Mireio. a Provencal Poem
UBRAW Of CALIFOWtt UNIVERSITY Mireio IN SAKE SERIES. THE LADY FROM THE SEA. BY HENRIK ISBEN. A LONDON PLANE TREE. BY AMY LEVY. WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE. BY WILLIAM WATSON. IPHIGENIA IN DELPHI. BY RICHARD GARNETT. Mireio. A PROVEJVfAl. POEM. , , FREDERIC MISTRAL. Translated ty Harriet Waters Preston. CAMEO SERIES T.FISHER UNW1N PATERNOSTER S$, LOJHDONE.C MDCCCXC Frontispiece by JOSEPH PENNELL. To Lamartine* Te eonsecre Mireio : es moun cor e moun amo, Es la flour de mis a. Es un raisin de crau qtfemi touto sa ramo, Te porge un paisan. I offer thee Mireio : it is my heart and spirit, The blossom of my years, A cluster of Crau grapes, with all the green leaves near it, To thee a peasant bears. Preface to the English Edition. odd years have come and gone since THIRTYthe curious litterateurs of Paris were excited and charmed by the apparition of Fre'de'ric " Mistral's Mireio." A pastoral poem in twelve cantos, composed in the dialect of the Bouches du Rhone, and first issued by an obscure bookseller at Avignon, it was produced before the great literary world with a parallel French version of the author's own, very singular and rather sauvage as French, but exceedingly bold, picturesque, and poetic, and the poem had the further advantage of a most eloquent and sympathetic introduction in the Revue des Deux Mondes, of September 15, 1859, by Saint-Rene' Taillandier. The employment of a rustic southern dialect for the purposes of poetic narrative was by no means so unheard-of a thing, even to the men of that generation as was indirectly assumed by the first " reviewer of Mireio." Had not Jacques Jasmin, the immortal barber of Agen, written, in his own " " local patois, Frangonette," and The Blind Girl " " of Castel CuilleY' and the inimitable Papillotes ? But the work of Mistral, along with that of the school which he claimed to represent, and of which he was easily chief, was heralded by a 8 PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
[Show full text]