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On the Text of Two Troubadour Poems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
aïmbaut d'Aurenca Ara'm so del tot conquis.
(B. Gr. 389, 11 ed. Kolsen, Neophilologus [1941], pp. 99–105.)
The well-known tenso between Giraut de Bornelh and Linhaure (Gr. 281, 1 = Gr. 389, 10a) whose identification with the Prince of Orange, generally accepted today, stands to the credit of Adolf Kolsen, reveals Raïmbaut as an adherent of trobar clus. Our poem, however, is one of those in which that aristocratic troubadour does not adhere to his artistic convictions. We can be glad of this attitude on the part of the poet because it gave us a poem attractive in its easy-flowing rhythm, simple versification, and continuous presentation of charming thoughts and motifs, from the doubts and hesitations of the beginning to the triumphant finale of the self-confident knight. To reach this goal, the poet takes particular care to connect the stanzas of his poem by repeating in the beginning of each of them the idea on which he closes the preceding stanza and developing it into a new one. He thus forms, as it were, coblas capfinadas, not in the usual sense of metrical technique, but in a higher artistic sense. Besides this stylistic phenomenon, there are two features that seem to me characteristic of this poem. (1) Much as he likes apostrophes to God and the saints, in none of his other poems does Raïmbaut concede to God such a dominant and intrinsic rôle concerning his love as in this one. (2) So God, Love, and Chivalry, those three essential elements of medieval thinking, are blended here into a mental and artistic unity hardly equaled in any other troubadour song.
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References
1 Guiraut von Bornelh (Berlin, 1894), pp. 44–51.
2 See the very careful discussion oí that tenso and Raimbaut's attitude towards trobar clus in Appel, Raïmbaut von Orange, Abh. Ges. Wiss. zu Goettingen, phil.=hist. KL, Neue Folge, xxi, 2 (Berlin, 1928), pp. 30ss, 94ss.
3 I.c., each stanza repeating in its beginning, in a more or less mechanical way, one or several words occurring at the end of the preceding stanza.
4 Appel (l.c.) does not mention this feature of our poem, nor does he give our song the consideration which I think it deserves. He quotes only one passage (ll. 57–59, p. 24, and again p. 55).
5 The italics in the left hand column indicate, as usual, the passages in which the text abandons the reading of the MS; those in the right hand column show the passages where the new text, either in its wording or its interpretation, differ from that of the first editor. Variants = II,11 aimia—III,16 de viel senis—IV,22 amors—24 Cab—27 Quel—V,32 gen—33. sap des—VI,39 lei dia—42dreg benamar—VII,43 volia ses dans—VIII, 50 demissing—54 cans qui el fos—XII,70 que fetz.
6 See my article in Archiv., cxxvii (1927), 222 ss.
7 Appel translates: “Da Freude mich zu solchem Wege leitet”; in this translation, the phrase “zu solchem Wege” is superfluous.
8 Kolsen refers to Diez, Etym. Wörterbuch, p. 584 and Appel, Chrest., p. 255 b. Both of them believe in the existence of an Old Prov. word fi <fidus with an evidence for the feminine *fiza missing. Meyer-Lübke (REW 3287) joins them in this supposition. Walberg, too (Rom, xxxvii, 310), pleads the etymon fidus, at least for the expression de fi “surely.” Levy registers de fi under fi<finis and does not carry the word fi<fidus at all.
9 The other way (the qualifier put only to the first of the two parts of the sentence) is indeed much more frequent.
10 I am adding the missing words in brackets.
11 Appel does not make any remark to this passage, as he does for the first example; but his translation proves that he interprets it according to the phenomenon explained here.
12 This is the form (three syllables) that should be given to the poet's name; cf. Schultz-Gora, Archiv, cxxxvi, 326. It is surprising to see that the editors speak of their poet as Raïmbautz (instead of Raïmbaut) with addition of the inflectional s used in Old Prov. (and Old French) to indicate the nominative. Raïmbautz's is a still greater anomaly.
13 This fact is not mentioned in the varia lectio, but the text of Mahn (Gedichte, No. 529) shows it. It is apparently to this omission that the editors refer in a note to ll. 26–28, saying: “For a slightly different version see Miss Fassbinder's article.” But Miss Fassbinder's text is a poor arrangement made from CE; she even willfully changes the order of lines!
14 It is to be regretted that in printing the poem no attention should have been paid to the different lengths of the lines. This procedure is all but generally adopted in troubadour editions, and for good reasons. It reveals to the reader at a glance the artistic and metrical structure of the stanza. Following it would perhaps have spared the editors the little error in locating the missing line mentioned above.
15 Kolsen who edited this poem in Dichtungen der Trobadors, fase. 3, Halle 1919, No. 57, makes one verse of every two of the lines c, the first and the third of the rhymes c thus forming an internal rhyme. So his scheme offers this form: a7 b' a7 b' a7 b' c (s+7)10 c (s+7)10.
16 The same holds true for the partimeli Vaquier-Catalan.
17 See note 5. 1,1. Te lays— 4. CE lack que.—5. T lacks e verays—6. lacking in T, C lacks e.—7. lacking in T, E lacks que.—8. C ylh clamava.—10. T ses, CE sis. 11,12 T ques, E aitai—17. T lacks horn—20. CE per ma fe, T per me. III, 23 Ccolh—26. J sol re, CE sal re.—IV, 31 C deguays, TE debáis—34. TE tesinhos, C not legible.—35. CE et es, T ques.—40. C e fara ho, E e farà, T e farai ho; C per iasse, E per iase, T giasse.
18 I am reproducing as far as possible the translation of the first editors.
19 Kolsen translates differently: “seine ganze Freude schöpft.”
20 It is anything but sure that the scribe of T thought of pieu as a noun; he might as well have meant his version to be understood as se·s pieu, with pieu being a verb, so there would have indeed been no difference between CE and T.
21 This preposition is, indeed, found in connection with pleure, as is proved by P. Meyer himself, who quotes from the Prise de Jérusalem: leu soy homs de l'emperador de Roma … et el pleu se mays e mi que en home quez el aia. But this does not mean that en must always be connected with that verb. I think per is perfectly justified, being the same per which is used for persons or things by which one swears or pledges one's word, e.g. per Cristi per ma feïl It accompanies also other verbs expressing trust: Mas cella qu'en pres dos o tres E per un non si vol fiar … Marcabru Gr. 293, 15 (ed. Dejeanne, No. xv), v, 4.
22 This unwritten stylistic law has its natural exceptions. It is not valid for direct questions; see Sabetz per que (1. 28). The word soven is emphatically placed at the head of 1. 15; a conjunction put before it would only weaken that stylistic effect. Ll. 15 and 16 have no syntactical link either; but they are tied together psychologically, the two actions expressed in them being parallel with each other. The editors do not put any punctuation between the two lines; their translation, however, “Often she lends her quiver; no man seeks in vain” does not correspond to this punctuation. After all, by reading s'i fadia instead of si fodia, as I do, a kind of bridge is made between these two lines through the pronominal adverb i. For. 1. 39, emphatically introduced by mal, it is true what has been said of soven (1. 15).
23 See also Schultz-Gora, Prov. Studien, pp. 144–145.
24 These two meanings, rather wide apart from, and nearly contrasting each other, are amazing. Is the beginning of Jeanroy's article: Cette locution reste énigmatique, en dépit des quatre (now nine) exemples qui en ont été relevés still true? See also the example from At de Mons.
25 Kolsen's text is unsatisfactory. Profiting by suggestions made by Jeanroy (Rom. 52, 383) and Pillet (ZRPh, xlix, 364), I propose to read thus:
Ja no m'en fara col ni cais,
en Gauseran, q'ieu per mi lais
donc quant eu ai e[aurai] mais.
“She will never be able to make me (such) advances that I then should voluntarily give up what I possess and shall possess in the future.”
26 The author inverts the habitual order of the two nouns to have a word rhyming with fol.
27 For phonetic reasons and because of the simple word gais missing in Old Provençal, Spanish gacho (<coactum, according to Diez and Meyer-Lübke; but see Menéndez Pidal, Manual de gramática histórica española [Madrid, 1941], §39,4, note 2, p. 128) is not likely to have anything to do with degais, though its sense “bent downwards” would not fit so badly.