Will come to this again. The Eternal Note of Sadness. Matthew Arnold pegged it, listening to the Ocean. Willie Nelson too – he said, Listen to what the blues are saying. It is in a lot of Medieval lyricism too. It's there on my book shelf in The Modern Library’s An Anthology of Medieval Lyrics. Edited by Angel Flores.*
But let's get to the poem - from the north of France, in the 14th or 15th century, a girl is versifying. Take it away, Christine de Pisan.
=~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~=
If I’m in church more often now
By Christine de Pisan
If I’m in church more often now
It’s just that I can see her there
Fresh as new-opened roses are.
Why gossip of it, why endow
It with such consequence? Why stare
If I’m in church more often now?
Where I may go – or when – or how
It is to come more near to her.
Fools call me fool! It’s whose affair
If I’m in church more often now?
=~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~= =~>+*<~=
Comment on the poem - This is a woman poet riffing on the girl in church with she’s smitten. I know all about that. Spent as much time dreamily directing eyes at the 8th grade girls as in siting them heavenward, during the Mass, daily and Sunday, thinking about Earth as it is in Heaven. The poet has the defiance of the blues poet - T'aint nobody's business .... It's whose affair if I am in church now?
Comment on the form -There’s a fair bit of courtier fancy chivalry in these poems – and it may get doubly propagated in translation; like Valentine Card poems, they can grate. There can be traps in translation, as people try to push round rhyme, language, and lyric music into square pegs. It can get clumsy, or sing-song, and some of that is patent here in this tome, which includes the Robert Johnson of the French middle ages, Villon. It may be surprising but in many of the medieval lyrics there’s a bluesy bawdiness round many a corner.
Something about the poet - Christine de Pisan’s father was an astrologer and physician, living at the tail-end of the Middle Ages ( 1364-1430). Hard times led her to write, and she may have ended her days in a convent.
Comment on the form -There’s a fair bit of courtier fancy chivalry in these poems – and it may get doubly propagated in translation; like Valentine Card poems, they can grate. There can be traps in translation, as people try to push round rhyme, language, and lyric music into square pegs. It can get clumsy, or sing-song, and some of that is patent here in this tome, which includes the Robert Johnson of the French middle ages, Villon. It may be surprising but in many of the medieval lyrics there’s a bluesy bawdiness round many a corner.
Something about the poet - Christine de Pisan’s father was an astrologer and physician, living at the tail-end of the Middle Ages ( 1364-1430). Hard times led her to write, and she may have ended her days in a convent.
* Angel was a great poet-translator we will come up on again and again.
No comments:
Post a Comment