| Anecdote about Frédéric MISTRAL |  |
| Emile RIPERT‘s conferences wanted to highlight the great Mistralien dream of a political, economic and intellectual union between all Latin nations. This idea of a great union of the Latin peoples was in their minds.
This anecdote recounted by Emile in his manuscript « The poets that I knew » testifies to this: « One day I went to visit Mistral in his sunny little garden in Maillane, and he picked up on a window sill an ancient debris he had found in the countryside. It was a fragment of a Roman millstone intended for crushing wheat. He put it on the ground in front of his dog. And suddenly the animal began to spin that piece of stone, barking frantically. – Isn’t that odd? Mistral told me, for me that proves metempsychosis. If my dog shows so much zeal in moving this grindstone, it is undoubtedly because the soul of a slave has reincarnated in him. He wasn’t laughing. -Your explanation seems excellent to me, I replied courteously. I have in front of me another example of metempsychosis: Isn’t Mistral the reincarnation of Virgil? – No, he said quickly. A Virgil does not reincarnate. There is only one in the centuries. »
Cultures of Latin origin, he said, are steeped in the spirit of finesse, the feeling of nuances, the possible reconciliation of what initially seems to be opposed, the « combinazione », the tasty and fruitful combination of culture. ancient and modern activity, paganism and Christianity, authority and democracy …… |
