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Occitan poetry 980-2006 by Joan-Frederic Brun
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Among literatures developed in various languages, some belong to cultures that have been widely disseminated all over the world (English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Arab, Portuguese...), others to official languages of countries that played an important (more or less!) role in history (Italian, Japanese,German, French, etc...). In other cases the language and the literature it produces are the symbol of identity of a little human group oppressed by its neighbours...
Occitan literature offers an almost unique (or at least very unusual) situation. This is a very rich literature written in a language that has never been that of a nation. Occitania has been almost totally a part of France since 700 years, and its language is considered by the French as an object of shame. It is believed by most people here to be nothing but a ridiculous corrupted form of French, that should absolutely be eradicated... Gigantic efforts have been made for this over he two last centuries. However the language is still alive... and still written...
It is in this context very surprising to read, for example, in the preface of Robert Kehew's beautiful book: Lark in the morning: the verses of the Troubadours. A bilingual edition. The university of Chicago Press, 2005 the following sentences:
"the troubadours exerted a strong, albeit indirect, influence on English letters"...
Yes! In most countries, in contrast to France, Occitan literature is considered as an important one. Its medieval production exerted a strong influence on Italian, Catalan, Spanish and German literatures.
Actually, there is a large movement among scholars and people fond of culture to rediscover medieval Occitan literature: troubadours are nowadays well represented on the web. As could be expected, none of the greatest websites devoted to them are French. They are Italian. Don't miss them, they are wonderful.
This website will aim at presenting mostly the literature that still continues to be produced in the Occitan language after the breakdown of the troubadours' world. This literature has only been published in Occitan, sometimes with French translations, almost never with English ones.
Like poets of all countries around the world, Occitan poets will thus be present on the web and so be read by anybody interested, from any culture. I hope this discovery will be pleasant for most poetry readers.
I plan to gradually add to this site poems of the greatest number of Occitan writers between the XIIth and the XXIth century.
If you are an Occitan poet and don't find yourself yet on this site, please don't be angry! Those pages are fully open to you and the only thing that I lack is time to do the job as I should! Thus please send me material! Occitan texts and if possible an English translation!
If you are an English-speaking reader, and if you find some flaws in the standard of English on those pages (and surely they are numerous), please tell-me! We need your help to improve the quality of this site!
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Acknowledgements: many thanks to all the poets who authorized me to put here their texts and even more those translations that, obviously, are as imperfect as a poetic translation can be - and perhaps a bit more! I am particulary grateful to a dear friend who is both American and Occitan, and, although he doesn't want his name to appear here, is an enthusiastic supporter of the culture presented here. He kindly checked my English translations, correcting many mistakes I had unfortunately made. Surely you'll find other imperfections of language (English, of course, not Occitan!), but they're surely restricted to places he has'nt yet got a look! And don't be afraid, they'll be corrected as soon as I can! More recently, the Occitan poets Olivier Lamarque and Xavier Bach provided me for this website beautiful translations by Sarah White and Louise Esher (a British young lady who writes fairly well in Occitan and translates it into English quite wonderfully!). And Finally, Steve Lombardo, who is also a distinguished Occitan poet, translated for usinto English a famous text by Loïsa Paulin. Many thanks to all! All further helps shall be welcome!
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