DESERT Ai sounja qu’anave eilabas Dins l’èr blu, trasparènt, que dindo, Liuen dis ome, dins lis sablas, Pivela d’Eternita lindo…
From the collection La Draio by Pèire Millet
DESERT I dreamed that I went over there Among the sands, with no people around In the blue, ringing, transparent air, By clear Eternity, I was spellbound
Translated from the above Provençal by Clayton McKee
I lived in Bollène, France – the same city where Pèire Millet was born in 1913 – for a year. It is a quaint town in Provence just north of Avignon. I immediately fell in love with the town, which, despite outward appearances, had a lot to offer. While there, I happened to stumble upon Parlaren à Bouleno, a community organisation and archive for Provençal culture, language, tradition, and literature. During my first week in Bollène, I attended my first language course. It was quite odd at first – imagine a 23-year-old American walking into a room of ten French people (and one Italian) aged 60 years and up. After they realised that I was serious, I became quite close to this group and, over the year, I really found myself engrossed by Provençal literature.
Naturally, I loved immersing myself in a new literary world, but I continually found that little was being published today and most of the texts were relegated to “old texts in that old language that no one speaks anymore.” In fact, one of the main ways that people see Provençal is on street signs like the image of this post. So, even though I was discovering gold, others neglected to take it seriously. There are, of course, a ton of French language politics that I’m skipping over for the sake of succinctness, but it still saddened me to find a very neglected corpus of literature.
I tell this story because many people do not have the time nor the desire to look at texts from the past, particularly in languages that are “dead.” As we began exploring ideas for our final issue of the year, this story popped into my head. Just after our meeting, I immediately went to one of my favorite poetry collections and was inspired to share one of my favorites with you all here.
Pèire Millet (born 1913 in Bollène) studied literature in Aix en Provence and worked as a high school French teacher in Orange from 1946 to 1974. He began writing in Provençal in the 1950s thanks to meeting other writers at the time, including Paul Manivet, Emile Ripert, Gabriel Bernard, and Sully-André Peyre. These influences led him to the creation of La Draio, which means “the way.” The work explores the inspirations in Millet’s life and is an amazing thank you to those who showed him the path to literature. The above poem is short and is not dedicated to a specific person; however, I like that here, Millet explores the imagery and inspiration gathered from nature, which is fairly common in Provençal literature. I have attempted to alter the poem’s grammar a bit to reflect the rhyme found in the original without losing the meaning as sound is extremely important in Provençal poetry.
With this poem, I want to also announce our final issue of 2024, which will be an issue focused on texts that have originally been published in the past but that have translations/editions reappearing in the present. I’ve stated in various podcasts and articles that Trafika Europe has changed its view of contemporary literature to include works that recircle back into our literary landscape from the past. Our team thought it was time to dedicate a full issue to this, which we will be naming Blast from the Past. What excites us about this issue even more is that it opens up a lot of language possibilities – get ready my Antiquity-loving friends, Latin is coming back – as well as possibilities for submitting texts in the public domain. We hope you consider submitting and look forward to seeing people’s favourite texts from the past!
Clayton McKee
Read previous posts in The Trafika Europe Corner series:
TRAFIKA EUROPE CORNER with Clayton McKee: TE and EU Prize for Literature
Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: TE’s Prizes for Prose and for Verse
Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: GARDEN OF EDEN by Sarah Talboys-Smith
Trafika Europe Corner: LOST IN TRANSLATION by Hannah Katerina
Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: Three poems by Károly Lencsés, translated by Ágnes Megyeri
Trafika Europe Corner with Clayton McKee: Three Poems by Guðrið Helmsdal, translated by Randi Ward
Three poems by Deniz Durukan – in Trafika Europe Corner II.11 by Andrew Singer
Three poems by Marius Burokas – in Trafika Europe Corner II.10 by Andrew Singer
Three poems by Franca Mancinelli – in Trafika Europe Corner II.9 by Andrew Singer
Three poems by Nina Kossman – in Trafika Europe Corner II.8 by Andrew Singer
Three poems by Alexander Kabanov – in Trafika Europe Corner II.7 by Andrew Singer
Three poems by Andrey Gritsman – in Trafika Europe Corner II.6 by Andrew Singer
Kosovan poet Fahredin Shehu – in Trafika Europe Corner II.5 by Andrew Singer
Three poems from Icelandic by Gyrðir Elíasson – in Trafika Europe Corner II.4 by Andrew Singer
Trafika Europe Corner II.3 – New Latvian poet Jānis Tomašs by Andrew Singer