MISTRAL (Frédéric). Two autograph letters signed.
- Autograph letter signed to L…
Description

MISTRAL (Frédéric).

Two autograph letters signed. - Autograph letter signed to Louis Ratisbonne, Paris, May 2, 1859, 4 pages in-8 (190 x 125 mm), in a modern black half-maroquin folder. Letter of thanks for his study on Mirèio and evocation of Lamartine's one. Very beautiful letter written to "his friend and his brother", the day after the publication of his poem in Provençal : Mirèio. Louis Ratisbonne published two articles in the Journal des Débats. Mistral had just read his magnificent study on Mirèio, a criticism "written with the heart; it is full, it shines with a friendship so true that the emotion while reading it swelled my eyelids with tears [...] You will receive with my letter the interview that M. de Lamartine has just written on Mirèio. No poet for two thousand years has begun under more beautiful auspices [...] The glory that is given to me is so dazzling that I dare not look at it, I long, I long to run away and to hide from the great light. A little shade and a lot of solitude will do me good...". Mistral gives an emotional account of his first meeting with Ratisbonne. He still feels the enthusiasm of that intoxicating time. Trace of folds, some foxing. - Autograph letter signed to a colleague, Julien Tiersot, from Maillane, December 7, 1898, 3 pages on a bifeuillet in-8 (178 x 114 mm) in black ink on Original Castle Mill watermarked paper, stamped envelope enclosed, in a modern black half-maroquin folder. About the tune and the origin of his song Magali extracted from the poem of Mireille. At the time and at the moment when I was thinking of rhyming a popular song on the rudimentary Provençal theme of Magali, I heard one of my father's ploughmen singing a Provençal song on the tune in question, which I did not know yet and which seemed to me very pretty [...] This song [...] which alludes to a fight in Gibraltar, seems to me to be contemporary with the 1st Empire and with the dialect of the banks of the Rhone river, between Arles and Avignon. I have only heard the song and tune in the mouth of this ploughman [...] and I am convinced that he was the last person to have the song in question, which had as its subject the arrival of the nightingale. It was thus by a blow of this providence which protects the poets (Deus, ecce Deus) that the air and the rhythm of Magali were revealed to me at the psychological moment. He quotes the first 8 verses of Magali, then extends on various Provençal popular songs. On the back of the envelope, Mistral wrote: "It was around 1855 that I heard for the first time the song of which I speak to you - and the singer was between 40 and 45 years old". Julien Tiersot was curator of the library of the Conservatoire and musicologist, author of a book on popular song in France.

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MISTRAL (Frédéric).

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