No More Learning

But the art of sing- ing 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 Mar- cello, the music turns the words out of doors and strews them and distorts them to the tune, out of all recogni- tion; andthephilosophiccanzoniofDanteandhistimes- men are not understandable if they are sung, and in their time music and poetry parted company; the can- zone'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'Orleans made good roundels and songs, as
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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 EUe me fait avoir peine et doulour.
Mon esperit te demande a toute heure. Reviens,ami; troplongueesttademeure.
Car il n'est nul, fors toi, qui me sequerre, Ne secourra, jusques a 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 cceur 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 I'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. "
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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 andmakingpermanentapoetrythatcouldbesung. 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 I'alen tir vas me I'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.
Done 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 differ- ent 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 Venta- dour, there are beautiful passages. And if the art, now in France, of saying a song disia sons, we find
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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 Provengals was there any one, nor had Dante thought out an sesthetic 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 Provengal 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 meta- phors and the exposition of passion. Cossir, solatz, plazers, have in them the beginning of the Italian philo- sophic precisions, and amors qu'ins el cor mi plou is not a vague decoration. By the time of Petrarca the analy- sis 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.
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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 hi 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 Provengal- Frangais, Karl Winter's Universitatsbuchhandlung, Hei- delberg), and to U. A. Canello, the first editor of Arnaut, who has shown, I think, great profundity in his arrange- ment of the poems in their order, and has really hit upon their sequence of composition, and the develop- ments of En Amaut's trobar ; and lastly to Rene Lavaud for his new Tolosan edition.
II
The twenty-three students of Provencal and the seven people seriously interested in the technic and assthetic of verse may communicate with me in person. I give here only enough to illustrate the points of the raso, 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 Ar-
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naut's system of echoes and blending there is no substi- tutefortheoriginal; butinextenuationofthelanguageof my verses, I would point out that the Provencals were not constrained by the modern literary sense. Their restraints were the tune and rhyme-scheme, they were not con- strained by a need for certain qualities of writing, with- out 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 liter- ature and music; if I have succeeded in indicating some of the properties of the latter I have also let the former gobytheboard. Itisquitepossiblethatifthetrouba- dours 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 csesurae
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.
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? ARNAUT DANIEL 297
CAN CHAI LA FUEILLA
When sere leaf falleth
from the high forked tips,
And cold appalleth
dry osier, haws and hips,
Coppice he strips
of bird, that now none calleth.
Fordel * 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,
* Preeminence.
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All other paring,
coinpared, is put to shame,
Man can acclaim
no second for comparing
With her, no dame
but hath the meaner beiaring.
rid 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.
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299
Chanson, nor stay
till to her thou declarest
"Arnaut would say
me not, wert thou not fairest. "
"Lancan son passat" shows the simple and presum- ably early style of Arnaut, with the kind of reversal from more or less trochaic to more or less iambic move- ment in fifth and eighth lines, a kind of rh3rthm taken over by Elizabethan lyricists. Terms trochaic and iam- bic 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 I'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.
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INSTIGATIONS
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,
'LI 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
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? ARNAUT DANIEL 301
--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,* 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 fueiir 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
* Presumably De Born.
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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 has" 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, presum- ably, Neis Jhezus, Mas pel us, etc.
Autet e bas entrels prims fuoills Son nou de flors li ram eil renc E noi ten mut bee 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 * spruce. * Wriblis = warblings.
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? ARNAUT DANIEL 303
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. *
* This is nearly as bad in the original.
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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 I'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 au- tumn, the onomatopoeia obviously depends upon the "-utz, -etz, -ences and -oris" 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
Fals bruoilss brancutz Clarzir
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305
Quel doutz espeissa ab fuoills, Els letz
Bees
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 has d'aut, Don tem morir
Sils afans no m'asoma.
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.
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II
So clear the flare
That first lit me
To seize
Her whom my soul believes If cad
Sneaks,
Blabs, slanders, my joy Counts little fee
Baits
And their hites.
I scorn their perk
And preen, at ease. Disburse
Can she, and wake
Such firm delights, that I Am hers, froth, lees
Bigod ! from toe to earring.
Ill
Amor, look yare!
Know certainly
The keys:
How she thy suit receives; Nor add
Piques,
'Twere folly to annoy. I'm true, so dree Fates
No debates
Shake me, nor jerk. My verities
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307
Turn terse,
And yet I ache
Her lips, not snows that fly Have potencies
To slake, to cool my searing.
IV
Behold my prayer,
(Or company
Of these)
Seeks whom such height achieves
Well clad
Seeks
Her, and would not cloy. Heart apertly
States
Thought. Hopewaits
'Gainst death to irk
False brevities And worse!
To her I raik. *
Sole her; all others' dry Felicities
I count not worth the leering.
Ah, visage, where
Each quality
But frees
One pride-shaft more, that cleaves Me; mad frieks
* Raik = haste precipitate.
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(O' thy beck) destroy. And mockery
Baits
Me, and rates.
Yet I not shirk
Thy velleities, Averse
Me not, nor slake
Desire. God draws not nigh To Dome,* with pleas Wherein's so little veering.
VI
Now chant prepare.
And melody
To please
The king, who'll judge thy sheaves. Worth, sad.
Sneaks
Here; double employ Hath there. Get thee Plates
Full, and cates,
Gifts,go! Norlurk
Here till decrees Reverse,
And ring thou take.
Straight t' Arago I'd ply
Cross the wide seas
But "Rome" disturbs my hearing.
Our Lady of Poi de Dome? No definite solution of this reference yet found.
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? ARNAUT DANIEL Coda.
At midnight mirk, In secrecies
I nurse
My served make * In heart; nor try My melodies
At other's door nor mearing. t
309
The eleventh canzo is mainly interesting for the open- ing bass onomatopoeia of the wind rowting in the au- tumnbranches. Arnautmayhavecaughthisalliteration from the joglar engles, a possible hrimm-hramm-hruffer, though the device dates at least from Na^vius.
En breu brisaral temps braus, Eill bisa busina els brancs Qui s'entreseignon trastuich De sobreclaus rams de fuoilla
Car noi chanta auzels ni piula
M' enseign' Amors qu'ieu fassa adonc Chan que non er segons ni tertz
Ans prims d'afrancar cor agre.
The rhythm is too tricky to be caught at the first reading, or even at the fifth reading; there is only part of it in my copy.
Briefly bursteth season brisk, Blasty north breeze racketh branch, Branches rasp each branch on each
*Make=mate, fere, companion.
t Dante cites this poem in the second book of De Vulgari Eloquio with poems of his own, De Horn's, and Cino Pistoija's.
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Tearing twig and tearing leafage,
Chirms now no bird nor cries querulous
So Love demands I make outright A song that no song shall surpass For freeing the heart of sorrow.
Love is glory's garden dose.
And is a pool of prowess staunch Whence get ye many a goodly fruit If true man come but to gather.
Dies none frost bit nor yet snowily, For true sap keepeth off the blight Unless knave or dolt there pass. . . .
The second point of interest is the lengthening out of the rhyme in piula, niula, etc. In the fourth strophe we find
The gracious thinking and the frank Clear and quick perceiving heart Have led me to the fort of love. Finer she is, and I more loyal
Than were Atlanta and Meleager.
Then the quiet conclusion, after the noise of the opening, Pensar de lieis m'es repaus:
To think of her is my rest
And both of my eyes are strained wry When she stands not in their sight, Believe not the heart turns from her,
For nor prayers nor games nor violing Can move me from her a reed's-breadth.
The most beautiful passages of Arnaut are in the canzo beginning:
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? ARNAUX DANIEL 311
Doutz brais e critz,
Lais e cantars e voutas
Aug dels auzels qu'en lor latins fant precs Quecs ab sa par, atressi cum nos fam
A las amigas en cui entendem
E doncas ieu qu'en la genssor entendi Dei far chansson sobre totz de bell' obra Que noi aia mot fals ni rima estrampa.
GLAMOUR AND INDIGO
Sweet cries and cracks
and lays and chants inflected
By auzels who, in their Latin belikes,
Chirm each to each, even as you and I
Pipe toward those girls on whom our thoughts attract; Are but more cause that I, whose overweening
Search is toward the Noblest, set in cluster
Lines where no word pulls wry, no rhyme breaks gauges.
No culs de sacs
nor false ways me deflected
When first I pierced her fort within its dykes, Hers, for whom my hungry insistency PassesthegnawwherebywasVivienwracked; * Day-long I stretch, all times, like a bird preening. And yawn for her, who hath o'er others thrust her As high as true joy is o'er ire and rages.
Welcome not lax,
and my words were protected
Not blabbed to other, when I set my likes
* Vivien, strophe 2, nebotz Sain Guillem, an allusion to the romance "Enfances Vivien. "
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On her. Not brass but gold was 'neath the die. That day we kissed, and after it she flacked
O'er me her cloak of indigo, for screening
Me from all culvertz' eyes, whose blathered bluster Can set such spites abroad; win jibes for wages.
God who did tax
not Longus' sin,* respected
That blind centurion beneath the spikes
And him forgave, grant that we two shall lie
Within one room, and seal therein our pact,
Yes, that she kiss me in the half-light, leaning
To me, and laugh and strip and stand forth in the lustre Where lamp-light with light limb but half engages.
The flowers wax
with buds but half perfected;
Tremble on twig that shakes when the bird strikes Butnotmorefreshthanshe! Noempery,
Though Rome and Palestine were one compact. Would lure me from her; and with hands convening I give me to her. But if kings could muster
In homage similar, you'd count them sages.
Mouth, now what knacks!
What folly hath infected .
Thee? Gifts, that th' Emperor of the Salonikes Or Lord of Rome were greatly honored by.
Or Syria's lord, thou dost from me distract;
O fool I am! to hope for intervening " FromLovethatshieldsnotlove! Yea,itwerejuster To call him mad, who 'gainst his joy engages.
* Longus, centurion in the crucifixion legend.
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? ARNAUT DANIEL Poi-iTicAL Postscript
The slimy jacks
with adders' tongues bisected,
313
Ifearnowhit,norhave; andifthesetykes
Have led Galicia's king to villeiny *
His cousin in pilgrimage hath he attacked
We know--Raimon the Count's son--my meaning Stands without screen. The royal filibuster Redeems not honor till he unbar the cages.
Coda
I should have seen itj but I was on such aifair. Seeing the true king crown'd here in Estampa. f
Arnaut's tendency to lengthen the latter lines of the strophe after the diesis shows in : Er vei vermeils, vertz, blaus, blancs, gruocs, the strophe form being
Vermeil, green, blue, peirs, white, cobalt.
Close orchards, hewis, holts, hows, vales.
And the bird-song that whirls and turns Morning and late with sweet accord.
Bestir my heart to put my song in sheen T'equal that flower which hath such properties. It seeds in joy, bears love, and pain ameises.
* King of the Galjcians, Ferdinand II, King of Galicia, 1157- 88, son of Berangere, sister of Raimon Berenger IV ("quattro figlie ebbe," etc. ) of Aragon, Count of Barcelona. His second son, Lieutenant of Provence, 1168.
t King crowned at Etampe, Phillipe August, crowned May 29, 1 180, at age of 16. This poem might date Arnaut's birth as early as 1150.
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The last cryptic allusion is to the quasi-allegorical descriptions of the tree of love in some long poem like the Romaunt of the Rose. .
Dante takes the next poem as a model of canzo con- struction; andhelearnedmuchfromitsmelody
Sols sui qui sai lo sobrefan quern sortz Al cor d'amor sofren per sobramar.
Car mos volers es tant ferms et entiers Cane no s'esduis de celliei ni s'estors Cui encubric al prim vezer e puois: Qu'ades ses lieis die a lieis cochos motz, Pois quan la vei non sai, tant I'ai, que dire.
We note the soft suave sound as against the staccato of "L'aura amara. "
Canzon.
I only, and who elrische pain support
Know out love's heart o'er borne by overlove,
For my desire that is so firm and straight
And unchanged since I found her in my sight
And unturned since she came within my glance,
That far from her my speech springs up aflame; Near her comes not. So press the words to arrest it.
I am blind to others, and their retort
I hear not. In her alone, I see, move.
Wonder. . . . And jest not. And the words dilate Nottruth; butmouthspeaksnottheheartoutright I could not walk roads, flats, dales, hills, by chance. To find charm's sum within one single frame
As God hath set in her t'assay and test it. ~
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? ARNAUT DANIEL
315
And I have passed in many a goodly court
To find in hers more charm than rumor thereof. . . . In solely hers. Measure and sense to mate.
Youth and beauty learned in all delight,
Gentrice did nurse her up, and so advance
Her fair beyond all reach of evil name.
To clear her worth, no shadow hath oppresst it.
Her contact jBats not out, falls not off short . . . Let her, I pray, guess out the sense hereof For never will it stand in open prate
Until my inner heart stand in daylight,
So that heart pools him when her eyes entrance, As never doth the Rhone, fulled and untame, Pool, where the freshets tumult hurl to crest it.
Flimsy another's joy, false and distort.
No paregale that she springs not above . . .
Her love-touch by none other mensurate. Tohaveitnot? Alas! Thoughthepainsbite Deep, torture is but galzeardy and dance,
For in my thought my lust hath touched his aim. God! Shall I get no more! No fact to best it
No delight I, from now, in dance or sport,
Nor will these toys a tinkle of pleasure prove. Compared to her, whom no loud profligate
Shall leak abroad how much she makes my right. Is this too much? If she count not mischance What I have said, then no. But if she blame, Then tear ye out the tongue that hath expresst it.
The song begs you : Count not this speech ill chance, But if you count the song worth your acclaim, Arnaut cares lyt who praise or who contest it.
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The XVIth canto goes on with the much discussed and much too emphasized cryptogram of the ox and the hare. I am content with the reading which gives us a classic allusion in the palux Laerna. The lengthening of the verse in the last three lines of the strophe is, I think, typicallyArnaut's. Ileavethetranslationsolelyforthe sake of one strophe.
Ere the winter recommences
And the leaf from bough is wrested,
On Love's mandate will I render
A brief end to long prolusion:
So well have I been taught his steps and paces That I can stop thje jtidaj-sea's inflowing. My stot outruns the hare; his speed amazes.
Me he bade without pretences
That I go not, though requested;
That I make no whit surrender
Nor abandon our seclusion:
"Differ from violets, whose fear effaces
Their hue ere winter; behold the glowing
Laurel stays, stay thou. Year long the genet blazes. "
"You who commit no offences
'Gainst constancy; have not quested;
Assent not ! Though a maid send her
Suit to thee. Think you confusion
Will come to her who shall track out your traces ?
And give your enemies a chance for boasts and crowing ? No! After God, see that she have your praises. "
Coward, shall I trust not defences Faint ere the suit be tested?
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Follow ! till she extend her
Favour. Keep on, try conclusion
For if I get in this naught but disgraces, Then must I pilgrimage past Ebro's flowing And seek for luck amid the Lemian mazes.
If I've passed bridge-rails and fences. Think you then that I am bested ?
No, for with no food or slender Ration, I'd have joy's profusion
To hold her kissed, and there are never spaces Wide to keep me from her, but she'd be showing In my heart, and stand forth before his gazes.
Lovelier maid from Nile to Sences
Is not vested nor divested.
So great is her bodily splendor
That you would think it illusion.
Amor, if she but hold me in her embraces, I shall not feel cold hail nor winter's blowing Nor break for all the pain in fever's dazes.
Arnaut hers from foot to face is.
He would not have Lucerne, without her, owing Him, nor lord the land whereon the Ebro grazes.
The feminine rhyming throughout and the shorter opening lines keep the strophe much lighter and more melodic than that of the canzo which Canello prints last of all.
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SIM FOS AMORS DE JOI DONAR TANT LARGA
"Ingeniiim nobis ipsa puella facit. " Propertius II, i.
Sim fos Amors de joi donar tant larga Cum ieu vas lieis d'aver fin cor e franc,
Ja per gran ben nom calgra far embarc Qu'er am tant aut quel pes mi poia em tomba Mas quand m' albir cum es de pretz al som Mout m'en am mais car anc I'ausiei volar, C'aras sai ieu que mos cors e mos sens
Mi farant far lor grat rica conquesta.
Had Love as little need to be exhorted
To give me joy, as I to keep a frank
And ready heart toward her, never he'd blast
Hy hope, whose very height hath high exalted. And cast me down . . . to think on my default, And her great worth; yet thinking what I dare, More love myself, and know my heart and sense Shall lead me to high conquest, unmolested.
I am, spite long delay, pooled and contorted
And whirled with all my streams 'neath such a bank Of promise, that her fair words hold me fast
In joy, and will, until in tomb I am halted.
As I'm not one to change hard gold for spalt, And no alloy's in her, that debonaire
Shall hold my faith and mine obedience
Till, by her accolade, I am invested.
Long waiting hath brought in and hath extorted The fragrance of desire; throat and flank
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The longing takes me . . . and with pain surpassed By her great beauty. Seemeth it hath vaulted O'er all the rest . . . them doth it set in fault
So that whoever sees her anywhere
Must see how charm and every excellence Hold sway in her, untaint, and uncontested.
Since she is such; longing no wise detorted Is in me . . . and plays not the mountebank, For all my sense is her, and is compassed Solely in her; and no man is assaulted (ByGodhisdove! ) bysuchdesiresasvault In me, to have great excellence. My care On her so stark, I can show tolerance
To jacks whose joy 's to see fine loves uncrested.
Miels-de-Ben, have not your heart distorted Against me now; your love has left me blank. Void, empty of power or will to turn or cast Desire from me . . . not brittle,* nor defaulted. Asleep, awake, to thee do I exalt
And offer me. No less, when I lie bare
Or wake, my will to thee, think not turns thence. For breast and throat and head hath it attested.
Pouch-mouthed blubberers, culrouns and aborted. May flame bite in your gullets, sore eyes and rank T' the lot of you, you've got my horse, my last Shilling, too; and you'd see love dried and salted. God blast you all that you can't call a halt
God's itch to you, chit-cracks that overbear
*"Brighterthanglass,andyetasglassis,brittle. " Thecom- parisons to glass went out of poetry when glass ceased to be a rare, precious substance. (C/. Passionate Pilgrim, III. )
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And spoil good men, ill luck your impotence !
More told, the more you've wits smeared and congested.
Coda
Arnaut has borne delay and long defence
And will wait long to see his hopes well nested.
[In De Vulgari Eloquio II, 13, Dante calls for freedom in the' rhyme order within the strophe, and cites this canzo of Amaut's as an example of poem where there is no rhyme within the single strophe. Dante's "Rithi- morum quoque relationi vacemus" implies no careless- ness concerning the blending of rhyme sounds, for we find him at the end of the chapter "et tertio rithimorum asperitas, nisi forte sit lenitati permista: nam lenium asperorumque rithimorum mixtura ipsa tragoedia nite- scit," as he had before demanded a mixture of shaggy and harsh words with the softer words of a poem. "Nimo scilicet eiusdem rithimi repercussio, nisi forte novum aliquid atque intentatum artis hoc sibi praeroget. " The De Eloquio is ever excellent testimony of the way in which, a great artist approaches the detail of metier. ]
? VIII TRANSLATORS OF GREEK EARLY TRANSLATORS OF HOMER L HUGHES SALEL
The dilection of Greek poets has waned during the last pestilent century, and this decline has, I think, kept pace with a decline in the use of Latin cribs to Greek authors. The classics have more and more become a baton exclusively for the cudgelling of schoolboys, and
less and less a diversion for the mature.
I do not imagine I am the sole creature who has been
well taught his Latin and very ill-taught his Greek (be- ginning at the age, say, of twelve, when one is unready to discriminate matters of style, and when the economy oftheadjectivecannotbewhollyabsorbing). Achild may be bulldozed into learning almost anything, but man accustomed to some degree of freedom is loath to ap- proach a masterpiece through five hundred pages of grammar. Even a scholar like Porson may confer with former translators.
We have drifted out of touch with the Latin authors as well, and we have mislaid the fine English versions: Golding's Metamorphoses; Gavin Douglas' Mneids; Marlowe's Eclogues from Ovid, in each of which books a great poet has compensated, by his own skill, any loss
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intransition; anewbeautyhasineachcasebeencreated. Greek in English remains almost wholly unsuccessful, or rather, there are glorious passages but no lohg or whole satisfaction. Chapman remains the best English "Homer," marred though he may be by excess of added ornament, and rather more marred by parentheses and inversions, to the point of being hard to read in many places.
And if one turn to Chapman for almost any favorite passage one is almost sure to be disappointed; on the other hand I think no one will excel him in the plainer passages of narrative, as of Priam's going to Achilles in the XXIVth Iliad. Yet he breaks down in Priam's prayer at just the point where the language should be the simplest and austerest.
Pope is easier reading, and, out of fashion though he is, he has at least the merit of translating Homer into something. ThenadirofHomerictranslationisreached by the Leaf-Lang prose; Victorian faddism having per- suaded these gentlemen to a belief in King James fustian; their alleged prose has neither the concision of verse nor the virtues of direct motion. In their preface they grumble about Chapman's "mannerisms," yet their version is full of "Now behold I" and "yea even as" and "even as when," tushery possible only to an affected age bent on propaganda. For, having, despite the exclusion of the Diciionnaire Philosophique from the island, finally found that the Bible couldn't be retained either as his- tory or as private Renter from J'hvh's Hebrew Press bureau, the Victorians tried to boom it, and even its wilfully bowdlerized translations, as literature.
"So spake he, and roused Athene that already was set
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thereon. . . . Evenasthesonof. . . eveninsuch guise. . . . "
perhaps no worse than
"With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving"* but bad enough anyway.
Of Homer two qualities remain untranslated: the magnificent onomatopoeia, as of the rush of the waves on the sea-beach and their recession in:
xapd diva iroXii<^Xoi(rj3oto SaXAcin/s
untranslated and untranslatable; and, secondly, the au- thentic cadence of speech; the absolute conviction that the words used, let us say by Achilles to the "dog-faced" chicken-hearted Agamemnon, are in the actual swing of words spoken. This quality of actual speaking is not untranslatable. NotehowPopefailstotranslateit
There sat the seniors of the Trojan race
(Old Priam's chiefs, and most in Priam's grace)
The king, the first; Thymcetes at his side; Lampus and Clytius, long in counsel try'd Panthus and Hicetaon, once the strong; And next, the wisest of the reverend throng, Antenor grave, and sage Ucalegon,
Lean'd on the walls, and bask'd before the sun. Chiefs, who no more in bloody fights engage. But wise through time, and narrative with age, In summer days like grasshoppers rejoice,
A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.
These, when the Spartan queen approach'd the tower. In secret own'd resistless beauty's power:
* Milton, of course, whom my detractors say I condemn with- out due circumspection.
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