The Félibrige
The Alpilles is the homeland of great writers who, very attached to their territory, have never stopped defending its particularities. The most famous of them is of course Frédéric Mistral. Writer and lexicographer, he was born in Maillane on September 8, 1830 and died there on March 25, 1914. An emblematic figure of the region, he was one of the founding members of the Félibrige, an association, but above all a cultural movement, working for the preservation of the language and traditions of the Oc language countries. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904 for Mireille, a major work composed in 1859, in verse and in the Occitan language. The writer tells the story of the thwarted love of two young Provençals, Vincent and Mireille, in the Provence of the time. At the end of the 19th century, he created the Museon Arlaten, a museum dedicated to the ethnography of Provence and which contains numerous collections representing the customs and history of the Arles region. Heir to this movement, Marie Mauron, born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence on April 5, 1896, also left a work of great poetic sensitivity. She is known as the Provençal Colette and has produced more than a hundred works: novels, stories, legends... always published in both languages, Provençal and French. If the majority of her works celebrate her beloved country, her most recent writings are tinged with militancy. The writer speaks out against the forces that disfigure the country: developers, speculators... Marie Mauron was elected Majoral of the Félibrige in 1969.
The Alpilles, a source of inspiration
Other writers were inspired by the Alpilles during their visit. When Alphonse Daudet (1840 - 1897) came for the first time to Fontvieille, in 1864, he decided to spend his vacations there for... the next thirty years! Almost all schoolchildren have, at one time or another, studied the famous Lettres de mon moulin, a collection of Provençal short stories, and many of them have visited the said mill in Fontvieille. However, the author only stayed in the village for one year and never lived in the mill. Nevertheless, even if Daudet spent most of his life in Paris, he remains, in the collective mind, the archetype of the Provençal writer. Some of his characters, such as Tartarin de Tarascon, have become so famous that they can no longer be dissociated from local history.
For Yvan Audouard, born on February 27, 1914 in Saigon and deceased on March 21, 2004 in Paris, Fontvieille was a source of inspiration. Indeed, if he was born and died far from Provence, he is still a champion of the latter. Indeed, he kept, from his childhood spent in Arles and Nîmes, a great tenderness for this country. As a journalist and writer, he published many works, including Le Sabre de mon père (My Father's Sword) in 1999, in which he recalls his childhood memories between Arles and Nîmes. He was also a dialogue writer for films starring Fernandel, Lino Ventura and Eddie Constantine. We also owe him the script of D'où viens-tu Johnny, with Johnny Hallyday.
