Wine, Women, and Song Part 2

[Footnote 11: Ibid.]

[Footnote 12: Ibid.]

[Footnote 13: See Muldner, _Die zehn Gedichte des Walther von Lille_.

1859. Walter Mapes (ed. Wright) is credited with five of these satires, including two which close each stanza with a hexameter from Juvenal, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Horace.]

VIII.

I do not think there is much probability of arriving at certainty with regard to the problems indicated in the foregoing section. We must be content to accept the names Golias and Goliardi as we find them, and to treat of this literature as the product of a cla.s.s, from the midst of which, as it is clear to any critic, more than one poet rose to eminence.

One thing appears manifest from the references to the Goliardi which I have already quoted. That is, that the Wandering Students ranked in common estimation with jongleurs, buffoons, and minstrels. Both cla.s.ses held a similar place in medieval society. Both were parasites devoted to the entertainment of their superiors in rank. Both were unattached, except by occasional engagements, to any fixed abode. But while the minstrels found their temporary homes in the castles of the n.o.bility, we have reason to believe that the Goliardi haunted abbeys and amused the leisure of ecclesiastical lords.

The personality of the writer disappears in nearly all the _Carmina Vagorum_. Instead of a poet with a name, we find a type; and the verse is put into the mouth of Golias himself, or the Archipoeta, or the Primate of the order. This merging of the individual in the cla.s.s of which he forms a part is eminently characteristic of popular literature, and separates the Goliardic songs from those of the Provencal Troubadours. The emotions to which popular poetry gives expression are generic rather than personal. They are such that all the world, granted common sympathies and common proclivities, can feel them and adopt the mode of utterance invented for them by the singer.

If there be any bar to their universal acceptance, it is only such as may belong to the peculiar conditions of the social cla.s.s from which they have emanated. The _Rispetti_ of Tuscany imply a certain form of peasant life. The _Carmina Vagorum_ are coloured to some extent by the prejudices and proclivities of vagabond existence.

Trenchantly true as the inspiration of a popular lyric may be, inevitable as may be the justice of its sentiment, unerring as may be its touch upon reality, still it lacks the note which marks it out for one man's utterance among a thousand. Composing it, the one has made himself the mouthpiece of the thousand. What the _Volkslied_ gains in universality it loses in individuality of character. Its applicability to human nature at large is obtained at the sacrifice of that interest which belongs to special circ.u.mstances. It suits every one who grieves or loves or triumphs. It does not indicate the love, the grief, the triumph of this man and no other. It possesses the pathos and the beauty of countless human lives prolonged through inarticulate generations, finding utterance at last in it. It is deficient in that particular intonation which makes a Sh.e.l.ley's voice differ from a Leopardi's, Petrarch's sonnets for Laura differ from Sidney's sonnets for Stella. It has always less of perceptible artistic effect, more enduring human quality. Some few of its lines are so well found, so rightly said, that they possess the certainty of natural things--a quality rare in the works of all but the greatest known poets. But these phrases with the accent of truest truth are often embedded in mere generalities and repet.i.tions.

These characteristics of popular poetry help to explain the frequent recurrence of the same ideas, the same expressions, the same stanzas even, in the lyrics of the Goliardi. A _Volkslied_, once created, becomes common property. It flies abroad like thistledown; settles and sows its seed; is maimed and mutilated; is improved or altered for the worse; is curtailed, expanded, adapted to divers purposes at different times and in very different relations.

We may dismiss the problem of authorship partly as insoluble, partly as of slight importance for a literature which is manifestly popular.

With even greater brevity may the problem of nationality be disposed of. Some critics have claimed an Italian, some an English, some a French, and some a German origin for the _Carmina Vagorum_. The truth is that, just as the _Clerici Vagi_ were themselves of all nations, so were their songs; and the use of a Latin common to all Europe in the Middle Ages renders it difficult even to conjecture the soil from which any particular lyric may have sprung. As is natural, a German codex contains more songs of Teutonic origin; an English displays greater abundance of English compositions. I have already observed that our two chief sources of Goliardic literature have many elements in common; but the treasures of the Benedictbeuern MS. differ in complexion from those of the Harleian in important minor details; and it is probable that if French and Italian stores were properly ransacked--which has not yet been done--we should note in them similar characteristic divergences.

The _Carmina Burana_, by their frequent references to linden-trees and nightingales, and their numerous German refrains, indicate a German home for the poems on spring and love, in which they are specially rich.[14] The collections of our own land have an English turn of political thought; the names Anglia and Anglus not unfrequently occur; and the use of the word "Sch.e.l.linck" in one of the _Carmina Burana_ may point, perhaps, to an English origin. France claims her own, not only in the acknowledged pieces of Walter de Lille, but also in a few which exhibit old French refrains. To Italian conditions, if not to Italian poets, we may refer those that introduce spreading pines or olive-trees into their pictures, and one which yields the refrain _Bela mia_. The most important lyric of the series, _Golias'

Confession_, was undoubtedly written at Pavia, but whether by an Italian or not we do not know. The probability is rather, perhaps, in favour of Teutonic authorship, since this _Confession_ is addressed to a German prelate. Here it may be noticed that the proper names of places and people are frequently altered to suit different countries; while in some cases they are indicated by an N, sufficiently suggestive of their generality. Thus the _Confession of Golias_ in the _Carmina Burana_ mentions _Electe Coloniae_; in an English version, introduces _Praesul Coventriae_. The prayer for alms, which I have translated in Section xiii., is addressed to _Decus N----_, thou honour of Norwich town, or Wittenberg, or wherever the wandering scholar may have chanced to be.

With regard to the form and diction of the _Carmina Vagorum_, it is enough to say two things at the present time. First, a large portion of these pieces, including a majority of the satires and longer descriptive poems, are composed in measures borrowed from hymnology, follow the diction of the Church, and imitate the double-rhyming rhythms of her sequences. It is not unnatural, this being the case, that parodies of hymns should be comparatively common. Of these I shall produce some specimens in the course of this study. Secondly, those which do not exhibit popular hymn measures are clearly written for melodies, some of them very complicated in structure, suggesting part-songs and madrigals, with curious interlacing of long and short lines, double and single rhymes, recurrent ritournelles, and so forth.

The ingenuity with which these poets adapted their language to the exigencies of the tune, taxing the fertility of Latin rhymes, and setting off the long sonorous words to great advantage, deserves admiring comment. At their best, it is almost impossible to reproduce in English the peculiar effects of their melodic artifices. But there is another side to the matter. At their worst, these Latin lyrics, moulded on a tune, degenerate into disjointed verbiage, sound and adaptation to song prevailing over sense and satisfaction to the mind.

It must, however, be remembered that such lyrics, sometimes now almost unintelligible, have come down to us with a very mutilated text, after suffering the degradations through frequent oral transmission to which popular poetry is peculiarly liable.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: The more I study the songs of love and wine in this codex, the more convinced am I that they have their origin for the most part in South-Western Germany, Bavaria, the Bodensee, and Elsa.s.s.]

IX.

It is easier to say what the Goliardi wrote about than who the writers were, and what they felt and thought than by what names they were baptised. The ma.s.s of their literature, as it is at present known to us, divides into two broad cla.s.ses. The one division includes poems on the themes of vagabond existence, the truant life of these capricious students; on spring-time and its rural pleasure; on love in many phases and for divers kinds of women; lastly, on wine and on the dice-box. The other division is devoted to graver topics; to satires on society, touching especially the Roman Court, and criticising eminent ecclesiastics in all countries; to moral dissertations, and to discourses on the brevity of life.

Of the two divisions, the former yields by far the livelier image of the men we have to deal with. It will therefore form the staple of my argument. The latter blends at so many points with medieval literature of the monastic kind, that it is chiefly distinguished by boldness of censure and sincerity of invective. In these qualities the serious poems of the Goliardi, emanating from a cla.s.s of men who moved behind the scenes and yet were free to speak their thoughts, are unique.

Written with the satirist's eye upon the object of his sarcasm, tinged with the license of his vagabondage, throbbing with the pa.s.sionate and nonchalant afflatus of the wine-cup, they wing their flight like poisoned arrows or plumed serpents with unerring straightness at abuses in high places.

The wide s.p.a.ce occupied by Nature in the secular poems of the Goliardi is remarkable. As a background to their love-songs we always find the woods and fields of May, abundant flowers and gushing rivulets, lime-trees and pines and olive-trees, through which soft winds are blowing. There are rose-bowers and nightingales; fauns, nymphs, and satyrs dancing on the sward. Choirs of mortal maidens emerge in the midst of this Claude-landscape. The scene, meanwhile, has been painted from experience, and felt with the enthusiasm of affection. It breathes of healthy open air, of life upon the road, of casual joys and wayside pleasure, s.n.a.t.c.hed with careless heart by men whose tastes are natural. There is very little of the alcove or the closet in this verse; and the touch upon the world is so infantine, so tender, that we are indulgent to the generalities with which the poets deal.

What has been said about popular poetry applies also to popular painting. In the landscapes of Goliardic literature there is nothing specific to a single locality--no name like Vaucluse, no pregnant touch that indicates one scene selected from a thousand. The landscape is always a background, more northern or more southern as the case may be, but penetrated with the feeling of the man who has been happy or has suffered there. This feeling, broadly, sensuously diffused, as in a masterpiece of t.i.tian, prepares us for the human element to be exhibited.

The foreground of these pictures is occupied by a pair of lovers meeting after the long winter's separation, a dance upon the village green, a young man gazing on the mistress he adores, a disconsolate exile from his home, the courtship of a student and a rustic beauty, or perhaps the grieved and melancholy figure of one whose sweetheart has proved faithless. Such actors in the comedy of life are defined with fervent intensity of touch against the leafy vistas of the scene. The lyrical cry emerges clear and sharp in all that concerns their humanity.

The quality of love expressed is far from being either platonic or chivalrous. It is love of the sensuous, impulsive, appet.i.tive kind, to which we give the name of Pagan. The finest outbursts of pa.s.sion are emanations from a potent s.e.xual desire. Meanwhile, nothing indicates the character or moral quality of either man or woman. The student and the girl are always _vis-a-vis_, fixed characters in this lyrical love-drama. He calls her Phyllis, Flora, Lydia, Glycerion, Caecilia.

He remains unnamed, his physical emotion sufficing for personal description. The divinity presiding over them is Venus. Jove and Danae, Cupid and the Graces, Paris and Helen, follow in her train. All the current cla.s.sical mythology is laid under cheap contribution. Yet the central emotion, the young man's heart's desire, is so vividly portrayed, that we seem to be overhearing the triumphant ebullition or the melancholy love-lament of a real soul.

X.

The sentiment of love is so important in the songs of the Wandering Students, that it may not be superfluous at this point to cull a few emphatic phrases which ill.u.s.trate the core of their emotion, and to present these in the original Latin.

I may first observe to what a large extent the ideas of spring and of female society were connected at that epoch. Winter was a dreary period, during which a man bore his fate and suffered. He emerged from it into sunshine, brightened by the intercourse with women, which was then made possible. This is how the winter is described:[15]--

"In omni loco congruo Sermonis oblectatio c.u.m s.e.xu femineo Evanuit omni modo."

Of the true love-songs, only one refers expressly to the winter season. That, however, is the lyric upon Flora, which contains a detailed study of plastic form in the bold spirit of the Goliardic style.[16]

The particularity with which the personal charms of women are described deserves attention. The portrait of Flora, to which I have just alluded, might be cited as one of the best specimens. But the slightest shades are discriminated, as in this touch:[17]--

"Labellulis Castigate tumentibus."

One girl has long tawny tresses: _Caesaries subrubea_. Another is praised for the ma.s.ses of her dark hair: _Frons nimirum coronata, supercilium nigrata_. Roses and lilies vie, of course, upon the cheeks of all; and sometimes their sweetness surpa.s.ses the lily of the valley. From time to time a touch of truer poetry occurs; as, for instance[18]--

"O decora super ora Belli Absalonis!"

Or take again the outburst of pa.s.sion in this stanza, where both the rhythm and the ponderous Latin words, together with the abrupt transition from the third to the fourth line, express a fine exaltation:[19]--

"Frons et gula, labra, mentum Dant amoris alimentum; Crines ejus adamavi, Quoniam fuere flavi."

The same kind of enthusiasm is more elaborately worked out in the following comparisons:[20]--

"Matutini sideris Jubar praeis, Et lilium Rosaque periere: Micat ebur dentium Per labium, Ut Sirium Credat quis enitere."

As might be expected, such lovers were not satisfied with contemplative pleasures:[21]--

"Visu, colloquio, Contactu, basio, Frui virgo dederat; Sed aberat Linea posterior Et melior amori, Quam nisi transiero, De cetero Sunt quae dantur alia Materia furori."

The conclusion of this song, which, taken in its integrity, deserves to be regarded as typical of what is pagan in this erotic literature, may be studied in the Appendix to _Carmina Burana_.

Occasionally the lover's desire touches a higher point of spirituality:[22]--

"Non tactu sanabor labiorum, Nisi cor unum fiat duorum Et idem velle. Vale, flos florum!"