Wine, Women, and Song Part 3

Occasionally, the sensuous fervour a.s.sumes a pa.s.sionate intensity:[23]--

"Nocte c.u.m ea si dormiero, Si sua labra semel suxero, Mortem subire, placenter obire, vitamque finire, Libens potero."

Very rarely there is a strong desire expressed for fidelity, as in a beautiful lyric of absence, which I hope to give translated in full in my 17th Section.

But the end to be attained is always such as is summed up in these brief words placed upon a girl's lips:[24]--

"Dulcissime, Totam tibi subdo me."

And the motto of both s.e.xes is this:[25]--

"Quicquid agant alii, Juvenes amemus."

It may be added, in conclusion, that the sweethearts of our students seem to have been mostly girls of the working and rustic cla.s.ses, sometimes women of bad fame, rarely married women. In no case that has come beneath my notice is there any hint that one of them aspired to such amours with n.o.ble ladies as distinguished the Troubadours. A democratic tone, a tone of the proletariate, is rather strangely blent with the display of learning, and with the more than common literary skill apparent in their work.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: _Carm. Bur._, p. 174.]

[Footnote 16: Ibid., p. 149, translated below in Section xvii.]

[Footnote 17: Ibid., p. 130.]

[Footnote 18: _Carm. Bur._, p. 200.]

[Footnote 19: Ibid., p. 231.]

[Footnote 20: Ibid., p. 121.]

[Footnote 21: Ibid., p. 135.]

[Footnote 22: _Carm. Bur._, p. 145.]

[Footnote 23: Ibid., p. 230.]

XI.

The drinking-songs are equally spontaneous and fresh. Anacreon pales before the brilliancy of the Archipoeta when wine is in his veins, and the fountain of the Bacchic chant swells with gushes of strongly emphasised bold double rhymes, each throbbing like a man's firm stroke upon the strings of lyres. A fine audacity breathes through the praises of the wine-G.o.d, sometimes rising to lyric rapture, sometimes sinking to parody and innuendo, but always carrying the bard on rolling wheels along the paths of song. The reality of the inspiration is indubitable. These Baccha.n.a.lian choruses have been indited in the tavern, with a crowd of topers round the poet, with the rattle of the dice-box ringing in his ears, and with the facile maidens of his volatile amours draining the wine-cup at his elbow.

Wine is celebrated as the source of pleasure in social life, provocative of love, parent of poetry:[26]--

"Bacchus forte superans Pectora virorum In amorem concitat Animos eorum.

"Bacchus saepe visitans Mulierum genus Facit eas subditas Tibi, O tu Venus!"

From his temple, the tavern, water-drinkers and fastidious persons are peremptorily warned:[27]--

"Qui potare non potestis, Ite procul ab his festis; Non est hic locus modestis: Devitantur plus quam pestis."

The tavern is loved better than the church, and a bowl of wine than the sacramental chalice:[28]--

"Magis quam ecclesiam Diligo tabernam."

"Mihi sapit dulcius Vinum de taberna, Quam quod aqua miscuit Praesulis pincerna."

As in the love-songs, so in these drinking-songs we find no lack of mythological allusions. Nor are the grammatical quibbles, which might also have been indicated as a defect of the erotic poetry, conspicuous by absence. But both alike are impotent to break the spell of evident sincerity. We discount them as belonging to the euphuism of a certain epoch, and are rather surprised than otherwise that they should not be more apparent. The real and serious defect of Goliardic literature is not affectation, but something very different, which I shall try to indicate in the last Section of this treatise. Venus and Helen, Liber and Lyaeus, are but the current coin of poetic diction common to the whole student cla.s.s. These Olympian deities merge without a note of discord into the dim background of a medieval pothouse or the sylvan shades of some ephemeral amour, leaving the realism of natural appet.i.te in either case untouched.

It is by no means the thin and conventional sprinkling of cla.s.sical erudition which makes these poems of the Goliardi pagan, and reminds the student of Renaissance art. Conversely, the scholastic plays on words which they contain do not stamp them out as medieval. Both of these qualities are _rococo_ and superficial rather than essential and distinctive in their style. After making due allowances for either element of oddity, a true connoisseur will gratefully appreciate the spontaneous note of enjoyment, the disengagement from ties and duties imposed by temporal respectability, the frank animalism, which connects these vivid hymns to Bacchus and Venus with past Aristophanes and future Rabelais. They celebrate the eternal presence of mirth-making powers in hearts of men, apart from time and place and varying dogmas which do not concern deities of Nature.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: _Carm. Bur._, p. 133.]

[Footnote 25: Ibid., p. 251.]

[Footnote 26: _Carm. Bur._, p. 238.]

[Footnote 27: Ibid., p. 240.]

[Footnote 28: Wright's _Walter Mapes_, p. xlv.; _Carm. Bur._, p. 69.]

XII.

The time has now come for me to introduce my reader to the versions I have made from the songs of Wandering Students. I must remind him that, while the majority of these translations aim at literal exactness and close imitation of the originals in rhyme and structure, others are more paraphrastic. It has always been my creed that a good translation should resemble a plaster-cast; the English being _plaque_ upon the original, so as to reproduce its exact form, although it cannot convey the effects of bronze or marble, which belong to the material of the work of art. But this method has not always seemed to me the most desirable for rendering poems, an eminent quality of which is facility and spontaneity. In order to obtain that quality in our language, the form has occasionally to be sacrificed.

What Coleridge has reported to have said of Southey may be applied to a translator. He too "is in some sort like an elegant setter of jewels; the stones are not his own: he gives them all the advantage of his art, but not their native brilliancy." I feel even more than this when I attempt translation, and reflect that, unlike the jeweller, it is my doom to reduce the l.u.s.tre of the gems I handle, even if I do not subst.i.tute paste and pebbles. Yet I am frequently enticed to repeat experiments, which afterwards I regard in the light of failures. What allures me first is the pleasure of pa.s.sing into that intimate familiarity with art which only a copyist or a translator enjoys. I am next impelled by the desire to fix the attention of readers on things which I admire, and which are possibly beyond their scope of view.

Lastly comes that _ignis fatuus_ of the hope, for ever renewed, if also for ever disappointed, that some addition may be made in this way to the wealth of English poetry. A few exquisite pieces in Latin literature, the Catullian _Ille mi par_, for example, a few in our own, such as Jonson's _Drink to me only with thine eyes_, are translations. Possibly the miracle of such poetic trans.m.u.tation may be repeated for me; possibly an English song may come to birth by my means also. With this hope in view, the translator is strongly tempted to engraft upon his versions elegances in the spirit of his native language, or to use the motives of the original for improvisations in his own manner. I must plead guilty to having here and there yielded to this temptation, as may appear upon comparison of my English with the Latin. All translation is a compromise; and while being conscious of having to sacrifice much, the translator finds himself often seeking to add something as a makeweight.

I shall divide my specimens into nine Sections. The first will include those which deal with the Order of Wandering Students in general, winding up with the _Confession_ ascribed to Golias, the father of the family. The second, third, fourth, and fifth are closely connected, since they contain spring-songs, pastorals, descriptive poems touching upon love, and erotic lyrics. The sixth Section will be devoted to a few songs of exile, doubt, and sorrow. In the seventh we shall reach anacreontics on the theme of wine, pa.s.sing in the eighth to parodies and comic pieces. Four or five serious compositions will close the list in the ninth Section.

At the end of the book I mean to print a table containing detailed references to the originals of the songs I have chosen for translation, together with an index of the princ.i.p.al works that have been published on this subject.

XIII.

The first song which concerns the Order of Wandering Students in general has been attributed to the Archipoeta or head-bard of the guild. Whoever this poet may have been, it is to him that we owe the _Confession of Golias_, by far the most spirited composition of the whole Goliardic species. I do not think the style of the poem on the Order, though it belongs to a good period, justifies our ascribing it to so inspired and genial a lyrist.

The argument runs as follows. Just as commission was given to the Apostles to go forth and preach in the whole world, so have the Wandering Students a vocation to travel, and to test the hearts of men wherever they may sojourn. A burlesque turn is given to this function of the _Vagi_. Yet their consciousness of a satiric mission, their willingness to pose as critics of society from the independent vantage-ground of vagabondage, seems seriously hinted at.