Domnei

Domnei, by James Branch Cabell et al

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Title: Domnei
Author: James Branch Cabell et al
Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9663] [This file was first posted on October 14, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Domnei
A Comedy of Woman-Worship
By
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
1920

"En cor gentil domnei per mort no passa."
TO
SARAH READ McADAMS
IN GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION

"The complication of opinions and ideas, of affections and habits, which prompted the chevalier to devote himself to the service of a lady, and by which he strove to prove to her his love, and to merit hers in return, was expressed, in the language of the Troubadours, by a single word, by the word domnei, a derivation of domna, which may be regarded as an alteration of the Latin domina, lady, mistress."
--C. C. FAURIEL, History of Provencal Poetry.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
A
PREFACE
CRITICAL COMMENT
THE ARGUMENT
PART ONE--PERION
I HOW PERION WAS UNMASKED
II HOW THE VICOMTE WAS VERY GAY
III HOW MELICENT WOOED
IV HOW THE BISHOP AIDED PERION
V HOW MELICENT WEDDED
PART TWO--MELICENT
VI HOW MELICENT SOUGHT OVERSEA
VII HOW PERION WAS FREED
VIII HOW DEMETRIOS WAS AMUSED
IX HOW TIME SPED IN HEATHENRY
X HOW DEMETRIOS WOOED
PART THREE--DEMETRIOS
XI HOW TIME SPED WITH PERION
XII HOW DEMETRIOS WAS TAKEN
XIII HOW THEY PRAISED MELICENT
XIV HOW PERION BRAVED THEODORET.
XV HOW PERION FOUGHT
XVI HOW DEMETRIOS MEDITATED.
XVII HOW A MINSTREL CAME
XVIII HOW THEY CRIED QUITS
XIX HOW FLAMBERGE WAS LOST
XX HOW PERION GOT AID
PART FOUR--AHASUERUS
XXI HOW DEMETRIOS HELD HIS CHATTEL
XXII HOW MISERY HELD NACUMERA.
XXIII HOW DEMETRIOS CRIED FAREWELL
XXIV HOW ORESTES RULED
XXV HOW WOMEN TALKED TOGETHER
XXVI HOW MEN ORDERED MATTERS
XXVII HOW AHASUERUS WAS CANDID
XXVIII HOW PERION SAW MELICENT
XXIX HOW A BARGAIN WAS CRIED
XXX HOW MELICENT CONQUERED
THE AFTERWORD
BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Preface
By Joseph Hergesheimer
It would be absorbing to discover the present feminine attitude toward the profoundest compliment ever paid women by the heart and mind of men in league--the worshipping devotion conceived by Plato and elevated to a living faith in mediaeval France. Through that renaissance of a sublimated passion domnei was regarded as a throne of alabaster by the chosen figures of its service: Melicent, at Bellegarde, waiting for her marriage with King Theodoret, held close an image of Perion made of substance that time was powerless to destroy; and which, in a life of singular violence, where blood hung scarlet before men's eyes like a tapestry, burned in a silver flame untroubled by the fate of her body. It was, to her, a magic that kept her inviolable, perpetually, in spite of marauding fingers, a rose in the blanched perfection of its early flowering.
The clearest possible case for that religion was that it transmuted the individual subject of its adoration into the deathless splendor of a Madonna unique and yet divisible in a mirage of earthly loveliness. It was heaven come to Aquitaine, to the Courts of Love, in shapes of vivid fragrant beauty, with delectable hair lying gold on white samite worked in borders of blue petals. It chose not abstractions for its faith, but the most desirable of all actual--yes, worldly--incentives: the sister, it might be, of Count Emmerick of Poictesme. And, approaching beatitude not so much through a symbol of agony as by the fragile grace of a woman, raising Melicent to the stars, it fused, more completely than in any other aspiration, the spirit and the flesh.
However, in its contact, its lovers' delight, it was no more than a slow clasping and unclasping of the hands; the spirit and flesh, merged, became spiritual; the height of stars was not a figment.... Here, since the conception of domnei has so utterly vanished, the break between the ages impassable, the sympathy born of understanding is interrupted. Hardly a woman, to-day, would value a sigh the passion which turned a man steadfastly away that he might be with her forever beyond the parched forest of death. Now such emotion is held strictly to the gains, the accountability, of life's immediate span; women have left their