THE JOGLAR.
The name ‘Troubadour,’ we have seen, is synonymous with our ‘lyrical
poet.’ His office was, strictly speaking, limited to the writing, or at
least producing, of songs. But for the publication of these poems two
more cooperators were required—the musical composer and the singer or
reciter. Frequently the Troubadour invented his own melodies, and takes
pride in stating that fact; some even combined with these two faculties
that of the executive musician; ‘Pons de Capduelh,’ we are told, ‘was a
poet (_trobava_), and could play the violin and sing.’ Others, however,
were not so variously endowed, and in that case they engaged the services
of an assistant, technically called joglar. The joglar proper seems to
be an exclusively Provençal institution. The necessities of musical
composition and promulgation of course existed more or less in all poetic
communities. Boccaccio says of Dante that he loved to associate with
musicians who supplied his canzone and sestine with melodies, but we
nowhere read that he kept a professional composer for that purpose.
The exact border-line between troubadour and joglar cannot be drawn
without difficulty. Sometimes, as we have seen, the two offices were
combined in one person, at others the same individual rose from the
lower to the higher class. Of Marcabrun, for instance, subsequently
one of the most celebrated troubadours, we are told that he began his
career as apprentice or joglar to another poet named Cercamon.[8] The
safest distinction is arrived at by bearing in mind that the joglars were
principally, though by no means exclusively, musicians and executants,
the converse ratio of the creative and executive faculties obtaining
amongst the superior class of poets. For that position the Troubadours
claimed for themselves, and took good care to let the world know of their
claim. Towards the joglars, immediately dependent on their productions,
they frequently adopt the tone of haughty condescension. ‘Bayona,’ Raimon
de Miraval addresses an unfortunate singer, ‘I know well it is for a
_sirventes_ that you have come amongst us. And counting this there will
be three; for two I have made already by which you have gained much gold
and silver, Bayona, and many a worn coat, and other clothes good and
bad.’ ‘Goodness! Bayona,’ he says in another poem, ‘how poverty-stricken
do I see you! badly dressed in a mean gown! But I will draw you from
your poverty with a sirventes which I offer you.’ In other places the
troubadours express anxious doubts as to the memory and capacity of their
interpreters, and seriously exhort the latter to adhere strictly to
the original as transmitted to them by personal instruction. ‘My son,’
Perdigo addresses his joglar, ‘on your honour, I charge you to take good
care that you understand the work and do not deface it.’ Other poets
sought safety from truncation in the well-knitted and compact woof of
their stanzas, which would not allow of the omission of a single verse or
rhyme without manifest detriment to the whole organism. ‘Marcabrun,’ that
celebrated troubadour boasts of himself, ‘knows how to turn and interlace
sense and verse in such a way that no other man can take away a single
word;’ which precaution, by the way, answered against plagiarists as well
as against slovenly reciters.
But the same feeling of ill-disguised contempt which some troubadours
betray for their immediate subordinates, others extend to the whole class
of singers and performers, and especially the works of later poets are
full of bitter invective against the meanness, vulgarity, and innumerable
other vices and shortcomings of the joglars. The nobles are reproved for
receiving them at their castles, and the decline of poetic art is not
unjustly attributed to the growing taste for the buffooneries cultivated
by the lower grades of the body poetic.
All things considered, this antagonism was not wholly unjustified. It has
already been said that the humbler members of the profession were fain to
turn an honest penny by enlivening the feasts and fairs of villagers by
ingenious tricks of jugglery, and whoever will consult the ‘Instructions
to Joglars,’ above mentioned, will find a considerable portion of the
modern _répertoire_ anticipated. Even dancing on the tight rope, and
training and producing clever dogs and monkeys, were accomplishments
not wholly beneath the dignity of the joglar. No wonder that noble
troubadours shunned all contact with a profession comprehending such
doubtful elements. But of course there were joglars and joglars, just
as in our times there are artists and artists; and a man like Perdigo,
who himself wrote beautiful songs, and kept a singer to sing them, and
who was knighted by the Marquis of Montferrat on account of his poetic
merits, would no more have considered a common trickster his equal than
Mario or Faure would artistically fraternise with the ‘Great Vance.’
And yet the old biographer calls Perdigo repeatedly and persistently a
joglar. It is in such cases as this that the distinction between the
two classes alluded to practically ceases. Joglars were received in the
best society on the same terms of equality as were granted to the more
exclusive brethren; the same gifts of horses and rich garments rewarded
their efforts, and these efforts also were to a large extent identical
with those of the troubadours, excepting perhaps the one circumstance
that the joglars, although poets themselves, included the pieces of other
authors in their _répertoire_, while the troubadours, if gifted with
executive talents, always confined themselves to their own productions.
But another line of distinction may be drawn from the purely literary
point of view previously indicated. The Troubadours, it has been said,
were lyrical poets, and seem to have looked upon romancers, novelists,
_et hoc genus omne_ with all the superciliousness of a higher caste.
Of one poet it is distinctly stated that he was _no bos trobaire mas
noellaire_, ‘not a good troubadour, but a story-teller.’ The Joglars,
on the contrary, as we know from the ‘Ensenhamens,’ were bound to know
and reproduce the whole store of facts and fables more or less common
to the mediæval literatures of Western Europe. The slight and temporary
character of most of these reproductions, and the comparative neglect
with which they were treated by Provençal literati, have previously
been touched upon, the scarcity of epical manuscripts in the _langue
d’oc_ being the natural corollary of these two causes. For the number of
joglars capable of wielding the pen must have been very small, and the
scribes and scholars to whom we owe the admirable and large collections
of lyrical pieces were naturally much less anxious to preserve the
humble productions of the narrative muse. Hence the astounding fact
above referred to that even of the epics of so renowned a poet as Arnaut
Daniel not a single specimen remains, and the other circumstance,
no less surprising, that the Provençal biographer passes over these
important and evidently most popular works with complete silence,
saving his literary conscience by a cursory reference to Arnaut as a
‘Joglar.’ It is a further significant fact that most of the narrative
poems preserved—barring the scanty remains of the popular epic which
belong to a separate epoch and circle of literary production—date from
a comparatively late period when the all-engrossing sway of lyrical
poetry, and with it the vitality of Provençal literature itself, began
to dwindle. The social aspects of this decline and fall, its causes, and
the vain efforts to check its detrimental force, are brought home to us
in the stanzas of a noble-minded poet, Guiraut Riquier, justly called
the Last of the Troubadours. For at his death, about the end of the
thirteenth century, the final expiration of the literature and of the
independent and artistically available idiom of Provence may be said to
commence.
Of the life of Guiraut Riquier comparatively little is known, his
biography being, strange to say, not included in any of the Provençal
collections. On the other hand we are more than usually well instructed
as to the chronology of his works. For to almost every one of his
poems the date of its production is affixed in the MS., which moreover
expressly claims to be an exact copy of the poet’s original. From
the latter statement we may at the same time infer the penmanship of
Guiraut, which in those days was never unaccompanied by other literary
attainments. But, besides this, the scholarly cast of his mind is
sufficiently proved by the troubadour’s work. The wonder is how with
this tendency could coexist in him the sweetest and freshest fragrance
of poetic _naïveté_—a _naïveté_ and spontaneity all the more admirable
as they are altogether rare amongst the Troubadours. To him Provençal
literature owes perhaps its nearest approach to the unalloyed impulse of
popular song. To this side of his creativeness we shall have to return on
a later occasion.
Guiraut’s lines had not fallen in pleasant places. The old times of glory
and well-being for the Troubadours were past and gone, and although
Guiraut found a protector and friend in Alfonso X., King of Castile,
to whom, as he says in 1278, his poetic services had been devoted for
sixteen years, this protection seems not to have been of a kind to exempt
the troubadour wholly from the cares of existence. With a bitterness
recalling Dante’s complaint of the steepness of strange stairs and the
salt flavour of strange bread, Guiraut speaks of the _vergonha e paor_,
the shame and fear with which he enters the presence of a noble lord _per
demandar lo sieu_, to ask him for his property.
To the above-named King Alfonso was presented a curious memorial or
supplication, in which Guiraut Riquier deplores the degradation of his
noble calling and at the same time suggests various remedies for the
growing evil. This was not the only or the last time that the troubadour
stood up in the defence of his art. In a powerful sirventes dated 1278,
he refutes the attacks of fanatic priests on poetry—that is, poetry in
the true and elevated meaning of the word. ‘So little,’ he complains, ‘is
the noble science of poetry valued nowadays, that people scarcely desire
or suffer it, or will listen to it.... And our preachers declare it to
be a sin, and reprove every one bitterly for its sake.’ He fully admits
the justice of these reproaches in many cases in which poets invent ‘vain
things whence sin may arise or war and disunion.’ ‘But,’ he concludes,
‘those who with mastership string together noble words, and with wisdom
and knowledge teach the truth, can never find sufficient honour and
reward.’
The reader who might be inclined to see a tinge of scholastic pedantry
in this passionate plea for ‘wisdom and knowledge,’ ought to consider
the root of the evil combated by Guiraut. The long war with France and
the crusaders had left its detrimental mark on the manners and morals of
Provençal nobles. Their fortunes were wasted, their castles destroyed,
and the new generation brought up in the camp knew little of the taste
and refinement of previous ages. Hence the bitter attacks in the poems
of the later troubadours directed against the vices of the nobles, their
avarice, their stinginess, their coarseness of taste which delighted
alone in the vulgar jests of the lowest joglars. It is especially
against the encroachments of the latter on the domain of artistic poetry
that Guiraut’s angry protest is directed. The mixing up of the two
classes of Joglars and Troubadours he believes to be the first cause of
the disease, and as the intellect of the time had grown too obtuse to
draw the line, he demands an external sign of distinction. Hence the
somewhat strange proposal laid down in his celebrated missive to the King
of Castile.
The ‘Suplicatio qe fes Guiraut Riquier al rey de Castela per lo nom
del joglars l’an LXXIII.’ is a most curious document. Nothing would be
easier than to draw into ridicule a man who intended to prop a tottering
literature with a name, a title. But at the same time this man is so
much in earnest himself, and his cause so noble, that one’s smile
at his Quixotic notion involuntarily gives way to a feeling of deep
sympathy. Guiraut begins his poem with a short exordium of complacent
self-laudation, in which he dwells at some length on his competence to
treat the subject:
Pus dieus m’a dat saber
Et entendemen ver
De trobar, etc.
Next follow the usual compliments to his protector, and, this duty
discharged, Guiraut begins to speak from the fulness of his heart. ‘You
know,’ he says, ‘that all men live in classes differing and distinguished
from each other. Therefore it seems to me that such a distinction of
name ought also to be made amongst the Joglars; for it is unjust that
the best of them should not be distinguished by name as well as they
are by deed. It is unfair that an ignorant man of small learning, who
knows a little how to play some instrument and strums it in public places
for whatever people will give him, or one who sings low ditties to low
people about the streets and taverns, and takes alms without shame from
the first comer—that all these should indiscriminately go by the name of
Joglars.... For joglaria was invented by wise men, to give joy to good
people by their skill in playing on instruments.... After that came the
Troubadours to record valiant deeds, and to praise the good and encourage
them in their noble endeavour.... But in our days and for some time
past a set of people without sense and wisdom have undertaken to sing
and compose stanzas, and play on instruments ... and their jealousy is
roused when they see honour done to the good and noble.’ Every one, he
reasons, ought to be named according to the work he does, and it would be
quite just, he characteristically adds, to apply the name of Joglars to
all poets and singers indiscriminately if they were all more or less of
the same kind and worth, like common citizens. This, however, is not the
case, and the good suffer by being mixed up with the low and vulgar.
To check this confusion by a tangible sign, to distinguish by an
acknowledged name and title the trickster and player of instruments, who
flatters the senses by momentary enjoyment, from the learned and serious
poet whose works are graven on the memory and long survive their author,
to do this and save poetry from impending ruin, Guiraut says, is a worthy
task for the wise and noble King Alfonso.
The king’s answer to this request is extant. It is written in verse,
but otherwise composed with all the gravity of a state paper, and at
the same time with a lucidity of argument rarely found in mediæval
writings. ‘Although,’ the king justly remarks, ‘it is unwise and of
dangerous consequence to speak about the affairs of strangers, yet he
who holds honour dear, and possesses sense and wisdom and power withal,
ought to consider the interests of others together with his own.’ After
this cautious beginning, the king fully admits the reason of Guiraut’s
complaint, and points out the injustice of comprising all the members of
the poetic, musical, and histrionic professions under the common title
of Joglar, a word which the king learnedly adds is derived from the
Latin _joculator_, and therefore is wholly unfit to designate the higher
branches of the art of poetry.
In Spain, we are further told, these things are managed better; musicians
and mountebanks and poets have each a name of their own, and nobody
can mistake the one for the other. A similar distinction the king now
proposes for the domain of the _langue d’oc_, and for that purpose
divides the whole poetic community into three classes. First and lowest
are named the people who would not dare to show themselves at court, and
who hang about taverns and village-greens, showing off the tricks of
learned dogs and goats, imitating birds’ voices, or singing coarse songs.
These in future are to be called by the Italian word ‘_bufos_,’ ‘as is
the custom in Lombardy.’
Different from these are the musicians and reciters of stories who
contribute to the amusement of the nobles by these arts or other
agreeable pastimes. These, and these alone, ought to claim the name
of ‘_joglars_,’ and they ought to be received at court and liberally
remunerated according to their merits.
The third and highest class comprises those who possess the gift of
composing verses and melodies, and for that reason are entitled to the
name of _inventores_, which, as the king remarks, is the Latin equivalent
of the vernacular _trobadors_.
But a last and highest distinction is reserved for those amongst the
poets who combine the useful with the agreeable, and in the sweet rhymes
of their canzos enforce moral and religious maxims. These are in future
to be called _doctors de trobar_, doctors of poetry; for, adds the king,
who is fond of etymology and not wholly averse to a pun:
... Car doctrinar
Sabon ben qui’ls enten.
Whether the degree was ever conferred remains uncertain. It is obvious
that the creating of twenty doctors of poetry would not make one poet.
At the same time if a man or men of high poetic gifts had arisen, the
improved social position intended for them would have been a gain and
an encouragement. But it is a melancholy fact that what seems most
spontaneous and involuntary in man—genius—obeys, after all, the universal
rules of supply and demand, and that when once literary vitality and
literary interest are departed from a nation it is hopeless to galvanise
the corpse with artificial life. Guiraut’s scheme in itself is therefore
hardly worth mentioning. But it is interesting as a symptom of the same
tendency of the age towards mixing up poetry with scholarship which soon
afterwards led to the institution of Academies, and Jeux Floraux, and
Poet-Laureateships, and traces of which have survived till the present
day in Provence and elsewhere.