FRANÇOIS FONTAN
François Fontan is a French Occitanist political thinker, founder of the Occitan Nationalist Party, now Party of the Occitan Nation (PNO).
He descend from the Gascon nobility. He was born in a monarchist family.
He becomes involved in politics for the first time in the monarchist socialist movement at the age of fifteen, but he soon abandons this tendency to adhere to anarchist ideas.
He then leaves them to support the Trotskyists of the group Socialisme ou Barbarie. He moved to Nice where he had family. He attended a time the French Communist Party (PCF) which shocked him for his Stalinism and chose the Second Left which is one of the founding branches of the United Socialist Party (PSU).
In the spring of 1959, he founded the Occitan Nationalist Party in Nice. Pursued following FLN assistance trials during the Algerian war, he settled in Frassino, in the Varaita Valley, one of the Occitan valleys. After spending two years establishing the language border between Occitan and Piedmontese, in 1967 he founded the Occitan autonomist movement.
From 1962, François Fontan entered into correspondence with Professor Guy Héraud1. Since Frassino, he directs the PNO.
The fontanian spelling
Fontan developed a standardized language proposal for Occitan, the so-called Fontanian spelling. However, it had little follow-up, even more scarce after his death, even within the PNO and MAO parties he founded, which leave the members free to choose the spelling they prefer. Two reasons for his failure were, on the one hand, the imposition of a unified pronunciation and grammar for a language (or a group of related languages, according to subjective opinions) so divided as Occitan; and on the other hand, to adhere to a rigorous phonetic principle, the use in such orthography of graphic solutions unrelated to the neo-Latin languages.
Ethnic and Occitanist political thought
The elaboration of Fontan's thought was the fruit of scientific research. They are mainly three currents of thought that led him to the foundation of the PNO: initially the criticism of Wilhelm Reich, later that of Karl Marx, and finally the critique of imperialism. Most of his thought was recorded in his writings in the early fifties, already 8-10 years before the creation of the PNO. It was a reflection on the decolonization of Vietnam, Morocco, Tunisia, and especially of Algeria, which served as a concrete political framework. The discovery of Marxist sociology and the study of psychoanalysis, in particular the work of Wilhelm Reich, led him to ethnicism and left nationalism in general, and to occitanism in particular.
Both Marx and Reich made him understand the profound alienation of humanity; and the study of the national question in the world led him to Occitan nationalism.
Most of his ideas developed when Professor Pèire Bec, from Cazères, made him discover the existence of the Occitan language. For Fontan, therefore, if there is a specific language of a territory, this territory is a nation that must be liberated. He argued that new boundaries should be created in the world, that would unite every separate people within a single state. Especially in Africa the borders were created by European administrators, and do not correspond at all to the various peoples who live there. For example, according to the followers of Fontan, the creation of new ethnic-linguistic boundaries could have prevented massacres like that of Rwanda in 1994 between Tutsi and Hutu.
Today the main contributors to the thought of François Fontan are the members of the parties he himself founded: the PNO ("Parti Nationaliste Occitan", today "Parti de la Nation Occitane") in France, and the MAO ("Occitan Autonomous Movement") in Italy. A well-known supporter of these ideas is the internationally renowned French artist Ben Vautier.
Works
Ethnisme, vers un nationalisme humaniste (1961)
La nation occitane, ses frontières, ses régions (1969)
Orientation politique du nationalisme occitan (1970)
Nationalisme révolutionnaire, religion marxiste et voie scientifique du progrès (1972)
Nationalisme, fédéralisme, internationalisme (1976)
PIERRE BEC
Pierre Bec, also known as Pèire Bèc, was a French linguist, philologist and poet, specializing in the study of Romance languages and, in particular, in Occitan.
Son of a Gascon father and a Creole mother, he spent his childhood in the Cominges region, where he learned Occitan. Without having completed high school, he began working as an interpreter for the refugees of the Spanish Civil War. At the beginning of the Second World War he was deported to Germany, where he returned in 1945 to graduate in German and Italian, obtaining his doctorate in Paris in 1959.
After a few years of teaching in the French capital, he moved to Poitiers, where he taught until his retirement in 1989.
He was awarded the first Robèrt Lafont Prize of 2010 in defense of the Occitan language.
Son of a Gascon father and a Creole mother, he spent his childhood in the Cominges region, where he learned Occitan. Without having completed high school, he began working as an interpreter for the refugees of the Spanish Civil War. At the beginning of the Second World War he was deported to Germany, where he returned in 1945 to graduate in German and Italian, obtaining his doctorate in Paris in 1959. After a few years of teaching in the French capital, he moved to Poitiers, where he taught until his retirement in 1989.
He was awarded the first Robèrt Lafont Prize of 2010 in defense of the Occitan language.
He is considered one of the most renowned specialists in Occitan language and literature. His work La langue occitane, which appeared in the collection ''Que sais-je ?'', contributed extensively to making the linguistic reality of the south known throughout France. His manual Manuel pratique de Philologie Romane, is a work of reference in the studies of Romance philology.
In 1982 he was part of the Linguistic Commission of Aranés, which established the regulations for this language made official in 1983.
He was honorary president of the newly inaugurated Occitan Academy in 2008.
He also published poems, stories and novels in the Occitan language.
WORKS:
Poetry
Au Briu de l'Estona (IEO, 1956)
La quista de l'Aute (IEO, 1971)
Sonets barròcs entà Isèut (IEO, 1979)
Cant reiau (IEO, 1985)
Prose
Contes de l'unic (Per Noste, 1977)
I hiu tibat. Racontes d'Alemanha (Per Noste, 1978)
Sebastian (Federop, 1981)
Contes esquiçats (Per Noste, 1984)
Racontes d'ua mòrt tranquilla (Reclams, 1993)
Entà créser au món (Reclams, 2004)
FREDERIC MISTRAL
Frederic Mistral was one of the most important Occitan writers for the rebirth of the Occitan language in the nineteenth century . It was Mistral who founded the felibrity, a movement that placed literature in oc language at the forefront of minority languages in Europe. Due to the wealth of his literary production, the Provençal poet received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904. In addition, Mistral was the author of Lou Tresor dólar Felibrige, the most complete dictionary of the Occitan language.
Politics:
At the beginning, Mistral thought that the key piece of identification with nationalities was language, which is the axis of identification of a historical town. He said that centralism is the enemy because it destroys the values of historical units and affirmed that centralism had its basic element in industrialization. He identified, then, a centralist state with industrial civilization. His vision of Occitania was clearly rural.
The Counts' allegory represents the story of a countess (Provence) who is imprisoned by her bad sister (French centralism). In his opinion, federalism can allow the relationship between nationalities without a state. For him, federalism is a relationship between peoples, not so much between states. I believed that a reconstruction of the Latin Mediterranean culture was necessary from the nations, not from the states. The Europe of Nations contributes things that Europe's states can not bring.
However, later, the positions of Mistral became more conservative and, after a while, he abandoned his federalist theses.
Literary work:
His main work is Mirèio (Mireia), which required him eight years of effort.
A work that is based on the recreation of a whole world, patriarchal and Georgian world, is comparable to that of Romeo and Juliet, showing a great strength of feelings.
In 1904, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, along with the playwright José Echegaray and Eizaguirre, in recognition of the fresh originality and the true inspiration of his poetic production, which faithfully reflects the natural landscape and the spirit native of his people and, moreover, his significant work as an Occitan philologist. With the amount of the prize, he created the Arlaten Museum in the city of Arle.
WORKS:
1859: Mirèio
1867: Calendau
1875: Lis isclo d'or
1884: Nèrto, novel·la
1878-1886: Lou tresor dóu Felibrige, indispensable encara avui dia «PDF».
1890: La rèino Jano, drama
1897: Lou pouèmo dou rose
1906: Moun espelido, memori e raconte, memòries
1906: Discours e dicho
1910: La genèsi, traducho en prouvençau
1912: Lis oulivado
1926: Proso d'Armana, publicació pòstuma
JOSÈP ROMANILHA
Josèp Romanilha was an Occitan writer. He was a professor at Avignon, and he was a pupil of the young Frederic Mistral. He published a collection of poems, Margaridetas (1847). His role as the creator of the Provençal Renaissance was confirmed by the founding of Felibritge, which was one of the greatest drivers. He was the editor of Armana Prouvençau, where he published a series of moralizing stories written in a strongly tasty language (edited in 1883). Realistic and Catholic, I conceived poetry as a cult of domestic virtues and the exaltation of traditional values. He skillfully learned to put on the scene popular characters. Some of his works, as it is now La campanile mountado (1857), can still be read with interest and pleasure.
WORKS:
La campano mountado (1857)
Fau i Ana (1877)
Lis enterre-chin (1872)
Li conte prouvençau (1883)
Dideto (1880)
Lou cascarelet, rondallaire anònim molt dretà, inclòs dins Lis oubreto en proso (1853)
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