Arnaut Daniel

Arnaut Daniel - Illustration from Bibliothèque Nationale, MS cod. fr. 12473, 13th century

Arnaut Daniel (* around 1150 in Ribérac in today's Dordogne department , county of Périgord and Duchy of Aquitaine ; † around 1200 or 1210) was an Occitan trobador and one of the main exponents of trobador poetry in the dark, difficult style ( trobar clus ).

He is praised by Dante as “the best blacksmith of the mother tongue” and called by Petrarch “Grand Master of Love”. In the 20th century he was named the greatest poet of all time by the writer Ezra Pound in his work The Spirit of Romance (1910).

Life

According to a Vida (a short prose biography written in Occitan ) attributed to Uc de Sant Circ , Arnaut was born as a nobleman ( gentils hom ) at Ribérac Castle in the diocese of Périgord, received an education in the letras (probably referring to the seven liberal arts , or at least their language subjects of the trivium), then gave the study but in favor of poetry and was Joglar , what with the German word juggler ( joculator related) designation of a minstrel , the foreign fee and own songs recites. His contemporary Raimon de Dufort also calls him "a student ruined by playing dice ".

Artistic creation

Arnaut of two melodies and lyrics to 18 are obtained, of which 12 in canzones form and one ( Lo ferm voler q'el cor m'intra ) the oldest known song in the form of Sestine . He is considered to be the inventor of this genre, a formally highly demanding form of poetry consisting of six stanzas with six verses each and six constant rhyming words that have no rhyming partner within the individual stanza, but recur from stanza to stanza in a different position, with each stanza starting with the first rhyme repeats the rhyming word of the previous stanza ( rimas capcaudadas ). Because of the particular difficulty of allowing the words exposed in the rhyme to recur with the most varying meanings possible in new contexts of the statement, and because of the associated darkness, the sestine is considered to be particularly characteristic of the style of the trobar clus represented by Arnaut.

One of Dante's comments in the Purgatorio (26,118) can be understood to mean that Arnaut made a special honor not only with songs (“versi d'amore”) but also with prose novels ( prose di romanzi ), but no such prose work has survived could be attributed to him. The English poet Henry W. Longfellow wanted to ascribe to him a version of Launcelot of the Lake , but this did not meet with approval.

Arnaut had already made a name for himself among the trobadors around 1185 and later enjoyed particular esteem among the Italian imitators of trobador poetry. Dante lists him in his work De vulgari eloquentia with his canzone L' aur'amara as the main representative of the genre love poetry (Dve II, ii, 8), there also quotes him with the canzones Sols sui qui sai lo sobrafan qe'm sortz ( II, vi, 6) and Si'm fos Amors de ioi donar tant larga (II, xiii, 2) and imitated Arnaut's Sestine in his own sestine Al poco giorno (Rime 34) and the double sestine Amor tu vedi ben (Rime 37) to. In his Commedia, Arnaut meets Daniel in Canto 26 of Purgatorio , as “Arnaldo” in purgatory among the penitents of the sin of lust. He is introduced there by the Italian poet Guido Guinizelli , who is also highly esteemed by Dante , who introduces Arnaut as "miglior fabbro del parlar materno" ("best blacksmith of the mother tongue"), who is even preferable to the trobador Giraut de Bornelh . Arnaut then introduces himself in his mother tongue:

«Tan m'abellis vostre cortes deman,

qu'ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire.

Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;

consiros vei la passada folor,

e vei snacks lo joi qu'esper, denan.

Ara vos prec, per aquella valor

que vos guida al som de l'escalina,

sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor »

(Purg., XXVI, 140-147)

Literally translated:

I like your polite question so much

that I neither will nor can hide from you.

I am Arnaut, who I cry and walk here singing;

I look at the past folly with worry

and with pleasure I see the impending joy (i.e., paradise) that I hope for.

But now I ask you, for the sake of that virtue,

that leads you to the bottom of those stairs:

Do you remember when I suffered?

In the rework by Carl Streckfuß :

"You know how to embellish the noble question,

That I neither want nor can I hide.

I'm Arnald and go in pain and groaning,

Realizing the madness of the past

And sing, hoping, then cheerfully.

Now I ask you, do you have the glory

Found on this mountain top

Then think of my suffering at the right time. "

As a tribute to these verses, which Dante Arnaut dedicated to Daniel, the European edition of TS Eliot's second volume of poetry was published under the title Ara Vos Prec. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" begins and ends with references to Dante and Daniel. The last paragraph of the poem also contains a reference to the last line of the 26th song from the Purgatorium: “Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina” (Then he disappeared in the fire that purifies them), which also refers to Daniel Arnaut relates.

In Arnaut's song No. 10 ( Ab gai so cuindet e leri , “To a beautiful, cheerful and happy melody”) there are - according to Ezra Pound - “three verses for which Daniel is best known” (The Spirit of Romance, p . 36):

“Leu sui Arnaut qu'amas l'aura

E chatz le lebre from lo bou

E nadi contra suberna "

Translation:

"I am Arnaut who loves the wind,

And chase the hare with the ox,

And swims against the flash flood. "

The school in Ribérac was named after Daniel Arnaut.

See also

• Trobadord seal

literature

• Paolo Canettieri: Il gioco delle forme nella lirica dei trovatori. Roma: Bagatto Libri, 1996.
• Mario Eusebi: L'aur'amara. Parma: Pratiche Editrice. 1995.
• Ezra Pound: The Spirit of Romance. First edition 1910, reprint New Direction Books 1968.

Web links

• Arnaut Daniel: Complete Works (English; Provencal)

Remarks

1. ↑ Literally: "collects".