Lou Félibre d'Irlando

...FOOTBALL AND PHILOSOPHY By JAMES H. RYAN F OOTBALL supremacy and Notre Dame Uni-versity have come to be synonymous terms in the vocabulary of the American public...

...On Christmas day in I859, Bonaparte-Wyse journeyed to MaiUane to see the author of Mireio...

...It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for the language and life of the Provence of Mistral, Aubanel, Rou-manille, and their fellows of the F~librige...

...Pragmatism is largely responsible for bringing the problems of phil- osophy before the American people and for having stimulated interest in the solutions offered by the dif- ferent schools of thought...

...A little over four years later, the congress of poets from Provence, Languedoc, and even Catalonia, held at Font-S~gugne in t867, was organized by Bonaparte-Wyse, whose friend the Catalan Victor Balaguer was among the poets there...

...The latest theories relative to epistemology, the origin and nature of religion, the fundamental norm of morality, and the teleological aspects of nature were...

...Certain it is that on all sides students are beginning to realize that what the Germans call a "world-and-life-view" is not a use- less piece of mental baggage, but a very real and uni- versal need of the intellectual life...

...When Bonaparte-Wyse returned to England he sent to Maillane English and Irish journals with articles he had written on the Pro- venial poets...

...His mother was Laetifia Bonaparte, daughter of that Lucien who, marrying to suit himself and not his brother, had to flee that all-powerful brother's dis-pleasure and settled for some years in England...

...Perhaps it was the poet Joseph Roumanille himself who gladly told the inquirer about the strange language and what he and his friends were trying to do for that language...

...Once they walked together to les Baux...

...Charles William Bonaparte-Wyse died at Cannes on December 3, I892" On the stone covering his grave in the cemetery at Cannes were inscribed the lines in Provenqal he had sent to Mistral from Avig- non a few weeks before...

...His poem, A mon ami J. Roumaniho, dated London, Jan- uary 28, I86I, appeared in the Armana Proven~au of t862...

...Li Piado de la Princesso appeared simultaneously in I882 at Bucharest, Plymouth, Barcelona, and Avig- non, and was dedicated to the author's friend, the Roumanian poet and statesman Vasile Alessandri, later ambassador to Paris and premier of Roumania...

...And it might be that by his ardent devotion to the Provenqal language he loved so well he had sacri- ficed fame and glory in his own...

...Be-sides the volumes mentioned, there were many minor ones from time to time...

...He had written English verses long before becoming familiar with the language of Mistral and Roumanille...

...An outstanding characteristic of the gathering was its open-mindedness and complete willingness to discuss every point of view presented...

...32o i THE COMMONWEAL January z6, i9z 7 LOU FELIBRE D'IRLANDO By CHARLES ROGER MILLER O N THE rue Saint-Agricole in Avignon one day in I859, a traveler tarrying in the old French dry of the Popes stopped before the now famous Librairie Roumanille...

...Charles William Bonaparte-Wyse, grandnephew of the great Napoleon and scion of an Anglo-Irish family settled at the Manor of Saint John's, Water- ford, for centuries, was born there February zo, I8z6...

...From Waterford in Ireland came, in I88o, a volume of ballads "dins la maniero de Francois Villon," in- cluding a Ballad of the Dialects of the Langue d'Oc, and a Ballad Against Those Who Speak Evil of the Provencal Language...

...Especially charming are two aubades in the manner of the Provenqal troubadours of the twelfth century...

...It is be- ginning to be experienced in the United States, and it is the principal function of the American Catholic Philosophical Association to interpret Saint Thomas first to our own philosophical world, and then to the general public with the idea of arousing here some-thing of the respect for this great mediaeval philos- opher common among European scholars...

...Who could tell...

...For a great university to have achieved a national football reputa- tion has its disadvantages...

...The visitor to its campus expects to be greeted by a troop of students in mole- skins or at least to be let into the secrets of the system which produces championship teams...

...In his M6moires et R6cits, Mistral tells how the word "f61ibre," taken unto themselves as a title by himself and his poet friends, was found in an old legend current at Maillane dealing with the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin, where the word seems to signify a learned man or scholar...

...The latter it was who composed the famous device of the F61ibrige: "Lou sol6u me fai canta...

...Mistral's new friend and dis- ciple began to write in Provencal almost at once...

...Mistral admired Bonaparte-Wyse and was proud of him--so much so that he once sought to make him king l It was in I863 when the Greeks were looking about for a monarch, that Mistral put forward his friend--whom he sometimes referred to as "milord" and "prince" because of his Bonaparte blood and noble origin--as the candidate of the poets of Provence for the royal throne of Greece...

...Many times he journeyed to Provence, and at all other times he kept in close contact by letter with his friends there--above all with Mistral...

...Philosophy is coming to mean more and more each year to an ever-increasing circle of thinkers...

...I believe it was Bdranger who said in one of his songs, and I remember that you, too, were some- what of the same opinion once when you were speaking of poor Sdm~now: 'J'aime qu'un Russe soit Russe...

...His attention was caught by some books in a strange language that re-sembled Italian and Spanish but was neither...

...Mistral answered with an invitation to Maillane...

...In the letter Bonaparte-Wyse wrote to congratulate Mistral on his great work and thank him for the honor paid him, there is a note of sadness: "I cannot forget, after all, that I am foreign, a stranger, an intruder in the sanctuary...

...As the years passed and thoughts came of the end, there seem to have come regrets...

...Before his imag- ination the heroes of former days pass in review...

...et qu'un Anglais soit Anglais l' " In the autumn of x892, Bonaparte-Wyse left his home in Ireland, of whose dreary climate he was not fond, to journey for the last time to his loved Provence...

...Ah ! si j'eusse dtd Provenqal !" He is busy writing some poems in English...

...He went inside...

...The two quickly became fast friends and spent much time together...

...His father, Sir Thomas Wyse, served in Par- liament and later became British minister in Athens...

...The statutes adopted after the Jeux Floraux at Apt in September, I862, created in the F61ibrige--origi- nally founded in i854 by Mistral and six other poets of the langue d'Oc--a "Section of Friends" including among its seven members Alphonse Daudet and Charles William Bonaparte-Wyse...

...From Avignon he sent some verses in Provenqal to his old friend at Maillane: "I have come at last to die in the land of flowers and sunlight-- worn out, tired, and wearied by the delusions of life-- amid the flowers and sunshine, in the land of my old affection, where the sun god shines resplendent in the air...

...Bonaparte-Wyse was eager to make the Provencal language his own, and Mistral encouraged him, writ- ing him in I86o the somewhat dubious praise: "Vous ~tes plus forts en provencal que tousles membres de l'Institute de France, voire que tousles docteurs de l'Universit6 d'Oxford...

...At any rate, the curious stranger carried back to his hotel a copy of Fr6d6ric Mistral's Mireio, published that same year by Roumanille...

...Of all the great thinkers of the past, Saint Thomas stands with Kant, Aristotle, and Plato as an enduring source of philosophic inspiration and a permanent in- fluence on metaphysical thinking...

...A genuine desire to dis-cuss philosophy and to arrive at sound conclusions is evidenced on all sides, and among no group is the in- terest more lively than among those who have given their allegiance to the philosophy of Saint Thomas...

...The following year came a noel in Provencal, dedicated to his friend Th6odore Aubanel...

...In the following years, the Irish poet passed many hours with Mistral at his home or the homely Provencal Caf6 dou Sol6u at Maillane where Mistral came every evening to enjoy his cottee and cigar with his friends...

...Walt Whitman's Reconcilia- tion, and I Heard You, Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ are among the many poems translated into Pro- venial by Bonaparte-Wyse...

...A strange place and a queer atmosphere in which to discuss the problems of philosophyl Strange and queer for anyone who does not know the soul of Notre Dame or who is unacquainted with its heroes of the classroom, but the most logical place in the country for a philosophy congress to all who appreciate that the academic fire does not burn less brightly at the Indiana institution because its athletic fame has risen to such tremendous heights...

...During the years that followed, he continued from time to time to write in English but Provem;al claimed his service most...

...For thirty-three years this passion for Provence and Provencal dominated this Franco-Anglo-Irish poet of the Midi...

...Mistral, in thanking him for one of these papers, discusses the origin of the word "f61ibre" and asks his friend to investigate the possible connec- tion of the word with a somewhat similar Irish word for poet...

...the thundering feet of the "Four Horsemen" echo in the still air as they charge to victory and undying fame...

...What factors are chiefly responsible for the change in atti- tude, it would be difficult to state...

...January z6, x9z 7 THE COMMONWEAL 3zx Bonaparte-Wyse was a poet in English as well as in Provengal...

...I have not given up the idea, which I have neglected too much thus far, of doing something worth while in my own language...

...He had sent Mistral some verse and asked him to Avignon...

...The interested spectator at the Notre Dan~ con-gress could not but be impressed first of all by the representative character of the audience made up, as it was, of professors of philosophy from about forty of the leading Catholic colleges, universities, and the- ological seminaries...

...Mistral cited passages from the poems of his friend as illustrations in his Provenqal dictionary...

...He realized that, after all, he was not really Proven~;al, that even to his old friends in Provence there must be something strange, exotic, even artificial, in his writing in a language not his own...

...Li Parpaioun Blu (Blue Butterflies) a collection of poems by Bonaparte-Wyse, all in Proven~aI save one m Catalan, was published at Avignon, Barcelona, and Paris in I868, and drew praise from Victor Hugo, Th6odore de Banville, and from Fran~;ois Copp6e...

...This influence has been felt outside scholastic circles in all the continental countries during the last twenty-five years...