By 1219 Uc de Saint Circ, troubadour and scholar, had left his home in the Quercy to live in the Marca Treviziana in the north of the Veneto. Although he may have paid several visits to the Midi over the next decades, he remained active mainly in the north of Italy and was last heard of there in 1257.1
It is fair to say that no one cared much about Uc’s whereabouts until recent scholarship revealed the importance of his Italian activity. His forty-four or so songs of various genres had never struck anyone as better than stilted, and he was otherwise known only for putting his name to a few prose biographies.2 But studying the transmission of the troubadours in Italy has resulted in Uc becoming a magnetic figure to whom ever more texts can be attached and ever more achievements credited. Many if not all of what are termed vidas (lives) and razos (expositions)3 of the troubadours are now ascribed to him, he is believed to have compiled the song collection drawn on by the oldest surviving chansonnier (Da, 1254), he is in contention for most of the contents of another (H, also third quarter of the thirteenth century), and he is sometimes attributed with the authorship of the Donatz proensals of about 1240, a grammatical treatise ascribed to Uc Faidit, or “Uc in exile.”4 In short Uc de Saint Circ is now seen as almost single-handedly responsible for creating the paradigms for the written reception of the Occitan lyric in Italy and thus as the inventor of “the troubadours” as we now know them.5
This chapter is about the way quotations are used in vidas and razos— short prose biographical works that Uc inaugurated even if he did not write them all and that recount the circumstances behind the composition of songs and/or the lives of individual poets. These forms met with international success, since though the majority of chansonniers that contain them are of Italian origin, they are also found in some Iberian and Occitan manuscripts;6 they continue to thrive over time, giving rise to distinctive developments in later manuscripts such as P and N2. Uc is believed to have composed his inaugural cycle of over twenty razos for Bertran de Born’s political songs either just before or shortly after his first arrival in Italy in 1219.7 His other razos followed in the period circa 1227–30, while his vidas date to the 1220s generally. Both forms are related to Latin introductions to the lives and works of Latin authors (accessus ad auctores) that were used in grammar teaching in medieval schools, since “grammar is not simply a matter of learning how to write and speak well . . . ; it also has as its proper task the explication and study of the authors” (Thierry of Chartres).8 They are thus part of the same impulse as Raimon Vidal’s Razos de trobar and subsequent treatises to grammaticalize (or make more like Latin) the language of troubadour poetry.
Uc de Saint Circ’s treatment of this poetry nevertheless differs from Raimon Vidal’s. Abril issia is about the hunt for audiences capable of appreciating troubadour songs in performance. So fo presents local courts peopled by troubadour aficionados who trade quotations in a kind of courtly game. The Razos de trobar seems calculated to encourage such enthusiasts and refine their tastes. Raimon Vidal represents knowledge as oral and memorial rather than as bookish. Even though Uc de Saint Circ’s biographies may originally have been intended for live performance alongside songs, his context is more avowedly writerly than Raimon Vidal’s. The Donatz proensals (supposing he wrote it) is a more technical manual than those of the Vidal tradition and, once equipped with a Latin interlinear translation, could only have been satisfactorily accessed in written form. It might have been used for practical, writing-related purposes, for example, as a bilingual dictionary.9 If not under Uc de Saint Circ’s direction, at least in the same milieu, the early troubadour chansonniers evolve a complex ordinatio that acts as an archival supplement to memory. As forms of commentary, vidas and razos belong together with other core scholastic activities of copying and compiling that combine to preserve troubadour songs in writing for posterity. Moreover they overlap in interesting ways with chansonnier rubrics and indices to signpost how a manuscript’s contents are organized, with the result that their status hovers between that of text and paratext. A particularly concrete instance of this overlap is that the biographies predominantly quote the incipits of songs, the very lines most likely to feature in indices or rubrics. This chapter concentrates on incipital quotations, especially in relation to the other devices of inauguration that accompany the onset of the troubadours’ written transmission, relating them to the love of beginnings discussed in my introduction.
Although they are authentic Occitan words, vida and razo have become generic labels only in modern usage. The distinction between the two is not hard and fast, and a significant number of biographical texts are borderline cases that could belong in either (or neither) category.10
Quotations, however, do offer a way of differentiating the commonest forms of these two narrative types.11 In the edition of the prose biographies by Jean Boutière and A. H. Schutz, texts classed as razos quote at least the opening line of the song they explain, usually at the end of the narrative.12 They may additionally quote a whole skein of excerpts linking together a group of songs into a narrative cycle.13 Others, notably the razos contained in chansonnier H, embed coblas that may be shortened versions of songs we have lost (for example, that of Tibors), or may be freestanding coblas (like those in the exchanges involving Dalfi d’Alvernha). Since it is impossible to distinguish between isolated coblas and excerpted coblas, all the coblas embedded in razos are included in Appendix 1, where they account for all of the quotations from women troubadours.14
By contrast, only nine of the hundred or so texts that Boutière and Schutz label vidas contain quotation. Most are lives of prominent twelfth-century poets: Arnaut Daniel, Arnaut de Maruelh, Bernart de Ventadorn (version B, found only in the very late manuscript N2), Marcabru (version A), Peire d’Alvernha, Peire Rogier, and Raimbaut d’Aurenga (this last only with a so far unidentified quotation, likewise in N2).15 To have a vida containing quotation(s) is thus an unusual distinction for a poet. Since accessus to Ovid were more likely to incorporate quotations from the works they introduce than those to other auctores, it is seemingly on them that the vidas containing quotations are most closely modeled, implying the quasi-Ovidian status of the troubadours concerned.16 Unlike with razos, not all the quotations in vidas are incipits; they can be tornadas (Arnaut Daniel) or late stanzas (Marcabru) or indeed extracts from different troubadours (Bernart de Ventadorn, in whose vida the poets quoted are Peire d’Alvernha, Arnaut de Maruelh and Gui d’Ussel). Another formal difference is that quotations in vidas do not typically occur at the very end of the prose text but are embedded in the middle of the narrative.
Within chansonnier manuscripts, the quotations in these biographical texts can be seen as distinguishing them generically in another way. When the passage quoted is from an immediately adjacent lyric, and serves to key the prose exposition to it, we have the classic razo pattern that is standard in the thirteenth-century chansonniers I and K, and in the Bertran de Born section of F. Conversely, where a biographical text contains quotations that are not necessarily from an adjacent lyric, and that serve to introduce a selection of lyrics by an individual troubadour rather than one lyric in particular, it makes more sense to see the text as a vida. This usage is found in vidas in ABIK, and in a1, a late paper copy of an early, probably thirteenth-century chansonnier. The biography of Raimon Jordan is a vida in this sense in ABIK, even though it is classed as a razo by Boutière and Schutz.17 Conversely, what Boutière and Schutz present as the vida of Bertolome Zorzi functions as a razo in IK since it is placed between the two songs, one by Bertolome (74.10) and the other by Bonifaci Calvo (101.7), of which it quotes both incipits.18
Quotation, from this perspective, would be an indicator less of the narrative form of the prose text than of its relationship to its surroundings in the chansonnier; it draws attention to the ambiguous status of the biographies as between texts and paratexts. The difference between vidas and razos would then relate to their different function in a manuscript’s ordinatio, vidas signaling the start of major sections, razos having the lowlier role of accompanying parficular texts, though in the capacity of being themselves texts too. Only in some later, fourteenth-century manuscripts such as EPR are biographical texts found grouped together apart from songs, and thus in another relation to the codex entirely.19 The most remarkable arrangement is that of N2. Here the vidas and razos of individual poets are compiled to form biographical sequences into which are intercalated lists of incipits of the songs by the troubadour in question. The blurring between quotation, index, and rubric is here complete.
We cannot know how Uc envisaged the layout of his biographical works, or indeed if he anticipated their being incorporated into large codices, because only one chansonnier survives that dates to his lifetime and it contains no biographies.20 But we might take the format of chansonniers I and K as the best available evidence of early practice, if not of Uc’s actual intentions. These two closely related manuscripts were both copied in the Veneto in the third or fourth quarter of the thirteenth century. They are among the oldest songbooks to contain biographical texts; they preserve the largest number of them of any chansonniers; and their text of the Bertran de Born razos is now thought to be the closest to Uc’s original.21 Boutière and Schutz edit biographical texts from I wherever possible.22 In his edition of Bertran de Born, Gouiran favors the transmission of K especially. I and K are thus obvious choices for study.23
These chansonniers visibly inscribe a difference between vidas and razos. Razos are transcribed like any other text in ordinary dark ink, whereas vidas are written in red. Vidas thereby appear as a kind of expanded rubric or title, but razos are introduced by rubrics of their own. In both I and K, the Bertran de Born section begins: “from here on, those sirventes of Bertran de Born that have razos are copied, the sirventes and then the razo, one after the other” (de ci en auan son escritz del siruentez den bertran de born lo cals an la rason per qual fon faitz lo siruentes e la rason. lun apres lautre).24 In the index of K, though not of I, the incipits of razos are listed alongside those of the songs; vidas are not indexed in either manuscript. It seems that in I, and even more in K, razos have the status of texts but vidas, being part of the system for signposting texts, are paratexts.25 On the other hand the fact that the quotations in razos are sometimes copied in red makes them look like a rubric to the songs they accompany.
This interplay between quotation, rubric, and index in the IK vidas and razos draws attention to the proximity between quoting and other forms of copying. The following reflections will be guided by their common element, the incipit, and the act of symbolic inauguration and thus of the potential for change that it represents (see Introduction).
In oral performance, nearly all of the significant effects of troubadour song are clustered around endings. The rhyme scheme is borne by the ends of lines and frequently emphasized by musical settings more likely to ornament the conclusion of a phrase than its beginning. The sequence of rhyme words will often provide a key to the song’s substance, a rapid mapping of its contents, sometimes a more profound indication of its import. The final full stanza usually contains a song’s most explicit appeal to its addressee, while tornadas are the likeliest source of information about its authorship and historical audience. All this concentration of interest on endings is put into reverse by the veritable fanfare of beginnings that marks the transition to writing.
In I and K in particular, disposition, design, and color combine to front-load effects of all kinds. The opening folios of both chansonniers present long tables of incipits, which act as lists of contents for the various sections of each codex. These tables institutionalize the beginning as the principle of organization and retrieval of the volumes’ contents. The first index heading in I is typical of the wording of the others, including those in K: “From here on are written the beginnings of the songs that are in this book” (Dissi enauan son escrig li comenzamen de las cansos qui son en aquest liure). The incipits follow in ordinary ink, prefaced by the names of the troubadours in red. The promotion to quasi-technical status of the Occitan word comenzamen (beginning) is striking; the equivalent in the lists of incipits in D is the Latin inceptiones.26
Both I and K open with a large collection of cansos, putting the most prestigious genre first. Troubadours are ordered at least partly in descending order of importance; in both, the first twelve are Peire d’Alvernha, Peire Rogier, Giraut de Bornelh, Bernart de Ventadorn, Gaucelm Faidit, Peire Vidal, Arnaut de Maruelh, Perdigon, Aimeric de Peguilhan, Peirol, Folquet de Marselha, and Arnaut Daniel.27 The canso selection for each author of any distinction is prefaced by a vida copied in red ink, which thus appears as an extended form of prefatory rubric. After each vida, the enlarged initial at the start of the opening song contains an author portrait, larger in K than in I.28 Each song is prefaced by the poet’s name, in red, together with a numeral indicating its position in that section. With all this information flashed up above the start of the song there is no need to scour the tornada for clues to authorship. The poems are copied so as to fill out the two columns per page of the writing block, the ends of the verses being marked only by a discreet punctus; the rhyme scheme having become invisible, what stand out instead are the enlarged initials at the beginning of each stanza. The canso section in I and K is followed with one of dialogue poems where many of the same troubadours resurface with further marks of beginnings in the form of rubrics, new numbering, and a sprinkling of new vidas. Afterward comes the least valued genre of the three, the sirventes, where the razos for Bertran de Born appear.
The concerted privileging of beginnings in I and K is overwhelming. It is as though the first editors and scribes were aware of inaugurating a new phase in the history of troubadour song, one where beginning a song meant not beginning to sing it, as it does in countless troubadour exordia, but beginning to write it down—beginning, that is, to copy it.29 This very act of copying, of course, is profoundly transformative;30 and one of its chief sites of change is the incipit.
Incipital quotation of troubadour songs is introduced into Occitan by Raimon Vidal de Besalú in the Razos de trobar and used with increasing regularity in later grammars. As we saw in Chapter 1, one of its functions is to create an aura of authority for the grammarian, effectively promoting him to a subject supposed to know. Transposing to the vernacular the usage of the Latin schoolroom, it also helps to conjure into existence the troubadours’ “grammaticality.” Only exceptionally quoted in other lyrics (see Chapter 7), incipits are not quoted in Occitan works that stage speech. Characters in novas may argue over the meaning of an individual song, as do Matfre and his interlocutors in the Breviari d’amor, but they never identify it by its opening line, preferring periphrases such as “and he himself says in the same song.”31 Still less will they evoke a significant passage such as a cobla by means of its opening words, as happens in H (see Chapter 4). Although quotations in the novas, and to some extent the Breviari, test recognition of what is not quoted, they do not do so using the very particular synecdoche that is the incipit.
It is in the written environment of songbooks and in their commitment to writing, copying, and hence repeating, that incipital quotation thrives. The convergence between index, rubric, quotation, and copy as creatures of writing raises the specter of indefinite iterability evoked by Derrida in the essay already quoted in my introduction: “Every sign . . . can be quoted, put between quotation marks; in so doing it can break with every given context.”32 However, as Derrida continues, reiteration can be inherently transformative, “engendering,” as he puts it, “an infinity of new contexts.” Chansonnier manuscripts might be thought the ideal medium to resolve this challenge, on the assumption that these quotations are truncated forms of texts that it is the codex’s remit to provide elsewhere copied in full. A rubric consisting of an incipit may directly preface an in extenso copy. Or an effective retrieval system in the form of an index of incipits may prove the exact counterpart to the puzzle of incipital quotation, and its prospective solution. However, as pointed out in my introduction, not all incipits are expanded in the texts that contain them (notably those in the biographical sequences in chansonnier N2, and the Garin d’Apchier razo). The last sections of this chapter examine the challenge and the impetus to transformation posed by incipital quotations in the IK vidas and razos.
The Bertran de Born razos in I and K usually contain only one quotation, the incipit of the song they explicate. Often it is distinguished from the text by being copied in red ink or prefaced by an initial paraph. This makes it instantly obvious that the quotation has a different status from the surrounding prose: it represents the commentator’s object, a discourse he will explicate with discourse of his own. Whereas, as we will see, in the vidas the quotations are subsumed into the same discourse as the biographer’s, in the razos the discourse of the commentator remains distinct from that which is commentated on.
When the quotation is in red at the very end of the razo, it also looks like a rubric flashing up the incipit-as-title of the sirventes to which it relates, and this is indeed how it functions in F. This impression is misleading, however, in I and K, since both of these (alone among chansonniers) place each razo after the sirventes it comments on, not before; the incipit is the rubric not of the song following, but of the one that precedes. In light of both manuscripts’ emphasis on inauguration, I and K present the song as initiating the commentary, not the other way around; the concluding quotation operates retrospectively, challenging readers to recall what they have just read. I say “recall,” but “reconstruct” or even “reinterpret” might be more accurate since, with their understanding of the song shaped by the commentary, they may rather be supposed to recover it in an altered form. This is a clear instance where incipital quotation involves a break that may be followed by a change: after reading the razo, and then looping back to the song, its words no longer mean the same, even when repeated verbatim. In the course of this return, what Compagnon calls, by analogy with the “work of mourning,” “the work of quotation” takes effect. As a form of beginning, the incipital quotation provokes the whole song to begin again and thus to begin otherwise. To quote Saïd once more, “Beginnings inaugurate a deliberately other production of meaning” (Beginnings, 13).
Bertran’s razos situate him among the most blue-blooded and red-handed in the land, while at the same time expanding into a series of novelettes his hints at sexual imbroglios. These aspects combine in the razo to “Rassa, tan creis” (80.37), which imagines Richard Lionheart, Geoffrey of Brittany, and Alfonso of Aragon as Bertran’s rivals in his love affair with Maheut de Montaignac. In both I and K the stanza quoted from the song in the middle of the razo is copied in red, as is the final incipit. The razo to “S’abrils e fuoillas e flors” (80.38), a song quoted by Raimon Vidal in both novas discussed in Chapter 2, interprets it as another chapter in Bertran’s liaison with the same Maheut, creating a detailed scenario involving two other women to whose existence the song gives little or no clue. As Bertran’s political reflections play no part in this exposition, the razo is closer to Uc de Mataplana’s treatment of the song in So fo (where it is understood as resolving a love triangle) than to Dalfi’s in Abril issia (which recognizes its discourse as political even if it appears to misrepresent it). The razo, that is, does not so much “explain” the song as enter into contention for its interpretation. The incipit (flagged by a paraph but not a change of ink in K, and not marked at all in I) directs its readers to a quite specific reconstruction of its meaning.
The vidas in the IK canso section contribute to these codices’ general inflation of beginnings. Any troubadour worthy of consideration is afforded a vida, which, copied in red ink, appears as an extended form of introductory rubric.33 That the vidas’ presence has more to do with inaugurating a selection than with glorifying or explicating authorship as such is indicated by the fact that both codices are primarily organized by genre, not by author. Moreover, repetition of the same format to introduce all the troubadours insinuates similarity rather than difference between them, the more as the narrative pattern of each vida is quite predictable.
Four vidas among those for the first twelve troubadours in the canso section of I and K contain quotations: those of Peire d’Alvernha (two quotations), Peire Rogier, Arnaut de Maruelh, and Arnaut Daniel (one apiece).34 There is thus a noticeable concentration of quotations at the beginning of both codices, an inevitable consequence of the fact that they accord priority to the more distinguished early troubadours whose vidas are most likely to adopt what has been identified (see above) as an Ovidian model. All four troubadours dignified in this way were clerics at some stage of their careers; perhaps this education helps to qualify them for the status of poeta. Quotations in three of these four vidas are from the openings of songs. The accumulation of markers of inauguration in I and K is thus compounded, near the beginning of both codices, by the quotation of beginnings. Except for Arnaut Daniel’s, none of the vidas is followed immediately by the song(s) from which it quotes; as with the razos a pause is marked between quotation and (the copy of the) song. Moreover, Arnaut Daniel’s vida builds in a pause too, though by different means since it quotes the tornada of the song following (see Chapter 9 for discussion of this quotation).
Beginning, rupture, and change are clearly at issue in the incipit quoted in the vida to Arnaut de Maruelh. We learn that Arnaut was in love with the wife of the count of Béziers. He would read aloud to her but could not admit to authorship of his songs because he was afraid to declare his love.35
Mas si avenc c’amors lo forsa tant qu’el fetz una canson, la quals comensa:
[30.15] La franca captenensa.
Et en aquesta canson el li descobri l’amor qu’el li avia. E la comtessa no.l esquiva, ans entendet sos precs e los receput e los grazi. (Biographies, VII, 32)
But then it happened that love overwhelms him so forcefully that he composed a song which begins “The noble demeanor.” And in this song he disclosed to her the love he had for her. And the countess does not refuse him (it) but rather heeded his (its) prayers and received and welcomed them.
A copy of “La franca captenensa” follows later, coming second (I) or third (K) in the selection of Arnaut’s songs, but for now readers have only its opening line to go on, barely amplified from its appearance in the index a few folios earlier. As in the index, the phrase “una canson, la quals comensa” posits the incipit as a synecdoche for the whole; readers are challenged to recognize the song and if possible supply its contents from memory.36 In case they cannot do this, or until they reach the full copy, they have as a mysterious surrogate the interpretation marvelously performed on their behalf by the countess. The biographer does not specify what this interpretation is, saying merely that the song uncovered (descobri) what was hitherto hidden: an act of disclosure that, from the point of view of a reader equipped only with the incipit, is actually only a further act of concealment. As the countess was the original target of Arnaut’s extreme discretion, the fact that she perceives the song’s meaning, while the vida’s readers remain in the dark, colors her portrayal; the “noble” or “generous and open” (franc) character attributed to her in the incipit is enhanced by her virtuosity. Readers are maneuvered into regarding her as the “subject supposed to know” the song’s true content.
An aspect that may be transformed by the countess’s reception is the song’s second stanza, which in R. C. Johnston’s edition reads:
Ses geing e ses faillensa
vos am, e ses cor var,
al plus c’om pot pensar;
d’aitan vos puosc forsar
part vostres mandamens.
Ai! dompna cui desir,
si conoissetz ni.us par
que sia faillimens
car vos sui benvolens,
sofretz m’aquest falhir.
(Song 3, 11–20)
I love you without deceit or wrongdoing and with an unswerving heart, the most one can imagine; on this account, I am capable of forcing you beyond what you command. Ah lady whom I desire, if you recognize or if it seems to you that it is a failing in me to be so fond of you, allow me this failing.
As Johnston’s embarrassed note confesses, it is hard not to understand this stanza as Arnaut fantasizing about forcing himself sexually on his lady and asking her to condone his fantasy. The problematic line 14 containing the verb forsar (coerce, rape) is anticipated in the lead-up to the quotation in the vida. The biographer explains Arnaut’s inspiration using the same verb (“amors la forsa tan,” “love impels him”), but the force in question has become Arnaut’s compulsion to compose the song, declare his love, and so make the moment of disclosure inevitable. Disguising rape behind the persuasions of poetry may, indeed, be the biographer’s way of gesturing toward this uncharacteristically Ovidian moment in Arnaut de Maruelh’s otherwise genteel corpus. The countess’s accommodating reception could then be interpreted precisely as her condoning his violent desires—an “open and generous” reaction in the circumstances—again, perhaps as an expression of Ovidian cynicism on the biographer’s part. Alternatively, the application of the word forsa to poetic energy may just be a way of preemptively eliminating the issue of rape. This is certainly what happens when this song is quoted elsewhere: the problematic stanza consistently disappears in favor of other preoccupations (see Chapter 4). As with the razos, the separation between the vida and the poem creates room for the hesitations and suppositions generated by the incipit to transform reception of the song concerned so that, when its copy begins, it also starts afresh.
In the opening vida, the very first quotation in IK presents the incipit in its most mysterious guise. We learn of Peire d’Alvernha that
trobet ben e cantet ben, e fo lo premiers bons trobaire que fon outra mon et aquel que fez los meillors sons de vers que anc fosson faichs:
[323.15] De josta.ls breus jorns e.ls loncs sers. Canson no fetz, qe non era adoncs negus cantars appellatz cansos, mas vers. (Biographies, XXXIX, 263)
he composed and sang well, and was the first good troubadour there ever was beyond the Alps [i.e., in France], and the one who composed the best ever melodies for vers, “Alongside the short days and the long evenings.” He did not compose any cansos, because at that time no song was called a canso, but a vers.
The reader’s prospective encounter with “De josta.ls breus jorns,” the third song in the Peire d’Alverhna selection in IK, is dissimulated by the biographer’s syntax, which presents it not as a title or a quotation, still less a reminiscence of the recent index, but merely as an adverbial phrase modifying “composed the best ever melodies.” (When did he compose them? Alongside the short days and long evenings.)37 Nor is it betrayed by the scribe of either codex, who give no indication that this is a quotation. It is only the bizarreness of the phrase itself that sticks out and triggers hesitation.
When the song is eventually reached, its puzzling opening stanza develops the riddle of the incipit through a contrast between the springtime of knowledge (saber) burgeoning and bearing fruit in the poet’s head and the darkening air and thinning trees around him. We understand that, in reality, wintertime is approaching at the same time as, in his imagination, the singer is leaving it behind; the reason for the odd choice of adverbial phrase is to enable him to be “alongside” winter in both directions, both nearing and departing from it. As he enters the imaginary springtime of his song, still in the first stanza, real birds disappear in the face of the real winter:
Per que.s retrai entre.ls enois e.ls freys
lo rossignols e.l tortz e.l guays e.l picx.
(Song 12, 6–7)
And so amid the torments and the cold, the nightingale, the turtledove, the jay, and the woodpecker withdraw.
Two songbirds identified with love, nightingale and dove, are followed by the noisily imitating jay, a term liable to confusion with “popinjay” or parrot, and the woodpecker with its tuneless tapping. The song was composed in the mid-twelfth century, at a time when troubadours promoted nightingales and depreciated parrots. From Peire’s viewpoint, then, this enumeration descends from the most to the least amorous or musical of the birds, and from the least to the most mechanically repetitive. Its bathos is intended to undermine the value of the poet’s new, inner season of enlightenment; and we soon discover that the love that preoccupies him is proving equally disillusioning. As the song continues, and Peire apes—parrots—the theme of “love from afar,” he does indeed self-mockingly concede the presence, in his song, of repetitive jays or woodpeckers where we might have expected only rapturous turtledoves and spontaneous nightingales. “De josta.ls breus jorns” does, then, raise the specter of the parrots’ way, if only to deride it.
The incipit’s presence in the vida refocuses the problematic, since its context is that of a copy—that of the manuscript—which is a good deal more literal and mechanical than the recycling of poetic tropes to which Peire draws attention. The line “Alongside the short days and the long evenings,” which is both quoted and dissimulated, serves to situate Peire as “the one who composed the best ever melodies for vers.” To what extent can the troubadour as nightingale survive in the world of copying that is the chansonnier? If he can already concede that love and song are merely repetitive, what about quotation, and what about the labor of the scribe? What is the significance of calling attention at the very beginning of large and prestigious codices like I and K to the fineness of the line between composing, quoting, and simply copying? What is the impact on subjectivity of such enmeshment in repetition? Perhaps the point is precisely to underline the value of beginning, and beginning again; to point to the opportunity for freedom in the very act of repeating.
A poet who benefits from this moment of freedom is Dante. In De vulgari eloquentia (2.13), he asserts that one of his rime petrose, “Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra,” takes its form from Arnaut Daniel’s “Si.m fos Amors de ioi donar tant larga” (29.17). The assertion is doubly provocative, since in professing this implausible debt Dante dissimulates two real ones: one to Arnaut’s sestina “Lo ferm voler” (29.14), which is the formal point of departure for “Al poco giorno”; and the other to the troubadour hailed by his vida as the first great vernacular artist, whose melodies were composed “dejosta.ls breus jorns e.ls loncs sers.”38 The wintry chiaroscuro of Peire’s mysterious incipit, precisely because it is unencumbered in the vida by the rest of the song, can be reworked by Dante as he in turn explores the tug between clarity and obfuscation, between fixity and mobility, and the inescapable complicity between copying and starting afresh.