Felibrige
Introduction to Mistral. By Richard Aldington. (Heinemann, 25s.) FEW poets can have been born with a name more mellifluous, or fuller of natural associations, few can have acquired fame of a more specialised sort, than Mistral, and for the general reader who knows no Provencal, whose knowledge of the Mistral country comes from books, paintings, films, holidays there, the light and landscape, and not from any knowledge of its mysterious and ancient underside, Richard Aldington's Intro- duction to Mistral is a reminder that fame has many forms, and importance may be measured geographically as well as numerically. It is also something of an introduction to an entire Provencal culture rich, inbred, robust yet at the same time self-conscious, one that, like all regional cultures of the sort, has its genuine and its spurious exponents, or, since it almost comes to that, its serious and its popular exploiters of legend, lore, and ancient custom; of whom Mistral comes in the first category and Daudet (according at least to Mr. Aldington), Parisian Daudet with his slick windmills, in the second. Mistral, in his success and in his limitations, most of all in the fact that he wrote in a language few
but inhabitants of his region can understand, is something of a model for regional writers and one's response to him is likely to vary in pro- portion to one's feeling for the importance of the specialised and recondite simplicity that makes up most of what we call folklore. This Mr. Aldington sees—and with it Mistral's whole life : his poetry, his philological work, the museum of objects of Provençal daily life, founded with his Nobel prize money, his organi- sation of Provence into a living force, of its language into something of power and literary
value; the quiet rhythm of his years—as the antithesis of the machine age, which, with all its products, Mr. Aldington passionately dislikes. His book is more than an examination of the life and work of a single poet: it deals with a whole outlook and way of life to which he is intensely, one might almost say aggressively, attached. Mr. Aldington is an enthusiast, and enthusiasm is generally contagious; but it has in his case the effect of making him heartily dislike everything outside the immediate circle of his sympathy. Beyond it, he sticks his tongue out wherever possible—not in any jaunty way that arouses amusement, or even clever way that arouses awe, but simply with a bilious ill-nature that smacks, of disappointment, pettiness, and spiritual dyspepsia. All of which is a pity, for his subject is genial and a little of the local sunshine cannot fail to penetrate the_ jagged and often virulent style.
ISABEL QUIGLY
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