Quotation in Raimon Vidal de Besalú’s Razos de trobar and the Grammars of the Vidal Tradition
One of the remarkable features of Occitan culture is its precocious production of vernacular treatises on vernacular grammar and poetics. The earliest, the Razos de trobar by the Catalan Raimon Vidal de Besalú, dates from around the end of the twelfth century, two hundred years before anything equivalent appears in French.1 The word razos has many meanings, including “explanation,” “theme,” “speech,” “proportion,” as well as “reason”;2 but I believe we should take the reference to “reason” seriously and understand his title to mean “Rational principles of poetic composition.” Such a conjunction of razos with trobar may have struck Raimon’s contemporaries as provocative, even oxymoronic. Attributing rationality—razo—to a courtly diversion—trobar— paradoxically precipitates it to the status of an “art” in the scholastic sense of the word.3 Of the many treatises subsequently produced in Catalan-and/or Italian-speaking territories through the thirteenth and into the early fourteenth century, several are grouped by John H. Marshall in what he calls “the Vidal tradition” because of their debt to the Razos.4 In the overview of surviving treatises up to 1356 given in Appendix 3, all the entries before Dante fall within this tradition except for the Donatz proensals of Uc Faidit.
The Razos de trobar, composed so far as we know in Catalonia, is preserved in four manuscripts of which three (BCL) were copied in Italy and the fourth (H) is Catalan (Figure 1 shows a folio of L).5 The permeability that this suggests between Catalan and Italian domains is continued in the late thirteenth century by Raimon Vidal’s two principal imitators whose work I discuss in this chapter. The Italian Terramagnino da Pisa writes his Doctrina d’acort (Instruction in rhyme), preserved only in the Catalan grammatical compilation H, in Sardinia.6 Raimon’s fellow Catalan, Jofre de Foixà, composes the Regles de trobar (Rules of poetic composition) for the Catalan court of Sicily and it too is subsequently compiled in Catalan manuscripts (HR).7 Clearly, both texts and authors journeyed back and forth across the Mediterranean, the best copies of the Razos, which originated in Catalonia, being found in Italy, whereas conversely the only copies of Doctrina and the Regles are Catalan, even though they were composed in what is now Italy.8
Although early grammars of French are also associated with travel, their aim is to help nonnative French speakers transact commercial or diplomatic business in francophone territories. By contrast, the Occitan grammars transmit Occitan as a language of poetry, marshaling grammatical information with a view to enabling their readers to compose or appreciate lyric. The grammarians of the Vidal tradition concentrate almost exclusively on flexion (thus “grammaticalizing” Occitan on the model of Latin); they claim, explicitly or implicitly, that their rationale for this focus is to help their readers achieve or recognize correct rhyme (thus identifying vernacular poetry with rhyme); and in this way they create a new disciplinary hybrid of grammar-cum-poetry, which I have elsewhere called a “science of endings.”9 In addition, the Vidal grammarians resemble Latin ones in harnessing language learning to the study of the auctores, providing extracts from troubadour songs to serve as illustrations and models. It is remarkable to see the troubadours being treated like Classical poets as early as 1200.10 These quotations contribute to the grammarians’ bid to extend Occitan from a regional poetic standard to a more universal one and, by the same token, to found their innovative grammar-cum-poetry as an art.
The plan of Raimon Vidal’s Razos de trobar is broadly followed by the Doctrina d’acort and the Regles de trobar. A longish preamble distinctive to each author advances claims about the importance of Occitan and its poetry. Then comes the statement, standard in Latin grammar, that there are eight parts of speech. Coverage of these occupies most of the rest of each treatise, but is unequally proportioned. Nouns and nominal morphology take up about half the space, rather less is given to verbs, and the remainder is shared by other topics. One reason for devoting relatively more attention to nouns, as Jofre de Foixà explains, is that literary Occitan still has a case system that distinguishes nominative from other forms, whereas that of Catalan has been lost (Regles de trobar, H text, 172–86). So has that of Italian; similar instances of teaching being slanted to help Catalans and Italians avoid the pitfalls of Occitan are found elsewhere in these grammars. Nevertheless the Vidal grammarians’ heightened attention to nouns is surprising in view of the greater difficulty posed by the complex Occitan verbal system, a difficulty they acknowledge when they find errors of conjugation in the very troubadours they most promote as models for imitation by their readers.
At the beginning of the Razos de trobar, Raimon declares that his aim is to enhance appreciation of the art of trobar by discriminating between better and less good models; in turn, he encourages others to identify faults and omissions in his own text. In promoting his topic he stresses that trobar is valued and aspired to by people from all walks of life; and that the troubadours knew how, through rhyme, to render moral truths memorable:
Et tuit li mal e.l ben del mont sont mes en remembransa per trobadors. Et ia non trobares mot [ben] ni mal dig, po[s] trobaires l’a mes en rima, qe tot iorns [non sia] en remembranza, qar trobars et chantars son movemenz de totas galliardias. (Razos de trobar, B text, 27–31)
And all the good and evil things of the world are made memorable by the troubadours. And you won’t find a well-expressed or badly expressed idea that, once a troubadour has set it to rhyme, will not be remembered forever. For composition and song are what move all exceptional bravery.11
Ill-informed listeners who condone second-rate poetry are as reprehensible as the poets who produce it; by honing their linguistic sensibilities, Raimon undertakes to educate connoisseurs who will keep standards from slipping.12 The strength of Limousin as a poetic medium is that, while a “natural” vernacular (a language one is born into), it shares the structures of grammatica: “for the Limousin idiom both is acquired naturally, and expresses itself by means of case, number, gender, tense, person, and word class, as you will be able to hear if you listen properly” (B text, 83–89, “car tota la parladura de Lemosyn se parla naturalmenz et per cas et per [nombres e per] genres e per temps e per personas e per motz, aisi com poretz auzir aissi si ben o escoutas”). Inflection, Raimon continues, distinguishes what he calls “substantive” and “adjective” words from all the other word classes, which he terms “neutral” (neutras, B text, 99–103). The difference between “substantive” and “adjective,” he goes on to explain, is between words designating substances and those that predicate them:
Las paraulas adiectivas son con bons, bels, bona, bella, fortz, vils, sotils, plazens, soffrenz, am, vau, grazisc, en[e]gresisc, et cant a o qe fa o qe suffre; et son appelladas aiectivas car hom no la[s] pot portar ad entendement si sobre substantius no las geta.
Las paraulas substantivas son aisi come belezza, boneçza, cavaliers, cavals, dopna, poma, ieu, tu, mieus, tieus, sui, estau, et toutas las autras del mont qe demostron substantia visibil o non visibil; et per so an nom substantivas car demonstran substantia et sostenon las aiectivas, aisi com qi dizia rei[s] sui d’Aragon, o ieu sui rics homs. (Razos de trobar, B text, 104–12)
Adjective words are such as beautiful [m.], good, beautiful [f.], strong, cheap, subtle, pleasing, patient, I love, I go, I thank, I grow pale, and whatever possesses or acts or suffers; and they are called adjectives because they cannot be rendered intelligible unless they are “thrown upon” substantives.
Substantive words are those such as beauty, goodness, knight, horse, lady, apple, I, you, mine, yours, I am [ontic], I am [stative], and all the others in the world that show substance visible or invisible; and they are called substantives because they show substance and support adjectives, as for example if someone were to say I am the king of Aragon or I am a powerful man.
Raimon is here echoing Latin grammatical theory, which analyzed the cognitive and logical capacities of language in light of contemporary philosophical preoccupation with universals.13 He seems to be contending that the presence of inflexion in Occitan makes it not only “grammatical” in the sense of sharing Latin paradigms, but also universal in the sense of mirroring the relation of substance and predication. Substantive words convey what exists (essentia, or substance); adjective words tell us about the attributes of substance; their combination enables the formulation of intelligible claims and the advancement of rational understanding.
At the risk of crediting these borrowings from contemporary thought with more coherence than they in fact possess, we can discern the following logic to the seemingly disjointed statements in Raimon’s preamble:
The love of trobar is universal: why?
Because rhyme makes moral insights memorable.
In Limousin rhyme is inseparable from inflecting forms.
Inflecting forms manifest substance and its predicates; they enable one to form propositions through which one can achieve rational understanding.
Therefore the moral insight made memorable by rhyme is, at the same time, a form of rational understanding.
That is, poetry defined by rhyme [trobar] is an expression of reason [razo].
The idea that troubadour poetry could be a privileged distillation of reason is formulated a little more clearly in the equivalent discussion in the Doctrina d’acort. Terramagnino praises Limousin as “better than all reasoned forms of speech” (“sobre totz razonatz parlars,” 30) because “it is as though it reasons in a manner similar to good Latin” (“quays se razona / con la gramatica bona,” 33–34); mastery of all the various kinds of flexion, he promises, “holds open its pathway to speech that is reasoned with certainty” (“te lo sieu cami ubert / del parlar razonat per cert,” 49–50). The thrust of this opening passage is admirably formulated in H’s initial rubric: “the beginning of the Provençal Instruction regarding true and reasonable expression” (“començament de Doctrina provincial de vera e rahonable locucio”).
In a more ambitious preamble than Raimon Vidal’s, Jofre de Foixà similarly lends support to the view of poetic Occitan as somehow opening a pathway to rational understanding. He begins by surveying what he calls the nine causas (first causes, prerequisites) of trobar. They include agreement in number and gender, sequence of tense, rhyme, case, and the use and inflexion of articles. First among them, however, is razo, which here could mean simply “theme” but which seems, in addition, to take on the more philosophical coloring of “reason.” This is due in part to the quotation from Aimeric de Peguilhan, which precedes it, to which I return at the end of this chapter; and in part to Jofre’s reprise, at the end of his preamble, of Raimon Vidal’s account of word classes in a way that shows he has grasped the logical and cognitive implications of his model, even if he expresses them in different terms. Unlike Raimon, Jofre does not consider verbs at all in this particular discussion, but instead focuses on two categories of nomen (name/nominal form), one of which renders the category of substance, the other various forms of accident:
totes les causes qui son nomenades e han sustancia, axi com Deus, angles, reys, comtes, duchs, cavallers . . . , et d’altre motz qu’en hi a sens nombre, cove a far que aquestas coses, les quals son appellades nomen, haien alguna natura o algun acte o algun accident o alcuna causa qui lo[r e]s aiustada; aquella es axi matex appellada nomen. (Regles de trobar, H text, 218–24)
all things that are named and have substance, like God, angel, king, count, duke, knight . . . and other such words ad infinitum—all such things, which are called “names” [or “nominal forms”], need to have some nature or some act or some accident or some other thing that is added to them. And this thing is also called a name [nominal form].
This second name/nominal form must agree with the first,
car aquests nomens, segons que son accident, en la maior part no poden esser sens lo nomen primer. Per que lor coven a sseguir llur natura, car ell non han sustancia, ans los coe esser en los noms qui hansustancia—en axi co bells, bos, blanchs, e mantz d’autres, car beutatz ni bondatz ni blanquesa ni bellesa no podon esser sino en los noms qui han sustancia. (Regles de trobar, H text, 226–31)
for these names/nominal forms, insofar as they are accidents, for the most part cannot function without the first one. Therefore they must follow their own nature: for they do not have substance but must accompany names/nominal forms that do; thus it is with beautiful, good, white, and many others, for beauty or goodness or whiteness cannot exist except in names/nominal forms that have substance.
This enables Jofre to return to his favorite topic: agreement. But we can also see how recasting Raimon Vidal leads him to focus attention almost exclusively on nominal forms as those most apt to render what is rational about song: its capacity to make substance and its accidents materialize in the language of poetry. Where Jofre differs most significantly from Raimon is in detaching the study of inflexion from Latin, confident in the independence and universality of vernacular art since one no longer requires “the art of grammatica” (“la art de gramatica,” H, 6) in order to access it.
These preambles help to explain why, in the examination of the parts of speech that follows in each of these treatises, more attention is paid to nouns than verbs. Nouns map poetic substance, whereas the verbs that predicate them are subject to caution.
Following their preambles, the grammarians’ presentation of the parts of speech is illustrated with reference to the troubadours. Appendix 4 provides a breakdown of which passages are quoted at what point in each treatise. The majority of quotations, it shows, divide between discussion of two major categories, nominal forms (including adjectives) and verbs. By grouping adjectives together with nouns, the grammarians retreat from the subject-predicate distinctions drawn in their preambles. But their progression from nouns to verbs nevertheless evokes sentence formation, or, from a logician’s standpoint, the passage from term to proposition.
The kinship between the treatises is apparent in the way they illustrate the same grammatical forms, sometimes indeed with the same words. Yet it is remarkable how little overlap there is in their choice of excerpts. All three authors like to extract a succession of quotations from the same song or the same troubadour, but each privileges different sources. Raimon Vidal favors Bernart de Ventadorn and Giraut de Bornelh, taking almost half his quotations from them. Terramagnino da Pisa most often names Folquet de Marselha (though not always, as it happens, correctly),14 and Jofre quotes most from Gaucelm Faidit and Aimeric de Peguilhan. In their quotations from poets other than these favorites, the effort at diversity is also palpable. The three grammarians further introduce unattributed examples that may be their own compositions, as if to insinuate themselves into the company of distinguished troubadours. For each of them, independent knowledge of Occitan poetry and a personal relationship to it are ways of staking out their individual authority. Conversely, their reliance on quotations has the odd effect of turning the troubadour corpus into a compendium of grammatical lore, a body of knowledge to be tapped. This lore is entirely divorced from music.15 Quotations in all three treatises are introduced by forms of dire, which, although not so narrow in meaning as English “say,” does nothing to indicate that these texts are (or once were) songs (although Terramagnino, author of the only rhymed treatise, has the interesting eccentricity of referring to the troubadours’ language as chant, “song”).
Raimon Vidal pioneers two different forms of quotation that are taken up in the later grammars.16 One is the self-contained example, usually one or two lines long, chosen to illustrate a point of grammar. In the older B redaction this practice is justified by the claim that nominal forms are best acquired from troubadours familiar with the parladura (“spoken idiom”), the poetic language that Raimon elsewhere calls Limousin:
Et per so qe ancaras n’aias maior entendement, vos en trobarai senblan dels trobadors, aisi con o an menat sobre.l nominatiu cas singular et sobre.l nominatiu plural et sobre.l vocatiu singular et sobre.l plural, per so car aqest qatre cas son plus de leu per entendre a cels qe an la parladura. . . . En Bernartz del Ventedor dieis:
Bien s’escai [a] dompna ardimenz. (Razos de trobar, B text, 172–85)
And so you can have a better grasp of it I’ll find models among the troubadours of how they used the nominative singular case and the nominative plural and the vocative singular and plural, because these four cases are easier to grasp for those who know the spoken idiom. . . . Sir Bernart de Ventadorn said: “Boldness befits a lady well.”
Bernart’s line (70.1, 33) is quoted “materially,” as contemporary grammarians termed it,17 not for its meaning but for its formal expression, in this instance the correct form of the nominative singular noun ardimenz. In the Regles de trobar, Jofre reinforces the quotations’ exemplary value by introducing them with the formula “per eximpli,” as when he says that masculine nominative forms are lengthened in the singular and shortened in the plural by addition or removal of flexional –s: “for example, as Bernart de Ventadorn said, ‘Now advise me lords’ ” (“e per eximpli axi com dix Bernat de Ventadorn: ‘Ar me conselatz, senyor,’ ” Regles de trobar, H text, 384–86; 70.6, 1). The grammatical form addressed by each quotation is identified in Appendix 4.
In the section of Raimon Vidal’s treatise devoted to verbs a second form of quotation surfaces. Before reproducing an example “materially,” he may situate it by providing the incipit (opening line) of the song in which it appears. The first instance occurs when he criticizes Bernart de Ventadorn, previously hailed for his instinctive mastery of nouns, for saying (re)trai when he should have said (re)trac (Appendix 4, RaT, #14–#17; 70.25 and 70.7):
Pero En B. del Ventedor mes la terza persona per prima en dos cantars. L’uns ditz Ara can vei la fuella ios dels arbres cazer, et l’autres ditz Era non vei luzer soleill. Del primier cantar fon li falla en la cobla qe ditz:
Escontra.l dampnatge
e la pena q’ieu trai.
. . . En l’autre cantar fon li falla en la cobla qe ditz:
ia ma dompna no.s meravelh . . .
contra la foudat q’i[eu] retrai. (Razos de trobar, B text, 360–70)
But Sir Bernart de Ventadorn put the third person for the first in two songs. One goes, “Now when I see the leaf / fall from the trees” and the other goes, “Now I cannot see the sun shine.” In the first song, the error was in the stanza that says: “In the face of the harm / and suffering I endure.” . . . In the other song the error was in the stanza that says: “Let my lady not be astonished . . . at the crazy things I say.”
In such cases quotation of the incipit names the song as well as reproducing part of it; it has no exemplary function in itself, but enables the reader to contextualize the example that follows.
There are striking differences in the distribution both of quotations and of types of quotation between the sections of these treatises devoted to nominal forms and those that deal with verbs. The grammarians take more pains in the former than the latter. In its nominal section the B text of the Razos contains about a dozen quotations, the CL redaction slightly more.18 None of the same quotations reappears among the twenty-four with the same remit in the Doctrina d’acort and only one is reused among the five in the Regles. With one exception, Raimon Vidal selects examples where the form in question is at the rhyme, and all Jofre de Foixà’s examples follow suit, thereby tacitly confirming that the need to study inflexion in the first place stems from the fact that Occitan lyric depends for its structure on rhyme (the forms in bold in Appendix 4 are rhyme words). Terramagnino da Pisa initially adopts the different strategy of choosing extracts that helpfully show the same word, amic, variously inflected for number and case, though not at the rhyme;19 but his subsequent nominal examples are mostly rhyme words.
Raimon’s preference for the Limousin poets Bernart de Ventadorn and Giraut de Bornelh chimes with his claim that speakers from this region instinctively know best how to combine grammar and rhyme. Jofre’s quotations in his noun section are all from troubadours referred to at some point in the Razos de trobar, but Terramagnino’s examples display a real effort at innovation; he quotes from twenty songs and fifteen poets including several (such as Rigaut de Berbezilh) who are not quoted at all by Raimon Vidal, and others who are unknown or unidentified (Andrianz del Palais, Uc). Terramagnino also prefaces quotations with expressions of admiration for the troubadour concerned, for example, “As Andrian, a good and true troubadour, said” (200–201, “Con dis Andrianz del Palais. / Trobayre bos e verays”), a trait found in Raimon Vidal’s novas but not in his grammar.
When Raimon Vidal moves on to verbs, he provides the incipits of four of the eight songs excerpted in the B text.20 Two are the Bernart de Ventadorn songs quoted above; the others are Giraut de Borneil’s “Gen m’aten” (242.34) and Folquet de Marselha’s “Ai! quan gen vens et ab quan pauc d’afan” (155.3). Distinguishing between incipits and examples shows that Raimon’s verb section contains markedly fewer illustrations than the section on nouns, and this asymmetry is reproduced by Jofre de Foixà, who provides only two verbal examples to five nominal ones. Terramagnino da Pisa’s zeal for quotation continues to outstrip both of the others, but once examples are distinguished from contextualizing incipits it becomes clear that he too provides many fewer illustrations for verbs than nouns. Like Jofre de Foixà, Terramagnino seems less invested in this part of his treatise than in the earlier section on nominal morphology. Whereas his nominal quotations were markedly original, here he is satisfied with quoting the same songs and even the same lines as Raimon.21
The most striking and unexpected development from Raimon’s treatment of nouns to that of verbs is that now almost every example alerts his readers to alleged errors in the great Limousin troubadours—the very ones who had figured so positively in the previous section.22 The forms that he stigmatizes are all found at the rhyme; most involve forms of traire and creire (see Figure 1). Whereas Jofre parts company with Raimon Vidal on this point and urges acceptance of troubadour usage, Terramagnino continues the purism of his model, proliferating instances of supposedly incorrect forms of creire just as, in the previous section, he had accumulated examples of amic. In this section, Terramagnino also follows Raimon in placing examples at the rhyme. By focusing on rhyme words, Raimon and Terramagnino are simultaneously stigmatizing the poetic and the linguistic competence of the authors they quote. The Doctrina d’acort’s expressions of admiration now ring distinctly hollow: “Mas En Ffolquetz, trobayre fis, / I fallic en son chan e dis . . .” (H text, 645–66, “But Sir Folquet, true poet, erred in his song and said . . .”).
Figure 1. Quotations in Raimon Vidal’s Razos de trobar, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M 831 (grammar manuscript L), fo. 6r. This figure contains quotations corresponding with Appendix 4, ##18–24, which illustrate errors of conjugation committed by famous troubadours. In the first section: incipit and commentary on the form cre in Giraut de Bornelh 242.34 (“Gen m’aten”). In the second section: the quotations are from Peirol 366.21 (“Mout m’entremis de chantar voluntiers”) and Bernart de Ventadorn 70.43 (“Can vei la lauzeta mover”), with attention again directed to the form cre for crei. The final section (beginning with the enlarged P) repeats the process with reference to the conjugation of the verb traïr in Folquet de Marselha 155.3 (“Ai! quan gen vens et ab quan pauc d’afan”). Note how the scribe adapts the punctus, used following the convention of chansonniers to mark the ends of metrical lines, also to mark potential linguistically correct rhyme words. The text in this image corresponds with J. H. Marshall’s edition of the CL text, lines 354–84.
I see the practice of providing the incipits of many of the songs that they criticize as furnishing these two grammarians with the authority for their critique. Used as a title on the model of Latin works, the incipit connotes learnedness (see Introduction). Their mastery of the entire song implicitly justifies the grammarians’ presumption in correcting the great troubadours—the very ones whom they themselves are promoting to the status of auctores. (Conversely, perhaps it is because Jofre de Foixà does not try to correct troubadour usage that he does not use incipits to contextualize any of his quotations; or maybe he is just less eager than his predecessors to assume the trappings of scholasticism, since part of his aim is to free the study of the vernacular from the yoke of grammatica.)23
A strange consequence of Raimon’s and Terramagnino’s use of quotations is the impression they convey that troubadour poetry is distinguished by well-formed nouns and adjectives but marred by badly conjugated verbs. Whereas the good nouns feature in the context only of single lines or small groups of lines, the bad verbs are introduced by the incipits as belonging within whole poems; this wider frame presents verbs as marking the passage from noun to sentence, or from topic to theme (razo). The words exemplified in the two sets of quotations linger in the mind to create bizarre combinations. The nominal examples highlight core elements of troubadour vocabulary; thus Raimon Vidal’s excerpts foreground positive adjectives like genz (beautiful), pros (worthy), presanz (estimable), gentil (noble), and nouns that include ardimenz (boldness), cavaliers (knight), senhor (lords), and amors (love); Terramagnino da Pisa’s highlighted words include amic (friend, lover), domna (lady), valor (worth), sabor (relish, savor), and chansos (song)—not to mention razon;24 and Jofre contributes douçor (sweetness) and merces (favor, mercy) to the mix. Such quotations convey the sense of touring obligatory landmarks in the ideological landscape of cortezia. But these values appear compromised, in the Razos and Doctrina d’acort, as a result of the failures implied by the vocabulary enshrined in the verbal quotations. Here things are experienced (tray), recounted (retray), believed (cre), reneged on (recre) or betrayed (trahit), in all cases ineptly, and mostly in the first person. The combination of amic (friend, declined correctly) with cre (believe, conjugated wrongly) is especially insistent in Terramagnino. The substance of troubadour poetry, we feel, is beyond reproach; but its articulation and its predication are wanting. If all good and bad things are memorialized by troubadour rhymes, as the introduction to the Razos asserts, then the bad (or at least the erroneous) seem to have the last word.
Allusions to philosophical grammar in the Vidal tradition may represent less a thoroughgoing conceptualization of the Occitan language than an intellectual veneer adopted to attract amateur enthusiasts. Nevertheless, the grammars’ association of rhyme with reason offers the possibility that vernacular poetry could encapsulate understanding. The pessimistic trajectory from nouns to verbs of the Razos de trobar and the Doctrina d’acort implies that this aspiration is yet to be fulfilled. Illustrations in these treatises are equivocal since some are to be followed and others eschewed.
By contrast, Jofre de Foixà’s presentation of trobar is more sanguine. He also provides the sole example in the Vidal tradition of quotation functioning as a genuine means of understanding: the stanza from Aimeric de Peguilhan’s “Mangtas vetz sui enqueritz” (10.34) quoted at the beginning of the Regles de trobar. Neither a grammatical illustration nor a contextualizing incipit, this stanza is repeated for the sake of its content; that is, it introduces a third, justificatory form of quotation into the grammars. Jofre has just stated that he is writing so that laymen ignorant of grammatica can recognize and acquire the skill (saber) of writing poetry. He continues, adapting Raimon’s prefatory exhortation to his readers to identify faults and omissions in the Razos (in the text and translation below, as throughout this book, italics are used to highlight an overlap between quotation and context):
E si alcuna causa de repreniment hi ha ques eu non entenda, a mi platz fort que la pusquen esmenar segons rayso; car N’Aymerich de Peguila m’o ensenya en una sua canço dient en axi:
Si eu en soy desmentitz
c’aysso no sia veritatz,
no n’er hom per mi blasmatz
si per ver m’o contreditz;
entre.ls pros, e.ls meus mermans,
Si.m pot venser d’ayso segons rayso,
qu’eu no say ges tot lo sen Salamo. (Regles de trobar, H text, 15–26)
And if there is in it any grounds for criticism that I am unaware of, I’d be very glad for them to amend it in accordance with reason; for Sir Aimeric de Peguilhan taught me this in one of his songs, saying in this manner: “If I am found not to be speaking the truth, I won’t blame anyone who truthfully opposes what I say. On the contrary, I see his skills as great among the worthy and my own as diminishing, if he can do this better than me, in accordance with reason; for I do not possess all the wisdom of Solomon.”
This engaging modesty device, in which Jofre admits to learning from Aimeric who confesses to knowing less than Solomon and both submit to higher reason, uses repeated phraseology and syntax (in italics above) in order to fuse Jofre’s thinking with that of the quoted text.25 The effect of the fusion is effectively to retract the declaration of modesty in the very act of making it, since by insinuating his community of outlook with Aimeric, and placing both barely a peg lower than Solomon, Jofre seems rather to assert his own authority. The vaunted reason and wisdom of the quotation serve the grammarian’s claim to professional knowledge. They also affirm the value as knowledge of the poetry he expounds. When Jofre passes immediately afterward to a consideration of razo, its usual sense of “theme” cannot help but be affected by the reiterated segon rayso of the preceding lines and assume the meaning of “reason” too. Here, quotation exemplifies and contributes to the intellectual substance of the treatise, confirming the capacity of trobar to transmit razo.
Although such substantive use of quotation is not found in the Razos de trobar, it is seemingly inaugurated by Raimon Vidal in the verse novas he is thought to have composed shortly after. Indeed, the novas quote six of the same lyrics—though not the same passages—as the Razos.26 Three are songs that Raimon had criticized from a grammatical standpoint, but he can nevertheless draw wisdom from them. Despite Giraut’s faulty conjugation of creire in “Gen m’aten,” Raimon quotes from it to support his argument:
E car hom per esgardamen
val may ades n’estatz membratz
per esfortir lur bon captenh:
“Ni no tenh a dan si.m destrenh
amors ni.m deschay
c’una vetz n’auray
man bon esdevenh.”
(Abril issia, 1545–52)
And since through reflection a man is worth more, remember what Sir Giraut said to people of refinement in order to strengthen their good conduct: “Nor do I see it as a setback if Love torments me or brings me low because one day I shall get many a good outcome from it all.”
The narrator’s emphasis on improvement through intellectual effort is more clearly expressed in his own than in Giraut’s words, but this does not mean that the song has not provoked and justified this reflection. As an articulation of rhyme with reason, song can serve as a tool of thought.
When Raimon Vidal claims that poetry makes understanding memorable, then, he is not claiming that its only role is to perpetuate the past. Memory enables understanding to progress, so that the past can be improved on in the future. As we will see in Chapter 2, in Abril issia Raimon Vidal both remembers and misremembers Giraut de Bornelh as a means for developing his own thought. His grammar, by the associations it forges between rhyme and reason, lays the groundwork for the substantive use of quotation found in later works. His treatise, and those of the tradition it inspired, consist only partly in documenting the achievements of the classical troubadours. They also project a future for Catalan- or Italian-authored Occitan poetry in which troubadour lyric will both continue and begin anew.
