Part 5

From the return and enthronement of Afonso III imitation of French and Provençal poetry was in full swing in Portugal. The long sojourn of the prince in France, accompanied by several noblemen who figure in the _Cancioneiros_ (as Rui Gomez de Briteiros and D. Joan de Aboim), had an important bearing on the development of Portuguese poetry. He came back determined to act the part of an enlightened patron of letters; he encouraged the immigration of men of learning from France and maintained three _jograes_ permanently in his palace.[80] Princes and nobles as _trobadores_ for their own pastime, the _segreis_,[81] knights who went from Court to Court and received payment for the recital of their own verses, the _jograes_, belonging to a lower station, who recited the poems of their patrons the _trobadores_, all vied in imitation of the love songs of Provence. In general, i. e. in the structure of their poems, the resemblance is close and clear enough. The decasyllabic love song in three or four stanzas with an _envoi_, the satirical _sirventes_, the _tenson_ (_jocs-partits_) in which two poets contended in dialogue, the _descort_ in which the discordant sounds expressed the poet’s distress and grief, the _balada_ of Provence, the _ballette_ and _pastourelle_ of North France, were all faithfully reproduced.

If, on the other hand, we look for imitations in detail it is perhaps natural that we should find them less frequently.[82] The conventional character of the Portuguese poems would sufficiently account for this, and moreover their models were probably more often heard than read, so that reproduction of the actual thought or words would be difficult. When Airas Nunez in a poem of striking beauty, which is almost a sonnet (C. V. 456), wrote the lines:

Que muito m’eu pago d’este verão Por estes ramos et por estas flores Et polas aves que cantan d’amores,

he need not have read Peire de Bussinac’s lines:

Quan lo dous temps d’Abril Fa ’ls arbres secs fulhar E ’ls auzels mutz cantar Quascun en son lati,

in order to know that birds sing and trees grow green in spring. And generally it is not easy to say whether an apparent echo is a direct imitation or merely a stereotyped phrase. The Portuguese _trobadores_ introduced little of the true spirit of the Provençal _troubadours_--that had passed to Palestine and to the Lady of Tripoli. In their _cantigas de amor_ is no sign of action--unless it be to die of love; no thought of Nature. Jaufre Rudel (1140-70), that prince of lovers, had ‘gone to school to the meadows’ and might sing in his _maint bons vers_ of _la flor aiglentina_ or of _flors d’albespis_, but in the Portuguese _cantigas_ nothing relieves the conventional dullness and excessive monotony (which likewise marked the Provençal school of poets in Sicily). Composed for the most part in iambic decasyllables they describe continually the poet’s _coita d’amor, grave d’endurar_, his grief at parting, his loss of sleep, his pleasure in dying for his _fremosa sennor_. She is described merely as beautiful, or, at most, as

Tan mansa e tan fremosa e de bon sen (C. C. B. 206). Fremosa e mansa e d’outro ben comprida (C. C. B. 278).

Vocabulary and thought are spectre-thin. Indeed, it was part of the convention to sing vaguely. _Eu ben falarei de sa fremosura_, says one poet[83] (C. C. B. 337)--he will sing of her beauty, but not in such a way that the curious who _non o poden adevinhar_ should guess his secret. As to allusions to Nature, perhaps the climate, with less marked divisions than in Provence, furnished less incentive to sing of spring and the earth’s renewal or to imitate Guiraut de Bornelh in going to school all the winter (_l’ivern estava a escola a aprender_) and singing only with the return of spring. King Dinis, perhaps in reference to that troubadour, declares that his love is independent of the seasons and more sincere than that of the singers of Provence:

Proençaes soen mui ben trobar E dizen eles que é con amor, Mais os que troban no tempo da frol E non en outro sei eu ben que non An tan gran coita ... (C. V. 127)

and even as he wrote the words he was unconsciously imitating the thought of the Provençal poet Gace Brulé, who had spoken of _les faus amoureus d’esté_. The exceeding similarity of the _cantigas de amor_ did raise doubts as to the sincerity of all this dying of love (cf. C. V. 353 and C. V. 988) and as to whether a poem was a _cantar novo_ or an article at second hand (C. V. 819). Yet the poets evidently had talent and poetic feeling; indeed, their skill in versification contrasts remarkably with their entire absence of thought or individuality. They appear to revel in monotony of ideas and pride themselves on the icy smoothness of their verse. All their originality consisted in the introduction of technical devices, such as the repetition at intervals of certain words (_dobre_), or of different tenses of the same verb (_mordobre_, as C. V. 681), to carry on the poem without stop from beginning to end by means of ‘for’, ‘but’, &c., at the beginning of each verse (_cantigas de atafiinda_,[84] as C. V. 130, C. A. 205), to begin and end each verse with the same line (_canção redonda_, as C. V. 685), to repeat the last line of one verse as the first line of the next (_leixapren_), to use the same word at the end of each line (as _vi_ in C. A. 7). The poet who addressed _cantigas de amor_ to his lady also provided her with poems for her to sing, _cantigas de amigo_ in complicated form, or as the simpler _cossante_, which the _cantigas de amigo_ include. These are poems with more life and action, often in dialogue. Perhaps the _dona_ herself, wearied by the monotonous _cantigas de amor_, had pointed to the songs of the peasant women, and the form of these _cantigas de amigo_ was a compromise between the Provençal _cantiga de meestria_ and the popular _cantiga de refran_. The peasant woman composed her own songs, and the poet places his song on the lips of his love: thus we find her describing herself as beautiful, _eu velida_; _eu fremosa_; _trist’ e fremosa_; _fremosa e de mui bon prez_; _o meu bon semelhar_. Poetical shepherdesses sing these _cantigas de amigo_; the fair _dona_ sings them as she sits spinning (C. V. 321). The old _Poetica_ (II. 2-12) distinguishes between the _cantigas de amor_, in which the _amigo_ speaks first, and the _cantigas de amigo_, in which the first to speak is the _amiga_. Both were artificial forms, but the latter are clearly more popular in theme (the _amiga_ waiting and wailing for her lover), and in treatment sometimes convey a real intensity of feeling.[85] The favourite subject of the _cantiga de amigo_ is that the cruel mother prevents the lovers from meeting. The daughter is kept in the house: _a manda muito guardar_ (C. V. 535). She reproaches and entreats her mother, who answers her as choir to choir; she bewails her lot to her friends, or to her sister. She is dying of love and begs her mother to tell her lover. Her mother and lover are reconciled. Her lover is false and fails to meet her at the trysted hour. She waits for him in vain, and her mother comforts her in her distress. She pines and dies of love while her _amigo_ is away serving the king in battle or _en cas’ del rei_.

The third section of the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_ does not sin by monotony. We may divide Pope’s line, since if the _cantigas de amor_ are ‘correctly cold’ many of the satiric poems are ‘regularly low’. In these verses, containing violent invective and abuse (_cantigas de maldizer_) or more covert sarcasm and ridicule (_cantigas d’escarnho_), the themes are often scandalous, the language ribald and unseemly. They were written with great zest, although without the fiery indignation of the Provençal and Catalan _sirventeses_. They are concerned with persons: the haughty _trobador_ may take a _jogral_ to task for writing verses that do not rhyme or scan, but even then it is a personal matter and he rebukes his insolence for daring to raise his thoughts to _altas donas_ in song. Some of these poems should never have been written or printed, but many of them give a lively idea of the society of that time. They laugh merrily or venomously at the poverty-stricken knight with nothing to eat; at the knight who set his dogs on those who called near dinner-time; the _jogral_ who knows as much of poetry as an ass of reading; the poet who pretended to have gone as a pilgrim to the Holy Land but never went beyond Montpellier; the physician (Mestre Nicolas) whose books were more for show than for use (_E sab’ os cadernos ben cantar quen[86] non sabe por elles leer_, C. V. 1116); the Galician unjustifiably proud of his poetical talent (_non o sabia ben_, C. V. 914); the _jogral_ who gave up poetry--shaved off his beard and cut his hair short about his ears--in order to take holy orders, in hope of a fat living, but was disappointed; the _jogral_ who played badly and sang worse; the poet who was the cause of good poetry in others; the gentleman who spent most of his income on clothes and wore gilt shoes winter and summer. We read of the excellent capon, kid, and pork provided by the king for dinner; of the fair _malmaridada_, married or rather sold by her parents; of the impoverished lady, one of those for whom later Nun’ Alvarez provided; of the poet pining in exile not of love but hunger; of the lame lawyer, the unjust judge; the _parvenu villão_, the knighted tailor, the seers and diviners (_veedeiros_, _agoreiros_, _divinhos_). These _cantigas d’escarnho e de maldizer_ were a powerful instrument of satire from which there was no escape. A hapless _infançon_, slovenly in his ways, drew down upon himself the wit of D. Lopo Diaz, who in a series of eleven songs (C. V. 945-55) ridiculed him and his creaking saddle till at Christmas he was fain to call a truce. But the implacable D. Lopo forthwith indited a new song: ‘I won’t deny that I agreed to a truce about the saddle, but--it didn’t include the mare’,[87] and so no doubt continued till _pascoa florida_ or _la trinité_. But the majority of these verses are not so innocently merry. Many of the poets of the _Cancioneiros_ wrote in all three kinds: _cantigas de amor_, _de amigo_, and _de maldizer_. Of JOAN DE GUILHADE[88] (fl. 1250) we have over fifty poems.[89] He imitated both French and Provençal models, and, having learnt lightness of touch from them, would appear to have contented himself with writing _cantigas de amigo_ (besides _cantigas de amor_ and _escarnho_) without having recourse to the _cossante_. There is life and poetical feeling as well as facility of technique in his poems.

PERO GARCIA DE BURGOS (fl. 1250) is, with Joan de Guilhade, one of the more voluminous writers of the _Cancioneiros_. He shows himself capable of deep feeling in his love songs, but speaks with two voices, descending to sad depths in his poems of invective. His contemporary, the _segrel_ PERO DA PONTE, is also an accomplished poet of love, in the even flow of his verse far more accomplished than Pero Garcia, and in his satirical poems wittier and, as a rule, more moderate. He placed his poetical gift at the service of kings to sing their praises for hire, and celebrated San Fernando’s conquest of Seville in 1248; Seville, of which, he says, ‘none can adequately tell the praises’. To satire almost exclusively the powerful courtier of King Dinis’ reign, STEVAM GUARDA, devoted his not inconsiderable talent, and the _segrel_ PEDR’ AMIGO DE SEVILHA (fl. 1250) shone in the same kind with a great variety of metre as well as in numerous _cantigas de amigo_. MARTIN SOAREZ (first half 13th c.), born at Riba de Lima, and considered the best _trobador_ of his time (by those who could not appreciate the charm of the indigenous poetry), wrote no _cossante_ nor _cantiga de amigo_, and in his satirical poems displayed a contemptuous insolence--towards those whom he regarded as his inferiors in lineage or talent--which places him in no attractive light. A notable poet at the Courts of Spain and Portugal was JOAN AIRAS of Santiago de Compostela (fl. 1250), of whom we have over twenty _cantigas de amor_ and fifty _cantigas de amigo_. Contemporary criticism apparently viewed their quantity with disfavour,[90] for he complains that _Dizen que meus cantares non valen ren porque tan muitos son_ (C. V. 533). But if his poems lack the variety of those of King Dinis, which they almost rival in number, they are nevertheless marked not only by harmony but by many a touch of real life. Of most of the other singers we have far fewer poems. Like Meendinho and Estevam Coelho, PERO VYVYÃES (first half 13th c.) is known chiefly for a single song: his _bailada_ (C. V. 336). By D. JOAN SOAREZ COELHO (_c._ 1210-80) there are two _cossantes_ (C. V. 291, 292) and numerous other poems. He was prominent at the Court of Afonso III (1248-79) and in the conquest of Algarve, as was also D. JOAN DE ABOIM (_c._ 1215-87), whose poems are less numerous but include a dozen _cantigas de amigo_ and a _pastorela_ (C. V. 278: _Cavalgava noutro dia per hun caminho frances_), and FERNAN GARCIA ESGARAVUNHA,[91] whose _cantigas de amor_ show characteristic life and vigour, and a good command of metre. There is an engaging grace and spirit in the _cantigas de amigo_ written in dancing rhythm by FERNAN RODRIGUEZ DE CALHEIROS (fl. in or before 1250), who preceded those soldier poets; deep feeling and melancholy in the _cantigas de amor_ of D. JOAN LOPEZ DE ULHOA, their contemporary. Neither of these, however, possessed the poetical genius and versatility of the priest of Santiago, AIRAS NUNEZ (second half 13th c.)--the name appears in a marginal note to one of King Alfonso’s _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (C. M. 223 in the manuscript j. b. 2)--whose poems show a perfect mastery of rhythm and a true instinct for beauty. He wrote a _pastorela_ in the manner of the _trouvères_, and combined it with some of the most exquisite specimens of the indigenous poetry.[92] The fact that one of these was by Joan Zorro makes it probable that Nunez’ celebrated _bailada_ (C. V. 462) is but a development of Zorro’s (C. V. 761), unless both drew from a common popular source. Another of his poems (C. V. 468) reads like an anticipatory slice out of Juan Ruiz’ _Libro de Buen Amor_. Great importance has been attached to another (C. V. 466) as a remnant of a _cantar de gesta_, but D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos has shown that it was written to commemorate a contemporary event, probably in 1289.[93] More than any other poet of the _Cancioneiros_, with the exception, perhaps, of King Dinis, Nunez anticipated that _doce estylo_, the introduction of which cost Sá de Miranda so many perplexities.

The _Cancioneiros_ contain poems by high and low, prince and, one would fain say, peasant, noble _trobador_ and humble _jogral_, soldiers and civilians, priests and laymen, singers of Galicia, Portugal, and Spain, but more especially of Galicia and North Portugal. As in the case of C. V. 466, the interest of many of the poems is historical: C. V. 1088, for instance, written by a partisan of the dethroned King Sancho II; or C. V. 1080, a _gesta de maldizer_ of fifty-six lines in three rhymes, with the exclamation _Eoy!_ at the change of the rhyme, which was written by D. AFONSO LOPEZ DE BAYAN (_c._ 1220-80), clearly in imitation of the _Chanson de Roland_.[94] Almost equally prominent, though not from any historical associations, is the curiously modern C. A. 429 (= C. C. B. 314) among the _cantigas de amor_. It tells of a girl forced against her will to enter a convent, and who says to her lover: ‘My dress may be religious, but God shall not have my heart.’ (For the metre, cf. C. V. 342.) Its author was the _fidalgo_ D. RODRIG’ EANEZ DE VASCONCELLOS, one of the pre-Dionysian poets. But indeed no further proofs are needed to show that, even had King Dinis never existed, the contents of the early Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ would have been remarkable for their variety and beauty. When Alfonso X died his grandson DINIS (1261-1325)[95] had sat for five years on the throne of Portugal. Plentifully educated by a Frenchman, Ayméric d’Ébrard, afterwards Bishop of Coimbra, married to a foreign princess, Isabel of Aragon (the Queen-Saint of Portugal), profoundly impressed, no doubt, by the world-fame of Alfonso X, to whom he was sent on a diplomatic mission when not yet in his teens, he became nevertheless one of the most national of kings. If he imitated Alfonso X in his love of literature, he showed himself a far abler and firmer sovereign, being more like a rock than like the sea, to which the poet compared Alfonso. Far-sighted in the conception of his plans and vigorous in their execution, the _Rei Lavrador_, whom Dante mentions, though not by name: _quel di Portogallo_ (_Paradiso_ xix), fostered agriculture, increased his navy, planted pine-forests, fortified his towns, built castles and convents and churches, and legislated for the safety of the roads and for the general welfare and security of his people. Among his great and abiding services to his country was the foundation of the first Portuguese University in the year 1290, and in the same spirit he ordered the translation of many notable books from the Spanish, Latin, and Arabic into Portuguese prose, including the celebrated works of the Learned King, so that it is truer of prose than of poetry to say that he inaugurated a golden age.[96] Had he written no line of verse his name must have been for ever honoured in Portugal as the real founder of that imperishable glory which was fulfilled two centuries later. But he also excelled as a poet, _d’amor trobador_. It had no doubt been part of his education to write conventionally in the Provençal manner, but his skill in versification, remarkable even in an age in which Portuguese poetry had attained exceptional proficiency in technique, would have availed him, or at least us, little had he not also possessed an instinct for popular themes, perhaps directly encouraged by Alfonso X. The _Declaratio_ placed by Guiraut Riquier of Narbonne on the lips of that king in 1275 marked the coming asphyxia of Provençal poetry, for it showed the tendency to take the _jogral_[97] away from tavern and open air and to cut off his poetry from the life of the people. It was owing to the personal encouragement of Dinis that the waning star of both Provençal and indigenous poetry continued to shine in Portugal for another half-century. The grandson of Alfonso X was the last hope of the _trobadores_ and _jograes_ of the Peninsula. From Leon and Castille and Aragon they came to reap an aftermath of song and _panos_ at his Court, and after his death remained silent or unpaid (C. V. 708). The poems of King Dinis are not only more numerous but far more various than those of any other _trobador_, with the exception of Alfonso X, and it may perhaps be doubted whether they are all the work of his own hand. In poetry’s old age he might well wish to collect specimens of various kinds for his _Livro de Trovas_. But many of the 138 poems[98] that we possess under his name are undoubtedly his, and display a characteristic force and sincerity as well as true poetic delicacy and power. Among them are some colourless _cantigas de amor_ and others more individual in tone, _pastorelas_ (C. V. 102, 137, 150), _cantigas de amigo_ (more Provençal than Portuguese in their spirit of vigorous reproach are C. V. 186: _Amigo fals’ e desleal_, and C. V, 198: _Ai fals’ amigo e sen lealdade_), a jingle worthy of the _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (C. V. 136), a poem in 8.8.4.8 metre (C. V. 131), _atafiindas_ (e. g. C. V. 130), a _mordobre_ in _querer_ (C. V. 113, _Quix ben, amigos, e quer’ e querrei Ũa molher que me quis e quer mal E querrá_), and _cossantes_ of an unmistakably popular flavour: _Ay flores, ay flores do verde pino_ (C. V. 171), two _albas_ (C. V. 170, 172), C. V. 168, 169, with their refrains _louçana_ and _ai madre, moiro d’amor_, C. V. 173 with its quaint charm: _Vede-la frol do pinho--Valha Deus_, and the _bailada-cossante_ (C. V. 195: _Mia madre velida, Voum’ a la bailia Do amor_). If the king wrote these _cossantes_ he must be reckoned not only as a musical and skilful versifier but as a great poet. And certainly, at least, his _graciosas e dulces palavras_ well earned him the reputation of being not only the best king but the best poet of his time in the Peninsula.

It would seem that, unlike his grandfather, who had begun with profane and ended with religious verse, King Dinis, no doubt at his grandfather’s bidding, who would be delighted to find a disciple (_Dized’, ai trobadores, A Sennor das Sennores Por que a non loades?_), began writing songs in honour of the Virgin and sent them to the Castilian king. His book of _Louvores da Virgem Nossa Senhora_ is said to have been seen in the Escorial Library and in the Lisbon Torre do Tombo, and it is impossible altogether to set aside the statements of Duarte Nunez de Leam[99] and Antonio de Sousa de Macedo, who says that he read religious poems by King Dinis at the Escorial.[100] On the other hand, it must be remembered that it was the common opinion that King Dinis had been the first to write Portuguese poetry, and the temptation to attribute ancient poems to him would be strong. The possibility of confusion with the _Livro de Cantigas_ of Alfonso X (to which his grandson may well have contributed poems)[101] is also obvious. But the statement of Sousa de Macedo, who was no passing traveller in a hurry, and who had wide experience of books and libraries,[102] is very precise. No trace or

memory of the existence of this manuscript exists, however, at the Escorial Library, nor is to be found in the _Catálogo de los Manuscritos existentes antes del incendio de 1671_. The subjects of King Dinis’ ten[103] satirical poems are trivial, but he had too much force of character to descend to such vilenesses as were common among _profaçadores_. (His concise definition of a bore: _falou muit’ e mal_ (C. C. B. 411) is worthy of Afonso de Albuquerque.) Of his illegitimate sons, besides D. Afonso Sanchez, D. Pedro, Conde de Barcellos, long had a reputation as a poet almost equal to that of his father, owing to the association of his name with the _Cancioneiro_; but of his ten poems six (C. V. 1037-42) are satirical, and the four _cantigas de amor_ (C. V. 210-13) are perhaps the heaviest and most prosaic in the collection. It was as a prose-writer and editor of the _Livro de Linhagens_ that he worthily carried on the literary tradition of King Dinis.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] Antonio de Vasconcellos, _Anacephalaeoses, id est Svmma Capita Actorum Regum Lusitaniae_ (Antverpiae, 1621), p. 79.

[69] See also C. V. B., pp. xcv-vi.

[70] An English Crusader writing from Lisbon speaks of _inter hos tot linguarum populos_ (_Crucesignati Anglici Epistola de Expugnatione Olisiponis_, A.D. 1147).

[71] _Colección de Poesías Castellanas_ (1779), vol. i, p. lvii. The important passages of Santillana’s letter have been so often quoted that the reader may be referred to them, e.g. in the _Grundriss_, p. 168.

[72] Milá y Fontanals (_De los Trobadores_, p. 522) lays much stress on the resemblance between Galician and Provençal.

[73] It must be remembered that in the early thirteenth century (1213) the range of the Galician-Portuguese lyric already extended to Navarre (C. V. 937).

[74] Guiraut Riquier and Nat de Mons placed Provençal poems on his lips, which may be taken as an indication that he also wrote in Provençal. As proof that he wrote poems in Castilian we have a single _cantiga_ of eight lines (C. C. B. 363: _Señora por amor dios_). The other poem of the _Cancioneiros_ in Castilian (with traces of Galician) is by the victor of Salado, Alfonso XI (1312-50), King of Castille and Leon: _En un tiempo cogi flores_ (C. V. 209).