The humility of a troubador? Marcabru Canso 14

The virtue of the one I sing
reigns high, without dispute,
and her valour is sovereign,
even if disputed,
for, if I don't wake up for her,
don't expect that another awakens me!

He who [writes?]the words and dance
does not know whence the dancing comes.

Marcabru has written the dance
and does not know whence the dancing comes.

End of winter troubadour poetry

Very happily, I begin to love a joy from which I will have more pleasure; and, since I want to be back to joy I well ought to, if I can, aim for the best; since I love the best, without doubt, that one could see or hear. I (you know as much) should not brag nor dare I praise myself much; but if ever could one joy blossom, this one should above all take roots and shine above all others just as the day turns brighter. And never could anyone portray it for in want nor wish nor in though nor in imagination such a joy can't find an equivalent; and if one wanted to praise it properly, he couldn't do it in a year. Every joy must lower itself and all royalty obey my lady, because of her kindness and of her sweet pleasant visage; and he will live a hundred times longer who can partake of her love. Because of her joy can the sick turn healthy and because of her displeasure can a healthy man die and a wise man turn mad and a handsome man lose his beauty and the most courteous turn into a lout and the most churlish turn into a courtier. Since nobody can find a worthier woman nor eyes see one, nor mouth describe one, I want to keep her all for me, to bring freshness to my heart and to renew my flesh, so that it cannot grow old. If my lady wants to grant me her love, I am ready to receive it and to reciprocate I am ready to discretion and cajoling and to say and do what she pleases, and to keep her worth into account and to further her reputation I don't dare communicate by proxy, so much I am afraid to anger her; nor I myself, so much I am afraid to fail, dare declare my love precisely; But she ought to choose what is best for me because she knows that I shall be saved through her.

Guilhen de Peiteus

A classic courtly love sentiment from Cadenet

Provided that her great virtue increases,
and is heard about,
it doesn't matter to her if I find myself afflicted,
nor how my affairs go.
For it is good for her that I bear all the suffering,
and I like when I can put her forth;
it is good for her when she can make me languish
and I like when I can advance her;
she doesn't care that I feel bad,
and I like it when she feels good.

More from Cadenet

The thing I would  be,
if I had such faculty,
would be such
as has power.
For I'd be nicely provided
with weapons and clothing,
I'd be generous with guests,
I'd be sumptuous in court,
I'd want to see ladies,
give gifts often,
follow wars and tournaments,
and take pleasure in courting.

And this, it seems to me, would be virtue
more than rapine
of which are fond
all our barons;
for if you are richer
than others, and so are your people,
they'll prepare riders
with light equipment
to snatch the loot more easily,
or, if they are met with force,
to flee more easily; it'd seem to me
that this debases and discredits them.

There was a time when one recognized
lovers, when he saw them,
by their great expenses
and by the many beautiful gifts
and by the pleasant apparels
and by the beautiful receptions.
But, today, it's the smooth talkers,
for riches corrupt all good qualities;
but through ingenuity or through learning
one can't keep his virtue
unless one establishes or enhances it through [his] actions:
such is the way these things go.

No man loses himself
through courtesy.
And there was a time
when one was in love
and youth showed
and congeniality reigned.
But now he who first goes
get the oxen and the cattlemen
is thought of as the most valiant.
You, see if they tell the truth,
those who, thanks to these same earnings,
show themselves in disgraceful attire.

According to my impression, the best of the other poetry

	With a faithful heart and with a humble attitude I come towards Love to show the grievous ills I have suffered, great and extraordinary, for the sweet smile and amorous semblance my lady gave me when we first exchanged glances when she took my heart and my faithful thoughts and I put myself under her rich suzerainty.
	To you, O Love, I want to show, by singing, how my lady took me, and why, and with which aids and where I, Love’s faithful and loyal servant, stand. I have little good: captured and wretched, I have been held, without any regards, not merely a year but, in truth, believe me, it will be seven years when the leaves sprout again.
	Sweetly, Love, she came before me displaying, in her eyes, joyous and perfect expressions of mercy; for there is no man born of woman who can sway my devotion because of the smile she gave me, which was so sweet that I believed she would soon have mercy on me: but having believed that, I admit, was foolish.
	For I chose her, according to my impression, as the best of the other royals, and she has held my heart among her possessions with her rich virtue, which outshines the others': just as the Sun, above all other radiance gives us clarity, I can say equally that she is clarity and gives radiance.
	The sweet awareness of her beautiful shapely body much worsens my pains and my ills, which make my eyes used to weeping for her beauty, which is before me all day: and her looks thus kill me in my imagination, for I know she has simply killed me unless she gives me her heart in short order.
	Well, then, Love, do this at least: be my peer in good will and force my lady, at the very least, to approve, and show me she approves that I love her more than any living being; and you'll have made me joyous and happy when I have been taken as her liege.
	Go quickly, song, to My Desire, and tell her, if she likes, through her choice, to find it good that I love her with all my desire. Cadenet, Canso 1, adapted

Not cynical enough to be Marcabru, which is why I like it

 Another troubadour poem:

Bel m'es quan son li fruich madur E reverdejon li gaim, E l'auzeill, per lo temps escur, Baisson de lor votz lo refrim, Tant redopton la tenebror! E mos coratges s'enansa, Qu'ieu chant per joi de fin' Amor E vei ma bon' esperansa. Fals amic, amador tafur, Baisson Amor e levo·l crim, E no·us cuidetz c'Amors pejur, C'atrestant val cum fetz al prim! Totz temps fon de fina color, Et ancse d'una semblansa! Nuills hom non sap de sa valor La fin ni la comensansa. Qui·s vol si creza fol agur, Sol Dieus mi gart de revolim Qu'en aital Amor m'aventur On non a engan ni refrim! Qu'estiu et invern e pascor Estau en grand alegransa, Et estaria en major Ab un pauc de seguransa. Ja non creirai, qui que m'o jur, Que vins non iesca de razim, Et hom per Amor no meillur! C'anc un pejurar non auzim, Qu'ieu vaill lo mais per la meillor, Empero si·m n'ai doptansa, Qu'ieu no·m n'aus vanar, de paor De so don ai m'esperansa. Greu er ja que fols desnatur, Et a follejar non recim E folla que no·is desmesur! E mals albres de mal noirim, De mala brancha mala flor E fruitz de mala pensansa Revert al mal outra'l pejor, Lai on Jois non a sobransa. Que l'Amistats d'estraing atur Falsa del lignatge Caim Que met los sieus a mal ahur, Car non tem anta ni blastim, Los trai d'amar ab sa doussor, Met lo fol en tal erransa Qu'el non remanria ab lor Qui·l donavan tota Fransa.

I love when the fruits are ripe and the second crop becomes green and when the birds, the dark season, lower the warbling of their voice, so much they fear the darkness! And my heart is exalted because I sing out of joy of fine love and I see my good hope. False friends, treacherous lovers demean Love and heighten crime, and don't think that Love worsens, for it is worth as much as it was in the beginning; it was ever of a single colour and of constant appearance! no man knows where its power begins nor where it ends. Let who will believe in foolish omens: God only prevent me from changing my mind because I venture into such a love as has no deception nor trouble in Summer and Winter and at Easter time, I'm in great joy and I would be in greater still with a little assurance. I will never believe, whoever may swear it, that wine doesn't come from grapes and that men don't improve through love; because we've never heard about one becoming worse, and I am worth the more through the best, but I have a doubt about it, for I dare not boast, out of fear of that whence my hope comes. It's indeed hard for the fool to change nature and not to start acting foolishly again and for a foolish woman not to be reckless! Bad trees from bad nourishment, from bad branch, bad flower, and the fruit of bad thought turns back to bad, if not to worse, where Joy is not sovereign. For the false friendship of Cain's lineage and its strange attachments drags into wretchedness, for it doesn't fear shame or blame, with its mellifluousness, it distracts from love and it puts the fool in such confusion that he wouldn't stay with those who would give him all France.

Laura Kendrick on courtly love

From The Game of Love:

For Guillaume IX and his facetious troubadour followers, the stakes in the game of love were not the sexual favors of living ladies; Guillaume IX did not have to write poetry to get what he wanted from women, nor did other nobleman and courtiers. The object of the twelfth – century game of love was to win with words, just as the objective of medieval wargames was to win with weapons. The player's goal was not to win the lady, but to win the game, to conquer the masculine opponents. The secular domna presided as a figurehead (abstract, distant, absent) over the troubadours' vernacular language games in secular courts– much as her religious counterpart, the domina of Mary/Ecclesia, presided over the scholarly Latin language games of ecclesiastical schools and courts. To win the lady's favor, to rise in her esteem, to be desired by her: these are the nominal objects of most of the troubadours' verbal contests in the arenas of the secular courts. With nearly all games, however, the "material" prize of winning the game is, of itself, not worth the players' efforts; it is merely a symbol of the more intangible prize or pretz. Everyone knows the prize of the Olympics is not the gold– or the stamped gold medals. The real object of the troubadours' game of love was to assert personal prowess by wielding words to attack and destroy opponents' words, reversing or modifying their meaning by dismembering or "cutting them up" or by reframing and reinterpreting them in one's own new context.

...

Marcabru played the facetious troubadours' debasing game on their terms, going them one "down," which only heightened the contest. Other ascetics – some of them monks, canons, and clergy – took a different, and ultimately more promising, tactic; they cleaned up the facetious troubadours' lyrics by interpreting them in a deliberately "good" way; they found sincere adoration of a lady or the Virgin to be the "true" object of the lyrics, however ambiguously expressed, and wove the facetious troubadours' phrases into the new context of their own "sincere" love lyrics. It's not at all inconceivable that Cercamon's lady in "Assatz es or' oimai qu'eu chan" was as Jeanroy once suggested, the Virgin. In all these cases, however, a contest is implicit in the language of the lyric, a debate between points of view that we sense, if at all, as ambiguity or equivocation.

Love from afar?

Laura Kendrick in her book The Game of Love: Troubadour wordplay, makes the point that medieval readers in  paying more attention to the sound of words than their spelling could create compositions with multiple meanings. For instance, here is a translation of a poem by Jaufre Rudel that acknowledges an ambiguity in the interpretation of de loing/ del oing.

He speaks the truth who calls me covetous

And  desirous of love from afar [and, of the ointment],

For no other joy pleases me so much

As enjoyment of love from afar [and, of the ointment];

But what I want is so hateful to me,

For thus did my godfather fix as my fate

That I should love and not be loved

Troubador poetry and chivalry

 When I teach chivalry in the classroom, I do talk about its relationship to love (really! I swear!) but this remarkable website has convinced me that I have missed a bet by not just jumping in and rolling around.

This poem, for instance, evokes a whole social environment and the stinging criticism of one knight disappointed with the way life treats his kind (though it  serves some of them right.)

Some of the poet's targets knew exactly who he was talking about -- them -- and knew that everyone else did, too.

 At the first onset of winter, by Marcabru

At the first onset of winter,
when the acorns fall like rain the wood,
I want people to strive
towards Prowess, without hesitation,
and that they are as eager to achieve it
as if we were in the grassy season.

    Well then, every lesser man complains
when he sees the cold weather and the puddles,
which make him grumble
because he has to get ready and start bargaining,
while, in the Summer, he doesn't need to be dressed
and can go around naked except for a rag.

    These types resemble the badger
in the evening, when they are full and sated,
after the wine,
and, in the morning, they have lost all memory,
these ashen cowards, who swear
one has never seen such an ugly time.

    Young men of handsome appearance
I see, deceived by wickedness,
because they go boasting,
they say, planning a thousand projects,
"We'll do [this], in the flowery season",
but, then, the bragging and noise stop.

    They have the habits of a hound dog,
who says that, when the light comes,
he'll build a house
then, when it is there, if one urges him to deliver,
he isn't listened to, nor heard:
as far as it concerns him, wood was never worked.

    Husbands, you would be the best people
in the world, but each of you turns into a lover,
which confounds you,
and the cnts have put themselves on the market,
so Youth is banned far away,
and one dubs you cuckolds for it.

    The price of the profit and loss,
wherever it may have come from,
it's married men who bear it!
And I have granted it to them
for Joy is celebrated among them,
and largesse somewhat maintained.

    Right or wrong, they have the upper hand,
and Youth concedes defeat!
Most young people, and the best among them,
hardly find [women] who receive them,
one of them had his hat blown away by shouted abuse
for a morsel that was thrown to him.

Andrew Taylor's upcoming book: this could be really good

In short order, Boydell and Brewer will be releasing a book by my old friend, Andrew Taylor.  Andy is witty, learned, and an original thinker, and though the book is pricey and not in my usual line of work, I am interested.

Here is some of what B&B has to say:

Richard Sheale, a harper and balladeer from Tamworth, is virtually the only English minstrel whose life story is known to us in any detail. It had been thought that by the sixteenth century minstrels had generally been downgraded to the role of mere jesters. However, through a careful examination of the manuscript which Sheale almost certainly "wrote" (Bodleian Ashmole 48) and other records, the author argues that the oral tradition remained vibrant at this period, contrary to the common idea that print had by this stage destroyed traditional minstrelsy. The author shows that under the patronage of Edward Stanley, earl of Derby, and his son, from one of the most important aristocratic families in England, Sheale recited and collected ballads and travelled to and from London to market them.

I know a fair number of people who will also be tempted.

Juan Cole translates Omar Khayyam

Now that the rose of your 
good fortune is blooming,
why are you standing there
with no glass in your hand?
Have some wine–
fate is a treacherous enemy,
And a day like this 
is hard to come by.

Translated by Juan Cole
from [pdf] Whinfield 71
http://www.juancole.com/2012/03/omar-khayyam-71.html

A sample of sufi poetry -- for students in HIST 3805

For non-Muslims in countries that are historically non-Muslim, understanding the sufi tradition in Islam is perhaps difficult.  It's mystical -- concerned with direct contact with God -- rather than legalistic.


Perhaps the best way to get the flavor is to read sufi poetry, which might be described as "love poetry to God." Wahiduddin's Web, an English-language site devoted to the sufi tradition, has a collection of translated poetry from some famous mystics.

It doesn't take a thousand years

...for this poem to become relevant.