# The Waning of the Middle Ages/Chapter 22

CHAPTER XXII
VERBAL AND PLASTIC EXPRESSION COMPARED
II
The superiority of painting to literature in point of expressiveness is not, however, absolute and complete. There are regions where it does not exist, and these we must now consider.
The whole domain of the comic is much more open to literature than to plastic art. Unless it stoops to caricature, art can only express the comic in a slight degree. In art the comic tends at once to become serious again; we do not laugh on looking at Breughel, although we admire in him the same force of droll fancy which makes us laugh in reading Rabelais. Only where the comic forms but a slight accessory can pictorial expression rival the written word. We can observe it in what is called genre painting, which may be considered the most attenuated form of the comic.
The disproportionate refinement of details which we noticed above as being characteristic of the paintings of the epoch tends insensibly to change into the pleasure of relating petty curious facts. Whereas in the room of Arnolfini the minutiæ do not injure the solemn intimacy of the picture in the least, they have become mere curiosities in the master of Flémalle. His Joseph on the "Altar of Merode" is occupied with making mouse-traps. With him all the details are "genre," with an almost imperceptible flavour of the comic about them. Between his manner of painting an opened window-shutter, a sideboard, a chimney, and that of Van Eyck, there is all the difference between purely pictorial vision and "genre" painting.
Now here comes to light a clear advantage of speech over pictorial representation. As soon as something more than mere vision has to be expressed, literature, thanks to its ​faculty of expressing moods explicitly, takes the lead. Let us remember again Deschamps’ ballads, celebrating the beauty of the castles, which we compared with and found inferior to the perfect miniatures of the brothers of Limburg. These poems of Deschamps lack power and splendour; he has not succeeded in reproducing the vision of these glorious halls. But now compare the ballad in which he paints himself, lying ill in his poor little castle of Fismes, kept awake by the cries of barn-owls, starlings, crows and sparrows, nesting in his tower.
“C’est une estrange melodie Qui ne semble pas grant deduit A gens qui sont en maladie. Premiers les corbes font sçavoir Pour certain si tost qu’il est jour: De fort crier font leur pouoir, Le gros, le gresle, sanz sejour; Mieulx vauldroit le son d’un tabour Que telz cris de divers oyseaulx, Puis vient la proie; vaches, veaulx, Crians, muyans, et tout ce nuit, Quant on a le cervel trop vuit, Joint du moustier la sonnerie, Qui tout l’entendement destruit A gens qui sont en maladie.”
At night the owls come with their sinister screeching, evoking thoughts of death:
“C’est froit hostel et mal reduit A gens qui sont en maladie.”
This trick of the mere enumeration of a multitude of details loses its wearisome character, as soon as the faintest trace of humour is mixed up with it. In the middle of a very prolix allegorical poem, L’Espinette amoureuse, Froissart diverts us ​by the enumeration of some sixty games at which he used to play at Valenciennes as a boy. The descriptions of burgher customs or of the female toilet, long though they be, do not fatigue us, because they contain a satirical element which was lacking in the poetical descriptions of the beauty of spring.
From the "genre" to the burlesque is but a step. But here again painting may rival literature in expressive power. Before 1400 art had already attained some mastery of this element of burlesque vision which was to reach its full growth in Pieter Breughel in the sixteenth century. We find it in the figure of Joseph in the "Flight into Egypt" by Broederlam at Dijon and, again, in the three soldiers asleep in the picture of the "Three Marys at the Sepulchre," at one time attributed to Hubert Van Eyck. Of the artists of the epoch none took more pleasure in effects of bizarre jocularity than Paul of Limburg. A spectator of the "Purification of the 'Virgin" wears a kind of bent wizard's cap, a yard long, and immoderately wide sleeves. The font displays three monstrous masks, shooting out their tongues. In the framework of the "Visitation," we see a soldier in a tower fighting with a snail, and a man wheeling away on a barrow a pig playing the bagpipes.
The literature of the epoch is bizarre in nearly every page, and very fond of burlesque. A vision worthy of Breughel is called up by Deschamps in the ballad of the watchman on the tower of Sluys; he sees the troops for the expedition against England collecting on the beach; they appear to him like an army of rats and mice.
"Avant, avant! tirez-vous ça. Je voy merveille, ce me semble. —'Et quoy, guette, que vois-tu là?' Je voy dix mille rats ensemble Et mainte souris qui's'assemble Dessus la rive de la mer. . . ."
On another occasion, sitting at table, absent-minded and gloomy, Deschamps suddenly began to notice the way in which the courtiers were eating: some chewing like pigs; ​some gnawing like mice, or using their teeth like a saw; others whose beards moved up and down or who made such horrible faces that they looked like devils.
As soon as literature sets to work to depict the life of the masses, it shows this realism full of vitality and good humour, which was to develop abundantly, but not till later, in painting. The peasant receiving in his hovel the duke of Burgundy, who has lost his way, reminds us, by the portrait which Chastellain draws of him, of Breughel's types. The Pastoral deviates from ite central theme, which is sentimental and romantic, to find in the description of shepherds eating, dancing, and courting, matter for a naïve naturalism with a spice of burlesque.
Wherever the eye suffices for communicating the sense of the comic, however airy it may be, art is able to express it as well as, or better than, literature. Apart from this, pictorial art can never render the comic. Line and colour are impotent wherever the comic effect lies in a point of wit. Literature is incontestably sovereign both in the low-comedy genre of the farce and the fabliaux, and in the higher domain of irony.
It is especially in erotic poetry that irony developed; by adding its acrid flavour it refined the erotic genre; it purified it at the same time by introducing into it an element of a serious nature. Outside the pale of love-poetry irony was still heavy and clumsy. It is worth remarking that a French writer of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, speaking ironically, often takes care to inform his reader of the fact. Deschamps praises his age; all is well, peace and justice reign everywhere:
"L'en me demande chascun jour Qu'il me semble du temps que voy, Et je respons: c'est tout honour, Loyauté, verité et foy, Largesce, prouesce et arroy, Charité et biens qui s'advance Pour le commun; mais, par ma loy, Je ne di pas quanque je pence."
​Another ballad, of the same tenor, has the refrain: "Tous ces poins a rebours retien"; a third ends with the words:
"Prince, s'il est par tout generalment Comme je say, toute vertu habonde; Mais tel m'orroit qui diroit: 'Il se ment'..."
A wit of the end of the fifteenth century entitles an epigram: "Soubz une meschante paincture faicte de mauvaises couleurs et du plus meschant peinctre du monde, par manière d'yronnie par maître Jehan Robertet."
When dealing with love, on the other hand, irony had already often attained a high degree of refinement. In this region it blended with the gentle despondency and the languishing tenderness which renewed the erotic poetry of the fifteenth century. For the first time we hear the poet voice his melancholy with a smile about his own misfortune, such as Villon giving himself the air of "l'amant remis et renié" or Charles of Orleans singing his little songs of disillusion. Nevertheless the figure "Je riz en pleurs" is not Villon's invention. Long before him the scripture word, risus dolore miscebitur et extrema gaudii luctus occupat, had given a text for poetical application. Othe de Granson, for example, had said:
"Veillier ou lit et jeuner à la table Rire plourant et en plaignant chanter."
And again:
"Je prins congié de ce tresdoulz enfant Les yeulx mouilliez et la bouche riant."
Alain Chartier made use of the same motif in various ways:
"Je n'ay bouche qui puisse rire,
Que les yeulx ne la desmentissent:
Car le cueur l'en vouldroit desdire
Par les lermes qui des yeulx issent."
He says of a disconsolate lover:
"De faire chiere s'efforçoit
Et menoit une joye fainte,
Et à chanter son cueur forçoit
Non pas pour plaisir, mais pour crainte,
Car tousjours ung relaiz de plainte
S'enlassoit au ton de sa voix,
Et revenoit à son attainte
Comme l'oysel au chant du bois."
Very near akin to the motif of laughter and tears is that of the poet who at the end of his poem denies his own sorrow, as, for example, Alain Chartier:
"Cest livret voult dicter et faire escripre
Pour passer temps sans courage villain
Ung simple clerc que l'en appelle Alain
Qui parle ainsi d'amours pour oyr dire."
Othe de Granson had already pretended to speak of secret love only "par devinaille." King René treated this motif in a fantastic manner at the end of his Cuer d'Amours espris. His valet, with a candle in his hand, tries to find out if the king has really lost his heart, but finds no hole in his side.
"Sy me dist tout en soubzriant
Que je dormisse seulement
Et que n'avoye nullement
Pour ce mal garde de morir."
​By losing the impeccable gravity characteristic of them in preceding epochs, the ancient conventional forms of erotic poetry became penetrated by a new meaning. Charles d'Orléans makes use of personifications and of allegories like all his predecessors, but, by some slight surplus of stress, he adds an almost imperceptible flavour of raillery, and this gives them an affecting note, which is lacking in the graceful figures of the Roman de la Rose. He sees his own heart as a double of himself.
"Je suys celluy au cueur vestu de noir. . . ."
Occasionally in his extravagant personifications, the comical element has the upper hand:
"Un jour à mon cueur devisoye
Qui en secret à moy parloit,
Et en parlant lui demandoye
Se point d’espargne fait avoit
D’aucuns biens quant Amours servoit:
Il me dist que très voulentiers
La verité m’en compteroit,
Mais qu’eust visité ses papiers.   "Quand ce m’eut dit, il print sa voye
Et d’avecques moy se partoit.
Après entrer je le véoye
En ung comptouer qu’il avoit:
Là, de ça et de là quéroit,
En cherchant plusieurs vieulx caîers
Car le vray monstrer me vouloit,
Mais qu’eust visitez ses papiers. . . .”
Not always, however; in the following lines the comic is not dominant:
"Ne hurtez plus à l'uis de ma pensée, Soing et Soucy, sans tant vous travailler; Car elle dort et ne veult's'esveiller, Toute la nuit en peine a despensée,
"En dangier est, s'elle n'est bien pansée; Cessez, ceasez, laissez la sommeiller; Ne hurtez plus à l'uis de ma pensée, Soing et Soucy, sans tant vous travailler. . . ."
For the spirit of the epoch nothing heightened so much the acrid flavour of sad and sensitive love as the addition of an element of profanation. Religious travesty has created something better than the obscenities of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles; it furnished the form for the tenderest love-poem which that age produced: L'Amant rendu Cordelier à l'Observance d' Amours.
Already the poetical club of Charles d'Orléans had imagined a literary brotherhood whose members, in analogy to the reformed Franciscans, called themselves "amourex de l'observance." The author of L'Amant rendu Cordelier developed this motif. Who is this author? Is it really Martial d'Auvergne? It is hard to believe it, so much does this poem rise above the level of his work.
The poor disillusioned lover comes to renounce the world in the strange convent, where only "the martyrs of love" are received. He tells the Prior the touching story of his despised love; the latter exhorts him to forget it. Under a medieval guise we seem to perceive already the genre of Watteau. Only the moonlight is wanting to remind us of Pierrot. "Was she not in the habit," asks the Prior, "of giving you a sweet look or saying 'God save you' in passing?"—"I had not got so far in her good graces," replies the lover; "but at night I stood about the door of her house, and looked up at the eaves."
LYSBET VAN DUVENVOORDE. BY AN UNKNOWN MASTER.
“Et puis, quant je oyoye les verrières De la maison qui cliquetoient, Lors me sembloit que mes prières Exaussées d’elle sy estoient.”
“Were you quite sure that she noticed you?” asks the Prior.
“Se m’aist Dieu, j’estoye tant ravis, Que ne savoye mon sens ne estre, Car, sans parler, m’estoit advis Que le vent ventoit sa fenestre Et que m’avoit bien peu cognoistre, En disant bas: ‘Doint bonne nuyt,’ Et Dieu scet se j’estoye grant maistre Après cela toute la nuyt.”
Then he slept in glory.
“Tellement estoie restauré Que, sans tourner ne travailler, Je faisoie un somme doré, Sans point la nuyt me resveiller, Et puis, avant que m’abiller, Pour en rendre à Amours louanges, Baisoie troys fois mon orillier, En riant à par moy aux anges.”
When he is solemnly received into the order, the lady who had despised him faints and a little gold heart enamelled with tears, which he had given her, falls from her dress.
“Les aultres, pour leur mal couvrir A force leurs cueurs retenoient, Passans temps a clorre et rouvrir Les heures qu’en leurs mains tenoient, Dont souvent les feuillès tournoient En signe de devocion; Mais les deulz et pleurs que menoient Monstroient bien leur affection.”
"Doux yeulx qui tousjours vont et viennent; Doux yeulx eschauffans le plisson, De ceulx qui amoureux deviennent. . . .
"Doux yeulx a cler esperlissans, Qui dient: C'est fait quant tu vouldras, A ceulx qu'ils sentent bien puissans. . . ."
Towards the middle of the fifteenth century all the conventional genres of erotic poetry are of a languishing tenor, and bear the stamp of resigned melancholy. Even cynical contempt of woman grows refined. In the Quinze Joyes de Mariage the mischievous and gross purpose is tempered by wistful sentimentality. By its sober realism, by the elegance of its form and the subtlety of its psychology, this work is a precursor of the "novel of manners" of modern times.
In all that concerns the expression of love, literature profited by the models and the experience of a long series of past centuries. Masters of such diversity of spirit as Plato and Ovid, the troubadours and the wandering students, Dante and Jean de Meun, had bequeathed to it a perfected instrument. Pictorial art, on the contrary, having neither models nor tradition, was primitive in the strict sense of the word, in respect of erotic expression. Not till the eighteenth century was painting to overtake literature in point of delicate expression of love. The artist of the fifteenth century had not yet learned to be frivolous or sentimental. In the miniatures of that time the posture of lovers embracing remains hieratic and solemn. A portrait of a Dutch gentlewoman, Lysbet of Duvenvoorde, by an unknown master before 1430, shows a figure of such severe dignity that a modern scholar has taken ​the picture for a donor’s portrait, omitting to read the words on the scroll she bears in her hand: “Mi verdriet lange te hopen, Wie is hi die syn hert hout open?” i.e.: “I am weary of hoping so long. Who is he who holds his heart open?’” Pictorial expression knew no middle term between the chaste and the obscene. The rendering of erotic subjects was rare, and what there is of it, is naive and innocent. Once more, however, we must bear in mind that the greater number of profane works have disappeared. It would be most interesting to be able to compare the nude of Van Eyck in his “Bath of Women,” which Fazio saw, with that of his “Adam and Eve.” As to the latter picture, it must not be imagined that the erotic element is lacking. Following the rules of the code of feminine beauty of his time, the artist made the breasts small and placed them too high; the arms are long and thin, the belly prominent. But he did so quite ingenuously and with no intention of giving sensual pleasure. A small picture in the Leipsic Gallery, occasionally designated as belonging to the “school of Jan van Eyck,” represents a girl in a room; she is nude, as magical practices require, and is employing witchcraft to force her lover to show himself. Here the intention is present, and the artist has succeeded in expressing the erotic sentiment: the nude figure has the demure lasciviousness which reappears in those of Cranach.
It is most improbable that the restraint thus displayed in fifteenth-century art, in respect of erotic expression, was due to a sense of modesty, for in general an extreme licence was tolerated. Though pictorial art cultivated it very little as yet, the nude occupied a large place in the tableau vivant. The “personnages” of nude goddesses or nymphs played by real women were rarely wanting at the entries of princes. These exhibitions took place on platforms and occasionally even in the water, like that of the sirens who swam in the Lys “quite naked and dishevelled as they paint them,” near the bridge over which Duke Philip had to pass, on his entry into Ghent in 1457. The Judgment of Paris was the favourite subject. These representations should be taken neither as proofs of high æsthetic taste nor gross licentiousness, but rather as naive and popular sensuousness. Jean ​de Roye, speaking of sirens that were seen, not very far from a calvary, on the occasion of Louis XI’s entry into Paris in 1461, says: “And there were also three very handsome girls, representing quite naked sirens, and one saw their beautiful turgid, separate, round and hard breasts, which was a very pleasant sight, and they recited little motets and bergerettes; and near them several deep-toned instruments were playing fine melodies.” Molinet tells us of the pleasure which the people of Antwerp felt at the entry of Philip le Beau in 1494, when they saw the Judgment of Paris : “But the stand at which the people looked with the greatest pleasure was the history of the three goddesses represented nude by living women.”
How far removed from the Greek sense of beauty was the parody of this theme got up for the entry of Charles the Bold at Lille in 1468, where were seen a corpulent Venus, a thin Juno and a hunchbacked Minerva, each wearing a gold crown.
These nude spectacles remained customary during the sixteenth century. Dürer, in the diary of his journey in the Netherlands, described the one he saw at Antwerp at the entry of Charles V in 1521, and as late as 1578 William of Orange, at his entry in Brussels, saw among other items a chained and nude Andromeda, “which one would have taken for a marble statue.”
The inferiority of pictorial as compared with literary expression is not confined to the domain of the comic, the sentimental and the erotic. The expressive faculty of the art of this period fails as soon as it is no longer supported by that extraordinary turn for visualizing, which explains the marvels of its pictures. When more is required than the direct and accurate vision of reality, the superiority of pictorial expression at once vanishes, and then is felt the justice of Michelangelo’s criticism: that this art aims at achieving several things at the same time, of which a single one would be important enough to demand the devotion of all its powers.
Let us once more consider a picture by Jan van Eyck. In so far as accurate observation suffices, his art is perfect, especially in facial expression, the material of the dresses, and the jewellery. As soon as it becomes necessary to reduce reality in some sort to a scheme, as is the case when buildings ​and landscapes have to be painted, certain weaknesses appear. In spite of the charming intimacy of his perspectives, there is a certain incoherence, a defective grouping. The more the subject demands free composition and the creation of a new form, the more his powers fall short.
It cannot be denied that in the illuminated breviaries the calendar pages surpass in beauty those representing sacred subjects. To picture a month, it suffices to observe and reproduce accurately. On the other hand, to compose an important scene, full of movement, with many personages, needed the sense of rhythm and of unity which Giotto possessed and which Michelangelo recaptured. Now, multiplicity was a characteristic of fifteenth-century art. It rarely succeeds in finding harmony and unity. The central part of the altar-piece of the Lamb does indeed show this harmony, in the severe rhythm in which the different processions of adorers are advancing towards the Lamb; but this effect has been obtained, so to say, by a purely arithmetical co-ordination. Van Eyck evaded the difficulties of the composition by grouping his personages in a very simple figure; the harmony is static, not dynamic.
The great distance separating Van Eyck from Rogier van der Weyden lies in the fact that the latter is aware of a problem of rhythmical composition. He limits himself in the use of detail, in order to find unity; it is true, without always succeeding.
There was a venerable and severe tradition regulating the representation of the most important sacred subjects. The artist had not to invent the composition of his picture; for some of these subjects rhythmical composition came, so to speak, of itself. It was impossible to paint a Descent from the Cross, a pietà, an Adoration of the Shepherds, without the composition assuming a certain rhythmical structure. It suffices to remember the Descent from the Cross by Rogier van der Weyden in the Escurial, his pietà at Madrid, or those of the Avignon school at the Louvre and at Brussels, those by Petrus Cristus, by Geertgen of Sint Jan, the “Belles heures d’Ailly.” The very nature of the subject implied a simple and severe composition.
As soon as the scene to be represented required more move​ment, as in the case of Christ being mocked or bearing the cross, or in the Adoration of the Magi, the difficulties of the composition increase and a certain unrest and lack of harmony is the result. Here, however, inconographic tradition still supplies a model of a kind, but where it fails him altogether the artist of the fifteenth century is almost helpless. We need but notice the feebleness of composition in the scenes in courts of justice by Dirk Bouts and by Gerard David, though the solemnity of the subject itself called for an element of severity. The composition reaches an irritating pitch of clumsiness in scenes like the Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus at Louvain, and that of Saint Hippolytus, torn to pieces by horses, at Bruges.
And yet here we are still dealing with the representation of scenes borrowed from reality. When the whole has to be created by the unaided imagination, the art of the period cannot avoid the ridiculous. Pictures on the grand scale were saved by the solemnity of their subjects, but the illuminators could not evade the task of giving a shape to all the mythological and allegorical fancies of which literature was full. The illustrations by Jean Miélot for the Eptire d’Othéa à Hector, a mythological fancy of Christine de Pisan’s, may serve as a sample. It is impossible to imagine anything more awkward. The Greek gods have large wings outside their ermine mantles and “houppelandes” of brocade. Saturn devouring his children, Midas awarding the prize, are simply ridiculous and devoid of all charm. Yet, whenever the illuminator sees a chance of enlivening the prospect by a little scene, such as a shepherd with his sheep, he shows the ability common to the period: within his province his hand is sure. The reason is that here we have come to the limit of the creative faculties of these artists. Easily masters of their craft, so long as observation of reality is their guide, their mastery fails at once when imaginative creation of new motifs is called for.
Imagination, both literary and artistic, had been led into a blind alley by allegory. The mind had grown accustomed simply to turn into pictorial presentments the allegorical ideas presenting themselves to the mind. Allegory linked the presentment to the thought and the thought to the present​ment. The desire to describe accurately the allegorical vision caused all demands of artistic style to be lost sight of. The cardinal virtue of Temperance has to carry a clock to represent rule and measure. We see her with this attribute on a tomb, the work of Michel Colombe, in Nantes Cathedral, and on that of the cardinals of Amboise at Rouen. The illuminator of the Eptire d’Othéa, to conform to this rule, simply puts on her head a timepiece resembling the one with which he ornaments the room of Philip the Good.
The allegorical figure can only be justified by a tradition which has become venerable. Invented all of a piece, it is rarely satisfactory. The more realistic the mind which creates it, the more bizarre and factitious its form will be. Chastellain, in his Exposition sur Vérité mal prise, sees four ladies coming to accuse him. They call themselves “Indignation, Reprobation, Accusation, Vindication.” This is how he describes the second. “This dame here appeared to have acrid conditions and very tart and biting reasons; she ground her teeth and bit her lips; often nodded her head; and showing signs of being argumentative, jumped on her feet and turned to this side and to that; she proved to be impatient and inclined to contradict; the right eye was closed and the other open; she had a bag full of books before her, of which she put some into her girdle, as if they were dear to her, the others she threw away spitefully; she tore up papers and leaves; she threw writing-books into the fire furiously; she smiled on some and kissed them; she spat on others out of meanness and trod them underfoot; she had a pen in her hand, full of ink, with which she crossed out many important writings ...; also with a sponge she blackened some pictures, she scratched out others with her nails, and others again she erased wholly and smoothed them as if to have them forgotten; and showed herself a hard and fell enemy to many respectable people, more arbitrarily than reasonably.” Elsewhere he sees Dame Peace spread out her mantle and break up into four new ladies: Peace of Heart, Peace of Mouth, Seeming Peace, Peace of True Effect. Or he invents female figures which he calls ‘‘ Importance of your lands, Various conditions and qualities of your several peoples, The envy and hatred of Frenchmen and of neighbouring nations,” as ​if politics lent themselves to allegory. It is no living fancy, of course, which prompts him to imagine these quaint figures, but only reflection. All wear their names written on scrolls: he evidently imagines them as figures on tapestry, or in a picture or a show.
There is not a trace of true inspiration here. It is the pastime of an exhausted mind. Though the authors always place their action in the setting of a dream, their phantasmagorias never resemble real dreams, such as we find in Dante and Shakespeare. They do not even keep up the illusion of real vision: Chastellain naïvely calls himself in one of his poems “the inventor or the imaginer of this vision.”
Only the note of raillery can still make the arid field of allegory flower again, as in these lines of Deschamps:
“Phisicien, comment fait Droit? —Sur m’ame, il est en petit point…. —Que fait Raison?… Perdu a son entendement, Elle parle mais faiblement, Et Justice est toute ydiote….”
The different spheres of literary fancy are mixed up regardless of all homogeneity of style. The author of the Pastoralet dresses his political shepherds in a tabard ornamented with fleurs-de-lis and lions rampant; “shepherds in long cassocks” represent the clergy. Molinet muddles up religious, military, heraldic and amorous terms in a proclamation of the Lord to all true lovers:
“Nous Dieu d’amours, créatour, roy de gloire Salut à tous vrays amans d’humble affaire! Comme il soit vrays que depuis la victoire De nostre filz sur le mont de Calvaire Plusieurs souldars par peu de cognoissance De noz armes, font au dyable allyance….”
Therefore the true blazon is described to them: escutcheon argent, chief or with five wounds—and the Church militant ​is given full liberty to take all into her service who want to return to that blazon.
The feats which procured Molinet. the reputation of an excellent “rhétoriqueur” and poet appear to us rather as the extreme degeneration of a literary form nearing its end. He takes pleasure in the most insipid puns: “Et ainsi demoura l’Escluse en paix qui lui fut incluse, car la guerre fut d’elle excluse plus solitaire que rencluse.” In the introduction to his prose version of the Roman de la Rose he plays upon his name, Molinet. “Et affin que je ne perde le froment de ma labeur, et que la farine que en sera molue puisse avoir fleur salutaire, j’ay intencion, se Dieu m’en donne la grace, de tourner et convertir soubz mes rudes meulles le vicieux au vertueux, le corporel en l’espirituel, la mondanité en divinité, et souverainement de la moraliser. Et par ainsi nous tirerons le miel hors de la dure pierre, et la rose vermeille hors de poignans espines, où nous trouverons grain et graine, fruict, fleur et feuille, trés souefve odeur, odorant verdure, verdoyant floriture, florissant nourriture, nourrissant fruict et fructifiant pasture.”
When they do not play upon words, they play upon ideas. Meschinot makes Prudence and Justice the glasses of his Lunettes des Princes, Force the frame and Temperance the nail which keeps the whole together. The poet receives the aforesaid spectacles from Reason with directions how to use them. Sent by Heaven, Reason enters his mind and wants to feast there; but finds nothing “off which to dine well,” for Despair has spoilt all.
Products like these would seem to betray mere decadence and senile decay. Thinking of Italian literature of the same period, the fresh and lovely poetry of the quattrocento, we may perhaps wonder how the form and spirit of the Renais​sance can still seem so remote from the regions on this side of the Alps.
* ↑ It is a strange melody, Which is not felt as a great amusement By people who are ill. First the ravens let us know For certain as soon as it is day: They cry aloud with all their might In deep and shrill tones, without interruption. Even the sound of a drum would be better Than those cries of various birds. Next come the cattle going to pasture, cows, calves, Bellowing, lowing, and all this is noxious When one has an empty brain, With the bells of the church chiming in, And destroying altogether the understanding Of people who are ill.
* ↑ It is a cold hostelry and ill refuge for people who are ill.
* ↑ Forward, forward, come here. I see a marvellous thing, it seems to me.—And what, watchman, do you see there?—I see ten thousand rats together And a multitude of mice collecting On the seashore. . . .
* ↑ People ask me every day What I think of the present times, And I answer: it is all honour, Loyalty, truth and faith, Liberality, heroism and order, Charity and advancement Of the common weal; but, by my faith, I do not say what I think.
* ↑ Take all these points just the other way about.
* ↑ Prince, if it is generally everywhere As I know: every virtue abounds; But many a man hearing me will say: He lies.
* ↑ Under a bad picture done in bad colours and by the most paltry painter of the world, in an ironical manner by master Jehan Robertet.
* ↑ The shelved and rejected lover.
* ↑ I laugh in tears.
* ↑ Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.
* ↑ Lying abed awake and fasting at the board, Laughing in tears and lamenting in song.
* ↑ I took leave of this most sweet child With tearful eyes and a laughing mouth.
* ↑ My mouth cannot laugh, Without my eyes belying it: For the heart would deny it By the tears issuing from the eyes.
* ↑ He constrained himself to be cheerful And showed a feigned joy, And forced his heart to sing Not for pleasure, but for fear, For ever a remainder of complaint Entwined itself with the tone of his voice, And reverted to its purpose Like the ousel singing in the wood.
* ↑ This booklet meant to dictate and to describe To pass the time without vulgar mood A simple clerk called Alain Who speaks thus of love by hearsay.
* ↑ By guessing.
* ↑ So he told me smiling That I should lie down and sleep And that I should not at all Be afraid to die of this evil.
* ↑ I am the wight whose heart is draped in black.
* ↑ One day I was talking with my heart Which secretly spoke to me, And in talking I asked it If it had saved No goods when serving Love: It said that quite willingly It would tell me the truth about it, As soon as it had consulted its papers. Having told me this it went away And from me departed. Next I saw it enter In an office it had: There it rummaged here and there In looking for several old writing-books, For it would show me the truth, As soon as it had consulted its papers.
* ↑ 1Do not knock at the door of my mind any more, Anxiety and Care; do not give yourselves so much trouble; For it sleeps and does not want to wake, It has passed all the night in solicitude. It will be in danger, if not well nursed; Stop, stop, let it sleep; Do not knock at the door of my mind any more, Anxiety and Care; do not give yourselves so much trouble.
* ↑ And then, when I heard the window Of the house which clattered, Then it seemed to me that my prayers Had been heard by her.
* ↑ So help me God, I was so ravished That I was scarcely conscious, For, without being told, it seemed to me That the wind moved her window And she could well have recognized me, Perhaps saying softly: “Good night, then,” and God knows I felt like a prince After this all night.
* ↑ I felt so refreshed That without turning about or tossing, I enjoyed golden slumber, Without waking up all night, And then, before dressing To praise Love for it, I kissed my pillow thrice, While laughing silently at the angels.
* ↑ The others, to hide their affliction Controlled their hearts by force, Passing the time in closing and opening again The breviaries they held in their hands, Of which they often turned the leaves As a sign of devotion; But their sorrow and tears Clearly showed their emotion.
* ↑ Sweet eyes that always come and go; Sweet eyes heating the fur coat Of those who fall in love. . . . Sweet eyes of pearly clearness, That say: I am ready when you please, To those whom they feel to be powerful.
* ↑ Physician, what about Law?—By my soul, he is poorly…. How does Reason? … She is out of her mind, She speaks but feebly, And Justice is quite crazy.
* ↑ We God of love, creator, king of glory All hail to all true lovers of humble mind! As it is true that since the victory Of our son on Mount Calvary Several soldiers through lack of knowledge Of our arms, make an alliance with the devil….
* ↑ And so Sluys remained in peace that was included with her, for war was excluded from her, lonelier than a recluse.
* ↑ And lest I lose the wheat of my labour, and that the meal into which it will be ground may have wholesome flour, I intend, if God gives me grace for it, to turn and convert under my rough mill-stones the vicious into the virtuous, the corporal into the spiritual, the worldly into the divine, and, above all, to moralize it. And in this way we shall gather honey from the hard stone and the vermeil rose from sharp thorns, where we shall find grains and seed, fruit, flower and leaf, very sweet odour, odoriferous verdure, verdant florescence, flourishing nurture, nourishing fruit and fruitful pasture.