The Provençal language seems to have been popular at the court, and many of the Spanish poets wrote in it; but their native tongue, which bears great affinity to it, is one of great force and beauty, and probably of equal antiquity. It is certainly more ancient, at least as devoted to literary purposes, than the Castilian, which was then, probably, only developing itself amongst the adventurers who gradually encroached upon the dominion of their Moorish conquerors; and it still continues to be the popular dialect in Catalonia and (with more Moorish intermixture) in Valencia. The Catalan is a genuine Romance tongue, evidently deduced from the Latin by the same process as the Provençal : and as the latter had received less intermixture from the Northern invaders, and was therefore less removed from its parent than the Norman French, so the Catalan suffered less adulteration than the Castilian from the Moors, whose empire was in this part of Spain short and precarious. It is a language "rich in musical sounds, abounding in rhymes, and divested of every thing harsh and grating in its utterance; equally free from the deep gutterals of its twin sister the Castilian, and the perpetually recurring nasal twang of the Portuguese." Yet if the Catalan poets did often use their native tongue, few early productions in it have survived to us. This is a matter of regret, as the pieces which we have of a later date in this tongue are often distinguished for the harmony of their versification, as well as the simplicity, tenderness and energy of their style. It is so to be hoped that the awakened industry of the Spaniards will be directed towards the revival of this department of their ancient national literature. No one doubts the great prevalency of Provençal poetry in this part of Spain during the 12th and 13th centuries; yet it has often been remarked with astonishment that hitherto not a single MS. has come from thence: the scantiness of the published remains of Catalan poetry is therefore no argument against its having once been as prolific and popular as the Provençal.
The highly valuable letter of the Marquis of Santellana (the cotemporary of Ausias March), published by Sanchez, speaks of the Catalonian Troubadours as numerous, and in his day well known; and there is reason to believe that research alone is wanted, to bring to light treasures which ignorance and religious bigotry have so long consigned to neglect. Indeed a pamphlet by Fr. Jayme de Villanueva, entitled "Notizia del Viage Literario a las Inglesias de España, Valencia 1820," has lately reached this country; in which the author enumerates, amongst the other fruits of his inquiries, "a collection of unedited Provençal poets, with accounts of their authors, commencing with a fragment of the 12th century on the first Crusade; and notices of forty Limosin poets of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, with copies of some of their works," amongst which is the famous cancion of Mosen Jordi de Sant Jordi, called "Los opositos."
The Catalan Troubadours were doomed, like their Provençal brethren, to bow before more fortunate rivals. The Castilian was the triumphant star. Poets here too flocked to the rising court, and the Spanish heroic romances better suited the tastes and feelings excited by the restless state of warfare in which Spain was perpetually engaged with the Moors. Yet the Catalonian school did not fall without efforts for its support. John the First of Arragon, according to Zurita, invited the poets of the South of France to Barcelona and Tortosa, and founded in 1390 an academy "dels Jogos florios," which he sought to supply from a similar academy of the Gay Saber, which had been formed at Toulouse in 1323. But this was only a lingering protraction of the natural decay of the art. The gloom of an academy was a poor substitute for the sparkling light of a court of beauty. The heart must join in that gaiety which could inspire a genial Troubadour; for, as Bernard Ventadour sings,
Chantars no pot guaire valer
Si d' ins del cor no mov lo chans,
Ni chans no pot del cor mover,
Si no i es fin' amors coraus:
Per so es mos chantars cabaus;
Qu' en joy d'amor ai et enten
La boca, e'ls huels, e'l cor, e'l sen.
Little can sweetest song avail
If from the heart it do not come,
And from the heart it cannot spring
Unless there first be love at home.
And thus is love the soul to me
Of all my song and all my joy,
Entrancing eyes and lips, heart, soul, in harmony.
On the union of the crowns of Castille and Arragon, the language of the former court became that of literature, and its rival met the same fate as the Provençal, and was reduced to the degradation of becoming a mere patois.
It has already been remarked, that scarcely any of the early productions of the Catalan poets have as yet been before the public; it will not therefore detain us long to mention the names of the few that have reached us. We have nothing left of what the Marquis de Santellana describes as the elegant poetry of Mosen Pero March, a knight of noble family of the 12th century; and must content ourselves with noticing, as the first known Catalan Troubadour, Mosen Jordi de Sant Jordi, who is usually placed in the beginning of the 13th century, subject to the doubts on that head which have arisen from the coincidence between some of his lines and parts of Petrarch's 104th Sonnet. The elucidation of this question may be sought with advantage in a learned article on the poetic literature of Spain, in the seventh number of the Retrospective Review (ascribed to the pen of Mr. Bowring), from which it may be permitted to quote a few lines, with their accompanying translation, as a specimen of the state of the language in which Mosen Jordi wrote:---
Esperanza res nom dona
A ma pena comportar
L'ora que vinch a pensar
Qui ofen jamay perdona.
Lo ofes afranqueix la cara
Et perdona quisque sia
Qui ofen tostemps din gara
Qui non faza per falsia.
Ausades Deu me confona
Si non cuit desesperar
L'ora que vinch a pensar
Qui ofen jamay perdona.
Beneath my grief I fainted not,
And hope within me seem'd to live
Until the moment when I thought
That they who injure ne'er forgive.
Be pardon ready! -- oft one sees
A wound inflicted ne'er intended,
And oftener by carelessness
Than by design are men offended.
I hoped in vain -- when hope had brought
Her dreams so fond, so fugitive;
I hoped -- but sunk beneath the thought
That they who injure ne'er forgive.
Mosen Jayme Febrer is another Catalonian poet usually assigned to the 13th century; the Vatican preserves much of his unpublished poetry, and a curious poem by him, entitled "The Book of Linages," is analysed in the article before referred to. Both as to Jayme Febrer and Jordi de Sant Jordi, the doubt exists whether they have or have not been usually placed by the historians of Catalonian poetry at too early an ag;e the main argument turning upon the question of plagiarism above alluded to.
Jayme Roig and Ausias March, two Catalan poets of the 15th century, close the brief list of these Troubadours. Of them more is known. Ausias March's works have been more than once printed. He is the favourite of the Spanish Troubadours; and his character is thus traced by one who is fully capable of estimating his worth :-- "His verses are harmonious, natural and pleasing, pregnant with interesting truths and moral reflections; they are generally pervaded by that soft spirit of melancholy which is so often the favourite companion of the lyre:
'Qui no es trist de mos dictats no cur'
is the opening line of the first poem; and this feeling runs through all. His poetry is the poetry of truth and wisdom: it has the condensation of proverbs, and the force of philosophy. His subjects are few -- love, death, and duty; and they are treated with a sort of didactic solemnity. One listens to him as to an inspired teacher: his sanctions are brought alike from old mythology, from the Jewish and Christian codes, and from the books of legends; and all are introduced in the tone of one having authority, though for himself he constantly claims the title of a 'Chrestio molt devot.'"
It may be permitted to us to anachronize so far as to borrow one short extract of this poet's writings (which has been also quoted by Sismondi), in order to illustrate the state of the language at that period:
Si com la mar se plang greument e crida
Com dos forts vents la baten egualment,
Hu de Levant e l' altre de Ponent,
E dura tant fins l'um vent la jequida
Sa força gran per lo mas poderos:
Dos grans dezigs han combatut ma pensa,
Mas lo voler vers un seguir dispensa;
Yol vos publich, amar dretament vos.
As when the sea groans heavily and cries
When two contending winds sweep o'er its breast,
One from the East, the other from the West,
Till the one yielding to the other dies;
Even so two mighty passions, angrily,
Have long contended in my breast, until
Obeying the high dictates of my will
I followed one -- that one was, love to thee!
~Mr. Roscoe's Translat. of Sismondi, vol. 1. p. 249.
---------------------------------------------
CASTILE
It would perhaps have been unnecessary to have touched upon Castilian poetry, which has very little bearing upon the period and class of composition that come under consideration in this little work, if it were not desirable to notice the hypothesis, supported principally by Father Andrez in his work 'Dell' Origine e de' Progressi d' ogni Letteratura,' and since adopted by MM. Ginguené and Sismondi -- that the Provençal poetry owes its origin to the Spanish Arabs.
Nothing is more annoying, than the perpetual efforts of so many writers to hunt out fancied origins for all the products of the imagination of the middle ages, and to pass them from port to port and country to country, like a bale of merchandize or a price current.
Nothing, however, will satisfy the majority of these distrusters of the powers of nature, but hunting out the genealogical pedigree of every thought and feeling: and in pursuing the inquiry, it has been quite of course to overlook the philosophic maxim of resting content when we discover causes adequate to the production of the existing phenomenon;--
"Ye gods, annihilate both space and time."
seems to be no extravagant wish for one who desires to make a theory hold water. Thus Warton embarks his cargo of fiction consigned to the ports of Toulon and Marseilles, conveys it on by land-carriage to Brittany, and leaves it, under the impetus he has given it, to find its way thence into the mountains of Wales, or the court of Strathclyde ;-- and all this to escape the shorter process of allowing to native bards the exercise of their own fancies, which were, to all appearance, as competent to create, as those of the supposed exporters of surplus produce in Spain. So, too, the editor of Antar sees the heroes of the roundtable in the Bedouin rover, and tells us "that little more was wanted to compose the romances of the middle ages, than to engraft on the war, love, and courtesy of the Arabs, the splendid and soft luxuries of the other countries of the East, the witchcraft of Africa, the religious fervour of the South of Europe, and the gloomy superstitions of the North." A curious meeting this on the plains of Brittany.
Massieu imports the Arabic poetry with Warton's fiction, by sea at Toulon and Marseilles: for he tells us that by the convenience of these ports it passed with the commerce between Spain and France. Father Andrez is less prudent, in so far as he is more particular as to time and place, and fixes the aera when the gallant knights of the South of France could have learnt the songs of the Moors, at the taking of Toledo in 1085. Unfortunately, Mr. Raynouard has published a Provençal poem anterior to 1000; and the finished versification of the earliest known specimens gives us every reason to suppose the Troubadour muse to have been long cultivated. Unfortunately, too, the Spaniards themselves (with whom these French knights fought, and whose literature, though at a much later period, has the most resemblance to that of the Moors,) have nothing in the least approaching to the character of the Troubadour poetry till they imitated it in later ages; and moreover, the earliest school of Spanish poetry is that which bears least affinity to the Oriental.
It is almost vain to ask upon what grounds this supposed derivation of the Provençal love-songs from the Arabs could rest. One would naturally be at a loss to think it probable that a poetry founded on a devoted idolatry of woman, and her absolute supremacy in the social system, should have sprung from a people whose principles lead to conclusions totally the reverse; or that those of the Christians, who fled to mountain fastnesses, and only met their moslem foes for deadly combat, should make them their masters in the fine arts. When indeed the Christians afterwards gained the ascendancy, the population might be expected to have imbibed much of the manners and perhaps the literature of their late masters. So, in fact, it turned out: but the character of this early Castilian literature is altogether different from that of the Troubadours. Both Moors and Spaniards must have considerably assimilated during so long a period of intermixture :-- for instance, the Arabs learned to raise their women to a rank in society approaching that which they enjoyed among the Christians, though not to any great extent, for the allusions to the state of females in society contained in Conde's compilations from the Arabian documents are strictly Oriental : and, on the other hand, their schools of mathematics, physics and philosophy, were resorted to by the studious of all religious denominations. But it is perfectly absurd to attribute to them such an influence as is asserted over the poetic genius and social relations of distant European countries, at a time when the same principles were at work every where, in giving the spring to civilization and the culture of the mental faculties. M. Ginguené will not even allow the smiling descriptions of the beauties of nature, the joyous revelling in the genial influences of spring, the delights of fields, of flowers, of brooks and groves, to be natural ornaments of poetic imagination :-- "tout cela est oriental," he observes. Surely Görres is more philosophic in his observation, -- that it was easier for our forefathers to search in their own breasts for the feelings which their poetry breathes, than to mine the inaccessible rocks of foreign manners and language. We might with as much propriety seek our origin of such songs of joy in that of the ancient Hebrew poet ;
Rise up, my love!
My fair one! and come away!
For lo! the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land;
The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs,
And the vines, with the tender grape, give smell:
Rise up, my love!
My fair one! and come away!
What is the internal evidence on which the supposed derivation of Troubadour poetry from the Arabs rests? Are these critics acquainted with the poetry of the nations whom they thus unite? .... [Many] writers on Provençal poetry, in reality knew very little of it, or [they] would have been aware that it contains almost as many references to classical heroes and stories as to those of the romances of chivalry. These classical allusions are sometimes rather happily contrived; as in the following pretty stanza of Bernard de Ventadour, referring to the magical lance of Peleus:
Ja sa bella boca rizens
No cugei baizan me trays,
Mas ab un dous baizar m' aucis;
E s'ab autre no m' es guirens,
Atressi m' es per semblansa
Cum fo de Peleus la lansa,
Que de son colp non podi' hom guerir,
Si per eys loc no s'en fezes ferir.
References to the mythological tales of Ovid are frequent: as for instance in another piece of Bernard de Ventadour, translated in a subsequent part of this volume, the story of the fate of Narcissus is referred to :
Anc pueissas non pogui aver
De me poder, de lor en sai,
Qu' ela m fetz a mos huels vezer
En un miralh que molt mi plai.
Mirahls! pois me mirei en te,
M' an mort li sospir de preon
Qu' aissi m perdei, cum perdet se
Lo bels Narcezis en la fon.
In the following lines, a passage from Horace,--
"fungar vice cotis," &c. -- is thus rendered by Bernard Martin,
Ab so qu 'ieu sembli be la cot
Que non tailh' e fa 'l fer talhar;
Aquo de qu' ieu no sai un mot
Cugi ad autrui ensenhar.
On the other hand it may be worth remarking, that there are scarcely any allusions to Arabian or Moorish language, customs or feelings, throughout the whole body of published Troubadour poetry, though there is scarcely another country of which the same can be said. Some have fixed on rime as a striking feature derived from the Moors; yet the Teutonic nations rimed two centuries before the period of communication supposed by Father Andrez. It is clear that the acquaintance both of M. Sismondi and M. Ginguené with the Hispan-Arabic poetry is very slender; and it is equally clear that they are, by their own confession, incompetent to give a general judgement on Provençal. But M. Ginguené, in addition to his discovery that a feeling of the beauties of nature is altogether Oriental, asserts that the Italian sonnet is the lineal descendant of the Arabian Ghazel Casside. But here again, if this proves any thing, it raises no influence that the early Provençals borrowed from the Arabians; for they (the persons through whom the communication with Italy is supposed to have taken place) have not a sonnet in the whole body of their poetry. They have indeed the name; but it has no such arbitrary meaning as that attached to it by the Italians.
Between the Spanish-Arabian poetry and the latter Castilian alone is there any great affinity; and nothing is more widely removed from the French Troubadour than the Castilian school, till about the 15th century, when it began to be imitative.
For the best idea that can now perhaps be formed of the style and merits of the Hispanic-Arabic poets, the rader must be referred to the highly interesting and valuable, though imperfect, work of Conde, on the history of the Moors in Spain, compiled exclusively by translating and arranging chronologically the Moorish chronicles; (Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en España sacada de varios manuscriptos y memorias Arabicas, por el Doctor Don Jose Antonio Conde, &c. Madrid, 1820. 3 vols.) This is a book which it is to be hoped will appear in an English dress, and cannot but be considered of the highest value as a picture of the manners, thoughts and literature of this most singular people, drawn by their own cotemporary historians, and brought before the public by a man who devoted his life to the pursuit. No one but must be curious to see the campaigns in France, the battles with Charles Martel, and the perpetual struggles with the rising Christian states of Spain, in the chronicles of a people for a long time perhaps the most enlightened in Europe. The work is continunally interspersed with selections from the Moorish poetry of the time; and certainly the tone and character of none of these extracts give the least countenance to the supposition that the Troubadour poetry was borrowed from, or had the least affinity to, the early Arabian school. The burden of them in general is warlike or didactic, and the allusions to the female sex are just what would be expected to characterize Eastern manners, and as much the reverse of Troubadour feelings.
To illustrate this observation, we need only quote the little song of Hemad de Taharti, who concealed his verses in a rose, where it was likely to meet the eye, not of his mistress, as a Troubadour would have done, but of his king. It has more of the Troubadour turn than any other of the pieces in Conde: yet the singular and unchivalric mode of addressing and complimenting the lady, by reminding her of her being made for a slave, is sufficiently distinctive of this class of poetry from the Provençal taste.
Woman, though but the dross of man,
Created to obey,
Reverses nature's wisest plan,
And soon usurps the sway.
When,-- not in summer-hours,-- the rose
Through many a field we seek,
'Tis vain; but no! the sweetest blows,
Fair damsel, on thy cheek.
Grant the petition I present,
Grant this one prayer of mine:
'Tis form'd of roses, and 'twas meant,
To praise those cheeks of thine.
These verses, adds the Moorish chronicler, were read, applauded and sung by the slaves of the king, and Taharti obtained the favour he sought, and a sum of money. In the chronicle of the exploits of king Abdelmumen (A.D. 1155), he is stated to have been a prince of great taste and erudition; to have made several literary innovations, particularly in "prohibiting with much severity the burning of books of chivalrous adventures; and to have permitted the writing of histories, adventures, and tales." "These orders," it is stated, "were published in all the provinces as well of Africa as of Andalusia," which was always the fountain of Moorish genius and poetry. This curious passage throws still further doubt on the theories which place the origin of any of this sort of literature in Spain, and would rather lead us to suspect the direct reverse to be the truth.
During the splendid period of Arabic literature in Spain, the Gothic party in their retreat had, doubtless, preserved and gradually fixed that species of Romance which became the language, in the first instance, of Castille, and eventually of all Spain. Its earliest state and formation it is as impossible to trace in Spain as in other European states. That language cannot, however, have been of recent formation, which in the works of its earliest poets appeared in nearly as determinate a form of construction as it possesses at this day, allowance being made for the greater or less preponderance of Arabic words, which depends principally on the relative positions of the different provinces.
The earliest efforts of the Castilian poets are of an epic cast, abounding chiefly in military adventure, and consisting for the most part in detached scenes of the exploits of the Cid and other warriors. This seems the genuine early national school of Castilian poetry. It has no feature in common with the Provençal or Catalan Troubadours, and scarcely any affinity to the Oriental schools. Next come the ballads of chivalry founded on the French romances, which are probably none of them older than the latter part of the 14th century. Soon after commenced the aera of the later Spanish romances, pastoral ballads, &c. so justly admired, and of the Trobador or amatory school of Spain, which is to a great extent merely imitative of the later efforts of the Provençaux and Italians. Last in date are the ballads of the proper Moorish school, which belong to the age when the Spanish power was finally overwhelming the Moorish dynasty, and entering on the seats of their luxury and ease: of these it has been said with truth they "live like echoes about the ruins of Moorish greatness."
But though the proper Trobador or amatory poetry of the Spaniards did not arise till it had nearly expired in other countries, the early kings of Leon and Castille were not insensible of the attractions of the Provençal poets. Ferdinand III. of Castille, in the beginning of the 13th century, welcomed them to his court, as Alphonso IX. had done at that of Leon: and Alphonso the Wise, the great poet and astronomer of the same century, is reported to have issued an edict, at the suggestion of Giraud Riquier, a Troubadour, for purging their ranks of those idle pretenders who disgraced them, and restoring the honourable name of Troubadours to those only "qui supieren componer danzas, coplas, arias, juegospartidos," &c.
Little of the existing poetry of Spain can be traced to a very remote antiquity. The venerable but rude poem of the Cid is probably to be dated half a century after the Troubadour William count of Poitiers had flourished; and Gonzalo Berceo, who selected religious legends for his subjects, is to be placed in the middle of the 13th century, about which time also, or perhaps rather earlier, was written the romance of Alexandro Magno, of which an extract will shortly be given. In the second half of the 14th century, the regular school of Castilian poetry may be said to have its proper commencement; in that period we may probably date the earliest of the romances or ballads in the form in which they now exist: the Trobador or amatory poetry, of which the Cancioneros are so full, and which were found on the model of the Provençal school, or rather on the affected style of their Italian imitators, belongs chiefly to the 15th and 16th centuries.
Many of the works of the poets of this class are, however, undoubtedly highly national, and of great and original beauty, especially where they partake of the simple spirit of the ancient ballad. But with these we can have nothing to do here, for they are too late in date to come within the limits proposed for our selections. It would be presumption, too, to venture upon a topic so delightfully illustrated by Mr. Bowring's genius; we shall therefore content ourselves as a specimen of the earliest form and comparative perfection of the Castilian tongue, in a graver class of poetry. They are from Alexandro Magno, the poem just alluded to, commencing at line 1788:
El mes era de Mayo un tiempo glorioso
Quando facen las aves un solaz deleytoso,
Son vestidos los prados de vestido fremoso
De sospiros la dueña la que non ha esposo.
Tiempo dolce è sabroso por bastir casamientos,
Ca lo tempran las flores è los sabrosos vientos,
Cantan las doncellejas, son muchas a convientos,
Facen unas a otras buenos pronunciamentos.
Caen en el verano las bonas rociadas;
Entran en flor las miesses, ca non ya espigadas,
Entonz casan algunos que pues messan las barbas
Facen las dueñas triscas en camisas delgadas.
Andan mozas è viejas cobertas en amores,
Van coger por la siesta a los prados las flores,
Dicen unas a otras "Bonos son los amores,
Y aquellos plus tiernos tienense por meiores."
Los dias son grandes, los campos reverdidos,
Son los passariellos del mal pelo exidos,
Los tabanos que muerden non son aun venidos,
Luchan los monagones en bragas sen vestidos.
El Rey Alexandre, un corpo acabado,
Al sabor del tiempo que era bien temprado,
Fizo corte general, su corazon pagado:
Non fue varon en Persia que non fus y iuntado.
---
It was the month of May, in the bright and glorious spring,
When the birds in concert sweet on the budding branches sing,
When the meadows and the plains are rob'd in verdure green,
And the mateless lady sighs, despairing o'er the scene.
A gentle tempting time for loving hearts to meet,
For the flow'rs are blossoming, and the winds are fresh and sweet;
And, gather'd in a ring, the maidens wear away
In mirthful talk and song the blithe and sunny day.
Soft fall the gentle dews, an unfelt freshening rain,
The corn puts forth the hope of harvests rich in grain,
The down-cheek'd stripling now is wedded to his love,
And ladies, lightly clad, in bounding dances move.
For love o'er young and old now holds its mightest sway;
The siesta's hour to grace they pluck the wild flowers gay,
While each to other tells how love is ever blest,
But the tenderest suit, they own, is the happiest and the best.
The days are long and bright, the fields are green once more,
The birds have ceased to moult, and their mourning time is o'er;
No gad-fly yet appears with bite of venom keen,
But the youths in wrestling strive half-naked on the green.
'Twas then that Alexander, of Persia conquering king,
Moved by the fragrant call of that delightful spring,
Throughout his wide domain proclaim'd a general court,
And not a lord o' the land but thither made resort.
~ Lays of the Minnesingers or German Troubadours of the 12th and 13th Centuries. (anonymous). Printed in London for Longman, etc. 1825. {1st edition}.
The intimate connection between the Troubadours of Provence and those of Catalonia and Arragon leads us naturally to a few observations on the obscure memorials, which have come down to us, of the history and works of the poets who once graced this division of Spain. From the earliest days of Provençal glory its court had enjoyed the most intimate union with the Arragonese crown, in the person of Alphonso the Second, extended the empire of love and poetry over a great portion of the south-western district of Spain.
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