章节正文
his own philosophy, is among us to-day, crowned with years and
honours, the singer of "Ulysses," of the "Lotus Eaters," of
"Tithonus," and "OEnone."
So, after all, I have been enthusiastic, "maugre my head," as Malory
says, and perhaps, Lady Violet, I have shown you why it is "right"
to admire Virgil, and perhaps I have persuaded nobody but myself.
P.S.--Mr. Coleridge was no great lover of Virgil, inconsistently.
"If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave
him?" Yet Mr. Coleridge had defined poetry as "the best words, in
the best order"--that is, "diction and metre." He, therefore,
proposed to take from Virgil his poetry, and then to ask what was
left of the Poet!
AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE
To the Lady Violet Lebas.
Dear Lady Violet,--I do not wonder that you are puzzled by the
language of the first French novel. The French of "Aucassin et
Nicolette" is not French after the school of Miss Pinkerton, at
Chiswick. Indeed, as the little song-story has been translated into
modern French by M. Bida, the painter (whose book is very scarce), I
presume even the countrywomen of Aucassin find it difficult. You
will not expect me to write an essay on the grammar, nor would you
read it if I did. The chief thing is that "s" appears as the sign
of the singular, instead of being the sign of the plural, and the
nouns have cases.
The story must be as old as the end of the twelfth century, and must
have received its present form in Picardy. It is written, as you
see, in alternate snatches of verse and prose. The verse, which was
chanted, is not rhymed as a rule, but each laisse, or screed, as in
the "Chanson de Roland," runs on the same final assonance, or vowel
sound throughout.
So much for the form. Who is the author? We do not know, and never
shall know. Apparently he mentions himself in the first lines:
"Who would listen to the lay,
Of the captive old and gray;"
for this is as much sense as one can make out of del deport du viel
caitif.
The author, then, was an old fellow. I think we might learn as much
from the story. An old man he was, or a man who felt old. Do you
know whom he reminds me of? Why, of Mr. Bowes, of the Theatre
Royal, Chatteris; of Mr. Bowes, that battered, old, kindly
sentimentalist who told his tale with Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
It is 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, pretty fever and foolish; oh, absurd happy
days of desolation:
"When I was young, as you are young,
And 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 elderlynamelessminstrel, strolling
with his viol and his singing boys, a blameless D'Assoucy, from
castle to castle in the happy poplar land. I think I see him and
hear him in the silver twilight, in the court of some chateau of
Picardy, while the ladies around sit listening on silken cushions,
and their lovers, fettered with silver chains, lie at their feet.
They listen, and look, and do not think of the minstrel with his
gray 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.
The story is simple enough. Aucassin, son of Count Garin, of
Beaucaire, loved so well fair Nicolette, the captive girl from an
unknown land, that he would never be dubbed knight, nor follow
tourneys; nor even fight against his father's mortal foe, Count
Bougars de Valence. So Nicolette was imprisoned high in a painted
chamber. But the enemy were storming the town, and, for the promise
of "one word or two with Nicolette, and one kiss," Aucassin armed
himself and led out his men. But he was all adream about Nicolette,
and his horse bore him into the press of foes ere he knew it. Then
he heard them contriving his death, and woke out of his dream.
"The damoiseau was tall and strong, and the horse whereon he sat
fierce and great, and Aucassin laid hand to sword, and fell a-
smiting to right and left, and smote through helm and headpiece, and
arm and shoulder, making a murder about him, like a wild boar the
hounds fall on in the forest. There slew he ten knights, and smote
down seven, and mightily and knightly he hurled through the press,
and charged home again, sword in hand." For that hour Aucassin
struck like one of Mallory's men in the best of all romances. But
though he took Count Bougars prisoner, his father would not keep his
word, nor let him have one word or two with Nicolette, and one kiss.
Nay, Aucassin was thrown into prison in an old tower. There he sang
of Nicolette,
"Was it not the other day
That a pilgrim came this way?
And a passion him possessed,
That upon his bed he lay,
Lay, and tossed, and knew no rest,
In his pain discomforted.
But thou camest by his bed,
Holding high thine amice fine
And thy kirtle of ermine.
Then the beauty that is thine
Did he look on; and it fell
That the Pilgrim straight was well,
Straight was hale and comforted.
And he rose up from his bed,
And went back to his own place
Sound and strong, and fair of face."
Thus Aucassin makes a Legend of his lady, as it were, assigning to
her beauty such miracles as faith attributes to the excellence of
the saints.
Meanwhile, Nicolette had slipped from the window of her prison
chamber, and let herself down into the garden, where she heard the
song of the nightingales. "Then caught she up her kirtle in both
hands, behind and before, and flitted over the dew that lay deep on
the grass, and fled out of the garden, and the daisy flowers bending
below her tread seemed dark against her feet, so white was the
maiden." Can't you see her stealing with those "feet of ivory,"
like Bombyca's, down the dark side of the silent moonlit streets of
Beaucaire?
Then she came where Aucassin was lamenting in his cell, and she
whispered to him how she was fleeing for her life. And he answered
that without her he must die; and then this foolish pair, in the
very mouth of peril, must needs begin a war of words as to which
loved the other best!
"Nay, fair sweet friend," saith Aucassin, "it may not be that thou
lovest me more than I love thee. Woman may not love man as man
loves woman, for a woman's love lies no deeper than in the glance of
her eye, and the blossom of her breast, and her foot's tip-toe; but
man's love is in his heart planted, whence never can it issue forth
and pass away."
So while they speak
"In debate as birds are,
Hawk on bough,"
comes the kind sentinel to warn them of a danger. And Nicolette
flees, and leaps into the fosse, and thence escapes into a great
forest and lonely. In the morning she met shepherds merry over
their meat, and bade them tell Aucassin to hunt in that forest,
where he should find a deer whereof one glance would cure him of his
malady. The shepherds are happy, laughing people, who half mock
Nicolette, and quite mock Aucassin, when he comes that way. But at
first they took Nicolette for a fee, such a beauty shone so brightly
from her, and lit up all the forest. Aucassin they banter; and
indeed the free talk of the peasants to their lord's son in that
feudal age sounds curiously, and may well make us reconsider our
notions of early feudalism.
But Aucassin learns at least that Nicolette is in the wood, and he
rides at adventure after her, till the thorns have ruined his silken
surcoat, and the blood, dripping from his torn body, makes a visible
track in the grass. So, as he wept, he met a monstrous man of the
wood, that asked him why he lamented. And he said he was sorrowing
for a lily-white hound that he had lost. Then the wild man mocked
him, and told his own tale. He was in that estate which Achilles,
among the ghosts, preferred to all the kingship of the dead outworn.
He was hind and hireling to a villein, and he had lost one of the
villein's oxen. For that he dared not go into the town, where a
prison awaited him. Moreover, they had dragged the very bed from
under his old mother, to pay the price of the ox, and she lay on
straw; and at that the woodman wept.
A curious touch, is it not, of pity for the people? The old poet is
serious for one moment. "Compare," he says, "the sorrows of
sentiment, of ladies and lovers, praised in song, with the sorrows
of the poor, with troubles that are real and not of the heart!"
Even Aucassin the lovelorn feels it, and gives the hind money to pay
for his ox, and so riding on comes to a lodge that Nicolette has
built with blossoms and boughs. And Aucassin crept in and looked
through a gap in the fragrant walls of the lodge, and saw the stars
in heaven, and one that was brighter than the rest.
Does one not feel it, the cool of that old summer night, the sweet
smell of broken boughs and trodden grass and deep dew, and the
shining of the star?
"Star that I from far behold
That the moon draws to her fold,
Nicolette with thee doth dwell,
My sweet love with locks of gold,"
sings Aucassin. "And when Nicolette heard Aucassin, right so came
she unto him, and passed within the lodge, and cast her arms about
his neck and kissed and embraced him:
"Fair sweet friend, welcome be thou!"
"And thou, fair sweet love, be thou welcome!"
There the story should end, in a dream of a summer's night. But the
old minstrel did not end it so, or some one has continued his work
with a heavier hand. Aucassin rides, he cares not whither, if he
has but his love with him. And they come to a fantastic land of
burlesque, such as Pantagruel's crew touched at many a time. And
Nicolette is taken by Carthaginian pirates, and proves to be
daughter to the King of Carthage, and leaves his court and comes to
Beaucaire in the disguise of a ministrel, and "journeys end in
lovers' meeting."
That is all the tale, with its gaps, its careless passages, its
adventures that do not interest the poet. He only cares for youth,
love, spring, flowers, and the song of the birds; the rest, except
the passage about the hind, is mere "business" done casually,
because the audience expects broad jests, hard blows, misadventures,
recognitions. What lives is the touch of poetry, of longing, of
tender heart, of humorousresignation. It lives, and always must
live, "while the nature of man is the same." The poet hopes his
tale will gladden sad men. This service it did for M. Bida, he
says, in the dreadful year of 1870-71, when he translated
"Aucassin." This, too, it has done for me in days not delightful.
{6}
PLOTINUS (A.D. 200-262)
To the Lady Violet Lebas.
Dear Lady Violet,--You are discursive and desultory enough, as a
reader, to have pleased even the late Lord Iddesleigh. It was
"Aucassin and Nicolette" only a month ago, and to-day you have been
reading Lord Lytton's "Strange Story," I am sure, for you want
information about Plotinus! He was born (about A.D. 200) in Wolf-
town (Lycopolis), in Egypt, the town, you know, where the natives
might not eat wolves, poor fellows, just as the people of Thebes
might not eat sheep. Probably this prohibition caused Plotinus no
honours, the singer of "Ulysses," of the "Lotus Eaters," of
"Tithonus," and "OEnone."
So, after all, I have been enthusiastic, "maugre my head," as Malory
says, and perhaps, Lady Violet, I have shown you why it is "right"
to admire Virgil, and perhaps I have persuaded nobody but myself.
P.S.--Mr. Coleridge was no great lover of Virgil, inconsistently.
"If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave
him?" Yet Mr. Coleridge had defined poetry as "the best words, in
the best order"--that is, "diction and metre." He, therefore,
proposed to take from Virgil his poetry, and then to ask what was
left of the Poet!
AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE
To the Lady Violet Lebas.
Dear Lady Violet,--I do not wonder that you are puzzled by the
language of the first French novel. The French of "Aucassin et
Nicolette" is not French after the school of Miss Pinkerton, at
Chiswick. Indeed, as the little song-story has been translated into
modern French by M. Bida, the painter (whose book is very scarce), I
presume even the countrywomen of Aucassin find it difficult. You
will not expect me to write an essay on the grammar, nor would you
read it if I did. The chief thing is that "s" appears as the sign
of the singular, instead of being the sign of the plural, and the
nouns have cases.
The story must be as old as the end of the twelfth century, and must
have received its present form in Picardy. It is written, as you
see, in alternate snatches of verse and prose. The verse, which was
chanted, is not rhymed as a rule, but each laisse, or screed, as in
the "Chanson de Roland," runs on the same final assonance, or vowel
sound throughout.
So much for the form. Who is the author? We do not know, and never
shall know. Apparently he mentions himself in the first lines:
"Who would listen to the lay,
Of the captive old and gray;"
for this is as much sense as one can make out of del deport du viel
caitif.
The author, then, was an old fellow. I think we might learn as much
from the story. An old man he was, or a man who felt old. Do you
know whom he reminds me of? Why, of Mr. Bowes, of the Theatre
Royal, Chatteris; of Mr. Bowes, that battered, old, kindly
sentimentalist who told his tale with Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
It is 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, pretty fever and foolish; oh, absurd happy
days of desolation:
"When I was young, as you are young,
And 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 elderlynamelessminstrel, strolling
with his viol and his singing boys, a blameless D'Assoucy, from
castle to castle in the happy poplar land. I think I see him and
hear him in the silver twilight, in the court of some chateau of
Picardy, while the ladies around sit listening on silken cushions,
and their lovers, fettered with silver chains, lie at their feet.
They listen, and look, and do not think of the minstrel with his
gray 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.
The story is simple enough. Aucassin, son of Count Garin, of
Beaucaire, loved so well fair Nicolette, the captive girl from an
unknown land, that he would never be dubbed knight, nor follow
tourneys; nor even fight against his father's mortal foe, Count
Bougars de Valence. So Nicolette was imprisoned high in a painted
chamber. But the enemy were storming the town, and, for the promise
of "one word or two with Nicolette, and one kiss," Aucassin armed
himself and led out his men. But he was all adream about Nicolette,
and his horse bore him into the press of foes ere he knew it. Then
he heard them contriving his death, and woke out of his dream.
"The damoiseau was tall and strong, and the horse whereon he sat
fierce and great, and Aucassin laid hand to sword, and fell a-
smiting to right and left, and smote through helm and headpiece, and
arm and shoulder, making a murder about him, like a wild boar the
hounds fall on in the forest. There slew he ten knights, and smote
down seven, and mightily and knightly he hurled through the press,
and charged home again, sword in hand." For that hour Aucassin
struck like one of Mallory's men in the best of all romances. But
though he took Count Bougars prisoner, his father would not keep his
word, nor let him have one word or two with Nicolette, and one kiss.
Nay, Aucassin was thrown into prison in an old tower. There he sang
of Nicolette,
"Was it not the other day
That a pilgrim came this way?
And a passion him possessed,
That upon his bed he lay,
Lay, and tossed, and knew no rest,
In his pain discomforted.
But thou camest by his bed,
Holding high thine amice fine
And thy kirtle of ermine.
Then the beauty that is thine
Did he look on; and it fell
That the Pilgrim straight was well,
Straight was hale and comforted.
And he rose up from his bed,
And went back to his own place
Sound and strong, and fair of face."
Thus Aucassin makes a Legend of his lady, as it were, assigning to
her beauty such miracles as faith attributes to the excellence of
the saints.
Meanwhile, Nicolette had slipped from the window of her prison
chamber, and let herself down into the garden, where she heard the
song of the nightingales. "Then caught she up her kirtle in both
hands, behind and before, and flitted over the dew that lay deep on
the grass, and fled out of the garden, and the daisy flowers bending
below her tread seemed dark against her feet, so white was the
maiden." Can't you see her stealing with those "feet of ivory,"
like Bombyca's, down the dark side of the silent moonlit streets of
Beaucaire?
Then she came where Aucassin was lamenting in his cell, and she
whispered to him how she was fleeing for her life. And he answered
that without her he must die; and then this foolish pair, in the
very mouth of peril, must needs begin a war of words as to which
loved the other best!
"Nay, fair sweet friend," saith Aucassin, "it may not be that thou
lovest me more than I love thee. Woman may not love man as man
loves woman, for a woman's love lies no deeper than in the glance of
her eye, and the blossom of her breast, and her foot's tip-toe; but
man's love is in his heart planted, whence never can it issue forth
and pass away."
So while they speak
"In debate as birds are,
Hawk on bough,"
comes the kind sentinel to warn them of a danger. And Nicolette
flees, and leaps into the fosse, and thence escapes into a great
forest and lonely. In the morning she met shepherds merry over
their meat, and bade them tell Aucassin to hunt in that forest,
where he should find a deer whereof one glance would cure him of his
malady. The shepherds are happy, laughing people, who half mock
Nicolette, and quite mock Aucassin, when he comes that way. But at
first they took Nicolette for a fee, such a beauty shone so brightly
from her, and lit up all the forest. Aucassin they banter; and
indeed the free talk of the peasants to their lord's son in that
feudal age sounds curiously, and may well make us reconsider our
notions of early feudalism.
But Aucassin learns at least that Nicolette is in the wood, and he
rides at adventure after her, till the thorns have ruined his silken
surcoat, and the blood, dripping from his torn body, makes a visible
track in the grass. So, as he wept, he met a monstrous man of the
wood, that asked him why he lamented. And he said he was sorrowing
for a lily-white hound that he had lost. Then the wild man mocked
him, and told his own tale. He was in that estate which Achilles,
among the ghosts, preferred to all the kingship of the dead outworn.
He was hind and hireling to a villein, and he had lost one of the
villein's oxen. For that he dared not go into the town, where a
prison awaited him. Moreover, they had dragged the very bed from
under his old mother, to pay the price of the ox, and she lay on
straw; and at that the woodman wept.
A curious touch, is it not, of pity for the people? The old poet is
serious for one moment. "Compare," he says, "the sorrows of
sentiment, of ladies and lovers, praised in song, with the sorrows
of the poor, with troubles that are real and not of the heart!"
Even Aucassin the lovelorn feels it, and gives the hind money to pay
for his ox, and so riding on comes to a lodge that Nicolette has
built with blossoms and boughs. And Aucassin crept in and looked
through a gap in the fragrant walls of the lodge, and saw the stars
in heaven, and one that was brighter than the rest.
Does one not feel it, the cool of that old summer night, the sweet
smell of broken boughs and trodden grass and deep dew, and the
shining of the star?
"Star that I from far behold
That the moon draws to her fold,
Nicolette with thee doth dwell,
My sweet love with locks of gold,"
sings Aucassin. "And when Nicolette heard Aucassin, right so came
she unto him, and passed within the lodge, and cast her arms about
his neck and kissed and embraced him:
"Fair sweet friend, welcome be thou!"
"And thou, fair sweet love, be thou welcome!"
There the story should end, in a dream of a summer's night. But the
old minstrel did not end it so, or some one has continued his work
with a heavier hand. Aucassin rides, he cares not whither, if he
has but his love with him. And they come to a fantastic land of
burlesque, such as Pantagruel's crew touched at many a time. And
Nicolette is taken by Carthaginian pirates, and proves to be
daughter to the King of Carthage, and leaves his court and comes to
Beaucaire in the disguise of a ministrel, and "journeys end in
lovers' meeting."
That is all the tale, with its gaps, its careless passages, its
adventures that do not interest the poet. He only cares for youth,
love, spring, flowers, and the song of the birds; the rest, except
the passage about the hind, is mere "business" done casually,
because the audience expects broad jests, hard blows, misadventures,
recognitions. What lives is the touch of poetry, of longing, of
tender heart, of humorousresignation. It lives, and always must
live, "while the nature of man is the same." The poet hopes his
tale will gladden sad men. This service it did for M. Bida, he
says, in the dreadful year of 1870-71, when he translated
"Aucassin." This, too, it has done for me in days not delightful.
{6}
PLOTINUS (A.D. 200-262)
To the Lady Violet Lebas.
Dear Lady Violet,--You are discursive and desultory enough, as a
reader, to have pleased even the late Lord Iddesleigh. It was
"Aucassin and Nicolette" only a month ago, and to-day you have been
reading Lord Lytton's "Strange Story," I am sure, for you want
information about Plotinus! He was born (about A.D. 200) in Wolf-
town (Lycopolis), in Egypt, the town, you know, where the natives
might not eat wolves, poor fellows, just as the people of Thebes
might not eat sheep. Probably this prohibition caused Plotinus no
- philosophy [fi´lɔsəfi]
n.哲学；人生观 (初中英语单词) - singer [´siŋə] n.歌手，演唱者 (初中英语单词)
- violet [´vaiələt] n.&a.紫罗兰(的)；紫色 (初中英语单词)
- poetry [´pəuitri] n.诗；诗意 (初中英语单词)
- painter [´peintə] n.画家；(油)漆工 (初中英语单词)
- captive [´kæptiv] n.俘虏；捕获物 (初中英语单词)
- beloved [bi´lʌvd] a.为....所爱的 n.爱人 (初中英语单词)
- sympathy [´simpəθi] n.同情，怜悯 (初中英语单词)
- absurd [əb´sə:d] a.荒谬的，可笑的 (初中英语单词)
- twilight [´twailait] n.黎明；黄昏 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- blossom [´blɔsəm] n.花；开花期 vi.开花 (初中英语单词)
- debate [di´beit] n.&v.讨论，辩论 (初中英语单词)
- thence [ðens] ad.从那里；因此 (初中英语单词)
- lonely [´ləunli] a.孤独的；无人烟的 (初中英语单词)
- curiously [´kjuəriəsli] ad.好奇地；稀奇古怪地 (初中英语单词)
- estate [i´steit] n.财产；庄园；等级 (初中英语单词)
- moreover [mɔ:´rəuvə] ad.再者，此外，而且 (初中英语单词)
- welcome [´welkəm] a.受欢迎的；可喜的 (初中英语单词)
- disguise [dis´gaiz] vt.假装；隐瞒 n.伪装 (初中英语单词)
- careless [´keəlis] a.粗心的；草率的 (初中英语单词)
- audience [´ɔ:diəns] n.听众；观众；接见 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- prohibition [,prəuhi´biʃən] n.禁止；禁令；禁酒 (初中英语单词)
- enthusiastic [inθju:zi´æstik] a.热情的，热心的 (高中英语单词)
- singular [´siŋgjulə] a.单一的；非凡的 (高中英语单词)
- alternate [ɔ:l´tə:nit, ´ɔ:ltə:neit] a.交替的 v.轮流 (高中英语单词)
- apparently [ə´pærəntli] ad.显然，表面上地 (高中英语单词)
- minstrel [´minstrəl] n.吟游诗人；音乐家 (高中英语单词)
- silken [´silkən] a.丝制的；柔软光滑的 (高中英语单词)
- knight [nait] n.骑士；爵士 (高中英语单词)
- mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
- pilgrim [´pilgrim] n.旅行者；香客 (高中英语单词)
- sentinel [´sentinəl] n.哨兵；看守人 (高中英语单词)
- monstrous [´mɔnstrəs] a.怪异的；庞大的 (高中英语单词)
- fragrant [´freigrənt] a.芳香的，芬芳的 (高中英语单词)
- fantastic [fæn´tæstik] a.奇异的；荒谬的 (高中英语单词)
- longing [´lɔŋiŋ] n.&a.渴望(的) (高中英语单词)
- resignation [,rezig´neiʃən] n.辞职(书)；放弃；顺从 (高中英语单词)
- elderly [´eldəli] a. 较老的，年长的 (英语四级单词)
- poplar [´pɔplə] n.白杨；杨木 (英语四级单词)
- chateau [´ʃætəu] n.城堡；公馆，邸宅 (英语四级单词)
- excellence [´eksələns] n.优秀；杰出；优点 (英语四级单词)
- whence [wens] ad.从何处；从那里 (英语四级单词)
- whereof [weər´ɔv] ad.关于什么；关于那事 (英语四级单词)
- humorous [´hju:mərəs] a.富于幽默的，诙谐的 (英语四级单词)
- nameless [´neimlis] a.无名字的；无名声的 (英语六级单词)
- blameless [´bleimlis] a.无可责难的 (英语六级单词)
- whereon [weər´ɔn] ad.在什么上面；因此 (英语六级单词)
- knightly [´naitli] a.&ad.骑士般的(地) (英语六级单词)
- moonlit [´mu:n,lit] a.月光普照的 (英语六级单词)
- woodman [´wudmən] n.伐木工 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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