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Roumanille," said he, "when you go to Avignon, and say that I sent you" for Roumanille's widow still lives, one of the most honoured muses of the "félibrige." When it was time for us to go on our way, nothing would satisfy M. and Mme.
It is a wine of poets, this bee-kissed Châteauneuf, and its noblest association is not with the Popes who gave their name to it but with the seven poets Mistral, Roumanille, Aubanel, Matthieu, Brunet, Giéra, Tavan whose chosen drink it was in those glorious days when they all were young together and were founding the Félibrige: the society that was to restore the golden age of the Troubadours and, incidentally, to decentralize France.
Soon their dream attracted other recruits, and presently seven friends, whose names are all famous now, and most of whom have statues in Arles or in Avignon Roumanille, Mistral, Aubanel, Mathieu, Giéra, Brunet, and Tavan after the manner of Ronsard's "Pléiade," and Rossetti's "P.R.B." formed themselves into a brotherhood to carry on the great work of regeneration.
Of course, we talked too of the "félibrige," and it was beautiful to see how M. Mistral's face softened at the mention of his friend Joseph Roumanille, and with what generosity he attributed the origin of the great movement to his dead friend. "But you must by all means call on Mme.
The road-side smiled with flowers, as he passed, and mothers trembled for joy; for infant-asylums arose wherever the child-angel trod." One of the first to respond to the call of Roumanille for the composition of the selection "Li Prouvençalo" was Th. Aubanel, also of Avignon. And now, eight years later, the promise of M. René Taillandier, in his introduction to the selection, has become reality.
As may easily be seen, Aubanel writes not, like Roumanille, for his own people alone. His Muse is more ambitious, and seeks to interest by appealing to the sentiments in a language polished with all the art of its sister, the French.
We call the poetry of Roumanille elevated, yet it always addresses itself to the people of Provence, and borrows its images from the many-colored life of those to whom it speaks; religious, but simple and ingenuous, with a tinge of mysticism, not the mysticism that seeks the good in dreamy inaction, as in some of the Spanish authors, nor has it the obscure tinge of the transcendental English school.
There, under the ancient Gothic vault, among the pupils of the primary Normal College, an eager crowd of listeners pressed to hear him; and among the most assiduous was Roumanille, the friend of Mistral, he who so exquisitely wove into his harmonies "the laughter of young maidens and the flowers of springtime."
A living, breathing poet was wanting to reanimate by his touch the poesy that had slept so long. That poet was Roumanille. The Minnesingers have found heirs and continuators in the modern writers of Germany. Side by side with the increasing tendency to unity in all national literature is working the force of races confounded under one political banner, to assert their existence as such.
The religion of Roumanille is active, not dogmatic; he incites to do, rather than discuss or dream the good. There is a health, a vigor, an earnestness, in this spontaneous poesy of an idiom which six centuries ago was the language of courts, and now sings the song of toil. Side by side with the over-cultured language of the Parisian, it seems so free and frank!
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