Chrétien’s Conte de la charrette is a clear rendering of the idea that love shall be absolute, and hesitate at nothing; it is an example of courtly love carried to its furthest imagined conclusions. It displays all the rules of Andrew the Chaplain in operation. In it Lancelot will do anything for Guinevere, will show himself a coward knight at her command, or perform feats of arms; he will desire the least little bit of her—a tress of hair—more than all else which is not she; he will throw himself from the window to be near her; engaged in deadly combat, the sight of her makes him forget his enemy; at the news of her death he seeks at once to die. Of course his heart loathes the thought of infringing this great love by the slightest fancy for another woman. On the other hand, when by marvels of valour Lancelot rescues Guinevere from captivity, she will not speak to him because for a single instant he had hesitated to mount a charrette, in which no knight was carried save one who was felon and condemned to death. This was logical on Guinevere’s part; Lancelot’s love should always have been so absolute as never for one instant to hesitate. Much of this is extreme, and yet hardly unreal. Heloïse’s love for Abaelard never hesitated.
Such love, imperious and absolute, shuts out all laws and exigencies save its own;[719] it must be virtue and honour unto itself; it is careless of what ill it may do so long as that ill does not infringe love’s laws. Evidently before it the bonds of marriage break, or pale to insignificance. It is its own sanction, nor needs the faint blessing of the priest. The poet—as the actual lover likewise—may even deem that love can best show itself to be the principle of its own honour when unsustained by wedlock; thus unsustained and unobscured it stands alone, fairer, clearer, more interesting and romantic. Again, since mediaeval marriage in high life was more often a joining of fiefs than a union of hearts, there would be high-born dames and courtly poets to declare that love could only exist between knight and mistress, and not between husband and wife. Marriage shuts out love’s doubts and fears; there is no need of further knightly services; and husband and wife by law are bound to render to each other what between lovers is gracious favour; this was the opinion of Marie de Champagne, it also was the opinion of Heloïse. In chivalric poetry the lovers, when at last duly married, may continue to call each other ami et amie rather than wife and lord;[720] or a knight may shun marriage lest he settle down and lose worship, doing no more adventurous feats of arms, like Chrétien’s Erec, till his wife Enide stung him by her speech.[721] Some centuries later Malory has Lancelot utter a like sentiment: “But to be a wedded man I think never to be, for if I were, then should I be bound to tarry with my wife, and leave arms and tournaments, battles and adventures.”
If allowance be made for the difference in topic and treatment between the Arthurian romances and Guillaume de Lorris’s portion of the Roman de la rose, the latter will be seen to illustrate similar love principles. De Lorris’s poem is fancy playing with thoughts of love which had inspired these tales of chivalry. Every one knows its gentle idyllic character;—how charming, for instance, is the conflict between the Lover-to-be and Love, who quickly overcomes the ready yielder. So he surrenders unconditionally, gives himself over; Love may slay him or gladden him—“le cuers est vostre, non pas miens,” says the lover to Love, and you shall do with it as you will. Then Love sweetly takes his little golden key, and locks the lover’s heart, after which he safely may impart his rules and counsels: the lover must abjure vilanie, and foul and slanderous speech—the opposite of courtesy. Pride also (orgoil) must be abandoned. He should attire himself seemingly, and show cheerfulness; he must be niggardly in nothing; his heart must be given utterly to one; he shall undergo toils and endure griefs without complaint; in absence he will always think of the beloved, sighing for her, keeping his love aflame; he will be shameful, confused and changing colour in her presence; at night he will toss and weep for love of her, and dream dreams of passionate delight; then wakeful, he will rise and wander near her dwelling, but will not be seen—nor will he forget to be generous to her waiting-maid. All of this will make the lover pale and lean. To aid him to endure these agonies, will come Hope with her gentle healings, and Fond-thought, and Sweet-speech of the beloved with a wise confidant, and Sweet-sight of her dwelling, maybe of herself. The Roman de la rose is fancy, and the Arthurian romances are fiction. In the one or the other, imagination may take the place of passion, and the contents of the poem or romance afford a type and presentation of the theory of love.
CHAPTER XXIV
PARZIVAL, THE BRAVE MAN SLOWLY WISE
The instances of romantic chivalry and courtly love reviewed in the last chapter exemplify ideals of conduct in some respects opposed to Christian ethics. But there is still a famous poem of chivalry in which the romantic ideal has gained in ethical consideration and achieved a hard-won agreement with the teachings of mediaeval Christianity, and yet has not become monkish or lost its knightly character. This poem told of a struggle toward wisdom and toward peace; and the victory when won rested upon the broadest mediaeval thoughts of life, and therefore necessarily included the soul’s reconcilement to the saving ways of God. Yet it was knighthood’s battle, won on earth by strength of arm, by steadfast courage, and by loyalty to whatsoever through the weary years the man’s increasing wisdom recognized as right. A monk, seeking salvation, casts himself on God; the man that battles in the world is conscious that his own endeavour helps, and knows that God is ally to the valiant and not to him who lets his hands drop—even in the lap of God.
Among the romances presumably having a remote Breton origin, and somehow connected with the Court of Arthur, was the tale of Parzival, the princely youth reared in foolish ignorance of life, who learned all knighthood’s lessons in the end, and became a perfect worshipful knight. This tale was told and retold. The adventures of another knight, Gawain, were interwoven in it. Possibly the French poet, Chrétien de Troies, about the year 1170, in his retelling, first brought into the story the conception of that thing, that magic dish, which in the course of its retellings became the Holy Grail. Chrétien did not finish his poem, and after him others completed or retold the story. Among them there was one who lacked the smooth facility of the French Trouvère, yet surpassed him and all others in thoughtfulness and dramatic power. This was the Bavarian, Wolfram von Eschenbach. He was a knight, and wandered from castle to castle and from court to court, and saw men. His generous patron was Hermann, Landgraf of Thüringen, who held court on the Wartburg, near Eisenach. There Wolfram may have composed his great poem in the opening years of the thirteenth century. He was no clerk, and had no clerkly education. Probably he could neither read nor write. But he lived during the best period of mediaeval German poetry, and the Wartburg was the centre of gay and literary life. Walther von der Vogelweide was one of Wolfram’s familiars in its halls.
Wolfram knew and disapproved of Chrétien’s version of the Perceval; and said the story had been far better told by a certain Kyot, a singer of Provence.[722] Nothing is known of the latter beyond Wolfram’s praise. Perhaps he was an invention of Wolfram’s; not infrequently mediaeval poets referred to fictitious sources. At all events, Wolfram’s sources were French or Provençal. In large measure the best German mediaeval poetry was an adaptation of the French; a fact which did not prevent the German adaptations from occasionally surpassing the French works they were drawn from. In the instance of Wolfram’s Parzival, as in that of Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, the German poems were the great renderings of these tales.