A review by sarah_dietrich
Mirèio - Mireille: poème provençal avec la traduction littérale en regard by Frédéric Mistral

3.0

Frédéric Mistral was one of the earliest recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature, receiving it in 1904. He was known for writing in a language of southern France called Occitan, which is related to Catalan. Occitan has no single written standard, is not officially recognised in France, and is considered to be endangered. Mistral was a renegade & trailblazer for choosing to write in Occitan, he sounds like a pretty interesting guy.

Some of the pre-WWII recipients are a bit lack-lustre and reading the description of Mirèio, I wasn't sure if I'd be into it. Happily, this wasn't the case. This epic poem is beautiful, especially the descriptions of landscape and people working on the land.

Mirèio was first published in 1859, and took eight years to write.