THE CANZO.
With the _canzo_ we have at last reached the climax and innermost essence
of the poetry of the troubadours. I have in the above called the idea
of the troubadour as exclusively a singer of love a one-sided one. So
indeed it is, but at the same time the lingering of this feature and this
feature alone in the memory of ages distinctly proves its prevailing
importance in the picture which the popular mind conceived and treasured
up. And the _vox populi_ in literature, as in other matters, is generally
found to be after all the voice of good sense and unsophisticated truth.
All true poetry must be the offspring of its time; it must show as in a
mirror the best contemporary thoughts and ideas. Now there is no doubt
that the purest and most poetic motive of early mediæval life was the
_cultus_ of the new-found ideal of womanhood. To this worship, therefore,
the troubadour devoted his noblest endeavour, and the result is a
literature in some respects unique in the history of all nations.
On first becoming acquainted with the amatory verses of Provençal
poets, one is apt to give way to a feeling of disappointment. Everything
is different from what one’s vague idea of the subject had led him to
expect. There is here no wild storm of passion, no untrammelled effusion
of sentiment On the contrary, the stream of emotion, and sometimes not
a very powerful stream, seems to run in a regular channel—a channel, to
continue the simile, with the marble sides and facings of a rigid form,
and the narrowness of which admits of little individual bubbling. The
last-mentioned feature, viz., the want of individual peculiarities, is
especially noticeable in the poets of the _langue d’oc_. There are of
course differences, as there are, and must be, in all other schools and
coteries of literary workers. Bernart de Ventadorn is an infinitely more
impassioned and more loveable singer than the affected Rambaut of Orange;
and the Monk of Montaudon, when he deigns to write a love-song, cannot
wholly disguise his sardonic vein, nor does he ever attain to the lyrical
sweetness of Guillem de Cabestanh. But such distinctions do not meet
the eye of the casual observer with the same force as is the case with
the poets of other nationalities. One of the reasons is the perfection
of formal development which universally prevails. In modern France or
England it is easy to know one poet from another, and attribute to each
his place in the republic of song by the quality of his verse _quâ_
verse. There are, in short, those who can and those who cannot write
poetry. But with the troubadours it was otherwise: they all knew their
business equally well; there were no bunglers amongst them.
We here once again touch upon that pride and bane of Provençal
poetry—form. That much freshness of expression, much genuine fervour
of inspiration, has been sacrificed to this moloch, is not a matter of
doubt. The sameness of type observable in a whole galaxy of gifted and no
doubt variously gifted poets cannot be explained from any other cause.
For not only did the observance of certain external niceties absorb
a great part of the poet’s energy, but the habit of such observance
gradually encroached even on his cast of thought. Certain feelings and
ideas gradually grew into established formulas. The absence of a true
sympathy with nature in the works of the troubadours is a case in point.
Originally such a feeling must have existed; the very common occurrence
at the beginning of a love-song of some remarks on the beauties of
spring, the song of birds, and the like, tends to prove it. But
unfortunately the similarity of these preludes and the narrow range of
objects to which they refer are a proof equally strong of the detrimental
force of the ‘set speech’ above alluded to. For one Gaucelm Faidit,
who feels genuine delight in the ‘_rossinholet salvatge_,’ the ‘wild
nightingale,’ there are twenty troubadours who speak of the sweet-toned
songster with perfect indifference and merely as a matter of custom. Even
the main and moving subject of the _canzo_, the lady, does not always
escape the same fate. She also frequently becomes a barren symbol to be
described according to a certain code of beauty and to be addressed in
certain well-turned phrases.
Another striking defect in Provençal poetry may to a great extent be
derived from the same source. This is the want of continuity in most
of the _canzos_. Few of these show a necessary organic growth. In most
cases stanzas might be added or taken away without detracting from or
increasing the general merit of the poem. The reason is the wonderful
elaborateness and symmetry of the single stanzas, which make them appear
in the light of independent and compact units, the stringing together
of which may delight the hearer for a time, but can never produce the
impression of an organic whole. I could cite modern instances in which
the same cause has had exactly the same effect.
But such deficiencies, apparent as they are in a greater or less
degree in every troubadour, ought not to blind us to the high merits
of Provençal poetry, its refinement, its tenderness of feeling, its
unrivalled perfection of form. Our admiration of these qualities
increases when we think of the soil in which this remarkable growth took
place. The troubadours were the first harbingers of reviving literary
culture after the storms which wrecked the Western Empire. They had no
models to fall back upon; for the poets of antiquity were more or less
above their ken, and the simple creations of the popular mind beneath
their attention. They had even to create their language from a mixture
of provincial _patois_. If ever poetry has sprung from the spontaneous
impulse of man, it is in this instance. And, what is more, it was at a
time when everywhere else intellectual darkness and barrenness covered
the land. At the time when Guillem of Poitiers wrote his masterpieces
of lyrical refinement, the amalgamation of the native with the foreign
idiom had only just begun in England; in Northern France the stage of the
primitive epic was hardly reached, and a century was to pass before the
seed sown by the troubadours was to bring forth fruit in Germany; Italy
yielding to the same influence at a still later period. But the Provençal
love-song had reached its autumn before these subsequent developments
entered into existence. For a long time it stood alone, an exotic plant
of unknown origin, but of rich and peculiar growth, in the wilderness of
the early middle ages.
Of the metrical structure of the love-song I shall say little in this
place. The varieties and niceties of its rhymes and stanzas the reader
will find fully discussed in the technical chapters. It may be mentioned
here that some difference seems to have existed between two kinds of
the love-song, the _vers_ and the _canzo_; but what the exact nature of
the difference was it is impossible to say. The troubadours themselves
had not a very clear notion of it. The _Leys d’amors_ is even more than
usually rambling and vague in its definition, and all the characteristics
it mentions of the _vers_ belong in equal measure to the _canzo_. Aimeric
de Pegulhan, one of the later troubadours, candidly confesses that
to him the distinction between the terms has lost its significance.
‘Frequently,’ he says, ‘I am asked at court why I do not write a _vers_.
Therefore I leave it to those who care, to decide whether this song be a
_vers_ or a _canzo_; and to those who inquire I answer that I do not find
any difference between _vers_ and _canzo_ beyond the name.’ It further
appears from his song, that, according to rule or prejudice, the _canzo_
generally had feminine rhymes and short lively musical accompaniments,
while the more primitive _vers_ affected monosyllabic endings and
long-drawn melodies. But he justly infers that this rule is not observed
by the troubadours to any prevailing extent, and this fact deprives
the theoretical subtleties of ancient and modern grammarians of their
substantial basis.
And here my remarks on the _canzo_ and on the general aspects of
Provençal literature must end. Of the incompleteness of the sketch in
more than one respect I am fully conscious. But I hope that the reader
may be able to form some adequate view of the intellectual and moral
conditions of which the poetry of the troubadours is the embodiment. To
blur this outline with further detail would be contrary to the purpose
of this book, which, I repeat it, is not a scientific treatise aiming at
exhaustiveness, but rather a first attempt to attract the English reader
towards a subject which deserves so much and has had so little of his
attention. The safest, perhaps the only, method of gaining this end is
the biographical. In the biographies of some of the principal troubadours
I therefore have embodied what further information of the life and work
of these poets I desired to give on the present occasion. Guillem de
Cabestanh will be the representative of the love-song proper. Peire Vidal
combines the satiric and the lyrical gifts. Bertran de Born represents
the warlike or political _sirventes_; the Monk of Montaudon is the
master of personal and literary satire, while Peire Cardinal’s pessimism
and severe morality loom in cloudy distance above the gay throng. The
crusade against the Albigeois heretics, with its baneful consequences for
Provençal literature, is treated in continuous chapters, and a separate
niche of fame is gallantly assigned to the lady troubadours. Other
questions connected with the subject are incidentally treated.
_PART II._
BIOGRAPHICAL