<h1>XI <br/> MEISTERSINGERS, MINNESINGERS, TROUVÈRES, TROUBADOURS.</h1>
<p>It would be a supreme mistake to think because the idea of literature
in the Thirteenth Century is usually associated with the Arthur
Legends, the Nibelungen and Dante, that all of the literary content of
the century was inevitably serious in character or always epical in
form. As a matter of fact the soul of wit and humor had entered into
the body social, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, and the
spirit of gaiety and the light-hearted admiration for nature found as
frequent expression as at any time in history. With these as always in
literary history there came outbursts of love in lyric strains that
were not destined to die. While the poets of South Germany and of
Italy sang of love that was of the loftiest description, never mingled
with anything of the merely sensual, their tuneful trifles are quite
as satisfying to the modern ear in both sense and sound as any of the
more elaborate <i>vers de societé</i> of the modern times. The German poets
particularly did not hesitate to emphasize the fact that sensuality
had no part in Minne—their pretty term for love—and yet they sang
with all the natural grace and fervid rapture of the Grecian poets of
the old pagan times, worshiping at the shrines of fleshly goddesses,
or singing to the frail beauties of an unmoral period. Nothing in the
history of literature is better proof that ideal love can, unmixed
with anything sensual, inspire lyric outbursts of supreme and enduring
beauty, than the poems of the Minnesingers and of some of the French
and Italian Troubadours of this period. It is easier to understand
Dante's position in this matter after reading the poems of his
predecessors in the Thirteenth Century.</p>
<p>For this feeling of the lofty character of the love they sang was not,
in spite of what is sometimes said, confined only to the Germans,
though as is well known from time immemorial the Teutonic
feeling towards woman was by racial influence of higher character than
that of the southern Nations. As Mr. H. J. Chaytor says in the
introduction to his Troubadours of Dante, there came a gradual change
over the mind of the Troubadour about the beginning of the Thirteenth
Century and "seeing that love was the inspiring force to good deeds,"
the later Troubadours gradually dissociated their love from the object
which had aroused it. Among them, "as among the Minnesingers, love is
no longer sexual passion, it is rather the motive to great works, to
self-surrender, to the winning an honorable name as Courtier and
Poet." Mr. Chaytor then quotes the well known lines from Bernart de
Ventadorn, one of the Troubadours to whom Dante refers, and whose
works Dante seems to have read with special attention since their
poems contain similar errors of mythology.</p>
<p class="cite">
<span class="cite2">"for indeed I know</span><br/>
Of no more subtle passion under heaven<br/>
Than is the maiden passion for a maid.<br/>
Not only to keep down the base in man.<br/>
But teach high thought and amiable words.<br/>
And courtliness and the desire of fame.<br/>
And love of truth and all that makes a man."</p>
<p>A sentiment surely that will be considered as true now as it ever was,
be the time the Thirteenth Century or earlier or later, and that
represents the best solution of social problems that has ever been put
forward—nature's own panacea for ills that other remedies at best
only palliate.</p>
<p>In the early Nineteenth Century Carlyle said of this period what we
may well repeat here:</p>
<p class="cite">
"We shall suppose that this Literary Period is partially known to
all readers. Let each recall whatever he has learned or figures
regarding it; represent to himself that brave young heyday of
Chivalry and Minstrelsy when a stern Barbarossa, a stern Lion-heart,
sang sirventes, and with the hand that could wield the sword and
sceptre twanged the melodious strings, when knights-errant tilted,
and ladies' eyes rained bright influences; and suddenly, as at
sunrise, the whole earth had grown vocal and musical. Then
truly was the time of singing come; for princes and prelates,
emperors and squires, the wise and the simple, men, women and
children, all sang and rhymed, or delighted in hearing it done. It
was a universal noise of Song; as if the Spring of Manhood had
arrived, and warblings from every spray, not, indeed, without
infinite twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no
music, were bidding it welcome."</p>
<p>This is the keynote of the Century—song, blithesome and gay as the
birds, solemn and harmonious as the organ tones that accord so well
with the great Latin hymns—everywhere song.</p>
<p>"Believers," says Tieck, the great collector of Thirteenth Century
poetry, "sang of Faith; Lovers of Love; Knights described knightly
actions and battles; and loving, believing knights were their chief
audience. The Spring, Beauty, Gaiety, were objects that could never
tire; great duels and deeds of arms carried away every hearer, the
more surely the stronger they were painted; and as the pillars and
dome of the Church encircled the flock, so did Religion, as the
Highest, encircle Poetry and Reality; and every heart, in equal love,
humbled itself before her."</p>
<p>The names of the Meistersingers are well-known to musical lovers at
least, because of the music drama of that name and the famous war of
the Wartburg. The most familiar of all of them is doubtless Walter von
der Vogelweide who, when he was asked where he found the tuneful
melodies for his songs, said that he learned them from the birds.
Those who recall Longfellow's pretty ballad with regard to Walter and
his leaving all his substance to feed the birds over his grave near
Nuremberg's minster towers, will not find it surprising that this
Meistersinger's poetry breathes the deepest love of Nature, and that
there is in it a lyric quality of joy in the things of Nature that we
are apt to think of as modern, until we find over and over again in
these bards, that the spirit of the woods and of the fields and of the
spring time, meant as much for them as for any follower of the
Wordsworth school of poetry in the more conscious after-time. This
from Walter with regard to the May will serve to illustrate very well
this phase of his work.</p>
<p>Gentle May, thou showerest fairly<br/>
Gifts afar and near;<br/>
Clothest all the woods so rarely,<br/>
And the meadows here;<br/>
O'er the heath new colors glow;<br/>
Flowers and clover on the plain.<br/>
Merry rivals, strive amain<br/>
Which can fastest grow.<br/>
<br/>
Lady! part me from my sadness.<br/>
Love me while 'tis May;<br/>
Mine is but a borrowed gladness<br/>
If thou frown alway;<br/>
Look around and smile anew!<br/>
All the world is glad and free;<br/>
Let a little joy from thee<br/>
Fall to my lot too!<br/></p>
<p>Walter could be on occasion, however, as serious as any of the
Meistersingers and is especially known for his religious poems. It is
not surprising that any one who set woman on so high a pedestal as did
Walter, should have written beautiful poems to the Blessed Virgin. He
was the first, so it is said, to express the sentiment: "Woman, God
bless her, by that name, for it is a far nobler name than lady."
Occasionally he can be seriously didactic and he has not hesitated
even to express some sentiments with regard to methods of education.
Among other things he discusses the question as to whether children
should be whipped or not in the process of education and curiously
enough takes the very modern view that whipping is always a mistake.
In this, of course, he disagrees with all the practical educators of
his time, who considered the rod the most effective instrument for the
education of children and strictly followed the scriptural injunction
about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Walter's opinion is for
that reason all the more interesting:</p>
<p class="cite">
"Children with rod ruling—<br/>
'Tis the worst of schooling.<br/>
Who is honor made to know.<br/>
Him a word seems as a blow."</p>
<p>The birds were always a favorite subject for poetic inspiration on the
part of the Minnesingers. Bird music rapt poetic souls into ecstasies
in which the passage of time was utterly unnoticed. It is from the
Thirteenth Century that comes the beautiful legend with regard to the
monk who, having wondered how time could be kept from dragging in
Heaven, was permitted to listen to the song of a bird one day in the
forest and when he awoke from his rapture and went back to his convent
found that a hundred years had passed, that all of the monks of his
acquaintance were dead, and while his name was found on the rolls of
the monastery, after it there was a note that he had disappeared one
day and had never been heard of afterwards. Almost in the same tenor
as this is a pretty song from Dietmar von Eist, written at the
beginning of the Thirteenth Century, and which was a type of the
charming songs that were to be so characteristic of the times:</p>
<p>There sat upon the linden-tree<br/>
A bird, and sung its strain;<br/>
So sweet it sung that as I heard<br/>
My heart went back again.<br/>
It went to one remember'd spot,<br/>
It saw the rose-tree grow.<br/>
And thought again the thoughts of love,<br/>
There cherished long ago.<br/>
<br/>
A thousand years to me it seems<br/>
Since by my fair I sate;<br/>
Yet thus to be a stranger long<br/>
Is not my choice, but fate;<br/>
Since then I have not seen the flowers,<br/>
Nor heard the birds' sweet song;<br/>
My joys have all too briefly past.<br/>
My griefs been all too long.<br/></p>
<p>Hartman von Aue was a contemporary of Walter's and is best known for
his romantic stories. It is rather curiously interesting to find that
one of the old chroniclers considers it a great mark of distinction
that, though Hartman was a knight, he was able to read and write
whatever he found written in books. It must not be forgotten,
however, that not all of these poets could read and write, and that
indeed so distinguished a literary man as Wolfram von Eschenbach, the
author of Percival, the story on which Wagner founded his opera of
Parsifal, could neither read nor write. He had developed a very
wonderful memory and was able to store faithfully his poems in the
course of their composition so that he was above the need of pen and
paper. Hartman is most famous for having written the story of Poor
Henry, which Longfellow has chosen so effectively for his Golden
Legend. Hartman's appreciation of women can be judged from the
following lines, which accord her an equal share in her lord's glory
because of her sufferings in prayer at home.</p>
<p>Glory be unto her whose word<br/>
Sends her dear lord to bitter fight;<br/>
Although he conquer by his sword.<br/>
She to the praise has equal right;<br/>
He with the sword in battle, she at home with prayer.<br/>
Both win the victory, and both the glory share.<br/></p>
<p>Occasionally one finds, as we have said, among the little songs of the
Minnesingers of the time such tuneful trifles as could be included
very appropriately in a modern collection of <i>vers de société</i>, or as
might even serve as a love message on a modern valentine or a
Christmas card. The surprise of finding such things at such a time
will justify the quotation of one of them from Brother Wernher, who
owes his title of brother not to his membership in any religious
order, very probably, but to the fact that he belonged to the
brotherhood of the poets of the time.</p>
<p>Since creation I was thine;<br/>
Now forever thou art mine.<br/>
I have shut thee fast<br/>
In my heart at last.<br/>
I have dropped the key<br/>
In an unknown sea.<br/>
Forever must thou my prisoner be!<br/></p>
<p>Wolfram von Eschenbach was the chief of a group of poets who at the
close of the Twelfth and beginning of the Thirteenth centuries
gathered about the Landgraf Hermann of Thuringen in his court on the
Wartburg, at the foot of which lies Eisenach, in the present Grand
Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. They shaped tales of knightly adventure, blended
with reflection, spiritual suggestion, and a grace of verse that
represented the best culture of the court, and did not address itself
immediately to the people. Wolfram was a younger son of one of the
lower noble Bavarian families settled at Eschenbach, nine miles from
Ausbach, in Middle Franconia. He had a poor little home of his own,
Wildenberg, but went abroad to seek adventures as a knight, and tell
adventures as a poet welcome to great lords, and most welcome to the
lavish friend of poets, Hermann of Thuringen, at whose court on the
Wartburg he remained twenty years, from 1195 to 1215, in which latter
year his "Parzival" was finished. From some passages in his poem it
may safely be inferred that he was happily married, and had children.
The Landgraf Hermann died in 1216, and, was succeeded by Ludwig,
husband of St. Elizabeth.</p>
<p>We cannot ascribe to English writers alone the spiritualizing of the
Grail Legends, when there is Wolfram's "Parzival" drawing from the
same cycle of myths a noble poem of the striving to bind earthly
knighthood to the ever-living God. While Gawain, type of the earthly
knight wins great praise in love and chivalry,
Parzival—Percival—finds his way on from childhood up, through humble
searchings of the spirit, till he is ruler in the kingdom of the soul,
where he designs that Lohengrin, his eldest son, shall be his
successor, while Kardeiss, his younger son, has rule over his earthly
possessions.</p>
<p>How beautifully the Minnesingers could enter into the spirit of nature
and at the same time how much the spirit of Spring has always been
prone to appeal to poetic sensibilities may be judged from the
following song of Conrad of Kirchberg, which is translated very
closely and in the same meter as the original old high German poem. It
is very evident that none of the spirit of Spring was lost on this
poet of the olden time, nor on the other hand that any possibility of
poetic expression was missed by him. There is a music in the lilt of
the verselets, eminently suggestive of the lyric effect that the
new birth of things had on the poet himself and that he wished to
convey to his readers. Of this, however, every one must judge for
himself and so we give the poem as it may be found in Roscoe's edition
of Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe.</p>
<p>May, sweet May, again is come;<br/>
May, that frees the land from gloom.<br/>
Up, then, children, we will go<br/>
Where the blooming roses grow.<br/>
In a joyful company<br/>
We the bursting flowers will see;<br/>
Up! your festal dress prepare!<br/>
Where gay hearts are meeting, there<br/>
May hath pleasures most inviting<br/>
Heart, and sight, and ear delighting:<br/>
Listen to the bird's sweet song.<br/>
Hark! how soft it floats along!<br/>
Courtly dames our pleasures share.<br/>
Never saw I May so fair;<br/>
Therefore, dancing will we go:<br/>
Youths rejoice, the flowrets blow;<br/>
Sing ye! join the chorus gay!<br/>
Hail this merry, merry May!<br/></p>
<p>At least as beautiful in their tributes to their lady loves and their
lyric descriptions of the beauties of Spring, were the Troubadours
whose tuneful trifles, sometimes deserving of much more serious
consideration than the application of such a term to them would seem
to demand, have come down to us though the centuries. One of the best
known of these is Arnaud de Marveil, who was born in very humble
circumstances but who succeeded in raising himself by his poetic
genius to be the companion of ruling princes and the friend of the
high nobility. Among the provencals he has been called the great
Master of Love, though this is a name which Petrarch reserves
especially for Arnaud Daniel, while he calls Marveil the less famous
of the Arnauds. An example of his work as the Poet of Love, that is
typical of what is usually considered to have been the favorite
mode of the Troubadour poets runs as follows:</p>
<p>All I behold recalls the memory<br/>
Of her I love. The freshness of the hour<br/>
Th' enamell'd fields, the many coloured flower,<br/>
Speaking of her, move me to melody.<br/>
Had not the poets, with their courtly phrase,<br/>
Saluted many a fair of meaner worth,<br/>
I could not now have render'd thee the praise<br/>
So justly due, of "Fairest of the Earth."<br/>
To name thee thus had been to speak thy name,<br/>
And waken, o'er thy cheek, the blush of modest shame.<br/></p>
<p>An example of the love of nature which characterizes some of Arnaud de
Marveil's work will serve to show how thoroughly he entered into the
spirit of the spring-time and how much all the sights and sounds of
nature found an echo in his poetic spirit. The translation of this as
of the preceding specimen from Arnaud is taken from the English
edition of the Historical View of the Literature of the South of
Europe by Sismondi, and this translation we owe to Thomas Roscoe, the
well known author of the life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who
considering that Sismondi does not furnish enough of specimens of this
Troubadour poet, inserts the following verses, for the translation of
which he acknowledges himself indebted to the kindness of friends, a
modest concealment doubtless of his own work:</p>
<p>Oh! how sweet the breeze of April,<br/>
Breathing soft as May draws near!<br/>
While, through nights of tranquil beauty,<br/>
Songs of gladness meet the ear:<br/>
Every bird his well-known language<br/>
Uttering in the morning's pride,<br/>
Revelling in joy and gladness<br/>
By his happy partner's side.<br/>
<br/>
When, around me, all is smiling,<br/>
When to life the young birds spring,<br/>
Thoughts of love, I cannot hinder,<br/>
Come, my heart inspiriting—<br/>
Nature, habit, both incline me<br/>
In such joy to bear my part:<br/>
With such sounds of bliss around me<br/>
Could I wear a sadden'd heart?<br/></p>
<p>His description of his lady love is another example of his worship of
nature in a different strain, which serves to show that a lover's
exaggeration of the qualities of his lady is not a modern development
of <i>la belle passion</i>.</p>
<p>Fairer than the far-famed Helen,<br/>
Lovelier than the flow'rets gay.<br/>
Snow-white teeth, and lips truth-telling,<br/>
Heart as open as the day;<br/>
Golden hair, and fresh bright roses—<br/>
Heaven, who formed a thing so fair.<br/>
Knows that never yet another<br/>
Lived, who can with thee compare.<br/></p>
<p>A single stanza from a love-song by Bertrand De Born will show better
than any amount of critical appreciation how beautifully he can treat
the more serious side of love. While the Troubadours are usually said
to have sung their love strains in less serious vein than their German
brother poets of the North, this has the ring of tenderness and truth
about it and yet is not in these qualities very different from others
of his songs that are well known. The translation we have chosen is
that made by Roscoe who has rendered a number of the songs of the
Troubadours into English verse that presents an excellent equivalent
of the original. Bertrand is insisting with his lady-love that she
must not listen to the rumors she may hear from others with regard to
his faithfulness.</p>
<p>I cannot hide from thee how much I fear<br/>
The whispers breathed by flatterers in thine ear<br/>
Against my faith. But turn not, oh, I pray!<br/>
That heart so true, so faithful, so sincere.<br/>
So humble and so frank, to me so dear.<br/>
Oh, lady! turn it not from me away.<br/></p>
<p>At times one is surprised to find pretty tributes to nature even in
the midst of songs that are devoted to war. The two things that were
nearest the hearts of these Troubadour poets were war and their
lady-loves, but the beauties of nature became mixed up not only with
their love songs but also with their battle hymns, or at least with
their ardent descriptions of military preparations and the glories of
war. An excellent example of this is to be found in the following
stanza written by William of Saint Gregory, a Troubadour who is best
known for his songs of war rather than of tenderness.</p>
<p>The beautiful spring delights me well.<br/>
When flowers and leaves are growing;<br/>
And it pleases my heart to hear the swell<br/>
Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing<br/>
In the echoing wood;<br/>
And I love to see all scattered around<br/>
Pavilions and tents on martial ground;<br/>
And my spirit finds it good<br/>
To see on the level plains beyond<br/>
Gay knights and steeds caparison'd.<br/></p>
<p>Occasionally the Troubadours indulge in religious poetry though
usually not of a mystical or profoundly devotional character. Even the
famous Peyrols, who is so well known for his love songs, sometimes
wandered into religious poetry that was not unworthy to be placed
beside his lyric effusions on other topics. Peyrols is best known
perhaps for his lamentations over King Richard the Lion Heart's fate,
for he had been with that monarch on the crusade, and like most of the
Troubadours who went with the army, drank in deep admiration for the
poetic king. After his visit to the Holy Land on this occasion one
stanza of his song in memory of that visit runs as follows: [Footnote
19: Translated by Roscoe.]</p>
<p>I have seen the Jordan river,<br/>
I have seen the holy grave.<br/>
Lord! to thee my thanks I render<br/>
For the joys thy goodness gave,<br/>
Showing to my raptured sight<br/>
The spot whereon thou saw'st the light.<br/>
<br/>
Vessel good and favoring breezes,<br/>
Pilot, trusty, soon shall we<br/>
Once more see the towers of Marseilles<br/>
Rising o'er the briny sea.<br/>
Farewell, Acre, farewell, all.<br/>
Of Temple or of Hospital:<br/>
<br/>
Now, alas! the world's decaying.<br/>
When shall we once more behold<br/>
Kings like lion-hearted Richard,<br/>
France's monarch, stout and bold?<br/></p>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i193.jpg" border=1><br/>
TOWER OF SCALIGERS (VERONA)</p>
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