CHAPTER XXIII
ROMANTIC CHIVALRY AND COURTLY LOVE
From Roland to Tristan and Lancelot
The instance of Godfrey of Bouillon showed how easy was
the passage from knighthood in history to knighthood in
legend and romance: legend springing from fact, out of
which it makes a story framed in a picture of the time;
romance unhistorical in origin, borrowing, devising, imagining
according to the taste of an audience and the faculty of the
trouvère. A boundless mediaeval literature of poetic legend
and romantic fiction sets forth the ways of chivalry. Our
attention may be confined to the Old French, the source
from which German, English, and Italian literatures never
ceased to draw. Three branches may be selected: the
chansons de geste; the romans d'aventure; and the
Arthurian romances. The subjects of the three are distinct,
and likewise the tone and manner of treatment. Yet they
were not unaffected by each other; for instance, the hard
feudal spirit of the chansons de geste became touched with
the tastes which moulded the two other groups, and there
was even a borrowing of topic. This was natural, as the
periods of their composition over-lapped, and doubtless their
audiences were in part the same.
The chansons de geste (gesta=deeds) were epic narratives
with historical facts for subjects, and commonly were
composed in ten-syllable assonanced or (later) rhyming couplets,
laisses so called, the same final assonance or rhyme extending
through a dozen or so lines. They told the deeds of
Charlemagne and his barons, or the feuds of the barons among themselves, especially those of the time following the
emperor's death. So the subject might be national, for
instance the war against the Saracens in Spain; or it might
be more provincially feudal in every sense of the latter
word. It is not to our purpose to discuss how these poems
grew through successive generations, nor how much of
Teutonic spirit they put in Romance forms of verse. They
were composed by trouvères or jongleurs. The Roland is
the earliest of them, and in its extant form belongs to the
last part of the eleventh century. One or two others are
nearly as early; but the vast majority, as we have them, are
the creations, or rather the remaniements, of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries.
These chansons present the feudal system in epic action.
They blazon forth its virtues and its horrors. The heroes
are called barons (ber) and also chevaliers; vassalage and
prowess (proecce) are closely joined; the Roland speaks of
the vassalage of Charles le ber (Charlemagne). The usages
of chivalry are found: a baron begins as enfant, and does
his youthful feats (enfances); then he is girt with manhood's
sword and given the thwack which dubs him chevalier.
Naturally, the chivalry of the chansons is feudal rather than
romantic. It is chivalry, sometimes crusading against "felun
paien," sometimes making war against emperors or rivals;
always truculent, yet fighting for an object and not for pure
adventure's sake or the love of ladies. The motives of
action are quite tangible, and the tales reflect actual situations
and conditions. They tell what knights (the chevaliers and
barons) really did, though, of course, the particular incidents
related may not be historical. Naturally they speak from
the time of their composition. The Roland, for example, throbs with the crusading wrath of the eleventh century—a
new fervour, and no passionate memory of the old obscure
disaster of Roncesvalles. It does not speak from the time
of the great emperor. For when Charlemagne lived there
was neither a "dulce France" nor the sentiment which
enshrined it; nor was there a sharply deliminated feudal
Christianity set over against a world of "felun paien"—those
false paynim, who should be trusted by no Christian
baron. The whole poem revolves around a treason plotted
by a renegade among vile infidels.
In this rude poem which carries the noblest spirit of the
chansons de geste, the soul of feudal chivalry climbs to its
height of loyal expiation for overweening bravery. The
battle-note is given in Roland's words, as Oliver descries the
masses of paynim closing in around that valiant rear-guard.
Said Oliver: "Sir comrade, I think we shall have battle
with these Saracens."
Replied Roland: "God grant it! Here must we hold
for our king. A man should suffer for his lord, endure heat
and cold, though he lose hair and hide. Let each one strike
his best, that no evil song be sung of us. The paynim are
in the wrong, Christians in the right!"
Then follows Oliver's prudent solicitation, and Roland's
fatal refusal to sound his horn and recall Charles and his
host: "Please God and His holy angels, France shall not be
so shamed through me; better death than such dishonour.
The harder we strike the more the emperor will love us."
Oliver can be stubborn too; for when the fight is close to
its fell end, he swears that Roland shall never wed his sister
Aude, if, beaten, he sound that horn.
The paynim host is shattered and riven; but nearly all
the Franks have fallen. Roland looks upon the mountains
and the plain. Of those of France he sees so many lying
dead, and he laments them like a high-born knight (chevaliers gentilz). "Seigneurs barons, may God have pity on you and
grant Paradise to your souls, and give them to repose on
holy flowers! Better vassals shall I never see; long are
the years that you have served me, and conquered wide
countries for Charles—the emperor has nurtured you for an ill end! Land of France, sweet land, to-day bereft of
barons of high prize! Barons of France! for me I see you
dying. I cannot save or defend you! God be your aid,
who never lies! Oliver, brother, you I must not fail.
I shall die of grief, if no one slay me! Sir comrade, let
us strike again."
Roland and Oliver are almost alone, and Oliver receives
a death-stroke. With his last strength he slays his slayer,
shouts his defiance, and calls Roland to his aid. He strikes
on blindly as Roland comes and looks into his face;—and
then might you have seen Roland swoon on his horse, and
Oliver wounded to death. "He had bled so much, that his
eyes were troubled, and he could not see to recognize any
mortal man. As he met his comrade, he struck him on his
helmet a blow that cut it shear in twain, though the sword
did not touch the head. At this Roland looked at him, and
asked him soft and low: 'Sir comrade, did you mean that?
It is Roland, who loves you well. You have not defied me.'
"Says Oliver, 'Now I hear you speak; I did not see
you; may the Lord God see you! I have struck you; for
which pardon me.'"
Roland replied: "I was not hurt. I pardon you here
and before God."
"At this word they bent over each other, and in such love
they parted." Oliver feels his death-anguish at hand;
sight and hearing fail him: he sinks from his horse and
lies on the earth; he confesses his sins, with his two hands
joined toward heaven. He prays God to grant him Paradise,
and blesses Charles and sweet France, and his comrade
Roland above all men. Stretched on the ground the count
lies dead.
A little after, when Roland and Turpin the stout
arch-bishop have made their last charge, and the paynim have
withdrawn, and the archbishop too lies on the ground, just
breathing; then it is that Roland gathers the bodies of the
peers and carries them one by one to lay them before the
archbishop for his absolution. He finds Oliver's body, and
tightly straining it to his heart, lays it with the rest before
the archbishop, whose dying breath is blessing and absolving his companions. And with tears Roland's voice breaks:
"Sweet comrade, Oliver, son of the good count Renier, who
held the March of Geneva; to break spear and pierce shield,
and counsel loyally the good, and discomfit and vanquish
villains, in no land was there better knight." Knowing his
own death near, Roland tries to shatter his great sword, and
then lies down upon it with his face toward Spain; he holds
up his glove toward God in token of fealty; Gabriel accepts
his glove and the angels receive his soul.
This was the best of knighthood in the best of the
chansons: and we see how close it was to what was best
in life. As the fight moves on to Oliver's blow and Roland's
pardon, to Roland's last deeds of Christian comradeship, and
to his death, the eyes are critical indeed that do not swell
with tears. The heroic pathos of this rough poem is great
because the qualities which perished at Roncesvalles were so
noble and so knightly.
The poem passes on to the vengeance taken by the
emperor upon the Saracens, then to his return to Aix, and
the short great scene between him and Aude, Roland's
betrothed:
"Where is Roland, the chief, who vowed to take me for
his wife?"
Charles weeps, and tears his white beard as he answers:
"Sister, dear friend, you are asking about a dead man.
But I will make it good to thee—there is Louis my son,
who holds the Marches.…"
Aude replies: "Strange words! God forbid, and His
saints and angels, that I should live after Roland." And
she falls dead at the emperor's feet.
As was fitting, the poem closes with the trial of the
traitor Ganelon, by combat. His defence is feudal: he had
defied Roland and all his companions; his treachery was
proper vengeance and not treason. But his champion is
defeated, and Ganelon himself is torn in pieces by horses,
while his relatives, pledged as hostages, are hanged. All of
which is feudalism, and can be matched for savagery in
many a scene from the Arthurian romances of chivalry—not always reproduced in modern versions.
So the chansons de geste are a mirror of the ways and
customs of feudal society in the twelfth century. The
feudal virtues are there, troth to one's liege, orthodox
crusading ardour, limitless valour, truth-speaking. There is
also enormous brutality; and the recognized feudal vices,
cruelty, impiousness, and treason. In the Raoul de Cambrai,
for example, the nominal hero is a paroxysm of ferocity and
impiety. All crimes rejoice him as he rages along his
ruthless way to establish his seignorial rights over a fief
unjustly awarded him by Louis, the weak son of Charlemagne.
His foil is Bernier, the natural son of one of the rightful
heirs against whom Raoul carries on raging feudal war.
But Bernier is also Raoul's squire and vassal, who had
received knighthood from him, and so is bound to the
monster by the strongest feudal tie. He is a pattern of
knighthood and of every feudal virtue. On the day of his
knighting he implored his lord not to enter on that fell war
against his (Bernier's) family. In vain. The war is begun
with fire and sword. Bernier must support his lord; says
he: "Raoul, my lord, is worse (plu fel) than Judas; he is
my lord; he has given me horse and clothes, my arms and
cloth of gold. I would not fail him for the riches of
Damascus": and all cried, "Bernier, thou art right."
But there is a limit. Raoul is ferociously wasting the
land, and committing every impiety. He would desecrate
the abbey of Origni, and set his tent in the middle
of the church, stabling his horse in its porch and making
his bed before the altar. Bernier's mother is there as a
nun; Raoul pauses at her entreaties and those of his
uncle. Then his rage breaks out afresh at the death of two
of his men; he burns the town and abbey, and Bernier's
mother perishes with the other nuns in the flames.
Now the monster is feasting on the scene of desolation—and
it is Lent besides! After dining, he plays chess:
enter Bernier. Raoul asks for wine. Bernier takes the cup
and, kneeling, hands it to him. Raoul is surprised to see
him, but at once renews his oath to disinherit all of Bernier's
family—his father and uncles. Bernier speaks and
reproaches Raoul with his mother's death: "I cannot bring her back to life, but I can aid my father whom you unjustly
follow up with war. I am your man no longer. Your
cruelty has released me from my duties; and you will find
me on the side of my father and uncles when you attack
them." For reply, Raoul breaks his head open with the
butt of his spear; but then at once asks pardon and
humiliates himself strangely. Bernier answers that there
shall be no peace between them till the blood which flowed
from his head returns back whence it came. Yet in the
final battle he still seeks to turn Raoul back before attacking
him who had been his liege lord. Again in vain; and
Raoul falls beneath Bernier's sword. Here are the two
sides of the picture, the monster of a lord, the vassal vainly
seeking to be true: a situation utterly tragic from the
standpoint of feudal chivalry.
It is not to be supposed that a huge body of poetic
narrative could remain utterly truculent. Other motives
had to enter;—the love of women, of which the Roland has
its one great flash. The ladies of the chansons are not coy,
and often make the first advances. Such natural lusty love
is not romantic; it is not l'amour courtois; and marriage
is its obvious end. The chansons also tend to become
adventurous and to fill with romantic episode. An
interesting example of this is the Renaud de Montaubon
where Renaud and his three brothers are aided by the
enchanter, Maugis, against the pursuing hate of Charlemagne
and where the marvellous horse, Bayard, is a fascinating
personality. This diversified and romantic tale long held its
own in many tongues. In the somewhat later Huon de Bordeaux
we are at last in fairyland—verily at the Court of
Oberon—his first known entry into literature. Thus the
'chansons tend toward the tone and temper of the
romans d'aventure.
The latter have the courtly love and the purely
adventurous motives of the Arthurian romances, with which
the men who fashioned them probably were acquainted, as
were the jongleurs who recast certain of the chansons de geste to suit a more courtly taste. Of the romans d'aventure, so-called, the Blancandrin or the Amadas or the
Flamenco, may be taken as the type; or, if one will, Flore et Blanchefleur and Aucassin et Nicolette, those two enduring
lovers' tales. Courtly love and knightly ventures are the
themes of these romans so illustrative of noble French
society in the thirteenth century. They differ from the
Arthurian romances in having other than a Breton origin;
and their heroes and heroines are sometimes of more easily
imagined historicity than the knights and ladies of the
Round Table. But they never approached the universal
vogue of the Arthurian Cycle.
It goes without saying that tastes in reading (or rather
listening) diverged in the twelfth century, just as in the
twentieth. One cannot read the old chansons de geste in
which fighting, and not love, is the absorbing topic, without
feeling that the audience before whom they were chanted
was predominantly male. One cannot but feel the contrary
to have been the fact with the romances in verse and prose
which constitute that immense mass of literature vaguely
termed Arthurian. These two huge groups, the
chansons de geste and the Arthurian romances, overlap chronologically and geographically. Although the development of the
chansons was somewhat earlier, the Arthurian stories were
flourishing before the chansons were past their prime; and
both were in vogue through central and northern France.
But the Arthurian stories won adoptive homes in England,
Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. Indeed their earlier stages
scarcely seem attached to real localities: nor were their
manners and interests rooted in the special traditions of any definite place.
The tone and topics of these romances suggest an
audience chiefly of women, and possibly feminine authorship.
Doubtless, with a few exceptions, men composed and recited
them. But the male authors were influenced by the taste,
the favour and patronage, and the sympathetic suggestive
interest of the ladies. Prominent among the first known composers of these "Breton" lays was a woman, Marie de
France as she is called, who lived in England in the reign
of Henry II. (1154-1189). Her younger contemporary
was the facile trouvère Chrétien de Troies, of whose life little
is actually known. But we know that the subject of his
famous Lancelot romance, called the Conte de la charrette,
was suggested to him (about 1170) by the Countess Marie
de Champagne, daughter of Louis VII. Surely then he
wrote to please the taste of that royal dame, whose queenly
mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was also a patroness of this
courtly poetry.
These are instances proving the feminine influence upon
the composition of these romances. And the growth of
this great Arthurian Cycle represents, par excellence, the
entry of womanhood into the literature of chivalry. Men
love, as well as women; but the topic engrosses them less,
and they talk less about it Likewise men appreciate
courtesy; but in fact it is woman's influence that softens
manners. And while the masculine fancy may be drawn by
what is fanciful and romantic, women abandon themselves
to its charm.
Of course the origin or provenance of these romances
was different from that of the chansons de geste. It was
Breton—it was Welsh, it was walhisch (the Old-German
word for the same) which means that it was foreign. In
fact, the beginnings of these stories floated beautifully in
from a weiss-nicht-wo which in the twelfth century was
already hidden in the clouds. When the names of known
localities are mentioned, they have misty import. Arthurian
geography is more elusive than Homeric.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries these stories
took form in the verse and prose compositions in which
they still exist. Sometimes the poet's name is known,
Chrétien de Troies, for instance; but the source from
which he drew is doubtful. It probably was Breton, and
Artus once in Great Britain fought the Saxons like as not.
But the growth, the development, the further composition,
of the matière de Bretagne is predominantly French. In
France it grows; from France it passes on across the Rhine,
across the Alps, then back to what may have been its old home across the British Channel. With equal ease on the
wings of universal human interest it surmounts the Pyrenees.
It would have crossed the ocean, had the New World been discovered.
Far be it from our purpose to enter the bottomless
swamp of critical discussion of the source and history of the
Arthurian romances. Two or three statements—general
and probably rather incorrect—may be made. Marie de France, soon after the middle of the twelfth century, wrote a number of shortish narrative poems of chivalric manners and romantic love, which, as it were, touch the hem of Arthur's cloak. Chrétien de Troies between 1160 and
1175 composed his Tristan (a story originally having
nothing to do with Arthur), and then his Erec (Geraint), then
Cligés; then his (unfinished) Lancelot or the Conte de la charrette; then Ivain or the Chevalier au lion, and at last
Perceval or the Conte du Graal. How much of the matter
of these poems came from Brittany—or indirectly from
Great Britain? This is a large unsolved question! Another
is the relation of Chrétien's poems to the subsequent
Arthurian romances in verse and prose. And perhaps
most disputed of all is the authorship (Beroul? Robert
de Boron? Walter Mapes?) of this mass of Arthurian Old
French literature which was not the work of Chrétien.
Without lengthy prolegomena it would be fruitless to attempt
to order and name these compositions. The Arthurian
matters were taken up by German poets of excellence—Heinrich
von Veldeke, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von
Strassburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach,—and sometimes the
best existing versions are the work of the latter; for instance,
Wolfram's Parzival and Gottfried's Tristan. And again the
relation of these German versions to their French originals
becomes still another problem.
For the chivalry of these romances, one may look to the
poems of Chrétien and to passages in the Old French prose
(presumably of the early thirteenth century), to which the
name of Robert de Boron or Walter Mapes is attached.
Chrétien enumerates knightly excellences in his Cligés, and,
speaking from the natural point of view of the jongleur, he
puts largesce (generosity) at their head. This, says he, makes one a prodome more than hautesce (high station) or
corteisie or savoirs or jantillesce (noble birth) or chevalerie, or
hardemans (hardihood) or seignorie, or biautez (beauty).
Such are the knightly virtues, which, however, reach
their full worth only through the aid of that which makes
perfect the Arthurian knight, the high love of ladies, shortly
to be spoken of. In the meanwhile let us turn from
Chrétien to the broader tableau of the Old French prose,
and note the beginning of Artus, as he is there called. The
lineage of the royal boy remains romantically undiscovered,
till the time when he is declared to be the king. It is then
that he receives all kinds of riches from the lords of his
realm. He keeps nothing for himself; but makes inquiry
as to the character and circumstances of his future knights,
and distributes all among them according to their worth.
This is the virtue of largesce.
Now comes the ceremony of making him a knight, and
then of investing him with, as it were, the supreme
knighthood of kingship. The archbishop, it is told, "fist (made)
Artu chevalier, et celle nuit veilla Artus a la mestre Eglise
(the cathedral) jusques au jour." Then follows the
ceremony of swearing allegiance to him; but Arthur has
not yet finally taken his great sword. When he is arrayed
for the mass, the archbishop says to him: "Allez querre
(seek) l'espee et la jostise dont vos devez defendre Saincte
Eglise et la crestiante sauver."
"Lors alia la procession au perron, et la demanda li arcevesques
a Artu, se il est tiels que il osast jurer et creanter Dieu et madame
Sainte Marie et a tous Sains et toutes Saintes, Sainte Eglise a sauver
et a maintenir, et a tous povres homes et toutes povres femmes pais
et loiaute tenir, et conseiller tous desconseillies, et avoier (guide)
tous desvoies (erring), et maintenir toutes droitures et droite justice
a tenir, si alast avant et preist l'espee dont nostre sire avoit fait de
lui election. Et Artus plora et dist: 'Ensi voirement com Dieus
est sire de toutes les choses, me donit-il force et povoir de ce
maintenir que vous avez dit.'
"II fu a genols et prit l'espee a jointes mains et la leva de
l'enclume (anvil) ausi voirement come se ele ne tenist a riens; et
lors, l'espee toute droite, l'enmenerent a l'autel et la mist sus; et lors il le pristrent et sacrerent et l'enoindrent, et li firent toutes iceles
choses que l'en doit faire a roi."
All this is good chivalry as well as proper feudalism.
And there are other instances of genuine feudalism in these
Romances. Such is the scene between the good knight
Pharien and the bad king Claudas, where the former
renounces his allegiance to the latter (je declare renoncer a vostre fief) and then declares himself to be Claudas's enemy,
and claims the right to fight or slay him; since Claudas
has not kept troth with him.
There is perhaps nothing lovelier in all these Romances
than the story of the young Lancelot, reared by the tender
care of the Lady of the Lake. His training supplements
the genial instincts of his nature, and the result is the mirror
of all knighthood's qualities. He is noble, he is true, he
is perfect in bravery, in courtesy, in modesty, the Lady
imparting the precepts of these virtues to his ready spirit.
There is no knightly virtue that is not perfect in this
peerless youth, as he sets forth to Arthur's Court, there to
receive knighthood and prove himself the peerless knight
and perfect lover. In this Old French prose his career is
set forth most completely, and most correctly, so to speak.
One or two points may be adverted to.
Lancelot is not strictly Arthur's knight. Originally he
owed no fealty to him; and he avoided receiving his sword
from the king, in order that he might receive it from
Guinever, as he did. And so, from the first, Lancelot was
Guinever's knight, as he was afterwards her accepted lover.
Consequently his relations to her broke no fealty of his to
Arthur.
Again, one notices that the absolute character of
Lancelot's love and troth to Guinever is paralleled by the
friendship of the high prince Galahaut to him. That has
the same précieuse logic; it is absolute. No act or thought of Galahaut infringes friendship's least conceived requirement; while conversely that marvellous high prince leaves
undone no act, however extreme, which can carry out the
logic of this absolute single-souled devotion. At last he
dies on thinking that Lancelot is dead; just as the latter
could not have survived the death of Guinever. In spite of
the beauty of Galahaut's devotion, its logic and preciosity
scarcely throb with manhood's blood. It will not cause our
eyes to swell with human tears, as did the blind blow and
the true words which passed between Oliver and Roland at
Roncesvalles.
Chivalry—the institution and the whole knightly
character—began in the rough and veritable, and progressed
to courtlier idealizations. Likewise that knightly virtue,
love of woman, displays a parallel evolution, being part of
the chivalric whole. Beginning in natural qualities, its
progress is romantic, logical, fantastic, even mystical.
Feudal life in the earlier mediaeval centuries did not
foster tender sentiments between betrothed or wedded
couples. The chief object of every landholder was by force or policy to secure his own safety and increase his
retainers and possessions. A ready means was for him to
marry lands and serfs in the robust person of the daughter,
or widow, of some other baron. The marriage was prefaced
by scant courtship; and little love was likely to ensue
between the rough-handed husband and high-tempered wife.
Such conditions, whether in Languedoc, Aquitaine, or
Champagne, made it likely that high-blooded men and
women would satisfy their amorous cravings outside the
bonds of matrimony. For these reasons, among others, the
Provençal and Old French literature, which was the medium
of development for the sentiment of love, did not commonly
concern itself with bringing lovers to the altar.
In literature, as in life, marriage is usually the goal of
bliss and silence for love-song and love-story: attainment
quells the fictile elements of fear and hope. Entire classes
of mediaeval poetry like the aube (dawn) and the pastorelle
had no thought of marriage. The former genre of Provençal
and Old French, as well as Old German, poetry, is a lyric
dialogue wherein the sentiments of lover and mistress
become more tender with the approach of the envious
dawn. The latter is the song of the merry encounter of
some clerk or cavalier with a mocking or complaisant
shepherdess. Yet one must beware of speaking too
categorically. For in mediaeval love-literature, marriage is
looked forward to or excluded according to circumstances;
and there are instances of romantic love where the lovers
are blessed securely by the priest at the beginning of their
adventures. But whether the lover look to wed his lady, or
whether he have wedded her, or whether she be but his
paramour, is all a thing of incident, dependent on the
traditional or devised plot of the story.
Like all other periods that have been articulate in
literature—and those that have not been, so far as one may
guess—the Middle Ages experienced and expressed the
usual ways of love. These need not detain us. For they
were included as elements within those interesting forms of
romantic love, which were presented in the lyrics of the
Troubadours and their more or less conscious imitators, and
in the romantic narratives of chivalry. This literature
elaborately expresses mediaeval sentiments and also love's
passion. Its ideals drew inspiration from Christianity and
many a suggestion from the antique. More especially, in
its growth, at last two currents seem to meet. The one
sprang from the fashions of Languedoc and the courtly
centres of the north; the other was the strain of fantasy
and passion constituting the matière de Bretagne.
Languedoc had been Romanized before the Christian
era, and thereafter did not cease to be the home of the
surviving Latin culture. By the eleventh century, castles
and towns held a gay and aristocratic society, on which
Christianity, honeycombed with heresy, sat lightly, or at
least joyfully. This society was inclined to luxury, and the
gentle relationships between men and women interested it
exceedingly. Out of it as the eleventh century closes, songs
of the Troubadours begin to rise and give utterance to
thoughts and feelings of chivalric love. These songs
flourished during the whole of the twelfth century, and then
their notes were crushed by the Albigensian Crusade, which
destroyed the pretty life from which they sprang.
She whom such songs were meant to adulate or win,
frequently was the wife of the Troubadour's lord. The
song might intend nothing beyond such worship as the
lady's spouse would sanction; or it might give subtle voice
to a real passion, which offered and sought all. To separate
the sincere and passionate from the fanciful in such songs is
neither easy nor apt, since fancy may enhance the
expression of passion, or present a pleasing substitute. At all
events, in this very personal poetry, passion and imaginative
enhancings blended in verses that might move a lady's heart
or vanity.
Love, with the Troubadours and their ladies, was a source of joy. Its commands and exigencies made life's
supreme law. Love was knighthood's service; it was
loyalty and devotion; it was the noblest human giving. It
was also the spring of excellence, the inspiration of high
deeds. This love was courteous, delicately ceremonial,
precise, and on the lady's part exacting and whimsical. A
moderate knowledge of the poems and lives of the Troubadours
and their ladies will show that love with its joys and pains,
its passion, its fancies and subtle conclusions, made the life
and business of these men and dames.
In culture and the love of pleasure the great feudal
courts of Aquitaine, Champagne, and even Flanders, were
scarcely behind the society of Languedoc. And at these
courts, rather than in Languedoc, courtly love encountered
a new passionate current, and found the tales which
were to form its chief vehicle. These were the lays
and stories, as of Tristan and of Arthur and his knights,
which from Great Britain had come to Brittany and
Normandy. They were now attracting many listeners who had
no part with Arthur or Tristan, save the love of love and
adventure. Marie de France had put certain Breton lays
into Old French verse. And one or two decades later, a
request from the great Countess Marie de Champagne led
Chrétien de Troies, as we have seen, to recast other Breton
tales in a manner somewhat transformed with thoughts of
courtly love. These northern poems of love and chivalry
were written to please the taste of high-born dames, just as
the Troubadours had sung and still were singing to please
their sisters in the south. The southern poems may have
influenced the northern.
In the courtly society of Champagne and Aquitaine
diverse racial elements had long been blending, and
acquirements, once foreign, had turned into personal qualities.
Views of life had been evolved, along with faculties to express them. Likewise modes of feeling had developed.
This society had become what it was within the influence of
Christianity and the antique educational tradition. It knew
the Song of Songs, as well as Ovid's stories, and likewise his
Ars amatoria, which Chrétien was the first to translate into
Old French. Possibly its Christianity had learned of a
boundless love of God, and its mortal nature might feel
mortal loves equally resistless. And now, in the early
twelfth century, there came from lands which were or had
been Breton, an abundance of moving and catching stories
of adventure and of passion which broke through restraint,
or knew none. Dames and knights and their rhymers would
eagerly receive such tales, and not as barren vessels; for they
refashioned and reinspired them with their own thoughts of the
joy of life and love, and with thoughts of love's high service
and its uplifting virtue for the lover, and again of its ways
and the laws which should direct and guide, but never stem, it.
Thus it came that French trouvères enlarged the matter
of these Breton lays. Their romances reflected the loftiest
thoughts and the most eloquent emotion pertaining to the
earthly side of mediaeval life. In these rhyming and prose
compositions, love was resistless in power; it absorbed the
lover's nature; it became his sole source of joy and pain.
So it sought nothing but its own fulfilment; it knew no
honour save its own demands. It was unimpeachable, for
in ecstasy and grief it was accountable to no law except that
of its being. This resistless love was also life's highest
worth, and the spring of inspiration and strength for doing
valorously and living nobly. The trouvère of the twelfth
century created new conceptions of love's service, and
therewith the impassioned thought that beyond what men might
do in the hope of love's fruition or at the dictates of its
affection, love was itself a power strengthening and ennobling
him who loved. Thought and feeling joined in this
conviction, each helping the other on, in interchanging rôles of
inspirer and inspired. And finally the two are one:
"Oltre la spera, che più larga gira,
Passa il sospiro ch' esce del mio core:
Intelligenza nuova, che l'Amore
Piangendo mette in lui, pur su lo tira."
No one can separate the thought and feeling in this verse.
But they were not always fused. The mediaeval fancy
sported with this love; the mediaeval mind delighted in it as
a theme of argument. And the fancy might be as fantastic
as the reasoning was finely spun.
The literature of this love draws no sharp lines between
love as resistless passion and love as enabling virtue; yet
these two aspects are distinguishable. The first was less an
original creation of the Middle Ages than the second.
Antiquity had known the passion which overwhelmed the
stricken mortal, and had treated it as something put upon
the man and woman, a convulsive joy, also a bane.
Antiquity had analyzed it too, and had shown its effects,
especially its physical symptoms. Much had been written
of its fatal nature; songs had sung how it overthrew the
strong and brought men and women to their death. Looking
upon this love as something put on man and woman,
antiquity pictured it mainly as an insanity cast like a spell
upon some one who otherwise would have been sane. But
the Middle Ages saw love transformed into the man and
woman, saw it constitute their will as well as passion, and
perceived that it was their being. If the lover could not
avoid or resist it, the reason was because it was his mightiest
self, and not because it was a compulsion from without; it
was his nature, not his disease.
The nature, ways, and laws of this high and ennobling
love were much pondered on and talked of. They were
expounded in pedantic treatises, as well as set forth in tales
which sometimes have the breath of universal life. Ovid's
Ars amatoria furnished the idea that love was an art to be
learned and practised. Mediaeval clerks and rhymers took
his light art seriously, and certain of them made manuals of
the rules and precepts of love, devised by themselves and
others interested in such fancies. An example is the Flos amoris or Ars amatoria of Andrew the Chaplain, who compiled his book not far from the year 1200. He wrote with his obsequious head filled with a sense of the authority in love matters of Marie de Champagne, and other great
ladies. His book contains a number of curious questions
which had been laid before one or the other of those reigning
dames, and which they solved boldly in love's favour. Thus
on solicitation Countess Marie decided that there could be
no true love between a husband and wife; and that the
possession of an honoured husband or beautiful wife did not
bar the proffer or acceptance of love from another. The
living literature of love was never constrained by the
foolishness of the first proposition, but was freely to exemplify the
further conclusion which others besides the countess drew.
Andrew gives a code of love's rules. He would have no
one think that he composed them; but that he saw them
written on a parchment attached to the hawk's perch, and
won at Arthur's Court by the valour of a certain Breton
knight. They read like proverbs, and undoubtedly represent
the ideas of courtly society upon courtly love. There are
thirty-one of them—for example:
(1) Marriage is not a good excuse for rejecting love.
(2) Who does not conceal, cannot love.
(3) None can love two at once. There is no reason why a woman should not be loved by two men, or a man by two women.
(4) It is love's way always to increase or lessen.
(9) None can love except one who is moved by love's suasion.
(12) The true lover has no desire to embrace anyone except his (or her) co-lover (co-amans).
(13) Love when published rarely endures.
(14) Easy winning makes love despicable; the difficult is held dear.
(15) Every lover turns pale in the sight of the co-lover.
(16) The lover's heart trembles at the sudden sight of the co-lover.
(18) Prowess (probitas) alone makes one worthy of love.
(20) The lover is always fearful.
(23) The one whom the thought of love disturbs, eats and sleeps little.
(25) The true lover finds happiness only in what he deems will please his co-lover.
(28) A slight fault in the lover awakens the co-lover's suspicion.
(30) The true lover constantly, without intermission, is engrossed with the image of the co-lover.
These rules were exemplified in the imaginative literature of courtly love. Such love and the feats inspired by it made the chief matter of the Arthurian romances, which
became the literary property of western Europe; and the
supreme examples of their darling theme are the careers and
fortunes of the two most famous pairs of lovers in all this
gallant cycle, Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere.
In the former story love is resistless passion; in the latter
its virtue- and valour-bestowing qualities appear. In both,
the laws forbidding its fruition are shattered: in the Tristan
story blindly, madly, without further thought; while in the
tale of Lancelot this conflict sometimes rises to
consciousness even in the lovers' hearts. How chivalric love may
reach accord with Christian precept will be shown hereafter
in the progress of the white and scarlet soul of Parzival, the
brave man proving himself slowly wise.
Probably there never was a better version of the story of
Tristan and Iseult than that of Gottfried of Strassburg, who
transformed French originals into his Middle High German
poem about the year 1210. The poet-adapter sets forth
his ideas of love in an elaborate prologue. Very
antithetically he shows its bitter sweet, its dear sorrow,
its yearning need; indeed to love is to yearn—an idea
not strange to Plato—and Gottfried uses the words
sene, senelîch, senedaere (all of which are related to sehnsucht, which is yearning) to signify love, a lover, and his
pain. His poem shall be of two noble lovers:
"Ein senedaere, eine senedaerin."
The more love's fire burns the heart, the more one
loves; this pain is full of love, an ill so good for the heart
that no noble nature once roused by it would wish to lose
part therein. Who never felt love's pain has never felt love:
"Liep unde leit diu waren ie
An minnen ungescheiden."
It is good for men to hear a tale of noble love, yes, a
deep good. It sweetens love and raises the hearer's mood;
it strengthens troth, enriches life. Love, troth, a constant spirit, honour, and whatever else is good, are never so
precious as when set in a tale of love's joy and pain. Love
is such a blessed thing, such a blessed striving, that no one
without its teaching has worth or honour. These lovers
died long ago; yet their love and troth, their life, their
death, will still give troth and honour to seekers after these.
Their death lives and is ever new, as we listen to the tale.
Evidently, in Gottfried's mind the Tristan tale of love's
almighty passion carried the thought of love as the
inspiration of a noble life. Yet that thought was not native to the
legend, and finds scant exemplification in Gottfried's poem.
The tragic passion of the main narrative is presaged by
the story of Tristan's parents. His mother was Blancheflur,
King Mark's sister, and his father Prince Riwalin. She saw
him in the May-Court tourney held near Tintajoel. She
took him into her thoughts; he entered her heart, and
there wore crown and sceptre.
She greeted him; he her. She bashfully began: "My
lord, may God enrich your heart and courage; but I harbour
something against you."
"Sweet one, what have I done?"
"You have done violence to my best friend"—it was
her heart, she meant.
"Beauty, bear me no hate for that; command, and I
will do your bidding."
"Then I will not hate you bitterly. I will see what
atonement you will make."
He bowed, and carried with him her image. Love's
will mastered his heart, as he thought of Blancheflur, of her
hair, her brow, her cheek, her mouth, her chin, and the glad
Easter day that smiling lay in her eyes. Love the
heart-burner set his heart aflame, and lo! he entered upon another
life; purpose and habit changed, he was another man.
Sad is the short tale of these lovers. Riwalin is killed
in battle, and at the news of his death Blancheflur expires,
giving birth to a son. Rual the Faithful names the child
Tristan, to symbolize the sorrow of its birth.
The story of Tristan's early years draws the reader to
the accomplished, happy youth. He is the delight of all;
for his young manhood is courtliness itself, and valour and generosity. He is loved, and afterwards recognized and
knighted, by his uncle Mark. Then he sets out and avenges
his father's death; after which he returns to Mark's Court,
and vanquishes the Irish champion Morold. A fragment
of Tristan's sword remained in Morold's head; Tristan
himself received a poisoned wound, which could be healed, as
the dying Morold told him, only by Ireland's queen, Iseult.
Very charming is the story of Tristan's first visit to Ireland,
disguised as a harper, under the name of Tantris. The
queen hearing of his skill, has him brought to the palace,
where she heals him, and he in return becomes the teacher
of her daughter, the younger Iseult, whom he instructs in
letters, music and singing, French and Latin, ethics, courtly
arts and manners, till the girl became as accomplished as she
was beautiful, and could write and read, and compose and
sing pastorelles and rondeaux and other songs.
On his return to Cornwall he told Mark of the young
Iseult, and then, at Mark's request, set forth again to woo
her for him. The Irish king has promised his daughter to
whoever shall slay the dragon. Tristan does the deed, cuts
out the dragon's tongue as proof, and then falls overcome
and fainting. The king's cupbearer comes by, breaks his
lance on the dead dragon, and, riding on, announces that he
has slain the monster; he has the great head brought to
the Court upon a wagon. Iseult is in despair at the
thought of marrying the cupbearer; her mother doubts his
story, and bids Iseult ride out and search for the real slayer.
The ladies discover Tristan, with him the dragon's tongue.
They carry him to the palace to heal him, and the young
Iseult recognizes him as the harper Tantris, and redoubles
her kind care. But after a while she noticed the notch in
his sword, and saw that it fitted the fragment found in
Morold's head—and is not Tantris just Tristan reversed?
This is the man who slew Morold, her mother's brother!
She seizes the sword and rushes in to kill him in his bath.
Her mother checks her, and at last she is appeased, Tristan
letting them see that an important mission has brought him
to Ireland. There is truce between them, and Tristan goes
to the king with Mark's demand for Iseult's hand. Then
the cupbearer is discomfited, peace is made between the Irish king and Mark, and the young Iseult, with Brangaene
her cousin, makes ready to sail with Tristan. The queen
secretly gave a love-drink into Brangaene's care, which Iseult
and Mark should drink together. The people followed down
to the haven, and all wept and lamented that with fair
Iseult the sunshine had left Ireland.
Iseult is sad. She cannot forget that it is Tristan who
slew her uncle and is now taking her from her home.
Tristan fails to comfort her. They see land. Tristan calls
for wine to pledge Iseult. A little maid brings—the
love-drink! They drink together, not wine but that endless
heart's pain which shall be their common death. Too
late, Brangaene with a cry throws the goblet into the
sea. Love stole into both their hearts; gone was Iseult's
hate. They were no longer two, but one; the sinner, love,
had done it. They were each other's joy and pain; doubt
and shame seized them. Tristan bethought him of his
loyalty and honour, struggling against love vainly. Iseult
was like a bird caught with the fowler's lime; shame drove
her eyes away from him; but love drew her heart. She
gave over the contest as she looked on him, and he also
began to yield. They thought each other fairer than before;
love was conquering.
The ship sails on. Love's need conquered. They talk
together of the past, how he had once come in a little boat,
and of the lessons: "Fair Iseult, what is troubling you?"
"What I know, that troubles me; what I see, the heaven
and sea, that weighs on me; body and life are heavy."
They leaned toward each other; bright eyes began to
fill from the heart's spring; her head sank, his arm sustained
her;—"Ah! sweet, tell me, what is it?"
Answered love's feather-play, Iseult: "Love is my need,
love is my pain."
He answered painfully: "Fair Iseult, it is the rude wind
and sea."
"No, no, it is not wind or sea; love is my pain."
"Beauty, so with me! Love and you make my need.
Heart's lady, dear Iseult, you and the love of you have
seized me. I am dazed. I cannot find myself. All the
world has become naught, save thee alone."
"Sir, so is it with me."
They loved, and in each other saw one mind, one heart,
one will. Their silent kiss was long. In the night, love
the physician brought their only balm. Sweet had the
voyage become; alas! that it must end.
With their landing begins the trickery and falsehood
compelled by the situation. The fearful Iseult plotted to
murder the true Brangaene, who alone knew. After a while
Mark's suspicion is aroused, to be lulled by guile. Plot and
counterplot go on; the lovers win and win again; truth and
honour, everything save love's joy and fear and
all-sufficiency, are cast to the winds. Even the "Judgment of
God" is tricked; the hot iron does not burn Iseult swearing
her false oath, literally true. Many a time Mark's jealousy
has been fiercely stirred, only to be tricked to sleep again.
Yet he knows that Tristan and Iseult are lovers. He calls
them to him; he tells them he will not avenge himself, they
are too dear to him. But let them take each other by the
hand and leave him. So, together, they disappear in the
forest.
Then comes the wonderful, beautiful story of the
love-grotto and the lovers' forest-life; they had the forest and
they had themselves, and needed no more. One morning
they arose to the sweet birds' song of greeting; but they
heard a horn; Mark must be hunting near. So they were
very careful, and again prepared deception. Mark has been
told of the love-grotto in the wood. In the night he came
and found it, looked through its little rustic window as the
day began to dawn. There lay the lovers, apart, a naked
sword between them. A sunbeam, stealing through the
window, touches Iseult's cheek, touches her sweet mouth.
Mark loves her anew. Then fearful lest the sunlight should
disturb her, he covered the window with grass and leaves
and flowers, blessed her, and went away in tears. The
lovers waken. They had no need to fear. The lie of the
naked sword again had won. Mark sends and invites them
to return.
Insatiable love knew no surcease or pause. The
German poet is driven to a few reflections on the deceits of
Eve's daughters, the anxieties of forbidden love, and the crown of worth and joy that a true woman's love may be.
At last the lovers are betrayed—in each other's arms.
They know that Mark has seen them.
"Heart's lady, fair Iseult, now we must part. Let me
not pass from your heart. Iseult must ever be in Tristan's
heart. Forget me not."
Says Iseult: "Our hearts have been too long one ever
to know forgetting. Whether you are near or far, nothing
but Tristan enters mine. See to it that no other woman
parts us. Take this ring and think of me. Iseult with
Tristan has been ever one heart, one troth, one body, one
life. Think of me as your life—Iseult."
The fateful turning of the story is not far off: Tristan
has met the other Iseult, her of the white hands. The poet
Gottfried did not complete his work. He died, leaving
Tristan's heart struggling between the old love and the new—the
new and weaker love, but the more present offering
to pain. The story was variously concluded by different
rhymers, in Gottfried's time and after. The best ending is
the extant fragment of the Tristan by Thomas of Brittany,
the master whom Gottfried followed. In it, the wounded
Tristan dies at the false news of the black sails—the
treachery of Iseult of the white hands. The true Iseult
finds him dead; kisses him, takes him in her arms, and
dies.
From the time when on the ship Tristan and Iseult cast
shame and honour to the winds, the story tells of a love
which knows no law except itself, a love which is not
hindered or made to hesitate and doubt by any command
of righteousness or honour. Love is the theme; the tale
has no sympathy or understanding for anything else. It is
therefore free from the consciously realized inconsistencies
present at least in some versions of the story of Lancelot
and Guinevere. In them two laws of life seem on the verge
of conflict. On the one—the feebler—side, honour, troth
to marriage vows, some sense of right and wrong; on the
other, passionate love, which is law and right unto itself,
having its own commands and prohibitions; a love which is
also an inspiration and uplifting power unto the lover; a
love holy in itself and yet because of its high nature the more fatally impeached by truth and honour trampled on. In the conflict between the two laws of life in the Lancelot story, the rights and needs and power of love maintain themselves; yet the end must come, and the lovers live out love's palinode in separate convents. For this love to be made perfect, must be crowned with repentance.
Who first created Lancelot, and who first made the peerless knight love Arthur's queen? This question has not yet been answered. Chrétien de Troies' poem, Le Conte de la charrette, has for its subject an episode in Lancelot's long love of Guinevere. Here, as in his other poems, Chrétien is a facile narrator, with little sense of the significance that might be given to the stories which he received and cleverly remade. But their significance is shown in the Old French prose Lancelot, probably composed two or three decades after Chrétien wrote. It contains the lovely story of Lancelot's rearing, by the Lady of the Lake, and of his glorious youth. It brings him to the Court of Arthur, and tells how he was made a knight—it was the queen and not the king from whom he received his sword. And he loves her—loves her and her only from the first until his death. He has no thought of serving any other mistress. And he is aided in his love by the "haute prince Galehaut," the most high-hearted friend that ever gave himself to his friend's weal.
From the beginning Lancelot's love is worship, it is holy; and almost from the beginning it is unholy. From the beginning, too, it is the man's inspiration, it is his strength; it makes him the peerless knight, peerless, in courtesy, peerless in emprise; this love gives him the single eye, the unswerving heart, the resistless valour to accomplish those adventures wherein all other knights had found their shame—they were not perfect lovers! Only through his perfect love could Lancelot have accomplished that greatest adventure of the Val des faux amants;—Val sans retour for all other knights. Lancelot alone had always been, and to his death remained, a lover absolutely true in act and word
and thought; incomparably more chastely loyal to Guinevere
than her kingly spouse. Against the singleness of this
perfect love enchantments fail, and swords and lances break.
Yet this love, fraught with untruth and dishonour, must
conceal itself from that king who, while breaking his own
marriage vows as passion led him, trusted and honoured
above all men the peerless knight whose peerlessness was
rooted in his unholy holy love for Arthur's queen.
The first full sin between Lancelot and Guinevere was
committed when Arthur was absent on a love-adventure,
which brought him to a shameful prison. He was delivered
by Lancelot, and recognizing his deliverer, he said in royal
gratitude: "I yield you my land, my honour, and myself."
Lancelot blushes! Thereafter, as towards Arthur, Lancelot
and Guinevere are forced into stratagems almost as ignoble
as those by which King Mark was tricked. And Guinevere—she
too is peerless among women; perfect in beauty,
perfect in courtliness, perfect in dutifulness to her husband—saving her love for Lancelot! Guinevere's dutifulness to
Arthur is not shaken by his outrageous treatment of her
because of the "false Guinevere," when he cast off and
sought to burn his queen. She will continue to obey him
though he has dishonoured her and all the time, unknown
to her outrageous, unjustly accusing lord, how had she cast
her and his honour down with Lancelot! Only while she
is put away from her lord, and under Lancelot's guard, for
that time she will be true to marriage vows; and Lancelot
assents.
The latter part of the story, when asceticism enters with
Galahad, suggests that the peerless knight of "les temps adventureux" was sinful. But the main body of the tale
put no reproach on Lancelot for his great love. It told of a
love as perfect and as absolute as the author or compiler
could conceive; and the conduct of Lancelot was intended
to be that of a perfect lover, whose sentiments and actions
should accord with the idea of courtly love and exemplify its
rules. Their underlying principle was that love should
always be absolute, and that the lover's every thought and
act should on all occasions correspond with the most
extreme feelings or sentiments or fancies possible for a
lover. In the prose narrative, for example, Lancelot goes
mad three times because of his mistress's cruelty, a cruelty
which may seem to us absurd, but which represents the
adored lady's insistence, under all circumstances, upon the
most unhesitating and utter devotion from her lover.
Chrétien's Conte de la charrette is a clear rendering of the
idea that love shall be absolute, and hesitate at nothing; it
is an example of courtly love carried to its furthest imagined
conclusions. It displays all the rules of Andrew the
Chaplain in operation. In it Lancelot will do anything for
Guinevere, will show himself a coward knight at her
command, or perform feats of arms; he will desire the least
little bit of her—a tress of hair—more than all else which is
not she; he will throw himself from the window to be near
her; engaged in deadly combat, the sight of her makes him
forget his enemy; at the news of her death he seeks at once
to die. Of course his heart loathes the thought of infringing
this great love by the slightest fancy for another woman.
On the other hand, when by marvels of valour Lancelot
rescues Guinevere from captivity, she will not speak to him
because for a single instant he had hesitated to mount a
charrette, in which no knight was carried save one who
was felon and condemned to death. This was logical on
Guinevere's part; Lancelot's love should always have been
so absolute as never for one instant to hesitate. Much of
this is extreme, and yet hardly unreal. Heloïse's love for
Abaelard never hesitated.
Such love, imperious and absolute, shuts out all laws
and exigencies save its own; it must be virtue and honour
unto itself; it is careless of what ill it may do so long as
that ill does not infringe love's laws. Evidently before it
the bonds of marriage break, or pale to insignificance. It is
its own sanction, nor needs the faint blessing of the priest.
The poet—as the actual lover likewise—may even deem
that love can best show itself to be the principle of its own
honour when unsustained by wedlock; thus unsustained and
unobscured it stands alone, fairer, clearer, more interesting
and romantic. Again, since mediaeval marriage in high life
was more often a joining of fiefs than a union of hearts,
there would be high-born dames and courtly poets to
declare that love could only exist between knight and
mistress, and not between husband and wife. Marriage
shuts out love's doubts and fears; there is no need of
further knightly services; and husband and wife by law are
bound to render to each other what between lovers is
gracious favour; this was the opinion of Marie de
Champagne, it also was the opinion of Heloïse. In
chivalric poetry the lovers, when at last duly married, may
continue to call each other ami et amie rather than wife and
lord; or a knight may shun marriage lest he settle down
and lose worship, doing no more adventurous feats of arms,
like Chrétien's Erec, till his wife Enide stung him by her
speech. Some centuries later Malory has Lancelot utter a
like sentiment: "But to be a wedded man I think never
to be, for if I were, then should I be bound to tarry with
my wife, and leave arms and tournaments, battles and
adventures."
If allowance be made for the difference in topic and
treatment between the Arthurian romances and Guillaume
de Lorris's portion of the Roman de la rose, the latter will be seen to illustrate similar love principles. De Lorris's
poem is fancy playing with thoughts of love which had
inspired these tales of chivalry. Every one knows its gentle
idyllic character;—how charming, for instance, is the
conflict between the Lover-to-be and Love, who quickly
overcomes the ready yielder. So he surrenders
unconditionally, gives himself over; Love may slay him or
gladden him—"le cuers est vostre, non pas miens," says the
lover to Love, and you shall do with it as you will. Then
Love sweetly takes his little golden key, and locks the
lover's heart, after which he safely may impart his rules
and counsels: the lover must abjure vilanie, and foul and
slanderous speech—the opposite of courtesy. Pride also
(orgoil) must be abandoned. He should attire himself
seemingly, and show cheerfulness; he must be niggardly in
nothing; his heart must be given utterly to one; he shall
undergo toils and endure griefs without complaint; in
absence he will always think of the beloved, sighing for her,
keeping his love aflame; he will be shameful, confused and
changing colour in her presence; at night he will toss and
weep for love of her, and dream dreams of passionate
delight; then wakeful, he will rise and wander near her
dwelling, but will not be seen—nor will he forget to be
generous to her waiting-maid. All of this will make the
lover pale and lean. To aid him to endure these agonies,
will come Hope with her gentle healings, and Fond-thought,
and Sweet-speech of the beloved with a wise confidant, and
Sweet-sight of her dwelling, maybe of herself. The
Roman de la rose is fancy, and the Arthurian romances are fiction.
In the one or the other, imagination may take the place of
passion, and the contents of the poem or romance afford a
type and presentation of the theory of love.
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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