I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
I. Amore e ansia e i bei pensieri e una grave preoccupazione, e la nobile gioia e il desiderio prolungato mi trascinano su e giù, e a volte sospiro e piango per il timore che il congedo graziosamente donato che mi è stato accordato venga dimenticato perché non sono tornato.
II. Il bel pensiero cui aspiro mi provoca molti sospiri accorati, tanto ho paura di venir meno all’immagine che ho di una nobile impresa; e se sono stato lontano troppo a lungo, prego colei che adoro, se così le piace, di non permettere che venga sciolto l’accordo stabilito che mi è stato garantito da lei (stessa).
III. Infatti ora, a chi pensa che io stia lasciando e abbandonando la signora che tutti vorrebbero servire, apparirà come una conferma [dell’accordo] se lei mi tiene per (sua) scelta; perché i valenti soccorritori provano piacere nell’offrire un’assistenza speciale ai derelitti e diseredati, dei quali è palese la colpa.
IV. Se qualcuno mi abbandona senza colpa da parte mia non pensi di distruggermi, perché so ancora dove posso essere al sicuro se Dio mi permette di stare con il [signore di] Baux; perché lì trovo il vero e puro valore, il cui rispettabile, perfetto, raffinato merito protegge i derelitti.
V. Nobile Gioia, il diritto vi proibisce di seguire l’esempio di chiunque vediate commettere un errore; ma Dio vi ha dato il merito e il valore e il buon senso, perché vi ha fatta la migliore e la più nobile [di tutte le dame] dei regni. Quindi vigilate che chi è ingannato viva al sicuro, e l’altro sia biasimato.
VI. Sono lieto che il re d’Aragona si compiaccia di promuovere tutto ciò che una buona reputazione dovrebbe accogliere con favore; e anche il re Alfonso, perché con nobili azioni degne di un imperatore accresce il suo onore; perciò sappiate che vorrei vederli in concordia e in pace contro i rinnegati.
VII. Fillol (Figlioccio), fate i vostri preparativi con onore: fate attenzione, se elaborate l’opera in modo elegante, a portarla a compimento e a non rovinarla.
VIII. Canzone mista, vai e affrettati dal mio signore Messer Arias, e digli, se gli aggrada, che nei regni il suo nobile e raffinato pregio è manifesto.
I. Love and anxiety and good thoughts and heavy care, and noble joy and long desire lead me up and down, and at times I sigh and weep for fear that the graciously granted leave that was given me is being forgotten because I have not returned.
II. The good thought to which I aspire brings me many a heartfelt sigh, so much do I fear to fail in the thought I have of a noble enterprise; and if I have been away too long, I beseech the one whom I adore, if it please her, not to let the fixed agreement be unbound which was guaranteed to me by her.
III. For now, if anyone thinks I am leaving and abandoning the lady whom all would wish to serve, it will seem like reinforcement [of the agreement] if she retains me out of choice; for worthy supporters take pleasure in offering exceptional assistance to the abandoned and disinherited in whom there appears to be a fault.
IV. If anyone abandons me without fault on my part let him not think to destroy me, for I still know where I can be safe if God lets me stay with the [lord of] Baux; for there I find true, flawless worth, whose honourable, perfect, consummate merit protects the forsaken.
V. Noble Joy, right forbids you to follow the example of anyone you see committing a fault; but God gave you merit and worth and good sense, for He made you the best and the most gracious of [all ladies in] the kingdoms. Hence you are careful to see that the one who is deceived lives safe and sound, and the other is blamed.
VI. I am glad that the King of Aragon is pleased to promote everything that good reputation should welcome; and King Alfonso too, for with noble deeds fitting for an emperor he increases honour; so be aware that I would like to see them in harmony and peace against the renegades.
VII. Fillol (Godson), do make your preparations honourably: take good care, if you elaborate the work elegantly, to perfect it and not unravel it.
VIII. Mixed song, go and hasten to my lord Sir Arias, and tell him, if it please him, that in the kingdoms his noble, refined merit is conspicuous.
Critical apparatus:
I. 4 mi menet E, menon Da 5 pel lonc A, perloc Da 6 missing Da 9 acordatz ADa 10 non Da.
II. missing ADa.
III. 21 Ar ADa 22 quei Da 23 si autrem uol acuillir ADa 24 nim ADa 25 valen missing Da 26 missing Da 27 quan] dels l. A, missing Da 28 desamparatz A, missing Da 29 missing Da 30 fassen capteins a. A, missing Da.
IV. 32 ses (ges Da) pertant non cuich (cuic Da) d. ADa 33 qancar ai A, qanc cars ai Da 34 lo b. mi (me Da) deffen ADa 35 lai] la Da 37 que] on ADa 38 es mermatz Da 39 sobrepoiatz ADa.
V. 42 q. qui Da 43 noi prendatz ADa 48 missing A 50 sals ADa.
VI. 52 enantar E.
VII. missing ADa.
VIII. missing ADa.
2. Lewent’s correction to the singular bon cug is unnecessary.
5. As Lewent observes, the expression per luec meaning ‘bisweilen’ is not attested in the dictionaries, but the sense must be right, since per sazos is found with the same sense in VI, 8 (his edition, p. 674).
9. Lewent prefers ADa’s acordatz since autreiatz recurs in v. 20 with the same sense and form, whereas acordatz in 58 has a different sense and case.
16. Lewent silently corrects leis to lei; similarly 51 Arago to Aragon, 54 eisamen to eissamen, and 56 honor to s’onor.
20. Lewent misreads leis as lieis.
21-30. Chaytor combines the readings of E and A (essentially the same as Da) in 23-24 (si autre·m vol acuillir / ni·m rete per chausimen) and translates: «Mais cela me paraîtra (un acte de) fermeté, si l’on me voit abandonné et quitté, si un autre me reçoit et me retient par grande faveur: car les vaillants champions ont plaisir à accomplir, avec de pauvres déshérités, victimes du malheur, de splendides actions d’éclat». Lewent follows A, with 21-24 reading Ar parra d’afortimen / qi·m ve laissar e guerpir, si autre·m vol acuillir / ni·m reten per chausimen, translating «Jetzt wird es, wenn einer sieht, wie ich verlassen und aufgegeben werde, von Entschlossenheit zeugen, wenn ein anderer mich aufnimmt und mich aus Güte behält. Denn die (wirklich) trefflichen Helfer finden Gefallen daran, an den verlassenen Armen, in denen das Unglück offenbar wird, ausgezeichnete Hilfeleistungen zu vollführen». The version of ADa generates a sort of chanson de change, with the troubadour threatening to abandon one lady for another. E’s version seems more subtle: the troubadour is saying that if other people see him as abandoning his lady (because, as he has made clear in the previous stanzas, he has been away from her too long and he is concerned that she may want to break off her agreement with him), it will act as a strengthening of their agreement if she explicitly chooses to go on retaining him, because it is particularly praiseworthy to do good to someone who is both suffering from deprivation and apparently being at fault in some way. In other words, this is an artful way of giving reasons why the lady should reinforce their bond rather than destroy it.
31. Chaytor translates Qui.m laissa as «Si elle m’abandonne», wrongly.
32. delir is not in PD, but see LR, III, 23 ‘détruire, effacer’, transitive only. Lewent translates «glaube nicht, mich zu vernichten», correcting to no·m.
43. For se prendre albir de alc. ren see SW, I, 48 (referred to by Lewent). For the repetition of the que of a noun clause after an insertion, see Frede Jensen, Syntaxe de l’ancien occitan, Tübingen 1994, § 779.
48-50. Chaytor «aussi devez-vous considérer que l’homme trompé vit en sûreté et c’est l’autre [le trompeur] qui en court le blâme»; Lewent «drum merket wohl, daß der Betrogene selig und der andere (der Betrüger) schuldvoll lebt», neither of which makes much sense. I take these lines to be amplifying the compliment to Fins Jois: Perdigon says she does what in fact he hopes she will do.
52. Ms enantar is clearly a scribal slip.
56. Chaytor and Lewent emend to creis s’honor without comment, though this is unnecessary: «honour» can be understood in an absolute sense.
61-66. Chaytor first translated «si vous bâtissez avec honneur votre tour, faites attention, si vous voulez bien travailler, de parfaire l’oeuvre et de ne pas le défaire», commenting «Je ne puis expliquer cette allusion». Lewent (p. 675), judging «your tower» to be meaningless, decided to print vostr’ator and translated «wenn ihr eure Vorbereitungen trefft, so achtet wohl auf die Ehre, ob ihr es auch gut macht, damit ihr das Werk fertig bekommt und es nicht vernichtet!». He saw ator as a verbal noun from atornar and maintained that there could be no phonological objection to the form of the word: «Gegen die lautliche Form des Worts läßt sich kaum etwas einwenden, da auch tor neben torn durchaus gebräuchlich ist. Sonstige Belege für aprov. ator vermag ich freilich nicht beizubringen. Doch verweise ich auf afrz. ator (Godefroy I, 480) = préparatif, ce qui sert à s’équiper (nfrz. atour nur noch im Sinne von “weiblicher Putz”) und nprov. atour (Mistral I, 165) = ajustement, ornement, atour». In his revised edition Chaytor retained tor and understood it as ‘return’ («si vous voulez faire votre retour avec honneur»). While it is certainly tempting to understand tor as ‘return’, or alternatively ‘circuit’ or ‘rounds’ (PD torn, tor, ‘tour, révolution; retour; mesure qui se prend en faisant le tour du poing; circuit; enceinte des murs d’une ville...’, despite Lewent’s comment on the phonology the only secure examples of the form tor for such senses are in Aigar et Maurin (ed. Alfred Brossmer, Erlangen 1902), El [=E·l] fils del rei fait son tor per cambon, v. 17 (also v. 96); compare Daurel e Beton (ed. Charmaine Lee, Parma 1991 and Rialto, v. 1627), e fetz son torn mol gen, describing the turn after a charge made by a horseback warrior in a joust or mêlée. The form/word tor also appears in Pirot’s edition of Guiraut de Calanson’s Fadet joglar (ed. François Pirot, Recherches sur les connaissances littéraires des troubadours occitans et catalans des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, Barcelona 1972, p. 568): Apren mestier / de simïer / e fai los avols escarnir; de tor en tor / Sauta e cor / mas garda que la corda tir! (vv. 61-66), where LR, V, 377 translates tor as ‘tour d’adresse’; Pirot «Apprends le métier de montreur de singe et (fais railler les mauvais?); de tour en tour saute et cours, mais fais attention que la corde soit tendu!». The reading in ms. Da for v. 61 is de tor en torn, which perhaps lends support to the interchangeability of the two words, but while there are many examples on COM of the noun torn rhyming with jorn, jor being well-attested as an alternative for the latter, and several of torn meaning ‘tower’, for example la torn Mascaro (Chanson de la croisade contre les Albigeois, ed. Eugène Martin-Chabot, 3 voll., Paris 1931-1961, vol. II, 172.100; cf. Chastels d’Amors, in Vincenzo De Bartholomaeis, Poesie provenzali storiche relative all’Italia, 2 voll., Roma 1931, vol. II, pp. 303-311, vv. 91 and 128), I have been unable to find any evidence of tor other than meaning ‘tower’ rhyming in -or, even in variants. In his notes to Fadet joglar (p. 586) Pirot has nothing to say about tor, but it would seem to refer to something concrete, in other words a ‘tower’ of some sort: compare Guiraut Riquier’s Declaratio (ed. Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso, «La Supplica di Guiraut Riquier e la Risposta di Alfonso X di Castiglia», Studi Mediolatini e Volgari, 14, 1966, pp. 10-135, vv. 138-141): E tug li tumbador / en las cordas tirans / o en peiras sautans / son «ioculatores» («e tutti colori che fanno salti sulle corde tese o su pietri mobili»). For this reason I have adopted Lewent’s solution. − Unlike previous editors, however, I take si in v. 61 as emphatically introducing an imperative, rather than ‘if’: compare LR, V, 223 ‘certainement, assurément’, SW, VIII, 649, 1 «zur Einleitung eines Wunschsatzes dienend» and 224, 3 «einen Haptsatz einleitend», and Jensen, §§ 650 and 735. − In addition, the object pronoun in l’obratz suggests the idea of working on the song, in other words fashioning or decorating it (PD ‘faire, fabriquer, confectionner; construire; mettre en oeuvre; ouvrer, façonner...; obrat ouvré, façonner, orné, garni de broderies’). Since Fillol must be the performer, this would imply working on the singing performance rather than changing the text: Perdigon is urging him to suit the notes to the words, to make the melody complement and not garble them.
67. For Arias, see Istvan Frank, «Les troubadours et le Portugal», Mélanges d’études portugaises offerts à M. Georges Le Gentil, Lisbon 1949, pp. 201-226, p. 204, who states that this is a «seigneur proprement portugais» though considers a possible identification with the Galego-Portugese troubadour Ayras Moniz de Asme, as was suggested by earlier scholars, as highly unsure. In fact the chronology does not fit: see Vicenç Beltran, «Los trovadores en las cortes de Castilla y León. I. Bonifaci Calvo y Ayras Moniz d’Asme», Cultura neolatina, 40, 1985, pp. 45-57.
69. mesclatz: probably because of its mixture of canso and sirventes elements (as Lewent believes).
72. Alvar: «parece mejorado su fino valor».
Edition, english translation and notes: Linda Paterson; italian translation: Luca Barbieri. – Rialto 14.x.2014.
A 160r (Perdigons), Da 183v (Perdigons), E 168 (Perdigo). In ADa four stanzas of the song are soldered onto BdT 370.2, the latter consisting of two stanzas; BdT 370.5 does not appear in either of the Indices. The attribution in ADa is implicit, preceding 370.2. Da’s version does not appear in BdT.
Critical editions: Henry J. Chaytor, «Poésies du troubadour Perdigon», Annales du Midi, 21, 1909, pp. 153-168 and 312-337 (p. 316), revised in Les Chansons de Perdigon, Paris 1926, p. 14 (base E); Kurt Lewent, «Zu den Liedern des Perdigon», Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 33, 1909, pp. 670-687, p. 671 (on AE only, base A for stanzas I-IV).
Other editions: Henri P. de Rochegude, Le Parnasse occitanien, Toulouse 1819, p. 115; Carlos Alvar, Textos trovadorescos sobre España y Portugal, Madrid 1978, p. 243 (stanzas VI-VII, text Chaytor 1926).
Analysis of manuscripts: A 160r (Perdigons), Da 183v (Perdigons), E 168 (Perdigo). In ADa four stanzas of the song are soldered onto BdT 370.2, the latter consisting of two stanzas; BdT 370.5 does not appear in either of the Indices. The attribution in ADa is implicit, preceding 370.2. Da’s version does not appear in BdT. − The manuscripts divide E - ADa in their number and order of stanzas; A also lacks v. 48 and Da v. 6 and vv. 27-30. Despite A’s lacunae Lewent prefers to use this ms. as base where possible, holding nevertheless to E’s stanza order (which is indeed more logical). Although his reasons are not explicit, his preference probably derives from his interpretation of stanza III where there is a fundamental difference of sense between E and ADa, and where in my view ADa are facilior. Otherwise the differences concern minor variants and a few individual errors. Base: E.
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I |
II |
III |
IV |
V |
VI |
VII |
VIII |
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E |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
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ADa |
1 |
- |
2 |
4 |
3 |
- |
- |
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Versification: a7 b7 b7 a7 c7 c3 d3 d4 d4 d7 (Frank 587:1); -en, -ir, -or, -atz. Six coblas unissonans and two six-line tornadas. Unicum.
The song is sent to a certain Arias who was most probably a Galician. The details of the text suggest that it was composed shortly after the accession of Peter of Aragon at the end of April 1196, whether in renewed efforts against the Muslims, for whom the designation renegatz might be accepted, or more plausibly against renegade Christians under Alfonso IX of León or Sancho VIII of Navarre, who had formed alliances with the Muslims against Castile after Alfonso VIII’s defeat at the battle of Alarcos on 18 July 1195.