2. si...benezia. Subjunctive: ‘so may God bless me!’For si introducing a wish (often in confirmation of a statement), see Levy, SW, VII, 649:1, and 643:6. This exact phrase occurs in Pons de la Guardia’s De chantar dei (377,1; Frank’s ed., p. 288), v. 16.
3. tornar en nien. Cf. tornar a nien, same meaning, l. 21.
4. negus hom l’us en l’autre. The construction is a bit confused, but the sense is clear.
5. farai ab falsia. ‘I shall “do unto you” falsely, deal falsely with you’. I have not found examples of this precise use.
6. fach...perden. Also an unusual expression: Until I have ‘made you (such that you are) losing what is yours’. One would expect the infinitive.
11. corr’. ‘Is current’. Raynouard, Lex. rom., II, 489, quotes from Raimon de Castelnou: no y [in the world] cort dreg ni tem hom Dieu.
13. perdonon. ‘They forgive’, a loose reference to la gleyza through the clergy, who control it.
16. sen. Levy, PD, ( 1) gives the meaning ‘intention’, but it is not illustrated in his SW (VII, 558) or in the Lex. rom. (V, 194). One could read non an sen and translate ‘have no sense’, but this seems flat and not in keeping with the general argument.
18. lo. Refers loosely to the basic idea inherent in both renou and raubaria.
20. corr’. Cf. v. 11.
22. fan...dreyta via. Apparently means ‘cause what is crooked to be considered the straight path’.
23. dapmno...la via. ‘Damn sould and life’. They are pawning their eternal life to hell.
29. corra. Not quite the same sense as in 11 and 20; rather ‘is involved’. No examples in the dictionaries.
30. messorguier. A recognized variant of mensongier.
32f. gieton Dieu...en mesorgas. ‘They throw God into their lies, make a liar of God by calling on Him as witness to their lies’.
38. de tot avol guia (i.e., guiza). ‘Of every evil sort’.
40. si...vezia. A present tense would be expected: ‘unless he SEES some gain in it’.
41. cria. Here also, as in v. 40 (doubtless for the rime in both cases), the poet’s use of tense is peculiar: not ‘He who formed and CREATES us’, but ‘... CREATED us’.
42. oltra. Not ‘beyond’, but ‘contrary to’. — Son refers back to aisselh, which has no syntactic connection with the rest of the sentence.
47. si podia. ‘Yes I could’, ‘I could indeed’ (Levy, SW, VII, 650:7).
52. aver bon pessamen. Probably not ‘think good thoughts’, but ‘take serious thought’ about the consequences of our evil conduct.
53. valgues, podia. The tenses are probably influenced by the conditional in v. 52, but they also serve to put the action on the plane of unreality; these things, the poet suggests, will never happen.
55. Mon Azaut. The noun azaut (adaut) is translated ‘grâce, charme; plaisir, gré’ in Levy, PD; but the adjective is also possible here: ‘my pretty (graceful, agreeable) one’. Since this poem is a sirventes rather than a love song, and also because of the sobre totz (m.) in v. 57, one is inclined to identify Mon Azaut as a man, a patron of the poet; but a woman could conceivably be intended.
57. yssaussa. Eisausar ‘to lift up, exalt’.
60. Pons de Teza. The name of Pons de Thézan appears in documents from 1210 to 1226, always in connection with the “Albigensian” heresy. In 1210 he is named bondsman ( caution) for Étienne de Servian, “un des principaux seigneurs du diocèse de Béziers”, who has admitted to harboring two well-known heretics; in 1222 the papal legate excommunicates the inhabitants of Thézan and numerous other places, who had evidently thrown off the yoke of Amaury de Montfort and returned to their former masters; and in 1226 Pons and several other knights swear to obey the orders of the legate in the matters for which they were excommunicated ( Hist. de Languedoc, ( 2) VI, 325, 546, 601). The fact that there is no hint of all this in the poem may point to a date earlier than 1222. In view of the association of Pons with lords from the region Béziers, it seems logical to follow De Vic and Vaissète in identifying his town as Thézan-lès-Béziers (Hérault), rather than as Thézan (Aude) with Lavaud (see above, Attribution).
Notes:
1) Levy, Petit dictionnaire provençal-français (Heidelberg, 1923). (↑)
2) Claude de Vic et Jean Joseph Vaissète, Histoire générale de Languedoc, édition accompagnée de dissertations et notes nouvelles (Toulouse, 1872-1905); 16 vols. (↑) |
