CHAPTER XXVI.
BEATRICE DE DIE.
The only lady-troubadour of whose poems we possess a sufficient number to allow of a fair judgment of her capability is the Countess Beatrice de Die. She may also serve to illustrate the essentially subjective conception of the art of poetry which marks the phase in literature alluded to. The unvarying subject of her songs is the story of her love; without this passion she would have remained mute. Her first song is the embodiment of new-awakened happiness; her last a dirge over hopes dead and lost.
‘The Countess de Die,’ says the old manuscript, ‘was the wife of Guillem de Poitou and a good and beautiful lady; she became enamoured of Rambaut of Orange, and wrote many fine poems of him.’ This Rambaut was the third ruler of that name of the country of Aurenga or Orange, in the south of France, from which the Dutch line of the house of Nassau derived its name. The English cavaliers, by the way, were considerably out in their etymological reckoning when they derisively squeezed the orange.
Rambaut is well known as the author of numerous poems, some of them rather coarse in character. One of his songs is metrically curious by the poet relapsing at the end of every stanza into a few lines of prose, in which admirers of Walt Whitman will perhaps discover rhythm. In another poem he gives an elaborate prescription for gaining the hearts and bending the minds of women, quite in the spirit of the coarsest scenes of the Taming of the Shrew. The apparent disagreement of the poet with his own rules expressed in one stanza does not much alter the case in his favour, neither can we consider his calling one of his lady-loves by the nickname ‘my Devil’ a sign of refinement on his part. The exaggerated and boldly uttered opinion of his own poetic power is an additional unpleasant feature of Rambaut’s character. His songs to Beatrice de Die, of which several remain, are marked by extravagant gallantry rather than by true feeling. It may, for instance, be doubted whether the lady had much reason to be pleased with compliments of this kind: ‘The joy you give me is such that a thousand doleful people would be made merry by my joy. And on my joy my whole family could live with joy without eating.’
The reader will notice the frequent repetition of the word ‘joy,’ which occurs once in every line of the stanza. This is an instance of the artificialities in which many troubadours, Rambaut of Orange foremost amongst the number, took pride. A similar metrical contrivance is found in another song by the same poet, most likely also addressed to the Countess de Die. It is called the ‘rim dictional,’ and consists of the combination, in the rhyming syllables, of two words which can be derived from each other by either adding or deducting one or more syllables. Thus, for instance, the feminine and masculine forms of the adjective and participle; at-ada, ut-uda stand in the relation of ‘dictional rhymes.’ It is sadly significant to see that this silly contrivance has been adopted by Beatrice de Die in the song which expresses the fulness of her loving bliss. Perhaps it would be too bold to conjecture without additional evidence that, in this as in so many cases, the teacher had developed into the lover; but this sign of intellectual dependence is at any rate highly characteristic. To give the reader an idea of the sweetness of Beatrice’s metre and diction, I will quote one stanza of the poem alluded to in the original.
‘With joy and youth I am content; may joy and youth give me contentment! For my friend is most joyous, therefore I am amiable and gay. And as I am true to him, true he must be to me. For I do not withhold my love from him, so neither can I think that he should withhold his from me.’
Unfortunately the serene sky of this happiness was soon to be overclouded. We can distinctly recognise the mutual position of the lovers. Count Rambaut, if he had at any time felt a serious passion for Beatrice, soon got over that weakness. In vain he tries to hide his apathy from the keen glance of the loving woman. She is appeased for the moment by his grandiloquent vows of eternal devotion; but soon her suspicion awakes again with renewed strength. Such are the feelings which have inspired the admirable tenso respectively ascribed to Rambaut and Beatrice, but most likely composed by both of them in alternate stanzas of reproach and excuse. The poet, taxed with indifference and fickleness, explains that the rareness of his visits is caused by his fear of the evil tongues and spies ‘who have taken my sense and breath away.’ But the lady is little impressed with this tender care for her reputation. ‘No thanks do I owe you,’ she says, ‘for refusing to see me when I send for you, because of the harm I might suffer through it. And if you take greater care of my welfare than I do myself, you must forsooth be over-loyal; more so than the Knights of the Hospital.’ Only by the most extravagant promises of amendment is the poet able to gain from the lady the qualified concession: ‘Friend, I will trust you so far, so that I find you true and loyal to me at all times.’
A second song of the countess marks a further stage of this unfortunate amour. The poet now has dropped the mask; the lady is deserted—deserted for another love. The sight of her misery is pathetic, although, perhaps, less dignified than would be the silent pride of a noble-hearted woman. But pride is strange to the heart of poor Beatrice. Her desire is not to upbraid, but, if possible, to regain, her truant lover; and nothing she considers beneath her dignity that may accomplish this sole desire of her heart. Abject flattery of her lover and even the praise of her own beauty are resorted to by her with a naïve openness which, somehow, makes us forget her utter want of dignity. There is about her poem the true ring of simple pathos, which I have tried to retain as far as possible in the subjoined rendering of three of the stanzas:
The reader need hardly be told that this touching appeal proved in vain. We have another song of Beatrice, in which she deplores the final loss of her friend. It is remarkable that even now no word of anger escapes her lips. She blames herself for a reticence of feeling which, if she had possessed it, might have averted her fate. This is the first stanza of the plaintive ditty:
And here we must take leave of the beautiful Beatrice de Die. She is not without interest from a psychological point of view, and represents the literary capabilities of her class by the intensely subjective character of her work, which is the immediate outgrowth of her feeling.