Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/15

Rh let us create one for the hearths of our sires and grand-sires.' The boy of Saint-Rémy had written French verses without the slightest literary pretension. Henceforth he will write Provençal verses, with the very definite aim of substituting a frank, healthful, honest, yet gay and genuinely popular style of poetry for that riot of coarse speech which had slain modesty in the ears of the young. Such was the birth of that new Provençal poetry which is to-day illustrated by the success of 'Mirèio.

The name of this gardener of Saint-Rémy was Joseph Roumanille. He was a country school-master, as well as a rustic poet and a loving son; and he contrived to inspire with his own enthusiasm for their dishonored dialect, and to enlist in an ardent crusade for its restoration to literary honor, a class of apt and brilliant pupils, the youngest and most remarkable of whom was Frédéric Mistral, the author of "Mirèio." His master and his comrades, the chief of whom are apostrophized by name in the beginning of the Sixth Canto, had attempted only lyrics in their regenerate native tongue. Mistral conceived the bolder idea of employing it for the unfashionable uses of pastoral story, and of making it the medium of a study from nature, of the yet primitive and picturesque rural life of southern France. Discarding all classical models, and seeking to draw his inspiration straight from the soil, he