Instigations Part 40

And the ballad is a shorter form, and the Elizabethan lyrics are but sc.r.a.ps and bits of canzoni much as in the "nineties" men wrote sc.r.a.ps of Swinburne.

Charles d'Orleans made good roundels and songs, as in "Dieu qui la fait" and in "Quand j'oie la tambourine," as did also Jean Froissart before him in:

Reviens, ami; trop longue est ta demeure: Elle me fait avoir peine et doulour.

Mon esperit te demande a toute heure.

Reviens, ami; trop longue est ta demeure.

Car il n'est nul, fors toi, qui me sequerre, Ne secourra, jusques a ton retour.

Reviens, ami; trop longue est ta demeure: Elle me fait avoir peine et doulour.

And in:

Le corps s'en va, mais le cur vous demeure.

And in:

On doit le temps ainsi prendre qu'il vient: Tout dit que pas ne dure la fortune.

Un temps se part, et puis l'autre revient: On doit le temps ainsi prendre qu'il vient.

Je me comforte en ce qu'il me souvient Que tous les mois avons nouvelle lune: On doit le temps ainsi prendre qu'il vient: Tout dit que pas ne dure la fortune.

Which is much what Bernart de Ventadour has sung:

"Per dieu, dona, pauc esplecham d'amor Va sen lo temps e perdem lo melhor."

And Campion was the last, but in none of the later men is there the care and thought of En Arnaut Daniel for the blending of words sung out; and none of them all succeeded, as indeed he had not succeeded in reviving and making permanent a poetry that could be sung. But none of them all had thought so of the sound of the words with the music, all in sequence and set together as had En Arnaut of Ribeyrac, nor had, I think, even Dante Alighieri when he wrote "De Eloquio."

And we find in Provence beautiful poems, as by Vidal when he sings:

"Ab l'alen tir vas me l'aire,"

And by the Viscount of St. Antoni:

"Lo clar temps vei brunezir E'ls auzeletz esperdutz, Que'l fregz ten destregz e mutz E ses conort de jauzir.

Donc eu que de cor sospir Per la gensor re qu'anc fos, Tan joios Son, qu'ades m'es vis Que folh' e flor s'espandis.

D'amor son tug miei cossir...."

and by Bertrans de Born in "Dompna puois di me," but these people sang not so many diverse kinds of music as En Arnaut, nor made so many good poems in different fashions, nor thought them so carefully, though En Bertrans sings with more vigor, it may be, and in the others, in Cerclamon, Arnaut of Marvoil, in de Ventadour, there are beautiful pa.s.sages. And if the art, now in France, of saying a song--_disia sons_, we find written of more than one troubadour--is like the art of En Arnaut, it has no such care for the words, nor such ear for hearing their consonance.

Nor among the Provencals was there any one, nor had Dante thought out an aesthetic of sound; of clear sounds and opaque sounds, such as in "Sols sui," an opaque sound like Swinburne at his best; and in "Doutz brais"

and in "L'aura amara" a clear sound, with staccato; and of heavy beats and of running and light beats, as very heavy in "Can chai la fueilla."

Nor do we enough notice how with his drollery he is in places nearer to Chaucer than to the Italians, and indeed the Provencal is usually nearer the English in sound and in feeling, than it is to the Italian, having a softer humor, not a bitter tongue, as have the Italians in ridicule.

Nor have any yet among students taken note enough of the terms, both of love terms, and of terms of the singing; though theology was precise in its terms, and we should see clearly enough in Dante's treatise when he uses such words as _pexa, hirsuta, lubrica_, combed, and s.h.a.ggy and oily to put his words into categories, that he is thinking exactly. Would the Age of Aquinas have been content with anything less? And so with the love terms, and so, as I have said in my Guido, with metaphors and the exposition of pa.s.sion. Cossir, solatz, plazers, have in them the beginning of the Italian philosophic precisions, and _amors qu'inz el cor mi plou_ is not a vague decoration. By the time of Petrarca the a.n.a.lysis had come to an end, only the vague decorations were left. And if Arnaut is long before Cavalcanti,

Pensar de lieis m'es repaus E traigom ams los huoills cranes, S'a lieis vezer nols estuich.

leads toward "E gli occhi orbati fa vedere scorto," though the music in Arnaut is not, in this place, quickly apprehended. And those who fear to take a bold line in their interpretation of "Cill de Doma," might do worse than re-read:

"Una figura de la donna mia"

and what follows it. And for the rest any man who would read Arnaut and the troubadours owes great thanks to Emil Levy of Freiburg i/b for his long work and his little dictionary (Pet.i.t Dictionaire Provencal-Francais, Karl Winter's Universitatsbuchhandlung, Heidelberg), and to U.A. Canello, the first editor of Arnaut, who has shown, I think, great profundity in his arrangement of the poems in their order, and has really hit upon their sequence of composition, and the developments of En Arnaut's trobar; and lastly to Rene Lavaud for his new Tolosan edition.

II

The twenty-three students of Provencal and the seven people seriously interested in the technic and aesthetic of verse may communicate with me in person. I give here only enough to ill.u.s.trate the points of the _razo_, that is to say, as much as, and probably more than, the general reader can be bothered with. The translations are a make-shift; it is not to be expected that I can do in ten years what it took two hundred troubadours a century and a half to accomplish; for the full understanding of Arnaut's system of echoes and blending there is no subst.i.tute for the original; but in extenuation of the language of my verses, I would point out that the Provencals were not constrained by the modern literary sense. Their restraints were the tune and rhyme-scheme, they were not constrained by a need for certain qualities of writing, without which no modern poem is complete or satisfactory.

They were not competing with De Maupa.s.sant's prose. Their triumph is, as I have said, in an art between literature and music; if I have succeeded in indicating some of the properties of the latter I have also let the former go by the board. It is quite possible that if the troubadours had been bothered about "style," they would not have brought their blend of word and tune to so elaborate a completion.

"Can chai la fueilla" is interesting for its rhythm, for the sea-chantey swing produced by simple device of caesurae:

Can chai la fueilla dels ausors entrecims, El freitz s'ergueilla don sechal vais' el vims, Dels dous refrims vei sordezir la brueilla; Mas ieu soi prims d'amor, qui que s'en tueilla.

The poem does not keep the same rhyme throughout, and the only reason for giving the whole of it in my English dither is that one can _not_ get the effect of the thumping and iterate foot-beat from one or two strophes alone.

CAN CHAI LA FUEILLA

When sere leaf falleth from the high forked tips, And cold appalleth dry osier, haws and hips, Coppice he strips of bird, that now none calleth.

Fordel[1] my lips in love have, though he galleth.

Though all things freeze here, I can naught feel the cold, For new love sees, here my heart's new leaf unfold; So am I rolled and lapped against the breeze here: Love who doth mould my force, force guarantees here.

Aye, life's a high thing, where joy's his maintenance, Who cries 'tis wry thing hath danced never my dance, I can advance no blame against fate's t.i.thing For lot and chance have deemed the best thing my thing.

Of love's wayfaring I know no part to blame, All other paring, compared, is put to shame, Man can acclaim no second for comparing With her, no dame but hath the meaner bearing.

I'ld ne'er entangle my heart with other fere, Although I mangle my joy by staying here I have no fear that ever at Pontrangle You'll find her peer or one that's worth a wrangle.

She'd ne'er destroy her man with cruelty 'Twixt here 'n' Savoy there feeds no fairer she, Than pleaseth me till Paris had ne'er joy In such degree from Helena in Troy.

She's so the rarest who holdeth me thus gay, The thirty fairest can not contest her sway; 'Tis right, par fay, thou know, O song that wearest Such bright array, whose quality thou sharest.

Chancon, nor stay till to her thou declarest: "Arnaut would say me not, wert thou not fairest."

"Lancan son pa.s.sat" shows the simple and presumably early style of Arnaut, with the kind of reversal from more or less trochaic to more or less iambic movement in fifth and eighth lines, a _kind_ of rhythm taken over by Elizabethan lyricists. Terms trochaic and iambic are, however, utterly inaccurate when applied to syllabic metres set to a particular melody:

Lancan son pa.s.sat li giure E noi reman puois ni comba, Et el verdier la flors trembla Sus el entrecim on poma, La flors e li chan eil clar quil Ab la sazon doussa e coigna M'enseignon c'ab joi m'apoigna, Sai al temps de l'intran d'April.

LANCAN SON Pa.s.sAT LI GIURE

When the frosts are gone and over, And are stripped from hill and hollow, When in close the blossom blinketh From the spray where the fruit cometh, The flower and song and the clarion Of the gay season and merry Bid me with high joy to bear me Through days while April's coming on.

Though joy's right hard to discover, Such sly ways doth false Love follow, Only sure he never drinketh At the fount where true faith hometh; A thousand girls, but two or one Of her falsehoods over chary, Stabbing whom vows make unwary Their tenderness is vilely done.

The most wise runs drunkest lover, Sans pint-pot or wine to swallow, If a whim her locks unlinketh, One stray hair his noose becometh.

When evasion's fairest shown, Then the sly puss purrs most near ye.