Frédéric Mistral

His name in his native language was Frederi Mistral (Mistrau) according to the Mistralian orthography, or Frederic Mistral (or Mistrau) according to the classical orthography.

Mistral's fame was owing in part to Alphonse de Lamartine who sang his praises in the 40th edition of his periodical Cours familier de littérature, following the publication of Mistral's long poem Mirèio. Alphonse Daudet, with whom he maintained a long friendship, eulogized him in "Poet Mistral", one of the stories in his collection Letters from My Windmill (Lettres de mon moulin).

Biography

Mistral was born in Maillane in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in Southern France. His parents were wealthy landed farmers. His father, François Mistral, was from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. His mother was Adelaide Poulinet. As early as 1471, his paternal ancestor, Mermet Mistral, lived in Maillane. By 1588, the Mistral family lived in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

Mistral was given the Provençal name "Frederi" in memory "of a poor small fellow who, at the time when my parents were courting, sweetly ran their errands of love, and who died shortly afterward of sunstroke." Mistral did not begin school until he was about nine years old, and quickly began to play truant, leading his parents to send him to a boarding school in Saint-Michel-de-Frigolet, run by a Monsieur Donnat.

After receiving his bachelor's degree in Nîmes, Mistral studied law in Aix-en-Provence from 1848 to 1851. He became a champion for the independence of Provence, and in particular for restoring the "first literary language of civilized Europe"—Provençal. He had studied the history of Provence during his time in Aix-en-Provence. Emancipated by his father, Mistral resolved: "to raise, revive in Provence the feeling of race ...; to move this rebirth by the restoration of the natural and historical language of the country ...; to restore the fashion to Provence by the breath and flame of divine poetry". For Mistral, the word race designates "people linked by language, rooted in a country and in a story".

For his lifelong efforts in restoring the language of Provence, Frédéric Mistral was one of the recipients of the 1904 Nobel Prize for Literature after having been nominated by two professors from the Swedish Uppsala University. The other winner that year, José Echegaray, was honored for his Spanish dramas. They shared the prize money equally. Mistral devoted his half to the creation of the Museum at Arles, known locally as "Museon Arlaten". The museum is considered to be the most important collection of Provençal folk art, displaying furniture, costumes, ceramics, tools and farming implements. In addition, Mistral was awarded the Légion d'honneur. This was a most unusual occurrence since it is usually only awarded for notable achievement on a national level, whereas Mistral was uniquely Provençal in his work and achievement.

In 1876, Mistral married a Burgundian woman, Marie-Louise Rivière (1857–1943) in Dijon Cathedral (Cathédrale Saint-Bénigne de Dijon). They had no children. Mistral died on 25 March 1914 in Maillane, the same village where he was born.

On April 6, 1930, the centennial of his birth, he was posthumously honored by the unveiling of a sculpture of him by Tuby Victor in Cannes. In the high relief, stone sculpture, a young woman who is an allegory of Provence, presents him with a book under the gaze of Nerte, Mireille, and Calendal supporting Estelle.