This translation originally appeared on Asymptote's blog as a Translation Tuesday feature Born in 1863, Jules Boissière (Juli Boïssièra) spent his early years as a journalist, hobnobbing with the likes of Amouretti and Murras, and writing anemic verse with great virtuosity in two languages. In 1886 he changed careers, and headed for Hanoi, part of the recently consolidated territory of French Indo-China. He served in the 11th Alpine Infantry Battalion, and saw combat in some of the last few battles to conquer the Tonkinese countryside, before beginning his tenure in the French administrative corps in Saigon and Huế where he learned the language today known as Vietnamese, acquired at least a basic knowledge of Classical Chinese, and cultivated the fondness for opium for which he was to become notorious. He served a long post in Bình Định before returning to France to marry Thérèse Roumanille (Terèsa Romanilha), daughter of Joseph Roumanille the reactionary patriarch of the Provençal Félibre movement. Boissière returned to Tonkin with his wife in 1892, taking stewardship of the Revue Indochinoise. After another leave of absence in 1895, he was promoted to Vice-Resident 1st Class and died a painful intestinal death two years later. Boissière wrote prolifically, but published little during his life. He is now best remembered for his collection of French Indo-Chinese short storiestitled Fumeurs d'Opium "Opium Smokers". He also produced a sizable amount of poetry, both in French and in Occitan, a lot of which — particularly that from his later years — is extremely good. It is likely that some of his poetry remains unpublished. A posthumous collection of his Occitan verse Li Gabian "The Seagulls" was published in 1899 by his wife, who extracted the poems from among his manuscripts. Reading it, I have come across quite a few interesting pieces, the more so because generally "colonial exotic" themes are rare in Occitan literature of this period, which preoccupied itself mostly with its own soil. Like the stories in Fumeurs d'Opium, some of the poems deal with Chinese and Indo-Chinese themes. Interwoven with long odes of nostalgic yearning for his native country and rhapsodies to his fellow félibres, one finds things like an imaginative sonnet depicting a Chinese Princess reading Li Bai, or some lusciously lilting lines about stargazing from a boat gliding down the Mekong. Some are of a piece with some of the best of his French "oriental" poems. And then there are three or four poems where he goes Next Level, as in the one translated here, which caught me completely by surprise. It is like nothing at all that he wrote in French that I've seen. I was not expecting this. Not even a little bit.
The Buddha
By Jules Boissière
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Our soldiers won then torched a domicile. The owner with his sons ran half a mile Under gunfire. On the ancestors' altar Not guarding the old creeds or their old shelter, The Buddha gave the wolfish men a smile.
How many hours has it been since! Where now Is that house? Where's the pudgy god, his brow And smile a sign of fate's indifferent law? When man beneath mute Heaven prays or cries I see again that Buddha's ruddy jaw, His moonlike face and his too tranquil eyes.
Though Boissière was a native speaker of Lengadocian Occitan, he like the rest of his generation wrote in Provençal Occitan, specifically the variety of Rhodanian Provençal which had been raised to literary status by Mistral and others among the Félibrige movement. I give the poem in original Roumanille-Mistralian orthography, copied directly from Li Gabian, and in the more recent classicizing orthography. For all future Provençal texts in Roumanille-Mistralian orthography, I plan to include a parallel version in classical orthography.
Classical Orthography Lo Boddha Juli Boïssièra Brulavan un ostau, nòstei soudards vincèires; — Lo mèstre ambé sei fius peralin fugissiá Sota la fusilhada; e sus l'autar dei rèires, Luènh d'aparar l'ostau, l'autar e lei vièlhs crèires, Ais òme' alobatits lo Boddha sorrisiá Quant d'ora' an debanat desempèi! Monte es ara L'ostau? Monte es lo Dièu poput de quau la cara Sorrisenta retrais lo Sòrt indifferent? — E sota lo cèu mut, quand l'òme prèga e crida, Revese dau Boddha lei gauta' acolorida' E sa fàcia de luna, e sei vistóns serens.
Original Orthography Lou Bouddha Juli Bouissiero Brulavon un oustau nòsti soudard vincèire; Lou mèstre emé si fiéu peralin fugissié Souto la fusihado; e sus l’autar di rèire, Liuen d’apara l’oustau, l’autar e li vièi crèire, Is ome aloubati lou Bouddha sourrisié. Quant d’ouro an debana desempèi! Mounte es aro L’oustau? Mount es lou diéu poupu de quau la caro Sourrisènto retrais lou sort indiferènt? E souto lou cèu mut, quand l’ome prègo e crido, Revese dóu Bouddha li gauto acoulourido, E sa fàci de luno, e si vistoun seren.
This lament for King Ricartz Còr de Leó, known in English as Richard Lionheart, was composed in 1199 when Ricartz died of an infected wound during an incident involving a crossbow, a pissed-off teenager, and a field medic who operated like a surgeon cutting for the very first time.
Though born in England, famous in popular memory as King Richard I of England and played on screen by Sean Connery, there is little evidence that King Ricartz spoke English. He might just have learned some from his wetnurse Hodierna, but apart from that it is unlikely he heard it very often growing up. He might have taken steps to learn it for diplomatic and political reasons. Such things were not uncommon in medieval and early modern Europe.
Two songs by Richard himself have survived. One is a sirventés in Occitan. The other, a plea for aid while being held for tremendous ransom, exists in both Occitan and French versions. Unusually, neither version appears to be clearly derived from the other, and it is very possible that Richard composed both. And it is in Occitan that Gaucelm Faidit dirges Ricartz in the poem I translate here.
We have 18 different attestations of this song. Four have the melody preserved. Yet another six instances of the melody are found contrafacted to different lyrics. Unusually for a melody with such robust attestation, the different written versions of the tune resemble one another fairly closely in most respects. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that the poem and its melody went down extremely well with audiences, and stuck in the mind.
The text I give here (in a regularized orthography of my own devising) is based on that of Barachini's edition.
The MMAF database lists 22 modern published recordings of this song, and I have found at least one that is not listed there. I happen to have five of them.
This one here is my favorite to listen to. It is by the group Alla Francesca, and from an album consisting of music connected with the reign of Richard I. It takes its melody from the X manuscript, as most performances do. My instinct was that it is not a very historically accurate one, because there are all sorts of reasons to believe secular song was normally performed by no more than one singer. But this rendition borrows from things we know they did do in church singing. Quoth Tricia Postle of Pneuma Ensemble: "I don't think it's what they did [for troubadour laments], but it's not impossible. It's within the tonal palette that the troubadours would recognize."
This one here by the Early Music Consort of London. This rendering is performance-wise perhaps more "authentic" (though I hate that word.) The pronunciation appears to confuse Old Occitan with French in many respects. I admit this comes across to me as a bit lazy, like the performers couldn't be bothered to look up the basics of Old Occitan pronunciation. Mine would though be an anachronistic judgment. This performance — probably unwittingly — does reflect something often overlooked about the period. Gaucelm's piece was widely performed, and we happen to have hard evidence that it was sometimes performed by singers who were native speakers of Old French varieties. Such singers would have introduced features of their own vernacular into performance, like those nasalized vowels and deaffricated ch-, without any awareness or wariness of doing so. A 12th century Romance-speaker's attitude toward language was very different from ours.
This one here is by the Tre Fontane ensemble, a French medievalist group which focuses particularly on Aquitanian troubadours. It appears to be a free rendering of the basic melodic pattern, which I think borrows elements from manuscripts η, X and M, with lots of flourishes. The performer or arranger seems to have felt free to play around melismatically with the melody. This is quite a medieval way of doing it. (Tricia tells me she wishes more performers did it like this.)
This one here recorded by the Folger Consort is also heavily interpretative in an interesting way.
This one here is by the Kecskes Ensemble, and is rather different in mood from the above, showing just how much interpretative latitude exists. I wonder if this sort of performance reflects something of the mood in which sung dirges were performed at least some of the time, in the sense of being a "sung recitation." As Hendrik Van Der Werf notes: throughout the European Middle Ages and in some areas for long thereafter, the practice of singing or chanting rather than speaking a text went far beyond the realm of poetry, and extended to various mundane announcements by town criers, street vendors, beggars, and the like. Singing a poem, rather than speaking it, was not necessarily an artistic achievement. It may have just been a convenient and traditional way of raising one's voice in public.
My aim in working with Old Occitan material is to produce something that can be sung to the same melody as the Occitan text (in cases where the melody survives, anyway.)
Lament for King Richard Lionheart (1199 AD)
By Gaucelm Faidit
Translated by A.Z. Foreman It is an awful thing: the greatest pain And purest grief that I have known to sting, The ache that squeezes me to tears again Is mine to sing and tell while I can bear it. The father and the captain of all merit, Courageous noble Richard, England's king Is dead. My God, the loss is harrowing. The words are strange to say, harsh to the ear. The heart is hard that takes this with no tear. The king is dead. It took a thousand years Before a man like Richard met our view. Nor shall there ever be a man his peer, So bold and rich, so giving a commander. Not even Darius' conqueror Alexander Gave so much of his wealth to those he knew. He outstripped Charlemagne, and Arthur too. He had the world, if I am to be frank, Hold him in fear and turn to him with thanks.
I marvel how in false and wicked times A real, wise, courtly man could still remain. When good words and great works mean less than crimes Why make the slightest effort to be true now? For death with one blow showed what she can do now, Wrested out of this world its best of men Took honor, joy and good away again. Now, seeing nothing can repel her wrath, We should be less afraid to meet with death. Now, fearless king, what now is to become Of bustling tourneys and the melée sword, Of princely gifts, rich courts and champions, Now they are dispossessed of you their master? What of those men abandoned to disaster Who pledged themselves in court to you their lord And waited on you for a swift reward? Those who earned wealth and power at your side Who now may well be pondering suicide? They get a sordid life of pain and rue And constant gnashing grief. That is their prize. While Saracens and Turks who once feared you As they had feared no mother's son before Will get so puffed with pride and stoked for war That we may not yet win the Tomb of Christ. But so God wills. Had He willed otherwise And you, my lord, lived on, in little time You should have run them out of Palestine. Now there's no hope of any prince or liege Able to win it back from blasphemy. But all who come now to take up your siege Should think on how you sought esteem from others. So, while they lived, did your two braveheart brothers The Young King and the Duke of Brittany. Whoever it be who succeeds you three Must have a high heart and rock-firm intent To see every great exploit to the end. Tornada: My lord and king! May God the true forgiver, True man, true life, true mercy and true Sire Grant you in death the pardon you require. May He forget your failings and your sin May He remember all you did for Him.
Fòrtz causa es que tot lo maior dan
E·l maior dòl — las — qu'ièu anc mais agues,
E çò dont dei tostemps planher plorant,
M'aven a dir en chantant e retraire.
Car cell qu'èra de valor chaps e paire,
Lo rics valents Ricartz, reis dels Englés,
Es mòrtz. Ai Dièus quals perd e quals dans es
Quant estranhs motz e quant greus az auzir
Ben a dur còr totz om qu'o pòt sofrir.
Mòrtz es lo reis! E son passat mil an
Qu'anc tant proṉs om noṉ fo, ni no·l vi res,
Ni mais non èr nulhs om del sieu semblant,
Tant larcs, tant rics, tant arditz, tals donaire,
Qu'Alixandres, lo reis qui venquèt Daire,
Noṉ cre que tant dones ni tant meses!
Ni anc Carles ni Arturs tant valgues,
Qu'a tot lo mond si fetz, qui·n vòl ver dir,
Als uṉs doptar et als altres grazir.
Meravilh-me del fals sègle truand,
Co·i pòt estar sàvis om ni cortes,
Puòis reṉ no·i val bèll dich ni fach presant,
E doncs per que s'esfòrç' om, pauc, ni gaire
Qu'ara nos a mostrat Mòrtz que pòt faire,
Qu'az uṉ sol còlp a·l melhor del mond pres,
Tota l'honor, totz los gauchs, totz los beṉs!
E pos vezem que res no·i pòt gandir,
Beṉ deurí' om menhs doptar a morir.
Ai valents reis sénher, e que faran
Uòimais armas ni fòrt tornei espes,
Ni ricas cortz ni bèll don alt e grand,
Puòis vos no·i etz, qui n'èratz capdellaire,
Ni que faran li liurat a maltraire,
Cilh que s'èran en vòstre servir mes,
Qu'atendíon que·l gazardoṉs vengues?
Ni que faran cilh, que·is dègran aucir,
Qu'aviatz fach en grand ricor venir?
Longa ira et àvol vid' auran,
E tostemps dòl, qu'enaici lor es pres!
E Sarrasiṉ, Turc, Paian e Persan,
Qu·us doptàvon mais qu'ome nat de maire,
Creisseran tant d'orguòlh en lor afaire,
Que·l Sepúlcres n'èr tròp plus tart conques
Mas Dièus o vòl que, s'el non o volgues,
E vos, sénher, visquessetz, ses falhir,
De Suría los avengr' a fugir.
Uòimais no·i a esperança qu·i an
Reis ni princes que cobrar lo saubes
Però, tuch cilh qu'en luòc de vos seran
Dèvon gardar com fotz de pretz amaire,
Ni qual fòron vòstre dui valent fraire,
Lo Jóveṉs Reis e·l cortés Coms Jaufrés!
Et qui en luòc remandra, de vos tres
Beṉ deu aver fiṉ còr e ferm cossir
De totz boṉs fachs començar e finir.
Tornada
Ai sénher reis! Dièus, qu’es vers perdonaire,
vera vida, vers om, vera mercés,
vos faça cell perdoṉ que cochos es,
si que·l pecat oblida e·l falhir,
e·l membre çò en que saupès servir.
Prose gloss and commentary
Stanza 1
It is a terrible affair that it befalls me to tell, as singer and recounter, all the greatest harm and greatest grief — alas — that I have ever had, and which makes me continuously lament in tears. For he who was the chief/peak and father of merit, the great and brave Richard, king of the English, is dead. Oh God, what a loss and what harm it is. What strange words, and how harsh to hear of. All who can bear it have hard hearts indeed.
The syntax of the first four lines is not convoluted. It makes good sense. But it is complex and that complexity probably led to the great many manuscript variants which yield a simpler syntax for these lines.
Ric means not just "wealthy" but "of great standing, noble, prestigious." A rics om may be a "rich man" or a "great/powerful man" depending on context. Note the rich pun on Richard's name. (Fun fact: both the adjective and the name are from the Frankish loanword rīki "lordly, wealthy." Cognate to Latin Rēx, Hindi Rājā, German Reich.)
With terms like estranhs motz "strange/foreign words" and greus ad ausir "harsh to hear" Gaucelm uses language commonly associated with hearing an incomprehensible foreign language. The death, in other words, does not compute. It does not make sense. This isn't how it's supposed to be. Heroes aren't supposed to die before they triumph.
Stanza 2
The king is dead, and a thousand years passed when such a valorous man did not exist, nor was seen by any, nor shall there be again any man of his caliber, so gracious, so rich, so bold, so generous. (That) I think not even Alexander, the king who conquered Darius, gave or spent so much, and neither Charlemagne nor King Arthur had such worth(iness). For if truth be told, he made all the world (some) fear him and (others) thank him. (Or: made all the world now fear him and then thank him.)
King Arthur was at this time generally believed to be a historical figure.
Alexander the Great was for medieval writers a paragon of generosity.
The sado-masochistic mixture of fear and gratitude has a double meaning. It expresses a power analogous to that of God who is also feared and thanked. By suggesting that the thanks and fear come from different quarters, it also hints at the brutality with which Richard treated those who opposed him or whom he felt threatened by, matched by the open-handedness with which he rewarded the loyal.
Stanza 3
I am amazed at the faithless and deceptive age/world, how (in it) a wise and courtly man could still be, because good words and praiseworthy deeds don't mean anything to it (the world) anymore, and therefore why should one make a little effort (to that end) or any at all? For now death has made plain what it can do, how with a single blow it took the best of the world, all honor, all joys and all good things! And since we see that nothing can protect against it (death), one really ought to fear dying much less. Sègle like its latin etymon saeculum may mean both "world" and "age".
Stanza 4
Oh valiant king milord. What will become henceforth of feats of arms, and grueling tight-packed tourneys, and splendid courts and fine gifts great and grand, since you who were their leader are gone. What will they do who placed themselves in your service and expected you to reward them, and are now abandoned to ill-treatment. What will they do whom you had brought to great wealth and power, and who (now) would have reason to kill themselves? que·is degran aucir lit. "who should kill themselves, who would needs kill themselves." The use of the 2nd conditional form degran implies that the action is hypothetical and remote from fact. i.e. "Those who might have to themselves now." Use of the 2nd conditional with verbs like dever sometimes implies subjective belief also. So one could read the phrase as "those who think they ought to kill themselves now, those who wonder whether they ought to kill themselves."
Stanza 5
Theirs will be an abiding sorrow/anger and a wretched existence, and constant grief, for such is their lot. And the Saracens, Turks, Pagans and Persians who feared you more than they feared any (other) man born of woman, will grow so much more arrogant in their actions, that the Sepulchre will be conquered from them much later. But God wants it so. For if he had not wanted it, and you milord were alive, without fail, they soon would needs have fled Syria.
In his note to line 3 of this stanza in his critical edition, Barachini says
Il verso indica gli avversari degli stati cristiani in Medio Oriente e denota una buona conoscenza dei gruppi (etno-)linguistici di quell’area: i Sarrazi, Saraceni, sono le popolazioni arabe; i Turc sono chiaramente le popolazioni turche di ceppo altaico, in origine mercenari dei califfi abbasidi, ma a quest’epoca già giunte al potere in diverse aree del califfato; i Persan sono le popolazioni iraniche, tra cui vanno annoverati anche i curdi, popolo a cui apparteneva Safadino (il fratello di Saladino), che allora controllava la maggior parte della Terra Santa, della Siria e dell’Egitto; quanto ai Payan, il termine generico vuole probabilmente indicare tutte le genti non cristiane ostili agli stati crociati, assoldate dai sultani (si pensi all’eterogenea provenienza dei Mamelucchi). Il verso va pertanto inteso nel seguente modo: «arabi, turchi, iranici e tutti gli altri miscredenti».
I am not at all convinced of this. 12th and 13th century Europeans could and did use the term Saracen/Sarrazi/Saracenus/etc. to refer to any Muslim, most often Arab but sometimes not. (Notably, they did not use the term in reference to Arab Christians, whom they had ample dealings with in Crusader states.) Apart from this, Barachini seems to assume on Gaucelm's part both a considerable knowledge of the ethnolinguistic makeup of the Muslim occupants of the Levant, and considerable care in accurately referring to them. There is no clear proof that Gaucelm himself had yet been to Outremer until some time after this poem's composition, and in fact all the passage implies is that Gaucelm knew these terms referred in one way or another to the infidel enemy. This is all the reason he would need in order to use the words as he does. The line is a merism: "all of Mahommetan heathenry." But that does not make it a specimen of ethnography.
Because I enjoy irony, it's worth mentioning that in referring to the heathen Muslims this way, Gaucelm is doing much the same thing as the Arabic poet Al-Mutanabbī did two centuries earlier in referring to the heathen Christian army composed of "Byzantines and Russians" vanquished by his patron Abu Hasan the Realm-sword (Sayfu l-Dawla), the Emir of Aleppo. Al-Mutanabbī may not have known and probably did not care about the ethnic makeup of the opposing forces. His aim was to portray Lord Realmsword as facing down soldiers hailing from all over heathen Christendom in an army where their "every tongue and nation was gathered together." As Al-Mutanabbi would tell it, Lord Realmsword was "not just a sovereign vanquishing his peer, but monotheism vanquishing paganism" (lasta malīkan hāziman linaẓīrihī walākinnaka l-tawḥīdu ˁalā l-širki hāzimu). This is, more or less, the same virtue that Gaucelm praises King Lionheart for, not just as a tactician keeping specific enemy powers at bay, but as a bulwark of the faithful against all enemies of God in the Holy Land. It probably also helped that "Byzantines and Russians" (al-rūmu wa-l-rūsu) made for memorable soundplay in Arabic. As, incidentally, do paian e persan in Occitan.
om nat de maire "man born of woman" is a biblical phrase "mortal man."
Stanza 6
Henceforth there is no hope that there will be a king or prince who will be able to win it back. That being so, all those who will be in your place must consider how you were a seeker of esteem, and what your two valiant brothers were like, the Young King and the courtly Count Geoffrey. Whoever will follow on in place of you three must really have a high heart and resolute mind to begin and to complete all great deeds
Another variant of the final line is De far bos fachs e de socors chausir. "to do good deeds and choose to give aid (i.e. in crusading.)
Gaucelm here moves from praise of the dead Richard to broader praise of the House of Plantagenet.
Tornada
Oh lord king, may God the true forgiver, the true life, true man, true compassion, give you that pardon which is so urgently needed. So much may He forget (your) sins and failures, and remember the ways in which you were able to serve Him.
Richard was a popular ruler with the courtly crowds. People generally liked him. Or, at least, respected him. As Gaucelm indicates, he indirectly and directly made a great many men wealthy. He was also, as pundits like to put it today, "a polarizing figure" for some. Gaucelm expresses in this lament a complex of attitudes to cover the broadest swathe of sentiment. Even as he mentions Richard's excellence in war, in crusading, in noble sport, in courtly valor, in magnificent munificence, he also refers obliquely but extremely audibly to the fact that some disliked him and had reason to do so. Richard's readiness to conduct holy war was a great Christian virtue on its own, to be sure. (As uncomfortable as it may make modern Catholics, holy war was conceived of as a kind of exalted pilgrimage.) Relative irreligion could be passed over in silence by chroniclers, but his insistence on taxing churches and bending clerics to his preference was another matter. Such things might have given contemporary chroniclers (including the generally even-handed Ralph de Coggeshall) a bit of extra motivation to highlight unsavory elements of in Richard's character.
"Toxic masculinity" would be the term nowadays for many elements of Richard's personality. Contemporary accounts of his raping women exist, as do accounts of his cruelty, personal viciousness and fragile pride. (Modern historians are in resolute disagreement as to whether his breaking and entering of women was a way of compensating for the fact that women weren't the gender he really preferred to have sex with. Personally I think it's overreading. Aquitanian men of the time seem to have been given to flamboyant emotional openness, demonstrations of affection and physical closeness, including sharing a bed with a male friend. Such things are easily misinterpreted from the outside.) Richard's streak of cruelty had consequences. His impatience and callousness led to the massacre of several thousand Muslim prisoners after the taking of Acre, which provoked Saladin's retaliatory execution of several thousand Christian prisoners. This may be the sort of "failure" envisioned in these concluding lines.
Concluding thoughts:
The poem is replete with words taken from feudal terminology. Words such as proṉ, rics, onor, donaire, pretz, valor, valent, valer were terms of feudalobligation and are used in this poem to express feudal values. They are also used in love lyric to express valorous fidelity, infatuated servility, the worthiness of a lover etc. An important point in reading Old Occitan verse is that the language of feudal relations and obligations bled into the lyric or "poetic" register quite easily. Certainly by the time of this poem's composition, many feudal terms were experienced as "poetic" and exalted.
The feudality of elevated expression went beyond the strictly lexical, and the textual circumstances of this poem offer an excellent example. Manuscript witnesses to the final stanza of this poem attest two distinct versions. One in which the speaker addresses God and asks Him directly to intercede on King Ricartz' behalf, and another (the one given here) in which the speaker addresses King Ricartz and tells him he hopes that God will intercede on his behalf and forgive him. Both God and King are addressed in the respective versions as Sénher. (The use of Señor/Signore/Seigneur in Romance to refer to the Christian God, from a Latin etymon originally meaning "elder, superior" is another witness to this feudality.) The confounding of addressees in the text's transmission nicely illustrates how feudal vocabulary fused with religious sentiment.
This mood is difficult to capture in translation because the ideology that gave meaning to that mental universe is dead. An ideology, unlike doctrine or dogma, must be constantly created and verified in social life in order to make sense. If not, it dies, even if it is embodied in a form that may seem durable. As Barbara and Karen fields write in Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life:
Many Western Christians today still think of kneeling with folded hands as the appropriate posture for prayer, but few now know why; and the few who do know cannot, even if they wish to, mean the same thing by it as was meant by those to whom the posture was part of an ideology still real in everyday social life....The social relations that once gave explicit meaning to that ritual gesture of the vassal's subordination to his lord are now as dead as a dodo, and so, therefore, is the ideological vocabulary -including the posture of prayer- in which those social relations once lived.... [That original self-evident importance of the gesture existed only so long as] everyone in society stood in an explicit and nominally accepted position of inherited subordination to someone else: servant to master, serf to nobleman, vassal to overlord, overlord to king, king to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
During the Great French Wine Blight of the 19th century, an epidemic of phylloxera, a sap-sucking aphid that feeds on the root of grapevines, destroyed most vineyards and vintners' livelihoods throughout French wine-country, which included large parts of rural Occitania. Phylloxera was commonly referred to as La Bèstia "The Beast" by Lengadocian vintners. The following poem, part of a cycle about wine and phylloxera in Languedoc, is taken from Lo Gòt Occitan "The Occitan Goblet" originally published in serial installments in Le Feu Follet in 1902. The title given to this poem in that serialization is Lo Comba-Négrat "The Combnegran." Combanegra "Blackdell" is the name of a place north of Toulouse and west of Montauban. (It also leads the imagination to a dell sucked black and sparse by the pestilence of phylloxera.) When Lo Gòt Occitan was printed as a complete collection in 1903, the poem bore the title given here.
The poem's final passage evokes Cathar martyrs killed in the Occitan War, the plight of the vintner standing as symbol of a crushed and drained nation.
Death of the Vine
By Antonin Perbòsc
Translated by A.Z. Foreman Audio of me reciting this poem in Occitan
And that was that. The vine was really dead.
Last year in pangs the poor old shoots had spread
to ripen the last bunch each branch could yield;
but now the Beast, brawling through every field,
— unspeakable! — with all its mouths had struck,
and sucked the last sap drop from the bled stock.
The old Combnegran*, blistered by the sun
and beaten by the wind since he was young,
for fifty years had cut and picked each vine.
Now with legs shackled and a twisted spine
for these three seasons past, a crippled man
with feet by the andirons too weak to stand,
—His whole life an outdoorsman to the core —
he somberly sat pondering by the door,
Endlessly pondering the disastrous blight,
not wanting to believe his household's plight.
Oh what he wouldn't give now just to run
to Peyralade where vines sipped ancient sun,
simply to see (perhaps die when he saw)
the crop whose roots disease had eaten raw.
The heavens here had left the earth to rot.
"Hey dad, today's been bad, I tell you what!"
One evening this past summer he had heard
those words and couldn't speak. Head bowed down toward
his cup where red wine sparkled at his face,
he asked no more. Said nothing. Sat in place.
What had they done? Just ripped out every root
of Peyralade stock, the hillside's prize shoot
back when the bounteous harvests were still turning.
Still a good stock these days? Well, good for burning.
Whole ranks of them now, jumbled and bent double,
were heaped and shucked like sheathes in fields of stubble;
Then row on row were piled up and piled higher
until they made for an amazing pyre.
The sun had finished drying up last
those stumps on which, in summers now long past,
its beams bid bloom such richly leafy layers.
Winter had come. One evening during prayers
the old man on his stool, head bowed with bile,
chewed over bitter dreams of horror, while
outside the North Wind brawled with skreaking maw.
"Won't we be warm!" said his daughter-in-law
"We won't have wine, but we've got logs galore"
and gathered stumps into her pinafore.
Oh, flames like battle-torches, log by log,
lit the hearth from pot-hanger to fire-dog!
The old man watched the smoking sizzling brands
tossed on the fireplace twist like human hands,
akin to martyrs grasping in the air
for God's aid with the fingers of despair;
eyes wide, pupils dilated hideously,
mouths gaping up to scream their agony,
blood pouring purply from the melting skin,
salvos of golden sparks crazed up to spin
toward pitch night in the fire's devouring violence.
And then the house was all a deathly silence.
The old man saw pass in this hellish shine
all the joy squeezed out of the wounded vine.
What misery now would canker in his head?
He stooped. And stooped a bit more. And was dead.
The Original:
La Mòrt de la Vinha
Antonin Perbòsc
Tot èra plan finit, la vinha èra plan mòrta.
De migra, l'an passat, la paura cambatòrta
Suls rams aviá vairat sos darrièrs rasinòls;
Ara, La Bèstia aviá, sus totes los planòls,
— desparaulanta orror — amb sas milanta bocas
chucat duscas al còr la saba de las socas.
Lo vièlh Combanegrat, dempuèi sa joventut,
usclat pel solelhàs o pel ventàs batut,
las aviá cincanta ans podadas, vendimiadas;
ara, esquinal plegat e cambas enferriadas,
agut, despoderat, dempuèi tres calendrièrs,
a poder pas levar los pès de suls landièrs,
— el que tota sa vida aviá rotlat per òrta —
soscava sornament sul soquet de la pòrta.
Soscava sens sadol al malastre infernal,
sens voler creire al dòl tombat sus son ostal.
Qu'auriá donat per corre amont, a Peiralada,
ont sa vinha mila ans beguèt la solelhada,
per veire de sos uèlhs, — benlèu per ne morir!—
aquel mal rosegant que res podià garir!
A! La tèrra èra donc del cèl abandonada!...
"Paire, avèm fach, auèi, plan marrida jornada!..."
Aqui çò qu'ausiguèt un ser, l'estiu passat.
Demorèt atupit, son agach abaissat
sus son gòt, ont lo vin lusissiá, sus la taula,
sens ne mai demandar, sense dire una paraula.
Çò qu'avián fach? Avián arrancat a bèl talh
las vits de Peiralada, ondradas del costal
al temps ont se fasiá bèla vendemiadura,
ara bonas, ailas! Res qu'a la cramadura.
Las socas pels vidats, forra-borra, a redòls,
s'amontairèron tals los quintèls pels rastòls;
apuèi, a tombarèls comols, tièra per tièra,
anguèron s'apilar pel sòl en fagotièra
espectaclosa; aqui lo solelh finiguèt
de secar aquels socs ont, tant d'estius, fasquèt
espandir amb son flam rama tant pampolada.
L'ivèrn èra vengut. Un ser, a la velhada,
l'aujòl, sus son banquet, lo cap clin, al confin,
romiava son amar sosc de malcòr, ensin
qu'a grand buf la cisampa idolava defòra.
"Podèm plan nos calfar, ongan" diguèt la nòra,
"que s'avèm plus de vin, avèm pro de busquèts!"
E pel sòl anguèt quèrre un faudal de soquèts.
A! La flamba qu'alara esclairèt, batalhèra,
Tot l'ostal, del carmal duscas a l'endalièra!
L'aujòl vejèt los socs abrandats e fumants
se torsent suls landièrs tals de braces umans,
retiplant de martirs que tenon ennairadas
cap al secors diusenc lors mans desesperadas.
Avián d'uèlhs als perpels dubèrts orrescament,
de bocas s'alandant per clamar lor torment;
un sang porpral sortiá de lors ruscas ascladas,
e de belugas d'òr en folescas voladas
montavan dins la nèch del devorant brandal.
E l'ostal èra siau d'un silénci mortal.
L'aujòl vejèt passar dins l'òrra flambuscada
tot lo gauch avalit de la vinha atucada.
D'ara-enlà qual malcòr en el podiá florir?
Se clinant un pauc mai, acabèt de morir.
In 1144, in response to the fall of Edessa to ˁImād al-Dīn Zinkī, Pope Eugene III announced the Second Crusade. Three years later in 1147, he formally proclaimed that the Reconquista of Spain was also a Crusade. That year, a troubadour from Gascony named Marcabru composed the song whose lyrics are translated here, full of references to contemporary events. It is the prototypical Crusade Song, and went on to become one of the most popular of Occitan songs in 13th and 14th centuries, acquiring the name of Lo Vèrs Del Lavador "The Cleansing-Bowl Song." So named, because it portrays the Land of Crusade as a lavatorium which cleanses the soul and readies it for Christ. The variety of manuscripts it survives in attests to its popularity.
Marcabru is not a given name. It is the nom de plume (or, more appropriately, nom de neume) of a lyric singer active in the first half of the 12th century. As usual, we know nothing of him except what can be deduced from songs themselves, such as his Gascon background, his connection with the courtly world of Aquitaine and Poitou and his relationships with other troubadours. He does not seem to have been dependent upon a patron for his entire income. He writes with the certainty, rhetorical confidence, and indignation of an orthodox cleric.
Unlike singers like Jaufré Rudel, it does not seem likely that Marcabru expected (or at least, he didn't want) to have his compositions greatly modified in the course of transmission. Not a text like this, anyway, in which he has a very clear idea of what he wants to convey, and which cannot be intelligibly detached from context in quite the same way the poems of a Jaufré or a Bernart de Ventadorn can be.
Contrary to popular academic piety, the concept of authorship or of authorial control is not a "modern" construction anymore than the concept of the book. It's more accurate to say that different creators have had different attitudes, and the same creator often had different attitudes depending on context or genre. A textual operator might in some contexts have a conception of their authorship that approaches "our" own, and in others not. The Shakespeare of the plays, for example, was somewhat less "authorial" than the Shakespeare of the sonnets. There is nothing "un-modern" about this. It is still going on. Just not as much in the over-textualized, over-specialized and over-scholasticized realm of what is today conceived of as "literature" where texts are sometimes treated in a way almost as debasing and degrading as sanctity itself. Consider the enormous variety in the extant versions of Pete Yarrow's "Puff the Magic Dragon" which he really really didn't intend to be about Marijuana. Or the legion covers of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah which Cohen himself seldom sang the same way twice. Examples abound in religious life too. Consider the Pulpit Fiction delivered by pastors and priests to their Pewpils, or the flexibility with which the same hymn may adjusted to the needs, spiritual and practical, of different congregations and parishes. More interestingly, TV and Film writers also cannot usually expect to have the same kind of authorship as those who write novels (no matter how much they may often wish they could.) Otherwise "uncredited re-write" would not be a TV buzzword. This is at least part of what lies behind the relatively formulaic, trope-laden and generic nature of a lot of TV drama, where much of the excitement and pleasure comes from recognizing the tropes and then seeing how the show or episode maneuvers around them. There is little practical room for idiosyncrasies such as "authorial vision" in a medium that always has one eye on ratings and budget, just as a medieval court lyricist in Persia, Provence or Sicily was always wise to keep one eye on their patron's moneybag and another on the smile or scowl of their patron's VIPs. It is when TV-writers do get a more authorial level of control, and have the talent and confidence to exploit it, that a show like The Wire can take on the qualities of a Dickens novel, though sometimes at the cost of the referential fun to be had in playing with the rules in the manner of Sam & Max: Freelance Police.
Still, in the 12th century, it is probably hard to get any closer to a "modern" authorial ethos than a song that begins by saying essentially: "My name is Marcabru. I composed this text as well as the music to it. This is what I have to say."
Of course, modification did occur, because that is the nature both of the oral transmission by which this song was no doubt first disseminated, and of the manuscript culture which produced the extant versions. The poem is beset with many manuscript problems, in part because topical details tended to get elided over time as the song was adapted for new audiences increasingly removed from 12th century public life of Aquitaine and Poitou. But to some degree it is also because scribes in later centuries seem to have had a particularly hard time understanding it completely, and attempted to correct the text so as to produce something more intelligible. Marcabru could shift among all sorts of linguistic registers, from the solemnly liturgical to the plainly colloquial (as he does here), to the unabashedly obscene (elsewhere he calls a woman a cunt, and describes a man who gets a "hard-on for superfucking.") A lot of his language is at the margins of, and occasionally completely outside, the relatively restricted traditional lyric lexicon of later singers. The texts we have include (or, sometimes, seem to have included) a number of words found nowhere else in Medieval Occitan. Most of these are intelligible as compound coinages or transparent derivations, but some have otherwise unattested roots and are completely opaque. It is not surprising that copyists working outside Occitania had trouble with them.
Gaunt, Harvey and Paterson did an admirable job of handling this in their Marcabru: A Critical Edition and I take their main edition of this poem as my base text. That they take manuscript a1 so seriously makes their work invaluable. (Given how much that book costs, I am glad to get my money's worth out of it.) I have in a number of places gone a different way from them, usually where I thought the other option made for a cooler poem or where I found their reasoning implausible. Sometimes this is minor (e.g. at line 60 where I read crims instead of their critz) and at others not so much (see my note on felpidor.) With this poem, translation issues are more or less inseparable from text-critical issues. As I cannot treat them separately, it didn't seem sensible to provide text-critical notes in Modern Occitan.
The music to this song survives, and deserves comment in its own right. Now, while I do play an instrument, and have for most of my life, I will be the first to admit that I don't know music like I know poetry. I certainly don't know musical history like I know literary history, and I don't know music theory beyond a few college courses and chance readings. So what I say below has more to do with extra-musical considerations.
This song has been recorded many times in the modern era. Many of them are fine virtuosic performances. They are often operatically brilliant, and give the impression of being sung from a church choir. But this is not to be sung from the choir. It is sung from the pulpit, and meant to urge men into battle.
For that, a rhythmic punch is needed. The only rendition of this song that I have come across which at all captures the flavor I hear in my head is Eduardo Paniagua's (you can hear it here). Recording this piece myself was quite out of the question. I don't have near the vocal training or range to be able to perform it. It's one of the most exacting pieces in the troubadour repertoire. It's not surprising that Marcabru was so proud of his melody that he went to the trouble of signing the music the only way he could, in the lyrics themselves.
I've constructed my translation in such a way that it can be sung, if one wishes.
The Cleansing Bowl: A Crusade Song
By Marcabru
Translated by A.Z. Foreman PAX IN NOMINE DOMINI Hear Marcabru's own melody And here says he: In mercy to each faithful soul, The Lord God in eternity Has granted us a washing bowl Like none save that beyond the sea In Holy Armageddon's Land. I sing of this one close at hand. When day begins and when day ends I say it's right to rinse and cleanse. By common sense Each man can bathe where waters roll, Each must, while hale and hearty still Go to the waters of that bowl And there be truly cured of ill While they who die before they go Dwell not on high but burn below. But want of faith and wanton greed Keep youth away from friends in need It's sad indeed That everyone so rares to roll Their dice where Hell's the only prize. Be off then to the cleansing bowl Before you've sealed your mouth and eyes. Nobody gets so fat from pride Satan can't snatch him when he's died. For the Lord who knows all that was And all that will exist or does Has promised us An emperor's crowning aureole. Its beauty will show all we are, For bright above the cleansing bowl It will outshine the morning star If we avenge the way they maim God in Damascus and in Spain. In the long bloody line of Cain, First man of wickedness and bane, Many profane And shirk the Lord their lips extol. His true friends will be recognized. It is the virtue of that bowl That all who go there share in Christ. Lets drive the heathen scum away Who still believe what augurs say.
While self-indulgent liquor-mouths, Fire-squatting punks, food-glutting louts And slouchabouts Stay wimping in their septic hole, God means to try the sound and bold By cauldron of his cleansing bowl. Others keep watch of the household, Dig gardens with their little knives And I will shame them all their lives. In Spain I know Marquis Raimón And Templar Knights of Solomon Now bear alone The cross of pagans' proud control. So young men wallow in disgrace. Denouncement from that bloody bowl Pours over every captain's face: Broke failures, gutless with the sword, Who have no love for joy or sport. God damn degenerates of France Who shirk the work that God demands. I know how it stands. Antioch! Here Poitou unconsoled And Guyenne mourn the great and bold. God, take into Thy holy Bowl And lay to rest Lord Baldwin's soul And here Poitiers and Niort be safe In that Lord who defied the grave.
Vèrs del Lavador
Marcabru
Pax in nomine domini
Fetz Marcabruṉs los motz e·l soṉ Auiatz que di
Com nos a fach per sa dolçor
Lo senhorius celestials
Probèt de nos uṉ lavador
Qu'anc fòr oltramar noṉ fo tals
En de lai enves Josafas
E d'aquest de çai vos conòrt
Lavar de ser e de matiṉ
Nos deuriam segon rasoṉ Ièu·s o afi
Chascuṉs a de lavar lesor
Dementre qu'el es sáṉs e sals
Deurí' anar al lavador
Que·ns es verai medicinals
E si ans anam a la mòrt
D'aut' estatg' aurem alberc bas
Mas Escarsetatz e Noṉ-Fes
Part Joven de soṉ companhoṉ Aquell dòls es
Que tuch vòlon lai li plusor
Dont lo gazanhs èr infernals
S'ans noṉ correm al lavador
Qu'aiam la boca ni·ls uòlh claus
No·n i a uṉ d'orguòlh tant gras
Qu'al morir noṉ tròb contrafòrt
Que·l sénher que sap tot quant es
E sap tot quant èr e qu'anc fo Nos a promes
Coron' e nom d'emperador
E·l beltatz sera sabençals
Qu'e cell luiran al lavador
Plus que l'estella gausinhals
Amb çò que venguem Dièu del tòrt
Que·l fan çai e lai ves Domas
Probèt del linhatge Caïṉ
Del premairan ome felhoṉ, A tants aici
Qu'us a Dièu noṉ pòrta honor
Veirem qui l'èr amics corals
Qu'amb la vertut del lavador
Nos sera Jesus comunals
E tornem los garçoṉs atras
Qu'en agurs crezon et en sòrt
E·lh luxuriós cornavíṉ
Còcha-disnar, buffa-tisoṉ Crup'-en-camíṉ
Remandran ar' e·l felpidor
E Dièus vòl los arditz e·ls sals
Assaiar a soṉ lavador
E cilh gacharan los ostals
E plantaran lor coltre en l'òrt
Çò per qu'ièu a lor anta·ls chas
En Espanha, sai, lo marqués
E cilh del temple Salamoṉ Sófron lo pes
E·l fais de l'orguòlh paianor
Per que jovens cuòlh àvol laus
E·l crims per aquell lavador
vir' e versa sobre·ls chaptals
Frach-falhitz de proesa las
Que non amon jòi ni depòrt
Desnaturat son li Francés
Si del afar Dièu dison noṉ Qu'ièu sai com es.
Antiòca! Pretz amb valor
Çai plora Guian' e Peitaus
Dièus lo comte a soṉ lavador
L'arma condug' e meta en paus
E çai gart Peitièus e Niòrt
Lo sénher que resors del vas
Audio of me reciting this poem in Old Occitan
Notes on Text and Translation:
Stanza 1:
Pax In Nomine Domini. The Latin line reads "peace in the name of the Lord" and echoes (but does not reproduce) certain passages from the Bible and liturgy.
Armageddon's Land. The Occitan passage says the vale of Jehosaphat. Jehosaphat was where it was imagined the battle at the end of days would take place. So too in modern English, Armageddon (Heb. Har Megiddo, "Megiddo Mountain") is associated both with Holy Levantine Geography and with apocalyptic conflict. But note the context of Jehosaphat's appearance in the book of Joel for more profound parallels involving cleansing and streams. See in particular on this point A.H. Schutz' "Marcabru and Jehosaphat" in Romance Notes, Vol. 1, No. 1.
I sing of this one close at hand: Righteous men needn't even seek the Cleansing Bowl of crusade across the sea, for there's an equally important holy war against the Saracens right here to the south.
Lavador (nom. Lavaire) is the key word in this poem. It probably meant a lot of different things. One sense is "washing place" in a very ordinary sense: a public basin for the plebs to wash their clothes. Communal washing places were commonplace in Europe before industrial washing, piped water supplies, and modern drainage were introduced. In the Middle Ages they were often sited on a spring or by a river, with a roof for shelter. The word also refers to a bowl to dunk your face in to freshen up. And, like French lavoir it can be a place to do ritual washing as part of religious observance. Cf. English lavabo.
In many dialects of Modern Occitan, lavador can refer to various things such as a kitchen sink or a laundromat. It is also still used for a place of ritual ablution, and for old-style wash-houses (a number of which survived in small towns in southern France, and were preserved as historical curios long after they fell out of use.)
Stanza 3:
No-Fes: cannot mean "unbelief" in our sense of the term. The targets of invective here are not actually "pagani" like the infidel Mohammedans, but Christians who are delinquent in their holy duty.
Aquel dòls es: ironizing wordplay. That which causes dòls "grief, pity" is the opposite of the near-homophone dolç "sweet, kindly, a sight for sore eyes." Marcabru may himself have pronounced the respective words as /dɔws/ and /dowts/. Or he may not have distinguished the two at all. Regardless, the very things which a sybarite like Guilhem de Peitieus might find a source of dolçor are rather cause for dolor to a moralizing man like Marcabru.
Stanza 4:
Sabençal: not attested elsewhere in Old Occitan, though the derivation from sabença "wisdom" is straightforward. It is arrived at by Gaunt et. al through inference from copy bungles, and translated by them as "sapiential." I am a bit reluctant to hang the whole basket on what may be an editorial ghost.
Gausinhal: not attested elsewhere in Old Occitan. The phrase "estela gausinhaus" is taken to mean "morning star" and probably has been since the 14th century. Various Latin etymologies have been proposed to this end that connect it with the time of cock-crow. I'm not entirely convinced. Marcabru has another far more transparent term for morning star. The spirit of the passage makes me inclined to infer some more transparent derivation from gauzir. But since I haven't thought of anything specific beyond vague dissatisfaction, I'll leave it as is with its traditional meaning.
Stanza 5:
Line of Cain: Cf. St. Augustine's De civitate Dei 14.27, also 15.1, 17 and 18 in which he divides the world of men into two generations: those of Cain who live "according to man" and those of Abel who live "according to God."
Stanza 6:
Luxuriós: this word has been previously translated as "lecherous" "lustful" or even "horny." There is no arguing that this is the general sense of the word in Romance. Things like an Old Occitan medicinal recipe for a femna trop luxuriosa attest clearly to this sense of the word in Occitan by the 14th century. For clerics, the word can only be a moralizing one. It occurs in the troubadour corpus only in Marcabru's lyrics, and in only two songs. Once here, and once in Pos mos coratges esclarzis. Interestingly, in neither case does the context require (or even remotely suggest) lechery or lust in a specifically sexual sense. It will not do to simply assume that it meant for Marcabru what it meant elsewhere and in other contexts. I could be wrong. If so, then let the blame fall on Tricia Postle of Pneuma Ensemble who, after much protesting from me, convinced me that the word in this context really ought to refer to more general indulgence in worldly appetites of all sorts. In Latin, luxuriosus can refer both to sexual vice and to more general sumptuary excess characterized by a "womanish" lack of self-control. I have so translated the word here.
The stanza continues with a series of what appears to be highly colloquial coinages.
Crup-en-cami here translated as "hearth-squatter, fire-squatter" is evocative of the common image in Occitan and Old French literature of vile or baseborn men as squatting over fires. Another meaning of cami though is "road" and one could defensibly interpret it as "roadside bums" or the like.
Buffa-tiso means literally "brand-blower" i.e. one who fans the firebrand flames. This may be meant to evoke fodder for the flames of Hell. I didn't know how to deal with this exactly in translation, and so I chose to use "punk" as evocative of the colloquial register. I justify this to myself with the fact that the original meaning of punk is "rotten firewood."
Felpidor/folpidor/felpador: this word is attested nowhere else. It is apparently derived from a verb *felpir/folpir/falpar which is not attested anywhere at all. Later manuscripts tended to revise to something more intelligible (like fera pudor "savage stench") and others shift the surrounding language in ways which look like the copyist was trying to guess the meaning from context, or perhaps trying to find a context that would make the meaning more guessable. There is frankly no way to be sure whether it is even a real word, or just a scribal garbling of something else now unrecoverable. The most straightforward explanation for the word's shape is a nominalization of a verb cognate to French foupir "crumple up", ultimately from Late Latin faluppa which yeilds various nominal forms in old Oïl dialects such as frepe, ferpe, feupe (whence English frippery.) There have been many, many different attempts to resolve the problem. Here the solution proposed by Gaunt et al. is basically unconvincing to me, relying as it does a chain of speculations, each of which is plausible on its own but which in sum seem rather tortured. The treatment I find most satisfactory from an artistic standpoint is to take felpidor as a singular oblique noun which is in some important sense the opposite of the lavador. Anna M. Mussons in her article Traduir El Vers Del Lavador in which she surveys the various attempts to solve this problem, has I think hit on precisely the right idea in her own concluding thoughts. Her article is extremely useful and deserves to be read and cited more widely (and probably would be if she hadn't written it in Catalan.)
There are lots of possibilities for what could underlie the first word of aqeil felpidor in manuscript a1. Examples include ans e·l,ar e·l or al vil.
The final two lines of this stanza are badly garbled. Their original meaning was clearly confusing to later audiences and copyists. The solution given here, which I find eminently compelling, is taken entirely from Gaunt et al.
Stanza 7:
Marquis: the Occitan does not name the specific Marquis involved. But everything suggests that Marcabru could only have had in mind Marquis Raymond (Raimón) Berenguer IV of Barcelona, who conducted a campaign against Tortosa and Lerida in 1148-49.
Templars: the Templars of Solomon played a quite important part in the conquests of Tortosa and Lerida
Stanza 8:
Antioch! This word is probably best left as a disconnected exclamation, a reference to Prince Raymond.
Lines 6-7. A literal translation of Dieus lo comte al sieu lavador l'arma conduga e meta en paus would probably be: "God lead the Count's soul to his Cleansing-place and put to rest" with lo comte taken in a syntactically "dative" role. A lectio facilior — which makes for a more resonant poem, I think — would shift the position of the first word in the second line, thus conduga e meta l'arma en paus. Or even meta s'arma en paus. But there is zero manuscript justification for this.
The main question is how to understand the lavador here. Many, using an edition with different manuscript choices, have interpreted the lavador as referring to the Shrine of Santiago where Count William (Guilhèm) died on pilgrimage. (In that edition the lines translate as "Lord God, into Thy Cleansing-place lay the soul of the count to rest.") But apart from questions of manuscript variant, and apart the fact that William is probably not the count actually referred to, there seems to me to be something a bit off about Marcabru putting a popular pilgrimage site (i.e. the medieval equivalent of a tourist attraction) in the same league as holy purification by the blades of war. Assuming that the text here is (more or less) what Marcabru sang, then the lavador obviously something that comes after death, and therefore not the same thing as the Cleansing Bowl of the crusade. It appears to refer to a process by which the soul is cleansed and purified before being laid to rest in wait for the Last Judgment. The forerunner of the notion of Purgatory. That said, I have translated the passage by taking a reading from the C manuscript which portrays the Lavador as a place in God's possession. Why? It seemed to make for more satisfying English.
Lord Baldwin: The original, as said above, simply refers to an unnamed Count. Many and perhaps most scholars take it to be William VIII of Poitou. But the references to Templars and the Spanish Marquis make it more likely that the song was composed well over a decade after William's death. The other candidate, then, would be Raymond (Ramón) of Antioch. The presence of the word Antiocha in an ambiguous context makes this more appealing. The problem there is that Raymond of Antioch was styled 'prince' and not 'count', a fact that Marcabru was unlikely to fudge or forget given (a) how close his relationship with the Poitevin court seems to have been and (b) that Comte and Prince are metrically equivalent and one wouldn't even have to change the line at all to fit the latter in. The solution followed by Gaunt et al. is that the count referred to is Raymond's brother, Baldwin (Baldoí) of Marash, who died in 1146 in a battle with Nūr al-Dīn Abū al-Qāsim Maḥmūd, the atabeg of Aleppo. This reasoning is further developed by Linda Paterson in "Syria, Poitou and the Reconquista" in The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences. There is also the possibility that Comte is a manuscript garbling of something else. I have taken the risk of naming Baldwin in the translation, and have also styled him 'lord' rather than 'count.' I do this because it allows dramatic contrast between the dead lord and the resurrected Lord of the following lines. I can justify this to myself because, in English, it is common enough to style medieval continental counts as 'Lord' and also because "Lord" was a title that was used for Baldwin of Marash himself. (And an earl, the British equivalent of a count, is always styled 'Lord' today.)
Soul: The word Arma has been taken by others here to mean "soul" as it usually does in dirge verse, and I have so translated it. But there is another sense of the word: "weapon." This latter is more commonly, but not exclusively, found in the plural armas. Moreover, the context itself makes the sense "weapon" impossible for me not to hear as well. It wouldn't be the only or even first poetic treatment of a righteous man's soul as being itself an implement of God's battle with the Evil One(s). Weapons and fists, too, are sanctified by holy combat. Cf. St. John Chrysostom telling the Antiochenes to "sanctify your hand with the blow" by assaulting blasphemers. Only a few sentences after proclamations of Christian meekness, in fact. When convenient, Christian meekness is often held, as it were, at arm's length.
Fa longtemps qu'ai pas revirat res de la lenga d'òc ni mai escrich subre sa literatura. E ja qu'i torni, ço'm par, deuriái tornar començar a la debuta. Alara... Dins una encontrada de longa romanizacion, a una epòca ont las corts del sud de Gàllia èran totjorn en contacte cultural indirècte amb las tạ'ifas musulamanas d'Al-Andalós, sota lo triple signe d'amor, de jòia e de jovença, nasquèt la primièra literatura escricha "en plana lengua romana" coma lo diguèt aptament Jaufré Rudel. Dins lo sègle seguent, lo dialècte roman d'aquela literatura primairenca va venir la lenga lirica per excelléncia per las regions de parla romanica. Guilhèm IX de Peitièus, lo duc d'Aquitània, lo prince del Trobar e lo mai grand feodal del sieu temps, es lo primièr trobador conegut. La sieu cort, situada a l'entorn dels grands monastèris de Lemòtges e Peitièus aguèt una granda importància per l'istòria literària de la lenga. Mas sembla pauc versemblable que l'art de trobar nasquèt a sa cort. Guilhèm, aital coma las compausicions a las qualas el leguèt son nom, foguèt probablament lo resultat e lo produch d'un long periòde de desvolopament que ne podem percebre uèi pas que qualques traças obscuras. Ço que nos demòra d'aquela etapa de la literatura d'òc es pas qu'una fraccion relativament pichona de l'abondància lirica que segur existissià an aquela epòca, ço qu'es tipic quand se tracta d'una literatura vernaculara de l'Etat Mejana. Lo pauc que ne possedissèm a estat salvat, per aital dire, d'un naufratge istoric. Aquò dich, la situacion de l'occitan es evidentament pas gaire tipica, e es per aquò que decidiguèri d'escriure lo meu commentàri en òc. Al mai li torni pensar, al mai soi segur qu'es una bona idèa. Tot francament, se tracta d'una question de principi. La lenga es pas mòrta, e cal absoludament pas la tractar coma s'ela lo foguèsse. La majoritat de los qu'estudian la lenga en defòra de las regions occitanofònas dessabon gaireben tot de sas formas modernas. D'ont l'escarsitat dels trabalhs de lingüistica suls autors occitans contemporaneus. E mai las grandas òbras demòran èrmas d'estudi. En mai del nombre globalament reduch dels lingüistas que trabalhan sus la lenga moderna, i a agut plusors literators anglofòns que seguiguèron las piadas d'Ezra Pound que, maugrat son multilingüisme literàri e sa fetichizacion dels trobadors, aviá pas res a dire sus la litteratura d'òc modèrne. En fach, òm pòt se demandar perqué Pound s'interessèt pas als activitats del Felibritge. Es una question que fins ara degun a pausada. Mas quitament s'el ne sabià quicom, ieu dobti qu'un cambafin coma el aguèsse ausat s'encanalhar amb un simple "patoés", encara mai qu'avià pas res que mesprètz pels estatjants reals de las tèrras d'Òc pendent lo temps que passèt en Provénça. Mas ara cauqui fòra l'ièra... En tot cas, a mon vejaire, tot medievaliste, tot romaniste, tot literator que s'interessa a la lenga trobadorenca deuriá al mens saber un quicomet de l'occitan contemporanèu. Deurián tanben faire faça a un fach tragic: l'abotiment mai probable de la situacion actuala en frança es la fin de la lenga coma paraula sociala.
Song for New Romance
By William IX of Poitiers
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Now in the beauty of new days The leaves reach out and young birds raise Each in its native tweeted speech The harmonies of a new song Now it is right a man should reach And have what he has sought so long
The way our love is going now Is like a limber hawthorn bough Upon a tree that stands all night Shaken in wind and sleet and rain Till morning's sun comes stretching light Over green leaves and boughs again From her where good and beauty rise No message yet has reached my eyes So now I neither smile nor sleep Nor take a stand nor dare advance Till I am sure that she will keep Our truce and yield to my demands Let me recall that day once more When we made peace in our long war And she made such a gift to me Of love, her ring, and luscious oaths God grant I only live to see My hands again beneath her clothes
I don't care what weird things they say To take my Nearest One away I know how words of cant are spilled And spread to rumors of no good They boast what love their tools can build But we're the ones who nail the wood
Novèll Chant
Guilhem IX de Peitièus
Amb la dolçor del temps novèll
Fuòlhon li bòsc, e li ausèll
Chanton chascuṉs en lor latiṉ,
Segon lo vèrs del novèll chant:
Adonc esta beṉ qu'om s'aisiṉ
D'aquò dont om a plus talant.
La nòstra amor va enaicí
Com la brancha de l'albespiṉ
Qu'estai sobre l'arbre tremblant,
La nuòch, amb la pluòia et al gèl,
Tro l'endeman, que·l sols s'espand
Per la fuòlha vèrt e·l ramèll.
De lai dont plus m'es bon e bèll
Noṉ vei messagièr ni sagèll,
Donc moṉ còrs noṉ dòrm ni noṉ ri
Ni noṉ m'autz traire adenant,
Tro qu'ièu sapcha beṉ de la fiṉ,
S'el es aicí com ièu demand.
Encar me membra d'uṉ matiṉ
Que nos fesem de guèrra fiṉ
E que·m donèt uṉ don tant grand,
Sa drudarí' e son anèll:
Encar me lais Dièus viure tant
Qu'aia mas máṉs sotz soṉ mantèll!
Qu'ièu non ai sonh d'estranh latiṉ
Que·m parta de moṉ Boṉ Vesiṉ,
Qu'ièu sai de paraulas com van,
Amb uṉ brièu sermoṉ qui s'espèll:
Que tal se van d'amor gabant;
Nos n'avem la pèça e·l cotèll.
Nòtas sul tèxte occitan:
S1:
vèrs. Lo sens intentat aicí presenta fòrça ambigüitats. Se pòt que se tracta d'un "vèrs" dins lo sens mai o mens transparent de la paraula. Mas i a d'autras possibilitats, talas coma lo sens de "mesura" o de "ritme" o encar "tèxte verbal d'un cant."
s'aisinar - Las incertitudes que presenta aqueste tèrme son quasiment espantosas. Lo contèxt nos ajuda pas gaire. Lo sens de "gausir," lo de "trobar patz" e lo de "arrapar, panar" figuran dins l'esphèra semantica de la paraula.
S3
se traire adenant - aquesta expression deurià aver de nuàncias militaras, subretot en un contèxt ont la simbologia e los imatges cavalièrs, e lo caràcter generalment guerrièr de nombrosas passatges, pòdon pas èsser ignorats.
S5:
Gabar, pèça — De costuma los commentaires an pres lo vèrbe gabar dins lo sens commun de "se vantar." Aquò es completament credible. Mas se pòt que lo sens mai literal de "se dobrir la boca" siá tanben relevant. Es a dire que d'autres van gabant de l'amor, se dobrissent la boca precisament perqu'an fam — al nivèl quasi literal — de ço que realament possedisson pas. Encara una autra possibilitat seriá de prendre pèça dins un sens mai obscèn. Se pòt que siá pas que mon imaginacion que me guilha, mas quand un òme que ven de cantar los elògis de sas proesas sexualas menciona sa "pèça" e un cotèl o d'autres objèctes fallics, ço'm par, i a pas gaire de grands mistèris a descobrir subre l'idèa generala.
Philology is not much in vogue these days. At least, not in the English-speaking world. Yet when it comes to medieval and ancient texts, I seem to be part translator, part long-winded commentator, and part philologically-obsessed editor. I have come to increasingly accept this about myself, much as one must accept the passing of youth, the passing of air or the passing of a kidney stone. I had set out to write a brief two-to-three paragraph introduction to the song here translated. But it seems to have mushroomed into about five printed pages worth of philological, editorial and comparative literary divagation about Islamic literatures, modern Occitan and the history of troubadour studies.
A weird little story is found in Jaufré Rudel's vida, or biography. It tells how he fell in love with the countess of Tripoli simply by hearing about her from pilgrims, which inspired him not only to sing songs about her but to go on Crusade across the sea to try and see her. But he took gravely ill at sea so that his dying body had to be brought to an inn in Tripoli. The countess, having heard of this, came to see him in his last moments, and gave him the joy of dying in the arms of his lady love, seeing her for the first time, after which, she became a nun in posthumous fidelity to her one-time beloved. This unworldly little chain of improbabilities, seemingly drawn mostly from medieval stock commonplaces, fired the romantic blood of nineteenth century Europeans. Given what an extremely combustible substance romantic blood tends to be, this is unsurprising. What may be more of a shock, or rather more of an indictment, is that even medievalists took the tale to be basically factual until Gaston Paris set them straight, also disposing of the general reliability of Occitan troubadour biographies in the process. Yet even then, the search continued for some lucky lady referent, some real unseen woman of historical or literary note, to bear the dubious honor of being Rudel's Amor Lonhdana. The interpretative knot which the vida (almost certainly by the hand of Uc de Saint-Circ) twists itself into by trying to understand Jaufré's songs in literal terms seems to me a masterpiece of creative un-imagination which made the songs all the more memorable to medieval audiences, motivated as it was by the kind of textual intractability which once fostered the akhbār on pre-Islamic poets, and would centuries later stoke the minds of Biblical philologists. Modern audiences may find the vida to be much more fanciful than the song corpus it attempts to explain. Still, it is not an entirely straightforward matter to determine what the "love afar" (amor de lonh, amor lonhdana, amors de tèrra lonhdana), which Rudel sings about even is (nor, as I would argue, does it even matter quite so much as one might think.) It is still occasionally taken to be a woman, one which the singer has never seen and perhaps never will. Yet Rudel is peculiarly vague about the object of his love, and also contradictory, such that some have considered her to be a woman of dream visions, or a mere set piece abstracted from the "princesse lointaine" trope found sporadically in Old Spanish and Old French literature. Moreover, transcendent and temporal love seem to heavily inflect one another in Rudel's songs, with a heavy undertone of Crusading (that he did take up the cross for the Holy Land is one of the few things about his life for which there is external evidence.) Thus other incorporeal and even inanimate candidates for the "love afar" have been identified including not merely "love of God" but the Crusades themselves, the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Land, the Christian Paradise and even Helen of Troy (as a literary trope, obviously, not an object of fanciful necrophilia.) The broader generic question of whether Rudel's love was "religious or profane" has also been a cause in whose name many a valiant scholar's ink has been tragically shed. (One would do well to recall how close to the heart of lyric poetry hymnody was in the early Middle Ages, a matter all too often forgotten in the disciplinary crevice between Late Latin and Medieval Romance literature.) This and the other songs of Rudel have attracted much interest for all manner of reasons. But among the reasons why they interest me, one is somewhat odd. Perhaps it is odd (and more so today than it would have been 50 years ago) only because of how frequently, and increasingly, the study of literature is determined by the intellectual genealogies and taxonomies reflected in the divisions of university departments, and therefore students of Islamicate literatures seldom busy themselves much with the study of Occitan these days. For we have here a particularly crystalline example of the parallels with Islamicate court lyric that have long been sensed with regard to much troubadour song. Many of the issues at play with this song (confusion as to verse ordering, structural opacity, lack of clarity as to what the song is "really" supposed to be about and a good deal else both thematic and editorial) will ring a bell for anyone familiar with scholarship on classical Persian (and Persianate) court lyric, as well as the debates of orientalists regarding same in the previous century. Indeed, veterans of the badly-framed "religious or profane love" question that so troubled scholarship are downright legion among students and afficionados of Persian and Urdu poetry, including yours truly. To clone a phrase, you might say Rudel's stanzas are as beautiful as occident pearls at random sung. The relationship of Andalusi, Sicilian and even Persian lyric to troubadour song (and also to Italian lyric) has long been a point of discussion. The scholarly debate on the matter is fascinating, albeit sometimes "fascinating" in a rather clinical sort of way. Generally it has gone in a crude vein of "who influenced whom and how" (or, mīn akhad min mīn as I once heard an Arab nationalist friend put it), sometimes with naked national or disciplinarian prejudices involved. Sometimes it has taken the form of more nuanced speculations about the influence of the courtly melting pot of Frederick II. Apart from the obviously porous boundaries between Romance and Arabic oral culture in medieval Iberia, I'm inclined to grant the high plausibility of the latter speculations, as well as the general fact that troubadours and joglars traveled widely, from France to Spain to Germany to Hungary to Malta to Palestine, and must have had a considerable impact on their own. Explanations of this kind are in order in cases where the similarities go to the point of poets using the same peculiar metaphors for the same referents, as is the case especially with Italian and Arabic poetry, or of documentable points of contact however vague (e.g. Petrarch's mysterious comments about Arab poets.) But something more general seems to me to be at work, beyond specific sites of "cross-pollination" and not least because it would be rather more difficult, though not impossible, to rope Persian lyric into this filiation than the Andalusi or the Sicilian. Julie Scott Meisami writes this germane pair of sentences in her Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry:
Since the medieval literatures of Europe and the Middle East present similar problems in many respects (not least because they are medieval), the study of one may shed light on another, while reference to more familiar traditions may make the “exotic” ones more accessible to those unfamiliar with them. The medieval world was not fragmented by twentieth-century geopolitical or linguistic boundaries; despite differences of language, faith, and culture, it was far more homogeneous than traditional scholarship would have us believe.
Equally relevant, but in a different way is what Meisami says later on the same page:
In the West, the “experience” of the speaker (typically identified with the poet) is considered primary; that this is not obviously so in Arabic or Persian has led to the belief that Islamic literatures place no value on the individual or on individual experience.
I would argue that it is precisely the preoccupation with the speaker's experience that has led so much scholarship on Rudel's songs until recently to go off the rails. Particularly since he is a "western" poet, he must be made to fit the western ideas (but especially Romantic and post-Romantic ideas) of what it is that poets express, and the relationship of that expression to their reality. L. Topsfield certainly seems to me on the right track in pointing out that Rudel's songs and those of his contemporaries comes from a period characterized by "a seeking and experimental type of poetry...not normally tied down by courtly ideas of behavior, [which] is often more abstract than worldly in intention and is concerned more with the personal quest for joy and the absolute ideal of an ultimate happiness than with conformity to social convention." For Jaufré Rudel's preoccupation with an amor de lonh is much easier to understand as a function of his particular approach to the religious and ethical dimensions of his craft, in response to the more proximate (and less chaste) love that others in his day sang of (or, as in Marcabru's case, viciously sang against.) Rupert T Pickens puts it well:
The quest for an historical amor de lonh is futile and, in my opinion, wrongheaded. The identity of a woman as the object of the troubadour's passion can add nothing to our understanding of his poetry; on the contrary, the poetic content of his work is diminished when attention is deflected away from the songs themselves...[L]ove is a creation of the poet's imagination and...the poems are jeux d'esprit.
Now, then, about the Occitan text. A confession of editorial license: the arrangement of the stanzas, though not without textual warrant, is simply the one I liked best. The "original" (if it even makes sense to think in these terms) ordering of stanzas is probably impossible to authenticate, from the available manuscripts of this song. This is in the first place because not all of the best manuscripts even have all of the stanzas, and secondly (and relatedly) because the variation in attested stanza ordering for this song is so great that it is unlikely that stanzaic order remained stable anymore than the number of stanzas themselves. After his death, stanzas of Rudel's song were probably rearranged, or excised by singers according to taste and the exigencies of performance, in addition to the fallibility of memory, and there seems to be a small amount of evidence, albeit indirect, that troubadours expected their work to be modified in transmission, at least some of the time. (I am reminded of the variant orderings found in the lyrics of Hāfiz.) Unlike some other Occitan lyrics, there is little sign of either ring composition or linear development here, so much as variations on a theme developed in various directions. The ordering of stanzas might easily be changed about depending on how one interpreted the amor de lonh. My "edition" of the original text is a somewhat eccentric thing. I have taken a cue from Bianchi's and Romieu's La Lenga Del Trobar: Precis de Grammatica d'Occitan Ancian as to the value which Old Occitan texts may have for the speaker, or learner, of the modern language, and have regularized the text's orthography with the modern nòrma classica as a guide, not because I think modern Occitan readers are so dim that <can> will be unintelligible to them unless regularized to quand or quant, but because unless one is directly reproducing a manuscript version, which I'm not, I see little point in maintaining an old and hugely variable orthography. Moreover, partial modernization and systematization of orthography in texts for non-specialist modern readers is a fairly routine practice for other medieval languages (e.g. Middle French, Middle English, Old Spanish) with modern descendants, and I see no reason not to do this with Old Occitan. Thus for example, intervocalic [s] and [z] are distinguished by -ss- and -s- respectively, open o and e in stressed syllables are marked by a grave accent, and close o and e by an acute accent in non-final position. Where original pronunciation is clearly at issue, I leave irregularities as they are. For example, <chans> in the original is regularized as chants, and not cants. Forms with palatalized j/ch- and with unpalatalized g/c- before -a seem to have alternated freely in the version of Old Occitan in which many of the troubadours composed, presumably sometimes to suit taste or effect as in the alliteration of jamais and jausirai here. (One might compare American poets' willingness during the twentieth century to rhyme "again" with both "men" and "pain", and "been" with both "seen" and "fin", and the frequent preservation of a dual pronunciation in recitations.) You will notice that I have used the word "song" rather than "poem" above to refer to Jaufré Rudel's work. This is intentional. For this was in fact a song, with all that implies, and indeed the music for it still survives. I had considered singing the song myself. But it quickly became apparent that I did not have the training necessary to sing the somewhat complicated melody correctly, and tolerably, over seven stanzas. But the internet boasts a wealth of people doing their own renditions of this song. Here's one that sticks fairly closely to the recorded melody (the singer, judging by her pronunciation, is a native Catalan speaker). And here's another sung by the musicologist Elizabeth Aubrey, ripped from the CD accompanying William D. Paden's Introduction to Old Occitan, a wonderful book which I used to learn Old Occitan all those years ago. (Aubrey's performance will naturally be de-linked from this page upon request of copyright holders.)
Now that the days grow long in May I hear birds' gentle song afar When from that song I turn away My mind turns to my love afar I walk so overcast and dour That neither song nor whitethorn flower Can touch me more than winter's chill Never will I find joy on earth In love without my love afar Who shines above all other worth Above all others near and far Her virtue reigns so true and pure I'd die a prisoner of war In Moorish lands to serve her will Half grieved half joyful I will go Once having seen my love afar When shall we meet? I do not know For our two lands lie far too far So many paths by land and sea What lies ahead I cannot see But all things follow God's good will What bliss for love of God will be There in the lodge of love afar I'll lodge with her if she wants me Although a stranger from afar O discourse will be dear the day I come her love from faraway To hear love's words and feel its thrill I call him Lord who I believe Shall let me see my love afar Though for each pleasure I receive Two ills since she remains so far I'd go a pilgrim to that shrine To see my dust-dark tunic shine In those clear eyes reflected still God who made all things swift and still And fashioned me my love afar Grant me a way — I have the will Soon to behold my love afar In real space of such a grace That chamber wall and garden place Will seem a palace on a hill He speaks the truth who says I yearn And lust for naught but love afar What joy on earth would I not spurn Just to enjoy my love afar? But what I want is barred with hate My godfather1 has fixed my fate To love well and be treated ill Oh what I want I'll never find God damn that godfather of mine Who doomed my love to bring me ill
Notes: 1- An allusion to the belief that children's lives are influenced by the fate of their godparents.
The Original:
Amor de Lonh
Jaufré Rudèl
Lanquand li jorn son long en mai
M'es bèlls dòlç chants d'ausèlls de lonh
E quand me soi partitz de lai
Remembra·m d'un amor de lonh
Vau de talan embroncs e cliṉs
Si que chants ni flors d'albespiṉs
No·m platz plus que l'ivèrns gelatz
Jamais d'amor no·m jauzirai
Si no·m jau d'est' amor de lonh
que melhor ni gensor no·n sai
vas nulha part ni près ni lonh
Tant es sos prètz verais e fiṉs
Que lai e·l renc dels Sarrasiṉs
fos ièu per lièis chaitius clamatz
Iratz e jauzents m'en partrai
quand veirai cest' amor de lonh
mas noṉ sai córas la veirai
car tant son nòstras tèrras lonh
Assatz i a pòrtz e camiṉs
e per aiçò no·n soi devis
Mas tot sia com a Dièu platz
Be·m parra jòis quand li querrai
Per amor Dièu l'albèrc de lonh
E s'a lièis platz albergarai
Près de lièis si be·m soi de lonh
Adoncs parra·l parlaments fiṉs
Quand drutz lonhdáṉs èr tant vesiṉs
Qu'amb bèlls dichs jauzirai solatz
Beṉ tenc lo Senhor per verai
Per qu'ièu veirai l'amor de lonh
Mas per uṉ beṉ que m'en eschai
N'ai dos mals, car tant m'es de lonh
Ai! Car noṉ fui lai pelegriṉs
Si que mos fustz e mos tapiṉs
Fos pels sièus bèlls uòlhs remiratz
Dièus qui fetz tot quant veṉ ni vai
E formèt cesta amor de lonh
Mi don poder que còr ièu n'ai
Qu'en brèu veia l'amor de lonh
Veraiament en luòcs aisiṉs
Si que la cambra e·l jardiṉs
Mi ressemblès tostemps palatz
Ver ditz qui m'apèlla lechai
e desiron d'amor de lonh
que nulhs altres jòis tant no·m plai
Com jauziments d'amor de lonh
Mas çò qu'ièu vuòlh m'es ataïs
Qu'enaici·m fadèt mos pairis
Qu'ièu amès e noṉ fos amatz
Mas çò qu'ièu vuòlh m'es ataïs
Totz sia malditz lo pairis
que·m fadèt qu'ièu noṉ fos amatz Appendix:
The Vida of Jaufre Rudel
Jaufre Rudel of Blaya was a very noble man, and lord of Blaya. He fell in love with the countess of Tripoli, sight unseen, because of all the good things that he heard pilgrims tell of her on their way back from Antioch. He made many songs about her with good melodies but poor lyrics.
Out of desire to see her, he took up the cross and went to sea, but was taken ill while on board and was brought, near to death, to an inn in Tripoli. This was made known to the countess, and she came to his bed to see him, and took him into her arms. And he, having realized that she was the countess, at once recovered the faculties of hearing and smell, and praised God who had sustained his life until he could see her; and so he died in her arms.
And she had him buried with high honors in the house of the Templars, and became a nun that same day out of grief over his death.
La Vida de Jaufré Rudèl
Jaufrés Rudèls de Blaia si fo mout gentils om e fo prínces de Blaia. Et enamorèt de la comtéssa de Trípoli seṉs veser, per lo boṉ qu'el n'ausi dire als peleriṉs que vénguen d'Antiòcha. E fetz de lèis maints vèrs ab boṉs soṉs, amb paubre motz.
E per volontat de lèis veser, el se crosèt e se mes en mar; e pres lo malautía en la nau e fo conduch a Trípoli en un albèrc per mòrt. E fo fach saber a la comtéssa et ela venc az el, al son lièit, e pres lo entre sos bratz. E saup qu'ela èra la comtéssa e mantenent recobrèt l'ausir e·l flairar, e lausèt Dièu que l'avia la vida sostenguda tro qu'el l'aguès vista; et enaiçí el morí entre soṉs bratz.
Et ela lo fetz a grand honor sepelir en la maión del Temple; e pòis en aquel dia ela se rendèt morga per la dolor qu'ela n'ac de la mòrt de lui.
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