Thanks to Speranza for the excellent overview and details
pertaining to troubadours and others. My probably-outdated information
came from the early 1800s and translated in 1860 by by G.J. Adler --
hardly a scholarly approach to the matter, but back when I read it I had
no access to large libraries and the buying of books was a chancy and
time-consuming matter. I was engaged back then if I recall correctly in
one of my many (and soon abandoned) exercises to increase my knowledge
of the language I was writing poetry in. This book, /The History of
Provencal Poetry/ wasn't that, but it looked interesting, was available
to me, and if one lived back then in a "barbarous or remote" area, one
took what one could get. Thanks to Amazon.com the barbarous area in
which I still live are not quite so remote. Of course if one had no
access to a major library that is still somewhat limiting, but
enormously more books are available today.
A point I had in mind but failed to make is implied on the first
page of Fouriel's book: "I shall therefore divide the history of
Provencal literature into two great epochs, of which the one extends
from the second half of the eighth century to the year 1080, and the
other from 1080 to 1350.
"Of these two epochs the first is, as we can easily presume, by far
the most obscure, the one from which the smallest number of monuments
are left us, and concerning which history furnishes us the scantiest
information. It still however offers us many curious and interesting
facts -- facts, by which the literature of the South is linked, on the
one hand to the culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and on the
other to the glorious epochs of he Middle Age.
"The fundamental fact, to be examined in this first epoch of
Provencal literature, is the origin and formation of the idiom which was
destined to become its organ. The creation of every language presents
to us certain obscure and mysterious phrases which will not admit of an
absolute explanation. But this being granted, there is perhaps no idiom
in the world which furnishes us so many data for the construction of its
history, as does the ancient Provencal; and from this circumstance
alone, it is entitled to a particular attention. A careful and critical
examination of it enables us to distinguish the various ingredients,
which have successively entered into its composition, and the different
languages to which these ingredients respectively belong. In the Latin
substratum, which constitutes its basis, we find still enough of Greek
to attest the long residence of a Grecian population in the countries in
which it originated. We also discover considerable traces of the three
most ancient languages of Gaul, all of which are still alive in
barbarous or remote countries, which have served them as places of
refuge. One of these languages is spoken in France by the inhabitants of
lower Brittany, and in England by the Welsh; the other in the mountains
of Scotland, and in the interior of Ireland; the last in the Pyrenees by
the Basques."
In English literature we find critics referring to certain poets,
Shakespeare and Milton for example, as being "immortal," and various
poets (Milton, not Shakespeare if I recall correctly) seeking
immortality through their their poetry. In looking at the panorama
Fouriel has provided, what chance does the English we speak let alone
poets writing today have of being understood even a thousand years from
now? Further, as Speranza tells us, "Troubadours performed their own
songs. Jongleurs (performers) and cantaires (singers) also performed
troubadours' songs." We know the names (more names that I recalled from
reading Fouriel) of many Troubadours, but do we remember the names of as
many Jongleurs and cantaires? And if we do surely we remember nothing
of what made them significant in their day, the sound of their voices
and their instruments as they performed the music of the troubadours.
Today there are many more people benefiting from modern-day
troubadours, most of which haven't the ability to "perform" their own
writings. Psychiatrists forced Anne Sexton to perform her poetry at
$1,000 a performance in order to pay them. Ted Hughes used Sylvia
Plath's writings to obtain money enough to buy a vacation home for his
new wife and family. But even today publishers and book sellers are
benefiting from the writings of Sexton and Plath far more than they
themselves did. Perhaps the greed of these people will cause the poetry
of Plath and Sexton to approach more closely to immortality than the
writings of better poets who never achieved the celebrity of a madness
culminating in a romantic suicide providing a plethora of critical
remoras who benefited and still benefit from their debris. Surely the
practical minded publishers and book sellers are wiser in choosing the
money to be made from poor or dead poets than the poets themselves who
have given their lives for nothing that has a chance of living more than
a few centuries. Surely the pessimistic Koholeth was far ahead of his
time -- or have we always been like this?
Lawrence