Читать книгу A Short History of French Literature - Saintsbury George - Страница 26

En l'an de l'incarnacïon,

VIII jors aprés la nascïon

Jhesu qui soufri passïon,

en l'an soissante,

qu'arbres n'a foille, oisel ne chante,

fis je toute la rien dolante

que de cuer m'aime:

nis li musarz musart me claime.

or puis filer, qu'il me faut traime;

mult ai a faire.

deus ne fist cuer tant de pute aire,

tant li aie fait de contraire

ne de martire,

s'il en mon martire se mire,

qui ne doie de bon cuer dire

'je te claim cuite.'

envoier un home en Egypte,

ceste dolor est plus petite

que n'est la moie;

je n'en puis mais se je m'esmoie.

l'en dit que fous qui ne foloie

pert sa saison:

sui je marïez sanz raison?

or n'ai ne borde ne maison.

encor plus fort:

por plus doner de reconfort

a ceus qui me heent de mort,

tel fame ai prise

que nus fors moi n'aime ne prise,

et s'estoit povre et entreprise,

quant je la pris. a ci marïage de pris, c'or sui povres et entrepris ausi comme ele, et si n'est pas gente ne bele. cinquante anz a en s'escuële, s'est maigre et seche: n'ai pas paor qu'ele me treche. despuis que fu nez en la greche deus de Marie, ne fu mais tele espouserie. je sui toz plains d'envoiserie: bien pert a l'uevre.

Though he has less of the 'lyrical cry' than some others, Rutebœuf is perhaps the most vigorous poet of his time.

Lais. Marie de France.

There is one division of early poetry which may also be noticed under this head, though it is sometimes dealt with as a kind of miniature epic. This is the lai, a term which is used in old French poetry with two different significations. The Trouvères of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made of it a regular lyrical form. But the most famous of its examples, those which now pass under the name of Marie de France, are narrative poems in octosyllabic verse and varying in length considerably. It is agreed that the term and the thing are of Breton origin; and the opinion which seems most probable is that the word originally had reference rather to the style of music with which the harper accompanied his verse, than to the measure, arrangement, or subject of the latter. As to Marie herself[75], nothing is known about her with certainty. She lived in England in the reign of Henry III, and often gives English equivalents for her French words. The lais which we possess, written by her and attributed to her, are fourteen in number. They bear the titles of Gugemer, Equitan, Le Fresne, Le Bisclaveret, Lanval, Les Deux Amants, Ywenec, Le Laustic, Milun, Le Chaitivel, Le Chèvrefeuille, Eliduc, Graalent and L'Espine. Mr. O'Shaughnessy has paraphrased several of these in English[76]; they are all narrative in character. Their distinguishing features are fluent and melodious versification, pure and graceful language—among the purest and most graceful, though decidedly Norman in character, of the time—true poetical feeling, and a lively faculty of invention and description. After Marie there was a tendency to approximate the lai to the Provençal descort, and at last, as we have said, it acquired rules and a form quite alien from those of its earlier examples. There is a general though not a universal inclination to melancholy of subject in the early lays, a few of which are anonymous.

Note to Third Edition.—M. Gaston Paris has expressed some surprise at my remarks on metre (p. 63). This from so accomplished a scholar is a curious instance of the difficulty which Frenchmen seem to feel in appreciating quantity. To an English eye and ear which have been trained to classical prosody the trochaic rhythm of, for instance, the Pastourelle quoted on p. 65, is unmistakable, and there are anapaestic metres to be found here and there in early poems of the same kind. Indeed, all French poetry is easily scanned quantitatively, though the usual authorities protest against such scansion. Voltaire, it is said, took Turgot's hexameters for prose, and the significance of this is the same whether the mistake, as is probable, was mischievous or whether it was genuine.