Seven—
The Metaphorical Vocabulary of Mouvance and Textual Integrity
Texts that confer editorial license on their performers do not, as a rule, confer it unconditionally. In such cases, the recipient is invited to "melhurar lo vers" (improve the poem) as befits its flaws and virtues. The pun vers/ver(s) (poem/truth) discourages departures from the poem's metrical, logical, and thematic decorum as well as from publicly held belief, for any mot fals would disqualify its context as "true" poetry by excepting it from an equivalency built into the language itself. "Melhurar lo vers" is to enhance the poem's approximation to lo ver, the truth.[1]
In "Bel m'es lo dous chans per la faia" (323,6), fals motz would provide the one condition under which the poet asks of the addressee "q·el melhur . . . / los vers." The uncertainty of the poem's authorship may be the result of how little proprietary control its original poet claimed:
Lo vescoms que gran ben aja
vuelh que lo·m melhur, si·l plai
lo vers, si fals motz lo sec.
(Zenker 1901, 798, vv. 56–58)[2]
I would like the viscount—may he have great good—to im-
prove the poem, if he likes, if false words follow it.
The liberty offered at first only to one trusted nobleman, the addressee, might easily have been taken by jongleurs who, in adding the poem to their repertories, "improved" a few lines and, in time, took credit for its creation. This may explain its attribution to Bernart de Venzac, a poet
named only in manuscript C, whose entire corpus (as reconstructed by Rudolf Zenker) consists of songs more defensibly attributed to Peire d'Alvernhe and Marcabru. Whether or not he foresaw the effacement of his individual claim to authorship, however, the poet repeats his invitation, using the same deferential qualifying phrase si·l plai; he shows more interest in the appropriateness that his words maintain, and in their future as a song to be sung over and over, than in attaching his name to a fixed text:
Lo vers vas la fin s'atraja
e·lh mot sion entendut
per N'lsart, cui Dieus aiut,
quez el ama en autum;
se i a mot que non s'eschaia,
volh que l'en mova, si·l plai
e que no·i l'en teigna nec.
(Zenker 1901, 798, vv. 50–56)
The poem draws to an end, and may the words be understood
by Lord Isart—may God help him—for he loves in eminence,
and if there is a word which is not appropriate, I would like
him to alter it, if he likes, and may he not keep it silent.
Clear evidence that mover can mean "to alter a poem" as well as "to begin singing" appears in Jaufre Rudel's "No sap chantar qui so no di," where in one version he uses the verb mover as an amplifying synonym for camjar, with lo vers as its object: "E cel que de mi l'apenra / gard si non mueva ni camgi" (And he who learns it from me, let him take care neither to alter nor to change it; J Rud 6/1A, 21–22). Jaufre's prohibition of change asserts that the poem, as composed, contains no mot fals (c.f. falhir ): "Bos es lo vers s'ieu no·y falhi / Ni tot so que·y es, ben esta" (The poem is good if I am not mistaken, and everything in it well suffices; J Rud 6/1, 37–40). The only version to forbid change without exception ("Gard si non mueva ni camgi," 6/1A) is also the only version to omit the tornada foretelling that its hearers in Toulouse and Limoges or Quercy will make new words for the song: "Bons er lo vers e faran y / Calsque motz que hom chantara" (The poem will be good and they will make there whatever words someone will sing; 6/1B).
Ulrich Mölk demonstrates that in many instances, the word motz seems to refer specifically to the rhyme words and thus to entire metrical
schemes (1979, 3–5). If this meaning is intended in "Bel m'es lo dous chans per la faia," then the phrase "mot que non s'eschaia" refers not to a breach of decorum in diction but rather to a possible defect in the rhyme scheme. We should perceive here a distinction between transmitters' changes that alter a poem's form and changes that preserve it. Mölk follows Rupert T. Pickens in identifying certain words as belonging to the lexical field of poets' reference to transmission and performance: "Franher, pessar, mudar, peiurar, desfaissonar : the troubadours use these and other terms to express their concern for the integrity of the metrical structure. This concern can rightfully be seen less as a topos than as an obviously significant moment in literature" (Mölk 1979, 5). Yet "Bel m'es lo dous chans per la faia" teaches us that a poet could believe in the stability of the rhyme scheme even if he left further revisions to the hearer's discretion; it also shows that even the "integrity of the metrical structure," the motz or rhyme scheme, could be fair game for emendation if it were defective, fals . "Integrity" was something that could be restored, or even conferred for the first time, by a new performer.
References to future singers are often linked to the polarity "deterioration/improvement" and to a boast about the poem's structure. Guilhem IX affirms the enrichment of a poem well understood; the construction mais . . . qui suggests repeated performance ("the more . . . the more"), and the song's "equal rhymes" are supposed to guarantee appreciation rather than depreciation:
Del vers vos dic que mais ne vau
qui be l'enten, e n'a plus lau:
que·ls motz son faitz tug per egau.
(Gm IX 7, 37–39)
Of the poem I tell you that it is worth more, the better one
understands it, and gets more praise for it: for the rhymes are
all created equal.
Jaufre Rudel's "Quon plus l'auziretz, mais valra" (The more you will hear it, the more it will be worth; 6, 6) is colored by the ambiguity of Jaufre's previous line, "pero mos chans comens' aissi " (but [therefore] my song begins thus); is this "only the beginning of the song" because Jaufre has sung only the first stanza or because the song has yet to undergo all the transformations that will realize its full potential value? A less ambiguous version of this topos occurs near the end of a song by Bernart de
Ventadorn: "Lo vers, aissi com om plus l'au / vai melhuran tota via" (The more the poem is heard, the more it continually improves; B Vent 21, 57–58). Literally, his song improves "all along the road" (tota via ). Not just one hearer, whose understanding deepens, but many hearers and many performers enhance the song.
"Rust" and "Splinters"
In Peire d'Alvernhe's "Belh m'es qu'ieu fass' huey mays un vers," the boast about the durable structure takes the form of a metaphorical description:
On plus horn mos vers favelha
fe que·us deg, on reals valon elh
e no·y a motz fals que y rovelh
ni sobredolat d'astelha.
(P d'Alv 15, 65–68)
The more my song is repeated, I swear to you, the more it is
worth; and there are no false words that might rust in it, nor
[words] too smoothly filed free of splinters.
"Rust" suggests a song made of metal; "splinters," of wood. Both metaphors express Peire's confidence in the future of his song: its rhymes are neither prone to rust nor sobredolat d'astelha, "polished too smooth of splinters." Whether sobredolat connotes excessive or merely superficial smoothness, Peire is content that the "barbs" remain. Astelha can refer to sharp sticks as large as war spears, and Peire's invective against those who abuse language is intended to prick the conscience. "Splinters" might be viewed as flaws in fine woodworking, but Peire has already disavowed artistic roughness (mot fals ); he ends with a paradox, transferring a metaphor from the poet's technical craft (dolar, "polish") to his moralistic intention.
Marcabru first linked mot fals with "rust" and transferred the moral term into the lexical field of poetry. In the last strophe of "Lo vers comens quan vei del fau," a song composed "segon trobar naturau" (v. 7), Marcabru defies future stagers in a passage that compares his song to a miner's lode, an archaeologist's dig, or a vandal's buried treasure:
Marcabrus ditz que no·ill en cau
qui quer ben lo vers'al foïll
que no·i pot hom trobar a frau
mot de roïll
intrar pot hom de lonc jornau
en breu doïll.
(Mcb 33; Roncaglia 1951b, 31, vv. 49–64)
Marcabru says he does not care if someone searches the poem
well with a ransacker's tool, for one cannot find there hidden a
word of rust; one can enter after a long day's work through a
small hole.
The medieval Latin equivalency rubigo:malitia (Roncaglia 1951b, 45n. 52) is expanded here to accommodate Marcabru's artistic "morality"; "a word of rust" would make way for the chipping and chiseling of the vandal's foïll ("fodiculum, to designate the instrument used to fodiculare "; Roncaglia 1951b, 45n. 50). As it is, they merely "scratch the surface" (fant gratill ):
Mas menut trobador bergau
entrebesquill
mi tornon mon chant en badau
e·n fant gratill.
(Mcb 33: Roncaglia 1951b, 31, vv. 9–12)
But petty troubadours, drones, fabricators, turn my song into
gaping and scratching.
This portrait of a "droning" performance (bergau, "hornet, fool"; Roncaglia 1951b, 37n. 9), where the singer "scrapes" at his lyre and "stands with his mouth open" instead of singing meaningful sounds ("tornar chant en badau"), catches the cantador overacting his rôle of amador at the expense of poetry, gaping with feigned desire (badar ) and "tickling" (gratillar ) the imagination of other men's wives.
But these enemies of Marcabru, who profane his song, are not merely performers but trobador who compose, or recompose it: the designation entrebesquill (interweavers) alludes to the creation of rhymed lines. Thus, Marcabru's reference to his song's "freedom from rust" as a safeguard against "ransacker's tools" suggests, like Peire d'Alvernhe's "there are no false words that might rust in it," that its structure is "impenetrable." Indeed, Marcabru has found twenty-seven different words in each of his two rhymes, so that it might be difficult to replace a line without telltale repetition.
Because it does not rust or tarnish, and because it is "rare" and valuable, gold becomes a favorite metal for poets who use the metaphor of sculpture to describe poetic composition. Although Peire Vidal once compares the "tempering" of a love song to the goldsmith's method of purifying a lump of gold by "breaking" it in the fire, Peire more often alludes to a nonstructural, decorative exterior of gold:
Qu'era que sui malmenatz
fas meravelhatz
motz ab us sonetz dauratz .
(P Vid 4, 12–16)
For now that I am ill treated, I make marvelous rhymes with a
gilded little tune.
Senher N'Agout, no·us sai lauzar
mas de vos dauri mon chantar.
(P Vid 7, 81–82)
Sir Agout, I know not how to praise you, but with you I gild
my song.
In both of these instances, the context indicates that Peire has reason not to produce a "solid gold" song: in the first passage, he has been mistreated, and in the second, a man unworthy of Peire's praise provides the "gilt" with which he adorns his song. Peire gives a comic twist to the familiar idea that a poem should be worth the price paid for it and worthy of its addressee.
The combination of noble and base metals or of metal and wood as materials for "sculpture in words" reappears in Peire Vidal's "En una terra estranha," where Peire points to the futility of "gilding and filing" with words. He observes that whoever applies the gold leaf first and then shapes his words with a file destroys his own work, revealing his "illschooled" heart. Such a man's work, the amors he fabricates in words, can last no longer than a spider's web:
Quar pus qu'obra d'aranha
no pot aver durada
amors, pus es proada,
qu'ab ditz daur'ez aplana
tals qu'al cot de vilan escuelh.
(P Vid 25, 49–53)
For no more than a spider's web can love have duration, since
it has come to the test [been proven] that such a man as gilds
with words, and [then] files, gets his intention [heart] from an
ignoble school.
Taken together, Peire's uses of the verb daurar to describe poetic ornamentation disapprove the thin film of glitter, applied to conceal an unsound structure.
The troubadour who best reconciles the constructive metaphors for poetry—sculpture, building, and metallurgy—is Raimbaut d'Aurenga. In his rimeta prima that he "built without rule or line" (2,3) as well as in "Cars, dous e fenhz' (I ), Raimbaut associates the process of filing (limar ) with the removal of rust. More descriptively than in Marcabru's trobar naturau, the search for "rust" takes the form of a probing inspection; Marcabru's ransacker ("qui quer ben lo vers'al foïll") has his counterpart in Raimbaut's falsa genz:
De la falsa genz qe lima
e dech'e ditz (don quec lim)
ez estreinh e mostr'e guinha
(so don Joi frainh e esfila),
per q'ieu sec e pols e guinh;
Mas ieu no·m part del dreg fil,
quar mos talenz no·s roïlha
q'en Joi nos ferm ses roïlh.
(R d'Aur 2, 9–16)
[I complain] about the false people who file and dictate and
speak (wherefore I file each of them) and squeeze and point
and stare at that which causes Joi to break and unravel; be-
cause of them I follow [or "dry out"] and pound and squint,
but I do not leave the straight wire, for my intention does not
rust, because it encloses us in Joi without rust.
Like Marcabru, Raimbaut regards the critical scrutiny of his enemies ("estreinh e mostr'e guinha") as something closely related to vandalism. The two poets' enemies use comparable tools in their destruction: the lima and the foïll have in common the fact that both wear away their object and risk breaking it ("frainh e esfila"). One is reminded of Bernart Amoros's caution against overediting, to illustrate which he quotes "a wise man":
Blasmat venon per frachura
d'entendimen obra pura
maintas vetz de razon prima
per maintz fols qe·s tenon lima.
(Stengel 1898, 350)
Pure works come to be blamed through breakage of under-
standing, very often [works] with outstanding arguments, be-
cause of many fools with files ["erasers"] in their hands.
Bernart too speaks of "breakage" (frachura ) as the result of emendation by "fools with files in their hands."[3]
Raimbaut criticizes the falsa genz for actions that he and other poets associate with the making of legitimate vers . The least of it is the parallelism between Raimbaut's attentiveness ("ieu sec e pols e guinh," v. 13) and that of his enemies, who "estreinh e mostr'e guinha" (v. 11). Their "filing," which Raimbaut deprecates, is part of the work that goes on in a poet's obrador; Raimbaut himself admits to doing it:
Cars, bruns e tenhz motz entrebesc
pensius-pensanz enquier e serc
(com si liman pogues roire
l'estraing roill ni'l fer tiure)
don mon escur cor esclaire.
(R d'Aur 1, 19–23)
Rare, dark, and colored words I intertwine; pensively ponder-
ing I search and seek (as if by filing I could rub off the incon-
gruous rust or the hard calcifications) how I might clarify my
obscure intention.[4]
The skepticism expressed by "com si" admits that "filing" will not really remove "rust" from "dark words": it is only a simile. Cor can mean intention or will, and Raimbaut seeks to clarify his intention despite the "darkness" of his rhymes. The impurities that obscure his words—rust and calcium deposits—create a context in which Raimbaut's intention resembles a vein of gold surrounded by a mineral crust foreign to it, or a statue that has been left out in the rain for years and needs cleaning and restoration. The former image, "intention as a vein of gold," is consistent with the lines in Raimbaut's rimeta prima, where his "intention does not rust" because he "does not depart from the straight wire": "mas ieu no·m
part del dreg fil, / quar mos talenz no·s roïlha" (R d'Aur 2, 14–15). The excellent poet does not need to "file" because he works in rustproof materials. Raimbaut's implication of this "straight wire of gold" may be a sort of signature, a play on his nickname, Linhaure, "Golden Line."[5] Raimbaut identifies with this noble metal in several poems. In his view, anyone who "mistakes copper for gold" is courting danger: "Que vau doptan / aur per coire / cor al perill / on ie·m liure" (Because I go mistaking gold for copper, I run toward the peril to which I surrender myself; R d'Aur 1, 48–49). In the tenso with Giraut de Bornelh, he compares the rarest and best of songs to the rare metal: "Per so prez'om mais aur que sal / e de tot chant es atretal" (That is why one values gold more than salt, and it is the same way with every song; R d'Aur 31, 34–35).
Arnaut Daniel recalls Raimbaut's criticism of "la falsa genz que lima" (the false people who file) when he describes the art of his "Chansson do·ill mot son plan e prim," defending himself against anticipated objections like Raimbaut's:
Pel bruoill aug lo chan e·l refrim
e per c'om no men fassa crim
obre e lim
motz de valor
ab art d'Amor.
(Arn D 2, 10–14)
Through the grove I hear the song and I echo it, and in order
that this not be made an accusation against me, I work and file
words of value by the art of love.
To what crim might Arnaut be referring? Through the woods he hears the song e·l refrim, and to avoid being accused of error for this, he applies his poetic craft. My solution to the question is that refrim is a verb: refrimar, "retentir, résonner" (Levy 1961). Arnaut echoes the song he hears in the woods and "polishes it up." As he did in the famous razo, he adapts the song of another to his own art—but this time it is the song of a bird, and he jokingly suggests that he might be accused of plagiarism. Arnaut justifies using the lima by asserting the value of his results ("motz de valor") and the worthiness of the guiding aesthetics ("ab art d'Amor"). Like Raimbaut d'Aurenga, Arnaut combines the workshop metaphors with the idea of "following a (straight) line" and alludes to the possibility of "digression," inadvertent separation from the "right way": "ans si be·m
faill, / la sec a traill" (vv. 16–17). It is worth noting that although there is a tradition associating "filing" with "rust," the obvious rhyme ruoilla does not appear in extant copies of Arnaut's poem, although it meets the requirements of the leonine rhyme fuoilla/bruoilla/tuoilla .[6]
Arnaut also flouts Peire Vidal's criticism of "Amors, pus es proada / qu'ab ditz daur'ez aplana" (Love, since it has been proven that with speeches she gilds and [then] polishes; P Vid 25, 51–52), except that he does his "filing and gilding" in the more sensible order:
En cest sonet coind'e leri
fauc motz e capuig e doli
que serant verai e cert
qan n'aurai passat la lima
q'Amors marves plan'e daura
mon chantar, que de liei mou
qui pretz manten e governa.
(Arn D 10, 1–6)
In this graceful and gay little melody, I construct rhymes and
hone them and file them so that they will be true and sure
when I have passed the file over them, for Love without hesita-
tion planes and gilds my song, which originates in her who
supports and controls worth.
He defends love and his craft in one breath, declaring that love is not the creation of poetic artifice, but its creator. He counters Peire's taunt that the gilded works of Amor "can last no longer than a spider's web" by weighting his "graceful and frivolous little tune" with the sense of substantial, reliable carpentry that, he claims, will make his words "true and sure."
Level, Plumb, and True: Songs as Buildings
Architectural metaphors, for us, suggest the creation of a permanent edifice, perfected on a blueprint before the first board is cut. Some troubadours do speak of "building" their poems, likening the work of composition to a great stronghold made of wood and stone. It is the motif of the artisan working in his obrador, but on the largest scale. Raimbaut d'Aurenga draws on the idea that the master craftsman no longer needs the crude tools on which his apprentices must rely; his great skill and experience allow him to measure and level his work by sight. Raimbaut's
equivalent of the carpenter's skill is the sureness of his poetic intention (volers ):
En aital rimeta prima
M'agradon lieu mot e prim
Bastit ses regl'e ses linha,
Pos mos volers s'i apila.
(R d'Aur 2, 1–4)
In such a first-quality little rhyme, I am pleased by light and
fresh words, built without rule or [plumb] line, since my will
inclines toward it.
Like Arnaut, Raimbaut contrasts the delicacy of his project ("lieu mot e prim") with the heavy tools of construction, as if the lightest of these tools (regla,linha ) could damage the finely finished work.
Guilhem de Berguedà makes the same claim, but his mastery exempts him from using even grosser tools. In lines reminiscent of Arnaut Daniel's sonet coind'e leri, Guilhem satirizes the metaphor of the love poet as builder and of poets whose "hearts have wings" yet who carve their words with blunt instruments. Being the "master of the school," Guilhem has no need of the adz and hatchet; in implying that other poets do use these, he compares them not to architects but to clumsy woodcutters who bring rough lumber to the building site:
Cel so qui capol'e dola:
tant soi cuynde e avinen
si que destral ni exola
no·y deman ni ferramen
qu'esters n'a bastidas cen
que maestre de l'escola
so, e am tan finamen
que per pauc lo cor no·m vola.
(Gm Berg 15, 1–8)
I am the one who planes and trims: I am so gracious and pleas-
ing that I do not require an adz or a hatchet, nor other tools,
for I have built a hundred [songs] without them, because I am
the master of the school, and I love in such a refined way that
my heart nearly flies away.
Elsewhere Guilhem de Berguedà develops the expression "sirventes bastir" into a full conceit; the poem as "building" becomes a stronghold, a battle station, that not only protects itself but also shelters the poet during his fight for revenge on its attackers:
Ara voill un sirventes far
tal que, quan l'aurai, bastit
non hai negun tant ardit
enemic no·s posca pensar
que si m'offen qe ja mais fi in patz
aia de me tro qe·n sia venjatz.
(Gm Berg 24, 1–6)
Now I wish to compose a sirventes such that, when I have built
it, there will be no enemy so bold as to be able to think that he
will ever have an end [to war] or peace from me, if he offends
me, until I am avenged.
By 1190, "bastir sirventes" was a cliché for Guilhem de Berguedà: in song 21, Guilhem scarcely pauses to comment on this "building," so intent is he on obtaining patronage "hastily" (astivamen, v. 9):
Un sirventes ai en cor a bastir
que trametrai a·N Sanchon en Espaigna.
(Gm Berg 21, 1–2)
I have it in my heart [mind] to build a sirventes, which I will
transmit to Sir Sancho in Spain.
Already bastir means nothing more than "compose": one cannot "send" a fortress. Raimbaut de Vaqueiras uses the same verb to signal the completion of his "Kalenda maia":
Bastida, finida, N'Engles,
ai l'estampida.
(P.-C. 392, vv. 71–72; cited from Riquer 1975, 839)
Mr. Englishman, I have built, I have finished the estampida .
Although Raimbaut probably chose the verb bastir to draw attention to the artful "construction" of his poem, he is content to leave the term in the realm of the dead metaphor. Estampida is a dance and cannot be "built."
The lasting monuments of the Middle Ages—cathedrals, castles, and towers—were the work of many, sometimes of generations, and there would be no Frank Lloyd Wright to credit with designing the whole and seeing it completed according to his original plans. The metaphor of the poet as builder, too, must be in harmony with medieval ideas on building. Giraut de Bornelh develops the metaphor at length. He first compares the poem to a friendship, then likens both poem and friendship to a tower, built stone by stone until it finally reaches a defensible height. Then battlements can be built, and it can be armed, and the tower—or poem, or friendship—is safe from attack:
E pois auziretz chantador
E chansos anar e venir!
Q'era, can re no sai m'assor,
Me volh un pauc plus enardir
D'enviar no messatge
Que·ns porte nostras amistatz
Que sai n'es facha la meitatz,
Mas de leis no n'ai gatge
E ja no cut si'achabatz
Nuls afars, tro qu'es comensatz.
Qu'eu ai vist acomensar tor
D'una sola peir'al bastir
E cada pauc levar alsor
Tan josca c'om la poc garnir.
Per qu'eu tenh vassalatge
D'aitan, si m'o aconselhatz.
E·l vers, pos er ben assonatz,
Trametrai el viatge,
Si trop qui lai lo·m guit viatz
Ab que·s deport e·s do solatz.
(Gr Bor 40, 41– 60)
And then you will hear singers and songs come and go! For
now, when nothing uplifts me here, I wish to become a little
more courageous to send my messenger, that he might carry
for us our friendship, for here only half of it is made—though I
have no token [down payment] from her, and never, I think,
can any business be completed until it is begun.
For I have seen a tower begun from one single building
block and little by little rise higher until it can be armed.
Therefore I keep this much of chivalry, if you advise it; and the
verse, when it will be well set to music, I will send on the jour-
ney, if I find someone who will guide it there for me quickly,
whom it will amuse and provide with conversation.
If Giraut de Bornelh sends a messenger to "carry for us our friendship," he will surely have it conveyed in the form of a song. But now Giraut is so distressed (nothing "raises" him, v. 43) that he cannot dignify the work in progress with the name of chanso . In better times, he promises, "you will hear the singers and songs come and go." Now it will take more courage to send off his work, for it, like the friendship, is only half-made "here" (i.e., by Giraut): "Que sai n'es facha la meitatz" (v. 47).
The implication is that the other half (meitatz ) will be made lai, there where the addressee is.[7] Since the lady has sent no gatge (surety), no first word as "earnest money" on the song, Giraut can feel justified in sending a mere beginning: someone must lay the first stone. A song, like a friendship, is the work of more than one person. Contrasting the stationary, upward growth of the tower with the song's travel by long relay over time and space, Giraut sends his provisional song as the foundation of a great tower of amistatz, hoping that it will grow higher cada pauc (gradually) until the verse and the friendship together have become as unassailable as the best-armed fortress. Ben assonatz, well fitted with its music, the future poem will be provided with a solid foundation, but its ultimate height has not been limited by its architect.
Poetic "Wholeness": Vers Entiers
The controversy over vers entiers ("entire" or "whole poetry") among Peire d'Alvernhe, Bernart Marti, and other poets of the period bears a close relation to Jaufre Rudel's admonition, "Take care not to break it." The poets discuss "integrity" as a property of poetry itself, of its content, of the jongleur, and even of the poet; they invoke it, disclaim it, accuse others of destroying it, or deny that it can exist. The poems that tell us most about vers entiers and vers frach emphasize the dangers of performance to a song's "wholeness," and they hint at methods by which the poets could, or believed they could, protect it.
When Peire d'Alvernhe claims to be the first to make vers entiers, he also boasts that his song will be understood by posterity.
qu'entendon be aquels c'a venir son
c'anc tro per me no fo faitz vers entiers.
(P d'Alv 11, 3–4; in Paterson 1975, 60)[8]
. . . so that those who are yet to come may fully realize that a
truly whole song was never composed until by me.
(trans. Paterson)
We cannot be sure that he is referring to the "obviously significant moment in literature" announced by Mölk, but we can expect the poem to try to exemplify (and thus help us to define) "whole poetry"—despite an irony of transmission that breaks the poem with a one-line lacuna. Peire "steals from" (Levy 1961, apanar 2) those who practice the trade of poet or jongleur "without an accord that does not get broken along the roadside"; because he has "the bread of poetry" which they lack, other performers must content themselves to be his mere hirelings (apanar 1; cf. apanat ):
Q'ieu tenc l'us e·l pan e·l coutel
de que·m platz apanar las gens
que d'est mestier s'an levat un pairon
ses acordier que no·s rompa·l semdiers.
(P d'Alv 11, 7–10; in Paterson 1975, 60)
For I have the experience and the bread and the knife with
which it pleases me to feed [get the better of] the people who
have raised up a model for themselves in this profession, with-
out recognizing that a task should not be left half-finished.
(trans. Paterson)[9]
The kind of "accord" that befits "this profession" is not a contractual "agreement" or political "harmony" but rather that fitting of motz to son which derivatives of acordar so often signify in troubadour poetry.[10] Travel—that is, transmission—was hard on poems, and Peire evokes the bumpy roads of the time and their hazard to fragile things. The song should be composed for durability in recitation, so that the jongleur can sing it without fits and starts, without changing his mind midword about what word comes next:
C'a un tenen ses mot borrel
deu de dir esser avinens;
quar qui trassaill de Maurin en miron
entre·l mieg faill si no·s pren als ladriers,
com del trebaill quecs motz fatz trezagiers,
qu'en devinaill met l'auzir de maison.
(P d'Alv 11, 13–18; in Paterson 1975, 60)
For at one stretch, without broken words, he should be pleas-
ing in recitation; for he who leaps across from Maurin to
miron falls down in between, if he does not cling to the sides,
as he makes every [rhyme] word the occasion for turmoil, so
that he sets in riddledom the hearing of the house [ maison ].[11]
In lines 15–18, the words maurin,miron, and maion (MS E ) function in two ways: in addition to their semantic value, they represent the near homonyms among which a jongleur must choose correctly in order to make sense. "He who takes a leap between mauri and miro, " if he "falls down midway," will produce a hybrid of vowels and consonants from each word: maio . His poor memory for sound produces an aural riddle.
Peire thinks it best not to hesitate, but to sing without stopping to ponder and blunder (v. 13). Yet this is not an argument for rote memorization; the hesitation among mauri, miro, and maio is the sort of error that would be made by someone who tried to memorize only the sound and could not remember or reproduce the sense. It may also be an argument for reinforcing rhymes: the jongleur should know whether the word ends in -i or in -o and should not try to compromise by singing -io .
The poem is in coblas unissonans, with four internal rhymes. Thus, no rhyme sound is so rarely used that one can forget it; even the internal rhymes, each of which is confined to a single stanza, recur four times in four lines. Perhaps, like Marcabru, Peire believed that the form of coblas unissonans would protect his song from others' detractions, and thought of the repeated rhyme as a way to "bind up the razon in the verse." Peire does derive the proof that his vers is entier from his strict adherence to his argument: "Auia dese con estau a razon" (Hear right now how I stick to the argument; v. 6).
There is no sign, however, that Peire concerns himself with the order of stanzas. Although the modern reader might suppose that a coherent argument must develop its ideas in a necessary order, it is possible that
the troubadours' conception of the razo differs from modern expectations. Perhaps the "argument" consisted of movable parts: one might estar a razo without depending on a particular sequence.
Rather than derive "security in his song" from an exclusionist principle that restricts access to his song, Peire explains his "certainty" with farmers' metaphors:
Q'ie·m sen sertans del mielis qui aqui fon
ensegurans de mon chant e sobriers
ves los baisans e sai que dic, qu'estiers
no vengua·l grans don a trop en sazon.
(P d'Alv 11, 27–30; in Paterson 1975, 60)
For I feel confident about the best that ever was, self-assured
about my song and superior to those on the decline, and I know
what I am saying, for in no other way is the grain forthcoming,
of which there is much in due season.
(trans. Paterson)[12]
Peire attributes the "security" of his song to its abundance, to the fact that the original version (the "seed") is more than sufficient. The biblical parable of the Sower enters the picture, and its application appears to be that the song will "grow" when it is seeded in the "good soil" of audiences and performers who "heed the word." Peire declares himself the "root," "the first" in "finished recitations" ("qu'ieu soi raitz e dic que soi premiers / de digz complitz," vv. 22–23); by emphasizing growth from "root" and "seed" (raitz,grans ), Peire describes the lyric as an organism whose quality depends on its origin and that illustrates the genealogical aphorism of trobar natural that only good trees bring forth good fruit.[13] Peire d'Alvernhe thus, with his talk of "root" and "seed" of "complete poetry," achieves an effect similar to what Pickens observes in Jaufre Rudel's work, where "the erotic movement in the composition, transmission, destination and retransmission of the song associates . . . the spring topos with the topos of the 'seminal word'" (1977, 327).
The "abundance" of Peire's original work, what makes it ric, comes from the creative force of joi: "D'aisi·m sent ric per bona sospeison / qu'en ioi m'afic" (In this respect I feel rich, through a pleasant apprehension that I am fixed in joi ; vv. 38–39). The manuscripts give asic in line 38, from asezer (sit, seat); this makes good enough sense to render emendation unnecessary. "I am seated in joi " would give the same sense of sta-
bility and well-being as m'afic, except that instead of the overtones of being "fixed" or "attached," m'asic has the additional sense of "being set to music."
Sung performance, then, was clearly one of the major considerations in "securing a song" ("ensegurans de mon chant," v. 28), in keeping it "whole." Peire trusts in the reinforcing rhymes of coblas unissonans, as well as in the more than sufficient creative virtue of the original "seed" or "root" song, which should guarantee that the quality of its "offspring" will be as high as its own. Peire d'Alvernhe, today remembered most for his Marcabrunian satire, was known in the thirteenth century for his outstanding melodies. The superiority that he claims in "Sobre·l vieill trobar" was explained by his Provençal biographer as justifiable by the excellence of his musical compositions:
E trobet ben e cantet ben, e fo lo premiers bons trobaire que fon outra mon
et aquel que fez los meillors sons de vers que anc fosson faichs.
(Boutière and Schutz 1964, s.v. "Peire d'Alvernhe")
And he composed poems well and he sang well, and he was the first good
troubadour who went beyond the mountains and the one who made the
best lyric melodies ever made.
In general, Peire seems to rely on large, encompassing structures such as the melody (son, acordier ), the argument (razo ), and the rhyme scheme to keep the song entiers . "Breakage" (frachura ) in details, like the blurring of mauri and miro into maio, he blames on jongleurs' failure to sing consistently ("a un tenen") and thus to ensure meaningful sequences of sounds, rather than on their inability to remember the exact wording of the original composition.
In this way, Peire d'Alvernhe's view of what constitutes the "integrity" of the song—its son, its razo, and its rima (melody, argument, and rhyming)—strongly affirms the view of Jaufre Rudel:
No sap chantar qui so non di
ni vers trobar qui motz no fa
ni connoys de rima quo·s va
si razos non enten en si.
(J Rud 6/1, 1–4)
One cannot [know how to] sing without uttering the melody,
nor compose a poem without making rhymes [words], nor
know how the rhyme goes if he does not comprehend the argu-
ment within himself.
Understanding the razo ensures that one will know "how the rhyme goes," and not vice versa. The need to match rhyme and melody while making sense is the singer's, as well as the poet's, task; the rhyme does not precede the sense but follows it. Otherwise one sings well-rhymed nonsense, the devinaill referred to in Peire's song.
In "D'entier vers far ieu non pes" ("I care not for making 'entire' poems"), Bernart Marti discusses "textual integrity" as the counterpart of personal integrity, challenging Peire d'Alvernhe's boastful song on both levels, at times blending these levels. Even his own songs, Bernart admits, are not "whole," although he himself has not made "breaks" in them: "D'entier vers far ieu non pes / ni ges de frag non faria" (I am not thinking of making a "whole" song, nor would I make a broken one; B Mar 5, 1–2). Bernart denies that he, as the "original composer" of a song, could presume to claim the high perfection that entier implies; nonetheless, his songs' distance from that perfection does not brand them vers frag . He also does not blame others for whatever flaws might be found in his songs: transmission neither corrects their imperfections nor creates new "breakage." He composes two or three songs each year, he says, "et on plus sion asses / entier ni frag no son mia" (5, 5–6). In this context, asses may again mean "set to music" (from asezer ): "the more they are set to music, the more they are neither whole nor broken."[14]
Bernart interweaves personal criticisms of Peire d'Alvernhe—his "sin of pride," his disloyalty to monastic vows—with criticism of presumptuous aesthetic claims; the language of secular poetry, he insists, is a fallen language that can no more aspire to perfect "wholeness" than men can aspire to the "wholeness" that preceded original sin:
E so quez entier non es,
ni anc no fo, cum poiria?
Fols horn leu so cujaria
que chans melhs entrebesques,
qu'om de vanetat fezes
entiers ni frags non seria.
(B Mar 5, 13–18)
And that which is not "whole," nor ever was, how could it be-
come ["whole"]? A foolish man might easily believe that he
could weave the song better, but whatever a man might make
out of vanity would not be either "whole" or "broken."
Here, Bernart criticizes the vanity of the reviser: if a song never was "whole," and is not "whole," how can its "wholeness" be restored? "The fool might think he could weave the song better" (v. 16), perhaps better than the original poet made it. However, the works of vanity are flawed by their own motive; they cannot even be "broken" because the word implies a preexisting "wholeness."
Bernart also appears to recommend a division of labor between poets and musical composers; this supports my reading of the first stanza, where the phrase "on plus sion asses" (the more they are set to music) represents the time when the song leaves the poet's jurisdiction and becomes the work of others.
De far sos novelhs e fres,
so es bella maistria
e qui belhs motz lass'e lia,
de belh'art s'es entremes;
mas non cove q'us disses
que de tot n'a senhoria.
(B Mar 5, 73–78)
To make new and fresh melodies—that is a beautiful craft to
master, and he who laces up and binds beautiful words has in-
volved himself in a beautiful art; but it is not suitable that one
man should say that he holds dominion over all.
The making of a song requires the blending of two arts, the maistria of melodic composition and the belh'art of "tying and binding fine rhymes," but no one can claim absolute supremacy in both. Again, Bernart's comment indicates that a "whole" song would, ideally, create a perfect bond between the motz and the son . This responds to Peire's claim of superiority over others in his trade whose "acordier . . . se romp'al semdier."
Bernart also reminds Peire that he cannot keep constant vigil over transmission: he cannot spread his own praises over the countryside by himself, and it would be a disgrace if he tried to do so:
Pro sap e ben es apres
qui so fay que ben estia
et es mager cortezia
que sos laus es pels paës
per autruy que per el mes,
qu'ab pobol par vilania.
(B Mar 5, 67–73)
He knows enough and is well educated, he who makes a mel-
ody that may suit; and it is a greater courtly refinement that his
praise is spread through the countries by others than himself,
for among the population, baseness appears.
This stanza includes a backhanded compliment to Peire's musical compositions: it is enough that he "makes a melody that is perfectly adequate" (ben estia ). Peire should allow others to "spread his praises"—that is to say, he should leave the making of vers to others and stick to what he does best, the son . Among country audiences, the courtly song may acquire some new vilania that would wound its author's sensibility; he had better stay home. Bernart mentions the peasant audience to deflate Peire's lofty claim to have achieved the aesthetic ideal of "wholeness."
Time and performance leave songs neither "untouched" nor "broken"; they are mended as often as they are rearranged by other hands, other voices. Bernart laughs at the claim of absolute and personal control (seignoria ): once a song is known, it no longer belongs to its creator, and recreators share the credit (laus ) for making it, or the discredit (vilania ) for unmaking it.
Giraut de Bornelh uses Bernart's own argument to refute him: Bernart denies the poet's right to boast of his songs, since once they enter the public domain they may only distantly resemble his original productions. Giraut argues that, on the contrary, these conditions leave the poet at liberty to praise his own songs as loudly as if they had been made by another. A song's virtues are intrinsic in it and not conditional on the hearer's acquaintance (or identity) with the author:
S'es chantars ben entendutz
e s'ofris pretz e valor,
per qu'es lach de trobador,
desque sos chans er saubutz
qu'el eis en sia lauzaire?
Que be pareis al retraire
si·lh n'eschai blasmes o laus.
(Gr Bor 62, 1–7)
If a song is well planned, and offers in itself value and worth,
then why is it unbecoming in a troubadour, after his song is
known, that he himself be its praiser? For it is quite apparent
at the performance whether blame or praise redounds to him
because of it.
Giraut further clarifies the process of disjunction between the poem and its original author. A song may have an excellent author and yet come to a bad end (as Bernart Amoros later pointed out) because the jongleurs squabble over distorted versions of what was once a good poem by a good troubadour—just as the shrill grackle and the screaming peacock squabble over which of them produces the superior cacophony:
Lo vers auzitz e mogutz
coma de bo trobador
pois reverti en error,
lo chans can er' asaubutz,
c'us s'en fazia clamaire
dels dichs don altr'era laire,
corn fetz de la gralha·l paus.
(Gr Bor 62, 29–35)
The verse is heard and "moved"[15] as the work of a good trou-
badour; later, the song turns back into error when it becomes
known, for one man makes himself the claimant of verses an-
other man stole, just as the peacock does [complains] against
the grackle.
In "un vers que volh far leuger" (a poem that I want to make light), Giraut turns Peire d'Alvernhe's notion of "textual integrity" upside down: poetry too pure to be shared by all never achieves its full potential value:
Be·l saupra plus cobert far;
mas non a chans pretz enter
can tuch no·n son parsoner.
(Gr Bor 4, 8–10)
I could easily have made it more obscure; but a song does not
have its full worth when all are not sharers in it.
That Giraut intends this to be paradoxical is clear from his description of the aristocratic pretz enter as something to be found even in the voice of a hoarse servant who has gone to fetch well water:
Qui que·s n'azir, me sap bo,
can auch dire per contens
mo sonet rauquet e clar
e l'auch a la fon portar.
(Gr Bor 4, 11–14)
No matter who is angered by it, I savor it when I hear my song
sung in rivalry, both hoarse and clear, and hear it carried to the
wellspring.
The kind of "sharing" to which Giraut refers is access not only to the understanding of poetry but to its performance as well. He draws on the idea of the fon as a source of inspiration; even the lowliest performer who "takes the song to the wellspring" will contribute new lines to it, will recast and recreate its imperfect passages, will "refresh" it.
Peire d'Alvernhe, in 1170, calls Giraut's music "thin and sad," "the song of an old woman with a bucket." Answering Giraut's idea of integrity through communality, and at the same time replying to Bernart Marti's attacks, Peire defends the poet's personal responsibility for his song and (with a touch of comedy) returns pretz to a matter of beauty and not politics. The poet's "vanity," so disparaged by Bernart Marti, is quite suitable by comparison with the vanity of the "viella porta-seill" who dares try her voice at the canso . As Peire pictures for 5s the old bucket woman donning the persona of the canso 's poet/lover and gazing into the mirror, the reflection we glimpse is of a burlesque Giraut in drag; the typical modesty of the lover is transformed into the old woman's comment on her beauty ("not worth an eglantine"):
Q'es chans de viella porta-seill
que si·s mirava en espeill
no·s prezari'un alguilen.
(P d'Alv 12, 16–18)
For it is the song of an old woman, a bucket carrier, who, if she
saw herself reflected in a mirror, would not value herself worth
an eglantine.[16 ]
Can such a performer confer pretz enter on a song, when her own pretz is "hardly worth a suck"? Peire makes uproarious fun of Giraut's faith in literary partnership with humble folk ("can tuch en son parsoner"). The beauty of "carrying the song to the wellspring" is lost on a singer who would use even the fons Bandusiae for dishwater. She is the antithesis of the powerful lady whom the canso honors, and who in turn does honor to the canso by learning to sing it. Peire lets the bucket woman stand as the disheveled Muse of Giraut's aesthetic democracy, capable of frank self-judgment but unlikely to beautify a song.
In this exchange, then, it would appear that Giraut's views on textual integrity—comparable to those he expressed in the tenso with Raimbaut d'Aurenga over trobar clus versus trobar leu —concern accessibility or exclusivity to the performer, not just to the listener. This is consistent with other ideas Giraut defends: the initial composition of a song as the first stone in a tower "only half-built here" and completed through a long process of interchange, and the idea that a poet can no longer take full credit for his works once they enter the public domain. Peire d'Alvernhe, if he heard the tenso, would probably have sided with Raimbaut d'Aurenga: rauquet or enraumatz, a vilain is more likely to damage a song than to improve it.
"Dry Verse"
In "Cantarai d'aquestz trobadors," Peire d'Alvernhe criticizes Giraut above all for his dryness: "e sembla rare sec al soleil" (and he resembles a dry wineskin in the sun). The troubadours appear to associate dryness with a sort of insincerity or inconstancy: Peire Vidal brings alive the double meaning of pics (woodpecker; or, as adj., piebald, black and white; changing, inconstant), suggesting that the dryness, or untrustworthiness, of the woodpecker comes from the fact that he has "his mouth full of garbage":
Et es assatz plus secs que pics
e non pretz tot quant elh retrai
sa boca plena d'orrethai.
(P Vid 25, 82–83)
And he is somewhat more dry than a woodpecker, and I do
not deem valuable all that he reports [with] his mouth full of
garbage.
Raimbaut d'Aurenga associates the dry with the deaf: "Car sabran li sec e·il sort . . ." (For dry men and deaf men will know . . .). Sec describes an interference with entendre in both senses, deflecting intention as well as understanding.
Alegret's vers sec turns on a rime équivoque that reappears in the first line of each stanza; the refrain word sec, one of the "dos motz ab divers sens" (two words with varying meanings), sets equivocation itself as the theme for some stanzas—equivocation, hypocrisy, insincerity.[17] The mal sec that afflicts Larguetatz in lines 22–25 seems harmless, creeping up, imperceptible to the hearing, sight, and touch until it suddenly "skins and plucks" its victim. Dry people promise more than they accomplish:
Aqill son dinz e defor sec
escas de fag e larc de ven
e pagan home de nien.
(Alegret, "Ara pareisson ll'aubre sec"
[P.-C. 17,2], 29–31; in Riquer 1975, 239)
These people are dry inside and out, stingy with deeds and
generous with wind, and they pay a man with nothing.
They are "windbags" (larc de yen ). The association of sec with contract breaking or "paying with nothing" leads into a suggestion of stinginess: "Joven vei false flac e sec / c'a pauc de cobeitat no fen" (I see Youth so false and weak and dry that it nearly bursts with coveting; vv. 15–16). The natural "dry trees" of the opening lines, in their setting of wintry fog and lightless or "unclear weather" (vv. 1–4), become the biblical dry trees that can bear no fruit, just as "malvatz horn no poc esser valen" (a bad man cannot become worthy; vv. 13–14). This theme appears in numerous sirventes, including Marcabru's challenge to Alegret:
Alegretz, fols, en qual guiza
cujas far d'avol valen
ni de gonella camiza?
(Mcb 11, 65–67)
Alegret, you madman, by what trick do you expect to make
the base into the worthy, or trousers into a shirt?
For Alegret, "dryness" or equivocation is despicable in every situation but one: it is avol for youth, liberality, patronage, and love, yet valen as a device of versification, of rhyme and wordplay. His entire poem turns on
the shifting meanings of the word sec; while denouncing shifty people, it celebrates the shifty style.
Alegret anticipates objection to his vers sec, and his challenge to its detractors focuses on defending the style rather than the moral content of the song. Non-saben (know-nothings) who equate sec with avol might also equate vers sec with vers avol . But the listener must "double his understanding": Alegret is willing to prove, by fistfight if necessary, that he is too good a poet to blunder. He "foams up" the words on purpose:
Hueymais fenirai mon vers sec,
e parra pecx al non saben
si no·i dobla l'entendemen,
q'ieu sui cell que·ls mots escuma
e sai triar los auls dels avinentz;
e si fols ditz qu'aissi esser non dec,
traga s'enan, qu'Alegretz n'es guirens.
Si negus es del vers contradizens,
fassa·s'enan, q'eu dirai per que·m lec
metr' en est vers dos motz ab divers sens.
(Alegret [P.-C. 17,2], 50–59; in Riquer 1975, 240)
Now I will finish my dry poem, and it will appear stupid to a
know-nothing if he does not double the interpretation, for I
am he who foams up the rhymes, and I know how to separate
the bad ones from the suitable ones; and if a fool says that it
should not be this way, let him come forward, for Alegret is its
protector.
If anyone is a contradictor of the poem, let him come for-
ward, for I will tell why I allow myself to set in this poem two
words with various meanings.
Alegret's repeated request that his critic "come forward" suggests a challenge to combat, but it may be that instead Alegret wishes him to "contradire lo ver" in some form of public debate. One possibility is that the "fool" who "says that it should not be this way" would be charged to recite the poem as he believes it should be, the "counterversion" qualifying him as contradizens .
The poet, too, is a "dry tree" that puts forth no rhetorical flowers when he lacks the "sap" of inspiration: a troubadour may be sec when he cannot "express" his complaint in poetic flowers and leaves. It is this
blocking of expression that Peire d'Alvernhe struggles to overcome in the sirventes "Belh m'es qu'ieu fass' oimais un vers":
si que flurisc e bruelh defors
so que dedins mi gragelha.
(P d'Alv 15, 7–8)
So that what grumbles within me may bloom and leaf out,
outwardly.
In this poem, sec is the final blow in a long accumulation of adjectives denouncing those who "fan que quascus aprent un quec" (bring it about that each of them should learn something or other). What the dry people have tried to learn, the "un quec" in question, is a song; Peire lets us know this by describing the results of this education as a parody of genuine creativity. The real troubadour, when he makes a new song, "nais e cresc e bruoill" (is born and grows and bushes out), his words blossoming like spring branches. But for these low-born "degenerates," "volpillos, blau d'enveja, sec" (negligent, white with envy, dry; v. 38), the excitement of "learning un quec " causes them to break out in boils:
fan que quascus aprent un quec
don nays e bruelha·l pustelh.
(P d'Alv 15, 39–40)
They arrange that each one may learn a [little] something,
from which cause a boil is born and leafs out.
Peire's comment on Giraut's "dryness," then, may include both reproof of his populism (suggesting that the uninspired and vulgar can mimic but never invent good poetry) and a response to Giraut's claims for the refreshment of the public fountain. The "dry-wineskin" poet may hear his songs "carried to the wellspring," but the Muses' wineskin is empty, and likely to be refilled with the commonest water.
Giraut's answer to the criticism of resembling "a dry wineskin in the sun" (or perhaps part of what provoked that criticism) comes in his "Leu chansonet'e vil" ("Light little song and lowly"), a poem composed especially to be sent to Alvernhe (al Dalfi [to the Dauphin], though, and not to Peire):
Car ges aiga de vi
no fetz Deus al manjar
ans se volc esalzar
e fetz esdevenir
d'aiga qu'er ans
pois vi per melhs grazir.
(Gr Bor 48, 15–20)
For not at all did God make water from wine at the feast, but
rather he wished to exalt himself, and he caused what was for-
merly water to become wine, the better to confer grace.
Sharing with the public the "wine of poetry," by the same token, does not instantly convert it to water. The poet who wishes to "s'esalzar" and "melhs grazir" should follow the example of Christ, and having transformed something common (ordinary language, water) into something precious (a song, wine), he should distribute it freely in proportion as the original substance was plentiful. Rarity and expensiveness, says Giraut, do not guarantee excellence in a song; the troubadour's work is a craft, not a parade of furs and jewels. This is his objection to trobar car and ric ("rare" and "rich poetry"): a craftsman cannot sharpen his tools on a sable cape (a symbol of lavish payment for poetry, as well as of "soft" poetry) even if he has received such "rich" compensation for "rich" work:
E qui de fort fozil
no vol coltel tochar
ja no·l cut afilar
en un mol sembeli.
(Gr Bor 48, 11–14)
And anyone who is unwilling to strike his knife on a strong
whetstone certainly can never expect to sharpen it on a soft
sable.
For Giraut, the general public is the strongest "whetstone" (fort fozil ) for a poem, and their "sharpening" a better recompense for the poet than furs and other wealth.
Writing and Monumentalism: Some Modern and Medieval Views
Concern for the preservation of one's works has no doubt changed in character since the Middle Ages. For the modern author, "preserving" one's
works means supervising one's publisher. The poet studies the typesetter's proof sheets, requests fine paper and sewn binding to improve the durability of the book, campaigns for wide distribution, and finally buys up all the unsold copies to save them from being "pulped." One must, if possible, issue a Collected Poems late in life, to make sure one's best work, at least, does not go out of print before it has time to become a classic.
Air and stone (or the voice and the inscription) as two opposing media for poetry have long fascinated poets who could look back on the durable literature of antiquity, or of the nearer past. Aware of composing in sound rather than in printer's lead, the modern poet often seems to envy by turns the immortality of stones and the immortality of the nightingale. Basil Bunting, a poet who destroys his "imperfect" works, appears to distrust the printed word as sufficiently permanent to preserve the poems he has chosen to publish: "Pens are too light / Take a chisel to write" (1978, 41).
In "Briggflatts," Bunting's metaphor of the poet as stonecutter makes the analogue of the poem the ultimate monument: the tombstone. Yet other works are ambivalent: Bunting describes the words of his "Ode 33: To Anne Porter" as "a peal after / the bells have rested" (1978, 106). Robinson Jeffers with optimism compared poets to "stonecutters fighting time with marble": the "foredefeated" and "cynical" builders, like the poet who "builds his monuments mockingly," underestimate the power of stones and poems to weather the fall of civilizations (1925, 249). These poets come late in a long tradition of monumentalism. Shakespeare calls it a "miracle" "that in black ink my love may still shine bright" (Sonnets 65, 14), yet expects no less than that miracle: "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments / of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme" (Sonnets 55, 1–2). Horace, who could perhaps count on readers who read aloud, insisted that verse could be both permanent and alive. The dance measures he had transformed into a metal harder than bronze, making of them a "monument," could still escape oblivion through oral performance: dicar (I will be recited; Odes 3.30). The Occitan troubadours appear to be much more interested in "gathering from the air a live tradition"[18] and, having shaped it into song, returning it "alive" to the air it came from. Peire d'Alvernhe asks a viscount to do what he will with his song, "but please do not keep it silent" (e que no·i l'en teigna nec; Zenker 1901, 798). Pons de la Guardia hopes his song will find favor so that "it will be sung in many a good place" thereafter.[19] All the troubadours' ref-
erences to memorization and relay point to the idea that circulation in performance meant more to these poets than did scrupulous control over the precise words to be sung. Poetry was the "air they breathed," not their graveyard.
Instead of fussing over manuscripts, the troubadours fuss over performance, believing perhaps that one's songs were sufficiently preserved if they remained alive, regenerating themselves with each new recitation. The poet-as-phoenix has no need of a "well wrought urn" for his ashes:
Plus que ja fenis fenics
non er q'ieu non si'amics.
(R d'Aur 4, 64–65)
No more than the phoenix was ever finished will I ever stop
being your friend.
The persona of the lover, as well as something of the poet behind it, revives with each new voice taking up the song:
Amiga, tant vos sui amics
q'az autras paresc enemics
e vuelh esser en vos Fenics
qu'autra jamais non amarai
et en vos m'amor fenirai.
(P Vid 35, 90–94)
My friend, I am so much your friend that I seem an enemy to
other women, and I wish to be a phoenix in you, for I will
never love another and in you I will complete my love.
Both of these passages, the first from Raimbaut d'Aurenga and the second from Peire Vidal, are tornadas —the usual location for poets' comments on the song itself and its destiny. The simplest interpretation, in each case, is that the poet's amiga, like Peire Rogier's patronesses, will learn the song and thus "resuscitate" the voice of the poet. Peire Vidal's use of the phoenix occurs at the end of his last datable song (1204–1207; Avalle 1960, 286), but even a young poet might enjoy the prospect of "being a phoenix in" the memorizing patron's voice.
Rigaut de Berbezilh, in "Atressi com l'orifans" ("Just like the elephant"), wishes he were artful enough to transform his song into something perfectly artless. If he could "contrafar fenis" (36–37), this self-
immolation would destroy the "voice" of the "controlling poet" and would thus free the song of all its artifice, indeed of its very words. The song would live again as pure emotive utterance (sighs and tears) in the addressee's safekeeping:
e mos fals ditz messongiers e truans
resorsera en sospirs e en plors
la on beutatz e iovenz e valors
es . . .
(R Berb 2, 40–43)
And my false speech, lying and truant, will rise again in sighs
and in tears, there where beauty and youth and worth are . . .
The troubadours seem to have been conscious of a phenomenon we can observe retrospectively in the chansonniers . To transmit a song is to transform it: a single poem, both by rearrangement of stanzas and by abundance of variants in detail, comes down to us in a great many avatars. The lyric "phoenix" could take many different shapes, emerging into each new life with its structure significantly altered.
In summary, we have no reason to suppose—and good reason not to suppose—that literary self-consciousness, or a need to make salable commodities of their works, or even concern for reputation and posterity, should have compelled troubadour poets to commit their works to parchment. All of these motives can be satisfied independently of writing. The troubadours developed a different kind of monumentalism from that which depends on printed publication and copyright—a monumentalism no less flattering to the self-conscious poet, no less profitable, and no less concerned with posterity. Each new learner of a song speaks partly with the voice of the original poet and partly with his own voice: he can use the poem for fame or for profit, he can teach it to singers of another generation, and he can tell or withhold the name of the original poet:
E diga·l can l'aura apres
qui que s'en vuelha azautar.
E si hom li demanda qui l'a fag, pot dir que sel que sap be far
totas fazendas can se vol.
(R d'Aur 24, 40–43)
And let him recite it, when he has learned it, anyone who
wishes to embellish it. And if someone asks him who com-
posed it, he can say it was that man who knows how to create
all kinds of things when he wants to.
A system of transmission that depended primarily on sung performance could not satisfy a desire for letter-perfect transmission comparable to that of Scripture, or of modern printed poetry. But as I have shown, that type of literalism runs counter to the predominant spirit of troubadour song.