Occitan poetry

Occitan poetry 980-2008

by Joan-Frederic Brun

Joan-Francés Mariòt

Medieval poetry: the kingdom of love

XVI-XVIII century: tasty baroque antiliteratures

XIX th century: toward a renaissance

XIX th century (1854-1914): spreading and sclerosis of the Provençal miracle

XX th century (1920-1965): the anguish of no future

XX th century (1965-1981): "un país que vòl viure" (a country that just wants to live)

XX th century (1981-2000): postoccitanisme

XXI th century: just a living literature among many other ones?

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Poet of Rouergue as also was Jean Boudou, ie the passionately beating heart of Occitania. Jean-François Mariot is one of the "pillars" of the feast of world languages of his hometown Decazeville. A city whose social drama in the middle of the XXieth century played an important role in Occitan revival.

As a poet he collabores to the journal "OC". His recent book :"Fax / faxes lenga fa mond "(2006) opened the new poetic collection Oc-Passatges. His deliberately modern literary experiment explores crossroads between poetry and prose, at the point where languages mingle, aiming at highlighting the encounters among all humans.

I specially appreciated this very recent published fragment of a greater poem still to appear, in which he moves to another kind of poetry, gushing from the deepest springs of language, arising a subtle and long-lasting emotion in the reader's imagination.

Èbre
(tròces)

Ebro
(fragments)

canissals
confidéncias
de palhenca

bronzisson
al fons dels meus uèlhs
de mas nharras

vent
que m'agolopa
coma lèuna
de longas cossèrgas

aimi d'i m'escampar
l'èime an aquel trempum
remembrat
de las causas

aimi d'i me bandir coma
'nas pascas estremadas
dins de mesolha
novembrala

l'Èbre
clinava
fin qu'a la mar
la sia quita
mar de chompas
ganèla
entre nòstras ombras

"OC" 2007, no 85 p55

Walls of reeds,
confidences
of coarse straw

whistle
in the depths of my eyes
my nostrils.

Wind
wrapping me
like an ivy
with long tickles

I love rushing my mind
in this remembered moisture
of things.

I love rushing myself in it like
an Easter confined
in a marrow
of November.

Ebro takes down to the sea
its own puddles
misleading
among our shadows

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