How cicadas became the soundtrack of Provence — and a symbol of rest

In Provence, summertime means cicada time. The insects are only above ground for a few weeks in Southern France, when the weather is hot and sunny. And when they’re out, they sing.

Cicadas produce a variety of clicks and buzzes that fill the region’s fields and villages like a distinct summer symphony. These vocalizations can mean different things, but male cicadas often make them as a mating ritual. 

The annual arrival of cicadas isn’t exclusive to Provence, but the region’s love of the musical insect is unique. So engrained are cicadas in Provençal culture that their image often features in local shops and galleries, which sell cicada-themed souvenirs and ceramics.

How did a winged, beady-eyed bug, one that much of the world sees as a noisy nuisance, become a celebrated symbol of leisure in Provence?

Cicadas, artists, and dreamers

Cicadas are known for one thing: their song. Their vocalizations are unique and can reach 90 decibels, a roar not unlike a jet engine. Different cicada species produce different sounds, though this is not always obvious to the human ear. Generally, they fall silent by night.

Some have interpreted the cicada’s singing as evidence of its laziness, as if it whiles away the day in song. Seventeenth-century French poet Jean de La Fontaine fostered this view in his 1688 fable “The Cicada and the Ant.” In it, the ant spends its summer harvesting food, while the musical, musing cicada sings away the season––and ends up having to plead with the ant to share its bounty. To La Fontaine, the cicada is ill-prepared, foolhardy, and lost in its own art.  

Artists and poets in Provence saw the cicada as a kindred spirit, one that made music for the sake of it and loved the sun––another symbol of Provençal life––as much as they did. As in La Fontaine’s story, cicadas seemed to know how to relax, and that was something to celebrate.

Poet Frédéric Mistral promoted the insect as a symbol of the region when he helped found an association of Provençal poets in 1854. Known as the Félibrige, the organization devoted itself to the cultural heritage of Provence, including the revival of Occitan, the language that had once dominated the region. 

Mistral suggested a phrase in Occitan as the group’s motto: “Lou soulèu me fai canta,” or “the sun makes me sing.” It just as easily could have described the sun-loving cicada, whose persistent singing wasn’t unlike a poet’s ode to the Provençal sun.

Naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, who heralded from southern France, wrote in 1879, “Four years of hard work in the darkness, and a month of delight in the sun––such is the Cicada’s life/We must not blame him for the noisy triumph of his song.”

By the end of the 19th century, even tourists came to associate cicadas with the Provençal way of life. English travel writer Edward Harrison Barker appreciated the symbolism of the insect while hiking through southern France. The cicada’s song “is not a musical sound, but it is full of the joy of nature,” he wrote in 1890. 

“When the sun breaks forth it seems intoxicated with pleasure, and in the crest of every pine is a blithe spirit that cries, ‘Sadness is gone; joy! joy for ever!’”

A French ceramicist helped make cicadas an enduring Provençal icon

In 1895, Aubagne earthenware artist Louis Sicard received a commission from the tile-makers corporation in nearby Marseilles. The organization wanted a unique gift that it could send to its clients––and it wanted the gift to be distinctly Provençal.

Sicard crafted paperweights to look like cicadas, complete with wings that seemed to wrap around their backs like a cloak. He added to his paperweights the Félibriges’ signature phrase, “the sun makes me sing.”

Sicard’s cicadas were a hit, and the insect became a regular feature in his work. Other artists followed suit in the subsequent century, incorporating cicadas in their own crafts.

Today, Provençal artists continue to hold up the cicada as a symbol of their home and leisure. Though the humble cicada emerges from the ground for only a few weeks every summer, Provence’s love of it ensures that it remains a beloved figure year-round.