The Memoirs of Frederic MistralAuthor :
Paperback
Published : Wednesday 11 February 1987
Description
FrAcdAcric Mistral (1830-1914) was without a doubt the greatest modern ProvenAal poet and the foremost champion of his native Provence, the guiding spirit of a group of latter-day troubadours who revived and refined the language of Southern France as a literary medium. For this achievement and for his own poetry, Mistral was awarded the Nobel prize in 1904â?"â?"characteristically, he gave the prize money to a folklore museum he had founded in Arles. Two years later, at the age of seventy-six, Mistral published his charming book ofA Memoirs, which is not so much an autobiography as a recollection of the life of ordinary country people in his early years, filled with delightful anecdotes, tales, folksongs, and poetry. Written in the relaxed conversational style of an elderly gentleman reminiscing about the old days, theA MemoirsA describe the circumstances of Mistralâ?Ts childhood and early manhood â?" the ProvenAal landscapes, the seasonal life of the farm, the religious observances and seasonal festivities, many clearly of pagan origin. Although educated in the classics and law in Avignon and Aix, Mistral felt out of place among the French-speaking bourgeois and returned to his family farm to devote his life to writing for the simple farming people of his region. He soon began his long poemA MireioA (eventually transformed into the opera Mireille by Gounod), whose heroine was modeled on the peasant girls he saw and worked with daily. At the same time, he and several other young men came together to form the Felibrige, a society dedicated to restoring the ProvenAal language and preserving local traditions. TheA MemoirsA concludes with the death of young Mistralâ?Ts father and the success of Mireio (1859), so quietly understated that one would hardly suspect that the author had been hailed as a major poet while still in his twenties. Mistral wrote hisA MemoirsA in ProvenAal and himself translated them into French. A previous English translation (abridged and paraphrased from the French) was published in 1907 and has been out of print ever since. In his new translation, George Wickes of the University of Oregon has mined Mistralâ?Ts monumental dictionary,A Lou Tresor dA3u FAclibrige. This illustrated edition includes the original texts of ProvenAal songs and verse, with Professor Wickesâ?T English versions printed en face.
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