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: