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The Félibrée: Celebrating Occitanie
The Félibrée movement was begun in the 19th century to defend and preserve the Occitan culture. In the langue d’oc, it is known as the Félibrise, and Frédéric Mistral, the renowned poet, was one of its greatest adherents. Since 1903, on the first Sunday of July, the Félibrée is celebrated in a chosen town of the Périgord. The town spends a good part of the year in preparation for the festival, which is marked by poetry, dance, singing, musical performances, demonstrations of local customs, and election of a queen of the Félibrée. The town of Les Eyzies, just a few kilometers from my house, hosted the Félibrée in July of 2000, and we attended:July
dawns hot and sultry, with azure skies and a piercing heat that by 10
a.m. is already shuddering through the valley. I pick a weed, then go
inside for iced tea, pick another, and give up. The poplar trees that
line the Vézère seem to be shimmering up little waves of heat, so that
the green hillside behind them appears to be a moving, opalescent
creature. Hot. And except for birdsong and beetlebuzz and the
occasional distant tractor, silent.
A helicopter appears suddenly, practically in our yard, so high are we in the cliffs. The pilot waves as he drones over our terrace and disappears to survey the festivities getting underway down the road in Les Eyzies. We have missed the 8:30 a.m. défilé and the mass in Occitan sung by the bishop of Périgueux and the ceremony in honor of the young men of Les Eyzies who gave their lives in two world wars, but there is still a full day of festivities awaiting. If only it weren't so hot…
We take the normal route into Les Eyzies but just outside town are directed onto an unpaved road that winds through cornfields. I note that the corn is not grown in rows here - it's just a dense mass of corn plants. They don't eat it in any event - just feed the huge kernels to the geese for the gavage. Occasionally you get a salad with a few corn kernels scattered on top, but mainly corn is animal food. Eventually the cornfields give way to ploughed fields and we are in what has been turned into a parking lot for 15,000 cars. There's another one this size on the other side of town. But whether it be the weather or over-optimism on the part of the locals, this parking lot looks as though it won't be filled up until a week from now. We are directed by a cheerful volunteer into a spot not far from the footbridge into town. Emerging from the air-conditioned car is a chore. The hay crackles and spits as we walk, breathless, into town. I can never remember such a hot day in the Dordogne. It’s a sauna - every step a chore, every breath a wheeze.
Nonetheless, the Félibrée is in full swing. We enter the "portals" of the town through a huge fish constructed of mineral water bottles. This is hard to imagine, I know, but someone has made of white and blue plastic an enormous head of a fish - a huge, round, painted circle, very Picasso-esque, with two bulging eyes on it - and onto that has been attached the body of a fish, straddling the bridge over the Vézère, made of Vittel bottles fitted into one another to mimic scales. The significance of the fish is that near Les Eyzies is a prehistoric site where Crô-Magnon carved and painted several bodies of fish, very rare creatures in the prehistoric art collection. The bridge is also lined with white banners with images in blue of these prehistoric fish. We enter the "portal," pay a small entrance fee, and are in the Félibrée.
Les
Eyzies is nothing but one long narrow street under imposing cliffs that
house the Musée Nationale de la Préhistoire, and several abris
préhistoriques. It's not a pretty town, really. But 40 kilometers worth
of paper and plastic flowers have been strung up on every conceivable
bush and tree; they decorate the awnings of every café and restaurant;
and they hang over every alleyway leading to the river. The children in
the local schools have been preparing them for months. There is a space
called the Cours d'Amour, where later in the day there will be singing
and dancing. There are livestock everywhere – oxen seem to have been an
important part of the culture, and young men are wrestling with yokes
and slapping the rumps of fine ox specimens. There are stalls and
stands where local artisans show their wares - baskets, jewelry,
paintings, ceramics, you name it. And there are stands devoted to the
Occitan culture as well - honey stands and wine stands and musical
instrument stands and bookstalls where you can buy Occitan books, and
lace stands. It's an odd mixture whereby it seems the locals try to
promote the idea of Occitanie while selling Cokes and hawking gemstones
and cheap jewelry, all the while enticing you to watch the traditional
dances and to learn about the Occitan language. Everyone seems
comfortable with the blatant dichotomy, and perhaps that's the point,
that Occitan is alive and well in the 21st century, living alongside
crass commercialism. Anyway, if the locals don't mind, I'm certainly
not going to make a fuss. I do note one Occitan maiden in full costume
chatting loudly on a cell phone, and in the space of two seconds I have
thrust into my hands a brochure for pizza à emporter and one for
lessons in Occitan language and dance.
We
watch people young and old, encumbered in hot costumes, dance and sing
to the old Occitan tunes, which are indeed delightfully tuneful. As the
brochure I was handed says, Occitan would have been the language of
France if history had not turned out the way it did - well, yes, but
history did turn out the way it did and the kings of France chose the
langue d'oil instead of the langue d'oc. Yet there is clearly a
resurgence of interest in the old traditions.
The Bournat is perhaps the most interesting exhibit of all, although it seems to be the least attended. The Bournat is essentially the committee responsible for the preservation of the Occitan culture in the community. In Les Eyzies, the Jardins Publics and its main building have been converted into the Bournat for the Félibrée, and are filled with earnest, intellectual types passing out information on the preservation of the Occitan language and culture. Hardly anybody is paying attention – it’s too cerebral, I suppose. Or too hot. I buy a small grammaire, Occitan-Français - maybe now I can talk to my neighbors in their native language. It's more melodic than French, less than Italian.
We forgo the Toulado, the
traditional Occitane mid-day meal - who could stomach poule farcie in
this weather? The locals wouldn’t miss it for the world, though, and a
huge tent that has been erected to the side of the Hôtel Les Glycines
is packed to bursting. Steam is pouring out of the sides of the tent as
the family-style platters are served and passed around – foie gras on
toasts, chicken stuffed with foie gras, steaming green beans in walnut
oil dressing, and bottles of Bergerac wine with a special Félibrée
label.
After a leisurely gorge, French families
emerge from the tent and spread out wherever there is shade, under the
bridges, under trees, along the river banks. It's the siesta time and
the French just stop existing, wherever they are. They grab their
bottles of Vittel and their kids and they just stop in their tracks. I
take photographs of them in little clumps, under trees by the river on
their backs, with children scattered around them, individuals wound
around treetrunks, sleeping on pine needles, old folks sacked out on
shaded benches. Nothing will happen now until 4 p.m. or so.
Everyone will wake from the mid-day slumber and slowly re-enter the
day. The festivities will commence again as evening sets in and will
continue until after midnight. They know how to extend themselves through a long summer day.
Later, at La Rivière, our local 4-star luxe campground, we test the Menu Toulado, though it is still sweltering even as the sun goes down and it turns out to be more food than one could imagine: tourain (traditional garlic soup) for starters, then a cold chicken leg stuffed with foie gras and bread crumbs, served with garlic mayonnaise and salad, then roast pork and a pig's foot with creamy fava beans, then a salade de chèvre chaud, then ice cream or pastry and finally, coffee. All washed down with that special Félibrée wine. The Coupe du Monde is on in the background and the locals are ecstatic when France makes the winning goal. The day's festivities plus this are almost too much for them. They roar and dance and toast and slap each other on the back and their smiles are as wide as the Dordogne. We take our leave of this raucous crowd around 11 pm and drive the 4 km back to St-Cirq. Clouds have rolled in and there is a mist hovering over the valley. We prepare for bed, and as we are just about to climb in, the fireworks start down the valley. We are perfectly situated to see them - four heads sticking out of a stone house watching blossoms of fire erupt into the night sky.
