James Thomas (Bristol, 1971) è un traduttore e ricercatore in letteratura occitana. S’interessa di questo tema dal 1996, in seguito a tre mesi di passeggiate attorno alla città di Béziers. La sua coscienza linguistica si è sviluppata dopo un soggiorno di 5 anni a Barcellona (1997-2002), durante i quali ha appreso il catalano e visitato l’Occitania a più riprese. Nel 2002 ha fatto ritorno in Inghilterra, dove ha deciso di dedicarsi alla sua passione per la lingua occitana. Dopo aver considerato le opzioni, ha scelto di effettuare un Master di ricerca all’Università di Bristol consacrato al XIX secolo: il valore simbolico dell’occitano per Antoine Fabre d’Olivet ed il marsigliese Victor Gelu. Sebbene ciò non lo abbia portato agli studi dottorali, ha scritto un capitolo su Fabre d’Olivet per una pubblicazione della Oxford University Press sulla percezione di Dante nel XIX secolo (Dante in the Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity, and Appropriation, 2012) ed un articolo su Gelu per il giornale italiano La Questione Romantica (2010). Nel 2010 termina gli studi all’Università di Exeter con encomio e lode del preside per la maestria in lettere e traduzione. Questo fatto gli ha dato l’idea di realizzare un’antologia di letteratura occitana, un proposito che ha incontrato l’approvazione di un editore londinese, Clive Boutle (Francis Boutle Publishing House). Grains of Gold: an Anthology of Occitan Literature (2015), radunando testi dal X al XXI secolo ed in parte finanziato grazie al sostegno del Pen Club inglese. Lo stesso Thomas ha prodotto la metà delle traduzioni di questa antologia ed è stato traduttore per la Francis Boutle Publishing House del volume Solstice and other Poems: Poems in occitan (2012) di Aurélia Lassaque. Ha prodotto altre ricerche ed articoli nell’ambito occitano, compreso un capitolo nel 2014 su Le Troubadour di Fabre d’Olivet (1803) riguardo a teorie sulla pseudo-traduzione. Vive a Londra, dove progetta di continuare la sua opera di traduttore d’occitano e prosa catalana.

Il Premio per la lingua occitana gli è conferito per mettere in luce e ricompensare la notevole qualità del suo impegno in favore della diffusione della letteratura occitana nel mondo. Oltre al suo lavoro di traduzione, con l’attribuzione di questo premio ricompensiamo altresì il suo impressionante lavoro di ricerca, analisi, compilazione dei testi più pregevoli, conosciuti o meno, della letteratura occitana dai trovatori ai nostri giorni. Il libro realizzato dal suo accurato lavoro costituisce un considerevole passo avanti per la letteratura occitana attraverso il nuovo sguardo che lo studioso apporta alla conoscenza e allo studio di questa lingua.

ANTOLOGIA JAMES THOMAS

TESTO INGLESE

Five texts from Grains of Gold 

an anthology of occitan literature

TO ALL,

With a Triumph of a Foreword, 1617

We are finished with those who cock a snook at our Mondin tongue [Occitan of Toulouse] because they cannot dig deep into a knowledge of its pleasing turns of phrase or because they would have us believe that they have found the lucky charm in the cake of self-importance. Let us brush off scorn with contempt, and with all the value of their puffed up words and taunts let us make the same in furniture from bladders: NOTHING. Yes, does the musky rose really cease refreshing the eyes and nose if the hornet squirts with little pricks its sting onto its loving mantels? Nourished by Toulouse, it pleases me to keep intact its lovely language, capable of unknotting all manner of concepts and, accordingly, worthy of nestling under a plume of merit and esteem. This reproach can be levelled at it, that certain words are tied and chained to Latin: Amor, Cèl, Tèrra, Mar; but so too are Italian, Spanish and the pure French, each of which proudly boasts of touching the highest rungs of perfection. Such a kinship comes from study or the courtship of one people with another. Here, though, are some indigenous words that live off their own private income: gòf [soaked], pèc [stupid], lec [stylish], crauc [hollow], ranc [lame], brusc [rude], ganguièr [nasty], peròt [lamb], ranguilh [rail], roire [to gnaw], chichiu [chirping], folsinar [to smell], rampònha [fever], requincar [to protect], chambotar [to tinkle], chapotar [to soak], carrincar [to squeak], miracocar [to adorn], ajoatar [to harness], chotum-botum [intoxicated], espalabissar [to scatter], a tustas e bustas [in disarray], a malas endevèras [aimlessly, in bad shape], amongst a thousand others already catering for our simple pastimes. The reason is their antiquity: when by God’s decree all languages were sent for interment on account of the temerity of the giant Nimrod, who can say that ours was not part of the gathering? According to common opinion, Toulouse was founded by Tolus, great-nephew of Noah; appearances seem to favour us, then, that the city indeed had a particular language that had been amongst those which had contributed to the confusion of the building whose weathervanes would have skirted the sky and spited the spate of all future floods. Let this be said, in passing, against the jeerers and in favour of our Mondin, Toulousain, Toulousenc tongue, which has supplied us with the florets to make the Bouquet in search of those who, to amuse themselves in their leisure, would regard it with approval.

God be with you

The Scarecrow

Scarecrow, crusty with fleas,

Beggarman, pauper, coat-sleeper,

Stumped by misfortune,

Slouching night and day,

Do you see him in the street?

Feverish, his rheumy eye;

You catch his apothecary face

Furrowed with horrors;

Like a tramp lugging sacks,

He moves on, sluggish, in plasters!

His carcass is tatty, worn-out;

Not a penny in his pocket;

Nothing to fill his gullet;

At home the twins are crying;

It’s a matter of life or death!

He feels heavy as he totters,

Drunken legs floundering.

“To the charnel house”, people cry;

Poor beggar! His marrow dissolves

With the pain that seeps in!

Like this, through the streets

He walks on… walks on… At noon,

The friendly, gleaming sun!

The sky, like satin gloss,

Embraces the vernal earth.

The trees are bouquets of flowers;

Between their swaying branches

Rays of sunshine explode.

Shadows flee the city walls.

The heat is overwhelming.

Time passes, it’s cooler now,

Evening comes... The scarecrow,

Like someone dying in hospital,

Stumbles against houses,

Sensing the oncoming madness!

His eyes run like a fountain:

- “O, my children! What life is this? ” 

His heart crumples with this cry;

Saggy, like a bag of old rags,

He crumbles into his final sleep.

From Sorgas [Sources], 1940

Gentle Rain

Gentle autumn rain,

lead us to the house.

My apron is full of wild branches:

We shall light a roaring fire,

come, lead us to the house!

Before the dancing flames,

the smoke’s canine scent

will kindle in our memories

a contentment

buried deep within forests

lost in the hubbub.

Aliscamps, 1949

Tombstone for Federico García Lorca

Dark placatory waters

sombre enshrouded features

no dove upon the rooftops

and the sky...where is it?

Dark melancholy waters

torpid, lacking in vim,

stagnant waters, creeping

witnesses of phantoms,

stagnant waters, exhumers

of a death and an echo

cradling waters of a heart,

a heart that grips the song,

a heart of limpid desire

sweeping along to the sea

upon the silent river

a bloodline stripped away,

Only the human face

is blind to the day’s end,

inside the twilight soul

The owl circles three times.

Unforgettable Federico

the girls of Al-Andalus

and super-saint glory

vitriolic Civil Guard.

A spume of savage groans

A stifled peal of laughter

Pilgrimage retribution

Aliscamps of the moment

From Accidents, 1955

Moonstone on my chest you slumber

within my soul moonlight rises

What is the god that brightens

and alightens within me, laughing

at the dawn of a ring?

the rings, the largest ring in space

and other greater circles blossom

the flower’s petals close one atop the other,

each time the flower opens wider

gentle flame, crown of thorns, of neon

Look out, we’re about to fall, oh, my light

into your light! open your arms,

plunge into summer, like the sun,

like suns (there, there and there another!)

Falling, frothing foam up to their peaks