Paysage doubles suivi de Portraits - Païsatges doblauds seguit de Portrachs

Occitan literature has been nourished, since its rebirth at the end of the 19th century, by the nostalgia of the Troubadours of the Romanesque age, seeking inspiration at the source of a language whose literary thread had been interrupted for several generations. It is the turn of French poetry to find a new reflection in its transposition into the langue d'Oc.

Bruno Rossignol's Païsatges e portrachs (Landscapes and portraits) are not distinct from a land that carries a language, and therefore a culture. To write in the langue d'oïl to describe the valleys, the rivers, the forests of the Périgord, which have a toponymy whose origin is most often Occitan, is to show the tree without the roots. To speak of the contours of a face, of the flower of a smile, omitting the music of the words that the mouth pronounces, was to render the speech mute or, at best, white and gray a picture bursting with color. The richness of the Occitan language, handled here by a translator with a fine ear, Joan-Lois Lévêque, makes it possible to add to French what it lacks in rhythm, wind, and sometimes harshness.

However, the approach is not only poetic, it also aims to give back to the language the distinction from which it originated, after centuries of shame, this shame to express oneself in public in an Occitan qualified as patois because restricted to a family use.

The double landscapes are thus texts to be read in a mirror, on the surface of the multiple ponds which line the eponymous forest massif (La Double), face oïl, pile oc.

The text "la mer est entrée dans les prés/ la mar a entrat dins los prats" received the prize of the poetry contest of Sourzac 2013.

WORK PUBLISHED WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE REGION RHÔNE-ALPES