Provençal

“ After I had left the town I became more intimate with that Provençal charm which I had already enjoyed from the window of the train, and which glowed in the sweet sunshine and the white rocks, and lurked in the smoke-puffs of the little olives.
The olive-trees in Provence are half the landscape. They are neither so tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as I have seen them beyond the Alps; but this mild colorless bloom seems the very texture of the country. The road from Nîmes, for a distance of fifteen miles, is superb; broad enough for an army, and as white and firm as a dinner-table. ”

“ The road to Les Baux crosses a true Provençal desert where one realises the phrase, 'Vieux comme les rochers de Provence,'—a wilderness of grey stone, here and there worn into cart-tracks, and tufted with rosemary, box, lavender, and lentisk. On the way it passes the Abbaye de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all periods of architecture; where nothing seems to flourish now but henbane and the wild cucumber, or to breathe but a mumble-toothed and terrible old hag. ”

“ An evil shadow hangs about it, and yet there is but little of the building touched by visible shades at this magnificent moment of a Provençal day. A shadow that no sunshine can dispel surely haunts the fortress of Les Baux. For a second, in the hot glare, fancy plays one a trick, and there seems to be floating from the summit the blood-red banner which the princes used to 316 unfurl on days of combat, when the air rang with the strange battle-cry of the house: "Au hazard Balthazar!" ”

“ I answered, “of a Provençal poem in twelve cantos to which I am just giving the finishing touches.”
“Oh, these good Provencaux!” he laughed. “You are always the same, determined to keep your tattered language, like the donkeys who will walk along the borders of the roads to graze upon thistles. It is in French, my dear friend, it is in the language of Paris that we must sing of our Provence to-day if we wish to be heard. ”

“ The troubadours and jongleurs traveled from court to court, not only in France, but north into Germany and south into Italy, carrying with them the southern French poetry and customs. We have few examples of Provençal before the year 1100, but from that time on, for two centuries, countless songs were written, and many of the troubadours enjoyed an international reputation. The terrible Albigensian crusade brought misery and death into the sprightly circles which had gathered about the count of Toulouse and others who had treated the heretics too leniently. ”

“ A good friend this fierce, cleansing sun, and the wind from Mont Ventoux must sweep away all impurities from the narrow streets, and—il y en a!
Away across the parapet a mass of roofs fills the slope to the river bank—most wonderful of rivers!—and to the south there are hills and bright distances: Provençal hills, distances of the land of "joy, young-heartedness and love." And that makes the thought that we are in Provence wake up with a cry that rings in the heart like a reveillé. ”

“ No sooner had the Gay Science been established in Provence, than it became the fashion in surrounding countries. The sovereigns of Europe adopted the Provençal language, and enlisted themselves among the poets, and there was soon neither baron nor knight who did not feel himself bound to add to his fame as a warrior the reputation of a gentle troubadour. Monarchs were now the professors of the art, and the only patrons were the ladies. Women, no longer beautiful ciphers, acquired complete liberty of action, and the homage paid to them amounted almost to worship. ”

“ THE ARCH AT CARPENTRAS. valley in which are the ruins of a Roman aqueduct, to the bare slopes of the snow-crested Mont Ventoux, is one of varied charm. Groups of little houses peep out from amongst the trees; clumps of tall cypress, ranged like a{272} wall of spires, protect the vineyards from the blighting mistral’s chill; villages nestle in the shelter of trees whose rich foliage lingers long after summer has departed; a Provençal landscape lies all around the town, bewitching the eye and captivating the emotions. ”

“ This new Provençal poetry, which has created a certain sensation of late, had a very simple and touching origin. The son of a gardener of Saint-Rémy, educated in our French schools, wrote verses at the age of twenty, as one fresh from college is apt to do,—simple, unpretending verses, by no means poésie du diable, as a witty critic calls the over-hold attempts of youth, but rather poésie de famille, which was destined never to trangress the limits of the fireside. ”

“ These tiresome, empty tirades had at least the spice of being uttered in the strangest and most amusing kind of language, in which an old-school stilted French, the French of books of rhetoric, was mixed with the oddest provincialisms. Aunt Portal detested the Provençal tongue, that dialect so admirable in color and sonorousness, which only the peasants and people talk, which contains an echo of Latin vibrating across the deep blue sea. She belonged to the burgher class of Provence who translate pécaïré by péchère (sinner) and fancy they talk correctly. ”

“ I should have liked to make a stay at Trets, and to explore this country. There is so much [95] to see in connection with the battle—the ruins of the church on Mont Victoire, the ruins of the trophy on the field itself, the traces of the fortifications on the Pain de Munition, and perhaps the very hill slope of slippery marl upon which the Romans first bore back the attacking enemy. But I wanted to get on to Aix, the first large Provençal city in my itinerary, and thence to Arles and Nîmes and the rest of the beautiful places that are like a cluster of jewels in the country's diadem. ”

“ Then he devoted his time and energies to collecting Provençal relics, and to-day, with its treasures and associations, the place has become a shrine. Everything relating to the life and traditions of the Provence is there—Roman sculpture, sarcophagi, ceramics, frescoes, furnishings, implements—the place is crowded with precious things. Lately a room of honor has been devoted to the poet himself. ”

“ Perhaps the most famous, peculiar, and representative of Provençal forms are the alba, or poem of morning parting, and the sirvente, or poem not of love. The sestina, a very elaborate canzonet, was invented in Provence and borrowed by the Italians. But it is curious to find that the sonnet, the crown and flower of all artificial poetry, though certainly invented long before the decadence of Provençal, was only used in Provençal by Italian experimenters. The poets proper of the langue d'oc were probably too proud to admit any form that they had not invented themselves.
Many men, one mind. ”

“ The nobility of Provence shared in his infatuation and eagerly joined in the undertaking. At the accession of Charles under the wise government of Raymond Berenger, and the judicious husbanding of its resources by Romeo de Villeneuve, Provence was at its acme of prosperity. Charles brought it to ruin. After the execution of Conradin, he rode roughshod over the people of Naples and Sicily. To his exactions there was no end. The great fiefs were seized and granted to Provençal or Angevin favourites; the foreign soldiers lived at free quarters, and treated the people with the utmost barbarity. ”

“ THE CITIES OF THE LAGOONS
The rivers of Provence are strangely fascinating; perhaps because they so dominate and ensoul the country, and because of their tumultuous flowing. The really fascinating thing for the living is life!
The river Asse is so impetuous that a proverb has grown up about it: "l'Asse; fou qui la passe."
"And fleet Durance ...
Rugged in gait as wild of appetite...."
The Rhone has a little wind all to herself; the west wind that is called lou rosau, the Provençal name for the river being la Rose. ”

“ And thus among the more servile imitations of Provençal poetry crept in the Court versions of the Cantares de amigo, sung by the people in Galicia and Portugal, which still delight by their freshness and savour of the soil. With the death of King Diniz (1325) , of whose own poems over a hundred survive, the Provençal Portuguese school of poetry ended. If Spain borrowed from Portugal in the composition of the early lyrics, she repaid the debt later with the romances, those lovely fifteenth and sixteenth century crystallisations of the longer early heroic poems and chronicles of Spain. ”

“ This naïve local twist is not peculiar to Saboly. With very few exceptions all Provençal noëls are packed full of the same delightful [113] anachronisms. It is to Provençal shepherds that the Herald Angel appears; it is Provençaux who compose the bregado, the pilgrim company, that starts for Bethlehem; and Bethlehem is a village, always within easy walking distance, here in Provence. Yet it is not wholly simplicity that has brought about this shifting of the scene of the Nativity from the hill country of Judæa to the hill country of Southeastern France. ”

“ Provençal verses became models for all neighbouring countries. Frederick Barbarossa in Germany, Richard Cœur-de-Lion in Anglo-French England, Alfonso II in Aragon, Frederick II in Sicily, these royal personages went out of their way to compose in the fashionable style and rhythm of Provence. They became, in fact, troubadours. The terms needs some explanation. A troubadour is not properly a wandering minstrel carrying a guitar. That itinerant minstrel is an inferior order of person, the jongleur (in Provençal joglar) . He stands to the troubadour as the Anglo-Saxon “gleeman” to the “maker.” ”

“ The ancients assigned a place to the great wind among their deities, and the Emperor Augustus erected a temple in its honour. It is curious how this pagan feeling of personality in the wind survives to this day.
Its famous namesake, the Provençal poet, whose home is at Maillane, on the great plain among the guardian cypresses, expresses the sentiment in a hundred forms, and he adduces a still more striking instance in the 22 account he once gave of his father—a fine specimen of the Provençal farmer or yeoman—who had a positive adoration for "le bon vent." ”

“ From the south of France the novel spread into Catalonia, where we find in the 14th century a number of novels in verse very similar to the Provençal ones, and into Italy, where in general the prose form has been adopted.
Didactic and Religions Poetry.—Compositions intended for instruction, correction and edification were very numerous in the south of France as well as elsewhere, and, in spite of the enormous losses sustained by Provençal literature, much of this kind still remains. But it is seldom that such works have much originality or literary value. ”

“ He eloped with Cunizza, the wife of Count Richard of St. Boniface; at some period of his life he went into Provence; and he died a violent death, about the middle of the thirteenth century. The works attributed to him are poems in Tuscan and Provençal, a didactic poem in Latin named Thesaurus Thesaurorum (now in the Ambrosiana in Milan) , an essay in Provençal on "The Progress and Power of the Kings of Aragon in the Comté of Provence," a treatise on "The Defence of Walled Towns," and some historial translations from Latin into the vulgar tongue. ”

“ One hears the clang of metal as one walks along the melancholy avenue, or stands in the empty ruined church. The glory has all departed, and most of the romance.
There are many other memories of the past in Arles, but they need not detain us. The ancient city has of late years been the centre of the Provençal revival of the Félibres, and we may take leave of it as well as of the charming land of Provence, with a glance at the Musée Arlaten, which owes its foundation to the patriotism and largely to the generosity of Mistral. ”

“ French of the most barbaric, and Provençal of the most pliant, are mixed up in these delightfully comic dialogues exactly as they are upon the lips of the common folk. It is the most amusing, perhaps the only distinctly amusing work which the school of the felibre has ever produced, and anybody who reads French may read and have a hearty laugh over it. And I may add, from my own experience, that a very short residence in the ancient Provincia is enough to show that the local idiom is much more intelligible phonetically than it looks at first sight upon paper. ”

“ The brilliant life of the south was extinguished. We hear the piteous wail of the fast disappearing singers: "Oh! Toulouse and Provence, land of Agen, Beziers, and Carcassonne; as I have seen you, and as I see you now!"
While Provençal literature was thus perishing miserably, that of France was gradually unfolding; and we find here and there some grande dame named as a patroness of literature. Most of them are but names, yet we find that the Countess Marie de Champagne, Queen Eleanor's daughter, encouraged the great trouvère Chrestien de Troies. ”

“ We went into the house and sat down to talk awhile about poetry and books. There was a large book-case full of French and Provençal literature here, but it was rather the parlor and everyday sitting-room than his work-room. Unhappily, they have no children. Evidently they are exceedingly happy together and naturally do not miss what they have never had. She opened the drawing-room for us, which is the room of state. It is full of interesting things connected with Provence and their own life, but perfectly simple, in accord with the country-like fashion of their existence. ”