Their charm.
Yet their interest is not the less; it is perhaps even the more. It is nearly twenty years since I began to read them, and during that period I have also been reading masses of other literature from other times, nations, and languages; yet I cannot at this moment take up one without being carried away by the stately language, as precise and well proportioned as modern French, yet with much of the grandeur which modern French lacks, the statelier metre, the noble phrase, the noble incident and passion. Take, for instance, one of the crowning moments, for there are several, of the death-scene of Roland, that where the hero discovers the dead archbishop, with his hands—"the white, the beautiful"—crossed on his breast:—
"Li quenz Rollanz revient de pasmeisuns,
Sur piez se drecet, mais il ad grant dulur;
Guardet aval e si guardet amunt;
Sur l'erbe verte, ultre ses cumpaignuns,
La veit gesir le nobile barun:
C'est l'arcevesque que deus mist en sun num,
Claimet sa culpe, si regardet amunt,
Cuntre le ciel ainsdoux ses mains ad juinz,
Si priet deu que pareis li duinst.
Morz est Turpin le guerrier Charlun.
Par granz batailles e par mult bels sermuns
Contre paiens fut tuz tens campiuns.
Deus li otreit seinte beneïçun.
Aoi!"[28]
Then turn to, perhaps, the very last poem which can be called a chanson de geste proper in style, Le Bastart de Bouillon, and open on these lines:—
"Pardevant la chité qui Miekes[29] fut clamée
Fu grande la bataille, et fière la mellée,
Enchois car on eust nulle tente levée,
Commencha li debas à chelle matinée.
Li cinc frere paien i mainent grant huée,
Il keurent par accort, chascuns tenoit l'espée,
Et une forte targe à son col acolée.
Esclamars va ferir sans nulle demorée,
Un gentil crestien de France l'onnerée—
Armeïre n'i vault une pomme pelée;
Sus le senestre espaulle fu la chars atamée,
Le branc li embati par dedans la corée,[30]
Mort l'abat du cheval; son ame soit sauvée!"[31]
This is in no way a specially fine passage, it is the very "padding" of the average chanson, but what padding it is! Compare the mere sound, the clash and clang of the verse, with the ordinary English romance in Sir Thopas metre, or even with the Italian poets. How alert, how succinct, how finished it is beside the slip-shodness of the first, in too many instances;[32] how manly, how intense, beside the mere sweetness of the second! The very ring of the lines brings mail-shirt and flat-topped helmet before us.
Peculiarity of the geste system.
But in order to the proper comprehension of this section of literature, it is necessary that something more should be said as well of the matter at large as of the construction and contents of separate poems; and, most of all, of the singular process of adjustment of these separate poems by which the geste proper (that is to say, the subdivision of the whole which deals more or less distinctly with a single subject) is constituted. Here again we find a "difference" of the poems in the strict logical sense. The total mass of the Arthurian story may be, though more probably it is not, as large as that of the Charlemagne romances, and it may well seem to some of superior literary interest. But from its very nature, perhaps from the very nature of its excellence, it lacks this special feature of the chansons de geste. Arthur may or may not be a greater figure in himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story—the connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the Grail—complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, episodes of Balin or of Beaumains, incidents of the fate of the damsel of Astolat or the resipiscence of Geraint. But the central interest was too artistically complete to allow any of these to occupy very much independent space.
Instances.