Transcribed from the 1910 David Nutt edition , emailccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Dedicated to the Hon. James Russell Lowell.
There is nothing in artistic poetry quite akin to “Aucassinand Nicolete.”
By a rare piece of good fortune the one manuscript of the Song-Storyhas escaped those waves of time, which have wrecked the bark of Menander,and left of Sappho but a few floating fragments. The very formof the tale is peculiar; we have nothing else from the twelfth or thirteenthcentury in the alternate prose and verse of the cante-fable.{1} We have fabliauxin verse, and prose Arthurian romances. We have Chansons deGeste, heroic poems like “Roland,” unrhymed assonantlaisses, but we have not the alternations of prose with laissesin seven-syllabled lines. It cannot be certainly known whetherthe form of “Aucassin and Nicolete” was a familiar form—usedby many jogleors, or wandering minstrels and story-tellers suchas Nicolete, in the tale, feigned herself to be,—or whether thisis a solitary experiment by “the old captive” its author,a contemporary, as M. Gaston Paris thinks him, of Louis VII (1130). He was original enough to have invented, or adopted from popular tradition,a form for himself; his originality declares itself everywhere in hisone surviving masterpiece. True, he uses certain traditional formulae,that have survived in his time, as they survived in Homer’s, fromthe manner of purely popular poetry, of Volkslieder. Thushe repeats snatches of conversation always in the same, or very nearlythe same words. He has a stereotyped form, like Homer, for sayingthat one person addressed another, “ains traist au visconte dela vile si l’apela” τον δαπαyειβομενοςπροσεφε . . . Like Homer, andlike popular song, he deals in recurrent epithets, and changeless courtesies. To Aucassin the hideous plough-man is “Biax frère,”“fair brother,” just as the treacherous Aegisthus is αμυμωνin Homer; these are complimentary terms, with no moral sense in particular. The jogleor is not more curious than Homer, or than the poetsof the old ballads, about giving novel descriptions of his characters. As Homer’s ladies are “fair-tressed,” so Nicoleteand Aucassin have, each of them, close yellow curls, eyes of vair (whateverthat may mean), and red lips. War cannot be mentioned except aswar “where knights do smite and are smitten,” and so forth. The author is absolutely conventional in such matters, according tothe convention of his age and profession.
Nor is his matter more original. He tells a story of thwartedand finally fortunate love, and his hero is “a Christened knight”—likeTamlane,—his heroine a Paynim lady. To be sure, Nicoletewas baptized before the tale begins, and it is she who is a captiveamong Christians, not her lover, as usual, who is a captive among Saracens. The author has reversed the common arrangement, and he appears to havecared little more than his reckless hero, about creeds and differencesof faith. He is not much interested in the recognition of Nicoleteby her great Paynim kindred, nor indeed in any of the “business”of the narrative, the fighting, the storms and tempests, and the burlesqueof the kingdom of Torelore.
What the nameless author does care for, is his telling of the love-story,the passion of Aucassin and Nicolete. His originality lies inhis charming medley of sentiment and humour, of a smiling compassionand sympathy with a touch of mocking mirth. The love of Aucassinand Nicolete—
“Des grans paines qu’il soufri,”
that is the one thing serious to him in the whole matter, and thatis not so very serious. ...