Part 19

And by making song in _rimas escarsas_ he let into Provençal poetry many words that are not found elsewhere and maybe some words half Latin, and he uses many more sounds on the rhyme, for, as Canello or Lavaud has written, he uses ninety-eight rhyme sounds in seventeen canzos, and Peire Vidal makes use of but fifty-eight in fifty-four canzos and Folquet of thirty-three in twenty-two poems, and Raimbaut Orenga uses 129 rhymes in thirty-four poems, a lower proportion than Arnaut's. And the songs of En Arnaut are in some versets wholly free and uneven the whole length of the verset, then the other five versets follow in the track of the first, for the same tune must be sung in them all, or sung with very slight or orderly changes. But after the earlier poems he does not rhyme often inside the stanza. And in all he is very cunning, and has many uneven and beautiful rhythms, so that if a man try to read him like English iambic he will very often go wrong; though En Arnaut made the first piece of "Blank Verse" in the seven opening lines of the "Sols sui"; and he, maybe, in thinning out the rhymes and having but six repetitions to a canzone, made way for Dante who sang his long poem in threes. But this much is certain, he does not use the rhyme _-atage_ and many other common rhymes of the Provençal, whereby so many canzos are all made alike and monotonous on one sound or two sounds to the end from the beginning.

Nor is there much gap from "Lancan vei fueill'" or "D'autra guiza" to the form of the sonnet, or to the receipt for the Italian strophes of canzoni, for we have both the repetition and the unrepeating sound in the verset. And in two versets the rhymes run _abab cde abab cde_; in one, and in the other _abba cde abba cde_; while in sonnets the rhymes run _abab abab cde cde_; or _abba abba cde cde_. And this is no very great difference. A sonetto would be the third of a _son_.

And I do not give "Ac et no l'ac," for it is plainly told us that he learnt this song from a jongleur, and he says as much in his coda:

Miells-de-ben ren Sit pren Chanssos grazida C'Arnautz non oblida.

"Give thanks my song, to Miells-de-ben that Arnaut has not forgotten thee." And the matter went as a joke, and the song was given to Arnaut to sing in his repertoire "E fo donatz lo cantar an Ar Daniel, qui et aysi trobaretz en sa obra." And I do not give the tenzon with Trues Malecs for reasons clear to all who have read it; nor do I translate the sestina, for it is a poor one, but maybe it is interesting to think if the music will not go through its permutation as the end words change their places in order, though the first line has only eight syllables.

And En Arnaut was the best artist among the Provençals, trying the speech in new fashions, and bringing new words into writing, and making new blendings of words, so that he taught much to Messire Dante Alighieri as you will see if you study En Arnaut and the "De Vulgari Eloquio"; and when Dante was older and had well thought the thing over he said simply, "il miglior fabbro." And long before Francesco Petrarca, he, Arnaut, had thought of the catch about _Laura_, laura, l'aura, and the rest of it, which is no great thing to his credit. But no man in Provençal has written as he writes in "Doutz brais": "E quel remir" and the rest of it, though Ovid, where he recounts Atalanta's flight from Hippomenes in the tenth book, had written:

"cum super atria velum "Candida purpureum simulatas inficit umbras."

And in Dante we have much in the style of:

"Que jes Rozers per aiga que l'engrois."

And Dante learned much from his rhyming, and follows him in _agro_ and _Meleagro_, but more in a comprehension, and Dante has learned also of Ovid: "in Metamorphoseos":

"Velut ales, ab alto "Quae teneram prolem produxit in æra nido,"

although he talks so much of Virgil.

I had thought once of the mantle of indigo as of a thing seen in a vision, but I have now only fancy to support this. It is like that men slandered Arnaut for Dante's putting him in his Purgatorio, but the Trucs Malecs poem is against this.

En Arnaut often ends a canzone with a verset in different tone from the rest, as markedly in "Si fos Amors." In "Breu brisaral" the music is very curious, but is lost for us, for there are only two pieces of his music, and those in Milan, at the Ambrosiana (in R 71 superiore).

And at the end of "Doutz brais," is a verset like the verset of a sirvente, and this is what he wrote as a message, not making a whole sirvente, nor, so far as we know, dabbling in politics or writing of it, as Bertrans de Born has; only in this one place is all that is left us. And he was a joglar, perhaps for his living, and only composed when he would, and could not to order, as is shown in the story of his remembering the joglar's canzone when he had laid a wager to make one of his own.

"Can chai la fueilla" is more like a sea song or an _estampida_, though the editors call it a canzone, and "Amors e jois," and some others were so little thought of, that only two writers have copied them out in the manuscripts; and the songs are all different one from another, and their value nothing like even. Dante took note of the best ones, omitting "Doutz brais," which is for us perhaps the finest of all, though having some lines out of strict pertinence. But "Can chai la fueilla" is very cleverly made with five, six, and four and seven. And in "Sols sui" and in other canzos verse is syllabic, and made on the number of syllables, not by stresses, and the making by syllables cannot be understood by those of Petramala, who imagine the language they speak was that spoken by Adam, and that one system of metric was made in the world's beginning, and has since existed without change. And some think if the stress fall not on every second beat, or the third, that they must have right before Constantine. And the art of En Ar. Daniel is not literature but the art of fitting words well with music, well nigh a lost art, and if one will look to the music of "Chansson doil motz," or to the movement of "Can chai la fueilla," one will see part of that which I mean, and if one will look to the falling of the rhymes in other poems, and the blending and lengthening of the sounds, and their sequence, one will learn more of this. And En Arnaut wrote between 1180 and 1200 of the era, as nearly as we can make out, when the Provençal was growing weary, and it was to be seen if it could last, and he tried to make almost a new language, or at least to enlarge the Langue d'Oc, and make new things possible. And this scarcely happened till Guinicello, and Guido Cavalcanti and Dante; Peire Cardinal went to realism and made satirical poems. But the art of singing to music went well nigh out of the words, for Metastasio has left a few catches, and so has Lorenzo di Medici, but in Bel Canto in the times of Durante, and Piccini, Paradeis, Vivaldi, Caldara and Benedetto Marcello, the music turns the words out of doors and strews; them and distorts them to the tune, out of all recognition and the philosophic canzoni of Dante and his times--men are not understandable if they are sung, and in their time music and poetry parted company; the canzone's tune becoming a sonata without singing. And the ballad is a shorter form, and the Elizabethan lyrics are but scraps and bits of canzoni much as in the "nineties" men wrote scraps of Swinburne.

Charles d'Orléans 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 à toute heure. Reviens, ami; trop longue est ta demeure.

Car il n'est nul, fors toi, qui me sequerre, Ne secourra, jusques à 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 cœur 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 passages. 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 Provençals was there any one, nor had Dante thought out an æsthetic 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 Provençal 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 shaggy 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 passion. 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 analysis 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 (Petit Dictionaire Provençal-Français, Karl Winter's Universitätsbuchhandlung, 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 René Lavaud for his new Tolosan edition.

II

The twenty-three students of Provençal and the seven people seriously interested in the technic and æsthetic of verse may communicate with me in person. I give here only enough to illustrate 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 substitute for the original; but in extenuation of the language of my verses, I would point out that the Provençals 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 Maupassant'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 cæsuræ:

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 forkèd 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 tithing 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.

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

"Lancan son passat" 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 passat 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 PASSAT 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. Innocents at heart beware ye, When she seems colder than a nun.

See, I thought so highly of her! Trusted, but the game is hollow, Not one won piece soundly clinketh; All the cardinals that Rome hath, Yea, they all were put upon. Her device is "Slyly Wary." Cunning are the snares they carry, Yet while they watched they'd be undone.

Whom Love makes so mad a rover, 'll take a cuckoo for a swallow, If she say so, sooth! he thinketh There's a plain where Puy-de-Dome is. Till his eyes and nails are gone, He'll throw dice and follow fairly --Sure as old tales never vary-- For his fond heart he is foredone.

Well I know, sans writing's cover, What a plain is, what's a hollow. I know well whose honor sinketh, And who 'tis that shame consumeth. They meet. I lose reception. 'Gainst this cheating I'd not parry Nor amid such false speech tarry, But from her lordship will be gone.

_Coda_

Sir Bertran,[2] sure no pleasure's won Like this freedom naught, so merry 'Twixt Nile 'n' where the suns miscarry To where the rain falls from the sun.

The fifth poem in Canello's arrangement, "Lanquan vei fueill' e flor e frug," has strophes in the form:

When I see leaf, and flower and fruit Come forth upon light lynd and bough, And hear the frogs in rillet bruit, And birds quhitter in forest now, Love inkirlie doth leaf and flower and bear, And trick my night from me, and stealing waste it, Whilst other wight in rest and sleep sojourneth.

The sixth is in the following pattern, and the third strophe translates:

Hath a man rights at love? No grain. Yet gowks think they've some legal lien. But she'll blame you with heart serene That, ships for Bari sink, mid-main, Or cause the French don't come from Gascony And for such crimes I am nigh in my shroud, Since, by the Christ, I do such crimes or none.

"Autet e bas" is interesting for the way in which Arnaut breaks the flow of the poem to imitate the bird call in "Cadahus en son us," and the repetitions of this sound in the succeeding strophes, highly treble, presumably, Neis Jhezus, Mas pel us, etc.

Autet e bas entrels prims fuoills Son nou de flors li ram eil renc E noi ten mut bec ni gola Nuills auzels, anz braia e chanta Cadahus En son us; Per joi qu'ai d'els e del temps Chant, mas amors mi asauta Quils motz ab lo son acorda.

AUTET E BAS ENTRELS PRIMS FUOILLS

_"Cadahus En son us."_

Now high and low, where leaves renew, Come buds on bough and spalliard pleach And no beak nor throat is muted; Auzel each in tune contrasted Letteth loose Wriblis[3] spruce. Joy for them and spring would set Song on me, but Love assaileth Me and sets my words t' his dancing.

I thank my God and mine eyes too, Since through them the perceptions reach, Porters of joys that have refuted Every ache and shame I've tasted; They reduce Pains, and noose Me in Amor's corded net. Her beauty in me prevaileth Till bonds seem but joy's advancing.

My thanks, Amor, that I win through; Thy long delays I naught impeach; Though flame's in my marrow rooted I'd not quench it, well't hath lasted, Burns profuse, Held recluse Lest knaves know our hearts are met, Murrain on the mouth that aileth, So he finds her not entrancing.

He doth in Love's book misconstrue, And from that book none can him teach, Who saith ne'er's in speech recruited Aught, whereby the heart is dasted. Words' abuse Doth traduce Worth, but I run no such debt. Right 'tis in man over-raileth He tear tongue on tooth mischancing.[4]

That I love her, is pride, is true, But my fast secret knows no breach. Since Paul's writ was executed Or the forty days first fasted, Not Cristus Could produce Her similar, where one can get Charms total, for no charm faileth Her who's memory's enhancing.

Grace and valor, the keep of you She is, who holds me, each to each, She sole, I sole, so fast suited, Other women's lures are wasted, And no truce But misuse Have I for them, they're not let

To my heart, where she regaleth Me with delights l'm not chancing.

Arnaut loves, and ne'er will fret Love with o'er-speech, his throat quaileth, Braggart voust is naught t' his fancy.

In the next poem we have the chatter of birds in autumn, the onomatopœia obviously depends upon the "_-utz, -etz, -ences_ and _-ortz_" of the rhyme scheme, 17 of the 68 syllables of each strophe therein included. I was able to keep the English in the same sound as the _Cadahus_, but I have not been able to make more than map of the relative positions in this canzos.

L'aura amara Fais bruoilss brancutz Clarzir Quel doutz espeissa ab fuoills, Els letz Becs Dels auzels ramencs Ten balps e mutz, Pars E non-pars; Per qu'eu m'esfortz De far e dir Plazers A mains per liei Que m'a virat bas d'aut, Don tem morir Sils afans no m'asoma.

I

The bitter air Strips panoply From trees Where softer winds set leaves, And glad Beaks Now in brakes are coy, Scarce peep the wee Mates And un-mates. What gaud's the work? What good the glees? What curse I strive to shake! Me hath she cast from high, In fell disease I lie, and deathly fearing.

II