In the opening lines of Abril issi’ e mays intrava (April was ending and May beginning) its first-person narrator, whom we take to be Raimon Vidal, is alone in the square of Besalú when a young joglar approaches. The young man wants his older colleague’s advice because, he complains, today’s courts are so much less receptive to troubadour poetry than those of the past. He launches into a rather rambling anecdote about the hospitality he enjoyed at the court of the poet and patron Count Dalfi d’Alvernha (ca. 1160–1235), into which is set another tale, told to him by Dalfi, illustrating how values have declined. The narrator then advises his young companion to take heart. Many courts are still welcoming, and an astute performer who knows how to adapt to his audience can extract rewards even from the ill-mannered or ignorant; he too recalls happy days spent with a patron, Alfonso II of Aragon (ruled 1162–96). All the speakers pepper their discourse with quotations from the troubadours, star billing going to Arnaut de Maruelh, Giraut de Bornelh, and Raimon de Miraval (see Appendix 5). The excerpts found in the joglar’s exchanges with Dalfi are mainly about merit finding its due reward; those in the narrator’s recommendations are more about discerning where merit is and having the wit to succeed even when it is lacking.1
All this instruction makes the text more didactic than narrative, perhaps conveying above all its narrator’s own credentials as a teacher.2 As author of the Razos de trobar, Raimon Vidal was, after all, an expert on troubadour poetry. His expertise shines through in another verse novas that contains even more quotations, So fo e.l tems c’om era gais (It was at that time of merriment). More novella-like than Abril issia, and probably composed slightly later but within the same time frame of circa 1199–1209, So fo is harder to summarize because, whereas Abril issia is transmitted only by troubadour chansonnier R, So fo appears in several manuscripts in a variety of longer and shorter formats.3 It opens, like Abril issia, in the first person. The narrator recalls an anecdote from the Limousin about a knight spurned by the domna (married lady) he has been faithfully courting. The knight turns for advice to a donzela (unmarried lady), who at first urges him to persevere and even intercedes with the domna on his behalf. But when the domna responds unfavorably, the donzela herself begins to experience interest in the knight and eventually he declares his love for her. Shortly afterward the donzela marries; now a domna, she and the knight become exemplary courtly lovers. The first domna, when she sees the knight’s reputation prosper in this way, repents her hard-heartedness and asks him back, but he refuses. The version of the story found in chansonniers L and N ends at this point. In R, the story continues with the first domna confronting the second (formerly the donzela) and demanding that she give up the knight. Again she meets with refusal. The two ladies’ competition for the knight’s affections is referred via a joglar to the Catalan poet and patron Uc de Mataplana (ruled 1197–1213); the narrator is present when the joglar arrives and so witnesses what ensues. Uc’s verdict is that the second domna should relinquish her claim to the knight and, even if he chooses not to return to the first domna, dismiss him from her affections because he will have shown himself unforgiving and fickle in love. This ending is in turn reversed by some 180 additional lines found only in manuscript a2, which present the second domna, when she hears Uc’s verdict, refusing to obey. As in Abril issia, only more so, the narrator and all of the characters quote the troubadours at every turn, in this case primarily to justify their views on the proper way to behave in love. Raimon de Miraval is the most quoted troubadour, followed by Bernart de Ventadorn, Folquet de Marselha, and Giraut de Bornelh (see Appendix 5).
This more complex transmission of So fo has led Hugh Field, Raimon’s editor, to hypothesize three stages of composition, whereby the text found in LN would be by Raimon de Miraval and only the continuation in R by Raimon Vidal.4 However, it is characteristic of Italian manuscripts like L and N to abbreviate or excerpt Occitan narratives that are preserved in full in the Occitan source R; the transmission of the Novas del papagai presents a similar picture (see Chapter 6).5 Since I do not find Field’s arguments persuasive, this chapter will be about the texts of both novas as they appear in R.6
Both Abril issia and So fo are composed in octosyllabic rhyming couplets and use the same techniques of quotation, which will be subsequently imitated by Matfre Ermengau in the Breviari (Chapter 8). The speaker claims to remember (membrar), or invites his listeners to remember, the words of a famous troubadour, identified by name and praised for his wisdom;7 the excerpt is then introduced by the verb dire with no suggestion that it might be sung;8 quotations seem chosen for their content; and they are assimilated metrically as far as possible to the surrounding text. For example, at the beginning of Abril issia, the first sight of the little joglar reminds the narrator of lines from Giraut de Bornelh’s “Per solatz reveillar” (242.55, 41–44):
e membret mi qu’en Guiraut dis
que tan se fes a totz prezar:
“Eu vi per cortz anar
us joglaretz petitz,
gen caussatz e vestitz,
sol per donas lauzar.”
E si.m fos natural de far
aisi.m volgra estar tostemps.
(Abril issia, 94–101)
And I recalled what my lord Giraut said who won so much esteem from all: “I saw groups of little joglars 9 going from court to court elegantly shod and clothed, for the sole purpose of praising ladies.” And I would have liked to have stayed standing like that forever, so naturally it came to me to do so.
Giraut is cited as an authority worth remembering on account of his universally acclaimed merit. His lines are shorter than Raimon Vidal’s but their rhyme scheme is absorbed into his, the first line of the quotation forming a pair with the line preceding it, and the last line of the quotation with the line following it, so that the onward march of couplets continues without a halt. The transcription of the novas in R reflects this compromise between marking the distinctness of quotations and integrating them to the surrounding verse. Their beginnings are marked by capitals and their ends by paraphs. Throughout Abril issia the quoted extracts are set out line by line exactly like the rest of the text. In So fo, however, this layout is used for only fourteen of the thirty-nine quotations. The remainder are set out as prose paragraphs with a punctus marking the ends of verses, like stanzas in the older chansonniers. Initially, this gives the text a more hybrid appearance. However, from line 373 (the last column on fo. i3ir), the scribe stops setting the initial letter of the octosyllabic couplets apart from the rest of the column; the lyric passages immediately blend in with the rest of the text, even when they are copied as prose paragraphs, because both lyric and narrative occupy the full width of the column (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Quotations in Raimon Vidal’s So fo e.l tems c’om era gais in Paris, BnF, français 22543 (chansonnier R), folio 131r. Bottom right-hand section of the page, showing how the scribe comes to integrate the layout of the lyric quotations to that of the narrative verse frame. In the inner (left-hand) columns, the narrative is set out line by line with the initial letter offset from the rest of the line, whereas the quotations are copied according to lyric conventions—as prose paragraphs occupying the full column width, with a punctus at the end of each verse; the start of the lyric excerpts is marked by an enlarged initial, whereas paraphs mark the resumption of the narrative and progression within it. In the outermost (right-hand) column, however, the scribe stops offsetting the initial letter of the narrative verse, and adjusts the width of the lyric quotations to better match the surrounding narrative. Compare at the bottom of the inmost (left-hand) column the long quotation from Folquet de Marselh 155.1 (So fo, ed. Field, lines 248–54; Appendix 5, #7), beginning “Per q’er pechat, Amors,” with that from Bernart de Ventadorn 70.43 (433–40; #14) that starts “Pos ab midonç no.m pot valer” on the far right column. The last quotation in this column, Gui d’Ussel 194.19 (455–62; #15), though it starts with an enlarged initial T (“Tant cant hom fal”), is interrupted two lines later by a paraph like the narrative. The distinction between quoted and quoting text has become almost invisible. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Like the quotations in the Razos de trobar, those in both novas are, I shall argue, remembered in order to school connoisseurship and ensure the future of the lyric, even at the cost of breaking with the past.10 The relation between memory and connoisseurship proves surprisingly complex, in ways already hinted by the Razos, since it is often necessary to remember more (or remember differently) than what is seemingly remembered by those who quote. It can be difficult to know what there is to know, and by whom; this creates a web of supposition to negotiate. By examining quotations from three troubadour songs, one each by Giraut de Bornelh, Raimon de Miraval, and Bertran de Born, it will become apparent that the novas both memorialize existing troubadour poetry and disavow it, thereby subtly shifting connoisseurship from Occitania to Raimon’s native Catalonia.
The first quotation in Abril issia refers, as we have just seen, to joglars going from court to court praising ladies. It is from stanza V of “Per solatz reveillar,” the remainder of which presents the poet wondering why this no longer happens:
Ar no.n auzem parlar
tant es lor pretz delitz!
don es lo tortz issitz
d’ellas malrazonar?—
Non sai!—de cals, d’ellas o dels amans?—
Eu dic de toz, que.l pretz n’a trait l’enianz.
(Song 74, 45–50)
No words of praise do we hear now, so completely is their reputation in ruins! Who is to be blamed for speaking ill of them?—I know not!—Whose is the blame, theirs or their lovers’?—I call them all guilty, for it is deceitfulness that has stolen away their fair renown.11
These lines—the lines not quoted by Raimon Vidal—develop the song’s central theme of lament over social decline. Stanza I opens with Giraut complaining that he has tried hard to rouse solatz (social enjoyment) from its torpor but finds his efforts defeated and his distress worsening. Stanzas II and III deplore the degeneration of chivalry; stanzas IV and V follow these complaints with others about the falling standards of court life, specifically the way minstrels are no longer welcomed as they once were. In stanza VI, Giraut fumes at his fallen fortunes in a world where a random anecdote about Bremar’s goose is as well received as “a fine song about splendid deeds and the march of time and the years” (59–60, “us bons chanz / dels rics affars e dels temps e dels anz”): the kind of song, presumably, that he himself would sing.
Although the narrator of Abril issia has elected not to quote any of these stanzas of “Per solatz,” retaining only the relatively trivial description of the minstrels’ appearance, its stanzas I–VI are the germ of the young joglar’s entire harangue on the decline of courts. Stanza VI, additionally, anticipates the narrator’s solution. Much as he deplores the passing of better days, Giraut discreetly insinuates that their values live on in himself. He even, in stanza VII, concedes the need to compromise with the times; his lady should avoid giving him grounds for complaint since words of censure, from a man prepared to praise less than estimable men when the need arises, would be extremely damaging to her.12 Giraut’s oblique presentation of himself as the answer to social decline and his pragmatic bid for success in spite of it furnish uncanny parallels with the recommendations of the novas’ narrator. In short, the parts of “Per solatz” that the narrator omits to quote are the blueprint for the whole of Abril issia, but the only clue to this function is its quotation of four innocuous-seeming lines. By framing the whole novas as an unacknowledged reprise of such a well-known song, Raimon Vidal concedes that complaints about decadence were always already inscribed in the troubadour tradition, and remedies for survival proposed. The young joglar’s jejune handwringing over the good old days is just another instance of nostalgia for a past that maybe never was. Far from sympathizing with his young colleague’s complaints, the canny older joglar promotes his own agenda for success.13
If Giraut is the key to the novas, what does the novas tell us about quotation? Raimon Vidal praises the great troubadour, but the only borrowing he acknowledges is the trivial one of the joglars’ portrait: the tip of an iceberg of unacknowledged debt. Has the substance of Giraut’s song been so thoroughly memorized as to become fused with Raimon Vidal’s own thoughts? Or has Raimon Vidal, disavowing his source, set out to displace Giraut as the speaker of these thoughts? Or again, is he testing his audience to see if they have remembered what he appears to have forgotten? Such questions point to knowledge as a set of complex intersubjective negotiations in which hypotheses and suppositions are exchanged about what is known by whom.
These negotiations, playful in Abril issia, take on a harder tone in So fo, a tough school in connoisseurship especially for the ladies of Limousin.
The characters in So fo e.l tems constantly quote troubadour songs as though trying to work out how to feel and act in conformity with some ideal model. In the middle of the text, when the donzela has become a married domna, is still loved by the knight, and they are hailed as the perfect couple, their diligence seems to have paid dividends:
Mot lo tenon tug per cortes
lur fag donas et cavaier,
et dizon que anc tan entier
no.l viron ni tan benanan.
(So fo, R text, 560–63)
Ladies and knights all thought their conduct extremely courtly and said they had never before seen any so perfect or so fitting.
When the first domna returns to the scene, however, their ideal identities unravel. Quotation fails to provide the disputants with a solution and they seek recourse instead to a variant of the “court of love.” Uc’s judgment, judiciously supported by more snippets of troubadour song, puts the clock back to the starting point of the novas by reuniting the knight with the first domna and recommending patience and fidelity in love, just as the donzela had done at the outset. The whole of the central part of the novas, despite having been guided by the wit and wisdom of the troubadours, appears to have gone down a series of blind alleys. Perhaps the authority of the songs is ambiguous. But perhaps, since most of the quotations are placed in the mouths of women, female ears are less comprehending of the troubadours’ teaching than they might be; perhaps even, since this part of the tale is set in Limousin, its courtly class generally lacks appreciation of the poetry for which the region is famous.
The troubadours certainly lend themselves to amusingly diverse interpretations. Bernart de Ventadorn initially provides a model for the knight’s love for the first lady (Appendix 5, So fo quotation #1); and then her grounds for fending him off (#5); and then his reason for despairing of her (#14); and finally his justification for transferring his courtship to the donzela (#19). Even more than Bernart de Ventadorn, Raimon de Miraval is used to justify every twist of the plot. He is quoted both to endorse the knight when he perseveres with the first domna (#4), and by the donzela to woo him over to her instead (#17). Subsequently he is quoted on both sides in the spat between the knight and the first domna as to whether he was or was not justified in leaving her (##21, 23, 25, 26). The lady then quotes him while she is trying to persuade the donzela to let the knight come back to her (##27, 30); and he makes a final appearance in Uc de Mataplana’s verdict (#38).
Just as “Per solatz” is both present and absent in Abril issia, so Raimon de Miraval, Raimon Vidal’s contemporary, is the troubadour whose didacticism is simultaneously exploited and masked in So fo. “Tals vai mon chan enqueren” (406.42) is quoted by both the knight and the first domna at the point where the domna, seeing the knight’s reputation soar, regrets her earlier indifference and tries to win him back (Appendix 5, So fo quotations 25 and 26). The knight defends himself against the lady’s reproaches by countering that she dismissed him, he did not abandon her. In response, the domna claims she was putting his patience to the test and he failed; she backs her claim with stanza V:
Mas si fossetz tan ensenhatz
ni tan cortes ni tans vassalhs,
—aisi com dis en Miravalhs—
degratz entendre [joy]14 valen:
“Greu pot aver jauzimen
en dreg d’amor drut biays
qui er se det et huey s’estrays.
Mas qui ben ser et aten
e sap selar la folia,
sos pros en ai’ e.ls enbria,
ans que.ls tortz sidons aplanh,
aquel es d’amor companh.”
(So fo, 690–701)
But if, as my lord of Miraval said, you had been well-bred, courtly, and valiant enough, then you could have expected a worthy joy: “An inconstant lover who gives himself one day and takes himself off the next is hardly going to gain enjoyment in love; but one who is good at serving and being attentive and can keep his impulsiveness under control, may he get what he wants and more, even before his lady softens her injustice toward him, for such a man is love’s companion.”
The knight is unconcerned by her intended rebuke because he is now committed to the donzela. So he sarcastically compliments the domna on her choice of author and quotes another stanza (stanza IV) from the same song:
Avetz trobat reyre cosselh,
c’anc mentre.us fuy en apparelh
aital vos no.m volgues amar;
per qu’aiso vos no.m vuelh tornar,
ans faray so que.l meteys dis
(en Miravalhs!), que tan fon fis
e francx et de bon chauzimen:
“pus midons m’a en coven
c’autr’ amic non am ni bays,
ja Dieu no.m sia verays
si ja per nulh’ autra.l men.”
(So fo, 705–15)
You have found precious counsel, given that while I was in a similar situation vis-à-vis yourself, you chose not to love me! That is why I don’t want to come back to you. Instead I will do what he himself—my lord Miraval—said, who was so true, noble, and discerning: “Since my lady has promised not to love or kiss another lover, may God not be true to me if I betray her with any other woman.”
This marks his definitive rupture with the lady. Each, then, is using Miraval’s song to contrary effect: the lady to recommend patient loyalty to her, the knight to congratulate himself on having found love elsewhere.
Such a split in the song’s reception is warned of in its opening lines:
Tals vai mon chan enqueren
per so qu’en s’emble plus guays
que d’autre part s’irays
quan au mos digz e.ls enten;
tals n’i a per gelozia,
e drut que no segon via
que a bon’ amor s’atanh
conosc que meinhs son estranh.
(Song 23, 1–8)
There are some who seek out my song intending to go away cheered by it but instead leave upset when they hear and pay attention to my words. In some cases the problem is their jealousy; in others, they are not following the right path to good love, and these I would see as less deviant.
According to circumstances, then, Miraval’s song will strike its audience differently; only those with their hearts properly attuned to bon’ amor will rejoice at his words. In the next stanza he identifies ladies in particular as needing his instruction (11–12). Stanza III then warns them not to be swayed from sound judgment of potential lovers:
Que ja per chastiamen
neguna son miels non lays;
pus conoys quals es savays
o quals es pros issamen,
quals es fis ni quals gualia
e s’adoncs so miels non tria,
Dieu li do so don se planh,
dona, pus sa valor franh.
(Song 23, 17–24)
For let no domna leave what is best as a result of the admonitions of others. Once she recognizes what is base and, likewise, what is meritorious, which man is sincere and which deceiving, then if she doesn’t choose what is best may God reward her in a way she will regret.
These three stanzas show that, as with the quotation from Giraut’s “Per solatz” in Abril issia, what is omitted from Raimon de Miraval’s song is as important for So fo as what is quoted. In the initial context, when the domna introduces the song in a bid to win back the knight but is, instead, crushed by him, the omissions provide a rationale for her failure (indeed, she seems unaware that the very lines she quotes in her defense censure women’s waywardness [So fo, 700]). The domna may be counted among those who, the song predicts, will suffer distress from hearing it, since her jealousy toward the donzela makes her one of the worst listeners of all (stanza I). As a woman she needs teaching anyway (stanza II); and so she is punished for not recognizing or rewarding a true admirer (stanza III).
Uc’s judgment will suggest that the knight and the second domna too have strayed from what stanza I calls the “right path.” Uc rules that a lover should not fail in constancy to his lady (compare stanza V, quoted by the first domna); and that since the knight did not merit the second domna’s fidelity she must give him up. The novas directs Miraval’s ensenhamen (teaching) against the second domna even more than the first, since she ends up with nothing. As a woman she has been a donzela, a wife, and the knight’s lady, but none of these female identities secures her lasting success. Although she controls the major developments of the plot as she switches from (1) adviser to the knight to (2) intercessor with the first lady to (3) seducer of the knight and finally (4) rival to the first lady, all her initiatives are undone and her intentions frustrated. Since she justifies each of her successive roles with quotations from the troubadours, her understanding of their poetry is shown up as defective. The crucial opening stanzas of Raimon de Miraval’s “Tals vai,” which predict the song’s misinterpretation and denounce women listeners in particular, may be omitted from the text of the novas, but they are resoundingly present in the verdicts it reaches.15
As with the quotation from “Per solatz” in Abril issia, then, the quotations from “Tals vai” in So fo are part of Raimon Vidal’s wider strategy to exploit the knowledge in and of the unquoted portions of Miraval’s song. In both novas, sentiments and quotations are caught up in an intricate web of intersubjective interactions in the course of which knowledge is remembered, forgotten, affirmed, disavowed, assimilated, displaced, produced, or found wanting. In the case of Giraut’s “Per solatz,” the process broadly affirms the narrator’s credentials, and thereby Raimon Vidal’s. In the case of Raimon de Miraval’s “Tals vai,” it seems rather to censure fictional characters, primarily female consumers of troubadour lyric from the Limousin who, for want of memory and connoisseurship, contribute to poetry’s decline. My final example concerns a listener of a different order: the patron.16
Uc de Mataplana’s judgment in the R version of So fo has been interpreted by Field as grounds for seeing the novas as resulting from two stages of composition, one by Miraval and the other by Raimon Vidal. So fo seems to be related to a group of satirical exchanges between Uc de Mataplana and Raimon de Miraval, which begins when Uc criticizes the troubadour for being unfaithful to his wife, and Miraval responds in a contrafactum (formal imitation), accusing Uc of being “totz moilleratz” (totally married) and too Catalan to interfere (!).17 Field rightly emphasizes that Uc upholds fidelity to one’s original partner in both the poetic exchange and the novas. It is less clear why he would conclude that the composition of So fo echoes that of the poetic exchanges, with Miraval responsible for the core of both. Miraval’s situation in the songs is moreover not analogous to that of the knight in the novas, since the knight is not married. I believe Uc’s verdict owes more to “S’abrils e fuoillas e flors” (80.38) than to his own exchange with Raimon de Miraval, and that the important role of Bertran’s song in both novas confirms the hand of Raimon Vidal. In each, the song is quoted by a prominent patron and amateur poet, Dalfi d’Alvernha in Abril issia and Uc de Mataplana in So fo. And like the other examples discussed here, elements of the song persist in both novas outside the words that are actually quoted. This combination of absence and presence provokes questions about the location of knowledge that are particularly acute for figures whose position would appear ideally to constitute them as “subjects supposed to know” (see Introduction for this term).
In Abril issia, four lines of Bertran’s “S’abrils e fuoillas e flors” (Gouiran edition, Song 8, 85–88)18 are placed in the mouth of Dalfi whose words are then transmitted by the joglar to the older poet who subsequently, in his role of narrator, recalls them to the audience. (This constant filtering of knowledge through a variety of personal and temporal perspectives is typical of the novas; their multiple embeddings confirm the indissolubility of knowledge from memory but leave the effectiveness of its transmission in doubt.) Dalfi quotes the lines as he discourses, by way of an anecdote about a Moorish sultan, on the good old days when merit was rewarded:
Be fazian so qu’en Bertrans
del Born dis en .i. sirventes
a far ricx homes pus cortes
e pus francx et pus donadors,
que sian ses tortz faire, elitz,
e adretz e francx e chauzitz:
“Ad aiso fon pretz establitz
c’om guerrejes, e so fortmens
et a caresma et avens
e fezes soudadiers manens.”
(Abril issia, 462–71)
They did indeed what Bertran de Born said in one of his sirventes to make powerful men more courtly, noble, and liberal with their gifts, so that without committing injustice they would be outstanding, skillful, noble, and discerning: “For this purpose valor was established: that one should make war, and do so vigorously, in both Lent and Advent, and make mercenaries rich.”
Field’s observation that the lines Dalfi quotes are much less relevant to his position than words and expressions from earlier in the same song, is borne out by a comparison between this passage from the novas and Bertran’s entire stanza. Although Dalfi quotes only its last four lines, the sense of the preceding lines together with much of their phraseology have saturated his speech. The words and phrases in italics are the same in both Dalfi’s pronouncements and Bertran’s stanza:
Ric home, vuelh qu’ab amors
sapchon cavalliers aver
e que.ls sapchon retener
ab befag et ab honors
e c’om los truep ses tort faire,
e larcx e bos donadors,
qu’aissi fon pretz establitz
qu’om guerreyes ab torneys
e Quaresmes et Avens
fesson soudadiers manens.
(Song 8, 78–88)
I wish that powerful men knew how to have knights through giving them their love, and how to keep them through giving them lands and benefits, so that we could find them noble, courtly, and discerning, generous and liberal with their gifts, without committing injustice, for this is how merit was established: by making war in battles, while [even] Lent and Advent made mercenaries rich.
They confirm that Raimon Vidal does not necessarily quote those parts of his source texts that have most informed his own; he both remembers and forgets the knowledge they contain, both attributing it to an auctor and retaining it for himself.
Dalfi’s quotation also poses textual problems, as witness the divergences between Bertran’s lines as quoted in Abril issia, 468–71 and in Gérard Gouiran’s edition. In Gouiran, Bertran is advocating that magnates should inspire fidelity in their mercenaries first by their valor in war, and then by continuing to pay them even when the Peace of God prevents them from fighting. Gouiran is skeptical about the meaning imputed to Bertran in Abril issia: “Raimon Vidal’s text,” he says, “would have us believe that Bertran is calling on the rics omes to make war in Lent and Advent, that is to say, during the periods proscribed by the Peace of God.”19 Is the quotation placed in the mouth of Dalfi d’Alvernha a deliberate distortion of the original text?20 If so, Bertran’s voice is buried so deep in the embedded layers of Abril issia that it is difficult to assess the significance of the distortion. Dalfi quotes Bertran to the joglar, the joglar repeats Dalfi’s words to the narrator, and then he narrates the joglar’s anecdote to us. Are we to surmise that Dalfi misunderstood Bertran and thought he was recommending warmongering despite the Peace of God, or that the joglar misrepresents Dalfi, or that the older poet misheard what the joglar said? Has a copyist intervened in this flawed chain of transmission to set the record wrong? The point, in any case, is that in the intersubjective maze of this text, the seemingly remembered lines of Bertran’s text may well misrepresent his likely meaning whereas the ostensibly forgotten but in fact repeated ones, which form the aura of the quotation, more truly convey his thought, since they call on powerful men to act generously and eschew injustice. In other words, what seems to have been remembered contains an element of forgetting, whereas what seems to have been forgotten persists as a true memory. There is ample scope for misprision in the interaction between joglar and patron.
Bertran’s song is cited again at the end of the R version of So fo e.l tems. This scene is a mise en abyme of the entire work since the ladies’ dealings with the knight are referred to Uc, in the narrator’s presence, by a joglar who describes his account as a novas (1141). After deliberating, Uc determines that the donzela behaved well in taking care of the knight but the time now has come for her to give him up.
Et enquer may li membrara
si bona via vol seguir,
so qu’en Bertran dis al partir
de lay on fon gent aculhitz:
“E sel que manten faizitz,
per honor de si meteys,
e.n fa bons acordamens,
absol los afizamens.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
a dona qu’en pren autr’ amic;
per qu.l prec e.l cosselh e dic:
absolva.l cavayer ades.
(So fo, R text, 1403–14)
And now she [the former donzela] will remember, if she wishes to follow the right path, what Bertran [de Born] said when departing from the place where he had been so well received: “And she who supports exiles for the sake of her own honor enables good reconciliations to be reached and annuls the oaths that bound them.” [It appears a deficit and a lack of sense] in a lady who takes another person’s amic; so let her release the knight at once.
As with Dalfi’s quotation from this same song, though for different reasons, Uc’s meaning is somewhat opaque; again we need to look at the excerpt in context to grasp its meaning. Here, in stanza II of “S’abrils,” Bertran assures his lady that, although he has been received by another, he is not unfaithful; he affirms his devotion and leaves his temporary home. The lines “and she who supports an exile . . .” refer to the way a second lady, who took him in when he was estranged (“exiled”) from his first lady, now releases him from any commitment so that he can be reconciled with the first lady. (This stanza forms the basis of the subsequent razo to the song, which is discussed in Chapter 3.)
Uc’s verdict that the knight should leave the former donzela and be reconciled with the first domna matches Bertran’s return to his original lady.22 Correspondingly the knight’s situation in the novas resembles Bertran’s tug of love between two domnas more than it does the scenario of the Uc-Miraval exchanges in which Miraval is advised to return to the wife he had abandoned. Indeed, strategically positioned as the final quotation in So fo, “S’abrils” could be seen as resuming the whole R version of this novas, much as Giraut de Bornelh’s “Per solatz,” the inaugural quotation in Abril issia, is the matrix from which that whole novas emerges. And as with “Per solatz,” the excerpt of Bertran de Born that is quoted by Uc demands excellent recall of the rest of the song if its significance is to be appreciated. This example confirms that what is at stake in Raimon Vidal’s use of quotations is not just what knowledge is transmitted by the troubadours, but what knowledge other people—and not just those who quote them—have of their poems.
The reason why Uc’s quotation is opaque is therefore unlike the difficulty surrounding Dalfi’s quotation of the same poem. Dalfi is associated (though perhaps not by his own fault) with a likely misquotation that requires independent knowledge of the song to rectify. Uc relies on independent knowledge of the song to confirm that the use he has made of it, though allusive, is spot on. Dalfi and the young joglar combine to get Bertran wrong, whereas Raimon Vidal and Uc together demonstrate their expertise in getting him right. As poet-patrons, Dalfi and Uc may both be supposed to be connoisseurs of troubadour lyrics, but Uc emerges with greater credit. Raimon Vidal endorses the present and its ongoing transactions with troubadour culture. The role of memory is not to preserve but to improve upon the potentially flawed knowledge of the past. More especially, Raimon Vidal confirms Catalan connoisseurship and the sense that, in the more discerning Catalan courts, the future of the Occitan lyric is in safe hands.
