Post by Kriyaban on Oct 3, 2022 11:48:00 GMT
WHAT IS A TROUBADOUR?
We all know the expression “to go courting.” That is precisely what the
troubadours did. Indeed, their activities form the origin of this and many other
expressions and conventions we still associate with love: courtesy, for example.
The “Fine Love” took place at the courts—that is, the homes—of the nobility of
the Languedoc, the Limousin, Provence, Aragon, Castile, and beyond to
northern Italy and Portugal. Courtly love became a part of courtly life and its
customs, and special forms came to dictate what was expected of a courtier, who
was usually a knight of lower rank than the seigneur, who might, in this region,
be a woman. In the Languedoc, privileged women could enjoy the respect and
indeed love expected from a vassal. The basic form of Fine Love is woven into
this relationship of vassal to lord: hence the romantic custom of gett
his relationship of vassal to lord: hence the romantic custom of getting on one
knee before the loved one. However, the content of the proposition would be
rather different from what is heard today. One thing is certain; it would not be a
request for marriage, a proposition that would be considered practically
disgraceful but was in any case unimaginable. Furthermore, there are not many
male lovers today who would refer to their lady as “My lord.”
The first troubadour known to history was father to that highly cultured
woman Eleanor of Aquitaine. Guillaume IX, count of Poitou, duke of Aquitaine
(1071–1127), was, like his daughter, a very clever and witty person. The
following canso penned by Guillaume makes a fitting introduction to the
movement:
I’ll make a poem out of sheer nothingness;
It will not be about me, or about any other;
it will not be of love, or of youth, or
Such lyrical inventiveness, so unexpected from a person born only five years
after the Battle of Hastings, was developed with inspired vigor by a number of
unexpected people; the wordplay, the magic, and the poetry opened up a new
world.
Between Guillaume IX and young Raimon de Miraval the art continued to its
perfection in the hands of men such as Jaufré Rudel de Blaye, Marcabrun,
Bernard de Ventadour, Peire d’Auvergne, and the humorously defiant
anticonformist writer Raimbaut d’Aurenja, lord of Orange, Courthézon, and a
host of lesser feudal holdings in Provence and Languedoc. Raimbaut was the
author of the first surrealist song, “La Flors enversa” (The Inverted Flower):
Now is resplendent the inverted flower along the cutting crag
of anything else; it was, rather,
composed while sleeping on a horse.
The last verse:
I’ve made this poem, I know not of what;
and I’ll send it to him who will send it
on for me by another, yonder, toward Anjou,
that he might send back to me, from his own wallet,
the key to it.
6
Such lyrical inventiveness, so unexpected from a person born only five year
and in the hills. What flower? Snow, ice and frost which
stings and hurts and cuts, and by which I see
perished calls, cries, birdsongs and whistles among leaves,
among branches and among switches; but joy
keeps me green and joyful now, when I see dried up
the wretched base ones.
7
This was indeed a new world, and its purpose was single: Le Joy. Joy.
Sweet lady, may love and joy
join us, regardless of the base.
8
The troubadour writes his law on the world and in so doing creates a world: a
new and ecstatic dominion of love, amors e joys, regardless of the base, the
violent, the vulgar, or the “unruly clerics,” as another verse puts it. The
troubadours did not live in Camelot; though they might desire it, they lived in an
age of high spiritual endeavor. They also lived in a country of “vast deserts ruled
over by the fury of brigands . . . where there is no law, no tranquility, nothing
that does not menace life itself,” as a papal legate described his unhappy trip to
Languedoc at about the time Raimbaut was writing.
9 Much troubadour writing
refers to declining ethical standards, ecclesiastical corruption, and woeful
political tremors.
Inspired by the joys and frustrations of love as they were, the troubadours
were nobody’s fools. They wrote sermons called sirventès. There were two
classes of these works: the moral sirventès, which were directed against the
decadence of morals, the clergy, and women; and the political sirventès, whic
Gnostic Philosophy