Max Rouquette: Actes du Colloque International (Montpellier, Espace République, 8 octobre 1993) (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS WORKS CITED Azaïs, Gabriel, ed. Le Breviari d'amor de Matfre Ermengaud. 2 vol. Béziers: Société Archéologique, 1862-1881. Jensen, Frede. The Syntax of Medieval Occitan. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, Band 208. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1986. Lipton, W.S. "Imposed Verb Pronominalization in Medieval French and Provençal." Romance Philology XIV (1960): 1 1-37. Ricketts, Peter T. Le Breviari d'amor de Matfre Ermengaud. Tome V (27252T-34597). Leiden: Brill, 1976. --------. Le Breviari d'amor de Matfre Ermengaud. Tome II (1-8880). Publications de G?.?.?.?., 4. London: A.I.E.O., 1989. Skârup, Povl. "Morphologie élémentaire de l'ancien occitan." (Prê)Publications (Romansk Institut, Aarhus Universitet), Nos. 123 (mai) & 124 (juin 1990), 1-44 & 45-82. Max Rouquette: Actes du Colloque International (Montpellier, Espace République, 8 octobre 1993). Ed. Philippe Gardy and François Pic. Montpellier: Section Française de l'Association Internationale d'Etudes Occitanes, 1994. Pp. [140] Max Rouquette, perhaps the most important living Occitan writer, is little known in this country. A search of major library holdings finds scattered copies of the French translation of Verd paradis, hiscentralwork, whichwasoriginallypublished, inOccitan, in two parts in 1961 and 1974; the French translation appeared in 1980, anda German translation in 1983. An American translation by William Bracey MacGregor in collaboration with Rouquette has appeared in 1995. Meanwhile Rouquette has added Verdparadis, parts III, IV, and V. The English version containsfortyprose piecesvarying in length fromone pageto thirty-three pages. Theyare"talesofadventure and mystery," ifyou like, such as a blind beggar tells in the last ofthem. 86 REVIEWS Some of them read like mémoires, since they are narrated by a physician resemblingMaxRouquette, butoneisnarratedbyapriest. Some of them are fables entering the perspective of wild animals, while others describe birds with the loving objectivity of the avid hunter. There are legends of the devil's revenge on an oboe-player, or a medieval monk's encounter with God in the cry of a bird; there are cameos of village characters—a nasty old gossip, a young prostitute, an old peasant; there are a series ofphilosophical contes recalling Voltaire. Among the most heart-rending are a meditation on the suicide of a friend, and a recollection of the narrator's own youthful involvement with an impetuous gang ofboys who hanged a blind man's beloved dog. The language in this English version is rich, the observation keen, the sensitivity astringent. You should read it. MaxRouquette was born in 1908 in the village ofArgelliers near Montpellier, where he attended lycée, then medical school (see Pic, "Essai de bibliographie," 101). His vocation as a writer began early (1927) and remained constant, as he became a leader in Occitan literary and cultural life, producing prose, poetry, theater, translations , and radio broadcasts. He practiced medicine in Aniane, then in Montpellier. Co-founder of the Institut d'Estudis Occitans in 1945, then its president, he served tirelessly in other organizations and publishingventures. Among his close friends and fellow artists he counted the Catalan poet Josep Sebastià Pons (1886-1962), the RoussillonnaissculptorHenriFrère (1908-86), andtheMontpelliérain painter Georges Dezeuze. Contents of the volume under review: Gil Jouanard, "Avantpropos ," 8-9; Philippe Gardy, "Pour Max Rouquette," 10-23; Etienne Hammel and Philippe Gardy, "Ouverture," 13-14; RobertLafont, "Au souffledulangage," 16-2 1; WilliamCâlin, "Felixculpa?Lesarchétypes de Verd Paradis (I et II)," 22-27; Q. I. M. Mok, "La prose de Max Rouquette, étude de linguistique textuelle," 28-36; ClaireTorreilles, "Poétique de lafable chezJoseph-Sébastien Pons et Max Rouquette," 38-46; Philippe Martel, "Voyage en Amaluc," 48-55; Françoise Wyatt, "Lettre à Max Rouquette," 56-60; Jean-Claude Bouvier, "Max Rouquette ou la parole retrouvée," 62-71; Fritz Peter Kirsch, "'Dau manit es la patria, Io païs qu'a pas jamai vist': Enracinement et ubiquité chez Max Rouquette," 72-85; Georg Kremnitz, "Max Rouquette dans la littérature occitane. Mistral, Pons, Rouquette: quelques réflexions," 86-94; Jean-Marie Auzias, "Conclusions," 9687 REVIEWS 98; François Pic, "Essai de bibliographie de l'oeuvre imprimée et inédite de MaxRouquette," 100-34; "Table des photographies," 13537 . An album of sixteen photographs shows the...