The troubadours

Peire Vidal is one of the most versatile and many-sided amongst the troubadours. His character is a psychological riddle. High gifts and wildest eccentricities are strangely mixed up in it. But the riddle cannot be read from a purely individual point of view. Peire Vidal is also a type. His adventures and poems show as in a kaleidoscope the romantic and often exaggerated and whimsical ideas which animated his age and country.

‘Peire Vidal’—the old biography begins—‘was born in Toulouse, the son of a furrier; he sang better than any other poet in the world, and was one of the most foolish men who ever lived, for he believed everything to be just as it pleased him and as he would have it.’ That he grew to his greatness out of the meanest circumstances was a lot which he shared with some of the most famous of his brethren, such as Marcabrun and Folquet of Marseilles, and it accounts to a certain extent for many of his follies and illusions. The time of his birth it is impossible to state accurately; it appears, however, from several remarks in his poems, that it must have been somewhere about the middle of the twelfth century. In his youth he seems to have been very poor; thus in one of his earlier canzos he addresses a lady in the following simple and frank words: ‘I have no castle with walls, and my land is not worth a pair of gloves, but there never was nor will be a more faithful lover than I am.’ When his genius had made him the favourite and companion of kings and nobles, he did not lack wealth. In his songs we never find a request for assistance from his protectors, such as often occurs in the stanzas of other troubadours, and he was even in a position to keep many servants and followers. He soon tired of a quiet life, and left home to find fortune and renown. First he went to Spain, where he was kindly received at the court of Alfonso II., King of Aragon, one of the most liberal protectors of the troubadours; but his restlessness could not endure a long sojourn in the same place. He went to Italy, and for many years was travelling about between that country, Spain, and the South of France, always well received by nobles and princes, and always in love with beautiful women. It would be impossible to give the names of the different objects of his admiration. The general character of these futile attachments was that the poet believed himself quite irresistible, and supposed no interval to exist between his seeing and conquering. ‘Often,’ he says, ‘I receive messages with golden rings and black and white ribbons. Hundreds of ladies would fain keep me with them if they could.’ In another canzo he boasts that all husbands are afraid of him more than of fire and sword. In point of fact, however, the ladies he admired did not by any means justify these illusions, and his old biographer goes so far as to say that they all deceived him ‘totas l’engannavan.’ The best proof of the harmlessness of the poet’s love affairs seems to be that the husbands concerned were more amused than offended by his homage to their wives. One of them, however, took the matter less easily. When Peire Vidal boasted in his usual way of having received many favours from his wife, he took his revenge by imprisoning the poet and piercing his tongue through. This anecdote of the old manuscript is confirmed by different allusions to the fact in the poems of other troubadours. The Monk of Montaudon, who mercilessly ridicules Peire Vidal’s follies, says that he ‘stands in need of a silver tongue.’

The first strong and genuine attachment the poet seems to have formed was for the Viscountess Azalais, of the family of Roca Martina, wife of Barrai de Baux, Viscount of Marseilles. She was praised for her beauty and kindness by many of the greatest troubadours, and it was for her that Folquet of Marseilles, the amorous poet and afterwards ascetic bishop, sang his tenderest canzos. Peire Vidal in his poems always calls her Vierna, one of the nicknames by which the troubadours (in the same way as the antique poets their Lesbias and Lalages) addressed for discretion’s sake the fair objects of their admiration. Peire Vidal’s love in this case, unlike his former transient passions, was of long duration. Even the severest treatment, and a long banishment from the lady’s presence, could not extinguish his affection. Far from her he was unhappy, and sent her his songs as messengers of love and devotion. At first she was well pleased with the homage of the celebrated poet who spread the renown of her beauty over all the country. Moreover, Barral her husband was on very friendly terms with Peire, and sometimes even had to compose the little differences which soon arose between the eccentric troubadour and his beloved one. The poet complained bitterly of her cruelty and ingratitude towards him who had always been faithful to her, but this grief of unanswered love was favourable to his poetic genius. To this period belong his most beautiful canzos, full of touching pathos and marked by great artistic perfection. ‘I was rich and happy,’ he says in one of these songs, ‘until my lady turned my joy to grief, for she behaves to me like a cruel and pitiless warrior. And she is wrong in doing so, for I never gave her occasion to complain of me, and have always been her most faithful admirer. But this very faithfulness she will never forgive me. I am like a bird which follows the hunter’s pipe, although it be to its certain death. So I expose my heart willingly to the thousands of arrows which she throws at me with her beautiful eyes.’ But presently he is afraid to offend her even by these modest complaints. In the tornada, he says, ‘O lady Vierna, I will not complain of you, but I think I deserve a little more recompense for all my waiting and hoping.’ Notwithstanding all these entreaties the lady had no pity for her unhappy lover. The slight favours she granted him were overbalanced by outbreaks of bad temper, and worst of all she began to find something ridiculous in the rather eccentric proofs of Peire’s unchanged devotion. At last an inconsiderate outbreak of his passion resulted in his being for a long time banished from her presence. One day, early in the morning, Count Barral had risen, and Azalais remained alone in her room. Of this occasion the enamoured troubadour availed himself to go there in secret. He knelt down before her couch and kissed the lips of his slumbering love. At first she believed him to be her husband, and smiled kindly, but when she fully awoke and saw it was the ‘fool’ Peire Vidal who had taken this liberty, she grew furious, and began to weep and to raise a great clamour. Her attendants rushed into the room, and the importunate intruder had a narrow escape of being severely punished on the spot. The lady immediately sent for her husband, and begged him to avenge Peire’s impertinence; but Count Barral, in accordance with the opinion of his time, did not consider the offence an unpardonable one, and reproved the lady for having made so much of a fool’s oddities. He did not, however, succeed in softening her wrath; she made the story known all over the country, and uttered such terrible threats that the poet began to fear for his safety, and preferred to wait abroad for a change in his favour. He went to Genoa, and soon afterwards, according to some manuscripts, followed King Richard on his crusade to the Holy Land. Though this latter assertion is, for chronological reasons, not very probable, yet Peire’s voyage to Palestine cannot be doubted. Here he composed the little song of love and homesickness which I have attempted to translate, following the original closely, but the tender grace and melodious charm of which it would be impossible to reproduce in our Northern idiom:

By such repeated proofs of the poet’s unchangeable love the heart of Azalais, was at last touched. Besides, fool as he was, Peire was undoubtedly one of the most renowned troubadours, and the proudest beauty could not be indifferent to the celebration of her charms in canzos as popular as they were exquisite. Barral importuned his wife till she promised the poet forgiveness of all past offences, and immediately sent the happy message to Peire. Some of the manuscripts say that Azalais wrote him a letter in which she promised him all he had been wishing for so long. Peire Vidal returned to France, and Barral on hearing of his arrival rode out to meet him, and guided him to Marseilles. Azalais received him gracefully, and granted him the kiss he had once taken. All was forgiven and forgotten, and the troubadour commemorated the happy reconciliation by a song radiant with joy and hope. This state of pure happiness, however, was not destined to be of long duration. The lady seems to have been disinclined to fulfil her promises; the complaints in Peire’s canzos of her cruelty and falseness begin anew, and at last he very likely grew tired of his unrewarded pains. Certain it is that he did not stay very long at Marseilles, for he does not make the slightest mention of Barral’s death, which happened soon after, in 1192. This silence would have been impossible if he had been living at the time at his old friend and protector’s court.

While he was yet the professed admirer of Azalais, the poet had admired more or less fervently several other ladies, from one of whom he now seems to have sought consolation. This was Loba de Peinautier, who lived in Carcassonne. Her name Loba (she-wolf) became the motive of one of Peire Vidal’s most fantastic exploits; he gave himself the designation of a wolf, and adopted the animal as a badge. Once he put on a wolf’s skin, and called upon the shepherds to hunt him with their dogs. They readily accepted the offer, and treated him so badly that he was brought more dead than alive to the house of his beloved. Here, in addition to his wounds, he had to suffer the pitiless jests of the lady; who was not at all pleased by this kind of admiration. But in this case also the husband was more merciful, and regarded the aberrations of the great troubadour with indulgence. He took the greatest possible care of him, and had him tended by the best physicians. It would be difficult to believe a consummate poet had really been guilty of such absurdities, if he did not bear witness against himself. ‘I do not mind,’ he says in one of his poems, ‘if they call me a wolf, and if the peasants hunt me as such I do not consider it a disgrace.’ The foolishness of the man, however, did not impair the genius of the poet, and some of his canzos addressed to Loba are amongst the finest productions of Provençal literature. Whilst he was engaged in these and other love affairs the poet was also married, which of course did not interfere with his attachments of this kind more than the same circumstance did with Dante’s spiritual love for Beatrice Portinari. I mention the circumstance only because it throws fresh light on Peire’s wonderful capacity for illusion. On his voyage to the Holy Land, he became acquainted in Cyprus with a Greek lady, whom he married and brought home with him. Soon afterwards he was made to believe that his wife was the niece of the Greek emperor, and had as such a claim to the imperial crown. This idea was exactly to his taste, and he adapted himself to it without any difficulty. He had on a previous occasion, if we are to believe the satirical Monk of Montaudon, conferred knighthood on himself; now he assumed with equal facility the arms of the Emperor of Greece. He began collecting money, wherever he could find it, for an expedition to realise his claims. Meanwhile, he called himself and his wife by the title of ‘Imperial Majesty,’ and duly provided himself with a throne. It is needless to say that his schemes came to nothing; the only consequence was to expose him to greater ridicule than before. His brethren in poetry were not slow to avail themselves of this opportunity of lowering a renowned troubadour in general estimation, and to do him as much harm as they could. One bitter and contemptuous sirventes will give an example of the amiable feelings with which rivals in art regarded each other. Its author is the Italian Marquis Lanza, and it runs thus: ‘We have an emperor without sense or reason or consciousness; a worse drunkard never sat on a throne; no greater coward wore shield and lance, no greater scoundrel made verses and canzos. I wish a sword would split his head, and an iron dart go right through his body; his eyes ought to be torn out of his head with hooks. Then we will give him some wine, and put on his head an old scarlet hat, and for a lance he may have an old stick. So he may safely wander from here to France.’ Peire Vidal answered this friendly address with equal warmth. ‘Marquis Lanza,’ he says, ‘poverty and ignorance have spoilt your manners. You are like a blind beggar in the street, who has lost all shame or decency.’

It would hardly have been expected that, with all this trouble about his loves and his empire, the poet could have had time left to take part in the real political and religious struggles of his age. But his versatile genius was as much interested in public affairs as in his own private concerns. As one of the first poets of his time he was in continual intercourse with princes and nobles, and in consequence had ample means of knowing the politics of his protectors, and frequent occasion to use his poetical gift on their behalf. Among his most constant friends was King Alfonso II. of Aragon, at whose court the chief poets of the time gathered, and found shelter from poverty and contempt. The King himself practised the art of poetry; and we possess a canzo by him which, if not of the first excellence, shows at least that he did not shrink from competing for the prize in the ‘Gaia Sciensa.’ According to his liberality so was the praise awarded to him in the songs of the most renowned troubadours. Bertran de Born, indeed, accuses him of treason and cowardice, but the passionate character of that poet made him unscrupulous in his attacks on political and personal enemies. Peter II., Alfonso’s son, inherited his father’s disposition towards the troubadours, and it was a great loss to them when he fell in the battle of Muret (1213) against the Crusaders. Peire Vidal was among the greatest favourites of both father and son. Alfonso once had suits of armour of the same kind made for himself and the poet, a striking mark of friendship in so great a prince. The poet showed his thankfulness by the only return he had to offer, his songs. Several of his canzos are dedicated to Alfonso, whose side he took in all the Kings wars and feuds. The very first sirventes we have of Peire’s refers to the war between Alfonso and Count Raimon of Toulouse, and, notwithstanding the poet having been born in that city, it is an ardent war-song in favour of the intruder. The author, however, could not on this occasion withstand his natural inclination towards self-praise, and by his immoderate boasting lessened the effect of his song. ‘If I only had a good horse,’ he says, ‘I should trample on all my enemies, for even as it is, when they hear my name, they are afraid of me more than the quail of the sparrow-hawk, because I am so strong and wild and ferocious; when I have put on my double white armour, and girt my sword round my loins, the ground trembles under me where I step, and there is no enemy of mine so bold as will not get out of my way as quickly as he can.’ He goes on in this strain through several stanzas, and promises at last that if the King returns to attack Toulouse, he, Peire Vidal, will enter the city alone with the routed enemy and conquer it. The story of Coriolanus may possibly have been in his mind, but there are not many traces of his acquaintance with ancient Roman history. As a reward for his prowess he looks forward to obtaining the much-desired knighthood, for in the tornada of the same sirventes he promises Lady Vierna that soon she shall love in him a noble cavalier. This hope, however, was not fulfilled; he was obliged to be content with the knighthood which he had conferred on himself, and which of course other people did not recognise. Nevertheless, he remained invariably attached to Alfonso till the King’s death. This loss he felt very deeply, and the words in which he gives utterance to his grief show that his friendship was genuine. ‘In great affliction,’ he sings, ‘must live he who loses his good master, as I have lost the best whom death ever killed. Certainly, I should not live if suicide were not a sin.’ This song is dedicated to Peter II. of Aragon, the son of Alfonso, who is called ‘corn of a good ear.’ It was sent to him from the court of King Aimeric of Hungary, his brother-in-law, to which Peire had retired after the death of his protector, and where he appears to have seen something more of the Germans, whom he had always thoroughly disliked. In the same sirventes he apostrophises them in the following words: ‘Germans, you mean, bad, and false people, nobody who ever served you has had any pleasure of it.’ On a former occasion he had expressed his feelings on the same subject even more energetically. ‘The Germans,’ he says in another sirventes, ‘are coarse and vulgar, and if one of them tries to be courteous he becomes quite intolerable; their language is like the barking of dogs. Therefore, I should not care to be Duke of Friesland, where I should always have to listen to the barking of these tiresome people.’ These terms applied to the language of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walter von der Vogelweide must of course be taken cum grano salis, and are certainly more characteristic of the critic than of those criticised by him.

In the Crusades, Peire Vidal took the deepest interest. We have already seen that he himself went to Palestine, but he worked for the cause by his songs more usefully than by his actual presence. I cannot refrain from quoting a few stanzas of one of his sirventeses in the original langue d’oc, which may serve as an example of the poet’s energy in admonishing and reproaching those who were idle in the service of God:

The ‘infamous King’ thus denounced is Philip Augustus of France, whom the troubadours hated and despised almost as unanimously as they extolled Alfonso of Aragon.

This poem, apart from its political allusions, is remarkable as a specimen of Peire Vidal’s peculiar manner of mixing the two different forms of canzo and sirventes together (compare p. 141). Immediately after the passage about the French King just quoted the poet broaches his favourite theme of love, and explains how the unseasonable passion of mature ladies is sure to destroy the whole courteous world. This sudden change occurs in a similar manner in another sirventes where, after having reproached the same Philip Augustus as a coward and miser, the poet continues with great naïveté, ‘But now I must turn my song to my lady, whom I love more than my own eyes or teeth.’

Peire Vidal’s faults and errors were in great measure the result of the exaggerated sentiments of the time, and do not detract from his high poetical genius. The best of his contemporaries estimated him correctly, and forgave the great poet the extravagance of his character. ‘The greatest fool,’ says Bartolomeo Zorgi, another celebrated poet of the time, ‘is he who calls Peire Vidal a fool; for without sense it would be impossible to make poems like his.’

The exact date of Peire’s death we cannot tell. Most likely it took place about 1210.