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Frédéric Mistral (September 8, 1830 - March 25, 1914) was a French poet who led the 19th century revival of Occitan (Provençal) language and literature. He was a key figure in the literary félibrige movement. He shared the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904 (with Jose Echegaray y Eizaguirre) for his contributions in literature and philology.
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Life
Frédéric Mistral was born in Maillane, in the Bouches-du-Rhône département of France. Mistral's father was a well-to-do farmer in the former French province of Provence. Mistral attended the Royal College of Avignon (later renamed the Frédéric Mistral School). One of his teachers was Joseph Roumanille, who had begun writing poems in the vernacular of Provence and who became his lifelong friend. Mistral took a degree in law at the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1851.
Wealthy enough to live without following a profession, he early decided to devote himself to the rehabilitation of Provencal life and language. In 1854, with several friends, he founded the félibrige, an association for the maintenance of the Provencal language and customs, extended later to include the whole of southern France (le pays de la langue d'oc, "the country of the language of oc"). As the language of the troubadours, Provençal had been the cultured speech of southern France and was used also by poets in Italy and Spain. Mistral threw himself into the literary revival of Provençal and was the guiding spirit and chief organizer of the félibrige until his death in 1914.
Mistral devoted 20 years' work to a scholarly dictionary of Provençal, entitled Lou Tresor dou Felibrige, 2 vol. (1878). He also founded a Provencal ethnographic museum in Arles, using his Nobel Prize money to assist it. His attempts to restore the Provençal language to its ancient position did not succeed, but his poetic genius gave it some enduring masterpieces, and he is considered one of the greatest poets of France.
Mistral died in Maillane on the 25th of March, 1914.
Works
His literary output consists of four long narrative poems: Mirèio (1859; Mireio: A Provencal Poem), Calendau (1867), Nerto (1884), and Lou Pouemo dou Rose (1897; Eng. trans. The Song of the Rhone); a historical tragedy, La Reino Jano (1890; "Queen Jane"); two volumes of lyrics, Lis Isclo d'or (1876; definitive edition 1889) and Lis Oulivado (1912); and many short stories, collected in Prose d'Armana, 3 vol. (1926-1929).
Mistral's volume of memoirs, Moun espelido (French: Mes origines, 1906; Eng. trans. Memoirs of Mistral), is his best-known work, but his claim to greatness rests on his first and last long poems, Mirèio and Lou Pouemo dou Rose, both full-scale epics in 12 cantos.
Mirèio, which is set in the poet's own time and district, is the story of a rich farmer's daughter whose love for a poor basketmaker's son is thwarted by her parents and ends with her death in the church of Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Into this poem Mistral poured his love for the countryside where he was born. Mirèio skillfully combines narration, dialogue, description, and lyricism and is notable for the springy, musical quality of its highly individual stanzaic form. Under its French title, Mireille, it inspired an opera by Charles Gounod (1863).
Lou Pouemo dou Rose tells of a voyage on the Rhône River from Lyon to Beaucaire by the barge Lou Caburle, which is boarded first by a romantic young prince of Holland and later by the daughter of a poor ferryman. The romance between them is cut short by disaster when the first steamboat to sail on the Rhone accidentally sinks Lou Caburle. Though the crew swims ashore, the lovers are drowned. Although less musical and more dense in style than Mirèio, this epic is as full of life and colour. It suggests that Mistral, late in life, realized that his aim had not been reached and that much of what he loved was, like his heroes, doomed to perish.
Miscellaneous
In his honour, the Chilean poet Lucila Godoy Alcayaga took the last name of her pseudonym, Gabriela Mistral.
See also
External link and reference
- This article incorporates material from [1] (http://www.nobel-winners.com/Literature/mistral_frederic.html). "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License."
- recognition of the fresh originality and true inspiration of his poetic production, which faithfully reflects the natural scenery and native spirit of his people, and, in addition, his significant work as a Provenзal philologist. (http://www.angelfire.com/ego2/olko/cgi-bin/mistral-bio.html)ca:Frederic Mistral
de:Frédéric Mistral es:Frédéric Mistral eo:Frederic MISTRAL fr:Frédéric Mistral zh-min-nan:Frédéric Mistral nl:Frederic Mistral ja:フレデリック・ミストラル oc:Frederic Mistral pl:Frédéric Mistral ro:Frédéric Mistral sv:Frédéric Mistral