Epic and Romance Part 19

Our wills and fates do so contrary run, Our thoughts are ours, the ends none of our own.

This moral axiom is understood by the French author, and in an imaginative, not a didactic way, though his imagination is not strong enough to make much of it.

In this free, rapid, and unforced narrative, that nothing might be wanting of the humanities of the French heroic poetry, there is added the lament for Begon, by his brother and his wife. Garin's lament is what the French epic can show in comparison with the famous lament for Lancelot at the end of the _Mort d'Arthur_:--

Ha! sire Begues, li Loherains a dit Frans chevaliers, corajeus et hardis!

Fel et angris contre vos anemis Et dols et simples a trestoz vos amis!

Tant mar i fustes, biaus freres, biaus amis!

Here the advantage is with the English romantic author, who has command of a more subtle and various eloquence. On the other hand, the scene of the grief of the d.u.c.h.ess Beatrice, when Begon is brought to his own land, and his wife and his sons come out to meet him, shows a different point of view from romance altogether, and a different dramatic sense. The whole scene of the conversation between Beatrice and Garin is written with a steady hand; it needs no commentary to bring out the pathos or the dramatic truth of the consolation offered by Garin.

She falls fainting, she cannot help herself; and when she awakens her lamenting is redoubled. She mourns over her sons, Hernaudin and Gerin: "Children, you are orphans; dead is he that begot you, dead is he that was your stay!"--"Peace, madame," said Garin the Duke, "this is a foolish speech and a craven. You, for the sake of the land that is in your keeping, for your lineage and your lordly friends--some gentle knight will take you to wife and cherish you; but it falls to me to have long sorrow. The more I have of silver and fine gold, the more will be my grief and vexation of spirit. Hernaudin and Gerin are my nephews; it will be mine to suffer many a war for them, to watch late, and to rise up early."--"Thank you, uncle,"

said Hernaudin: "Lord! why have I not a little habergeon of my own? I would help you against your enemies!" The Duke hears him, and takes him in his arms and kisses the child.

"By G.o.d, fair nephew, you are stout and brave, and like my brother in face and mouth, the rich Duke, on whom G.o.d have mercy!" When this was said, they go to bury the Duke in the chapel beyond Belin; the pilgrims see it to this day, as they come back from Galicia, from St. James.[74]

[Footnote 74: One of the frequent morals of French epic (repeated also by French romance) is the vanity of overmuch sorrow for the dead.

[Greek: alla chre ton men katathaptein hos ke thanesin nelea thymon echontas, ep' emati dakrysantas.]

(Odysseus speaking) _Il._ xix. 228.

"Laissiez ester," li quens Guillaumes dit; "Tout avenra ce que doit avenir; Li mort as mors, li vif voissent as vis; Duel sor dolor et joie sor jor Ja nus frans hons nel devroit maintenir."

Les cors enportent, les out en terre mis.

_Garin_, i. p. 262.]

_Roland_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, and _Garin le Loherain_ represent three kinds of French heroic poetry. _Roland_ is the more purely heroic kind, in which the interest is concentrated on the pa.s.sion of the hero, and the hero is glorified by every possible means of patriotism, religion, and the traditional ethics of battle, with the scenery and the accompaniments all chosen so as to bring him into relief and give him an ideal or symbolical value, like that of the statues of the G.o.ds. _Raoul_ and _Garin_, contrasted with _Roland_, are two varieties of another species; namely, of the heroic poetry which (like the _Odyssey_ and the Icelandic stories) represents the common life of an heroic age, without employing the ideal motives of great causes, religious or patriotic, and without giving to the personages any great representative or symbolical import. The subjects of _Raoul_ and _Garin_ belong to the same order. The difference between them is that the author of the first is only half awake to the chances offered by his theme. The theme is well chosen, not disabled, like so many romantic plots, by an inherent fallacy of ethics or imagination; a story that shapes itself naturally, if the author has the wit to see it. The author of _Raoul de Cambrai_, unhappily, has "no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man," and leaves his work enc.u.mbered with his dulness of perception; an evidence of the fertility of the heroic age in good subjects, and of the incompetence of some of the artists.

_Garin_, on the other hand, shows how the common subject-matter might be worked up by a man of intelligence, rather discursive than imaginative, but alive to the meaning of his story, and before everything a continuous narrator, with the gift of natural sequence in his adventures. He relates as if he were following the course of events in his own memory, with simplicity and lucidity, qualities which were not beyond the compa.s.s of the old French verse and diction.

He does not stop to elaborate his characters; he takes them perhaps too easily. But his lightness of spirit saves him from the untruth of _Raoul de Cambrai_; and while his ethics are the commonplaces of the heroic age, these commonplaces are not mere formulas or cant; they are vividly realised.

There is no need to multiply examples in order to prove the capacity of French epic for the same kind of subjects as those of the Sagas; that is, for the representation of strenuous and unruly life in a comprehensive and liberal narrative, n.o.ble in spirit and not much hampered by conventional n.o.bility or dignity.

_Roland_ is the great achievement of French epic, and there are other poems, also, not far removed from the severity of _Roland_ and inspired by the same patriotic and religious ardour. But the poem of _Garin of Lorraine_ (which begins with the defence of France against the infidels, but very soon pa.s.ses to the business of the great feud--its proper theme), though it is lacking in the political motives, not to speak of the symbolical imagination of _Roland_, is significant in another way, because though much later in date, though written at a time when Romance was prevalent, it is both archaic in its subject and also comprehensive in its treatment. It has something like the freedom of movement and the ease which in the Icelandic Sagas go along with similar antique subjects. The French epic poetry is not all of it made sublime by the ideas of _Roland_; there is still scope for the free representation of life in different moods, with character as the dominant interest.

It should not be forgotten that the French epic has room for comedy, not merely in the shape of "comic relief," though that unhappily is sometimes favoured by the _chansons de geste_, and by the romances as well, but in the "humours" inseparable from all large and unpedantic fiction.

A good deal of credit on this account may be claimed for Galopin, the reckless humorist of the party of Garin of Lorraine, and something rather less for Rigaut the Villain Unwashed, another of Garin's friends. This latter appears to be one of the same family as Hreidar the Simple, in the Saga of Harald Hardrada; a figure of popular comedy, one of the lubbers who turn out something different from their promise. Clumsy strength and good-nature make one of the most elementary compounds, and may easily be misused (as in _Rainouart_) where the author has few scruples and no dramatic consistency. Galopin is a more singular humorist, a ribald and a prodigal, yet of gentle birth, and capable of good service when he can be got away from the tavern.

There are several pa.s.sages in the _chansons de geste_ where, as with _Rainouart_, the fun is of a grotesque and gigantic kind, like the fun to be got out of the giants in the Northern mythology, and the trolls in the Northern popular tales. The heathen champion Corsolt in the _Coronemenz Loos_ makes good comedy of this sort, when he accosts the Pope: "Little man! why is your head shaved?" and explains to him his objection to the Pope's religion: "You are not well advised to talk to me of G.o.d: he has done me more wrong than any other man in the world,"

and so on.[75]

[Footnote 75:

Respont li reis: "N'ies pas bien enseigniez, Qui devant mei oses de Deu plaidier; C'est l'om el mont qui plus m'a fait irier: Mon pere ocist une foldre del ciel: Tot i fu ars, ne li pot l'en aidier.

Quant Deus l'ot mort, si fist que enseigniez; El ciel monta, ca ne voit repairier; Ge nel poeie sivre ne enchalcier, Mais de ses omes me sui ge puis vengiez; De cels qui furent leve et baptisie Ai fait destruire plus de trente miliers, Ardeir en feu et en eve neier; Quant ge la sus ne puis Deu guerreier, Nul de ses omes ne vueil ca jus laissier, Et mei et Deu n'avons mais que plaidier: Meie est la terre et siens sera li ciels."

_l.c._, l. 522.

The last verse expresses the same sentiment as the answer of the Emperor Henry when he was told to beware of G.o.d's vengeance: "Celum celi Domino, terram autem dedit filiis hominum" (Otton. Frising.

_Gesta Frid._ i. 11).]

Also, in a less exaggerated way, there is some appreciation of the humour to be found in the contrast between the churl and the knight, and their different points of view; as in the pa.s.sage of the _Charroi de Nismes_ where William of Orange questions the countryman about the condition of the city under its Saracen masters, and is answered with information about the city tolls and the price of bread.[76] It must be admitted, however, that this slight pa.s.sage of comedy is far outdone by the conversation in the romance of _Auca.s.sin and Nicolette_, between Auca.s.sin and the countryman, where the author of that story seems to get altogether beyond the conventions of his own time into the region of Chaucer, or even somewhere near the forest of Arden. The comedy of the _chansons de geste_ is easily satisfied with plain and robust practical jokes. Yet it counts for something in the picture, and it might be possible, in a detailed criticism of the epics, to distinguish between the comic incidents that have an artistic value and intention, and those that are due merely to the rudeness of those common minstrels who are accused (by their rivals in epic poetry) of corrupting and debasing the texts.

[Footnote 76:

Li cuens Guillaumes li comenca a dire: --Diva, vilain, par la loi dont tu vives Fus-tu a Nymes, la fort cite garnie?

--Ol, voir, sire, le paaige me quistrent; Ge fui trop poures, si nel poi baillier mie.

Il me lesserent por mes enfanz qu'il virent.

--Di moi, vilain, des estres de la vile.

Et cil respont:--Ce vos sai-ge bien dire Por un denier .ii. granz pains i veismes; La deneree vaut .iii. en autre vile: Moult par est bone, se puis n'est empirie.

--Fox, dist Guillaume, ce ne demant-je mie, Mes des paiens chevaliers de la vile, Del rei Otrant et de sa compaignie.

_l.c._, ll. 903-916.]

There were many ways in which the French epic was degraded at the close of its course--by dilution and expansion, by the growth of a kind of dull parasitic, sapless language over the old stocks, by the general failure of interest, and the transference of favour to other kinds of literature. Reading came into fas.h.i.+on, and the minstrels lost their welcome in the castles, and had to betake themselves to more vulgar society for their livelihood. At the same time, epic made a stand against the new modes and a partial compliance with them; and the _chansons de geste_ were not wholly left to the vagrant reciters, but were sometimes copied out fair in handsome books, and held their own with the romances.

The compromise between epic and romance in old French literature is most interesting where romance has invaded a story of the simpler kind like _Raoul de Cambrai_. Stories of war against the infidel, stories like those of William of Orange, were easily made romantic. The poem of the _Prise d'Orange_, for example, an addition to this cycle, is a pure romance of adventure, and a good one, though it has nothing of the more solid epic in it. Where the action is carried on between the knights of France and the Moors, one is prepared for a certain amount of wonder; the palaces and dungeons of the Moors are the right places for strange things to happen, and the epic of the defence of France goes easily off into night excursions and disguises: the Moorish princess also is there, to be won by the hero. All this is natural; but it is rather more paradoxical to find the epic of family feuds, originally sober, grave, and business-like, turning more and more extravagant, as it does in the _Four Sons of Aymon_, which in its original form, no doubt, was something like the more serious parts of _Raoul de Cambrai_ or of the _Lorrains_, but which in the extant version is expanded and made wonderful, a story of wild adventures, yet with traces still of its origin among the realities of the heroic age, the common matters of practical interest to heroes.

The case of _Huon of Bordeaux_ is more curious, for there the original sober story has been preserved, and it is one of the best and most coherent of them all,[77] till it is suddenly changed by the sound of Oberon's horn and pa.s.ses out of the real world altogether.

[Footnote 77: Cf. Auguste Longnon, "L'element historique de Huon de Bordeaux," _Romania_, viii.]

The lines of the earlier part of the story are worth following, for there is no better story among the French poems that represent the ruder heroic age--a simple story of feudal rivalries and jealousies, surviving in this strange way as an introduction to the romance of _Oberon_.

The Emperor Charlemagne, one hundred and twenty-five years old, but not particularly reverend, holds a court at Paris one Whitsuntide and asks to be relieved of his kingdom. His son Charlot is to succeed him.

Charlot is worthless, the companion of traitors and disorderly persons; he has made enough trouble already in embroiling Ogier the Dane with the Emperor. Charlemagne is infatuated and will have his son made king:--

Si m'at Diex, tu auras si franc fiet Com Damediex qui tot puet justicier Tient Paradis de regne droiturier!

Then the traitor Amaury de la Tor de Rivier gets up and brings forward the case of Bordeaux, which has rendered no service for seven years, since the two brothers, Huon and Gerard, were left orphans. Amaury proposes that the orphans should be dispossessed. Charlemagne agrees at once, and withdraws his a.s.sent again (a painful spectacle!) when it is suggested to him that Huon and his brother have omitted their duties in pure innocence, and that their father Sewin was always loyal.

Messengers are sent to bring Huon and Gerard to Paris, and every chance is to be given them of proving their good faith to the Emperor.

This is not what Amaury the traitor wants; he goes to Charlot and proposes an ambuscade to lie in wait for the two boys and get rid of them; his real purpose being to get rid of the king's son as well as of Huon of Bordeaux.

The two boys set out, and on the way fall in with the Abbot of Clugni, their father's cousin, a strong-minded prelate, who accompanies them.

Outside Paris they come to the ambush, and the king's son is despatched by Amaury to encounter them. What follows is an admirable piece of narrative. Gerard rides up to address Charlot; Charlot rides at him as he is turning back to report to Huon and the Abbot, and Gerard who is unarmed falls severely wounded. Then Huon, also unarmed, rides at Charlot, though his brother calls out to him: "I see helmets flas.h.i.+ng there among the bushes." With his scarlet mantle rolled round his arm he meets the lance of Charlot safely, and with his sword, as he pa.s.ses, cuts through the helmet and head of his adversary.

This is good enough for Amaury, and he lets Huon and his party ride on to the city, while he takes up the body of Charlot on a s.h.i.+eld and follows after.

Huon comes before the Emperor and tells his story as far as he knows it; he does not know that the felon he has killed is the Emperor's son. Charlemagne gives solemn absolution to Huon. Then appears Amaury with a false story, making Huon the aggressor. Charlemagne forgets all about the absolution and s.n.a.t.c.hes up a knife, and is with difficulty calmed by his wise men.

The ordeal of battle has to decide between the two parties; there are elaborate preparations and preliminaries, obviously of the most vivid interest to the audience. The demeanour of the Abbot of Clugni ought not to be pa.s.sed over: he vows that if Heaven permits any mischance to come upon Huon, he, the Abbot, will make it good on St. Peter himself, and batter his holy shrine till the gold flies.

In the combat Huon is victorious; but unhappily a last treacherous effort of his enemy, after he has yielded and confessed, makes Huon cut off his head in too great a hurry before the confession is heard by the Emperor or any witnesses:--

Le teste fist voler ens el larris: Hues le voit, mais ce fu sans jehir.