# The Waning of the Middle Ages/Chapter 21

CHAPTER XXI
VERBAL AND PLASTIC EXPRESSION COMPARED
I
With each attempt to draw a sharp line of demarcation between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this borderline has receded further and further backward. Ideas and forms which one had been accustomed to regard as characteristic of the Renaissance proved to have existed as early as the thirteenth century. Accordingly, the word Renaissance has been so much extended by some as to include even Saint Francis of Assisi. But the term, thus understood, loses its genuine meaning. On the other hand, the Renaissance, when studied without preconceived ideas, is found to be full of elements, which were characteristic of the medieval spirit in its full bloom. Thus it has become nearly impossible to keep up the antithesis, and yet we cannot do without it, because Middle Ages and Renaissance by the usage of half a century have become terms which call up before us, by means of a single word, the difference between two epochs, a difference which we feel to be essential, though hard to define, just as it is impossible to express the difference of taste between a strawberry and an apple.
To avoid the inconvenience inherent in the unsettled nature of the two terms Middle Ages and Renaissance, the safest way is to reduce them, as much as possible, to the meaning they originally had—for instance, not to speak of Renaissance in reference to Saint Francis of Assisi or the ogival style.
PORTRAIT OF GIOVANNI ARNOLFINI. BY JAN VAN EYCK.
The art and literature of the fifteenth century in France and in the Netherlands are almost exclusively concerned with giving a finished and ornate form to a system of ideas which had long since ceased to grow. They are the servants of an expiring mode of thought. Now, the literature and the art of a period in which artistic creation is almost limited to mere paraphrasing of ideas fully thought out, will differ widely from each other in their value for future ages. Let us consider roughly, for a moment, the impression left upon us, on the one hand, by the literature of the fifteenth century, and on the other hand by its painting. Villon and Charles d’Orléans apart, most of the poets will appear superficial, monotonous and tiresome. Always allegories with insipid personages and hackneyed moralizing, always the same themes repeated to satiety: the sleeper in the orchard, who, in a dream, sees a symbolic lady; the walk at daybreak in the month of May; the “debate” on a love case; in short, an exasperating shallowness, cloying romanticism, vapid imagery. We shall rarely glean a thought there which is worth being remembered, or an expression which dwells in our memory. The artists, on the other hand, are not only very great, like Van Eyck, Foucquet, or the unknown who painted “The Man with the Glass of Wine,” but nearly all, even the mediocre ones, arrest our attention by each detail of their work and hold us by their originality and freshness. Yet their contemporaries admired the poets much more than the artists. Why was the flavour lost in the one case and preserved in the other?
The explanation is that words and images have a totally different æsthetic function. If the painter does nothing but render exactly, by means of line and colour, the external aspect of an object, he yet always adds to this purely formal reproduction something inexpressible. The poet, on the contrary, if he only aims at formulating anew an already expressed ​concept, or describing some visible reality, will exhaust the whole treasure of the ineffable. Unless rhythm or accent save it by their own charms, the effect of the poem will depend solely on the echo which the subject, the thought in itself, awakens in the soul of the hearer. A contemporary will be thrilled by the poet's word, for the thought which the latter expresses also forms an integral part of his own life, and it will appear the more striking to him in so far as its form is more brilliant. A happy selection of terms will suffice to make the expression of it acceptable and charming to him. As soon, however, as this thought is worn out and no longer responds to the preoccupations of the soul of the period, nothing of value is left to the poem except its form. No doubt, that is of extreme value. Sometimes it is so fresh and so touching that it makes us forget the insignificance of the contents. A new beauty of form was already revealing itself in the literature of the fifteenth century; still, in the greater number of its productions, the form as well was worn out and the qualities of rhythm and tone are poor. In such a case, without novelty of thought or form, nought remains but an interminable postlude on hackneyed themes, a poetry without a future.
The painter of the same epoch and of the same mentality as the poet will have nothing to fear from time. For the inexpressible which he has put into his work will always be there as fresh as on the first day. Let us consider the portraits of Jan van Eyck, the somewhat pointed and pinched face of his wife, the aristocratic, impassible and morose head of Baudouin de Lannoy, the suffering and resigned visage of the Arnolfini at Berlin, the enigmatic candour of "Leal Souvenir" in the National Gallery. In each of these physiognomies the personality was probed to the last inch. It is the profoundest character-drawing possible. These characters were not analysed by the artist, but seen as a whole and then revealed to us by his picture. He could not have described them in words, even though he had been, at the same time, the greatest poet of his age. Painting, even when it professes no more than to render the outward appearance of things, preserves its mystery for all time to come.
“LEAL SOUVENIR.” BY JAN VᾺΝ EYCK.
Let us take the brothers Van Eyck as being the most eminent representatives of the art of the epoch. Who are the men of letters to be matched with them, in order to compare their inspiration, their modes of expression? We have to look for them in the same environment whence came the great painters, that is to say, as we demonstrated above, in the environment of the court, the nobility and the rich middle classes. There we may assume an affinity of spirit to exist. The literature which may be matched with the art of the brothers Van Eyck is that which the patrons of painting protected and admired.
At first sight the comparison seems to bring to light an essential difference. Whereas the subject-matter of the artists is almost entirely religious, the profane genre preponderates in literature. Still, we must remember that the profane element occupied a much larger place in painting than might be supposed from what has been preserved. On the other hand, we run some risk of overrating a little the preponderance of profane literature. The history of literature, being naturally concerned with the tale, the romance, the satire, the song, historical writings, might easily lead us to forget that pious works always occupied the first and the largest place in the libraries of the time. In order to make a fair comparison between fifteenth-century painting and literature, we must begin by imagining side by side with the surviving altarpieces and portraits all sorts of worldly and even frivolous paintings, such as hunting or bathing scenes. The above-named Fazio mentions a picture by Rogier van der Weyden representing a woman in a sweating-bath, with two laughing young men peeping through a chink.
Art and letters in the fifteenth century share the general and essential tendency of the spirit of the expiring Middle Ages: that of accentuating every detail, of developing every thought and every image to the end, of giving concrete form to every ​concept of the mind. Erasmus tells us that he once heard a preacher in Paris preach during forty days on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, so that he devoted all Lent to it. He described his journeys on his setting out and on his return, the bill of fare of his meals at the inns, the mills he passed, his dicing, etc., torturing the texts of prophets and evangelists to find some that might seem to give some support to his twaddle. “And because of that the ignorant multitude and the fat big-wigs considered him almost a god.”
To realize the place conceded to the minute execution of details, it suffices to examine some paintings by Jan van Eyck. Let us first take the Madonna of the chancellor Rolin, at the Louvre. In any other artist the laborious exactness with which the materials of the dresses are painted, also the marble of the tiles and the columns, the reflections of the windowpanes, and the chancellor’s breviary, would give an impression of pedantry. Even in him the exaggerated finish of the details, as in the ornaments of the capitals, on which a whole series of Biblical scenes is represented, is hurtful to the general effect. But it is especially in the marvellous perspective opened behind the figures of the Virgin and the donor that his passion for details is given rein. “The dumbfounded spectator,” as Monsieur Durand-Gréville says in describing this picture, “discovers between the head of the divine child and the Virgin’s shoulder, a town full of pointed gables and elegant belfries, with a big church with numerous buttresses, and a vast square, cut across all its length by a staircase on which come and go and run countless little touches of the brush, which are so many living figures; his eye is next attracted by a curved bridge swarming with groups of people who pass and repass; it follows the meanderings of a river on which tiny barks make ripples; and in the midst of which, on an island smaller than the nail of a child’s finger, rises up a lordly castle with numerous turrets, surrounded by trees; it traces on the left a quay planted with trees, and covered with foot-passengers; it goes even further, passing beyond the green hill-tops, rests for a moment on the distant line of snowy mountains, to lose itself, at last, in the infinite space of a sky, which is hardly blue, where floating vapours are vaguely discerned.”
Are not unity and harmony lost in this aggregation of details, ​as Michelangelo affirmed of Flemish art in general? Having recently seen the picture again, I can no longer deny it, as I formerly did on the strength of recollections many years old.
Another work of the master, which lends itself particularly to the analysis of endless detail, is the “Annunciation” in the Hermitage, at Petrograd. If the triptych of which this picture formed the right wing ever existed as a whole, it must have been a superb creation. Van Eyck here developed all the virtuosity of a master conscious of his power to overcome all difficulties. Of all his works it is the most hieratic and, at the same time, the most refined. He followed the iconographic rules of the past in using as a background for the apparition of the angel the ample space of a church and not the intimacy of a bedchamber, as he did in the altar-piece of the Lamb, where the scene is full of grace and tenderness. Here, on the contrary, the angel salutes Mary by a ceremonious bow; he is not represented with a spray of lilies and a narrow diadem; he carries a sceptre and a rich crown, and about his lips there is the stiff smile of the sculpture of Ægina. The splendour of the colours, the glitter of the pearls, the gold and the precious stones, surpass those of all the other angelic figures painted by Van Eyck. His coat is green and gold, his mantle of brocade is red and gold, his wings are covered with peacock feathers. The book of the Virgin and the cushion before her are executed with painstaking and minute care. In the church there is a profusion of anecdotal details. The tiles of the pavement are ornamented with the signs of the zodiac and scenes from the lives of Samson and of David. The wall of the apse is decorated with the figures of Isaac and of Jacob in the medallions between the arches, and that of Christ on the celestial globe between two seraphim in a window, besides other mural paintings representing the finding of the child Moses and the giving of the tables of the Law, all explained by legible inscriptions. Only the decoration of the wooden ceiling, though still discernible, remains indistinct.
This time unity and harmony are not lost in the accumulation of details. The twilight of the lofty edifice envelops all with mysterious shade, so that the eye can only with difficulty distinguish the anecdotal details.
​It is the privilege of the painter that he can give the rein to his craving for endless elaboration of details (perhaps one ought to say, that he can comply with the most impossible demands of an ignorant donor) without sacrificing the general effect. The sight of this multitude of details fatigues us no more than the sight of reality itself. We only notice them if our attention has been directed to them, and we soon lose sight of them, so that they serve only to heighten effects of colouring or perspective.
When the same boundless passion for details is displayed in literature, the effect is quite different. In the first place, literature proceeds in another way; it sets itself to enumerate all the ideas and all the objects which the mind of the poet associates with his subject. Most of the authors of the fifteenth century are singularly prolix. They do not know the value of omission, they fill the canvas of their composition with all the details that present themselves, but without giving, as does painting, an accurate image of their particular features—they confine themselves to enumerating them. It is a strictly quantitative method, whereas that of painting is qualitative.
THE MADONNA OF THE CHANCELLOR ROLIN. BY JAN VAN EYCK.
Now, in the expression of details the artist is absolutely free. Whereas he is tied down by rigid convention in the composition of his principal theme he may give a free rein to his imagination in all other respects. He may paint the materials, the vegetation, the horizons, the faces, just as his genius prompts him; the wealth of detail will no more overload his picture than flowers weigh down a dress which they adorn.
In the poetry of the fifteenth century the relation of the essential to the accident is reversed. The poet is generally free as regards his principal subject; something novel is expected from him. As to accessories, however, he is tied down by tradition; there is a conventional way of expressing each detail, from which, though he may be unconscious of it, he can hardly deviate; the flowers, the delights of nature, sorrows and joys, all these are sung in a fashion which varies but little. Moreover, the salutary limitation which the dimension of his picture imposes upon the artist does not exist for the poet, as a rule. Hence, to be worthy of this liberty the poet should be relatively greater than the artist. Even mediocre painters may delight posterity, whereas the mediocre poet is forgotten.
To make the effect of the abuse of details in a fifteenth-century poem felt, it would be necessary to quote it entirely. As this is impossible, we must content ourselves with considering a few fragmentary specimens.
Alain Chartier in his day was held to be a great poet. He was compared to Petrarch, and even Clement Marot placed him in the first rank. We may, therefore, fairly compare his work with that of the greatest painters of his time, and set the description of nature with which his Livre des Quatre Dames opens against the landscape of the altar-piece of the Lamb.
“Pour oublier melencolie, Et pour faire chiere plus lie, Ung doulx matin aux champs issy, Au premier jour qu’amours ralie Les cueurs en la saison jolie….”
All this is conventional and without any special grace of rhythm or of accent. Then follows the description of a spring morning:
“Tout autour oiseaulx voletoient, Et si très-doulcement chantoient Qu’il n’est cueur qui n’en fust joyeulx. Et en chantant en l’air montoient, Et puis l’un l’autre surmontoient A l’estrivée à qui mieulx mieulx. Le temps n’estoit mie nueux, De bleu estoient vestuz les cieux, Et le beau soleil cler luisoit.”
The mention of these delights would not have lacked charm if the author had known where to stop. But he was not so discreet; having gone through all the singing birds, he continues his enumeration at a jog-trot:
“Les arbres regarday flourir, Et lièvres et connins courir. Du printemps tout s’esjouyssoit. Là sembloit amour seignourir. Nul n’y peult vieillir ne mourir, Ce me semble, tant qu’il y soit. Des erbes ung flair doulx issoit, Que l’air sery adoulcissoit, Et en bruiant par la valee Ung petit ruisselet passoit, Qui les pays amoitissoit, Dont l’eaue n’estoit pas salee. Là buvoient les oysillons, Après ce que des grisillons,
THE ANNUNCIATION. BY JAN VAN EYCK.
Des mouschettes et papillons Ilz avoient pris leur pasture. Lasniers, aoutours, esmerillons Vy, et mouches aux aguillons, Qui de beau miel paveillons Firent aux arbres par mesure. De l’autre part fut la closture D’ung pré gracieuz, ou nature Sema les fleurs sur la verdure, Blanches, jaunes, rouges et perses. D’arbres flouriz fut la ceinture, Aussi blancs que se neige pure Les couvroit, ce sembloit paincture, Tant y eut de couleurs diverses.”
A brook brawls over pebbles, fishes swim in it, a grove spreads its twigs on the bank, forming a green curtain. And then the birds reappear: ducks, turtle-doves, pheasants and herons; all the birds from here to Babylon, as Villon would say.
The artist and the poet, both striving to render the beauty of nature, both dominated by the tendency to fasten on each detail, nevertheless arrive, because of the diversity of their methods, at a very different result. Unity and simplicity in the picture, in spite of the mass of details, monotony and formlessness in the poem.
But are we right in comparing poetry with painting, with respect to expressive power? Should we not rather take prose, less tied down to obligatory motifs, freer in its choice of means to give an exact vision of reality?
One of the fundamental traits of the mind of the declining Middle Ages is the predominance of the sense of sight, a predominance which is closely connected with the atrophy of ​thought. Thought takes the form of visual images. Really to impress the mind a concept has first to take a visible shape. The insipidity of allegory could be borne, because the satisfaction of the mind lay in the vision. This constant need of expressing the visible was far better fulfilled by pictorial than by literary means. And again better by prose than by poetry, because it conforms more easily to the visualizing turn of mind. The prose of the fifteenth century in general is superior to its poetry, because prose, like painting, could attain a high degree of direct and powerful realism, which was denied to poetry by its stage of development and by its proper nature.
There is one author, especially, who, by the eminent clearness of his vision of external things, reminds us of Van Eyck, namely, Georges Chastellain. He was a Fleming from the Alost district. Though he calls himself “a loyal Frenchman,” “a Frenchman by birth,” it is highly probable that Flemish was his mother-tongue. La Marche calls him “a born Fleming, though writing in the French language.” He himself likes to lay stress on his rusticity; he speaks of “his coarse speech,” he calls himself “a Flemish man, a man of the cattle-breeding marshes, rude, ignorant, stammering of tongue, greasy of mouth and of palate and quite bemired with other defects, proper to the nature of the land.” His Flemish birth explains the heaviness of his flowery speech, his pompous and turgid grandiloquence; in short, his truly “Burgundian” style, which makes him almost unbearable to the French reader. It is a formal style, of somewhat elephantine character. But it is also to his Flemish cast of mind that Chastellain owes his lucid and penetrating vision and the richness of his colouring.
There are undeniable affinities between Chastellain and Jan van Eyck. In his best moments Chastellain equals Van Eyck at his worst, and that is saying a good deal. Let us recall the group of singing angels of the altar-piece of the Lamb. Those heavy dresses of red and gold brocade, loaded with precious stones, those too expressive grimaces, the somewhat puerile decoration of the lectern—all this in painting is the equivalent of the showy Burgundian prose. It is a rhetorician’s style transferred to painting. Now, whereas this rhetorical element occupies but a small place in painting, it is the principal thing in Chastellain’s prose, where the clear observation and the ​vivid realism are too often drowned in the flood of flowery phrases and stilted terms.
Only, when Chastellain describes an event which grips his visualizing mind, he evinces an imaginative strength, which makes him very interesting. He has no more ideas than his contemporaries and colleagues; his arsenal, like theirs, is stocked with nothing but moral, pious and chivalrous commonplaces; his speculations never go below the surface. But his powers of observation are remarkably keen and his descriptions very lively.
The portrait he drew of Duke Philip has all the vigour of a Van Eyck. He delights in the description of scenes of action and passion, displaying a degree of true and simple realism which would have made this chronicler an excellent novelist. Take, for instance, his narrative of a quarrel between the duke and his son Charles, which took place in 1457. His visual perception is nowhere so vivid as here; all the outward circumstances of the event are rendered with perfect clearness. A few rather long quotations are indispensable.
The difference arose in connection with a vacancy in the household of the young count of Charolais. The old duke wanted, contrary to his promise, to give the place to a member of the family of Croy, then in high favour. Charles, who did not share his father’s feelings for that family, had destined it for one of his friends.
“Le duc donques par un lundy qui estoit le jour Saint-Anthoine, après sa messe, aiant bien désir que sa maison demorast paisible et sans discention entre ses serviteurs, et que son fils aussi fist par son conceil et plaisir, après que jà avoit dit une grant part de ses heures et que la cappelle estoit vuide de gens, il appela son fils à venir vers luy et lui dist doucement: ‘Charles de l’estrif qui est entre les sires de Sempy et de Hémeries pour le lieu de chambrelen, je vueil que vous y mettez cès et que le sire de Sempy obtiengne le lieu vacant.’ Adont dist le conte: ‘Monseigneur, vous m’avez baillié une fois vostre ordonnance en laquelle le sire de Sempy n’est point, et monseigneur, s’il vous plaist, je vous prie que ceste-là je la puisse garder.’—‘Déa,’ ce dit le duc lors, ‘ne vous chailliez des ordonnances, c’est à moy à croistre et à diminuer, je vueil que le sire de Sempy y soit mis’—‘Hahan!’ ce dist le conte (car ​ainsi jurait tousjours), ‘monseigneur, je vous prie, pardonnez-moy, car je ne le pourroye faire, je me tiens à ce que vous m’avez ordonné. Ce a fait le seigneur de Croy, qui m’a brassé cecy, je le vois bien.’—‘Comment,’ ce dist le duc, ‘me désobéyrez-vous? ne ferez-vous pas ce que je veuil?’—‘Monseigneur, je vous obéyray volentiers, mais je ne feray point cela.’ Et le duc, à ces mots, enfelly de ire, respondit: ‘Ha! garsson, désobéyras-tu à ma volenté? va hors de mex yeux,’ et le sang, avecques les paroles, lui tira à cour, et devint pâle et puis à coup enflambé et si espoentable en son vis, comme je l’oys recorder au clerc de la chapelle qui seul estoit emprès luy, que hideur estoit à le regarder.”…
The duchess, who was present at this dispute, was so much frightened by her husband’s look, that she tried to lead her son out of the oratory, and pushed him before her, to get out of range of his father’s wrath. But they had to turn several corners before coming to the door of which the clerk had the key. “Caron, open the door for us,” says the duchess, but the clerk falls at her feet, praying her to persuade her son to ask pardon, before leaving the chapel. In answer to his mother’s urgent request, Charles answers in a loud voice: “Déa, madame, monseigneur m’a deffendu ses yeux et est ​indigné sur moy, par quoy, après avoir eu celle deffense, je ne m’y retourneray point si tost, ains m’en yray à la garde de Dieu, je ne scay où.” Then is heard the voice of the duke, who has remained in his seat, paralysed with fury… and the duchess in an agony of fear says to the clerk: “My friend, open the door quickly, quickly, we must be gone, or we are lost.”
On returning to his apartments, the old duke, beside himself with anger, fell into a fit of mental aberration; about nightfall he left Brussels alone, on horseback, insufficiently dressed and without warning anyone. “Les jours pour celle heurre d’alors estoient courts, et estoit jà basse vesprée quant ce prince droit-cy monta à cheval, et ne demandoit riens autre fors estre emmy les champs seul et à par luy. Sy porta ainsy l’aventure que ce propre jour-là, après un long et âpre gel, il faisoit un releng, et par une longue épaisse bruyne, qui avoit couru tout ce jour là, vesprée tourna en pluie bien menue, mais trés-mouillant et laquelle destrempoit les terres et rompoit glasces avecques vent qui s’y entrebouta.”
Both this passage, and the preceding one, are assuredly not lacking in simple and natural force. In the description which follows of the nocturnal ride of the duke, as he wanders through the fields and woods, Chastellain has mixed his pompous rhetoric with this spontaneous naturalism, which produces a very bizarre effect. Starving and tired, the old duke, having lost his way, vainly calls for help. He narrowly escapes falling into a river which he takes for a road. He is wounded by falling with his horse. He listens in vain for the crowing of a cock, or the barking of a dog, which might have indicated some habitation to him. At last he perceives a glimmer and tries to get to it; loses sight of it, finds it again and reaches it at last. “Mais plus l’approchoit, plus sambloit hideuse chose ​et espoentable, car feu partoit d’une mote d’en plus de mille lieux, avecques grosse fumière, dont nul ne pensast à celle heure fors que ce fust ou purgatoire d’aucune âme ou autre illusion de l’ennemy….” Upon this he stops, but suddenly remembers that charcoal-burners are in the habit of lighting such kilns in the depths of woods. However he does not find a house anywhere near, and begins roaming about once more. At last the barking of a dog directs him to the hovel of a poor man, where he finds rest and food.
Other episodes furnished Chastellain with themes for striking descriptions, such as the judicial duel between the two burghers of Valenciennes, mentioned above; the nocturnal quarrel at the Hague, between the envoys of Friesland and some Burgundian noblemen whose sleep they disturb by playing at “touch and go” in the room above on their pattens; the riot at Ghent in 1467, at the entry of the new Duke Charles, which coincided with the fair of Houthem, whither the people were in the habit of taking the shrine of Saint Liévin in a procession. In all these pages we admire the author’s faculty of observation. A number of spontaneous details betray his strongly visual perception. The duke facing the rebels sees before him “a multitude of faces in rusty helmets, framing the grinning beards of villains, biting their lips.” The lout who forces his way to the window, by the duke’s side, wears a gauntlet of blackened iron with which he strikes the window-sill to command silence.
The gift of finding the right and simple word accurately to describe things seen is, at bottom, the same visual power which enables Van Eyck to give his portraits their perfect expression. Only, in literature, this realism remains enslaved by conventional forms and suffocated under a heap of arid rhetoric.
MINIATURE FROM “LE CUER D’AMOURS ESPRIS.” By an Unknown Master, in a MS. in the State Library, Vienna.
To quicken the movement of the dialogue Froissart is rather too fond of the trick of making one interlocutor repeat with astonishment the last words of the other.—"'Monseigneur, Gaston est mort.'—'Mort?' dist le conte.—'Certes, mort est-il pour vray, monseigneur.'"
And elsewhere: "Si luy demanda, en cause d'amours et de lignaige, conseil.—'Conseil,' respondi l'archevesque, 'certes, ​beaux nieps, c’est trop tard. Vous voulés clore l’estable quand le cheval est per du.’”
Poetry, too, used the trick of short alternating sentences a good deal.
“Mort, je me plaing—De qui?—De toy. —Que t’ay je fait?—Ma dame as pris. —C’est vérité.—Dy moy pour quoy. —Il me plaisoit.—Tu as mespris.”
Here the means have become the object. The virtuosity of these jerky dialogues was carried to an extreme in the ballad of Jean Meschinot, in which France accuses Louis XI. In each of the thirty lines, questions and answers alternate, sometimes more than once. Still, this bizarre form does not destroy the effect of the political satire. This is the first stanza:
“Sire…—Que veux?—Entendez…—Quoy?—Mon cas. —Or dy.—Je suys…—Qui?—La destruicte France! —Par qui?—Par vous.—Comment?—En tous estats. —Tu mens.—Non fais.—Qui le dit?—Ma souffrance. —Que souffres tu?—Meschief.—Quel?—A oultrance. —Je n’en croy rien.—Bien y pert.—N’en dy plus! —Las! si feray.—Tu perds temps.—Quelz abus! —Qu’ay-je mal fait?—Contre paix.—Et comment? —Guerroyant…—Qui?—Vos amys et congnus. —Parle plus beau.—Je ne puis, bonnement.”
With Froissart the sober and accurate description of outward circumstances sometimes acquires tragic force, just because it leaves out all psychological speculation, as for instance in the episode of the death of the young Gaston ​Phébus, killed by his father in a fit of anger. Froissart’s soul was a photographic plate. Under the uniform surface of his own style we may discern the qualities of the various storytellers who communicated to him the endless number of his items of news. For example, all that was told him by his travelling companion, the knight Espaing du Lyon, has been admirably rendered.
In short, whenever the literature of the period works by means of direct observation, without conventional trammels, it approaches painting, without however rivalling it. Therefore we should not look for the equivalents of painted landscapes or interiors in literary descriptions of nature. Painting of the fifteenth century produced marvels of perspective, because there the masters could let themselves go, as landscapes were accessory and did not suffer from the same severe restrictions as the principal subject. Notice the contrast between the principal scene and the background of the “Adoration of the Magi” in the “Très riches heures de Chantilly.” The figures in the foreground are affected and bizarre, the scene is overcrowded, whereas the view of Bourges in the distance attains a perfect serenity and harmony.
In literature, on the other hand, the feeling for nature was not free, neither was the manner of expressing it. Love of nature had taken the form of the pastoral and was therefore controlled by sentimental and æsthetic convention. The poems in which the beauty of flowers and the song of birds are sung proceed from an inspiration quite different from that which gave birth to painted landscapes. Literature in describing nature moves on another plane than painting.
Nevertheless it is in the pastoral that we can trace the development of the literary feeling for nature. Side by side with the poems of Alain Chartier, cited above, we may place those of the royal shepherd René singing in a disguised form his love for Jeanne de Laval, in the pastoral poem of Regnault et Jehanneion. There we find ingenuous gaiety and freshness; the king even tried, not without success, to render the effect of night closing in, but all this is far from being great art, like that of the calendars in the breviaries.
The pictures of the months in the calendar of the “Très riches heures de Chantilly” enable us to compare the ​expression of the same motif in art and in literature, and that strongly in favour of the former. The reader will remember the glorious castles which ornament the background of the miniatures of the brothers of Limburg; September with the vintage in progress and the castle of Saumur, rising like a vision behind it, the steeples of the towers with their high weather-vanes, the pinnacles and the graceful chimneys, all shooting up like tall white flowers against the deep blue of the sky; or December and the sombre towers of Vincennes looming threateningly behind the leafless woods. What means or methods had a poet like Eustache Deschamps at his disposal to rival scenes like these when he produced a sort of literary counterpart to them in a series of poems, in praise of seven castles of Northern France? The description of architectural forms at which he tried his hand in the lines devoted to the castle of Bièvre was by no means successful. So he limited himself to enumerating the delights which these castles provided; thus, speaking of Beauté, he says:
“Son filz ainsné, daulphin de Viennois, Donna le nom à ce lieu de Beauté. Et c’est bien drois, car moult est delectables: L’en y oit bien le rossignol chanter; Marne l’ensaint, les haulz bois profitables Du noble parc puet l’en veoir branler…. Les prez sont pres, les jardins deduisables, Les beaus preaulx, fontenis bel et cler, Vignes aussi et les terres arables, Moulins tournans, beaus plains à regarder.”
“SEPTEMBER.” BY THE BROTHERS VAN LIMBURG, FROM THE CALENDAR OF THE “TRES RICHES HEURES DUC DE BERRY.”
In an epoch of pre-eminently visual inspiration, like the fifteenth century, pictorial expression easily surpasses literary expression. Although representing only the visible forms of things, painting nevertheless expresses a profound inner sense, which literature when it limits itself to describing externals wholly fails to do.
The poetry of the fifteenth century often gives us the impression of being almost devoid of new ideas. The inability to invent new fiction is general. The authors rarely go beyond the touching up, embellishing or modernizing of old subject-matter. What may be called a stagnation of thought prevails, as though the mind, exhausted after building up the spiritual fabric of the Middle Ages, had sunk into inertia. The poets themselves are aware of this feeling of fatigue. Deschamps laments:
"Hélas! on dit que je ne fais mès rien, Qui jadis fis mainte chose nouvelle; La raison est que je n'ay pas merrien Dont je fisse chose bonne ne belle."
In the fifteenth century the old romances of chivalry are recast from verse into very prolix prose. This "unrhyming"—"dérimage"—is another sign of the general stagnation of fancy. Nevertheless it marks at the same time an important broadening in the general conception of literature. In the more primitive stages of literature verse is the primary mode of expression. As late as the thirteenth century every subject, even natural history or medicine, seemed to lend itself ​to treatment in verse, because the principal mode of assimilating a written work was still hearing it recited and getting it by heart. Even the “chansons de geste,” it seems, were chanted to a uniform melody. Individual and expressive declamation, as we understand it, was unknown in the Middle Ages. The growing predilection for prose means that reading was superseding recitation. Another custom, dating from the same epoch, testifies to this transition, namely the division of a work into small chapters with summaries, whereas formerly scarcely any division had been thought necessary. In fifteenth-century literature prose was, to a certain degree, the more refined and artistic form.
The superiority of prose is, however, purely formal; it lacks novelty of thought just as much as poetry. Froissart is the type of this extreme shallowness of thought and facility of expression. The simplicity of his ideas is surprising. Only three or four motives or sentiments are known to him: fidelity, honour, cupidity, courage, and these in their simplest forms. He uses no allegorical or mythological figures, never touches on theology, and even moral reflections are almost wholly absent. He goes on narrating, without effort, correctly, and yet he remains empty, because he has but the mechanical exactitude of a cinematograph. His moral reflections, when they do occur, are so commonplace as to be almost bewildering. Certain conceptions are, with him, always accompanied by fixed judgments. He cannot speak of Germans without recalling their cupidity and their barbarous treatment of prisoners. Even the quotations from Froissart which are currently presented to us as piquant prove when read in their context to lack the point attributed to them. On reading his appreciation of the first Duke of Burgundy of the house of Valois, “sage, froid et imaginatif, et qui sur ses besognes veoit au loin,” we think we have lighted upon a penetrating and concise analysis of character. Only, Froissart applied these terms to almost everybody!
The poverty and sterility of Froissart’s mind, as compared with Chastellain’s, for example, is all the more evident, as his style is wholly devoid of rhetorical qualities. Now it is rhetoric which in the literature of the fifteenth century ​signalizes the coming of the new spirit. For readers of that age lack of novelty in the matter was made up for by the æsthetic enjoyment of an ornate style. Everything seemed to them to be new when garbed in far-fetched and turgid phrases. It is an error to suppose that only literature cultivated this stylistic ornamentation, and that art was exempt from it. Art also displays the same pursuit of novelty and rich variety of expression. In the pictures of the brothers Van Eyck there are parts which might be called “rhetorician-like:” for example, the figure of Saint George presenting Canon van de Paele to the Virgin at Bruges. The magnificent helmet, the gilt armour, in which a naïve classicism is apparent, the dramatic gesture of the saint, all this is closely akin to Chastellain’s grandiloquence. The same tendency recurs in the figure of the archangel Michael in the small triptych of Dresden and in the group of angels singing and playing, on the altar-piece of the Lamb. It is also present in the work of the brothers of Limburg: for instance, in the bizarre magnificence of their “Adoration of the three Magi.”
Unless the ornate form be so charming and so novel as to suffice in itself for giving life to a piece of verse, the poetry of the fifteenth century is happiest when it is not aspiring to express an important thought, nor aiming at elegance of style. When it is content to call up a simple image or scene, or to express a simple sentiment, it is not without vigour. Hence it is more successful in short pieces than in long-winded compositions and grave subjects. In the roundel and the ballad, constructed on a single airy theme, all grace depends on tone, rhythm and vision; in fact, the more the artistic song of the time approaches the popular song, the greater is its charm.
The end of the fourteenth century is a turning-point in the relations between music and lyrical poetry. The song of the preceding period was intimately linked with musical recitation. The common type of the lyrical poet of the Middle Ages is always the poet–composer. Guillaume de Machaut used to compose the melodies of his poems. He also fixed the customary lyrical forms of his time: roundels, ballads, etc. He invented the “débat,” the contention of different parties on a moot point. His roundels and ballads are very airy, simple in form and thought; they have little colour; all these are ​merits, for a poem that is sung should not be too expressive. Here is an example:
“Au departir de vous mon cuer vous lais Et je m’en vois dolans et esplourés. Pour vous servir, sans retraire jamais, Au departir de vous mon cuer vous lais. Et par m’ame, je n’arai bien ne pais, Jusqu’au retour, einsi desconfortés. Au departir de vous mon cuer vous lais Et je m’en vois dolans et esplourés.”
In Eustache Deschamps we no longer find composer and poet united. Hence his ballads are much more vivid and highly coloured than Machaut’s, therefore often more interesting and yet of an inferior poetical style.
The roundel, because of its very structure, preserved the airy and fluent character of a song to be set to music, even after poets ceased to be composers.
“M’aimerez-vous bien, Dictes, par vostre ame? Mais que je vous ame Plus que nulle rien, M’aimerez-vous bien? Dieu mit tant de bien En vous, que c’est basme Pour ce je me clame Vostre. Mais combien M’aimerez-vous bien?”
These lines are by Jean Meschinot. The simple and pure talent of Christine de Pisan lends itself admirably to these fugitive effects. She versified with the facility characteristic of the epoch, without much variety of form or thought, in a subdued tone and with a slight touch of melancholy. Her poems remind us of those ivory tablets of the fourteenth century, which always represent the same motifs: a hunting scene, episodes of the Roman de la Rose or of Tristram and ​Yseult, yet always retain a certain freshness and impeccable, though conventional, gracefulness. When in Christine courtly sweetness goes hand in hand with the simplicity of the popular song, we hear an accent of the most exquisite purity.
We print the dialogue of two lovers who meet after a separation.
“Tu soies le très bien venu, M’amour, or m’embrace et me baise Et comment t’es tu maintenu Puis ton départ? Sain et bien aise As tu esté toujours? Ça vien Costé moy, te sié et me conte Comment t’a esté, mal ou bien, Car de ce vueil savoir le compte.
—Ma dame, a qui je suis tenu Plus que aultre, a nul n’en desplaise, Sachés que desir m’a tenu Si court qu’oncques n’oz tel mesaise, Ne plaisir ne prenoie en rien Loings de vous. Amours, qui cuers dompte, Me disoit: ‘Loyauté me tien, Car de ce vueil savoir le compte.’
—Dont m’as tu ton serment tenu, Bon gré t’en sçay, par saint Nicaise; Et puis que sain es revenu Joye arons assez; or t’apaise Et me dis se scez de combien Le mal qu’en as eu a plus monte Que cil qu’a souffert le cuer mien, Car de ce vueil savoir le compte.
—Plus mal que vous, si com retien, Ay eu, mais dites sanz mesconte, Quans baisiers en aray je bien? Car de ce vueil savoir le compte.”
“Il a au jour d’ui un mois Que mon ami s’en ala.
Mon cuer remaint morne et cois, Il a au jour d’ui un mois.
‘A Dieu,’ me dit, ‘je m’en vois;’ Ne puis a moy ne parla, Il a au jour d’ui un mois.”
Here are words of consolation, addressed to a lover:
“Mon ami, ne plourez plus; Car tant me faittes pitié Que mon cuer se rent conclus A vostre doulce amistié. Reprenez autre maniere; Pour Dieu, plus ne vous doulez, Et me faittes bonne chiere: Je vueil quanque vous voulez.”
What gives these verses their abiding womanly charm is their spontaneous tenderness, their simplicity devoid of all pomp and pretension. Christine was content to follow the inspiration of her heart. But this is also the reason why her poems so often show the defect, characteristic of the poetry and music of all epochs of feeble inspiration, that of exhausting all their vigour in the opening lines. How many poems do we find with a fresh and striking theme, which begin like a blackbird’s song, only to lose themselves in thin rhetoric after the first stanza! The poet (or in music, the composer), after stating his theme, had ​come to the end of his inspiration. We are constantly disillusioned in this way by most of the fifteenth-century poets.
Here is an example taken from the ballads of Christine de Pisan:
“Quant chacun s’en revient de l’ost Pour quoy demeures tu derriere? Et si scez que m’amour entiere T’ay baillée en garde et depost.”
One expects the motif of the dead lover who reappears. But we are deceived: after two more insignificant stanzas the poem finishes. What freshness there is in the first lines of Froissart’s Debat dou Cheval et dou Levrier:
“Froissart d’Escoce revenoit Sus un cheval qui gris estoit, Un blanc levrier menoit en lasse. ‘Las,’ dist le levrier, ‘je me lasse, Grisel, quant nous reposerons? Il est heure que nous mengons.’”
After this the charm is lost; the author, in short, had no other inspiration than a moment’s vision of the two animals conversing.
The motifs are occasionally of incomparable grandeur and suggestive force, but the development remains most feeble. The theme of Pierre Michault in his Danse aux Aveugles was masterly; the everlasting dance of the human race about the thrones of the three blind deities, Love, Fortune, and Death. He only succeeded in working it up into very mediocre poetry. An anonymous poem, entitled Exclamacion des Os Sainct Innocent, begins by making the charnel-houses of the famous churchyard speak:
“Les os sommes des povres trespassez. Cy amassez par monceaulx compassez, Rompus, cassez, sans reigle ne compas.…”
All these themes have only been realized visually. Such vision may supply an artist with material for a most grand conception and consummate execution; it is insufficient for a poet.
* ↑ To forget melancholy, And to cheer myself, One sweet morning I went out into the fields On the first day on which love joins Hearts in the beautiful season.
* ↑ All around birds were flying, And they sang so very sweetly That there is no heart that would not be gladdened by it. And while singing they rose up in the air, And then passed and repassed each other, Vying with each other as to which should rise highest. The weather was not cloudy at all. The heavens were clad in blue. And the beautiful sun was shining brightly.
* ↑ I saw the trees blossom, And hares and rabbits run. Everything rejoiced at the spring. Love seemed to hold sway there. None could age or die, It seemed to me, so long as he was there. From the herbs arose a sweet smell, Which the clear air made sweeter still, And purling through the valley A little brook passed Moistening the lands Of which the water was not salt. There drank the little birds After they had fed upon crickets, Little flies and butterflies. I saw there lanners, hawks and merlins, And flies with a sting (wasps) Who made pavilions of fine honey In the trees by measure. In another part was the enclosure Of a charming meadow, where nature Strewed flowers on the verdure White, yellow, red and violet. It was encircled by blossoming trees As white as if pure snow Covered them, it looked like a painting, So many various colours there were.
* ↑ The duke then, on a Monday, which was Saint Anthony’s day, after mass, being very desirous that his house should remain peaceful and without dissensions between his servants, and that his son, too, should do his will and pleasure, after he had already said a great part of his hours, and the chapel was empty of people, called his son to come to him and said to him gently: “Charles, the quarrel which is going on between the lords of Sempy and of Hémeries, about this place of chamberlain, I wish that you put a stop to it, and that the lord of Sempy obtains the vacancy.” Then said the count: “Monseigneur, you once gave me your orders in which the lord of Sempy is not mentioned, and monseigneur, if you please, I pray you, that I may keep to them.”—“Déa,” this said the duke then, “do not trouble yourself about orders, it belongs to me to augment and to diminish, I wish that the lord of Sempy be placed there.”—“Hahan!” this said the count (for he always swore like that), “monseigneur, I beg you, forgive me, for I could not do it, I abide by what you have ordered me. This was done by my lord of Croy, who played me this trick, I can see that.”—“How,” this said the duke, “will you disobey me? will you not do what I wish?”—“Monseigneur, I shall gladly obey you. But I shall not do this.” And the duke, at these words, choking with anger, replied: “Hà! boy, will you disobey my will? Go out of my sight,” and the blood with these words rushing to his heart, he turned pale and then all at once flushed and there came such a horrible expression on his face, as I heard from the clerk of the chapel, who alone was with him, that it was hideous to look at him.…
* ↑ Faith, madam, monseigneur has forbidden me to come into his sight and is indignant at me, so that, after this prohibition, I shall not return to him so soon, but under God’s care, I shall go away, I do not know where.
* ↑ The days were short at that time, and it was already evening when that prince here mounted his horse, and asked nothing but to be alone out in the fields. It so happened that on that day after a long and sharp frost it had begun to thaw, and because of a lasting thick fog which had been about all day, in the evening a fine but very penetrating rain began to fall, which soaked the fields and broke the ice as did the wind which joined in.
* ↑ But the more he approached it, the more it seemed a hideous and frightful thing, for fire came out of a mound in more than a thousand places with thick smoke, and, at that hour, anybody would think that it was the purgatory of game soul or some other illusion of the devil.
* ↑ Then he heard the news that their town was taken. "And by what people?" he asks. Those with whom he was speaking answered, "They are Bretons!" "Ha," says he, "Bretons are bad people, they will pillage and burn and afterwards depart." "And what war-cry do they cry?" said the knight. "Sure, my lord, they cry La Trimouille!"
* ↑ "My lord, Gaston is dead." "Dead?" said the count. "Indeed, he is dead in sooth, my lord."
* ↑ So he asked him for counsel in matters of love and lineage. The archbishop answered, “Counsel, sure, good nephew, it is too late for that. You want to shut the stable when the horse is lost.”
* ↑ Death I complain. Of whom? Of you. What have I done to you? You have taken my lady. That is so. Tell me why? It pleased me. You mistook.
* ↑ Sire… What do you want? Listen… To what? To my case. Speak out. I am… Who? Devastated France! By whom? By you. How? In all estates. You lie. I do not. Who says so? My sufferings. What do you suffer? Misery. Which? The extremity of misery. I do not believe a word of it. Evidently. Do not say any more about it! Alas! I must. It is no use. What a shame! What have I done ill? You have sinned against peace. And how? By warring. With whom? With your friends and kinsmen. Speak more pleasingly. I cannot, in truth.
* ↑ His eldest son, the dauphin of Viennois, Gave this spot the name of Beauty. And justly, for it is very delectable: One hears the nightingale sing there; The river Marne surrounds it, the lofty pleasant woods Of the noble park may be seen waving on the wind. Meadows are near, pleasure-gardens, The fine lawns, beautiful and clear fountains, Also vineyards and arable lands, Turning mills, plains beautiful to view.
* ↑ Alas! it is said that I no longer make anything, I who formerly made many new things; The reason is that I have no subject-matter Of which to make good or fine things.
* ↑ Wise, frigid and imaginative, and far-sighted in business.
* ↑ On parting from you I leave you my heart And I go away lamenting and weeping. To serve you without ever retracting. And by my soul, I shall indeed have no peace Till my return, being thus discomforted.
* ↑ Do you love me indeed? Tell me, by your soul. If I love you More than anything, Will you love me indeed? God put so much goodness In you that it is balm; Therefore I proclaim myself Yours. But how much Will you love me?
* ↑ You are most welcome, My love; now embrace me and kiss me. And how have you been Since your departure? Healthy and at ease Have you always been? Here, come Beside me; sit down and tell me How you have been, well or not, For of this I want to have an account. —Lady, to whom I am bound More than to any other, may it displease no one, Know that desire so curbed me That I never had such discomfort Nor did I take pleasure in anything Far from you. Love, who tames hearts, Said to me: “Remain faithful to me, For of this I want to have an account.” —So you kept your oath to me, I thank you much for it by saint Nicaise; And as you came back safe and sound We shall have joy enough; now be appeased And tell me if you know by how much The grief you had from it exceeds That which my heart has suffered, For of this I want to have an account. —More grief than you, as I think, I had, but tell me without miscalculation, How many kisses shall I have for it? For of this I want to have an account.
* ↑ It is a month to-day Since my lover departed. My heart remains gloomy and silent. It is a month to-day. “Good-bye,” he said, “I am going;” Since then he has not spoken to me. It is a month to-day.
* ↑ Friend, weep no more; For I am so touched with pity That my heart gives itself up To your sweet friendship. Change your bearing; For God’s sake, be sad no longer. And show me a cheerful face: I am willing whatever you will.
* ↑ When everybody comes back from the army Why do you stay behind? Yet you know that I pledged you My loyal love to keep.
* ↑ Froissart came back from Scotland On a horse which was grey, He led a white greyhound in a leash. “Alas,” said the greyhound, “I am tired, Grisel, when shall we rest? It is time we were feeding.”
* ↑ We are the bones of the poor dead, Here heaped up by measured mounds, Broken, fractured, without rule or measure.