Review
SONGS OF THE TROUBADOURS, edited and translated by Anthony Bonner, Allen and Unwin, £5.00.
Anyone touched by Ezra Pound will have an inkling of the wealth of poetry produced in Provence, Aquitaine and the Languedoc by that incredibly heterogeneous group of poets known as trouveres or troubadours between the time of the First Crusade and the end of the Thirteenth Century.
Because of the comparative remoteness of Provencal and a sneaking suspicion that the troubadours were clowns in doublet and hose who spent their time mooning at castle walls, this entire body of work has remained largely inaccessible for most of us. It is a pleasure therefore to discover Anthony Bonner’s excellent volume, high price nothwitbstanding.
Mr Bonner offers a generous selection from the works of twenty-one troubadours, from William of Aquitaine to Guiraut Riquier ;some of these, such as Bertran de Born and Sordello, will be familiar, if only in name, from Pound’s translations and references. In reading through the collection, one is at once struck by the immense variety of moods and effects achieved within the precise but obviously far from constricting modes the troubadours wrote in, including the ‘canso’ (“concerned with the many twists and turns of courtly love”), the ‘sirventes’ (which had to copy the form of some pre-existing ‘canso’, but dealt with politics, war or invective), and the ‘planh’, or lament on somebody’s death.
Compare, for example, Peire d’Alvernhe’s light-hearted satire on his fellow troubadours, which ends:
Peire d’Alvernhe’s voice
is like a frog singing in a well,
yet he compliments himself in front
of everyone, for he’s master of them all;
but it’s a pity his meaning isn’t clearer,
for almost no one understands him.
This poem was made for bagpipe players
at Puivert, in sport and laughter.(p78)
to Bernart de Ventadorn on love:
May she have the courage
to come to me one night
there where she undresses
and make me a necklace of her arms.(p84)
and both to Peire Cardenal’s singularly courageous attack on the clergy:
Let caliphs or sultans
have no fear
that abbots and priors
will swoop down
and seize their lands.
It would be too much work;
they’d rather sit here scheming
how to make the world theirs
and how to flush
Frederick from his lair . . . .(p196)
No collection of Provencal poetry would be complete without that extraordinary figure Bertran de Born, he whom Dante placed in hell for a stirrer-up of strife (see, above all, Pound’s ‘Sestina: Altaforte’), and Mr Bonnor has not neglected him. Bertran de Born’s panegyrics on (not, please note, apologies for) war and the more violent forms of power struggle could easily have been flat and repetitive, even repulsive; yet even in translation the sheer exultion of the man comes blazing across the page:
We’ll soon see trumpets, drums, banners,
pennants and standards, horses both white
and black; and the times will be good,
for usurers will be parted from their money,
and beasts of burden will not travel safely
in broad daylight, nor townsmen without fear,
nor merchants on their way from France;
only those who rob will be rich.But if the King comes, I have faith in God
that I’ll either be alive or quartered,and if I’m alive, great will be my joy,
and if I’m dead, great will be my liberation.(p155)
Any translator of Provencal poetry will of necessity find the long shadow of Pound lying upon him but it would be unfair to Mr Bonner to press this comparison, concerned as he is with providing a well-rounded picture of the entire field. His highly readable translations succeed admirably in this aim, aided to no small extent by an informative introduction and copious notes.
Page(s) 83-85
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