Jean-Pierre Chabrol - Racontes a sotavotz

Jean-Pierre Chabrol - Racontes a sotavotz

"Tales in half-voice" revirada a l’occitan de Patric Sauzet

These short stories by Jean-Pierre Chabrol, translated into Occitan, are a delightful introduction to his world, his work and his country, the Cévennes. They speak of his commitment, his revolt, his life and his family, in a voice that is close and sincere. They show the transformations of the Cévennes, between tradition and modernity, resistance and adaptation.

For if Chabrol was the author of several novels, he was also an excellent storyteller.
Published in 1985 by Grasset, Jean-Pierre Chabrol's Contes à mi-voix (Tales in Mid-Voice), a mixture of short stories and narratives, evokes the world of his childhood and youth, during the Occupation, the Resistance and the Fifties. They can be humorous, as in the case of two unmarried peasants who respond to a classified ad and welcome two prostitutes to their farm. Or tragic, with his accounts of the Resistance and the execution of a young Gestapist. But always with great tenderness, as in his family portraits: La soupe de la Mamée, Le raisin magique, the secular schoolteacher mother who doubts nothing except the existence of God, the den of a handyman father or the evocation of village savoir-vivre with his young ladies, nurse or piano teacher, his baker and his Samuel son, or his Andalusian guitarist friend passing through.

« Ainsi l’occitan s’ancra dans ma jeune tête, comme la langue chuchotée, le précieux parler défendu » écrit Jean-Pierre Chabrol qui salua avec enthousiasme la traduction en occitan que lui proposa Patrick Sauzet, professeur de linguistique occitane à l’Université de Toulouse, et cévenol comme lui.

Original version “Contes à mi-voix” by Jean-Pierre Chabrol. Occitan translation by Patrick Sauzet.

Editions Vent Terral.

The authors:

Jean-Pierre Chabrol (1925-2001). Born in Chamborigaud (Gard) to a couple of schoolteachers. After a spell in the Paris khâgne, he joined the Resistance in 1944. A cartoonist, journalist and then editor-in-chief of L'Humanité, he distanced himself from the Communist Party in 1956. A radio and television storyteller and author of some forty books, he is heir to the Cévennes oral tradition.

Patrick Sauzet, born in Montpellier, a former student at the ÉNS, agrégé in grammar, Doctor of Letters (linguistics 1993), assistant to Robert Lafont at the University of Montpellier, then professor at the Universities of Paris VIII and Toulouse II - Jean Jaurès. Author of numerous articles, scientific papers and practical books: Conjugaison occitane (IEO Edicions), Diccionari de botgeta/Dico de poche (Yoran Embanner).