Vol. xxv.] [June 1815.
Vol. xxv.] [June 1815.
Vol. xxv.] [June 1815.
This is another great work from the pen of the celebrated historian of the Italian Republics: though we think it written, on the whole, with less force and spirit than that admirable history. The excellent author has visibly less enthusiasm as a critic than as a politician; and therefore he interests us less in that character, and at the same time inspires us rather with less than greater confidence in the accuracy of his opinions; for there can be no real love of liberty, or admiration of genius, where there is no enthusiasm—and no one who does not love them, will ever submit to the labour of a full and fair investigation of their history and concerns. A cold, calculating indifference in matters of taste, is generally the effect of want of feeling; as affected moderation in politics is (nine times out of ten) a cloak for want of principle. Notwithstanding the very great pleasure we have received from the work before us, we should have been still more gratified, therefore, if the author had himself appeared more delighted with his task, and consequently imparted to it a more decided andoriginal character. In his Republics, he describes events and characters in the history of modern Italy with the genuine feelings of an enlightened reasoner, indignant at the wrongs, the vices, and the degradation of the country of his ancestors: In judging of its literature, he too often borrows French rules and German systems of criticism. His practical taste and speculative principles do not, therefore, always coincide; and, regarding this work on Literature as an appendage to his History, it is impossible not to observe, that he is glad, upon all occasions, to slide into his old and favourite subject; to pass from the professor’s chair into the rostrum; and to connect, in glowing terms, the rise or fall of letters with the political independence or debasement of the states in which they flourished or decayed.
If we were to hazard any other preliminary remark of a general character, it should be, that the author appears to have a more intimate acquaintance with, and a great predilection for, the more modern and immediately popular writers of Italy, than for those who appear to us objects of greater curiosity and admiration. Thus, he dismisses Dante, Petrarca and Boccacio, in fewer pages than he devotes to Metastasio alone—an author whose chief merit he himself defines to be, the happy adaptation of his pieces to the musical recitative of the opera, and which, therefore, in a literary point of view, must be comparatively uninteresting. Again, Ariosto makes, in his hands, a very slender appearance by the side of Tasso—an appearance by no means proportioned to the size of the men, or to the interest which is felt in them, or to the scope for criticism in their different works. The account of the two modern Italian dramatists, Alfieri and Goldoni, though given much at length, is not certainly liable to the same kind of objection, as the information with respect to them is valuable from its novelty.
The present volumes contain a general view of the literature of the South of Modern Europe,—of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Provençal. The author proposes, in another work, to examine that of the North, particularly of England and Germany. The publication now before us was (we are informed in the preface) originally composed to be delivered to a class of young persons at Geneva: and this circumstance, while it has added to its value and comprehensiveness as a book of reference, has made it less entertaining to the general reader. A body of criticism, like a body of divinity, must contain a great deal of matter less pleasant than profitable in the perusal. In our account of it, we shall direct the reader’s attention to what most forcibly arrested our own—premising merely, that among the writers to whom M. Sismondi is forward to acknowledgehis obligations, are, Professor Boutterwek on modern literature in general, Millot’s history of the Troubadours, Tiraboschi and M. Guiguené on the Italian literature, Velasquez on the Spanish and Portuguese, and William Schlegel for the dramatic literature of all these nations. It is to this last author that he seems to be indebted for a great part of his theoretical reasoning and conjectural criticism on the general principles of taste and the progress of human genius.
The first volume commences with an account of the Provençal poetry, which is by no means the least interesting or curious part of this extensive and elaborate work. We shall endeavour to give some general idea of it to our readers. The language which prevailed in all the South of Europe, after the destruction of the Roman empire, was a barbarous mixture of Latin with the different languages of the Northern invaders. It was in the south of France that this language first took a consistent form, and became the vehicle of a gay and original poetry. The causes which contributed to invest it with this distinction, were, according to M. Sismondi, 1. The comparative exemption of the Francs from perpetual successive inroads of barbarous conquerors; and, 2. The collateral influence of the Moorish or Arabian literature, through the connection between the kingdoms of Spain and Provence. The description given by the author of the Arabian literature, which ‘rose like an exhalation,’ and disappeared almost as soon, is splendid in the extreme. In a hundred and fifty years, human genius is said to have produced more prodigies in that prolific region, than it has done in the history of ages in all the world besides. Arts and sciences had their birth, maturity and perfection;—almost all the great modern discoveries (as they have been considered) were anticipated, and again forgotten,—paper, printing, the mariner’s compass, glass, gunpowder, &c. In the exercise of fancy and invention, they infinitely surpassed all former or succeeding ages. As an instance of the prodigious scale on which these matters were conducted in the East, and of the colossal size to which their literature had swelled in all its branches, it is stated that the Thousand and One Stories forming the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, constitute only a six-and-thirtieth part of the original collection. We suspect that there is some exaggeration in all this; though the brilliant theories of our author have, no doubt, very considerable foundation in fact. We hope there is none for the eloquent, but melancholy, reflections he makes on the sudden disappearance of so much intellectual magnificence from the face of the earth.
‘Such,’ he says, ‘was the lustre with which literature and sciences shone forth from the ninth to the fourteenth century of our era, in the vast regions which were subjected to Mahometism. The mostmelancholy reflections are attached to the long enumeration of names unknown to us, and which were nevertheless illustrious,—of works buried in manuscript in some dusty repositories—which yet for a time had a powerful influence on the culture of the human mind. What remains then of so much glory? Five or six persons only can visit the treasures of Arabian manuscripts shut up in the library of the Escurial; and some few hundreds besides, scattered over all Europe, have qualified themselves, by obstinate labour, to dig in the mines of the East—but these persons can only obtain, with the utmost difficulty, some rare and obscure manuscripts, and cannot raise themselves high enough to form a judgment on the whole of a literature of which they never attain but a part. Meantime, the extended regions where Mahometism reigned, and still reigns, are dead to all the sciences. Those rich plains of Fez and Morocco, illumined five centuries ago by so many academies, so many universities, and so many libraries, are now nothing but deserts of burning sand, for which tyrants dispute with tigers. All the gay and fertile shore of Mauritania, where commerce, the arts, and agriculture had been raised to the highest prosperity, are now the nests of pirates, who spread terror on the seas, and who relax from their labour in shameful debaucheries, till the plague, which returns yearly, comes to mark out its victims, and to avenge offended humanity. Egypt is nearly swallowed in the sands, which it once fertilized—Syria and Palestine are desolated by wandering Bedouins, less formidable, however, than the Pasha who oppresses them. Bagdad, formerly the abode of luxury, of power, and of knowledge, is ruined; the once celebrated universities of Cufa and Bassora are shut,—those of Samarcande and of Balch are also destroyed. In this immense extent of country, twice or three times as large as our Europe—nothing is found but ignorance, slavery, terror and death. Few of the inhabitants can read any of the writings of their illustrious forefathers;—few could comprehend them—none could procure them. The immense literary riches of the Arabs, of which we have given some glimpses, exist no more in any of the countries which the Arabs and Mussulmen rule.—It is not there that we must now seek either the renown of their great men or their writings. What has been saved of them, is entirely in the hands of their enemies—in the convents of the monks, or in the libraries of the Kings of Europe. And yet these countries have not been conquered. It is not the foreigner who has despoiled them of their wealth, wasted their population, destroyed their laws, their morals, and their national spirit. The poison was within them—it developed itself, and has annihilated all things.
‘Who knows if, some centuries hence, this same Europe, wherethe reign of literature and sciences is now transported—which shines with such lustre—which judges so well of times past—which compares so well the successive influence of antient literature and morals, may not be deserted, and wild as the hills of Mauritania, the sands of Egypt, and the vallies of Anatolia? Who knows whether, in a country entirely new, perhaps in the high lands where the Oronoko and the Amazon collect their streams, perhaps in the now impenetrable enclosure of the mountains of New Holland, there may not be formed nations with other morals, other languages, other thoughts, other religions,—nations who shall again renew the human kind, who shall study like ourselves the times past, and who, seeing with surprise that we have been, and have known what they shall know—that we have believed like them in durability and glory, shall pity our impotent efforts, and shall recal the names of Newton, of Racine, of Tasso, as examples of the vain struggles of man to attain an immortality of renown which fate denies him?’
The more immediate causes which gave birth to the poetry of the Provençals, and by consequence to all our modern literature, are afterwards detailed in the following passage, which is interesting both in point of fact, and as matter of speculation.
‘In Italy, at the time of the renovation of its language, each province, each small district, had a particular dialect. This great number of differentpatois, was owing to two causes; the great number of barbarous tribes with whom the Romans had successively been confounded by the frequent invasions of their country, and the great number of independent sovereignties which had been kept up there. Neither of those causes operated on the Gauls in the formation of the Romanesque. Three hordes established themselves there nearly at the same time,—the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Franks; and after the conquest of these last, no northern barbarians could again form a fixed establishment there, except the Normans, in a single province; no mixture of Germans, much less of the Sclavonians and Scythians, came again to produce a change in language and morals. The Gauls had then been employed in consolidating themselves into one nation, with one language, for four ages: during which Italy had been successively the prey of the Lombards, the Francs, the Hungarians, the Saracens, and the Germans. The birth of the Romanesque in Gaul, came thus to precede that of the Italian language. It was divided into two principal dialects:—the Provençal Romanesque, spoken in all the provinces to the south of the Loire, which had been originally conquered by the Visigoths and the Burgundians; and the Walloon Romanesque, in the provinces to the north of the Loire, where theFranks had the ascendant. The political divisions remained conformable to this first division of nations and languages. In spite of the independence of the great feudatories, northern France always formed one political body; the inhabitants of the different provinces met in the same national assemblies, and in the same armies. Southern France, on its side, after having been the inheritance of some of the successors of Charlemagne, had been raised, in 879, to the rank of an independent kingdom, by Bozon, who was crowned at Nantes, under the title of King of Arles or of Provence; and who subjected to his domination Provence, Dauphiny, Savoy, the Lyonese, and some counties of Burgundy. The title of kingdom gave place, in 943, to that of earldom, under BozonII., without the dismemberment of Provence, or its separation from the House of Burgundy, of which Bozon I. had been the founder. This house was extinguished in 1092, in the person of Gillibert, who left two daughters only, between whom he divided his states. One, Faydide, married Alphonso, Count of Toulouse; and the other, Douce, married Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona. The union of Provence during two hundred and thirty years, under a line of princes who played no very brilliant part beyond their own territory, and who are almost forgotten by history, but who suffered no invasion; who, by a paternal administration, augmented the riches, and extended the population of the state, and favoured commerce, to which their maritime situation invited them, sufficed to consolidate the laws, the manners, and the language of the Provençals. It was at this epoch, but in a deep obscurity, that in the kingdom of Arles, the Provençal Romanesque took completely the place of the Latin. The latter was still made use of in the public acts; but the former, which was spoken universally, began also to be made use of in literature.
‘The succession of the Count of Barcelona, Raymond Berenger, to the sovereignty of Provence, gave a new turn to the national spirit, by the mixture of the Catalonians with the Provençals. Of the three Romanesque languages, which the Christian inhabitants of Spain then spoke, the Catalonian, the Castillian, and the Gallician, or Portuguese, the first was almost absolutely like the Provençal; and though it has since been much removed from it, especially in the kingdom of Valencia, it has always been called after the name of a French province. The people of the country call itLlemosinor Limousin. The Catalans, therefore, could make themselves well understood by the Provençals; and their intercourse at the same court served to polish the one language by means of the other. The first of these nations had already been much advanced, either by their wars and their intercourse with the Moors of Spain, or by the great activity ofthe commerce of Barcelona. This city enjoyed the most ample privileges: the citizens felt their freedom, and made their princes respect it,—at the same time that the wealth which they had acquired rendered the taxes more productive, and permitted the court of the Counts to display a magnificence unknown to other sovereigns. Raymond Berenger, and his successor, brought into Provence at once the spirit of liberty and chivalry, the taste of elegance and the arts, and the sciences of the Arabs. From this union of noble sentiments, arose the poetry which shone at the same time in Provence, and all the south of Europe, as if an electric spark had, in the midst of the thickest darkness, kindled at once in all quarters its brilliant radiance.
‘Chivalry arose with the Provençal poetry; it was in some sort the soul of every modern literature: and this character, so different from all that antiquity had known,—that invention, so rich in poetical effects, is the first subject for observation, which modern literary history presents us. We must not, however, confoundfeudalismwithchivalry. Feudalism is the real world at this epoch—with its advantages and disadvantages, its virtues and its vices; chivalry is this world idealized, such as it has existed only in the invention of the romancers: its essential character is a devotion to woman, and an inviolable regard to honour; but the ideas which the poets manifested then, as to what constituted the perfection of a knight or a lady, were not entirely of their invention. They existed in the people, without perhaps being followed by them; and when they had acquired more consistence in their heroic songs, they reacted in their turn upon the people, among whom they originated, and thus approximated the real feudal system to the ideal notions of chivalry.
‘Without doubt, there can be few finer things than the bold and active kind of life which characterized the feudal times; than the independent existence of each nobleman in his castle; than the persuasion which he felt, that God alone was his judge and master; than that confidence in his own power which made him brave all opposition, and offer an inviolable asylum to the weak and unfortunate,—which made him share with his friends the only possessions which they valued, arms and horses,—and rely on himself alone for his liberty, his honour, and his life. But, at the same time, the vices of the human character had acquired a development proportioned to the vigour of men’s minds. Among the nobility, whom alone the laws seemed to protect, absolute power had produced its habitual effect,—an intoxication approaching to madness, and a ferocity of which later times afford no example. The tyranny of a baron, it is true, extended only a few leagues round his chateau, or the town which belonged to him: If any one could pass this boundary, he was safe;but, within these limits, in which he kept his vassals like herds of deer in a park, he gave himself up, in the plenitude of his power, to the wildest caprices; and subjected those who displeased him to the most frightful punishments. His vassals, who trembled before him, were degraded below the human species; and, in the whole of this class, there is hardly an instance of any individual displaying, in the course of ages, a single trait of greatness or virtue. Frankness and good faith, which are essentially the virtues of chivalry, are indeed, in general, the consequence of strength and courage; but, in order to render an adherence to them general, it is indispensable that punishment or shame should be attached to their violation. But the seignoral lords were placed in their chateaus above all fear; and opinion had no force in restraining men who did not feel the relations of social life. Accordingly, the history of the middle ages furnishes a greater number of scandalous perfidies than any other period. Lastly, the passion of love had, it is true, taken a new character, which was much the same in reality and in the poetry of the time. It was not more passionate or more tender than among the Greeks and Romans, but it was more respectful; something mysterious was joined to the sentiment. Some traces of that religious respect were preserved towards women, which the Germans felt towards their prophetesses. They were considered as a sort of angelic beings, rather than as dependants, submitted to the will of their masters: It was a point of honour to serve and to defend them, as if they were the organs of the divinity on earth; and at the same time there was joined to this deference, a warmth of sentiment, a turbulence of passions and desires, which the Germans had known little of, but which is characteristic of the people of the South, and of which they borrowed the expression from the Arabians. In our ideas of chivalry, love always retains this religious purity of character; but in the actual feudal system, the disorder was extreme; and the corruption of manners has left behind it traces more scandalous than in any other period of society. Neither thesirventesnor thecanzosof the troubadours, nor the fables of the trouveres, nor the romances of chivalry, can be read without blushing: the gross licentiousness of the language is equalled only by the profound corruption of the characters, and the profligacy of the moral. In the South of France, in particular, peace, riches, and the example of courts, had introduced among the nobility an extreme dissipation: they might be said to live only for gallantry. The ladies, who did not appear in the world till after they were married, prided themselves in the homage which their lovers paid to their charms: they delighted in being celebrated by theirtroubadour: they answered in their turn, and expressed theirsentiments in the most tender and passionate verses. They even instituted Courts of Love, where questions of gallantry were gravely debated, and decided by their suffrages. In short, they had given to the whole of the South of France the movement of a carnival, which contrasts singularly with the ideas of restraint, of virtue, and of modesty, which we connect with the good old times. The more we study history, the more we shall be convinced that chivalry is an almost purely poetical invention. We never can arrive by any authentic documents at the scene where it flourished: it is always represented at a distance, both in time and place. And while contemporary historians give us a distinct, detailed, complete idea of the vices of courts and of the great, of the ferocity or licentiousness of the nobles, and the degradation of the people; one is astonished to see, after a lapse of time, the same ages animated by the poets with fictitious and splendid accounts of virtue, beauty, and loyalty. The romancers of the twelfth century placed the age of chivalry in the reign of Charlemagne; Francis I. placed it in their time: We at present believe we see it flourishing in the persons of Du Guesclin and of Bayard, at the courts of CharlesV.and Francis theI.But when we come to examine any of these periods, though we find some heroic characters in all of them, we are soon forced to confess that it is necessary to remove the age of chivalry three or four centuries before any kind of reality.’ p. 91.
This, we cannot help thinking, is a little hard on thegood old times: though the specimens of their poetry, which are subjoined, go far to justify this severity. They certainly indicate neither refinement of sentiment, nor elevation of fancy. They are merely war or love-songs, relating to the personal feelings or situation of the individual who composed them. The Provençal poetry, indeed, is in a great measure lyrical; at least it is certain, that it is neither epic nor dramatic. Thetensonswere, indeed, a sort of eclogues, or disputes in verse, in which two or three persons maintained their favourite opinions on any given subject; and they appear to have been for the most part extemporaneous effusions. The following example will give some idea of the state of manners and literature at this period.
‘Several ladies who assisted at the Courts of Love, as they were called, used to reply themselves to the verses which their beauty inspired. There is left but a small portion of their compositions, but they have almost always the advantage over the troubadours. Poetry did not then aspire either to creative power, or to sublimity of thought, or to variety of imagery. Those powerful efforts of genius, which have given birth at a later period to dramatic and epic poetry, were then unknown; and in the simple expression of feeling, an inspiration,more tender and more delicate, would give to the poetry of women a more natural expression. One of the most pleasing of these compositions is by Clara d’Anduse: it is left unfinished: but, as far as a prose translation can convey the impression, which depends so much on the harmony of the metre, it is as follows.
‘“In what cruel trouble, in what profound sadness, jealous calumniators have plunged my heart! With what malice these perfidious destroyers of all pleasure have persecuted me! They have forced you to banish yourself from me, you whom I love more than life! They have robbed me of the happiness of seeing you, and of seeing you without ceasing! Ah, I shall die of grief and rage!
‘“But let calumny arm itself against me: the love with which you inspire me braves all its shafts: they will never be able to reach my heart: nothing can increase its tenderness, or give new force to the desires with which it is inflamed. There is no one, though it were my enemy, who would not become dear to me, by speaking well of you: but my best friend would cease to be so, from the moment he dared to reproach you.
‘“No, my sweet friend, no: do not believe that I have a heart treacherous to you: do not fear that I should ever abandon you for another, though I should be solicited by all the ladies of the land. Love, who holds me in his chains, has said, that my heart should be devoted to you alone; and I swear that it shall always be so. Ah, if I was as much mistress of my hand, he who now possesses, should never have obtained it.
‘“Beloved! such is the grief which I feel at being separated from you, such my despair, that when I wish to sing, I only sigh and weep. I cannot finish this couplet. Alas! my songs cannot obtain for my heart what it desires.”’
The poets of this period were almost all of them chevaliers; and it is in their war-songs, that, according to M. Sismondi, we find most of the enthusiasm of poetry. Guillaume de St. Gregory, thus chants his love for war, and seems to be inspired by the very sight of the field of battle.
‘How I love the gay season of the approach of spring, which covers our fields with leaves and flowers! How I love the sweet warbling of the birds, which make the woods resound with their songs! But how much more delightful still it is to see the tents and pavillions pitched in the meadows! How I feel my courage swell, when I see the armed chevaliers on their horses, marching in long array!
‘I love to see the cavaliers put to flight,—the common people, who strive to carry away their most precious effects: I love to see thethick battalions of soldiers, who advance in pursuit of the fugitives; and my joy redoubles when I observe the siege laid to the strongest castles, and hear their battered walls fall with a dreadful crash!’... ‘Yes, I repeat it again, the pleasures of the table, or of love, are not to be compared, in my mind, with those of the furious fight ... when I hear the horses neighing on the green meadows, and the cry repeated on all sides, “To arms, to arms!” when the great and the vulgar load the earth with their bodies, or roll, dying, into the ditches; and when large wounds from the blows of the lance mark the victims of honour.’
This poetic rhapsody of the eleventh or twelfth century is not altogether unworthy of the spirit of the nineteenth; so we shall not stop to moralize upon it. One of the most heroic and magnanimous personages of the same period was Bertrand de Born, Vicompte Hautefort. He was a great maker of war and verses. ‘The most violent,’ says M. Sismondi, ‘the most impetuous of the French chevaliers, breathing nothing but war; exciting, inflaming the passions of his neighbours and his superiors, in order to engage them in hostilities, he troubled the provinces of Guienne by his arms and his intrigues, during all the second half of the twelfth century; and the reigns of the Kings of England, HenryII.and Richard Cœur de Lion. He first stripped his brother Constantine of his personal inheritance, and made war upon Richard who protected him. He then attached himself to Henry, the brother of Richard Cœur de Lion, and afterwards made war upon him, after having engaged him in a conspiracy against his father. For this last offence he is put by Dante into his hell. In all his enterprizes, he encouraged himself by composingsirventes, that is, songs in which he sounded the war-whoop, in the manner of some writers nearer our own times. Let the reader judge for himself.
‘“What signify to me happy or miserable days? What are weeks or years to me? At all times my only wish is, to destroy whoever dares to offend me! Let others, if they please, embellish their houses; let them idly procure the conveniences of life: but, for myself, to collect lances, helmets, swords and implements of destruction, shall be the only object of my life! I am fatigued with advice, and swear never to attend to it!”’
The historical notice of Richard Cœur de Lion gives a striking and more favourable picture of the manners of the time. Every one is acquainted with the story of his deliverance from prison by the fidelity of his servant Blondel, and of his rescue from the Saracens by the gallant device of Guillaume de Preaux, who attracted the fury of the assailants to his own person, by crying out, ‘Spare me; forI am the King of England!’ M. Sismondi gives the following as the words of the celebrated song (a little modernized) composed by Richard during the captivity to which he was treacherously subjected by Leopold of Austria, after his return from the Holy Land.
Si prisonnier ne dit point sa raisonSans un grand trouble, et douloureux soupçon,Pour son consort qu’il fasse une chansonJ’ai prou d’amis, mais bien pauvre est leur don;Honte ils auront, si faute de rançon,Je suis deux hivers pris.Qu’ils sachent bien, mes hommes, mes barons,Anglais, Normands, Poitevins et Gascons,Que je n’ai point si pauvres compagnonsQue pour argent n’ouvrisse leurs prisons.Point ne les veux taxer de trahison,Mais suis deux hivers pris.Pour un captif plus d’ami, de parent!Plus que ses jours ils epargnent l’argent;Las! que je sens me douloir ce tourment!Et si je meurs dans mon confinement,Qui sauvera le renom de ma gent,Car suis deux hivers pris?Point au chagrin ne vaudrais succomber!Le roi françois peut mes terres brûler,Fausser la paix qu’il jura de garder;Pourtant mon cœur je sens se rassurer,Si je l’en crois, mes fers vont se briser,Mais suis deux hivers pris.Fiers ennemis, dont le cœur est si vain,Pour guerrayer, attendez donc la finDe mes ennemis; me trouverez enfin,Dites-le leur, Chail et Pensavin,Chers troubadours, qui me plaignez en vainCar suis deux hivers pris.
Si prisonnier ne dit point sa raisonSans un grand trouble, et douloureux soupçon,Pour son consort qu’il fasse une chansonJ’ai prou d’amis, mais bien pauvre est leur don;Honte ils auront, si faute de rançon,Je suis deux hivers pris.Qu’ils sachent bien, mes hommes, mes barons,Anglais, Normands, Poitevins et Gascons,Que je n’ai point si pauvres compagnonsQue pour argent n’ouvrisse leurs prisons.Point ne les veux taxer de trahison,Mais suis deux hivers pris.Pour un captif plus d’ami, de parent!Plus que ses jours ils epargnent l’argent;Las! que je sens me douloir ce tourment!Et si je meurs dans mon confinement,Qui sauvera le renom de ma gent,Car suis deux hivers pris?Point au chagrin ne vaudrais succomber!Le roi françois peut mes terres brûler,Fausser la paix qu’il jura de garder;Pourtant mon cœur je sens se rassurer,Si je l’en crois, mes fers vont se briser,Mais suis deux hivers pris.Fiers ennemis, dont le cœur est si vain,Pour guerrayer, attendez donc la finDe mes ennemis; me trouverez enfin,Dites-le leur, Chail et Pensavin,Chers troubadours, qui me plaignez en vainCar suis deux hivers pris.
Si prisonnier ne dit point sa raisonSans un grand trouble, et douloureux soupçon,Pour son consort qu’il fasse une chansonJ’ai prou d’amis, mais bien pauvre est leur don;Honte ils auront, si faute de rançon,Je suis deux hivers pris.
Si prisonnier ne dit point sa raison
Sans un grand trouble, et douloureux soupçon,
Pour son consort qu’il fasse une chanson
J’ai prou d’amis, mais bien pauvre est leur don;
Honte ils auront, si faute de rançon,
Je suis deux hivers pris.
Qu’ils sachent bien, mes hommes, mes barons,Anglais, Normands, Poitevins et Gascons,Que je n’ai point si pauvres compagnonsQue pour argent n’ouvrisse leurs prisons.Point ne les veux taxer de trahison,Mais suis deux hivers pris.
Qu’ils sachent bien, mes hommes, mes barons,
Anglais, Normands, Poitevins et Gascons,
Que je n’ai point si pauvres compagnons
Que pour argent n’ouvrisse leurs prisons.
Point ne les veux taxer de trahison,
Mais suis deux hivers pris.
Pour un captif plus d’ami, de parent!Plus que ses jours ils epargnent l’argent;Las! que je sens me douloir ce tourment!Et si je meurs dans mon confinement,Qui sauvera le renom de ma gent,Car suis deux hivers pris?
Pour un captif plus d’ami, de parent!
Plus que ses jours ils epargnent l’argent;
Las! que je sens me douloir ce tourment!
Et si je meurs dans mon confinement,
Qui sauvera le renom de ma gent,
Car suis deux hivers pris?
Point au chagrin ne vaudrais succomber!Le roi françois peut mes terres brûler,Fausser la paix qu’il jura de garder;Pourtant mon cœur je sens se rassurer,Si je l’en crois, mes fers vont se briser,Mais suis deux hivers pris.
Point au chagrin ne vaudrais succomber!
Le roi françois peut mes terres brûler,
Fausser la paix qu’il jura de garder;
Pourtant mon cœur je sens se rassurer,
Si je l’en crois, mes fers vont se briser,
Mais suis deux hivers pris.
Fiers ennemis, dont le cœur est si vain,Pour guerrayer, attendez donc la finDe mes ennemis; me trouverez enfin,Dites-le leur, Chail et Pensavin,Chers troubadours, qui me plaignez en vainCar suis deux hivers pris.
Fiers ennemis, dont le cœur est si vain,
Pour guerrayer, attendez donc la fin
De mes ennemis; me trouverez enfin,
Dites-le leur, Chail et Pensavin,
Chers troubadours, qui me plaignez en vain
Car suis deux hivers pris.
Among the most distinguished troubadours, we find the names of Arnaud de Marveil, and of Arnaud Daniel, celebrated by Petrarch and Dante, Rambaud de Vaqueiras, and Pierre Vidal, both warriors and poets, and Pierre Cardinal, the satirist of Provence. The Provençal literature does not however appear to have produced any one great genius or lasting work. Their poetry, indeed, did not aim at immortality; but appears to have been considered chiefly as an ornamentalappendage of courts, as the indolent amusement of great lords and ladies. It consists, therefore, entirely of occasional and fugitive pieces. The ambition of the poet seems never to have reached higher than to express certain habitual sentiments, or record passing events in agreeable verse, so as to gratify himself or his immediate employers; and his genius never appears to have received that high and powerful impulse, which makes the unrestrained development of its own powers its ruling passion, and which looks to future ages for its reward.
The Provençal poetry belongs, in its essence as well as form, to the same class as the Eastern or Asiatic; that is, it has the same constitutional warmth and natural gaiety, but without the same degree of magnificence and force. During its most flourishing period, it made no perceptible progress; and it has left few traces of its influence behind. The civil wars of the Albigeois, the crusades which made the Italian known to all the rest of Europe, and the establishment of the court of Charles of Anjou, the new sovereign of Provence, at Naples, were fatal to the cultivation of a literature which owed its encouragement to political and local circumstances, and to the favour of the great. M. Sismondi compares the effects of the Provençal poetry to the northern lights, which illumine the darkness of the sky, and spread their colours almost from pole to pole; but suddenly vanish, and leave neither light nor heat behind them. After the literature of the troubadours had disappeared from the country which gave it birth, it lingered for a while in the kingdoms of Arragon and Catalonia, where it was cultivated with success by Don Henri of Arragon, Marquis of Villera; by Ausias, who has been called the Petrarch; and by Jean Martorell, the Boccacio of the Provençal tongue, and the well-known author of the history of Tirante the White, which is preserved by Cervantes with such marks of respect, when Don Quixote’s library is condemned to the flames.
Our author next enters at great length, and with much acuteness, into the literature of the North of France, or theRoman Wallon, which succeeded the Provençal. The great glory of the writers of this language, was the invention of the romances of chivalry. M. Sismondi divides these romances into three classes or periods, and supposes them all to be of Norman origin, in contradiction to the very general theory which traces them to the Arabs or Moors. The first class relates to the exploits of King Arthur, the son of Pendragon, and the last British king who defended England against the Anglo-Saxons. It is at the court of this king, and of his wife Geneura, that we meet with the enchanter Merlin, and the institution of the Round Table, and all the Preux chevaliers, Tristram de Leonois,Launcelot of the Lake, and many others. The romance of Launcelot of the Lake was begun by Chretien de Troyes, and continued, after his death, by Godfrey de Ligny: that of Tristram, the son of King Meliadus of Leonois, the first that was written in prose, and which is the most frequently cited by the old authors, was composed in 1190 by one of thetrouveresor Northern troubadours, whose name is unknown. The second class of chivalrous romances, is that which commences with Amadis of Gaul, the hero of lovers, of which the events are more fabulous, and the origin more uncertain. There are numerous imitations of this work, Amadis of Greece, Florismarte of Hircania, Galaor, Florestan, Esplandian, which are considered as of Spanish origin, and which were in their greatest vogue at the time of the appearance of Don Quixote. The third class considered by our author, as undoubtedly of French origin, relates to the court of Charlemagne and his peers. The most antient monument of the marvellous history of Charlemagne, is the chronicle of Turpin, or Tilpin, Archbishop of Rheims. Both the name of the author and the date are, however, doubtful. It relates to the last expedition of Charlemagne into Spain, to which he had been miraculously invited by St. Jacques of Galicia, and to the wars of the Christians against the Moors. M. Sismondi is inclined to refer this composition to the period when AlphonsoVI.king of Castile and Leon, achieved, in the year 1085, the conquest of New Castile and Toledo.
‘He was followed,’ it is said, ‘in this triumphant expedition, by a great number of French chevaliers, who passed the Pyrenees to combat the infidels by the side of a great king, and to see the Cid, the hero of his age. The war against the Moors in Spain was then undertaken from a spirit of religious zeal, very different from that which, twelve years later, kindled the first crusade. Its object professedly was, to carry succour to neighbours, to brothers who adored the same God, and who revenged common injuries, of which the romancer seemed to wish to recal the remembrance: whereas the end of the first crusade was to deliver the Holy Sepulchre, to recover the inheritance of our Lord, and to bring assistance to God rather than man, as one of the troubadours expressed it. This zeal for the Holy Sepulchre, this devotion pointing towards the East, appears nowhere in the Chronicle of Archbishop Turpin; which, nevertheless, is animated by a burning fanaticism, and full of all sorts of miracles. This chronicle, however fabulous, cannot itself be considered as a romance. It consists alternately of incredible feats of arms, and of miracles, of monkish superstition and monkish credulity. We find there several instances of enchantment: the formidable sword of Roland, Durandal, with every stroke opens a wound:Ferragus is all over enchanted and invulnerable: the dreadful horn of Roland, which he sounds at Roncesvalles to call for succour, is heard as far as St. Jean Pied de Port, where Charlemagne was with his army; but the traitor Ganeton prevents the monarch from giving assistance to his nephew. Roland, losing all hope, is himself desirous to break his sword, that it may not fall into the hands of the infidels, and thus hereafter bathe itself in the blood of Christians: he strikes it against tall trees, against rocks—but nothing can resist the enchanted blade, guided by an arm so powerful; the oaks are overturned, the rocks are shattered in pieces, and Durandal remains entire. Roland at last thrusts it up to the hilt in a hard rock, and twisting it with violence, breaks it between his hands. Then he again sounds his horn, not to demand succour from the Christians, but to announce to them his last hour; and he blows it with such violence, that his veins burst, and he dies covered with his own blood. All this is sufficiently poetical, and indicates a brilliant imagination; but in order to its being a romance of chivalry, it was necessary that love and women should be introduced—and there is no allusion made to one or the other.’ p. 289.
This, we think, is rather an arbitrary decision of our author, and certainly does not prove that the work is not a romance of any kind. He concludes this chapter in the following manner.
‘But all these extraordinary facts, which in the Chronicle of Turpin passed for history, were consigned soon after to the regions of romance, when the crusades were finished, and had made us acquainted with the East, at the end of the thirteenth century, and during the reign of Philip the Hardy. The king at arms of this monarch, Adenez, wrote in verse the romance ofBerthe-au-grandpied; the mother of Charlemagne, that of Ogier the Dane, and Cleomadis. Huon de Villeneuve wrote the history of Renaud de Montauban. The four sons of Aymon, Huon de Bourdeaux, Doolin de Mayence, Morgante the giant, Maugis the christian magician, and several other heroes of this illustrious court, were celebrated then or afterwards by romancers, who have placed in broad day all the characters, and all the events of this period of glory, of which the divine poem of Ariosto has consecrated the mythology.—The creation of this brilliant romantic chivalry, was completed at the end of the thirteenth century; all that essentially characterizes it, is to be found in the romances of Adenez. His chevaliers no longer wandered, like those of the Round Table, through gloomy forests in a country half civilized, and which seemed always covered with storms and snow: the entire universe was expanded before their eyes, The Holy Land was the grand object of their pilgrimage: but by it theyentered into communication with the fine and rich countries of the East. Their geography was as confused as all their other knowledge. Their voyages from Spain to Cathay, from Denmark to Tunis, were made, it is true, with a facility, a rapidity more astonishing than the enchantments of Maugis or Morgana: but these fanciful voyages afforded the romance writers the means of embellishing their recitals with the most brilliant colours. All the softness and the perfumes of the countries, the most favoured by nature, were at their disposal: All the pomp and magnificence of Damascus, of Bagdad, and Constantinople, might be made use of to adorn the triumph of their heroes; and an acquisition more precious still, was the imagination itself of the people of the East and South; that imagination, so brilliant, so various, which was employed to give life to the sombre mythology of the North. The fairies were no longer hideous sorceresses, the objects of the fear and hatred of the people, but the rivals or the friends of those enchanters, who disposed in the east of Solomon’s ring, and of the genii who were attached to it. To the art of prolonging life, they had joined that of augmenting its enjoyments: they were in some sort the priestesses of nature and of its pleasures. At their voice, magnificent palaces arose in the deserts; enchanted gardens, groves, perfumed with orange-trees and myrtles, appeared in the midst of burning sands, or on barren rocks in the middle of the sea. Gold, diamonds, pearls, covered their garments, or the inside of their palaces: and their love, far from being reputed sacrilegious, was often the sweetest recompense of the toils of the warrior. It was thus that Ogier the Dane, the valiant paladin of Charlemagne, was received by the fairy Morgana in her castle of Avalon. She placed on his head the fatal crown of gold, covered with precious stones, and leaves of laurel, myrtle, and roses, to which was attached the gift of immortal youth, and, at the same time, the oblivion of every other sentiment than the love of Morgana. From this moment the hero no longer remembered the court of Charlemagne; nor the glory which he had acquired in France; nor the crowns of Denmark, of England, Acre, Babylon, and Jerusalem, which he had worn in succession; nor all the battles he had fought, nor the number of giants he had vanquished. He passed two hundred years with Morgana in the intoxication of love, without being sensible of the flight of time; and when, by chance, his crown fell off into a fountain, and his memory was restored, he thought Charlemagne still living, and demanded with impatience, tidings of the brave paladins, his companions in arms. In reading this elegant fiction, we easily discover, that it was written after the Crusades had opened a communication between the people of the East and those of the West,and had enriched the French with all the treasures of the Arabian imagination!’
M. Sismondi also justly ascribes the invention of the Mysteries, the first modern efforts of the dramatic art, to the French; but the inference which he draws from it, that this was owing to the great dramatic genius of that people, must excite a smile in many of his readers. For, certainly, if there ever was a nation utterly and universally incapable of forming a conception of any other manners or characters than those which exist among themselves, it is the French. The learned author is right, however, in saying that the Mystery of the Passions, and the moralities performed by the French company of players, laid the foundation of the drama in various parts of Europe, and also suggested the first probable hint of the plan of theDivine Comedyof Dante; but it is not right to say that the merit of this last work consists at all in the design. The design is clumsy, mechanical, and monotonous; the invention is in the style.
We have hitherto followed M. Sismondi in his account of the progress of modern literature, before the Italian language had been made the vehicle of poetical composition, and before the revival of letters. The details which he gives on the last subject, and the extraordinary picture he presents of the pains and labour undergone by the scholars of that day in recovering antient manuscripts, and the remains of antient art, are highly interesting. It is from this important event, and also from the work of Dante, the first lasting monument of modern genius, that we should strictly date the origin of modern literature; and, indeed, it would not be difficult to show, that it is still the emulation of the antients, working, indeed, on very different materials, from different principles, and with very different results, that has been the great moving spring of the grandest efforts of human genius in our own times. Our author next follows the progress of the Italian language, particularly at the court of the Sicilian Monarchs, to the period of which we are speaking. He thus introduces his account of the first great name in modern literature.
‘Nevertheless, no poet had as yet powerfully affected the mind, no philosopher had penetrated the depths of thought and sentiment, when the greatest of the Italians, the father of their poetry, Dante, appeared, and showed to the world how a powerful genius is able to arrange the gross materials prepared for him, in such a manner as to rear from them an edifice, magnificent as the universe, of which it was the image. Instead of love songs, addressed to an imaginary mistress,—instead of madrigals, full of cold conceits,—of sonnets painfully harmonious,—or allegories false and forced, the only models which Dante had before his eyes in any modern tongue, he conceivedin his mind an image of the whole invisible world, and unveiled it to the eyes of his astonished readers. In the country, indeed, of Dante, that is, at Florence, on the 1st of May, 1304,’ (our author says), ‘all the sufferings of hell were placed before the eyes of the people, at a horrible representation appointed for a festival day; the first idea of which was no doubt taken from the Inferno. The bed of the river Arno was to represent the gulf of hell; and all the variety of torments which the imagination of monks or of the poet had invented, streams of boiling pitch, flames, ice, serpents, were inflicted on real persons, whose cries and groans rendered the illusion complete to the spectators.
‘The subject, then, which Dante chose for his immortal poem, when he undertook to celebrate the invisible world, and the three kingdoms of the dead, hell, purgatory, and paradise, was in that age the most popular of all; at once the most profoundly religious, and the most closely allied to the love of country, of glory, and of party-feelings, inasmuch as all the illustrious dead were to appear on this extraordinary theatre; and in short, by its immensity, the most loftily sublime of any which the mind of man has ever conceived. The commentaries on Dante, left us by Boccace and others, furnish a new proof of the superiority of this great man. We are there astonished to find his professed admirers unable to appreciate his real grandeur. Dante himself, as well as his commentators, attaches his excellence to purity and correctness: yet he is neither pure nor correct; but he isa creator. His characters walk and breathe; his pictures are nature itself; his language always speaks to the imagination, as well as to the understanding; and there is scarcely a stanza in his poem, which might not be represented with the pencil.’
M. Sismondi seems to have understood the great poet of Italy little better than his other commentators; and indeed theDivine Comedymust completely baffle the common rules of French criticism, which always seeks for excellence in the external image, and never in the internal power and feeling. But Dante is nothing but power, passion, self-will. In all that relates to the imitative part of poetry, he bears no comparison with many other poets; but there is a gloomy abstraction in his conceptions, which lies like a dead-weight upon the mind; a benumbing stupor from the intensity of the impression; a terrible obscurity like that which oppresses us in dreams; an identity of interest which moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes all things with the passions and imaginations of the human soul, that make amends for all other deficiencies. Dante is a striking instance of the essential excellences and defects of modern genius. The immediate objects he presents to the mind, arenot much in themselves;—they generally want grandeur, beauty, and order; but they become every thing by the force of the character which he impresses on them. His mind lends its own power to the objects which it contemplates, instead of borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even of the nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples the shades of death, and broods over the barren vastnesses of illimitable space. In point of diction and style, he is the severest of all writers, the most opposite to the flowery and glittering—who relies most on his own power, and the sense of power in the reader—who leaves most to the imagination.[2]
Dante’s only object is to interest; and he interests only by exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which he is himself possessed. He does not place before us the objects by which that emotion has been excited; but he seizes on the attention, by showing us the effect they produce on his feelings; and his poetry accordingly frequently gives us the thrilling and overwhelming sensation which is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive; but the interest never flags, from the intense earnestness of the author’s mind. Dante, as well as Milton, appears to have been indebted to the writers of the old Testament for the gloomy tone of his mind, for the prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his poetry. But there is more deep-working passion in Dante, and more imagination in Milton. Milton, more perhaps than any other poet, elevated his subject, by combining image with image in lofty gradation. Dante’s great power is in combining internal feelings with familiar objects. Thus the gate of Hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. The beauty to be found in Dante is of the same severe character, or mixed with deep sentiment. The story of Geneura, to which we have just alluded, is of this class. So is the affecting apostrophe, addressed to Dante by one of his countrymen, whom he meets in the other world.