Poems Found In Translation: “Jaufré Rudel: Love Afar (From Occitan)” |  |
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Posted: 06 Jan 2016 01:43 AM PST
Philology is not much in vogue these days, to be sure, yet when it comes to medieval and ancient texts, I seem to be part translator, part long-winded commentator, and part philologically-obsessed editor. I have come to increasingly accept this about myself, much as one must accept the passing of youth, the passing of air or the passing of a kidney stone. I had set out to write a brief two-to-three paragraph introduction to the poem here translated. But it seems to have mushroomed into about five printed pages worth of philological, editorial and comparative literary divagation about Islamic literatures, modern Occitan and the history of troubadour studies.
An crazy little story is found in Jaufré Rudel's vida, or biography. It tells how he fell in love with the countess of Tripoli simply by hearing about her from pilgrims, which inspired him not only to sing songs about her ("with great melody but poor words" ab bons sons, ab paubres motz) but to go on Crusade across the sea (se crosèt e se mes en mar "took up the cross and went to sea") to try and see her. But he took gravely ill at sea so that his dying body had to be brought to an inn in Tripoli. The countess, having heard of this, came to see him in his last moments, and gave him the joy of dying in the arms of his lady love, seeing her for the first time, after which, she became a nun in posthumous fidelity to her one-time beloved. This unworldly little chain of improbabilities, seemingly drawn mostly from medieval stock commonplaces, fired the romantic blood of nineteenth century Europeans. Given what an extremely combustible substance romantic blood tends to be, this is unsurprising. What may be more of a shock, or rather more of an indictment, is that even medievalists took the tale to be basically factual until Gaston Paris set them straight, also disposing of the general reliability of Occitan troubadour biographies in the process. Yet even then, the search continued for some lucky lady referent, some real unseen woman of historical or literary note, to bear the dubious honor of being Rudel's Amor Lonhdana. To my mind, the basic value of the vida, which one ought not to ignore, is that it suggests not only that some audiences as early as two centuries after Rudel's death found his lyrics less than appealing aesthetically (with their "good melodies but poor words"), but also just how peculiar they must have found their substance. The interpretative knot which the vida twists itself into by trying to understand Jaufré's songs in literal terms seems to me a masterpiece of creative un-imagination, motivated by the kind of textual intractability which once fostered the the akhbÄr on pre-Islamic poets, and would centuries later stoke the minds of Biblical philologists. Modern audiences may find the vida to be much more fanciful than the song corpus it attempts to explain. Still, it is not an entirely straightforward matter to determine what the "love afar" (amor de lonh, amor lonhdana), which Rudel sings about even is (nor, as I would argue, does it even matter quite so much as one might think.) It is still occasionally taken to be a woman, one which the singer has never seen and perhaps never will. Yet Rudel is peculiarly vague about the object of his love, and also contradictory, such that some have considered her to be a woman of dream visions, or a mere set piece abstracted from the "princesse lointaine" trope found sporadically in Old Spanish and Old French literature. Moreover, transcendent and temporal love seem to heavily inflect one another in Rudel's songs, with a heavy undertone of Crusading (that he did take up the cross for the Holy Land is one of the few things about his life for which there is external evidence.) Thus other incorporeal and even inanimate candidates for the "love afar" have been identified including not merely "love of God" but the Crusades themselves, the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Land, the Christian Paradise and even Helen of Troy (as a literary trope, obviously, not an object of fanciful necrophilia.) The broader generic question of whether Rudel's love was "religious or profane" has also been a cause in whose name many a valiant scholar's ink has been tragically shed. (One would do well to recall how close to the heart of lyric poetry hymnody was in the early Middle Ages, a mater often forgotten by scholars in the disciplinary crevice between Late Latin and Medieval Romance literature.) This and the other songs of Rudel have attracted much interest for all manner of reasons. But among the reasons why they interest me, one is somewhat odd. Perhaps it is odd only because of how frequently, and increasingly, the study of literature is determined by the intellectual genealogies and taxonomies reflected in the divisions of university departments, and therefore students of Islamicate literatures seldom busy themselves much with the study of Occitan these days. For we have here a particularly crystalline example of the parallels with Islamicate court lyric that have long been sensed with regard to much troubadour song. Many of the issues at play with this song (confusion as to verse ordering, structural opacity, lack of clarity as to what the song is "really" supposed to be about and a good deal else both thematic and editorial) will ring a bell for anyone familiar with scholarship on classical Persian (and Persianate) court lyric, as well as the debates of orientalists regarding same in the previous century. Indeed, veterans of the badly-framed "religious or profane love" question that so troubled scholarship are downright legion among students and afficionados of Persian and Urdu poetry, including yours truly. To clone a phrase, you might say Rudel's stanzas are as beautiful as occident pearls at random sung. The relationship of Andalusi, Sicilian and even Persian lyric to troubadour song (and also to Italian lyric) has long been a point of discussion. The scholarly debate on the matter is fascinating, albeit sometimes "fascinating" in a rather clinical sort of way. Generally it has gone in a crude vein of "who influenced whom and how" (or, mÄ«n akhad min mÄ«n as I once heard an Arab nationalist friend put it), sometimes with naked national or disciplinarian prejudices involved. Sometimes it has taken the form of more nuanced speculations about the influence of the courtly melting pot of Frederick II. Apart from the obviously porous boundaries between Romance and Arabic oral culture in medieval Iberia (the notion of "courtly love" owes more than a little to Arab models), I'm inclined to grant the high plausibility of the latter speculations, as well as the general fact that troubadours and joglars traveled widely, from France to Spain to Germany to Hungary to Malta to Palestine, and must have had a considerable impact on their own. Explanations of this kind are in order in cases where the similarities go to the point of poets using the same peculiar metaphors for the same referents, as is the case especially with Italian and Arabic poetry, or of documentable points of contact however vague (e.g. Petrarch's mysterious comments about Arab poets.) But something more general seems to me to be at work, beyond specific sites of "cross-pollination" and not least because it would be rather more difficult, though not impossible, to rope Persian lyric into this filiation than the Andalusi or the Sicilian. Julie Scott Meisami writes this germane pair of sentences in her Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry: Since the medieval literatures of Europe and the Middle East present similar problems in many respects (not least because they are medieval), the study of one may shed light on another, while reference to more familiar traditions may make the “exotic†ones more accessible to those unfamiliar with them. The medieval world was not fragmented by twentieth-century geopolitical or linguistic boundaries; despite differences of language, faith, and culture, it was far more homogeneous than traditional scholarship would have us believe.Equally relevant, but in a different way is what Meisami says later on the same page: In the West, the “experience†of the speaker (typically identified with the poet) is considered primary; that this is not obviously so in Arabic or Persian has led to the belief that Islamic literatures place no value on the individual or on individual experience.I would argue that it is precisely the preoccupation with the speaker's experience that has led so much scholarship on Rudel's songs until recently to go off the rails. Particularly since he is a "western" poet, he must be made to fit the western ideas (but especially Romantic and post-Romantic ideas, dominant in troubadour studies until embarrassingly recently) of what it is that poets express, and the relationship of that expression to their reality. L. Topsfield certainly seems to me on the right track in pointing out that Rudel's songs and those of his contemporaries comes from a period characterized by "a seeking and experimental type of poetry...not normally tied down by courtly ideas of behavior, [which] is often more abstract than worldly in intention and is concerned more with the personal quest for joy and the absolute ideal of an ultimate happiness than with conformity to social convention." For Jaufré Rudel's preoccupation with an amor de lonh is much easier to understand as a function of his particular approach to the religious and ethical dimensions of his craft, in response to the more proximate (and less chaste) love that others in his day sang of (or, in Marcabru's case, viciously sang against.) Rupert T Pickens puts it well: The quest for an historical amor de lonh is futile and, in my opinion, wrongheaded. The identity of a woman as the object of the troubadour's passion can add nothing to our understanding of his poetry; on the contrary, the poetic content of his work is diminished when attention is deflected away from the songs themselves...[L]ove is a creation of the poet's imagination and...the poems are jeux d'esprit.Now, then, about the Occitan text. A confession of editorial licence: the arrangement of the stanzas, though not without textual warrant, is simply the one I liked best. The "original" (if it even makes sense to think in these terms) ordering of stanzas is probably impossible to authenticate, from the available manuscripts of this poem. This is in the first place because not all of the best manuscripts even have all of the stanzas, and secondly (and relatedly) because the variation in attested stanza ordering for this poem is so great that it is unlikely that stanzaic order remained stable anymore than the number of stanzas themselves. After his death, stanzas of Rudel's song were probably rearranged, or excised by singers according to taste and the exigencies of performance, in addition to the fallibility of memory (there is a small amount of evidence, mostly indirect, that troubadours expected their work to be modified in transmission, at least some of the time.) Nor do I find reason to think the sources drawn upon by the compilers of the earliest chansonniers necessarily thought of the stanzaic order in this song in particular as especially canonical. If they did not, one could hardly blame them. Unlike some other Occitan lyrics, there is little sign of either ring composition or linear development here, so much as variations on a theme developed in various directions. My "edition" of the original text is a somewhat eccentric thing. Since my last translation from Old Occitan, for reasons made more explicit in this post, I have made some serious effort to familiarize myself more with Modern Occitan. I have taken a cue from Bianchi's and Romieu's La Lenga Del Trobar: Precis de Grammatica d'Occitan Ancian as to the value which Old Occitan texts may have for the speaker, or learner, of the modern language, and have regularized the text's orthography with the modern nòrma classica as a guide, not because I think modern Occitan readers are so dim that As for my recording of the poem in Old Occitan, further considerations apply. According to the ablest analyses of available evidence, many alternating features of the literary language (or, to borrow an Arabist's term which may be more appropriate, the "poetic koiné") reflected in later copies of the troubadour songs, if viewed in light of Modern Occitan dialect geography, correspond to a series of modern isoglosses which all converge more or less within Old Languedoc. I thought therefore of using features that are known, or thought, to be specific to medieval Languedocien. There are limits to how certain an inference can be drawn from the data however. Although many of the dialectal divisions of Modern Occitan are indubitably very old (Latin etymological evidence shows that at least some predate the recorded use of Occitan as a literary language) the dialect geography of the 11th and 12th centuries can not necessarily be inferred from that of the 19th and early 20th. In my recording of the Old Occitan, I have opted for something close to what can be deduced of the 12th century lyric language, and which wound up similar in many respects to the pronunciation found in any manual of Old Occitan. The peculiarities that stand out for many (particularly modern Occitan speakers) will be at least three: first the close <ó> in heavily stressed syllables pronounced [o], with the [u] pronunciation limited to unstressed syllables and lightly-stressed monosyllables, and second, the pronunciation of <ç> and I had considered including singing the song (for which the music still survives) on the recording. But it quickly became apparent that I did not have the training necessary to sing the somewhat complicated melody correctly, and tolerably, over seven stanzas. The internet boasts a wealth of people doing their own renditions of this song. Here's one that sticks fairly closely to the recorded melody. The singer, judging by her pronunciation, is a native Catalan speaker. Love Afar By Jaufré Rudel Translated by A.Z. Foreman Click to hear me recite the original Old Occitan (I realized about an hour after I made this recording, that I had accidentally read melhor as mièlher, and ressemblès as ressémbles. Now I know how scribes felt. I'll fix that as soon as I have some more time to myself with my microphone in a quiet room without traffic outside.) Now that the days are long in May I hear birds' gentle song afar. When from that song I turn away My mind turns to my love afar. Bend with desire, downcast and dour, No springbird's song or whitethorn flower Can touch me more than winter's chill. Never will I find joy on earth In love, without my love afar Who shines above all other worth. Above all others, near and far Her virtue reigns so true and pure I'd die a prisoner of war In Saracen lands to serve her will. Half grieved, half joyful will I go Once having seen my love afar. When shall we meet? I do not know, For our two lands lie far too far. So many paths by land and sea, What lies ahead I cannot see But all things follow God's good will. What joy, for love of God, will be There in the lodge of love afar! I'll lodge with her if she wants me, Although a stranger from afar. O discourse will be dear the day I come, her love from faraway, To hear love's words and take love's fill. I call him Lord who I believe Shall let me see my love afar, Though for each pleasure I receive Two ills, since she remains so far. I'd go a pilgrim to that shrine To see my dust-dark tunic shine Reflected in those bright eyes still. God who made all things swift and still And shaped for me my love afar, Grant me a way, I have the will, To witness my true love afar, In such a truly pleasant place That chamber wall and garden space Will seem a palace on a hill. The truth he speaks who says I yearn And lust for naught but love afar. What joy on earth would I not spurn Just to enjoy my love afar? But what I want is barred with hate. My godfather1 has fixed my fate To love well and be treated ill. Oh what I want I'll never find. God damn that godfather of mine Who doomed my love to bring me ill. Notes: 1- An allusion to the belief that children's lives are influenced by the destiny of their godparents. The Original: Amor de Lonh Jaufre Rudel Lanquand li jorn son lonc en mai M'es bèls doutz chants d'ausèls de lonh, E quand me soi partitz de lai, Remembra·m d'un amor de lonh. Vau de talan embroncs e clis Si que chants ni flors d'albespis No·m platz plus que l'ivèrns gelatz. Jamais d'amor no·m jausirai Si no·m jau d'est' amor de lonh, que melhor ni gensor no·n sai vas nulha part, ni près ni lonh. Tant es sos prètz verais e fis Que lai e·l reng dels Sarrasis fos ièu per lièis chaitius clamatz. Iratz e jausens m'en partrai, quand veirai cest' amor de lonh. mas non sai córas la veirai, car tant son nòstras tèrras lonh. Assatz i a pòrtz e camis, e per açó no·n soi devis. Mas tot sia com a Dieu platz. Be'm parra jòis quand li querrai, Per amor Dieu, l'albèrc de lonh, E, s'a lièis platz, albergarai Près de lièis, si be·m soi de lonh, Adoncs parra·l parlaments fis Quand drutz lonhdas er tant vesis Qu'ab bèls digs jauzirai solatz. Be tenc lo Senhor per verai Per qu'ièu veirai l'amor de lonh, Mas per un be que m'en eschai N'ai dos mals, car tant m'es de lonh Ay! Car no fui lai pelegris, Si que mos fustz e mos tapis Fos pels sièus bèls uèlhs remiratz! Dieus qui fetz tot quant ve ni vai E formèt cest' amor de lonh Mi don poder, que còr ièu n'ai, Qu'en brèu veia l'amor de lonh, Veraiament en lòcs aisis, Si que la cambra e·l jardis Mi ressemblès totztemps palatz. Ver ditz qui m'apèla lechai e desirón d'amor de lonh, que nulhs autres jòis tant no·m plai Com jausiments d'amor de lonh. Mas çò qu'ieu vòlh m'es tant aïs, Qu'enaissi·m fadèt mos pairis Qu'ièu amès e non fos amatz. Mas çò qu'ièu vòlh m'es tant aïs Totz sia mauditz lo pairis que·m fadèt qu'ièu non fos amatz   |
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