Aucassin and Nicolete(奥加西恩和尼古里特)

VIP免费

2024-12-26 0 0 133.04KB 37 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Aucassin and Nicolete

INTRODUCTION

There is nothing in artistic poetry quite akin to "Aucassin and

Nicolete."

By a rare piece of good fortune the one manuscript of the Song-Story

has escaped those waves of time, which have wrecked the bark of

Menander, and left of Sappho but a few floating fragments. The very

form of the tale is peculiar; we have nothing else from the twelfth or

thirteenth century in the alternate prose and verse of the cante- fable. {1}

We have fabliaux in verse, and prose Arthurian romances. We have

Chansons de Geste, heroic poems like "Roland," unrhymed assonant

laisses, but we have not the alternations of prose with laisses in seven-

syllabled lines. It cannot be certainly known whether the form of

"Aucassin and Nicolete" was a familiar form-- used by many jogleors, or

wandering minstrels and story-tellers such as Nicolete, in the tale, feigned

herself to be,--or whether this is a solitary experiment by "the old captive"

its author, a contemporary, as M. Gaston Paris thinks him, of Louis VII

(1130). He was original enough to have invented, or adopted from popular

tradition, a form for himself; his originality declares itself everywhere in

his one surviving masterpiece. True, he uses certain traditional formulae,

that have survived in his time, as they survived in Homer's, from the

manner of purely popular poetry, of Volkslieder. Thus he repeats

snatches of conversation always in the same, or very nearly the same

words. He has a stereotyped form, like Homer, for saying that one

person addressed another, "ains traist au visconte de la vile si l'apela"

[Greek text which cannot be reproduced] . . . Like Homer, and like popular

song, he deals in recurrent epithets, and changeless courtesies. To

Aucassin the hideous plough-man is "Biax frere," "fair brother," just as the

treacherous Aegisthus is [Greek text] in Homer; these are complimentary

terms, with no moral sense in particular. The jogleor is not more curious

than Homer, or than the poets of the old ballads, about giving novel

descriptions of his characters. As Homer's ladies are "fair-tressed," so

Nicolete and Aucassin have, each of them, close yellow curls, eyes of vair

Aucassin and Nicolete

(whatever that may mean), and red lips. War cannot be mentioned except

as war "where knights do smite and are smitten," and so forth. The

author is absolutely conventional in such matters, according to the

convention of his age and profession.

Nor is his matter more original. He tells a story of thwarted and

finally fortunate love, and his hero is "a Christened knight"--like

Tamlane,--his heroine a Paynim lady. To be sure, Nicolete was baptized

before the tale begins, and it is she who is a captive among Christians, not

her lover, as usual, who is a captive among Saracens. The author has

reversed the common arrangement, and he appears to have cared little

more than his reckless hero, about creeds and differences of faith. He is

not much interested in the recognition of Nicolete by her great Paynim

kindred, nor indeed in any of the "business" of the narrative, the fighting,

the storms and tempests, and the burlesque of the kingdom of Torelore.

What the nameless author does care for, is his telling of the love- story,

the passion of Aucassin and Nicolete. His originality lies in his charming

medley of sentiment and humour, of a smiling compassion and sympathy

with a touch of mocking mirth. The love of Aucassin and Nicolete -

"Des grans paines qu'il soufri,"

that is the one thing serious to him in the whole matter, and that is not

so very serious. {2} The story-teller is no Mimnermus, Love and Youth

are the best things he knew,--"deport du viel caitif,"-- and now he has

"come to forty years," and now they are with him no longer. But he does

not lament like Mimnermus, like Alcman, like Llwyarch Hen. "What is

Life, what is delight without golden Aphrodite? May I die!" says

Mimnermus, "when I am no more conversant with these, with secret love,

and gracious gifts, and the bed of desire." And Alcman, when his limbs

waver beneath him, is only saddened by the faces and voices of girls, and

would change his lot for the sea-birds." {3}

"Maidens with voices like honey for sweetness that breathe desire,

Would that I were a sea-bird with limbs that never could tire, Over the

foam-flowers flying with halcyons ever on wing, Keeping a careless heart,

a sea-blue bird of the spring."

But our old captive, having said farewell to love, has yet a kindly

Aucassin and Nicolete

smiling interest in its fever and folly. Nothing better has he met, even

now that he knows "a lad is an ass." He tells a love story, a story of love

overmastering, without conscience or care of aught but the beloved. And

the viel caitif tells it with sympathy, and with a smile. "Oh folly of

fondness," he seems to cry, "oh merry days of desolation"

"When I was young as you are young, When lutes were touched and

songs were sung, And love lamps in the windows hung."

It is the very tone of Thackeray, when Thackeray is tender, and the

world heard it first from this elderly, nameless minstrel, strolling with his

viol and his singing boys, perhaps, like a blameless d'Assoucy, from castle

to castle in "the happy poplar land." One seems to see him and hear him

in the twilight, in the court of some chateau of Picardy, while the ladies on

silken cushions sit around him listening, and their lovers, fettered with

silver chains, lie at their feet. They listen, and look, and do not think of

the minstrel with his grey head and his green heart, but we think of him.

It is an old man's work, and a weary man's work. You can easily tell the

places where he has lingered, and been pleased as he wrote. They are

marked, like the bower Nicolete built, with flowers and broken branches

wet with dew. Such a passage is the description of Nicolete at her

window, in the strangely painted chamber,

"ki faite est par grant devisse panturee a miramie."

Thence

"she saw the roses blow, Heard the birds sing loud and low."

Again, the minstrel speaks out what many must have thought, in

those incredulous ages of Faith, about Heaven and Hell, Hell where the

gallant company makes up for everything. When he comes to a battle-

piece he makes Aucassin "mightily and knightly hurl through the press,"

like one of Malory's men. His hero must be a man of his hands, no mere

sighing youth incapable of arms. But the minstrels heart is in other

things, for example, in the verses where Aucassin transfers to Beauty the

wonder-working powers of Holiness, and makes the sight of his lady heal

the palmer, as the shadow of the Apostle, falling on the sick people, healed

them by the Gate Beautiful. The Flight of Nicolete is a familiar and

beautiful picture, the daisy flowers look black in the ivory moonlight

Aucassin and Nicolete

against her feet, fair as Bombyca's "feet of carven ivory" in the Sicilian

idyll, long ago. {4} It is characteristic of the poet that the two lovers begin

to wrangle about which loves best, in the very mouth of danger, while

Aucassin is yet in prison, and the patrol go down the moonlit street, with

swords in their hands, sworn to slay Nicolete. That is the place and time

chosen for this ancient controversy. Aucassin's threat that if he loses

Nicolete he will not wait for sword or knife, but will dash his head against

a wall, is in the very temper of the prisoned warrior-poet, who actually

chose this way of death. Then the night scene, with its fantasy, and shadow,

and moonlight on flowers and street, yields to a picture of the day, with the

birds singing, and the shepherds laughing, in the green links between

wood and water. There the shepherds take Nicolete for a fairy, so bright

a beauty shines about her. Their mockery, their independence, may make

us consider again our ideas of early Feudalism. Probably they were in

the service of townsmen, whose good town treated the Count as no more

than an equal of its corporate dignity. The bower of branches built by

Nicolete is certainly one of the places where the minstrel himself has

rested and been pleased with his work. One can feel it still, the cool of

that clear summer night, the sweet smell of broken boughs, and trodden

grass, and deep dew, and the shining of the star that Aucassin deemed was

the translated spirit of his lady. Romance has touched the book here with

her magic, as she has touched the lines where we read how Consuelo came

by moonlight to the Canon's garden and the white flowers. The pleasure

here is the keener for contrast with the luckless hind whom Aucassin

encountered in the forest: the man who had lost his master's ox, the

ungainly man who wept, because his mother's bed had been taken from

under her to pay his debt. This man was in that estate which Achilles, in

Hades, preferred above the kingship of the dead outworn. He was hind

and hireling to a villein,

[Greek text]

It is an unexpected touch of pity for the people, and for other than

love-sorrows, in a poem intended for the great and courtly people of

chivalry.

At last the lovers meet, in the lodge of flowers beneath the stars. Here

Aucassin and Nicolete

the story should end, though one could ill spare the pretty lecture the girl

reads her lover as they ride at adventure, and the picture of Nicolete, with

her brown stain, and jogleor's attire, and her viol, playing before Aucassin

in his own castle of Biaucaire. The burlesque interlude of the country of

Torelore is like a page out of Rabelais, stitched into the cante-fable by

mistake. At such lands as Torelore Pantagruel and Panurge touched

many a time in their vague voyaging. Nobody, perhaps, can care very

much about Nicolete's adventures in Carthage, and her recognition by her

Paynim kindred. If the old captive had been a prisoner among the

Saracens, he was too indolent or incurious to make use of his knowledge.

He hurries on to his journey's end;

"Journeys end in lovers meeting."

So he finishes the tale. What lives in it, what makes it live, is the

touch of poetry, of tender heart, of humorous resignation. The old

captive says the story will gladden sad men:-

"Nus hom n'est si esbahis, tant dolans ni entrepris, de grant mal

amaladis, se il l'oit, ne soit garis, et de joie resbaudis, tant par est douce."

This service it did for M. Bida, the painter, as he tells us when he

translated Aucassin in 1870. In dark and darkening days, patriai tempore

iniquo, we too have turned to Aucassin et Nicolete. {5}

Aucassin and Nicolete

BALLADE OF AUCASSIN

Where smooth the Southern waters run Through rustling leagues of

poplars gray, Beneath a veiled soft Southern sun, We wandered out of

Yesterday; Went Maying in that ancient May Whose fallen flowers are

fragrant yet, And lingered by the fountain spray With Aucassin and

Nicolete.

The grassgrown paths are trod of none Where through the woods they

went astray; The spider's traceries are spun Across the darkling forest way;

There come no Knights that ride to slay, No Pilgrims through the grasses

wet, No shepherd lads that sang their say With Aucassin and Nicolete.

'Twas here by Nicolete begun Her lodge of boughs and blossoms gay;

'Scaped from the cell of marble dun 'Twas here the lover found the Fay; O

lovers fond, O foolish play! How hard we find it to forget, Who fain

would dwell with them as they, With Aucassin and Nicolete.

ENVOY.

Prince, 'tis a melancholy lay! For Youth, for Life we both regret: How

fair they seem; how far away, With Aucassin and Nicolete.

A. L.

Aucassin and Nicolete

BALLADE OF NICOLETE

All bathed in pearl and amber light She rose to fling the lattice wide,

And leaned into the fragrant night, Where brown birds sang of summertide;

('Twas Love's own voice that called and cried) "Ah, Sweet!" she said, "I'll

seek thee yet, Though thorniest pathways should betide The fair white feet

of Nicolete."

They slept, who would have stayed her flight; (Full fain were they the

maid had died!) She dropped adown her prison's height On strands of

linen featly tied. And so she passed the garden-side With loose-leaved

roses sweetly set, And dainty daisies, dark beside The fair white feet of

Nicolete!

Her lover lay in evil plight (So many lovers yet abide!) I would my

tongue could praise aright Her name, that should be glorified. Those

lovers now, whom foes divide A little weep,--and soon forget. How far

from these faint lovers glide The fair white feet of Nicolete.

ENVOY.

My Princess, doff thy frozen pride, Nor scorn to pay Love's golden

debt, Through his dim woodland take for guide The fair white feet of

Nicolete.

GRAHAM R. TOMSON

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

AucassinandNicolete1AucassinandNicoleteAucassinandNicolete2INTRODUCTIONThereisnothinginartisticpoetryquiteakinto"AucassinandNicolete."ByararepieceofgoodfortunetheonemanuscriptoftheSong-Storyhasescapedthosewavesoftime,whichhavewreckedthebarkofMenander,andleftofSapphobutafewfloatingfragments.Theveryfo...

展开>> 收起<<

Aucassin and Nicolete(奥加西恩和尼古里特).pdf

共37页,预览8页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Aucassin and Nicolete(奥加西恩和尼古里特)

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: