The Renaissance | Page 8

central love-poetry of Provence, the poetry of the Tenson and the
Aubade, of Bernard de Ventadour and Pierre Vidal, is poetry for the
few, for the elect and peculiar people of the [16] kingdom of sentiment.
But below this intenser poetry there was probably a wide range of
literature, less serious and elevated, reaching, by lightness of form and
comparative homeliness of interest, an audience which the concentrated
passion of those higher lyrics left untouched. This literature has long
since perished, or lives only in later French or Italian versions. One
such version, the only representative of its species, M. Fauriel thought
he detected in the story of Aucassin and Nicolette, written in the French
of the latter half of the thirteenth century, and preserved in a unique
manuscript, in the national library of Paris; and there were reasons
which made him divine for it a still more ancient ancestry, traces in it
of an Arabian origin, as in a leaf lost out of some early Arabian
Nights.* The little book loses none of its interest through the criticism
which finds in it only a traditional subject, handed on by one people to
another; for after passing thus from hand to hand, its outline is still
clear, its surface untarnished; and, like many other stories, books,
literary and artistic conceptions of the middle age, it has come to [17]
have in this way a sort of personal history, almost as full of risk and

adventure as that of its own heroes. The writer himself calls the piece a
cantefable, a tale told in prose, but with its incidents and sentiment
helped forward by songs, inserted at irregular intervals. In the junctions
of the story itself there are signs of roughness and want of skill, which
make one suspect that the prose was only put together to connect a
series of songs--a series of songs so moving and attractive that people
wished to heighten and dignify their effect by a regular framework or
setting. Yet the songs themselves are of the simplest kind, not rhymed
even, but only imperfectly assonant, stanzas of twenty or thirty lines
apiece, all ending with a similar vowel sound. And here, as elsewhere
in that early poetry, much of the interest lies in the spectacle of the
formation of a new artistic sense. A novel art is arising, the music of
rhymed poetry, and in the songs of Aucassin and Nicolette, which seem
always on the point of passing into true rhyme, but which halt
somehow, and can never quite take flight, you see people just growing
aware of the elements of a new music in their possession, and
anticipating how pleasant such music might become.
The piece was probably intended to be recited by a company of trained
performers, many of whom, at least for the lesser parts, were probably
children. The songs are introduced by the rubric, [18] Or se cante (ici
on chante); and each division of prose by the rubric, Or dient et content
et fabloient (ici on conte). The musical notes of a portion of the songs
have been preserved; and some of the details are so descriptive that
they suggested to M. Fauriel the notion that the words had been
accompanied throughout by dramatic action. That mixture of simplicity
and refinement which he was surprised to find in a composition of the
thirteenth century, is shown sometimes in the turn given to some
passing expression or remark; thus, "the Count de Garins was old and
frail, his time was over"--Li quens Garins de Beaucaire estoit vix et
frales; si avoit son tans trespassè. And then, all is so realised! One sees
the ancient forest, with its disused roads grown deep with grass, and the
place where seven roads meet--u a forkeut set cemin qui s'en vont par
le païs; we hear the light- hearted country people calling each other by
their rustic names, and putting forward, as their spokesman, one among
them who is more eloquent and ready than the rest--li un qui plus fu
enparlés des autres; for the little book has its burlesque element also, so

that one hears the faint, far-off laughter still. Rough as it is, the piece
certainly possesses this high quality of poetry, that it aims at a purely
artistic effect. Its subject is a great sorrow, yet it claims to be a thing of
joy and refreshment, to be entertained not for its matter only, but
chiefly for its manner, it is cortois, it tells us, et bien assis.
[19] For the student of manners, and of the old French language and
literature, it has much interest of a purely antiquarian order. To say of
an ancient literary composition that it has an antiquarian interest, often
means that it has no distinct aesthetic interest for