Cliges: A Romance | Page 3

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Cliges: A Romance by Chretien de Troyes, trans. L. J. Gardiner.
This translation was published with no copyright notice in 1966. "T. Camp" miralink.com>
CLIGES: A ROMANCE
NOW TRANSLATED BY L. J. GARDINER, M.A. FROM THE OLD FRENCH OF
CHRETIEN DE TROYES
COOPER SQUARE PUBLISHERS, INC. NEW YORK 1966 Published 1966 by Cooper
Square Publishers, Inc. 59 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10003 Library of Congress
Catalog Card No. 66-23315 Printed in the United States of America By Noble Offset

Printers, Inc., New York, N. Y. 10003
INTRODUCTION
IT is six hundred and fifty years since Chretien de Troyes wrote his Cliges. And yet he is
wonderfully near us, whereas he is separated by a great gulf from the rude trouveres of
the Chansons de Gestes and from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was still dragging
out its weary length in his early days. Chretien is as refined, as civilised, as composite as
we are ourselves; his ladies are as full of whims, impulses, sudden reserves, self-debate
as M. Paul Bourget's heroines; while the problems of conscience and of emotion which
confront them are as complex as those presented on the modern stage. Indeed, there is no
break between the Breton romance and the psychological-analytical novel of our own
day.
Whence comes this amazing modernity and complexity? From many sources:--Provencal
love-lore, Oriental subtlety, and Celtic mysticism--all blended by that marvellous
dexterity, style, malice, and measure which are so utterly French that English has no
adequate words for them. We said "Celtic mysticism," but there is something else about
Chretien which is also Celtic, though very far from being "mystic". We talk a great deal
nowadays about Celtic melancholy, Celtic dreaminess, Celtic "other-worldliness"; and
we forget the qualities that made Caesar's Gauls, St. Paul's Galatians, so different from
the grave and steadfast Romans--that loud Gaulois that has made the Parisian the typical
Frenchman. A different being, this modern Athenian, from the mystic Irish peasant we
see in the poetic modern Irish drama!--and yet both are Celts.
Not much "other-worldliness" about Chretien. He is as positive as any man can be. His is
not of the world of Saint Louis, of the Crusaders, of the Cathedral-builders. In Cliges
there is no religious atmosphere at all. We hear scarcely anything of Mass, of bishops, of
convents. When he mentions Tierce or Prime, it is merely to tell us the hour at which
something happened--and this something is never a religious service. There is nothing
behind the glamour of arms and love, except for the cas de conscience presented by the
lovers. Nothing but names and framework are Celtic; the spirit, with its refinements and
its hair-splitting, is Provencal. But what a brilliant whole! what art! what measure! Our
thoughts turn to the gifted women of the age--as subtle, as interesting, and as
unscrupulous as the women of the Renaissance--to Eleanor of Aquitaine, a reigning
princess, a troubadour, a Crusader, the wife of two kings, the mother of two kings, to the
last, intriguing and pulling the strings of political