US JOIS NOVELS, COMPLITZ DE GRANS BEUTATZ
The five stanzas beginning Us jois novels, complitz de grans beutatz, attributed by two of the Old Provençal chansonniers to Aimeric de Peguilhan, are in reality only a part of the poem of Daude de Pradas, Ben ay’ Amors, quar anc me fes chauzir. Since the beginning is different, it is not surprising that no one has noticed this fact before. Both Bartsch and Pillet-Carstens (1) accept the attribution to Aimeric without question; and evidently the editor of the poems of Daude de Pradas (Mr. A. H. Schutz) (2) did not happen to stumble upon this poem of Aimeric. It was only an accident that brought the identity of the two poems to my attention in the course of preparing an edition of Aimeric: looking up a word in Levy’s Supplementwörterbuch, I found quoted there the same passage I had before me, but ascribed to Daude de Pradas.
There is little doubt that the poem is really the work of Daude. It is attributed to him by twelve MSS (ACDaDcFGIKMNRf) and by Matfre Ermengaud in the Breviari d’amor, (3) where the first stanza is quoted. It is anonymous in O. Only two MSS (CR) attribute it to Aimeric de Peguilhan, and both also contain the complete poem, correctly ascribed to Daude de Pradas; more accurately, C contains the complete poem: the version of R lacks the fifth stanza, according to Mr. Schutz’s edition. Aimeric’s claim to the poem is therefore very slight.
Daude’s poem, as it appears in Mr. Schutz’s edition, has six stanzas and a tornada. The version attributed to Aimeric begins with the second stanza, and lacks the tornada. It is, furthermore, considerably garbled in meter and rime. I say “the version” rather than “the versions,” because the readings of the two MSS evidently derive from a single original, as the errors of one are repeated in the other.
Taking all these facts into account, we can say with some certainty that the attribution to Aimeric was a mistake on the part of the compiler of one of the common sources of CR. Such mistakes are common enough in the Provençal MSS, as a glance at Pillet-Carstens will show. Occasionally it is possible, from an examination of the extant MSS, to see how the error arose, (4) but more often we are forced to admit that we do not know. In the present case, nothing in the form or content of the poem suggests Aimeric rather than any other troubadour; and the order of poems in the MSS would not seem conducive to an erroneous attribution of this sort, nor, to the best of my knowledge, is there any other confusion of the poems of Daude and Aimeric. A possible explanation, which I advance only as a guess, is this: The five stanzas in question appeared on one folio of a collection in small format, on loose sheets; the beginning and the end of the poem were on other folios. This folio was introduced by accident among the poems of Aimeric de Peguilhan, and the stanzas (minus beginning and end) were then thought to be his, and were so ascribed in one of the common sources of C and R. This would account for both the truncations and the attribution.
Since the poem has already been edited critically, (5) I offer here a complete set of variants (apart from minor details of spelling) from C, folio 98, and R, folio 49 (the versions attributed to Daude de Pradas appear on folios 167 and 31, respectively). These readings are from my own copies from the MSS. Unless otherwise noted, all variants are given in the spelling of C, but are common to both C and R.
Variants
II. 9. (joves cors) ioys nouelhs; (gran beutat) grans beutatz. 10. (guais) guay; (cortes) cuende; (de bon agrat) e de bon grat C, de bon grat R. 11. (fis) fin; (renovelhatz e sors) ualen e melhurat. 12. (alhors) dalhor C. 13. (q’ieu) que; ni·m vir lacking. 14. (tir) an. 15. (li vet nulh temps ni·l tuelh) lur uedi ni lur tuelh. 16. (Amors) amor.
III. 17. (Gaugz e plazers) Gaug e plazer; (ven) ue; (mi) men. 18. (e) be; (tan m’es bon a suffrir) quan men ue a fugir. 19. (molt) trop. 20. (don so) des so C, de so R. 21. (qu’ieu no vuelh ges aver quist ni trobat) e ges no uuelh per res auer conquist. 22. (dona que m’aya trop leu joi donat) belha domna que leu magues (magues leu R) ioy dat. 23. (aduy) adutz. 24. (aduy) adutz.
IV. 25. (Merces) merce. 27. (dels maltragz) del maltrag; (lonc temps) tostz temps. 28. (Razos) amors. 29. (torna) sembla. 30. (per folh) per fols; (mi) men C, me R. 31. (no·s ... no·s) nom ... nom. 32. (tan) tal.
V. 34. (qu’ieu) quiem; (e) o C. 35. (Razos) merce; (trai, de lai, sas ricors) tra de lieys sa ricors. 37. (ges) ylh; (fina) ni sa; (lauzors) ualors C, ualor R. 38. (escuelh) erguelh C. 39. (dieus d’amor) drech damors R;(a ben) o a.
VI. 41. (devet) desuiest; (destuelh) despuelh. 42. (ans) e. 43. (capduelhs e guitz e tors) cap dels tors e palays. 44. (e·m pays tot jorn de pessamen onrat) totz iorns et er (e ser R) de pensamens honratz. 45. (De) Del R; (paguat) paguatz. 46. (no l’enguana de re lo miradors) quar nol enguana de rel miradors. 47. (onrar) amar. 48. (e qui·s vol) quis uuelha.
These MSS thus present a version substantially different from that of any of the MSS considered by Mr. Schutz: phrases and whole lines are totally unlike anything in his text or variants. I have already mentioned the faulty meter and rimes (cf. lines 11, 13, 21, 43). The deviations in lines 15, 18, 22, 35, 44, and 46 are equally striking.
The MSS of the version attributed to Daude which come closest to our text in individual lines are: ADaDcOR (17), IKR (28), C (32), MNOR (41), MNOR (46), R (48). The common term of all but one of these groups is R. From this, one might judge that R was closest of all to our text; but, according to Mr. Schutz, R does not contain stanza five, which is present in the version we are considering. Even so, it is not impossible that our version and that of R (folio 31, under the name of Daude) were derived, at a few removes, from the same source, since the omission of this stanza in R is probably due only to careless copying.
If anyone cares to confirm the statements made in this article, he can consult Mahn’s Gedichte, (6) where the versions of C and R ascribed to Aimeric are printed under the numbers 1218 and 1219, respectively. The accuracy of my readings can be checked from reproductions of the two MSS made by the Modern Language Association of America, and now on deposit in the Library of Congress (MLA deposit, nos 293 and 918, respectively). It is to be regretted that Mr. Schutz’s edition of Daude de Pradas, like many another useful Provençal text, is found in so few libraries in this country. I could not find a copy in the Chicago area, and was obliged to obtain one by inter-library loan from the Ohio State University Library, a favor for which I should like to express my gratitude here.
FRANK M. CHAMBERS
Northwestern University
Notes:
1) K. Bartsch, Grundriss zur Geschichte der provenzalischen Literatur, Elberfeld, 1872; Pillet-Carstens, Bibliographie der Troubadours, Halle, 1933. The second work is a revision and an amplification of the first. Both assign the number 10,53 to the poem as it appears under Aimeric’s name, and 124,6 to the poem of Daude de Pradas. Designations of MSS in this article are taken from these works (see particularly Pillet-Carstens, p. X and following). (↑)
2) Poésies de Daude de Pradas, publiées par A. H. Schutz, Paris-Toulouse, 1933 (Bibliothèque Méridionale, 1er série, tome XXII). (↑)
3) Edited by Gabriel Azaïs, Béziers-Paris, 1862-1881; lines 28549-56. (↑)
4) See my note “On the Attribution of a Provençal Poem,” in Modern Language Notes, May, 1947. (↑)
5) Schutz’s edition (see note 2, above), pp. 12-17, no. III. (↑)
6) A. Mahn, Gedichte der Troubadours in provenzalischer Sprache, Berlin,1856-73 (4 vols.). (↑) |
