Civilization, Medieval, in literature; Provençal poetry -- History and criticism; Troubadours
The answers to the seventeen rime-words which occur in this stanza do
not appear till the following stanza, the same rimes being kept
throughout the six stanzas of the poem. To rest the listener's ear,
while he waited for the answering rimes, Arnaut used light assonances
which almost amount to rime in some cases. The Monk of Montaudon in his
satirical _sirventes_ says of Arnaut: "He has sung nothing all his life,
except a few foolish verses which no one understands"; and we may
reasonably suppose that Arnaut's poetry was as obscure to many of his
contemporaries as it is to us.
Dante placed Bertran de Born in hell, as a sower of strife between
father and son, and there is no need to describe his picture of the
troubadour--
"Who held the severed member lanternwise
And said, Ah me!" (_Inf._ xxviii. 119-142.)
The genius of Dante, and the poetical fame of Bertran himself, have
given him a more important position in history than is, perhaps, [58]
entirely his due. Jaufré, the prior of Vigeois, an abbey of
Saint-Martial of Limoges, is the only chronicler during the reigns of
Henry II. and Richard Coeur de Lion who mentions Bertran's name. The
_razos_ prefixed to some of his poems by way of explanation are the work
of an anonymous troubadour (possibly Uc de Saint-Círe); they constantly
misinterpret the poems they attempt to explain, confuse names and
events, and rather exaggerate the part played by Bertran himself.
Besides these sources we have the cartulary of Dalon, or rather the
extracts made from it by Guignières in 1680 (the original has been
lost), which give us information about Bertran's family and possessions.
From these materials, and from forty-four or forty-five poems which have
come down to us, the poet's life can be reconstructed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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