| 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 …… |
