Une vie avec Léon Cordes (1913-1987)

Labours croisés du champ occitan

Abstract

Léon Cordes (1913-1985) was steeped in a cultural heritage which, from Minerve to Argeliers, combined memories of the Cathars, the Crusade waged against them in the 13th century and the winegrowers' revolt of 1907. From the 1930s onwards, he took part in the emergence of a completely new Occitanism, alongside Charles Camproux, then Robert Lafont and Max Rouquette. As an writer of theater plays and an editor and a sensitive poet, he claimed to be a peasant with a visceral connection to his land, but mastered all the literary disciplines in order to use his creative work to defend and develop an Occitan language and civilisation that he passionately lived. This article, born of admiration and friendship, attempts to retrace the major stages of an under-recognised career, that of a peasant and writer whose deep roots went hand in hand with a deliberate openness to modernity.