Garrett - Provence: a Cultural History

Title Page

PROVENCE

A CULTURAL HISTORY

By

Martin Garrett

Signal Books

Publisher Information

First published in 2006 by

Signal Books Limited

36 Minster Road Oxford OX4 1LY

www.signalbooks.co.uk

Digital edition converted and

Distributed in 2012 by

Andrews UK Limited 2012

www.andrewsuk.com

Martin Garrett, 2006

The right of Martin Garrett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. The whole of this work, including all text and illustrations, is protected by copyright. No parts of this work may be loaded, stored, manipulated, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information, storage and retrieval system without prior written permission from the publisher, on behalf of the copyright owner.

Cover Design: Baseline Arts

Cover Images: John Heseltine Photograpy; Catriona Davidson; Muse dOrsay, Paris

Design & Production: Devdan Sen

Photographs:

Rmy Cantin, pp.x, xxix, 2, 14, 24, 35, 66, 77, 80, 138, 142, 158, 174, 207

Catriona Davidson, pp.86, 93, 96, 170, 180, 201

iStockphoto.com/Jan Tyler, p.61, p.210; iStockphoto.com/John Said, p.64; iStockphoto.com/Fredrik Schjold, p.105; iStockphoto.com/Josep M. Pealver, p.120; iStockphoto.com/Luc Gillet, p.154; iStockphoto.com/Virgil Huston, p.160

Landscapes Of The Imagination

The Alps by Andrew Beattie

Flanders by Andr de Vries

The Thames by Mick Sinclair

The Basque Country by Paddy Woodworth

Catalonia by Michael Eaude

Preface

Roughly speaking it was diamond-shaped, pinpointed in the north by Montlimar and in the south by Marseille, and it followed the whole romantic valley of the Rhne... In the west it stretched beyond Nmes, in the east as far as Apt.

This map of Provence was tattooed across the conveniently substantial chest of Pepe the bull-owner, or so Lawrence Durrell claims in a piece reprinted in Spirit of Place (1969). I have adopted much the same definition of Provence as Pepes: an area that includes places beyond the Rhne that are technically in Languedoc, but traditionally part of ProvenceNmes, the Pont du Gard, Beaucaire, Aigues-Mortesand does not include the Cte dAzur and its hinterland.

This Provence is a rich and varied one, which is why there is no room for the riches of the Riviera. It contains the edge of the garrigue, windy forlorn and rather Bront where Durrell once lived; less forlorn orchards, olive-groves and lavender-fields; the Papal Palace in Avignon the Versailles of its day; and metropolitan Marseille. All this can also be perceived in many different ways: the essentially optimistic Marseille of Marcel Pagnol, for instance, or the more troubled and complicated modern city of Robert Gudiguian. Perceptions can be affected by sunny or sodden memories (the Alpilles hot and cicada-loud or wet and silent in autumn fog), the maps and books you read and the pictures you look at. Maps may be read from bull-owners chests, followed on site, savoured at home as a souvenir or aide-mmoire, or used more coldly as a necessary reference tool. It is much the same, tattooing aside, with books and paintings. If you have read Zolas account of the Aix-inspired Plassans and then go to Aix, how far do you see the city through his eyes, and how far do you alter Plassans to fit with Aixor the modern city to fit with that nineteenth-century version? Is it different if you read the book in England or France, Normandy or Provence, French or English? Paintings by Van Gogh and Czanne condition our sense of Provenal colours, light and forms and may in turn be conditioned by our memories of Provence. It is difficult, too, to see Fontaine de Vaucluse with an innocent eye: tourists and the tourist-trade have endlessly relived and reinterpreted what Sir Philip Sidney, in the late sixteenth century, could already call Petrarchs long-deceased woes.

The true Provence, natives and others have often insisted, does exist, as does the ideal inhabitant. But there are competing versions of the ideal. Is the Provenal talkative or dour by nature, a member of a race apart or perfectly integrated with modern French lifeor both? (Czanne intensively painted his native environment but feared that people who paid too much attention to regional traditions would embalm Provence.) Various true Provences are to be encountered in this book. They have been experienced or constructed by a great range of people: troubadours and mediaevalists, sun-seekers and nineteenth- century poets in felt hats, Petrarch and Laura, the Marquis de Sade and Virginia Woolf, novel-readers, film-goers, cooks and wine-growers, connoisseurs of Roman ruins and Czanne and Bouillabaisse.

As usual I have received a great deal of support from Helen, Philip and Ed. I should also like to thank Christine L. Corton, John Edmondson, James Ferguson, Robert Inglesfield and Gillian Rogers for their valuable questions, suggestions and practical help. I am grateful, too, to Yvette Souliers of the Maison de Tartarin in Tarascon, the staff of the Muse de lEmpri in Salon-de-Provence, and the man from Carpentras whose wine I tasted, and with whom I talked about Petrarch, in the summer of 1998, long before working on this book.

Provenal landscape: the grace of Italy, the harshness of Spain; la grandeur et la mesure (Pierre Girieud, 1926).

Introduction

Continuities

If Plutarchs Life of Marius is to be believed, local people developed a practical, if rather macabre, approach to recycling after the Romans great victory near Aix in 102 BC: they fenced their vineyards with the bones of slain Germanic warriors.

Continuityrearranging bones rather than discarding themhas always been a feature of the history of Provence. The name Provence itself derives from the regions period (temporarily threatened by the invading Teutons) as a provincia romana. And that period did not represent a complete break with the way of life of the Ligurians, Celts and Greek colonists who were there before the Romans. Many already lived in towns and were more easily assimilated to Rome than were the more northerly inhabitants of long-haired Gaul who were not conquered until sixty years later. Pliny the Elder, in the first century AD, felt that Provence, with its admirable people and ample resources, was more like Italy itself than a mere province.

After the collapse of Roman power Visigoths, Arabs and Franks struggled for control of southern France. But here, where the influence of Rome had been so powerful, people continued to speak a more strongly Latinate language than in other parts of France. Later in the Middle Ages troubadour poetry increased the prestige of the more literary form of the language. Even after Provenal was superseded by northern French in formal and official contexts in the sixteenth century, related dialects survived in everyday use; from the 1850s Frdric Mistral and the flibres drew both on oral tradition and the language of the troubadours in their successful campaign to restore Provenal language and Provenal confidence. (On the language see further pp. xviii-xxiv)

In architecture, too, there has been a good measure of survival and continuity. Roman work both influenced, and was sometimes incorporated in, Romanesque. To go back to bones, this time in a mercifully less literal sense, Gustave Flaubert compared the surviving Roman monuments of Arles to the bones of a skeleton, protruding, here and there, from the earth. Parts of the skeleton are still buried, parts have been exposed for archaeological inspection, but many pieces have had a more eventful history: after centuries as fortresses and shanty-towns, the amphitheatres at Nmes and Arles resumed their ancient function as places of entertainmentgladiatorial sports then, not completely dissimilar bull-fights and bull-games now as well as opera. The Maison Carre in Nmes has served as an imperial temple, Christian church, stable, museum, and by-word for architectural harmony. It remains central to the design and the image of the city, enhanced by its symbiotic relationship with Norman Fosters 1990s Carr dArt. (See pp.172-3)