Dins las carrièiras dau Clapàs - Dans les rues du Clapas - Édouard Marsal

Dins las carrièiras dau Clapàs - Dans les rues du Clapas - Edouard Marsal, Pascal Wagner

50 reproductions of engravings by Edouard Marsal and 50 photographs by Pascal Wagner.

Discover 19th-century Montpellier through the tender, humorous eyes of Edouard Marsal, when Occitan was the everyday language of the people. Picturesque figures and small trades, 50 portraits in words and pictures of Montpellier's little people are gathered here.

Edouard Marsal (Montpellier, 1845-1929) is known not only as a painter and illustrator, but also as a félibre and staunch defender of the langue d'oc. His book Dans les rues du Clapas, published in 1896, is a collection of fifty portraits in words and pictures of the little people of Montpellier: street vendors (of wine, vinegar, wild lettuce, snails, donkey, goat or cow milk, haberdashery, tripe, newspapers, doughnuts, sweets. ), grinders, scourers, carders, distillers, shoe shuckers, as well as comical and tragic misfits (simpletons, vagabonds, drunkards). A popular Montpellier that has disappeared, the Clapas of yesteryear, comes alive before our eyes with all these breadwinners, these people of little means who are the very soul of the city and whom Marsal makes speak, with all their professional cries, in the only language they know, Occitan.

Thanks to Pascal Wagner, a librarian from Montpellier, the book Dins las carrièiras dau Clapàs is now accessible to as many people as possible, transcribed in classic Occitan script, with a French translation and explanatory notes, as well as current photographs of the places Marsal drew.

Each of the 50 engravings is matched by a current photo of the site where the character appears, taken exactly from the perspective of the drawing, allowing us to measure the permanence and mutations of Montpellier.

Finally, a map of the city center, indicating the sites Marsal chose for his portraits (the various places drawn), invites you to visit the city in a different way, following in the artist's footsteps and discovering a small world that has disappeared. A guide full of humor and tenderness for these tiny lives.


An artistic and literary work as well as an irreplaceable document.
Classical transcription, French translation and photographs by Pascal Wagner.

Editions Jorn.