The Mistral of the dictionnary

The Mistral of the dictionnary Mistral, it's:

A north wind which blows in Provence,
a Procençal poet (Nobel Prize of Literature in 1904)
and a chilean poet.

Mistral {mis'-trahl}.

A mistral, which is a cold, dry, northwesterly wind that blows in southern France, is created when air from an inland high-pressure zone passes through the Alps-Pyrenees gap and funnels down the Rhone Valley toward a low-pressure area in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea. The wind velocity, strengthened because of the funneling effect, often reaches 100 km/hr (60 mph). The mistral, called a bora on the Adriatic coast, is strongest and most frequent in the winter and spring, when it may blow for several days at a time, sometimes causing severe crop damage and reaching heights of up to 3 km (2 mi).

Mistral, Frederic {mees-trahl' fray-day-reek'}.

Frederic Mistral, b. Sept. 8, 1830, d. Mar. 25, 1914, was the leading figure in the revival of PROVENCAL LITERATURE. His genius for depicting rural life, his lyric and imaginative gifts, and his passionate love of Provence gave him an international stature, recognized by the Nobel Prize for literature awarded him in 1904.

Mistral studied law and in 1854 helped found the Felibrige, an association devoted to promoting the language and literature of Provence. With Joseph Roumanille he set out to standardize Provencal grammar and spelling.

Mistral's verse romance Mireio (1859; Eng. trans., 1867) was immediately recognized as a masterpiece and later adapted by the composer Charles Gounod as an opera, Mireille. Nerto (1884), based on a medieval legend, was almost equally popular. Mistral's other works include an epic, Lou Pouemo dou Rose (1897; trans. as The Song of the Rhone, 1937) and collections of shorter poems. He also compiled a Provencal dictionary (1878-86) and set up (1904) a museum in Arles illustrating Provencal life.

Robin Buss

Bibliography: Aldington, Richard, Introduction to Mistral (1956); Edwards, Tudor, The Lion of Arles; A Portrait of Mistral and His Circle (1964); Lyle, Rob, Mistral (1953).

Mistral, Gabriela

Gabriela Mistral was the pen name of the Chilean poet Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, b. Apr. 7, 1889, d. Jan. 10, 1957, the first Spanish-American writer to win the Nobel Prize (1945). She enjoyed a continental reputation as a humanitarian and educator, and, together with several other writers, contributed greatly to postmodernist verse. Mistral won a poetry contest in 1914 with Sonetos de la muerte (Sonnets of Death), which were inspired by a tragic love affair and grew into a larger--and her best--collection, aptly entitled Desolacion (Desolation, 1922). Her only other books of poetry are Ternura (Tenderness, 1924), Tala (Destruction, 1938), and Lagar (Winepress, 1954).

Mistral's poems deal with nature, biblical motifs, death, platonic love, and especially love of children and of the dispossessed; they are permeated by feelings of sadness, compassion, asceticism, unsatisfied maternal longing, and communion with the land. Selected poems have been translated by Langston Hughes (1957) and Doris Dana (1971).

Gerardo Luzuriaga

Bibliography: Arce de Vasquez, Margot, Gabriela Mistral: The Poet and Her Work (1964); Taylor, Martin C., Gabriela Mistral's Religious Sensibility (1968).