Mistral, Frédéric. - Provençal poet, b. at Maillane on 18 Sept. 1830, d. there on 25 March 1914. A disciple and friend of Joseph Roumanille, the foremost of the Provençal poets of the 19th century, he founded with him in 1854 the Felibrige, which had as its official organ the Armana provenzau. This literary school, which later became famous, aimed at the artistic revival of the Provençal language and the various dialects of Languedoc. The attempt was later extended to the Catalan poets, invited to fraternize with the felibres in celebrating their common Romance traditions. Mistral’s enthusiasm for this union is reflected in the hymn Chant de la coupe, of purely convivial and troubadour inspiration.
Mistral’s poetic career began with Li Provençalo, the first anthology of the new Provençal lyric poets; Roumanille’s influence is predominant here. But it was with the poem Mirèio («Mirella»), published at Avignon in 1850 and hailed with enthusiasm by Lamartine, that Mistral fully revealed his art, bound to rustic themes and the legends of Provence: this land lives again in a delicate love story, rich in picturesque and peasant episodes, interwoven in the manner of an epic. The work, which became famous, was set to music by Gounod (1864). Mistral’s subsequent poems (Calendau, 1867; Nerto, 1884; Lou pouëmo dóu rose, 1897) and his sole dramatic attempt (La rèino Jano, 1890) fail to reach, except on rare occasions, the simple emotion and poetic heights of Mirèio. When Mistral departs from the sentimental candor and religious abandonment that permeate the masterpiece of his youth, he falls into literary artifice, rendered all the more evident by a «recovered» language. Yet in the recollections of childhood and youth, published in 1906 under the title Moun espelido, and in the felicitous collection of lyrics and short poems (Lis Isclo d’or, 1875; Lis oulivado, 1912), the poet’s pathetic impulse, often intertwined with traditional religious themes, attains undeniable heights. Finally, Mistral is responsible for the monumental dictionary