THE ARTISTIC EPIC.
The remains of the artistic epic, although scanty, are more numerous
than those of popular origin. They were held in greater estimation, and
therefore naturally had a better chance of being saved from oblivion.
Moreover, the fact of their being recited without the aid of music
made the reference to a written text more desirable than was the case
with the popular tales which were chanted to popular tunes, and for
the sole enjoyment of popular and uncritical audiences, not likely
to resent arbitrary variations or slips of memory. Amongst courtly
productions might be named the celebrated ‘Roman de Jauffre,’ describing
the love-affair of that knight with the beautiful Brunesen, and other
adventures, also the story of Guillem de la Bar, not long ago made
public by M. Paul Meyer, from the sole manuscript in the possession of
the Marquis de la Grange. The author of the latter poem is Arnaut Vidal,
remarkable as the first winner of the golden violet at the ‘Jeux Floraux’
of Toulouse; the prize being justly awarded to him for a sweet song in
praise of the Virgin, still extant.
But all these attempts are thrown into the shade by a work which, quite
apart from its philological and literary interest, is invaluable to the
student of mediæval manners and customs. This is ‘Flamenca,’ a narrative
poem in octosyllabic couplets, dating most likely from the first half
of the thirteenth century. Copious extracts, and an analysis of the
work, have been given by Raynouard in the first volume of his celebrated
‘Lexique Roman,’ and the whole has since been edited from the only
manuscript in existence at Carcassonne, by M. Paul Meyer, who has added a
translation into modern French (Paris, 1865). Unfortunately the beginning
and the end of the poem are missing, and with the former the name of
the author, frequently mentioned in the introductory lines of mediæval
romances, has most probably been lost. It is therefore to an anonymous
entity alone that we are able to concede the attributes of a scholar well
versed in antique and contemporary literature, of a man of the world who
knew the manners and morals of good society, and of a poet of genius.
The technical Provençal name of a poem like ‘Flamenca’ would be _nova_,
and with a slight variation of the final syllable the word will serve
the same turn in our language. For ‘Flamenca’ in all essential points
answers to the definition of a novel. It is a picture of contemporary
society in the same sense, and quite as close, as is ‘Tom Jones’ or
‘Vanity Fair.’ From the popular epic it naturally differs as widely as
can be imagined, but even with the other artistic romances of the same
period it has little in common. These latter depend for their interest
chiefly on a number of adventures more or less loosely strung together;
in ‘Flamenca’ there is a plot in our modern sense, artistically worked up
to a climax and illumined by cleverly drawn characters and psychological
observations. It is indeed evidently the author’s intention to delineate
and point out the evil consequences of certain psychological phenomena,
and in this respect ‘Flamenca’ might indeed almost be described as a
‘novel with a purpose,’ the ‘purpose’ leading the poet much beyond the
limits of probability and narrative economy, as ‘purposes’ are apt to do.
The plot of ‘Flamenca,’ moreover, is evidently a pure invention, while
the poets of ordinary chivalrous romances always rely more or less on
legendary sources.
Flamenca, the lovely daughter of Count Gui de Nemours, is wooed by the
King of Hungary and by Lord Archimbaut Count of Bourbon. Her father
prefers the latter suitor, who is said to be one of the best and most
valorous knights in the world; an important circumstance which the reader
is asked to remember. Count Archimbaut, on being told of the decision in
his favour, makes preparations on the grandest scale to visit his bride,
whom he has never seen, but of whom the descriptions of her beauty given
by his messengers have deeply enamoured him. The festivities arranged for
his reception at the court of Nemours are described at some length, and
give the poet an opportunity of deploring the decay of liberality amongst
the great nobles, of courtesy, of love, and of chivalry in his own time,
a complaint frequently met with in the works of the later troubadours.
Early on a Sunday morning Count Archimbaut is introduced by her father
to Flamenca, who, like a well-educated young lady, ‘did not pretend to
be doleful, but was a little shamefaced.’ ‘Here is your bride,’ Count
Gui says; ‘take her if you like.’ ‘Sir,’ answers the bridegroom, ‘if she
does not gainsay it, I never was so willing to take anything in my life.’
Then the lady smiled, and ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘one can see that you hold
me in your power, as you give me away so easily; but as it is your will
I consent.’ This ‘I consent’ throws Archimbaut into a transport of joy,
and he presses her hand passionately. But here the interview ends. The
gentlemen retire, Archimbaut taking leave of her with his eyes at the
door, while Flamenca did not show pride, but gave him good countenance,
frequently saying, ‘God be with you!’
What can be prettier than this quaint picture of mediæval wooing, and
what more magnificent than the wedding ceremony performed in the presence
and with the assistance of five bishops and ten abbots, and lasting much
too long for the impatience of Archimbaut, ‘for it was past the sixth
hour (noon) before he had married her’? At the banquet the bridegroom
and the father of the bride have to wait at table according to ancient
custom; but the eyes of the former continually go where his heart is,
and inwardly he curses the appetite of the guests and the long-winded
songs of the joglars. After nine days’ feasting he hurries home to
prepare his house for his bride. All this looks auspicious enough for the
happiness of the couple. But this bright beginning is but a clever trick
on the narrator’s part to show in its darkest dye the monstrous vice
which turns brightness itself into night. This vice is jealousy.
The King of France, to do honour to his trusty baron Gui of Nemours,
escorts Flamenca to her husband, and attends with his wife and his court
the festivities arranged by Archimbaut to celebrate the occasion. At
the tournament which takes place the king carries on the point of his
lance, by way of _gage d’amour_, the sleeve of a lady’s dress. ‘I don’t
know whose it was,’ the poet adds diplomatically. The queen’s jealousy
suggests Flamenca, and she loses no time to impart her suspicion to
Archimbaut, who immediately takes fire at the thought. He keeps his
countenance while his guests are present, but inwardly he feels sad, and
tormented by ‘a burning sickness called jealousy.’ ‘What was I thinking
of,’ he frequently says to himself, ‘when I took a wife? God! I was mad.
Was I not well off and happy before? Evil befall my parents that they
should have counselled me to take what did never good to any man!’
The symptoms of the ‘burning sickness’ are described with graphic
vivacity. Archimbaut shuts himself up; in every visitor he suspects a
suitor of his wife; he pretends to be very busy, and adds, in a whispered
aside, ‘I should like to kick you out head foremost.’ He then calls to
his servants for water, to wash for dinner, in order to make people
go, and if this does not avail he will say, ‘Dear sir, will you have
dinner with us, for it is time? I hope you will. There will be a good
opportunity for flirting’—looking all the while like a dog who shows his
teeth.
So far so good; but we can hardly believe that a noble and gallant knight
should lose all sense of decency so entirely as to go about unwashed and
unshaven, letting his beard grow long and matted ‘like a badly made sheaf
of oats,’ except in places where he had torn out the hair and stuffed it
in his mouth. The poet here decidedly makes a concession to his courtly
audience, who naturally were delighted to hear a jealous husband likened
to a ‘mad dog.’
At last Archimbaut resolves to keep his wife a close prisoner in a tower,
and ‘May I be hanged by the throat,’ he says, ‘if ever she go out without
me even to church, to hear mass, and that only on high feast days!’ So
poor Flamenca is shut up in the tower with only two devoted maidens,
Alice and Margarida, to comfort her in her misery. And here the poet
takes the opportunity of indulging in a psychological excursion which one
would expect in Feydeau or the younger Dumas rather than in a _romancier_
of the thirteenth century. As she could not love her husband and had
no child to be fond of, he suggests, it was a blessing, or ‘a great
favour of God,’ as he puts it, for Flamenca, that the feeling of love
entirely ceased in her for a season. For if she still had had love in her
heart with no object to centre it upon, her condition would have been
infinitely more unhappy.
But Flamenca’s fate is not to last, nor are Archimbaut’s misdeeds to be
left unpunished for ever. The avenger is nigh. He takes the form of a
perfect beau of the period, described by the poet in the most glowing
colours; with his riches, his valour, his courteous demeanour, his love
of poetry and song, his scholarship—for he has gone through his _trivium_
and _quadrivium_ at the University of Paris—and last, not least, his
beauty, down to the whiteness of his skin and the very shape of his mouth
and ears. Guillem de Nevers, for such is his name, hears of Archimbaut’s
jealous atrocities, which have become the butt of all the gay troubadours
of the country, and at once resolves to comfort the lady and punish the
monster. The question is, how to baffle the watchfulness of this Argus
and Cerberus combined. The manner in which this question is solved is a
marvel of ingenuity.
The first and greatest difficulty is to establish communication with
the imprisoned lady. The tower is watched against any possibility of
approach, and she never leaves it except to go to church. The church,
therefore, must be the scene of operations.
Guillem de Nevers ingratiates himself with the priest, who accepts him
as his clerk, and in this disguise the lover succeeds in entering the
private pew, from which, thickly veiled and concealed by a trellis work,
Flamenca is allowed to attend mass. When the clerk approaches the lady to
let her kiss the mass-book according to sacred rite, she is struck with
his beauty, and still more astonished when, instead of a sacred formula,
he breathes a suggestive _Ailas_! (alas). More than these two syllables
he dares not utter in the presence of the watchful Archimbaut. Flamenca,
on her return home, begins to muse on the strange behaviour of the clerk.
At first she feels almost aggrieved by his exclamation. ‘What right has
he,’ she says, ‘to be miserable? he is strong, and free, and happy. Maybe
he is mocking my own suffering. And why should he be so cruel as to add
to my grief? Tears and sighs are my lot. A slave compelled to carry wood
and water is enviable compared with me. My fate could not be worse even
if I had a rival and a mother-in-law.’ But the two chambermaids know
better. With the sagacity of their class they at once fathom the mystery.
‘Your beauty,’ Margarida suggests, ‘has ravished his heart, and, as he
has no other way of speaking to you, he has exposed himself to great
peril to let you know the state of his feelings.’
An answer has now to be thought of, and the united wisdom of the three
fair conspirators decides upon the query _Que plans?_ (what is your
complaint?) and these two syllables, softly whispered, gladden the heart
of Guillem on the ensuing Sunday. His immoderate rapture on seeing his
passion noticed by its fair object gives rise to a remark on the part
of the poet which strangely foreshadows the celebrated dying speech of
Cardinal Wolsey. ‘If Guillem,’ the passage runs literally, ‘had served
God as he served Love and his lady, he would have been lord of Paradise.’
Flamenca on her part is most anxious to be certain that her frightened
whisper has been understood, and the poet describes with masterly touches
a charming scene in the lady’s closet, when Alice has to take a book—it
is the romance of Blanchefleur—and hold it exactly in the position and
at the distance that Guillem has presented the missal. The lady then
bending over the pages whispers the two syllables, and inquires whether
she has been heard, which question the obliging chambermaid answers with
an ‘Oh, certainly, Madam! if you have spoken in such a tone, he must have
understood you.’
In this manner the lovers continue to correspond, a week elapsing
between each question and answer, unless a devoutly wished-for saint’s
day shortens the interval. A lover who for months feeds his passion on
dissyllables, sweetened only by an occasional lifting of Flamenca’s
veil or a furtive touch of her finger, deserves at any rate the praise
of constancy. Does the reader care to hear the dialogue in which this
extraordinary intrigue is carried on? Here is the series of questions and
answers, divided, it must be remembered, by an interval of several days,
and exchanged under the very eyes of the jealous husband, who mistakes
for pious mutterings of the Catholic ritual what in reality is offered at
a very different shrine:—
Guillem, in answer to Flamenca’s question above cited: _Muer mi_ (I die).
Flamenca: _De que?_ (what of?) G.: _D’amor_ (of love). F.: _Per cui?_
(for whom?) G.: _Per vos_ (for you). F.: _Quen puesc?_ (how can I help
it?) G.: _Garir_ (heal me). F.: _Consi?_ (how?) G.: _Per gein_ (by subtle
craft). F.: _Pren li_ (use it). G.: _Pres l’ai_ (I have). F.: _E cal?_
(what craft?) G.: _Iretz_ (you must go). F.: _Es on?_ (where to?) G.:
_Als banz_ (to the baths).
This requires a word of explanation. Bourbon in Auvergne, the seat of
Count Archimbaut, was then, as it is now, a well-known spa, of the
arrangements of which the author gives rather a curious description.
‘Here,’ he says, ‘every one, stranger or native, can bathe in excellent
fashion. In each bath-room you can see written up for what malady it is
good. No lame or gouty person would come there but he would go away quite
cured, provided he stopped long enough. Here one can bathe when he likes,
provided he have come to terms with the landlord who lets the bath. And
in each of the cells there is to be found boiling water, and in another
part cold.... Adjoining these baths are rooms where people can lie down
and rest and refresh themselves as they like.’ There is also a capital
portrait of the typical lodging-house keeper, who—wonderful touch of
nature which makes Margate and Bourbon kin—recommends a particular room
‘because Count Raoul takes it every time he comes to Bourbon.’
With this worthy and his wife, dame Bellepille, Guillem has made himself
exceedingly popular. He has paid his bills without haggling, has dined
at their table, and taken absinthe (_de bon aluisne_) with the husband.
At last he has persuaded the couple to decamp for a season and leave him
in sole possession of their house—for a consideration, it need hardly be
added. This house he has had connected by a subterraneous passage with
one of the bathing cells, and to the latter Flamenca is summoned by the
mysterious phrase alluded to. The lady understands the hint, and at once
takes the necessary measures for carrying out the scheme. She feigns
sleeplessness and pain—nothing but a bath can cure her. Archimbaut,
anxious for her safety, gives his consent, and himself conducts her to
the arms of her expectant lover, who receives her with knightly courtesy
and leads her, together with the two faithful damsels, through his
subterraneous passage to a room splendidly adorned to receive such a
visitor. The jealous husband in the meantime keeps watch before the door
of the bath-room, with the key in his pocket, while the careful damsels
have not forgotten to bolt the door inside.
Such is the just and inevitable punishment of jealousy according to the
doctrine of the Troubadours. But, strangely enough, this punishment,
unknown to himself though it be, ultimately works Archimbaut’s cure. He
notices the change in his wife’s manner; she shows no affection for him,
and even neglects the ordinary forms of politeness. At last he gets tired
of his suspicions, and accepts a compromise proposed by his ill-treated
wife to the effect that the lady is to be restored to liberty on her own
solemn promise of faithfulness to her husband. And here I fear that poor
Flamenca will forfeit the claim to the reader’s lenient sympathy to which
the cruelty of her husband has hitherto entitled her. With a virtuosity
of mental reservation worthy of any Jesuit she swears by all the saints
and in the presence of her inwardly chuckling damsels that ‘henceforth I
will guard myself quite as well as you (Archimbaut) have hitherto guarded
me.’ On this happy turn in her affairs the lady takes leave of her lover
for a season. He must resume his rank and add to his fame by new deeds of
valour. But she agrees to see him again at a tournament which Archimbaut
proposes to hold in celebration of his happy recovery. In answer to his
lady’s command, Guillem goes to the war and makes the country ring with
his prowess. Archimbaut becomes acquainted with him and eagerly invites
him to attend at his feast, where he himself introduces the valorous and
renowned young knight to his wife. The lovers keep their countenance and
greet each other in distant politeness, but in secret they meet again and
renew their bliss. At the tournament Guillem carries all before him, but
second to him alone shines Archimbaut, who has become again the valorous
and accomplished knight he was before the fell disease attacked him. In
the midst of their joustings and feastings the manuscript breaks off,
evidently not long before the end of the poem.
Such is the story of Flamenca. Its moral tone is not very high, although
certainly not worse than that of the typical French novel. But few modern
novelists would successfully compete with the natural grace and perfect
workmanship of the mediæval poet. The plot, although simple, is well
constructed, and the story developes itself rapidly and consistently.
The characters also are drawn with consummate skill. They are both types
and individuals, one of the chief criteria of high art-creation. It is
true that the effects of jealousy on Archimbaut are exaggerated to the
verge of caricature: the poet here bowed to the prejudice of his age. At
the same time the minutest symptoms of the disease are laid bare with
an astounding acuteness of psychological diagnosis. But, more than all,
there is true passion in the work in spite of occasional concessions to
the allegorical and hyperbolical tendencies of romantic feeling. And the
whole is transfused with the splendour of southern sunshine, the joy and
life and love of beautiful Provence.