El Pirineu i la construcció nacional: El fet literari gascó a l'inici del segle XX i la seua relació amb l'àmbit català (Camelat, Sarrieu, Condò)

Abstract

From the beginning of the 20th century to approximately the 1940s the strongest (and, in many ways, the definitive) tide of linguistic substitution in favour of the French language reaches the Occitan speech area at the same time as an Occitan cultural consciousness develops, which comes from the relationship between the Catalan Renaixença and the Occitan Félibrige movements, both going back to the middle of the previous century. In this context, the case of Mistral and his contacts to e.g. Verdaguer have attracted researcher’s interest.
      The Gascony extensions of this literary correlation are however less reputed. At that point Miquèu de Camelat writes his work. Born in Arrens, a small village in the Bigorre mountains, he is well known as author of Belina, a Pyrenean version of Mistral’s Mireia. With far more explicit ideologic aspects, Camelat publishes in 1920 Mort e viva, a piece that presents itself evidently as the big epic poem from the Gascony Pyrenees, obviously inspired by Verdaguer and concentrating on the important events that – according to the author – determined and still determine the existence or non-existence of the Gascon nation. The comparison of Camelat with his contemporaries, especially with Gascons like Bernat Sarrieu form Luchon and with the Aranese Jusèp Condò, shows us how the same cultural space (provided that we assume a cultural continuity in the whole of the Pyrenean area, at least concerning forms of interaction between man and mountain) was conceived in a total different manner by the Gascons and the Catalans and – depending on the various historic conditions – was transformed differently into literature.