Six—
Nature Enclosed:
The "Closed" Style and the "Natural" Poetics
I have shown in Part One that leu, as a stylistic term, often stands as an abbreviation for leu ad aprendre, "easy to learn." Long believed to be the master categories from which all other troubadour styles formed, trobar leu and trobar clus have remained an enigmatic pair, so that specific knowledge about one term demands application to the supposed antonym. Can trobar clus, then, also take one of its meanings from the process of memorization and transmission? Is vers clus "hard to learn"? One of Raimbaut d'Aurenga's most complex songs announces itself as chanson leu, and the poet apologizes for his choice of style as a concession to his audience. Greu (heavy, difficult) is the usual antonym for leu, but in a variant the term clus appears:
IKNN2 d and y : pos vers plus greu
son fer al faz
since more difficult poems are hard for the fool
A: pos vers clus greu
fan sorz dels fatz
(R d'Aur 18, 5–6)[1]
since difficult, closed poems make deaf men of fools
Fools are deaf to "hard" verses, and especially to "closed" ones. What they do not hear, they can neither understand nor memorize; thus, al-
though the passage does situate the opposition leu/clus within the context of performance, it specifies the most fundamental level of "closure," precluding reception itself.
When we think of "closed poetry" in the context of transmission, we might expect something that "excludes" part of its potential audience by restricting who may hear it, who can understand it, or who can learn and retransmit it. Or a poem might "close itself" by "drawing to a close," declaring itself "entire" or "complete" and admitting no further lines of verse, no new strophes. Its lines might interlock, shutting out revisions: in this case, poems whose stanzas are linked would be more "closed" than coblas unissonans, since linked stanzas restrict transposition. And yet, because they serve as a mnemonic aid, linked stanzas make a song plus leu ad aprendre, "easier to learn."
Without the tenso between Giraut de Bornelh and Raimbaut d'Aurenga, the most famous discussion of the term trobar clus, scholars would never have supposed that there was, around 1170, an important "controversy" on the subject. The term is much rarer than other stylistic terms such as ric, car, prim, and plan ; even the tenso itself appears to abandon the subject, ending apparently with trobar natural and trobar ric .[2] Yet if we follow where the concept of "closure" leads Giraut and "Linhaure" (Rambaut's nickname, "Golden Line") as they circle around the concept and apply it in various ways, their dialogue shows that it can stand for some of the major obsessions and unsolved problems of their developing art.[3] The tenso does not debate trobar clus as a technical "style"; rather, it debates the value of closure, and its stylistic implications, within the system of "publication" available in 1170.
The word prezatz (valued, prized) occupies the same pivotal position in each poet's opening statement (vv. 5 and 12); the poets concur in choosing as their issue the question of where poetry gets its value. Does its worth come from the poem's making or from what the public makes of it? Is aesthetic valor inherent, or can it be acquired? The poets first set the issue in a political context (strs. 1–2); the resulting opposition forms the basis for their dispute about the rewards of song (strs. 3–4) and the poet's right to restrict transmission (strs. 5–6); each poet then proposes a standard for the legitimation of style (strs. 7–8). Raimbaut plays the reactionary. Trobar clus, the feudal style, must defend its birthright of hierarchical value against the rising threat of a style that Raimbaut calls "comunal": when all are equal, there will be no "good" poems because no poems will be called "bad":
aisso·m digatz
si tan prezatz
so que es a totz comunal
car adonc tut seran egual.
(R d'Aur 31, 4–7)
Tell me why, if you value so highly that which is common to
all—for then all will be equal.
For Raimbaut, communality meant abolishing the stratification that creates value by comparison. The structure he attacks in these first lines bears some resemblance to the communes, the beginning of organization among bourgeois tradesmen: "In feudal society the oath of aid and 'friendship' had figured from the beginning as one of the main elements of the system. But it was an engagement between inferior and superior, which made one the subject of the other. The distinctive feature of the communal oath, on the other hand, was that it united equals " (M. Bloch 1961, 355). Raimbaut—who had been paying homage to the count of Toulouse since the age of ten (1154), receiving homage since the age of thirteen (1157), and pawning castles since the age of seventeen (1161) for the cash he needed to fulfill his lordly obligations—was in no position to approve of anything "communal," whether in property or in poetry.[4] Pattison indicates the communes as a probable source of stress to Raimbaut, citing more than a dozen of these "independent city corporations" organized between 1109 and 1157 in Avignon, Arles, Nice, the region of Béziers, and, closest of all to home, in Montpellier, near Raimbaut's cloth-producing domains of Miraval and Omelas: "The commune of Montpellier revolted against its lord in 1142 and sustained a two years' war," according to Pattison (1952, 16–17).[5] Raimbaut's titles and responsibilities commit him to social inequality; in poetry, recognizing a parallel inequality, he distinguishes between those "good at" judging poetry and those who trample it underfoot.[6] This inequality of good sense, independent of social rank, favors "good people, both great and small":
Giraut, non voill q'en tal trepeil
Torn mos trobars, que ja oguan
Lo lauzo·l bo e·l pauc e·l gran.
(R d'Aur 31, 15–17)
Giraut, I do not want my poetry turned to such noise, for
never again would good people, both great and small, praise it.
Guilhem IX was able to joke about such "equality," attributing it to his rhymes, as if the "goods" he manufactured had a social order of their own; in this way he converted the guildsman's "fighting words" into the literary man's harmless metrical terms:
Del vers vos dic que mais ne vau
qui be l'enten ni plus l'esgau
que·l mot son faitz tug per egau
comunalmens .
(Gm IX 7, 37–40)
Concerning the poem, I tell you that it is worth more to him
who understands it well and enjoys it better, for the rhymes
are all created equal, communally.
Guilhem confidently entrusts his poem to performers and audiences who will "increase its value" by "understanding" and "enjoying" it; both entendre and esgauzir may describe the activity of a recreating performer as well as of an appreciative public.[7] Guilhem's confidence in his song derives from its structure. Its strength in organization, the words formed like a community unto themselves, will ensure that its worth improves in proportion to the abilities of its hearers.
Although Raimbaut values an understanding audience, he sees the worth of the poem as independent from its reception. Audiences are either "good" or "foolish," without intermediate ratings; "the good" would withdraw their praise if the poet made any concession to los fatz (the fools), who will never praise his poems or, if poetry were subject to common vote, "approve them."[8]
Giraut sees the absurdity in making laws for poetry, and denies any wish for a uniform aesthetics that effaces individual style:
. . . no·m coreill
si qecs s'i trob' a son talan.
(R d'Aur 31, 8–9)
I do not object if each man composes according to his wish.
Giraut argues, then, that his aesthetic democracy does not prescribe equality among poets, or sameness in composition; it merely places all audiences on an equal footing. Giraut's own judgment cedes to the public evaluation:
Mas eu son jujaire d'aitan
Qu'es mais amatz
E plus prezatz
Qui·l fa levet e venarsal.
(R d'Aur 31, 10–13)
But I am a judge to this extent: that it is better loved and more
highly valued if one composes it to be light and popular.
To enforce the contrast in their views, Giraut describes the style he favors with a word that would in many contexts condemn it: venarsal, usually translated as "low, common," is a drawn-out form of venal and suggests availability in the marketplace as well as, perhaps, indiscreet loquacity.[9] Taking the stance of the bourgeois artisan or merchant to counter Rimbaut's advocacy of poetic feudalism, Giraut affirms that poetry "must have a market." The poet may compose as he washes, but the value of his work is determined by public acclaim.
What is more, according to Giraut, poetry must be available indiscriminately both to distributors and to their "market" of willing audiences, if it is to be "rewarding." Riquer glosses captal as "remuneration" in this passage:
A que trobatz
si non vos platz
c'ades o sapchon tal e cal?
Que chans non port'altre cabtal.
(R d'Aur 31, 25–28)
Why do you compose if it does not please you that any So-and-
so can learn it quickly? For song carries no other reward.
Giraut, sol que·l miels appareil
e·l dig'ades e·l trag'enan,
mi non cal sitot no s'espan.
C'anc granz viutatz
non fon denhtatz
per so prez'om plus aur que sal
e de tot chant es atretal.
(R d'Aur 31, 29–35)
Giraut, as long as I prepare it as well as possible, and recite it
without hesitation and bring it forward [to public attention], I
do not care if it does not spread. For great baseness was never
deemed valuable: for this reason people value gold more than
salt, and it is the same with all songs.
The poet's "reward" is the sole possession of a song that he has prepared to the best of his ability (miels aparelhar ) and has performed before an audience (dir, tragar enan ). When Raimbaut claims to be indifferent "if the song does not spread," he takes an extreme stance advocating "closed" performance; a song that "non s'espan" (literally, "does not spread") may never be heard again. "Expansion" refers to the widening influence of a song in public circulation and to its "amplification" by other performers. According to Raimbaut, these effects of popularity can never increase the original quality of composition. Raimbaut deprecates the term amatz (loved) with which Giraut had set the standard for pretz (value), by making viutatz (commonness) its abstract counterpart; Giraut's aesthetics, he implies, depends on the subjective judgment of the vilain rather than on intrinsic excellence. He replaces Giraut's equation of amatz and prezatz with the equation of prezatz (valued) and denhtatz (dignified): to "judge a song worthwhile" is better praise than "to love" it.
Giraut's reply, in the sixth strophe, has been read as an "admission of defeat," which might be paraphrased, "Linhaure, you are the expert; my own songs are fit only for hoarse singers and not for noblemen." In fact, Giraut continues to defend amor as the criterion of aesthetic value and mocks the "dignity" of Raimbaut's closed circuit. He exaggerates his alarm: "Etz tis amans contrarian, / e per o si n'ai mals d'affan" (You are an argumentative perfect lover, and for that reason I am even more shocked; vv. 37–38). In calling Raimbaut "fis amans contrarian," he compliments his opponent as a "debating theoretician of lyric poetry"; at the same time, he draws attention to Raimbaut's disavowal of amor, the first premise of their genre. Giraut insists: given a choice between making his songs amatz and having them appreciated as denhtatz, he prefers indignity—as long as everyone may sing them:
Mos sos levatz
c'us enraumatz
lo·m deissazec e·l diga mal
que no·l deing ad home sesal.
(R d'Aur 31, 39–42)
Lift up my song: let a stager with a cold garble it and sing it
badly, for I do not deem it worthy of the tax collector.[10 ]
Hearing the distorted rendition of the ordinary man, even one who sounds as if he had a bad cold, is preferable, for Giraut, to reserving the song for "the taxable man" (home sesal ). Worth, Giraut implies, is not synonymous with wealth.
Trobar Natural
The last exchange of the tenso (strs. 7–8) appears to evade the issue of trobar clus, each poet reluctant to upset the cordial relation of guest and host by carrying his argument to the point of offending the other. Yet in these last stanzas, each poet again aligns himself with a particular kind of poetry. It is not immediately obvious whether in these stanzas the poets are extending the ideas they have expressed up to this point or are now reversing their original positions. What is clear is that they are attempting to define the relation between trobar clus and the "closure" implied by other stylistic terms—trobar natural and trobar ric .
That Raimbaut appeals to the authority of Guilhem IX, in lines 43–49, is easy to see; what he means by connecting the vers de dreyt nien with trobar natural (and both with trobar clus ), is not. Perhaps the key is in the term natural itself, in the associations it calls up here and in other contexts of the time. Both Raimbaut and Guilhem claim ignorance of their "birth":
Raimbaut: Non sai de que·ns anam parlan,
ni don fui natz
si soi torbatz
tan pes d'un fin joi natural.
(R d'Aur 31, 45ndash;48)
I don't know what we were talking about, nor from whence I
was born, I am so confused, since I think so much about a per-
fect, natural joi .
Guilhem: Non sai en qual hora·m fui natz . . .
(Gm IX 4, 7)
I don't know in what hour I was born . . .
Raimbaut's and Guilhem's "forgetfulness of their birth" indicates extreme disorientation. Raimbaut has forgotten who his parents were, and Guilhem does not know how old he is. To "forget one's birth" is to renounce one's orientation in time, place, and the social order, as well as all
one's possessions. Natura, in the charters, meant family and referred to birthright; when title to a castle was transferred, so were the "men and women who were natural to it"—that is, the bondsmen born there. A formula for donations to the Templars was to give "tot quant eu devia aver per paire ni per maire ni per natura" (all that I should have had through [my] father or through mother or through nature), and one young man, whose father had disinherited him by such a donation, and who had attempted to recapture a castle by force, had to swear that neither he "ne nuls om de sa natura" (nor anyone of his family) would force the castle again.[11] Even when natura refers simply to species (e.g., Mcb 2, 28: "seguon la natura del ca," according to the nature of a dog) it insists on origin and lineage, on the privileges and obligations one has been born to rather than deserved or learned. Natura, then, is the essence of "history, narration, genealogy."[12] Yet fin joi natural, as Raimbaut d'Aurenga uses the term in the tenso, disrupts the sense of the past that natura stands for:
Non sai de que·ns anam parlan
ni don fui natz
si soi torbatz
tan pes d'un fin joi natural
can d'als cossir, no m'es coral.
(R d'Aur 31, 45–49)
I don't know what we were talking about, nor from whence I
was born, I am so confused. I think so much about a perfect
natural joi that when I think about something else, my heart
isn't in it.
Thus fin joi natural, obliterating memory, is the antithetical substitute for natura, rather than nature's counterpart in poetry.
One might question Raimbaut's seriousness in alleging fin joi natural as an excuse for discontinuity, either in genealogy or in discourse. This is not the voice of the fis amans contrarian —the good debater of lyric theory—who has just criticized "equality" and expressed the wish that his song "no torn' en trepeil" (not be stampeded). Raimbaut may be mimicking some poets who, in the name of "natural" inspiration or "song that moves from the heart" ("can d'als cossir, no m'es coral "), compose songs in which there is no necessary continuity in the razo, no "memory" of what was said in preceding stanzas, and thus no sequence. Raimbaut, as a practitioner of what Ghil (1979) calls "tropeic development," could be
pretending to yield (or default in) the debate by adopting the more common "topic development," where it makes no difference which of the conventions one has already activated and there is no need to remember (see discussion in Chapter 4 above).
L. T. Topsfield came to the conclusion that two types of poets, the "reflective poets such as Marcabru and Peire d'Alvernhe and courtly poets such as Bernart de Ventadorn," interpret the word naturals in nearly opposite ways (1974, 1157). His synopsis of the many meanings of natura and the adjective derived from it does not attempt to explore denotations the troubadours might have borrowed from Latin rhetorics: "The two primary meanings of naturals in medieval Provençal are 'conforming to the order which exists in nature' or 'conforming to the particular character of each species, including the human race and its subdivisions, e.g. the feudal ruler, the loyal lover, the good and the wicked.' Since naturals refers to the innate individual quality of a person, it has many nuances of meaning" (p. 1154n. 11). But after Roncaglia's study of the term, especially in " 'Trobar clus'—discussione aperta" (1969b), it is no longer satisfactory to associate Marcabru's trobar natural primarily with "the moral symbolism of colours and natural objects, trees, plants, animals, insects and birds" (Topsfield 1974, 1155). Of special interest for understanding the term naturals are Roncaglia's citations from medieval Latin rhetorical theory, where the "natural" and the "artificial" are two types of word order or narrative sequence:
Naturalis ordo est, si quis narret rem ordine quo gesta est; artificialis ordo
est, si quis non incipit a principio rei geste, sed a medio, ut Vergilius in
Aeneide.
(Roncaglia 1969b, 46, quoting Scolia Vindobonensia ad Horatii artem
poeticam, ed. J. Zechmeister [Vienna, 1877])
The natural order is when someone narrates a thing in the order in which it
was done; the artificial order is when someone does not begin at the begin-
ning of the thing done, but in the middle, as Vergil did in the Aeneid.
The "natural order," then, is historical—structured by the idea that an event to be told has a beginning, an order, and an end. Neither the "topic" nor the "tropeic" development, described by Ghil, qualifies as this type of ordo naturalis . Further, most troubadours' joi natural persistently shows itself to be the opposite of the "natural" in this sense, for it is anti-historical.
The "man with no memory," whose sen is natural, is the hero of the no-say-que-s'es . Peire Rogier introduces himself as such a man and then holds a debate with his own conscience. The result is a contest between the "timeless" or "lyrical" impulse of natural sen (which makes events inconsequential and thus neutralizes emotional response to them) and the sen that is aware of time and place, of beginnings and ends:
No sai don chant, e chantars plagra·m fort
si saubes don, mas de re no·m sent be
et es greus chans, quant hom non sap de que.
Mas adoncx par qu'om a natural sen
quan sap son dan ab gen passar suffrir
quar no·s deu hom per ben trop s'esjauzir
ni ia per mal hom trop no·s desesper.
(P Rog 4, 1–7)
I do not know what I am singing about, and singing would
please me very much if I knew what [I sing] of, but I do not feel
good about anything, and song is difficult when one does not
know what it is about. But now it becomes apparent that one
has "natural sense" when he knows how to suffer his loss by
nobly enduring it, for one should not be too delighted about
good fortune, nor ever too much despair about bad fortune.
The exordium may in fact be satirical: the "stalling" in the first three lines, the unconvincing and wordy platitude in the last three. The whole song explains natural sen as self-deception (vv. 40–41: "Am mai lo sieu mentir / qu'autra vertat," I prefer her lies to another woman's truth), when it confronts the voice of "true" conscience, much like the kindly moralistic voice of Peire d'Alvernhe's religious lyrics (vv. 13–14: "Aisso dic ieu que no·s deu hom giquir / aissi del tot qui·l segle vol tener," I say that a man should not thus abandon everything if he wishes to hold on to the world).
Peire Rogier lets his "conscience" remind him that composing in this "natural" style is a way of renouncing the world, insofar as fin joi natural works only from within, drawing on an inherent motivation to compose poetry, and allows the speaker to remain indifferent to actual joy and pain. Creating an inner landscape that bears no relation to sensed experience, Peire Rogier's natural sen cultivates a world-upside-down within the speaker. It is no wonder, then, that natural is so often associated with
madness. Here, Peire speaks as if he were rebelling against a rule that speech should correspond to experience; the dictates of weather (vv. 1 and 3) are overruled by the impulse to sing (vv. 2 and 4):
Tan no plou ni venta
qu'ieu de chan non cossire
frei'aura dolenta
no·m tolh chantar ni rire
qu'amors me capdelh' e·m te
mon cor en fin joy natural
e·m pais e·m guid' e·m soste
qu'ieu non sui alegres per al
ni alres no·m fai vivre.
(P Rog 2, 1–9)
Neither the ram falls nor the wind blows so hard that I do not
think about song; the chill, mournful wind does not take from
me my singing and laughter, for love controls me and holds my
heart in perfect natural joi, and feeds me and guides me and
sustains me, so that I am not cheerful for any other reason, nor
does any other thing make me live.
The treatment of amors as the lord from whom one holds one's fief, and on whom one depends for sustenance, makes of fin joi natural a self-sufficient realm, independent of lo segles (the secular world). Peire's choice of verbs suggests the Psalms, with fin joi natural as the "green pastures" and "still waters" where Amors leads him, maintains him, and "restores his soul." The "second nature" created by Amors is a verbal one: statement reforms perception. Again, love acts as a metaphor for song. Just as the lover is advised to believe what the lady says rather than what she does, so the poet proposes to give greater value to statements (powered by joi, the impulse to compose) than to experience.
Bernart de Ventadorn calls desnaturar (denaturing) the same effect that Peire Rogier ascribed to joi natural:
Tant ai mo cot pie de joya,
tot me desnatura.
Flor blancha, vermelh' e groya
me par la frejura,
c'ab lo yen et ab la ploya
me creis l'aventura,
per que mos pretz mont' e poya
e mos chans melhura.
(B Vent 44, 1–8)
My heart is so full of joy that it completely denatures me.
Flowers white, red, and yellow to me look like frost, for with
the wind and with the rain my fortune increases, so that my
worth rises and climbs, and my song improves.
Peire d'Alvernhe recognizes that some poets have distorted the meaning of the word natural . Those who criticize Marcabru for madness have in fact identified their own error; it is easy to see his criticism aimed at Peire Rogier's views of fin joi natural and at the "man with no memory":
Marcabrus per gran dreitura
trobet d'altretal semblansa,
e tengon lo tug per fol
qui no conoissa natura
e no·ill membre per que·s nais.
(P d'Alv 13, 38–42)
Marcabru, with great justice, composed in similar fashion—
and they all take him for a fool who does not know [his] na-
ture and does not remember why he is born.
Marcabru had upheld a form of trobar natural but never played the "natural fool." Peire d'Alvernhe, in his own work, emphasizes the genealogical aspect of natura; he denounces as "illegitimate" those whose joi, supposedly fin and natural, induces them to compose poems bearing no relation to reality. Once "history, narration, genealogy" are removed, action is "inconsequential" and noncura prevails, as Peire warns in this passage from "Bel m'es quan la roza floris":
Sel que·l ioi del setgle delis
vei que son pretz dezenansa;
fils es d'avol criatura
que fai avol demonstransa:
e per tan non baisa·l col!
Quar gitatz es a noncura
estai mais entre·ls savais.
(P d'Alv 13, 22–28)
He who destroys the joi of the secular world, I see that his
worth diminishes; he is the son of a base creature, for he makes
a base showing, and yet does not bow his head. Because he is
cast into indifference, let him remain longer among the lowly.
What Peire Rogier had called natural sen ("when one knows how to suffer his loss by nobly enduring it"), Peire d'Alvernhe calls noncura: it is disengagement from the world, both from dan and from the joi del setgle; it divides words from their referents, lets them fall from their original meanings—even the word natural . "Bel m'es quan la roza" insists that poetry should correspond to politics: when Peire urges Sancho III of Castile to follow the example of his father, Alfonso, in going to battle against the Moors, he makes a point of showing that he, too, is following the example of his poetic forebear, Marcabru, who had stirred Alfonso against the Muslims (Riquer 1975, 321). Peire's song descends from Marcabru's just as Sancho descends from Alfonso. Peire d'Alvernhe supports a notion of trobar natural best suited to the sirventes. The poet as castiador, who advises men of the world to fight for the traditions and rights of their natura, must use a language that "remembers" its source.
Thus—to return to the tenso between Raimbaut d'Aurenga and Giraut de Bornelh—it is doubly in opposition to Raimbaut's amnesiac fin joi natural that, for his last parry, Giraut "remembers" his promotion in rank: "Don't I remember how she appointed me comtal? " As a poet and as a debater, at least, Giraut is the equal of the Count of Orange—and in affirming it he accuses himself (with an ironical wink) of "forgetting" gratitude toward his superiors, of stepping out of rank:
Lingnaura, si·m gira·l vermeil
de l'escut cella cui reblan
qu'eu voill dir "a Deu mi coman."
Cals fols pensatz
outracuidatz!
M'a mes doptansa deslial!
No·m soven com me fes comtal?
(R d'Aur 31, 50–56)
Linhaure, if she whom I praise should turn the red side of her
shield toward me, then I will say, "I place myself in God's
hands." What a mad, outrageous thought—it has given me
disloyal doubt. Do I not remember how she made me a comtal?
Giraut has earned this title by merit and not by birth, yet he is more mindful of this feudal bond than Raimbaut is of his "birthright."
Giraut's Shield and the Heraldry of Style
Earlier Giraut had called Raimbaut a "fis amans contrarian," clearly using the word amans to designate a "theoretician of lyric poetry"; having once substituted amor for trobar in the debate, he lets his last contribution to it carry forward the idea that to win the argument is to succeed in love. If "virar lo vermeil de l'escut" is a sign of rejection, then Giraut concedes failure. Yet in calling to mind the heraldic "shield" of his patroness, Giraut replies to Raimbaut's evocation of trobar natural and the "man with no memory." He remembers "com me fes comtal"; he is "accountable," and he "recounts."[13] A comtal, according to Marc Bloch, was a local chief who organized others under his lord's "banner."
When Marcabru declares himself a follower of trobar natural, he describes himself as if carrying its blazon:
E segon trobar naturau
port la peire e l'esc'e·l fozill
mas menut trobador bergau
entrebesquill,
mi tornon mon chant en badau
e·n fant gratill.
(Mcb 33, 5–10)
And in accordance with "natural composition" I carry the flint
and tinder and steel, but insignificant rhyme-weaving hornet
troubadours turn my song into gaping and scraping.
The three emblems on Marcabru's "shield" are offered as a trademark—of the arsonist's trade, apparently, unless Prometheus used "flint and tinder and steel" (trans. Paterson 1975, 29). The "original" poet, equipped with the tools to make something from nothing wherever he goes, can strike up a blaze from cold stone; the "small-time" troubadours merely "do a lot of scratching" (fant gratill ). R. Howard Bloch has pointed out the interdependence of "semantic discontinuity and genealogical discontinuity" in similar passages of Marcabru's poetry (1981, 958–960) and, against a broader backdrop of medieval thought, in a trend to "the nomi-
nalizing lyric" in Old Provençal (1983, 126; see 108–127, "The Poetics of Disruption"); here morality illustrates poetics. The "trobador bergau" only flirt with his style ("tornon . . . en badau"), while Marcabru makes it conceive: songs as "natural" offspring. The legitimizing coat of arms, then, stands for the creative intelligence of a poet who, at least according to his vida, may not qualify for other kinds of "legitimacy."
There are at least two ways to make a fire: one can blow on the old coals in hope that they will flare up again (as the bufa-tizo of Marcabru's vers del lavador might do), or one can start "from scratch." To "remember"—and this includes history, narration, and genealogy, as well as the transmission and adaptation of other men's songs—is to "blow on the old coals." Marcabru is attempting to reverse our habits of legitimation: his shield proclaims the rise of a "natural" lineage of poetry conceived "from scratch."
Viewed as a statement about mouvance, Marcabru's lines on trobar natural tend to validate only the "original" version. The "menut trobador bergau" would, then, represent unskilled players who perform the song without authorization in diluted and insipid versions.
Peire d'Alvernhe also uses the metaphor of the heraldic shield, fancying his own style blazoned in gold and azure against a background of other styles in "rusty iron":
Que cum l'aurs resplan e l'azurs
contra·l fer ros
desobre los escutz
mi det do, tro lai ont es Surs,
qu'ieu sobriers fos
als grans et als menutz
dels esciens
de trobar ses fenhs fatz,
don sui grazens
ad aquilh don m'es datz.
(P d'Alv 5, 61–70)
For just as gold and azure gleam against red iron, on shields, I
was given the gift that I would be, as far as Syria, superior
among wise men both great and small in composing without
foolish imaginings, for which I am grateful to the one by whom
it was given to me.
These lines close a poem that has made no secret of its style, that in fact has overdescribed itself: senatz, segurs, francs e ferms, Peire gives his approval to "obscure verses" (ditz escurs ) recited "without broken words" (ses motz romputz, vv. 31–33).
Not all poets aspire to trobar ses fenhs (compose without imaginings), however, nor would describe fenhs as fatz (foolish). Raimbaut d'Aurenga, who in probably his earliest important poem praised the song of the wren as cars, dous, e fenhz (rare, sweet, and imagined; R d'Aur 1, 1–2), may have taken offense at Peire d'Alvernhe's condemnation of the imaginative (fenhs ) in poetry; at least, he composes an emphatic recusatio of the image of the "shining shield" Peire had upheld:
E qar no·i trop pro, en orda,
lais—car sent paraulas rancas.
No·m eslag l'amar e·l mel
d'amor, e non dig parlan
l'escut, e so que·i resplan.
(R d'Aur 34, 36–40)
And because I find no advantage in invention, I give up—for I
smell rancid words. I do not distinguish the bitter part from
the honey of love, and I do not describe in speech the shield,
and that which glitters upon it.[14]
According to Pattison (1952), this song addresses itself mainly to the vilania involved in Alfonso II of Aragon's change in marriage plans. The description of the shield announces a style allied with the lineage it serves to praise. Raimbaut's refusal to use the metaphor of the shield, then, is a protest against what he perceives both as a disruption of lineage (through the irregularity in Alfonso's broken engagement) and as a disruption of discourse (since praise, which Alfonso usually earns, is not now possible): he breaks off, offended by words not yet spoken.
The shield that has been turned against Giraut de Bornelh in the tenso belongs to a patroness, "cella cui reblan." Peire d'Alvernhe would have us think Giraut's flattery was directed mainly toward "old water carriers" and other vilanas . But Pattison directs our attention to the tornada of Giraut's song 27, where the poet thanks the Glove Lady for appointing him comtal (although here he seems to regret the appointment). As in the tenso, the motif of the poet's recollection accompanies the acknowledgment of his duty as spokesman:
Amia, d'aisso·m sove
C'anc, depos que'm fis comtals,
No m'avenc pois tan grans mals.
(Gr Bor 27, 73–75)
My friend, this much I remember: that never, since the time
when you made me comtal, has anything so bad happened to
me again.
This is the same poem in which Giraut earlier sought
. . . bos motz en fre
que son tuch chargat e ple
d'us estranhs sens naturals,
e non sabon tuch de cals.
(Gr Bor 27, 51–54)
. . . good rhymes reined in, which are all charged and filled
with an unfamiliar "natural" meaning, and not everybody
knows what kind.
In evoking this poem (which was an important stylistic manifesto) as an answer to the feigned "forgetfulness" induced by Raimbaut's fin joi natural, Giraut contests the other poet's interpretation of the term natural on a fundamental level.
Not remembering, in the vers de dreyt nien, tended to empty the meaning from bos motz (good rhymes), for "I don't remember" signals a song of madness and apathy: of noncura, foudatz . Giraut remembers, and fills his words with sen, though of a paradoxical kind. Estranh and natural are opposites: the first connotes all that is foreign, alien, outside the range of local experience—exogenous and "unfamiliar" in every sense. Guilhem IX, in the poem that Raimbaut d'Aurenga linked with joi natural, would not "locate himself" either in the distance or in close range:
no say en qual hora·m fuy natz:
no soi alegres ni iratz
no suy estranhs ni soi privatz
ni no·n puesc au.
(Gm IX 4, 7–10)
I do not know in what hour I was born, I am neither cheerful
nor morose, I am neither a stranger nor an intimate, nor can I
be otherwise.
Giraut's estranhs sens naturals directly opposes the foudatz . It includes both the foreign and the native; his bos motz are "harnessed" (en fre ) and loaded (chargat e ple ) like a wagon bearing exotic merchandise (estranhs sens ). "Not everyone knows what kind" of sens naturals Giraut means, since for some poets, like Peire Rogier, sen natural meant the foudatz that allows mere assertion to prevail over what the eyes see.
It is worthwhile to entertain the possibility that Giraut's estranhs sens naturals might combine quoted or adapted (exogenous, another's) material with original compositions. The term natural has already appeared in other contexts where it meant "original" poetry, as opposed to adaptations. Giraut has accepted and even welcomed the idea that others would adapt his songs to their own use. The opposition estranh/natural has also been developed by Marcabru, who from all evidence disapproves of adaptation; the context in which Marcabru places this opposition—the closed garden that requires constant vigilance against poachers—sheds further light on the debate over trobar clus .
Trobar Natural and the Enclosed Garden
Marcabru speaks of an amors whose "native place" is enclosed and therefore safe from the estranhs . Substituting trobars for amors in this passage yields an interesting view of the relationship between trobar clus and the opposition natural/estranh:
L'amor don ieu sui mostraire
nasquet en un gentil aire,
e·il luocs on ill es creguda
es claus de rama branchuda
e de chaut e de gelada,
qu'estrains no l'en puesca traire.
(Mcb 5, 49–54)
The love to which I point the way was born in a noble lineage
[pun: "air, climate"], and the place where it grew up is en-
closed by branching boughs, [closed off] both from heat and
from cold, so that a stranger may not take it away from there.
Roncaglia discounts the contention of Scheludko and Robertson that this passage may allude to the hortus conclusus, "Symbol of the Blessed Mary, her eternal virginity," by identifying the Desirat of the tornada with a
historical figure, Sancho III, called desiderabilis Sancius (1969b, 25). Marcabru is quite capable, however, of reconciling doas cuidas in one statement. The above passage is the last stanza before the tornada, and this is the normal position for dedications explaining why the song and the addressee are worthy of each other.
Much has been said about Marcabru's distinctions between fin'amors and fals'amors, so that discussions of his poetics usually turn to his ethics. Yet Marcabru himself appears to be conscious of the structural congruity between amors and trobars: he attempts to match his subject (fals'amistatz ) with an appropriate song—a vers desviatz sung to a son desviatz . His familiar reproval of husbands who cuckold one another:
Tals cuid' esser ben gardaire
de la so' e de l'altrui laire
(Mcb 5, 25–26)
So-and-so thinks he is a good guard of his own belongings, and
the robber of another's
is punctuated with a comment on the progress of the vers desviat itself
Si l'us musa, l'autre bada
E ieu sui del dich pechaire.
(Mcb 5, 29–30)
If one gawks, the other gapes, and I am a sinner against the
poem.
In all the manuscripts (AIK ), as Dejeanne (1909) notes, line 26 is hypermetric; that is, the poet has "sinned against" his dich, and it is probably wrong to correct the line as Dejeanne suggests ("De la so'e d'altrui laire"). Further, the verse is deliberately unspecific about what these men believe they are guarding. Dejeanne's translation begins, "Tel pense être bien le gardien de sa femme. . . ," and already he has supplied a detail that was not in the Provençal original: the femme . Perhaps Marcabru intended a broader meaning. One is reminded of Giraut de Bornelh's application of the same terms to a problem specific to poetry: "c'us s'en fezes clamaire / dels dichs don altre era laire / corn fes de la gralha·1 paus" (one makes himself the claimant [screamer] of poems whose thief [barker] was another man, just as the cricket does [complains] against the peacock; Gr Bor 62, 33–35).
The major part of Marcabru's vers desviatz, then, develops a parallel
between fals'amistatz (improper love) and improper verse: it is continually being stolen by someone who hypocritically "guards his own"; it is "easy to pick up or drop," and it is "marketable," like Giraut de Bornelh's vers levet e venarsal:
C'aissi' leu pren e refuda
puois sal ven e lai mercada.
(Mcb 5, 4–5)
For it is so easily picked up and then set aside, since it is sold
here and purchased there.
In the last strophe, however, Marcabru changes his subject from the amors (and the trobars ) he must censure to the amors he would recommend ("don eu sui mostraire"). Line 54 echoes the more explicit stylistic statement of "Aujatz de chan":
vers desviatz, v. 54: Qu'estrains no l'en puesca traire.
So that a stranger cannot take it away from there.
"Aujatz," v. 4: Si que autr'om no l'en pot un mot traire.
(Roncaglia 1957, 23)
So that another man cannot take away one word from it.
The last stanza of Marcabru's vers desviatz does propound an ideal for trobar as well as for amor; it thus helps to explain the connection the troubadours perceive between closure and vers naturals . "Original" poetry, worthy of its attribution to an "author" and fully "pedigreed" ("nasquet en un gentil aire"), requires for its growth and maintenance an impossibly sheltered place, where there is neither heat nor cold, where no "stranger" can reach it ("the place where it grew up is enclosed by branching boughs, closed off both from heat and from cold"). Marcabru only claims to point the way to this ideal, to be its mostraire . For him it is the verbal counterpart of love in the terrenal paredis, where things went by the names Adam gave them, and there were no "strangers."
The connection between "closed rhymes" and "closed gardens" becomes still more apparent in a song of Peire d'Alvernhe that explicitly favors motz clus . The motif of the hortus conclusus recurs; rather than deny the biblical allusion altogether, we might learn from it how clus po-
etry situated itself within a complex of images that had come to stand for a theory of interpretation.
Be m'es plazen
e cossezen
que om s'ayzina de chantar
ab motz alqus
serratz e clus
qu'om no·ls tem ja de vergognar.
(P d'Alv 8, 1–6)
It pleases me well and suits me fine that one should undertake
to sing with few words, locked and closed so that one may never
be afraid of spoiling them.
Mais am un ort
serrat e fort
qu'hom ren no m'en puesca emblar
que cent parras
sus en puegz plas:
qu'autre las tenh ez ieu las guar.
(P d'Alv 8, 25–30)
I like better one garden, locked and strong so that no one can
steal anything from me, than a hundred gardens up on a plateau
such that another man owns them and I watch them.
The parallelism of the two strophes sets up the garden as the analogue of the poem: motz serratz, like the ort serrat, are safe from those who might invade and dishonor it. Trobar plan, through its geographical counterpart puegz plans (flat peak, plateau) is also being set in contrast to the more desirable "closed" and "tight" writing of the closed garden.
Ulrich Mölk interprets the first of these two strophes in the context of mouvance, working with the assumption that Peire intends to influence the transmission of his song by installing formal safeguards. According to his translation, Peire expects his "closed and dark" style to intimidate the performer: "words which one does not hesitate to respect" inspire reverence for the original, precluding unauthorized revision, especially at the rhyme word (Mölk 1979, 5). Mölk compares the passage to the opening of Marcabru's "Aujatz de chan," where the poet claims that he "knows how
to bind up the razo and the vers so that another man cannot remove one mot from it": "Peire d'Alvernhe argues in similar fashion that it is precisely the bizarre and obscure words—motz meaning primarily rhyme word here as well—which will function as protectors of the integrity of the song" (p. 5).
Paterson also links Peire's closed garden of verses with this "stylistic ideal" of Marcabru: "Peire . . . himself prefers such poetry, which is strong and tightly locked so that each word is strong and necessary to the whole, to 'a hundred parcels of land up on the open plain' which another might own" (1975, 81). This raises the question of "textual integrity," discussed in the next chapter: can Peire have expected a poem in which "each word is necessary to the whole" to survive the relay of transmission? More important, is it accurate to attribute to the troubadours such a modern ideal of "the text"? Serrat may have been meant more as a guarantee of the position of a rhyme word within a "closed" stanza than as a guarantee that the entire stanza will not drop out of the poem. If Peire had written "Be m'es plazen" as a song "in which each word is necessary to the whole," then available texts fall too far short of "necessity" for the modern reader to recapture "the whole" and to comment on it.
A related issue, that of the "ownership" of poetry, also arises in Peire's and Marcabru's metaphor of the closed garden. Emblar (to steal) has no meaning except in the context of property, whether fief or allodium, movable or immovable goods, and insofar as the garden stands for the song, this means literary property. Marcabru calls his garden an alos, a freehold. This is consonant with my interpretation of his remarks on trobar natural: the original maker of the poem owns it free and clear, without obligation to any higher senher on earth. Peire d'Alvernhe's dislike of the hundred plateau gardens, "c'altre las tenh e ieu las guar," also implies a preference for the role of proprietor over that of spectator (perhaps "watchman") in poetry. Translated into the terms of poet and audience, Peire's lines favor the unique "original creation" and seem rather hostile to its dozens of circulating versions—more so even than Raimbaut d'Aurenga's "mi non cal sitot non s'espan" (I don't care if it does not circulate).
The "closed garden" as a metaphor for "closed poetry" is an interesting one: it not only implies an effort on the poets' part to control mouvance (since "no one can remove a single word" and "no one can steal anything" from such a closed poem), but it also situates this kind of "closure" within a well-known area of medieval theory of interpretation:
Dolce, tu ies jardins enclos
ou ge sovent gis en repos,
tu ies fontaine soz gelee
ki deseur totes bien m'agree.
Li soiels guarde les secretz
qe nuls n'en soit avant mostrez
s'a celui no cui om velt faire
consachable de son afaire.
Tels est tis cuers, quar ben conois
A cui tu descovrir le dois.
(Song of Songs, 12th-cent. O.F. version,
2302–2312; Pickford 1974)
Sweet one, you are a closed garden where I often he at rest;
you are a fountain frozen on top which is pleasant to me above
all else. The seal protects the secrets of which not one may be
revealed, except to someone whom one wishes to make the
confidant of his doings. Such is your heart, for you know well
to whom you should uncover it.
The author of this popular interpretive "translation" has thus made the maiden of the Canticus a symbol of the hermetic text, "sealed" to those who should not be consachable .[15] The "sealing of the heart" becomes the "sealing of a message." Raimbaut d'Aurenga has borrowed this image: the injunction of the Canticus —"pone me ut sigunaculum cor tuum" (8, 6)—is answered by Raimbaut:
Car s'eu dic so que·s cove
de leis que mon cor sagel,
totz lo mons sap, per ma fe,
cals es; car tota gen cria
e sap, et es pron devis
cals es la meiller que sia!
Per qu'eu la laus et enquis.
(R d'Aur 29, 29–35)
For if I say what is fitting about her whom my heart seals, all
the world knows, by my faith, what she is like; for everyone
shouts it, and knows, and is fully informed who is the best
woman in existence. Therefore I praise and petition her.
The "seal" on this particular lady is not very hermetic, since the "message" she embodies ("cals es") is common knowledge, and is transmitted by everyone ("car tota gen cria"). The lady of this poem is in the same situation as Raimbaut's trobars plans, a style (again contrasted with the "closed" style) in which Raimbaut believes he can excel because a poet capable of truly original work surely can surpass the common singers in their "bleating," everyday style of rhyming:
Qi tals motz fai
c'anc mais non foron dig cantan,
qe cels c'om totz jorns ditz e brai
sapcha, si·s vol, autra vez dir.
(R d'Aur 16, 5–8)
Anyone who composes such rhymes as have never before been
recited in song, can also at other times, if he wishes, recite
those [rhymes] that are sung and bleated every day.
Raimbaut lets us know that he cannot specify "her whom my heart seals" because she consists of pure convention: ironically, "the best woman in the world" (la meiller que sia ) was also, in Raimbaut's time, the most talked about woman in the world, and had as many lovers among the troubadours as "Anonymous" has titles to his credit.
The analogy, then, works three ways: the song is a garden, the lady is a song, and the garden is a lady. Any of the three can be either "serratz e clus / qu'hom no·ls tem ja de vergonhar" (locked and closed so that one never fears that they may cause disgrace) or shared (envazit, parsonat, comunal —"invaded, divided, communal"). Erich Köhler (1970) has argued that the gilos in troubadour poetry represents a growing ideal of private property that had begun to extend its claim to the domna herself and that therefore found fin'amors inimical; the proponents of fin'amors themselves eventually absorbed some of this attitude toward property, and the amador too became gilos . This theory can be applied metaphorically to the concept of literary property: the "jealous poet" would see in his verse a potential source of dishonor—"temer de vergognar," in Peire d'Alvernhe's phrase. Thus, rival poets might "corrupt" a song, produce in it a "change of heart" (represented by such phrases as "virar lo cor") that alters the intended form or meaning and leads to the creation of "illegitimate" versions.
Vernacular literary convention of the twelfth century is more familiar
with ladies who are locked inside gardens than with ladies who are locked gardens: we might cite Chrétien de Troyes's Fenice and the lady of Marie de France's "Guigemar," among others. Yet the locus amoenus is often identified with the lady herself. The troubadours often designate an "implied lady" as a place, a loc "over there" (lai ); Rigaut de Berbezilh addresses a song to his "Bels Paradis." Guilhem IX's "bosc en un deveis" (3, 14) stands for a lady, and her situation is apparently the same as that of the domna esserrada of song 2, who complains to Guilhem about her gardadors .
If we follow the isomorphism ort serrat/motz serratz/domna esserrada (locked-up garden, words, lady), then Guilhem's resentment of gardadors amounts to skepticism about the value of keeping poetry as a "private preserve." The manuscript tradition attests that in many cases, for every line that is "pruned out" from a poem, "two or three more crop up": "E quam lo bocx es taillatz nais plus espes" (And when the wood is trimmed, it comes forth thicker). Moreover, even the best-guarded poem sooner or later yields to its natural inclination for "infidelity" and escapes its owner, like the resourceful woman of whom Guilhem predicts, "If she can't have a horse, she'll buy a pony." The poet soon finds attributed to him numerous songs not of his own making, though they bear a family resemblance to his own wayward poem. Guilhem's comical "remedy," that one may as well agree peaceably to the unexpected "increase," take credit for the "abundance," and call it "profit," proposes a cheerful response to the hazards of transmission not only in families but in songs. if anyone should accept Guilhem's argument, the joke would be on him.
That "pruning stimulates new growth" applies equally well to polysemic texts: to remove one specifying detail may cause the range of possible meanings to multiply. Guilhem may actually have been alluding parodically to the exegetical tradition, specifically to that of the ending of the Song of Solomon: the "closed garden" is the Virgin Mary, but it is also the divine Word of the Scripture, whose meanings multiply according to the interpretive ingenuity of its commentators (see Minnis 1984, 42–58). When Guilhem adds that there is no loss of profit to the senher, he may have had in mind the mille argenteos of Solomon's final parable (Song of Solomon 8: 11):
e·l senher no·n pert son comte ni sos ses;
a revers planh hom la tala . . .
(Gm IX 3, 17–18)
And the lord does not lose his account from it, nor his taxes. A
man is wrong to complain about the harvesting . . .
For the Scriptures, a single text in the hands of its temporary caretakers produces a great abundance of sermones —the equivalent, according to Rupert of Duize, of the thousand coins paid for fruit cut from Solomon's orchard after it was entrusted to gardadors:
"Tradidit eam custodibus," commisit earn rectoribus; "vir affert pro
fructu ejus mille argenteos," id est quivis operarius fidehs ac virtuosus,
Scripturarum peritus et ore facundus, cunctas fidelis sermonis copias im-
pendit praedicando, ut percipiat tempore suo quidpiam de fructu ejus.
Omnes argentei eius mille, id est omnes sermones ejus consonant in una
fide, quia sicut jam supradictus est, qued arithmeticis non incognitum est.
(Rupert of Duize, Patrologia Latina, sec. 426, vol. 168, col. 959)
"He gave it over to guardians," he entrusted it to leaders; "a man brings
for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver," that is to say, anyone who is in-
dustrious, faithful and virtuous, experienced in the Scriptures and fertile
of tongue, is inevitably going to produce publicly a great abundance of
faithful discourses, so that in his time something of its fruit may be
picked [understood]. All his thousand pieces of silver, that is to say, all
its discourses, resound together in a single faith, for the same reason
mentioned above, which is something not unknown to those who make
accountings.
The parallel among the lady, the poem, and the garden (or hunting ground, borrowing the Ovidian motif of "love as a chase") may be presented from the point of view of the poacher as well as of the jealous proprietor. Guilhem IX took the poacher's stance. Marcabru's gap plays up the interchangeability of drutz and gilos in their relation to various dompnas; by analogy, the jealous holder of the "rights" to one poem might seek to "poach" from another man's repertory to increase his own, "adulterating" the song and recreating it in his own image:
En l'altrui broill
chatz cora·m voill
e fatz mos dos canetz glatir
e·l tertz sahus
eis de rahus
bautz e ficatz senes mentir.
(Mcb 16, 37–42; in Roncaglia 1951a)
In another man's woods I go hunting whenever I wish, and
make my two dogs bark, and the third hound leaps forward,
bold and tense, toward the prey—it is no lie.
Marcabru hints that his repertory is not limited to songs that "anc mais non foron dig cantan" (were never before recited in song), even though his own songs are "claus . . . que nuills no lo·m pot envazir" (closed . . . such that no man can invade it against me): he plays the gilos with his own works, but makes the private preserves of others resound with the barking of raiding hounds. Peire d'Alvernhe's "ort / serrat e fort" (garden locked and strong), which he equates with "motz alqus / serratz e clus" (few words locked and closed), certainly derives from Marcabru's deves claus . Both set up the poem as a "closed garden" and, to the extent that they refer to amors at all, speak from the point of view of the gilos drutz keeping close guard over a domna esserrada —a lady quite opposite to the biblical sponsa . She represents a thoroughly secular kind of discourse; the "private place"—ort, cambra, aizi, deves[16] —is in troubadour poetry the site of just the kind of love, earthly, not divine, that one might find if one failed to read the Song of Solomon allegorically.
It is not surprising that the troubadours should give some thought to the greater-than-usual need of this part of the Bible, so popular in the twelfth century, for exegesis to bring it into conformity with divine charity.[17] Surely they were aware of its resemblance to many of their own lyric conventions:
Iam enim hiems transiit:
imber abiit, et recessit.
flores apparuerunt in terra nostra.
(Cant. Cant. Salomoms 2: 11–12;
Colunga and Turrado 1959, 642)
Now the winter has passed; the rain has gone away, and has
retreated; flowers have appeared in our land.
No doubt their works reflect an effort to set themselves in some clear relation to this text. They do so, apparently, with playful contrariety. First, their songs are not Scrichura but contemporary airs designed to entertain audiences rather than enlighten souls. Second, the love-languishing they sing of concerns not the love of the Church for Christ but "amor jauzida / de don'e de cavalier" (love enjoyed by a lady and a knight; B Mar 7, 59–60). Only a very few troubadour poems, such as those framed as the
poet's interpretation of his patron's symbolic dream, are allegorical in the sense of using imagery to refer to abstractions (although another type of allegory, in which personified abstractions like Jovens, Largueza, and Proeza refer to specific political events and persons, is more common). At least, insofar as they employ this type of allegory, they remain strictly on secular ground. Marcabru, as much as his invasion of l'autrul broill with his "two dogs" evokes the role of the "little foxes that spoil the vine," flaunts a sexual implication that would discourage the exegete and that may not have been intended for mixed company.
Drawing the Honey from the Wax
The literal level of meaning vanishes, or is transformed, when scriptural commentary applies its principles of interpretation to passages whose literal meaning seems unacceptable for moral instruction, and this phenomenon is exaggerated with the Song of Solomon. Its Old French translator explains patiently to his reader how the actual "letter of the text," sacred though it may be, serves as a mere container—disposable and, in itself, not spiritually "nourishing"—for the "honey of meaning" that it is the commentator's duty to extract:
Molt a de miel en ceste ree
que nos avoms ici trovee.
Or covenroit fors le miel traire.
Deus le nos doinst dignement faire.
(Song of Songs, 12th-cent. O.F. version,
2535–2548; Pickford 1974)
There is much honey in this honeycomb which we have found
here. Now it would be fitting to draw out the honey: may God
grant that we do it worthily.
When the Occitan poets adapt this image to their poetry, they observe that with amors the wax at times becomes as important as the honey, just as trobar values form as highly as meaning. In Marcabru's "Dirai vos senes duptansa," amors reverses the normal interpretive procedure: she extracts the wax from the honey. After this action, it will be difficult for her to be "true" in the future:
Greu sera mais Amors vera
pos del mel triet la cera
anz sap si pelar la pera;
—Escoutatz!—
Doussa·us er corn chans de lera
Si sol la coa·l troncatz.
(Mcb 18, 31–36)
With difficulty will Love be true hereafter, since she drew out
the wax from the honey; but she does know how to peel the
pear—Listen! She will be as sweet to you as the song of a lyre,
if only you cut off her tail.
Raimbaut d'Aurenga, much less resistant to the appeal of amors than Marcabru was, is intrigued by the geometric form of the honeycomb; he uses the image in conjunction with that of the chain, since the bresca (honeycomb) consists of interlocking compartments and expands the linear structure of the cadena (chain) to three dimensions. His thought (pessars )—which will become the sens and ric'entendensa for his song—takes like form, proceeding from one "link" inevitably to another:
Qu'Amors m'a mes tal cadena
plus doussa que mel de bresca;
quan mos pessars en comensa
pus pes que·l dezirs m'en vensa.
(R d'Aur 5, 29–32)
Because love has contrived for me such a chain, sweeter than
honey from the honeycomb, that once my thinking begins,
then thought more than desire overcomes me.
Raimbaut's "meaning," then, is the counterpart not merely of the mel, but also of the "interlocking" structure that holds it:
Ben ai ma voluntat plena
de tal sen que s'entrebesca.
(R d'Aur 5, 36–37)
My will is full of a meaning of such kind that it intertwines
itself.
In a song that "conceals its meaning" yet can be "easily understood"—
li mot seran descubert
Al quec de razon deviza
(R d'Aur 3, 7–8)
The words will be revealed to one who divides [interprets]
them properly
—Raimbaut uses both triar and devezir to describe aesthetic discrimination:
Ben saup lo mel de la cera
triar, e·l miels devezir
lo iorn que·m fes lieys ayzir;
pus, cazen clardat d'estela,
sa par no·s fay ad contendre ( CR: ad entendre)
beutatz d'autra, si be·s lima,
ni aya cor tan asert
de be s'aribar en Piza.
(R d'Aur 3, 25–32)
He knew well how to separate the honey from the wax, and to
discern the best, that day when he introduced me to her; since,
when light is falling from the stars, she has no peer to compete
with [CR: understand] her, no matter how well polished is the
beauty of another woman, nor may anyone's heart be so
certain of having actually arrived in Pisa.
The lady surpasses others in beauty as honey is sweeter than wax. She is the "pure meaning," extractable by wise men, from the general form of womankind. Raimbaut, however, uses the terms of carefully shaped poetry to describe her beutatz: the phrase "si be·s lima" (if it is well polished) belongs to trobar plan and applies the metaphor of sculpture to song. The "starlight" by which she looks best, along with Raimbaut's "cor asert," recall the combination of clar and ferm that distinguish the songs of Arnaut Daniel. In embodying an ideal she is "essential," as honey is the essence of honeycomb, but it is her forma that interests Raimbaut and not some more specifically interpretable message underlying beutatz .
A striking feature of the passage is its comparison, by the choice of terms of praise, between the Creator and the poet. Raimbaut does not praise God so much for having made so many beautiful ladies, but rather for being able to discern what is finest among all his creations: "He knew well how to separate the honey from the wax, and to discern the best" (R d'Aur 3, 25–26). This metaphor of "trying out the honey from the wax" (in the terms triar and devezir ) appears to function like entendre: it
serves to designate both interpretation and composition, that task of "making distinctions" that all parties to the message must undertake— the "original" poet, the performer (who recomposes), and the auditor, who reconstructs the message in his mind.
We have thus distinguished two concepts of the "text" in the lyrics of the troubadours: one is a distinctly "open" text that is made for the pleasure of the retransmitter—permutable, conventional, additive, and with movable parts in the style of Bernart de Ventadorn and Jaufre Rudel. The second, the "closed" text, admits the possibility of literary property that traces the "lineage" of a song to its creator, of a text intricately shaped like a honeycomb, such that its honey can be extracted only by the worthy. Poets who speak of the closed text are not incapable of comparing divine Creation with poetic creation: the poet is elevated to Author. The task of interpretation inherent in reception is also viewed as an act of poetic creation, since it is an act of aesthetic discernment. For those advocating "closed" poetry (here represented by Marcabru and Raimbaut d'Aurenga), only a select audience deserves a share in this privilege of recreating discernment. In the tenso with Raimbaut, Giraut de Bornelh plays on both sides of the net: he understands Raimbaut's concern with "legitimacy" and "lineage" for song, but he favors a classless aesthetics that makes song openly available to even the poorest of singers and listeners.
It will become more and more apparent, as we trace the metaphorical vocabulary of "open" and "closed" poetry in the works of the troubadours, that with the twelfth-century troubadours we are in the presence of massive ambivalence surrounding their medium. On the one hand a successful song is innately beautiful; on the other hand a successful song circulates widely and in the process adds some shady characters to its lineage. Exclusive, limited circulation could prevent tarnish or shame to a song's "legitimacy," yet it could also doom the song to oblivion. It is the rare poet who takes a fixed, immobile stance; the others uphold now exclusivity, now commonality. But a great many of them, even those who change their minds, are aware that their songs are to be judged. They therefore ask themselves who holds the aesthetic standard by which songs are to be judged: small, select court audiences, or large indiscriminate "marketplace" audiences.