This dictionary makes order out of chaos, and although the language of the Felibres is justly said to be an artificial literary language, we have in this work along with the form adopted or created by the poet an orderly presentation of all the speech-forms of the langue d’oc as they really exist in the mouths of the people.

PART SECOND

THE POETICAL WORKS OF MISTRAL

CHAPTER I

THE FOUR LONGER POEMS

I. MIREIO (MIREILLE)

The publication of this poem in 1859 is an event of capital importance in the history of modern Provencal literature.  Recognized immediately as a master-work, it fired the ambitions of the Felibres, enlarged the horizon of possibilities for the new speech, and earned for its author the admiration of critics in and out of France.  Original in language and in conception, full of the charm of rustic life, containing a pathetic tale of love, a sweet human interest, and glowing with pictures of the strange and lovely landscapes of Provence, the poem charmed all readers, and will doubtless always rank as a work that belongs to general literature.  Of no other work written in this dialect can the same be asserted.  Mistral has not had an equal success since, and in spite of the merit of his other productions, his literary fame will certainly always be based upon this poem.  Whatever be the destiny of this revival, the author of Mireio has probably already taken his place among the immortals of literature.

He has incarnated in this poem all that is sweetest and best, all that is most typical in the life of his region.  The tale is told, in general, with complete simplicity, sobriety, and conciseness.  The poet’s heart and soul are in his work from beginning to end, and it seems more genuinely inspired than any of the long poems he has written subsequently.

In the first canto the author says,—­

    “Car cantan que per vautre, o pastre e gent di mas.”

    For we sing for you alone, O shepherds and people of the farms,

and when he wrote this verse, he was doubtless sincere.  Later, however, he must have become conscious that a work of great artistic beauty was growing under his hand, and that it would find a truly appreciative public more probably among the cultivated classes than among the peasants of Provence.  Hence the French prose translation; and hence, furthermore, a paradox in the position Mistral assumed.  Since those who really appreciate and admire his poetry are the cultivated classes who know French, and since the peasants who use the dialect cannot feel the artistic worth of his literary production, or even understand the elevated diction he is forced to employ, should he not, after all, have written in French?  The idea of Roumanille