Provence winter

This post is mainly about Alphonse Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin, but it starts with Sir Walter Scott.

 It was late in the autumn, and about the period when the southeastern counties of France rather show to least advantage. The foliage of the olive-tree is then decayed and withered, and as it predominates in the landscape and resembles the scorched complexion of the soil itself, an ashen and arid hue is given to the whole. Still, however, there were scenes in the hilly and pastoral parts of the country, where the quantity of evergreens relieved the eye even in this dead season.   (Sir Walter Scott, Anne of Geierstein (1829), Ch.XXIX)

Scott is making up this information, to some extent. Olive trees are evergreen. Leaves last 2-3 years and the older ones are usually shed in April, at the same time that new leaves are developing. (But it's quite true that in autumn there's often a greyish tint to foliage and land alike.) 

Vincent van Gogh painted a famous series of olive-tree studies in 1889 while in the asylum at St-Rémy-de-Provence, many of them from this "dead season".

Olive Trees, painting by Vincent van Gogh (November 1889)

[Image source: Wikipedia . In the National Gallery of Scotland.]

The White Cottage among the Olive Trees, painting by Vincent van Gogh (December, 1889)

[Image source: Wikipedia . The painting is in a private collection.]

Grande rumeur au château. Le messager vient d’apporter un mot du garde, moitié en français, moitié en provençal, annonçant qu’il y a eu déjà deux ou trois beaux passages de galéjons, de charlottines, et que les oiseaux de prime non plus ne manquaient pas.

   « Vous êtes des nôtres ! » m’ont écrit mes aimables voisins ; et ce matin, au petit jour de cinq heures, leur grand break, chargé de fusils, de chiens, de victuailles, est venu me prendre au bas de la côte. Nous voilà roulant sur la route d’Arles, un peu sèche, un peu dépouillée, par ce matin de décembre où la verdure pâle des oliviers est à peine visible, et la verdure crue des chênes-kermès un peu trop hivernale et factice. Les étables se remuent. Il y a des réveils avant le jour qui allument la vitre des fermes ; et dans les découpures de pierre de l’abbaye de Montmajour, des orfraies encore engourdies de sommeil battent de l’aile parmi les ruines. Pourtant nous croisons déjà le long des fossés de vieilles paysannes qui vont au marché au trot de leurs bourriquets. Elles viennent de la Ville-des-Baux. Six grandes lieues pour s’asseoir une heure sur les marches de Saint-Trophyme et vendre des petits paquets de simples ramassés dans la montagne !…

Much excitement at the chateau. The messenger has just brought word from the keeper, half in French and half in Provençal, saying there's already been two or three good flights of galéjons (=herons), of charlottines (=Black-tailed Godwits), and there's no lack of the oiseaux de prime (birds of spring).

   "You're coming with us!" my amiable neighbours wrote to me ; and this morning in the half-light of five o'clock their big wagon, filled with guns, dogs and provisions, has arrived to take me down to the coast. So here we are rolling along the road to Arles, a bit arid, a bit bare, on this December morning when the pale foliage of the olive trees is scarcely visible, and the harsh green leaves of the Kermes oaks seem a bit too wintry and false. The stables are stirring, and early risers light up the windows in the farms ; and in the gaps among the stones of the Abbey of Montmajour, some ospreys, still heavy with sleep, beat their wings among the ruins. Yet we're already meeting old peasant women on their way to market, clopping along in their donkey carts. They come from Ville-des-Baux. Six long leagues just to sit down for an hour on the steps of Saint-Trophyme and sell their little packets of simples gathered on the mountain!

(Alphonse Daudet, the opening of "En Camargue" (1873), included in the definitive 1879 edition of Lettres de mon moulin (first edition 1869))

From a 1904 illustrated edition of Lettres de mon moulin

[Ville-des-Baux, now known as Les Baux-de-Provence, is a mountain village amidst a ruined fortress that occupies a spectacular position on the Alpilles, east of Arles. (Not far, as the crow flies, from van Gogh's asylum at Saint-Rémy.) There's another (absurdly different) view of it here: https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/02/les-baux.html . ]

Full French text of Lettres de mon moulin: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettres_de_mon_moulin/Texte_entier .

English translation by Mireille Harmelin and Keith Adams, on Gutenberg.

Here's an extract from later in "En Camargue", with their translation:

Mais c’est l’après-midi surtout que la cabane est charmante. Par nos belles journées d’hiver méridional, j’aime rester tout seul près de la haute cheminée où fument quelques pieds de tamaris. Sous les coups du mistral ou de la tramontane, la porte saute, les roseaux crient, et toutes ces secousses sont un bien petit écho du grand ébranlement de la nature autour de moi. Le soleil d’hiver fouetté par l’énorme courant s’éparpille, joint ses rayons, les disperse. De grandes ombres courent sous un ciel bleu admirable. La lumière arrive par saccades, les bruits aussi ; et les sonnailles des troupeaux entendues tout à coup, puis oubliées, perdues dans le vent, reviennent chanter sous la porte ébranlée avec le charme d’un refrain… L’heure exquise, c’est le crépuscule, un peu avant que les chasseurs n’arrivent. Alors le vent s’est calmé. Je sors un moment. En paix le grand soleil rouge descend, enflammé, sans chaleur. La nuit tombe, vous frôle en passant de son aile noire tout humide. Là-bas, au ras du sol, la lumière d’un coup de feu passe avec l’éclat d’une étoile rouge avivée par l’ombre environnante. Dans ce qui reste de jour, la vie se hâte. Un long triangle de canards vole très bas, comme s’ils voulaient prendre terre ; mais tout à coup la cabane, où le caleil est allumé, les éloigne : celui qui tient la tête de la colonne dresse le cou, remonte, et tous les autres derrière lui s’emportent plus haut avec des cris sauvages.

In the afternoon, the shack is especially charming. Throughout our beautiful, southern winter days, I enjoy being alone by the tall mantelpiece, while several twigs of tamarisk smoke away in the hearth. The howling mistral or tramontana makes the doors bang, the reeds scream, and a range of noises that make the great, natural clamour all around. The rays of the winter sun gather and are then scattered by the fierce wind. Great shadows race around under a perfect blue sky. The light comes in flashes, and the noise in crashes, and the flock's bells are suddenly heard, then lost in the wind, only to emerge again under the rattling door like a charming refrain…. Twilight, just before the hunters come back, is the most exquisite time of day. By then the wind has moderated. I go out for a moment; the great red sun, at peace at last, goes down in flames, but without heat. Night falls and brushes you with its damp, black wing as it passes over. Somewhere, at ground level, there is a bang, a flash, as the red star of a rifle shot bursts into the surrounding blackness. What is left of the day rushes past. A long flight of ducks flies by, low, as if looking for somewhere to land; but suddenly, catching sight of the cabin where the fire is lit, they take fright. The one at the head rises, and the rest follow as they fly away screaming.

I don't see that there would have been any light at all at 05:00 in December: sunrise at Arles isn't until 08:00. Lettres de mon moulin is "un peu factice", like the winter leaves of the Kermes oak; also like Anne of Geierstein and indeed most other books. Writers need to tweak things to allow their creations to come forth. 

The book begins with "the poet Alphonse Daudet" (1840-1897) buying a ruined windmill in Provence, as a bolt-hole from his life in Paris. And the subsequent letters (tales, stories and accounts) were, we are to imagine, written in and about that romantic location. 

The windmill that inspired Daudet's framework was at Fontvieille.  Fontvieille is indeed on the road from Les-Baux to Arles, as described in the opening to "En Camargue". 

Daudet got to know the windmill during visits to Fontvieille. He actually stayed at the Château de Montauban, home of his Ambroy cousins. Daudet had been born in Nîmes but had thoroughly embraced Parisian life. These sojourns in Provence, like those in Corsica and Algeria, arose from his doctor's advice: Daudet, still in his early twenties, was already showing symptoms of syphilis. 

In Trente ans de Paris he admits that he never did purchase the ruined windmill (though he thought about it), but he often spent whole days up there. 

The windmill that's now known as "Daudet's windmill" was built in 1815; it had the names "Ribet" and "Saint Pierre". From 1935 it housed a Daudet museum (moved to the Château de Montauban in 2012) and in 2016, following renovations, it was re-opened to visitors.

Provence is a windy place, ideal for windmills until the new steam mills took away the trade (as described in "Le secret de Maître Cornille"). In winter the Mistral blows from the north west and the Tramontane from the north, both seeming to gather force in the lower part of the Rhône valley.

In fact, there were four windmills in Fontvieille back in the early 1860s, and we don't know which one Daudet frequented, but it almost certainly wasn't Ribet/Saint Pierre, because unlike the other mills it wasn't ruinous. It remained a working mill for a further fifty years, closing down during the First World War. (The other mills were called Tissot-Avon, Ramet and Sourdon; I've heard it claimed that Daudet's windmill was actually Tissot.)  Ironically, but pragmatically, the townsfolk chose Ribet because it was the best preserved!

Anyway, Daudet composed virtually all of the Lettres back in Paris. They aren't letters, even formally, but it's a fertile suggestion. They are pieces in many genres. Somewhat like the Canterbury Tales, each piece has its own form and style, they are not all of equal weight, but the overall effect is of dazzling riches, of a book you can't easily be done with. There is some reference to the windmill location in most of the stories, though they are not all about Provence. 

*

Here's a list of the contents of the definitive 1879 edition of Lettres de mon moulin. (The dates are 1. the date of first publication 2. the date of first incorporation into the collected Lettres -- either 1869 or 1879.)

Avant-Propos (1869) A deed of sale of the ruined windmill to "Alphonse Daudet, poète"; the notary comically shrugging his shoulders over the perversity of the purchase.  

Installation (1868, 1869) Lyrically and fondly describes the author taking up residence in the old mill, and then a homecoming of the flocks and shepherds and dogs from their summer mountain pastures. (Their "installation" back in the farm.)

La Diligence de Beaucaire  (1868, 1869) Harsh anecdote of the last leg of the author's journey to his new home. A Beaucaire baker cruelly taunts another coach passenger, the cuckolded rémouleur (grinder). 

Le Secret de Maître Cornille   (1866, 1869) The old fife-player Francet Mamaï tells the story of the region's decline and of its last proud miller, who pretended to maintain a flourishing trade, though he no longer had any customers. When this is discovered, the local people are touched and come flocking back to him, but when he dies his mill (Daudet's mill) falls silent for ever.

La Chèvre de M. Seguin   (1866, 1869) Animal fable of a goat who cannot resist the lure of freedom, though it leads to the wolf eating her. (Supposed to be addressed to an improvident fellow-artist, who has just rejected the idea of working as a journalist.)

Les Étoiles  (1873, 1879)  An old shepherd recounts an episode from his youth, when the beautiful master's daughter spent an innocent night with him under the stars.

L'Arlésienne  (1866, 1869) Stark tale of a tragic farm; the eldest boy's hapless love for the flighty Arlésienne and his subsequent suicide. (Daudet later turned it into a play. It wasn't a hit but is remembered for Bizet's music. In France the "Arlésienne" has become proverbial for a title character who is absent or nearly absent from the actual story.)

La Mule du pape  (1868, 1869) Supposedly in explanation of a local expression about long-held grievances. Colourful tale of medieval Avignon and a bon viveur Pope. His magnificent mule is secretly ill-treated by a mischievous hanger-on; seven year later, the mule takes its revenge. 

Le Phare des Sanguinaires  (1869, 1869) With the mistral keeping the author awake, he remembers his stay at an island off Corsica containing only a lighthouse. The keepers' tales: e.g the sudden death of a co-keeper while stuck there in winter.

L'Agonie de la Sémillante  (1866, 1869) Another Corsican memory: the author hears about the dreadful wreck of a troop ship, with no survivors. (It really happened, on the 15th February 1855.) He reconstructs the ship's last hours. 

Les Douaniers  (1873, 1879) Corsica again. The sad death of the merry sailor Palombo, at a miserable customs post on a Corsican beach.

Le Curé de Cucugnan  (1866, 1869) Translated from the Provençal of Joseph Roumanille (1818-1891). A comic story in which the local priest delivers a sermon to his unregenerate flock, telling them that he has visited the afterlife in a dream and discovered to his horror that they are all on the way to hell. The congregation are duly impressed, and the virtue of Cucugnan becomes proverbial. 

Les Vieux  (1868, 1869) A Paris friend asks Daudet to pay a visit to his aged relatives (he can never be bothered to visit them himself). A touching account of their rapturous reception of "l'ami de Maurice" and their blind belief in Maurice's virtues. 

Ballades en prose  (1866, 1869) Two "ballades": "La Mort du Dauphin", somewhat like a fairy tale, describes the dying boy's naive discovery that his royal blood won't preserve him; and "Le Sous-Préfet aux champs", in which the functionary yields to the delights of nature and forgets all about the pompous speech he's meant to be writing.

Le Portefeuille de Bixiou  (1868, 1869)  "One October morning, a few days before I left Paris...". The formidable satirist Bixiou has gone blind and no longer has the heart for the work that made him famed and feared. The emptiness and sadness of his life. 

La Légende de l'homme à la cervelle d'or  (1866, 1869) Another cautionary tale of rapacious Paris, but more fantastic in form. Its hero has a brain made of solid gold. He's unable to resist digging out the invaluable nuggets from his brain, until there's nothing left. 

Le Poète Mistral  (1866, 1869) One gloomy Sunday the author visits the Provençal poet Mistral at Maillane (near Saint-Rémy), hears him read from his new poem Calendal and joins in the rumbustious village feast. [Frédéric Mistral (1830-1914) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904. Provençal is a form of Occitan. Without official status in France, Occitan as a spoken language is in precipitous decline.] 

Les Trois Messes basses  (1875, 1879) Comic tale of a sixteenth-century prior who is tempted by the devil's luscious descriptions of the forthcoming Christmas feast into hurrying through the three masses of Christmas Eve. In the afterlife he's condemned to delivering three hundred midnight masses (at the chapel on Mont Ventoux) before he can enter Paradise.

Les Oranges   (1873, 1879) A fanciful meditation on oranges: the orange in Paris (it was associated with the Christmas season); a rare snowfall in an orchard in Algeria; superb oranges in Corsica.

Les Deux Auberges   (1869, 1869) Two coaching inns lie opposite each other; one bustling, the other lifeless. The author talks to the landlady of the second inn, afflicted by tragedy. Even her husband is across the road, flirting with the beauty from Arles. 

À Milianah   (1864, 1869) An ironic, helterskelter account of a day in an Algerian town. Daudet's presentation of both Jews and Muslims is somewhat cool and dispiriting, compared with the warmth he shows  towards Provençals and Corsicans. 

Les Sauterelles   (1873, 1879) Description of a locust storm in the Sahel (here meaning the Algerian coast).

L'Élixir du révérend père Gaucher  (1869, 1869) The author is told a comic tale by a priest: how the cowherd Gaucher helps an impoverished monastery recover its fortunes by distilling a liqueur from mountain herbs. Gaucher becomes increasingly addicted to his creation, is apt to break into indecent songs, and begs to give up the work for the sake of his soul, but the rest of the monastery are terrified about losing their income stream.

En Camargue   (1873, 1879)  Lyrical description (in five sections) of hunting on the Camargue; the life of the keepers; the cattle during the mistral . . .

Nostalgie de casernes    (1866, 1869)  A sort of epilogue. The author wakes to the sound of drum-rolls just outside the windmill. A drummer, on leave in his native Provence, is bored and misses his barracks in Paris. And the author admits that he, too, is longing to get back to his Paris life.

Kaviar

 

The Swedes call it "caviare" (kaviar), or more precisely "sandwich caviare" (smörgåskaviar). It's an iconic everyday brand in Sweden, but it's not actually that old.  It was introduced in 1954 by Aktiebolaget Bröderna Ameln (subsequently Abba AB, now Abba Seafood), a firm based in Bohuslän on the west coast of Sweden. (It isn't part of my very earliest childhood memories, and I suppose my mother, a northern Swede living in England since the mid-1950s, hadn't yet come across it.)

Though described on the tube as "mildly smoked" (mildrökt), it's a robustly flavoured spread, good with boiled eggs or straight on crispbread (or rye bread, as I'm demonstrating here in this photo of my breakfast). It's basically sweet-salted cod roe, mixed with rapeseed oil, potato flakes, and tomato puree, plus a bit more salt, potassium sorbate and ascorbic acid.

The recipe was purchased in 1954 from a gårdfarihandlare or nasare, i.e. a pedlar. (Once an important feature of rural life in Sweden, they supplied small grocery items and household goods to farms and villages.)

When the spread proved popular with children, Abba marketed it as "Kalle's caviare" (Kalles kaviar) and added the picture (based on a photograph of the CEO's son Carl) that still appears on the tubes 65 years later. (Kalle is an informal version of Carl.)

Swedes are much more attached than Brits to buying foods in tubes. Here, we'd typically think only of  tomato puree, and toothpaste. But over there, besides kaviar and messmör, there are a host of other sandwich spreads commonly sold in tubes: cheese, meat and fish products, pates, pickles and mayonnaise. A particular favourite of our family was buckling pate (böcklingpastej); apparently it's still around, but I haven't tasted it for far too many years. Maybe next time . . .

Predominantly these tubes are still made out of aluminium rather than plastic, so wise consumers roll them neatly from the far end to prevent any cracking. 

(As proudly shown on the tube, Abba Seafood were one of several cod fisheries that acquired MSC status in 2017 when stocks seemed to have recovered from the crisis of 2006; but this status may be temporary.  In 2019 it was reported that North Sea cod stocks were collapsing again.)

Losing count

 

drinks

While travelling, I was fully occupied with the events of our travelling life. I did very little reading (just a bit of Daudet and a bit of Galdós) and, as you'll have noticed, I did scarcely any blogging. 

Another regular habit of mine, of which I'm somewhat shy to speak, fell behind too. This is a spreadsheet in which, for the past couple of years, I've faithfully detailed all my expenditure, right down to the merest coffee-and-croissant or trifling visit to a corner shop. I can't supply a defensible justification for this habit, but it apparently gives me a sense of security, the illusion of control over outgoings that, nevertheless, stubbornly exceed income. 

In ordinary life, I'm never more than a few days behind in my record, but while I was on the road the time to process the ever-growing bundle of receipts never seemed to arrive. Eventually I had to stuff a whole wad of them into a corner of my bag and start accruing a fresh batch.

Once back home I did a marathon session of retrospective spreadsheeting, but at times the usual detail defeated me. Arrived in the motorway services, cold and benighted, we would go through multiple rounds of hot chocolate and mint-flavoured green tea from the drinks machines: I noted the whole of this debauch merely as "drinks" and estimated a total. One part of me felt dissatisfied, the other part liberated. Isn't it important, sometimes, to lose count? 

Indeed it occurred to me that this one word, drinks, contained within it the implication, the intoxicating implication of uncountedness. Especially if the drinks are alcoholic (which in our case they were not). You don't keep tabs on drinks. And the stereotypic association of drinks with double vision emphasizes that "losing count" is itself a significant aspect of the ritual. It's a worship at the shrine of life, the aspect of life that resists control, measurement, being accounted for. . .

that money

This phrase (think of it as a spoken phrase) is a miniature drama. Doesn't our embarrassment grow at the mere thought of the scene it suggests? For here, evidently, is a sum of money recognized by two people, the person speaking and the person spoken to. It's a sum of money in which both have some kind of interest; for example, it belongs to one but is in the hands of the other; perhaps for some very laudable reason; but all the same, that's an awkward kind of situation. Both parties have a certain understanding of what sum of money is being spoken of; e.g. of whose money it is, how much it is, what the money is for and how this particular sum of money has come to be in question, as distinct from all the other money in the world. It will be a very good thing if both parties have precisely the same understanding on these matters, but that's as may be. In the mean time, things can easily go awry. The person addressed surely hears the accusatory undertone, I hope you haven't forgotten about the money, but it looks very like it. But the person who broaches the subject is embarrassed too. That money reveals only too clearly that it's on your mind, you're fussing, you have a tendency to micro-manage. 

Not too far beneath this phrase, the possibility of open conflict is already palpable; the time when people say "Hang the money!" or tell home truths or storm out of the room. We hope there will be no lasting damage. 

tracing

Out in the sticks, on the street, at markets and in most bars, cash remained the only form of payment.  Nevertheless, the dream of Björn Ulvaeus is coming ever closer to being realized. Cash is disappearing, it will become a distant memory; like hand-painted crockery, or the rows of religious statuettes that I still recall admiring in the souvenir shops of twenty-five years ago. 

Everywhere along the main road networks card payment was the default and preferred method, contactless especially. (On our return journey I didn't use cash once.)

Which adds another level of futility to my ham-fisted spreadsheet: because all I have to do is log into my banking app and there's all the information about my expenditure, ready-gathered and (unlike my spreadsheet) including all the transactions that have slipped my mind.

After all, it's not only "the parties concerned" who take an interest in that money. Government and business and police have long shown a desire to keep tabs on money, frustrated by its essential liquidity. The technology is all in place now, though cash itself isn't chipped -- at least not for now. (My bank statement is personal to me, they say, but that's only to soothe me.) 

When it began to seem permissible and even desirable to track the movements of human individuals, one of the quickest ways to achieve it was to leverage existing technology for tracking their spending. 

Sometimes it seems that human societies are dedicated to eradicating the wild human species. Arguably that's already happened, many times over.  But I understand why going feral might become a moral imperative.

 

Verso

 

Love poem without a tune

Love song without words

Or just a glance, or a shared joke

A drawing, of an everyday subject, we knew

It was of love. 

*

What is a poem

It's what you write standing in a queue

Or what you can't think out

The possibility

*

Place of the Constitution

Loudspeakers around the old bell

The message must get through!

The tawny paint that adapts interior walls to exterior walls: scars.

*

Blot on the landscape

The sky, the combing ploughs patterned the brown earth, white villages, proper roads.

Only to clean the scab of hippies. If you don't exploit, you don't inhabit.

*

I believed, a poem

should contain three surprises.

*

Bogbreath

Because inside me something is quaking

I am too acidic

Inside me is a place that used to

be something else

as the stumps show.

Black specks whirr in the pearl morning

and when the sun rises

the pines are silver, berries orange.

Like to the lark

 Sonnet XXIX

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate;

Wishing myself like one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope;

With what I most enjoy, contented least;

Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising,

I haply think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Lines 5-6 one, him, him i.e. various different people.

Line 7 scope. OED gives the modern sense of mental range or reach (6a), but this is much earlier than its other examples. More likely 2d: level of skill, excellence.

Line 8 enjoy. I.e. possess. Referring rather to his talents than his job or family.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I once learnt the first fifty sonnets by heart; I used to declaim them to myself while on a long daily commute to Bristol (on the days I wasn't lift-sharing). It was a wonderful way of getting under a poem's skin, and I've had a special fondness for these early sonnets ever since.

I used to look forward to reaching this one in my recitation, a moment when the sequence, like the lark, attains a new height of devout ecstasy, a height sustained through XXX and XXXI. Love is never quite so purely perfect again. I was going to say "so simple", but that's a moot point. 

The pace of the poem gains, through that second quatrain, the doubts of a self-made man, and then the third, the fluttering rise of the.lark. And then, in the final couplet (and unlike a lark), the pace changes, the poem soars on those long syllables of "thy sweet love".

Another thing I appreciated from repeatedly reciting these poems was their capaciousness, the range of emotions they can express. On one reading I might feel the resurgence of humble gratitude that follows a period of discontent. On another, the lark's ascent can proclaim not humility but fierce pride. Or that soaring phrase "thy sweet love remembered" could evoke grief for a loss, though that's not what Shakespeare intended: "remembered" here just means "brought back to mind". Or on another day, this same phrase could be about fondly dwelling on erotic details.

*

I was reminded of this sonnet while reading the liner notes to Like to the Lark, a recent CD by the Swedish Chamber Choir with Simon Phipps, a fascinating assemblage of mainly British and Nordic choral pieces, including RVW's Lark Ascending with the solo violin backed by chorus rather than orchestra.

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%205255

Out here in remote places a CD liner note can feel quite inspiring. The Stenhammar selection has texts by Jens Peter Jacobsen, a Danish author I didn't know and am now avid to read more of.

These notes on Shakespeare: Full List