There is nothing in artistic poetry quite akin to "Aucassin and
Nicolete."
By a rare piece of good fortune the one manuscript of the Song-Story has
escaped those waves of time, which have wrecked the bark of Menander, and
left of Sappho but a few floating fragments. The very form of the tale
is peculiar; we have nothing else from the twelfth or thirteenth century
in the alternate prose and verse of the _cante-fable_. {1} We have
fabliaux in verse, and prose Arthurian romances. We have _Chansons de
Geste_, heroic poems like "Roland," unrhymed assonant _laisses_, but we
have not the alternations of prose with _laisses_ in seven-syllabled
lines. It cannot be certainly known whether the form of "Aucassin and
Nicolete" was a familiar form--used by many _jogleors_, or wandering
minstrels and story-tellers such as Nicolete, in the tale, feigned
herself to be,--or whether this is a solitary experiment by "the old
captive" its author, a contemporary, as M. Gaston Paris thinks him, of
Louis VII (1130). He was original enough to have invented, or adopted
from popular tradition, a form for himself; his originality declares
itself everywhere in his one surviving masterpiece. True, he uses
certain traditional formulae, that have survived in his time, as they
survived in Homer's, from the manner of purely popular poetry, of
_Volkslieder_. Thus he repeats snatches of conversation always in the
same, or very nearly the same words. He has a stereotyped form, like
Homer, for saying that one person addressed another, "ains traist au
visconte de la vile si l'apela" [Greek text] . . . Like Homer, and like
popular song, he deals in recurrent epithets, and changeless courtesies.
To Aucassin the hideous plough-man is "Biax frere," "fair brother," just
as the treacherous Aegisthus is [Greek text] in Homer; these are
complimentary terms, with no moral sense in particular. The _jogleor_ is
not more curious than Homer, or than the poets of the old ballads, about
giving novel descriptions of his characters. As Homer's ladies are "fair-
tressed," so Nicolete and Aucassin have, each of them, close yellow
curls, eyes of vair (whatever that may mean), and red lips. War cannot
be mentioned except as war "where knights do smite and are smitten," and
so forth. The author is absolutely conventional in such matters,
according to the convention of his age and profession.
Nor is his matter more original. He tells a story of thwarted and
finally fortunate love, and his hero is "a Christened knight"--like
Tamlane,--his heroine a Paynim lady. To be sure, Nicolete was baptized
before the tale begins, and it is she who is a captive among Christians,
not her lover, as usual, who is a captive among Saracens. The author has
reversed the common arrangement, and he appears to have cared little more
than his reckless hero, about creeds and differences of faith. He is not
much interested in the recognition of Nicolete by her great Paynim
kindred, nor indeed in any of the "business" of the narrative, the
fighting, the storms and tempests, and the burlesque of the kingdom of
Torelore.
What the nameless author does care for, is his telling of the love-story,
the passion of Aucassin and Nicolete. His originality lies in his
charming medley of sentiment and humour, of a smiling compassion and
sympathy with a touch of mocking mirth. The love of Aucassin and
Nicolete--
"Des grans paines qu'il soufri,"
that is the one thing serious to him in the whole matter, and that is not
so very serious. {2} The story-teller is no Mimnermus, Love and Youth are
the best things he knew,--"deport du viel caitif,"--and now he has "come
to forty years," and now they are with him no longer. But he does not
lament like Mimnermus, like Alcman, like Llwyarch Hen. "What is Life,
what is delight without golden Aphrodite? May I die!" says Mimnermus,
"when I am no more conversant with these, with secret love, and gracious
gifts, and the bed of desire." And Alcman, when his limbs waver beneath
him, is only saddened by the faces and voices of girls, and would change
his lot for the sea-birds. {3}
"Maidens with voices like honey for sweetness that breathe desire,
Would that I were a sea-bird with limbs that never could tire,
Over the foam-flowers flying with halcyons ever on wing,
Keeping a careless heart, a sea-blue bird of the spring."
But our old captive, having said farewell to love, has yet a kindly
smiling interest in its fever and folly. Nothing better has he met, even
now that he knows "a lad is an ass." He tells a love story, a story of
love overmastering, without conscience or care of aught but the beloved.
And the _viel caitif_ tells it with sympathy, and with a smile. "Oh
folly of fondness," he seems to cry, "oh merry days of desolation"
"When I was young as you are young,
When lutes were touched and songs were sung,
And love lamps in the windows hung."
It is the very tone of Thackeray, when Thackeray is tender, and the world
heard it first from this elderly, nameless minstrel, strolling with his
viol and his singing boys, perhaps, like a blameless d'Assoucy, from
castle to castle in "the happy poplar land." One seems to see him and
hear him in the twilight, in the court of some chateau of Picardy, while
the ladies on silken cushions sit around him listening, and their lovers,
fettered with silver chains, lie at their feet. They listen, and look,
and do not think of the minstrel with his grey head and his green heart,
but we think of him. It is an old man's work, and a weary man's work.
You can easily tell the places where he has lingered, and been pleased as
he wrote. They are marked, like the bower Nicolete built, with flowers
and broken branches wet with dew. Such a passage is the description of
Nicolete at her window, in the strangely painted chamber,
"ki faite est par grant devisse
panturee a miramie."