetry in
Provençal.
In 1851 the young man returned to the mas_, a licencié en droit_, and
his father said to him: "Now, my dear son, I have done my duty; you
know more than ever I learned. Choose your career; I leave you free."
And the poet tells us he threw his lawyer's gown to the winds and gave
himself up to the contemplation of what he so loved,--the splendor of
his native Provence.
Through Roumanille he came to know Aubanel, Croustillat, and others.
They met at Avignon, full of youthful enthusiasm, and during this
period Mistral, encouraged by his friends, worked upon his greatest
poem, _Mirèio_. In 1854, on the 21st of May, the Félibrige was
founded by the seven poets,--Joseph Roumanille, Paul Giéra, Théodore
Aubanel, Eugène Garcin, Anselme Mathieu, Frédéric Mistral, Alphonse
Tavan. In 1868, Garcin published a violent attack upon the Félibres,
accusing them, in the strongest language, of seeking to bring about a
political separation of southern France from the rest of the country.
This apostasy was a cause of great grief to the others, and Garcin's
name was stricken