En Ar. Daniel was of Ribeyrac in Perigord, under Lemosi, near to
Hautefort, and he was the best fashioner of songs in the Provençal, as
Dante has said of him in his Purgatorio (XXVI, 140), and Tasso says it
was he wrote "Lancillotto," but this is not known for certain, but Dante
says only "proze di romanzi." Nor is it known if Benvenuto da Imola
speaks for certain when he says En Arnaut went in his age to a monastery
and sent a poem to the princes, nor if he wrote a satire on Boniface
Castillane; but here are some of his canzos, the best that are left us;
and he was very cunning in his imitation of birds, as in the poem
"Autet," where he stops in the middle of his singing, crying: "Cadahus,
en son us," as a bird cries, and rhyming on it cleverly, with no room to
turn about on the words, "Mas pel us, estauc clus," and in the other
versets. And in "L'aura amara," he cries as the birds in the autumn, and
there is some of this also in his best poem, "Doutz brais e critz."
And in "Breu brisaral," he imitates, maybe, the rough singing of the
_joglar engles_, from whom he learnt "Ac et no l'ac"; and though some
read this "escomes," not "_engles_," it is likely enough that in the
court of En Richart there might have been an English joglar, for En
Bertrans calls Richart's brother "joven re Engles," so why should there
not be a joglar of the same, knowing alliterations? And he may, in the
ending "piula," have had in mind some sort of Arabic singing; for he
knew well letters, in Langue d'Oc and in Latin, and he knew Ovid, of
whom he takes Atalanta; and may be Virgil; and he talks of the Palux
Lerna, though most copyers have writ this "Uzerna," not knowing the
place he spoke of. So it is as like as not he knew Arabic music, and
perhaps had heard, if he not understood the meaning, some song in rough
Saxon letters.
And by making song in _rimas escarsas_ he let into Provençal poetry many
words that are not found elsewhere and maybe some words half Latin, and
he uses many more sounds on the rhyme, for, as Canello or Lavaud has
written, he uses ninety-eight rhyme sounds in seventeen canzos, and
Peire Vidal makes use of but fifty-eight in fifty-four canzos and
Folquet of thirty-three in twenty-two poems, and Raimbaut Orenga uses
129 rhymes in thirty-four poems, a lower proportion than Arnaut's. And
the songs of En Arnaut are in some versets wholly free and uneven the
whole length of the verset, then the other five versets follow in the
track of the first, for the same tune must be sung in them all, or sung
with very slight or orderly changes. But after the earlier poems he does
not rhyme often inside the stanza. And in all he is very cunning, and
has many uneven and beautiful rhythms, so that if a man try to read him
like English iambic he will very often go wrong; though En Arnaut made
the first piece of "Blank Verse" in the seven opening lines of the "Sols
sui"; and he, maybe, in thinning out the rhymes and having but six
repetitions to a canzone, made way for Dante who sang his long poem in
threes. But this much is certain, he does not use the rhyme _-atage_
and many other common rhymes of the Provençal, whereby so many canzos
are all made alike and monotonous on one sound or two sounds to the end
from the beginning.
Nor is there much gap from "Lancan vei fueill'" or "D'autra guiza" to
the form of the sonnet, or to the receipt for the Italian strophes of
canzoni, for we have both the repetition and the unrepeating sound in
the verset. And in two versets the rhymes run _abab cde abab cde_; in
one, and in the other _abba cde abba cde_; while in sonnets the rhymes
run _abab abab cde cde_; or _abba abba cde cde_. And this is no very
great difference. A sonetto would be the third of a _son_.
And I do not give "Ac et no l'ac," for it is plainly told us that he
learnt this song from a jongleur, and he says as much in his coda:
Miells-de-ben ren
Sit pren
Chanssos grazida
C'Arnautz non oblida.
"Give thanks my song, to Miells-de-ben that Arnaut has not forgotten
thee." And the matter went as a joke, and the song was given to Arnaut
to sing in his repertoire "E fo donatz lo cantar an Ar Daniel, qui et
aysi trobaretz en sa obra." And I do not give the tenzon with Trues
Malecs for reasons clear to all who have read it; nor do I translate the
sestina, for it is a poor one, but maybe it is interesting to think if
the music will not go through its permutation as the end words change
their places in order, though the first line has only eight syllables.
And En Arnaut was the best artist among the Provençals, trying the
speech in new fashions, and bringing new words into writing, and making
new blendings of words, so that he taught much to Messire Dante
Alighieri as you will see if you study En Arnaut and the "De Vulgari
Eloquio"; and when Dante was older and had well thought the thing over
he said simply, "il miglior fabbro." And long before Francesco Petrarca,
he, Arnaut, had thought of the catch about _Laura_, laura, l'aura, and
the rest of it, which is no great thing to his credit. But no man in
Provençal has written as he writes in "Doutz brais": "E quel remir" and
the rest of it, though Ovid, where he recounts Atalanta's flight from
Hippomenes in the tenth book, had written:
"cum super atria velum
"Candida purpureum simulatas inficit umbras."
And in Dante we have much in the style of:
"Que jes Rozers per aiga que l'engrois."
And Dante learned much from his rhyming, and follows him in _agro_ and
_Meleagro_, but more in a comprehension, and Dante has learned also of
Ovid: "in Metamorphoseos":
"Velut ales, ab alto
"Quae teneram prolem produxit in æra nido,"
although he talks so much of Virgil.
I had thought once of the mantle of indigo as of a thing seen in a
vision, but I have now only fancy to support this. It is like that men
slandered Arnaut for Dante's putting him in his Purgatorio, but the
Trucs Malecs poem is against this.
En Arnaut often ends a canzone with a verset in different tone from the
rest, as markedly in "Si fos Amors." In "Breu brisaral" the music is
very curious, but is lost for us, for there are only two pieces of his
music, and those in Milan, at the Ambrosiana (in R 71 superiore).
And at the end of "Doutz brais," is a verset like the verset of a
sirvente, and this is what he wrote as a message, not making a whole
sirvente, nor, so far as we know, dabbling in politics or writing of it,
as Bertrans de Born has; only in this one place is all that is left us.
And he was a joglar, perhaps for his living, and only composed when he
would, and could not to order, as is shown in the story of his
remembering the joglar's canzone when he had laid a wager to make one of
his own.
"Can chai la fueilla" is more like a sea song or an _estampida_, though
the editors call it a canzone, and "Amors e jois," and some others were
so little thought of, that only two writers have copied them out in the
manuscripts; and the songs are all different one from another, and their
value nothing like even. Dante took note of the best ones, omitting
"Doutz brais," which is for us perhaps the finest of all, though having
some lines out of strict pertinence. But "Can chai la fueilla" is very
cleverly made with five, six, and four and seven. And in "Sols sui" and
in other canzos verse is syllabic, and made on the number of syllables,
not by stresses, and the making by syllables cannot be understood by
those of Petramala, who imagine the language they speak was that spoken
by Adam, and that one system of metric was made in the world's
beginning, and has since existed without change. And some think if the
stress fall not on every second beat, or the third, that they must have
right before Constantine. And the art of En Ar. Daniel is not literature
but the art of fitting words well with music, well nigh a lost art, and
if one will look to the music of "Chansson doil motz," or to the
movement of "Can chai la fueilla," one will see part of that which I
mean, and if one will look to the falling of the rhymes in other poems,
and the blending and lengthening of the sounds, and their sequence, one
will learn more of this. And En Arnaut wrote between 1180 and 1200 of
the era, as nearly as we can make out, when the Provençal was growing
weary, and it was to be seen if it could last, and he tried to make
almost a new language, or at least to enlarge the Langue d'Oc, and make
new things possible. And this scarcely happened till Guinicello, and
Guido Cavalcanti and Dante; Peire Cardinal went to realism and made
satirical poems. But the art of singing 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 Marcello, the music turns the words out
of doors and strews; them and distorts them to the tune, out of all
recognition and the philosophic canzoni of Dante and his times--men are
not understandable if they are sung, and in their time music and poetry
parted company; the canzone'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'Orléans made good roundels and songs, as 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:
Elle me fait avoir peine et doulour.
Mon esperit te demande à toute heure.
Reviens, ami; trop longue est ta demeure.
Car il n'est nul, fors toi, qui me sequerre,
Ne secourra, jusques à 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 cœur 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 l'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."
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
and making permanent a poetry that could be sung. 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 l'alen tir vas me l'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.
Donc 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 different 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 Ventadour, there are beautiful
passages. And if the art, now in France, of saying a song--_disia sons_,
we find 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 Provençals was there any one, nor had Dante thought out an
æsthetic 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 Provençal 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 metaphors and the
exposition of passion. Cossir, solatz, plazers, have in them the
beginning of the Italian philosophic precisions, and _amors qu'inz el
cor mi plou_ is not a vague decoration. By the time of Petrarca the
analysis 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.
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 in 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
Provençal-Français, Karl Winter's Universitätsbuchhandlung, Heidelberg),
and to U.A. Canello, the first editor of Arnaut, who has shown, I think,
great profundity in his arrangement of the poems in their order, and has
really hit upon their sequence of composition, and the developments of
En Arnaut's trobar; and lastly to René Lavaud for his new Tolosan
edition.