The simple meaning of the next poem, is as follows.
qt. Xi.

I leave this prose as I wrote it seven years ago,
I did not at that time ttempt a metric version of the
Canzon. After the lapse of time, I do not now attempt
a translation in form. There are so many interests,
technical and metrical interests stronger that the rhymes
in this poem, that I am not prepared to sacrifice them.
It seems at present impossible to do the thing right,
and likely to remain so until we find the unfindable
music to which the words were sung.

My trans. of six years since had no
virtue save that of being diagramatic. They proved that
the impossiblity of the canzon in English was not
due to an utter impossibility of _getting rhymes_. The
rhymes _exist_ in sufficiency.

Now I have had a chance to add a little
onomatopoia, to copy a little the chirrup and quality
of some of verses, and even to enrich _as_ the
language of my versions, and in one or two places to
bring them almost into the purlieu of art. In XI.
I am not yet come to that point. I can only indicate
a few of the problems and speculations aroused by the
poem.

I dont in the leat mean that tours de force,
chirrups and twitters as in IX have anything to do with
literature. But I have at least, gone far enough to

know, where at first I had only suspected on instinct
that the professors who contradicted Dante, were excessively
rash.

I take up my present revision, entirely without the
heat of my early fury. Still it is interesting that
professors should have contradicted, if not the greatest
poet that ever lives, at least one of the three
half dozen greatest, and the only one of them who
had ever studied provençal, or written it. And they
rush in to call Dante stupid, or at least to
say his remarks are unintelligible, without even looking
at the art Arnaut Daniell.

It is all quite professorial.

Let us pass the Glamour of the lamplight in XII.

Let us pass the sea-chatey surge of the movement in III.

Or the melody of *RISE OF XIX*., the first blank verse
paragraphs. Let us consider Arnats achievement. The
weight of the time that was there for his lifting.
The encumberance of the stanza of seven or eight lines wit
with internal rhyme, abmacdc. or some such simplicity.
in atge, etc.

The boredom of the round after one has heard
three hunder such canzos.

Yet in the last strophe of XI. we have, I think
the accent of passion.

Pensar de lies m'es relaus.

Thinking on her, have I repose.

It is a song that Dante knew well, vide the, _agro_
in XVI Purg. as the Sols sui, gave him the melody
of qui plor e vau cantan.

I take it that is not impossible that Arnaut in his set
to with joglar Engles may have come on this alliterative
anglo saxon poems, and that there may have been some tal
talk of the craft.

The alliteration in XI. 1. might easily have resulted
from it. As the leonine rhyme of piula and friula,
might have resulted from trying to sing to some arabic
melody; as Atalanta and meleagar come undoubtedly from these
rassassage Ovid and the hunting in Calydon.

There are here indications of something
approaching a culture, of something approaching a conscious
effort to lift the art of the trobadour out of its
former level.

Dante may have noticed these things, tho they
be doubtless doubtless too tiny for the eye of
lofty philologer. Who indeed is the philologer that he
should take count of the art.

I have studied these canzos as an artist,
off and on from some time. I am still stumped by the
rhythms of XI. the cross rip. The music is lost, and
without it (and even if we had I am not sure it would
settle the matter) but without it I can not do what I

I can only give a translation containing the same no.
of syllabs. as the orig. and hope it may stimulate
the per eption of certain details in the orig. which
hasty
might escape the reader .

In this I am, as in ideed in all this
edition, only chalking up my results, to the present,
My only preface, if I had written one, should be
this is as far as I have yet carried my translation
of Arnaut.

The literary value of metricnal tornate di forza
is nil, nil precicley. There is however an art of
fitting song beautiful words into music, and it is to
that art that the making of canzoni largely belongs. In
L'aura amara, one may by reading guess something of
music, the strophe is one half the imitation of bird
notes, the other half a suggen sinking of pitch,
lowering of the voice,
Don tem morir

in a wide out sweep,
in isincerity, the real feeling beneath the bright show.

Els letz becs dels auzels ramencs
ten balbs
e mutx
pars
e non pars,

and in contrast
que m'a virat bas d'haut

sils fans
nom asoma

In VIII the bird cry comes in the middle of the strophe
cadahus
en son us

estauc clus,

all these obviously soft and staccato.

William Allingham 'n "the lover and the birds" has made an
almost unique attempt at this sort of this, for English.

I do not intrude a judgement, for the comparison need not
be made a court martial.

With Arnaut there are two questions. 1. How much is
great and permanent poetry, or lovely and lasting.

2. What actual weight did he lift. What were his gift
to the art, his inventions and discoveries,

in comparison to those of any of his contemporaries. ??

Five years ago I should have dogmatized and said,
it is rubbish to mention quel de limozi etc.

. Now I am content to ask the philologer to try at
least to understand a little of Arnauts art, before
telling us that Dante was no judge of the matter.

There charming passages in at least two dizen troubadours
Even old 'rebezieus elephant has just had his habits confir
med by a Zoo keeper.