Letter from Frederic Mistral to the Consistory of the Floral Games of Barcelona

Date: 1893

Archive: Municipal Archive of Barcelona

Document type: Textual

Reference code: CAT-AHCB-AHCB2-278-C173/36-1 a

Link to the online document

Description: Letter from Frèderic Mistral to the supporters of the Barcelona Floral Games in which he reflects on the value of the Occitan and Catalan languages and the abuse they are subjected to by the respective states. He also talks about common historical entities such as the Consulate of the Sea and the strong ties between the land, the language and the people. Written in Occitan, it includes a poem by the author. The linguistic claims of the Catalan literati, grouped in the Renaissance, and the Occitans, gathered in the felibrage, had been in parallel since the middle of the 19th century. The great diffusion of the Occitan movement in Catalan lands occurred in 1859 with the edition of Mistral’s Miréio and the ties between them became closer when, after Víctor Balaguer was welcomed in his exile by the Occitans (1865), Mistral and a large group of felibres attended in person the edition of the Jocs Florals of 1868, where the Capoulié publicly recognized the value of the work of Jacint Verdaguer, then still a young promise of poetry.
The reinstatement of the Floral Games in Barcelona in 1859 had a wide echo at European level and there were many relationships that were established between the organization of the Games and literati from all over Europe. The contacts were particularly fruitful, as has been said, with the Provençal felibres, as well as with Johannes Fastenrath and the city of Cologne.

You might also be interested in