The Félibrige
The Alpilles is home to a number of great writers who were deeply attached to their region, and never ceased to defend its distinctive features. The best-known of these 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 Félibrige, an association, but above all a cultural movement, working to preserve the language and traditions of the Oc-speaking 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. In it, the writer recounts the thwarted loves of two young Provençals, Vincent and Mireille, in the Provence of the time. At the end of the 19thcentury , he founded the Museon Arlaten, a museum dedicated to the ethnography of Provence, with 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 body of work of great poetic sensitivity. Known as the Provençal Colette, she produced over a hundred works: novels, tales, legends... always published in both Provençal and French. While the majority of her works celebrate her beloved country, her more recent writings are tinged with militancy. The writer speaks out against the forces that are disfiguring 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 visits. When Alphonse Daudet (1840 - 1897) first came to Fontvieille in 1864, he decided to spend his vacations there for... the next thirty years! Almost all schoolchildren have at some time studied the famous Lettres de mon moulin, a collection of Provençal short stories, and many have visited the aforementioned mill in Fontvieille. Yet the author spent only one year in the village, and never lived in the mill. Nevertheless, even though Daudet spent most of his life in Paris, he remains, in the collective mind, the archetypal 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, who was born on February 27, 1914 in Saigon and died on March 21, 2004 in Paris, Fontvieille was a source of inspiration. Although the author was born and died far from Provence, he was nonetheless a champion of the region. His childhood spent in Arles and then Nîmes left him with a great fondness for this land. As a journalist and writer, he published a number of works, including Le Sabre de mon père(1999), in which he recalls his childhood memories of Arles and Nîmes. He also wrote dialogue for films starring Fernandel, Lino Ventura and Eddie Constantine. He also wrote the screenplay for D'où viens-tu Johnny, starring Johnny Hallyday.
