Theodore Aubanel: A Modern Provençal Poet

THE ideal Mutual Admiration Society has its head-quarters in the south of France. Such clumsy indorsements as people with a common literary cause elsewhere afford one another are contemptible indeed beside the fervent felicitations, the ascriptions of honor, the prayers for a common immortality, the vows of eternal faith and mutual selfabasement, to which the Felibres of the Bouehes-du-Rhône are treated among themselves. The Felibres are the whole school of modern Provenҫal poets of which Joseph Roumanille is founder and master, and Frédéric Mistral facile princeps, and no Gentile seems to know precisely why they are called or call themselves by this name. The very etymology of the word is disputed; some asserting that it means merely qui facit libros, others that it is homme de foi libre, and that the word, from being applied to the apostles in ancient prayers, has been adopted by the apostles of the Provenҫal revival as indicating the breadth of their own views, and the novelty — if the word may be pardoned — of their literary and perhaps political departure. It should be said, however, that this last is not the explanation of a friend, but of a deserter, M. Eugene Garcin, who is the author of a very curious and not very amiable little book entitled Les Franҫais du Nord et du Midi, and whom M. Mistral himself does not hesitate to call “the Judas of our little church.” The etymology is not perhaps of very much account. These men are self-styled felibres, and the felibre Anselme Mattthieu sings to the felibre Joseph Roumanille, and the felibre Theodore Aubanel to the felibre Jan Brunet, and all together, as well they may, hymn the praises of M. Mistral, who, in his turn, invokes them all (and the faithless Garcin among them) like a choir of masculine Muses, in the fifth canto of Miréio; while to one of them, Theodore Aubanel, who forms the subject of this article, and who undoubtedly ranks next to Mistral in originality and beauty of gifts, the latter has furnished a more formal and very characteristic introduction to the world. Nor, with the glowing pages before me of Mistral’s fanciful preface to Aubanel’s poems, can I bring myself to preface the versions which I have made from the less famous minstrel by any dry record of the few known facts of his history. I prefer to let the one poet present the other, as he did to the French public, and must beg the kindly reader to regard this new candidate for favor, and his sad and simple story, less through the dim medium of my own translations than by the rose light of the generous praises of his enthusiastic superior. Aubanel’s book is called La Miongrano Entredouberto: The Opening — or Half Open — Pomegranate. The coincidence of the name with that of one of Browning’s early volumes, and of Mistral’s interpretation of it with Miss Barrett’s of the latter, is a little singular. This is the Avant-propos.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by H. O. HOUGHTON & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

I.

The pomegranate is by nature wilder than other trees. It loves to grow in the broad sunshine among heaps of stones, afar from men and near to God. There, solitary as a hermit and brown with the sun, it shyly unfolds its bloodred flowers. Love and sunlight fertilize the blossoms, and in their rosy cups mature a thousand coral seeds, a thousand pretty sisters nestling under the same coverlet.

“ The swollen pomegranate keeps con cealed, as long as may be, under its rind the beautiful, rosy grains, — the beautiful, bashful sisters. But the wild birds of the oak-barrens cry to the pomegranate-tree, ‘ What wilt thou do with thy seeds ? Autumn and winter will soon be here to drive us across the hills and over the sea. Shall it be said, thou wild pomegranate-tree, that we left Provence without seeing the birth of thy coral seeds, the eyes of thy bashful daughters? ’

“ Then the pomegranate-tree, to satisfy the eager birds, slowly opens its fruit. The vermilion grains flash in the sun; the timid girls with their rosy cheeks peep out of the window. The giddy birds assemble in flocks and gayly feast upon the fair coral seeds; the giddy suitors devour with kisses the fair, bashful maidens.”

II.

“ Theodore Aubanel — and when you have read his book you will say the same — is a wild pomegranate - tree. The Provenҫal public, which liked his earliest songs so well, has been saying of late, ‘ What is our Aubanel doing, that we no longer hear his voice? '

“ Aubanel was singing in secret. Love, that sacred bee, whose honey is so sweet in its own time and place, and which, when crossed, can sting so sharply,— love had buried in his heart a keen and pitiless arrow. The unhappy passion of our friend was hopeless; his malady without remedy. His beloved, the maiden who had crossed the clear heaven of his youth, — alas, she had become a nun!

“ The poor soul wept seven years for his lady and is not yet consoled.

“ To drive away the fever which consumed him, he left Avignon, committing himself to God. He saw Rome; he saw Paris; with the barb still in his side, he came back to Provence. He climbed mountains—Sainte Baume, Ventour, the Alps, the Alpilles. But his rose had shed its leaves; thorns only remained, and none might strip them off.”

III.

“ Nevertheless, from time to time the swellings of his passion overflowed in poesy. He had taken for his motto, —

And whenever he felt a stab of regret the poor child gave a cry.

“ And these plaints, these cries of love, at the earnest instance of us his friends, the birds of the oak-barrens, Theodore Aubanel has consented to publish under the charming title of the Book of Love.

“ The Book of Love is thus, strange to say, a song in good faith, a genuine flame. The story, as I have said, is perfectly simple. It is that of a youth who loves, who languishes afar from his beloved, who suffers, who weeps, who makes his moan to God. Holding his story sacred, he has not changed it. All is here as it happened, or better than so, for from his virgin passion, his weariness and despondency, his weeping and his cries, a book all nature has arisen, living, youthful, exquisite.”

IV.

“ If ever in April you have passed along the hedge-rows, you know the odor of the hawthorn. It is both sweet and bitter.

“ If ever in early May you have scented the evening coolness under the light green trees, you know the song of the nightingale. It is clear and vivid, impassioned and pure, plaintive but full of power.

“If ever in June you have seen the sun set from the ramparts of Avignon, you know how the Rhone shines under the old bridge of Saint Bénézet. It is like the mantle of a prince, red and radiant, torn with lances,—it floats, it flames.

“ I can think of no better comparison for the Book of Love. Nor do I think it too much to say that the coral seeds of the opening pomegranate will henceforth be the lover’s chaplet in Provence.”

v.

“ After the Book of Love comes the Intergleam.

“ It is quite natural. If you have a hedge of roses, lilacs, or myrtle, it is hardly possible but that it should be interspersed with shoots of blackthorn, periwinkle, and honeysuckle. And observe the sea, when it is beaten and churned and tormented by the north wind; there will be found, amid the tumultuous billows, bright ripples which reflect the sun.

“ So amid the impassioned love-songs of Theodore Aubanel there are a few pleasant, peaceful, consoling strains. So in the tempest of his emotions there are transient gleams of fair weather.

“ Truly the lucid interval is short. But the more severe the attack, the more vigorous the reaction. The strain is broken; or at least the young man believes for an instant that it is so, and lo, with what ardor he drinks at the cool springs of serene, majestic nature! He quaffs the sunshine like a lizard; his nostrils expand to the soft breathings of the forest airs. Does he sing of reapers? He seems himself to grasp the sickle. Of fishermen? ’Tis he who flings the net. And if he celebrates nuptials, he fairly leaps with joy. You would say that he was himself the bridegroom.”

VI.

“ But the lightningof the storm cloud is only temporary. The trouble of the heart again makes darkness in the soul.

“ When Raimbaud de Vacqueiras was so madly enamored of Beatrix, the sister of Marquis Boniface de Montferrat, and dared not tell her so; this is the song which he made in his despair: —

“ So might Aubanel of Avignon have said. When Zani, the brunette, fled from Avignon as the tender and virginal snow vanishes from the hill before tlie breath of tlie fine days, fled in fear from the burning breath of her felibre, his heart fainted within him. And now, if you care to know, all sunshine became heavy mist to him, all merriment sad, all life, death. Then in the gloom of liis spirit, tear by tear, he wrote the Book of Death. The seven sorrows are there; the seven knives of the Pieta have pierced llie pages. All that suffers is as his own soul; all that causes suffering, his mortal horror. And so harrowing, so harsh, so real are the pictures which he paints, that it would seem as if the poet, violently robbed of his love (like a tree whose spring buds have been torn away), had resolved to be avenged for his cruel fate, by chastising all tlie instruments of cruelty, all the tyrannies in tlie world.”

VII.

“ So much by way of explaining the principle on which this volume is divided. I have not taken my place upon the threshold to say ‘Come and see!’ nor to laud that which can speak for itself. And we poets are neither gold nor silver; it is impossible that we should please all. I would merely point the way of refreshment to those who thirst.” (Frédéric Mistral.)

And now for some specimens of the Book of Love. Each song has a motto from some old poet, usually Provenҫal or Italian. A line from Countess Die heads the first: “ E membre nos qual fo I’ comensamens de nostr’ amor.” ³

There follow a few happy little lyrics, one rapturous, another dreamy. The poet sings of his lady’s smile; he sings of her quiet grace in the dance; he sings, with a touch of awe, of her readiness for all good works, as in this peculiar and lingering stanza: —

Mothers whose little ones are in the sky,—

Then the poet’s key changes, and he suddenly breaks into passion in a song beginning, “ Thy little warm, brown hand —give it me!” and furnished with a motto from that fiery and illfated troubadour, Guillaume de Cabestan. But equally abrupt is the ensuing transition. The next motto is that line from the Inferno which we all know: “We read no more that day.” And this is the number: —

“ 'T is the last time ! ” “ What meanest thou ? ”
“ I must go !" • • • •
“ Whither? " Ah yes, I am to be a nun.”
“What sayest thou, dear? Why dost thou fright
me so ?
Thou must be ill! Thy youth is scarce begun !
Beware of thy own heart, my little one !
Thou art not ill? Then thou hast struck me
dead ! ”
'T was our last day indeed, and this is all we said.”

And now the songs of sorrow begin; at first fragmentary and bewildered, and afterwards either fierce in their resistance to pain, or breathing a deep and quiet despondency like the following: —

Twice the poet makes his way into chambers which his lady has inhabited at different times before she forsook the world. In one he beseeches the little mirror to show him once more the pictures it has reflected so often: his lady at her toilette, at her prayers, “ reading in the old prayer-book of her grandfather until she marks the place with a blessed spray and kneels and talks a long while to God,” plaiting her abundant hair, or in all the simple glories of her gala-day dress. Upon the wall of the other he leaves this verse inscribed:

But if the poet found temporary rest of body and soul by the homely, hospitable firesides of his native land, it was far otherwise when he had extended his wanderings to foreign countries and stood awe-stricken amid the ruins of the Eternal City. Then his heart-sickness returned upon him overpoweringly, and he sang, —

With the first return of spring after his misfortunes, the poet finds himself back in Provence, lying by a brookside, while there rings in his ears that charming verse from the Rouman de Jaufré in which the birds “ warble above the young verdure, and make merry in their Latin: ”

And so on, for more pages than one cares to quote, or even to read consecutively, tuneful though they are. The fancies are infinite, but the mode never changes, nor the theme. Quaint little pictures of Provenҫal life keep flitting across the background of Aubanel’s sorrow, their brightness intensified by tlie surrounding gloom, — as when the sunshine falls on a landscape from behind a storm cloud. At last there comes a motto from the Imitation, Quia sine dolore, non vivilur in amore, followed by a sort of prayer recording the poet’s rather forlorn endeavor to reconcile himself to the strange system of chastening and disappointment which he finds prevailing in the world. And so ends the Book of Love.

In the series of twelve poems which M. Mistral lias rather fantastically christened the Entreluisado or Intergleam, or Lucid Interval, the poet tells us little about himself, hut we learn to love him better perhaps than before, for the real breadth and warmth of his human sympathies. Some of his themes are homely almost to the verge of coarseness, and treated with a frankness quite troublesome to reproduce. The attempt is made with two of them. The first is called

THE TWINS.

The other, which is addressed to Mine. Cecile Brunet, the wife of one of the sacred felibres, is, in the original, wonderfully like a Nativity by some innocent old master. It seems a Nativity of the Dutch school, however, and the wonder is that the author of the sad and tender lyrics in the Book of Love can write of anything with so small an admixture of sentiment. In this case only I have departed from the metre of the Original to the extent of shortening each line by one foot. I did not know how else to indicate, in our comparatively stiff and sober tongue, the babyishness. the nursery-rhyme character, of the original.

Equally artless and realistic, and wholly local in their coloring, are a Song of the Silk-Spinners, and a Song of the Reapers, —the latter dedicated to M. Mistral. There is also a picture of a Provençal salon, which is rendered quite as much for its indirect interest as for its intrinsic grace. Observe the essentially musical manner in which the two phrases of the simple theme are repeated and varied.

TO MADAME ——.

I.

II.

III.

Upon the serenity of those domestic and rural pictures descend, or are made to descend, abruptly, the chills and terrors of the Book of Death. In this final section is undoubtedly included the most powerful writing of our author. It opens with a wild and dreary song entitled All-Saints Day, which is interesting as presenting an almost unique picture of late autumn in the South.

After this ominous and melancholy prelude, comes a poem entitled The Famine, a plaintive but somewhat monotonous dialogue between two hungry babies and the mother who is vainly trying to hush them asleep without their supper. The next, The Lamp, is the watch of a mother by her dead child. The next is very curious in its solemnity. It is called Lou Tregen.

THIRTEEN.

It is but just to Aubanel to say that the tinge of burlesque which all our efforts have hardly been equal to excluding from this imperfect version, is nowhere in the original, which is of a truly childlike gravity and intensity. It seems always difficult for one who uses our language to depict superstition pure and simple with entire seriousness; and this is perhaps especially true of the American. The most ardent advocates among us of the various forms of “ spiritualism” in religion, and quackery in medicine, are ever driven to make a show of supporting their vagaries by a vast pretense of scientific arguments, very falsely so called. We are as a nation wofully wanting in the grace of credulity, which few men can make more engaging than the Provençal poets. I have space for but two more of our author’s efforts, or rather for my own inadequate reproduction of them. The first shall be the famous Neuf Thermidor. Famous it may fairly be called, since every one of the author’s European critics singles it out for mention, some of them in terms of extravagant praise. It is easier, however, to account for its fascination to a Gaul, than to approach in English its very ghastly naïveté.

TUB NINTH OF THERMIDOR.

There is a long and somewhat elaborate trilogy concerning the Massacre o£ the Innocents, of which the numbers are entitled Saint Joseph’s Day, The Massacre, and The Lamentations, which I leave untouched; and the last specimen selected shall be the poem with which this strange little volume concludes, and where the singer finds again something of the pious and plaintive sweetness of his earlier notes. It is an invocation to an African Madonna, dedicated to Mgr. Pavy, the Bishop of Algiers, and records the fulfillment (perhaps by way of contributions to the Algerian chapel) of some vow once made with reference to the poet’s unhappy passion. The metre is interesting, as presenting two among the many varieties attempted by the Provençals on the original strophe of Mireio, that most rich and musical stanza so singularly adapted to the genius of the modern Langue d’ oc. ⁵

OUR LADY OF AFRICA.

O Rose of Afric, Lady blessed, etc.

O Rose of Afric, Lady blessèd, etc.

O Rose of Afric, Lady blessed, etc.

I have adhered to M. Mistral’s arrangement of his friend’s verses, but cannot refrain from expressing my own conviction that, however picturesque, it is a somewhat artificial one, and furnishes but an imperfect clew to the chronological order of the poems. In Theodore Aubanel, who is, in many ways, a perfectly representative child of the South and descendant of the Troubadours, qualities meet which we are not used to see associated. He is both soft and fierce. He loves with a devotion and also with a delicacy, as rare as it is affecting. He mourns with infantine desperation. He hates with a peculiar and almost gamesome zest. As compared with Mistral, he has less power, whether descriptive or dramatic, but more grace, of a certain wild, faun-like character, while he shows barely a trace of the training of the schools. Mistral’s simplicity is often studied. The ideals of Greek and Roman antiquity are ever present to his imagination, and he avows himself a “ humble scholar of the great Homer.” Many of his critics have noted the Homeric character of the refrains in the ninth canto of Mirèio, but this is only one among many instances. The charming description of the cup of carved wood which Alari offered to Mirèio, is obviously imitated from Virgil’s third Eclogue. It is greatly enriched indeed, but some, even of the details, are precisely similar, as for example, the fact that neither cup had yet been used for drinking: —

Sentié ’ncaro lou nou, i'nvié panca begu.

and: —

Necdum illis labra admovi, sed condita servo.

And the same is true of the descriptions of the public games in Calendau. But Theodore Aubanel is purely indigenous, and need not be other than he is, if Greece and Rome had never existed. The antecedents of his genius are the love-songs and sirventes of the Troubadours, and the silence of the last few hundred years.

Harriet W. Preston.