The Memoirs of Frederic Mistral (Paperback)

by Frederic Mistral (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes
Text: English (translation) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation; First Edition. galleys edition (November 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081121009X
• ISBN-13: 978-0811210096
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,220,865 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The poet of provence, February 7, 2003

By	Maryann Taylor "cigalechanta" (Cambridge, Ma. United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Nobel poet who brought back the Provencal language to his beloved Provence writes of his home and surroundings and his quartrains. If you love the childhood memories of Marcel Pagnol, you'll love this book too.

5.0 out of 5 stars His Years in Provence, June 15, 2009

By	Arch Llewellyn "arch-l" - See all my reviews

Mistral launched, and won the Nobel for, the Provencal renaissance, a quixotic shot at restoring the language of the troubadours to the respectability of print after centuries sheltered in the mouths of south French peasants. His Memoirs are Romantic and winning in their humble insistence that the "back to the land" poetic he and his fellow Felibriges pioneered sprang from a doggedly non-literary way of life, in this case the earthy cadence and harvest cycles of Provence, that Land of the Lost that becomes through Mistral's rosy lenses everything the 20th-century isn't: rustic, contentedly patriarchal, pre-industrial, frankly religious, and integrated into a satisfying cosmic whole.

Mistral has to be one of the least alienated writers modernity ever threw up, though his Provence looks so much like Tolkien's Shire that you have to wonder if the modernity's in the escapism; the glow comes in part from Mistral's awareness of a world disappeared, like childhood. You choose your illusion and takes your chances; Mistral lived a long life--and helped keep a language from dying--inside his.