History of Occitania - Henri Espieux

Histoire de l'occitanie - Henri Espieux

Occitania is in search of its being, Occitania is in search of its history. The equivalence of these two propositions is obvious to those who know how to see. For a people poses its existence by its presence in time. I say: a people, and there will be more than one to contradict me, to assert that I venture into the myth, into the unproven. Henri Espieux's essay attempts to answer the historical thread of a certain permanence of behavior, from an ethnic presence to the great encounters of the event. Would we here speak a language and a culture, no more, that we would not speak differently. How is it that a language is born and lives in one place? How can one explain his birth and life other than in terms of history? Moreover, is not a culture, incarnated as it is in a language, the very sign of ethnicity? Thus, is not his life the life of a people seeking its way to make itself and to be discarded, distinguished and reconstructed in the tangle of economic, social and political facts?


Editions Center culturel occitan - Collection cap e cap 1970

Preface by Robert Lafont - Translation of Occitan by Jean Revest - Illustrations by Jean-Luc Severac.

The author:

Henri Espieux (Enric Espieut) is an Occitan poet and writer born in Toulon in 1923 and died in Nimes in 1971. He spent most of his life in Paris where he founded the local section of the Institute of Occitan Studies.

Warning ! Old book in poor condition rather used book.