- published: 21 Sep 2012
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Frédéric Mistral (Occitan: Frederic Mistral, 8 September 1830 – 25 March 1914) was a French writer and lexicographer of the Occitan language. Mistral won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1904 and was a founding member of Félibrige and a member of l'Académie de Marseille. He was born in Maillane in the Bouches-du-Rhône département in southern France.
His name in his native language was Frederi Mistral (Mistrau) according to the Mistralian orthography or Frederic Mistral (/Mistrau) according to the classical orthography.
Mistral's fame was owing in part to Alphonse de Lamartine who sang his praises in the fortieth edition of his periodical "Cours familier de littérature", following the publication of Mistral's long poem Mirèio. He is the most revered writer in modern Occitan literature.
Alphonse Daudet, with whom he maintained a long friendship, devoted to the "Poet Mistral" one of his "Lettres de mon moulin", in an extremely eulogistic way.
Several schools bear Frédéric Mistral's name.
Mistral was the son of wealthy landed farmers (François Mistral and Adelaide Poulinet, both of whom were related to the oldest families of Provence: Cruvelier, Expilly, Roux (originally Ruffo, from Calabria), themselves very closely related to each other; Marquis d'Aurel). Mistral was given the name "Frederi" in memory “of a poor small fellow who, at the time when my parents were courting, sweetly ran their errands of love, and who died shortly afterward of sunstroke.” Mistral did not begin school until he was about nine years, and quickly began to play hooky, leading his parents to send him to a boarding school in Saint-Michel-de-Frigolet, run by a Monsieur Donnat.