96 The Troubadours, Chapter 3: The Greats

Chapter 3: The Greats

[Quan vei la lauzeta mover by the Unicorn Ensemble plays]

I am struck by a joy that kills me,

And pangs of love that so ravish

All my flesh, body will perish;

Never before did I so fiercely

Suffer like this, and so languish,

Which is scarce fitting or seemly.

How often do I close my eyes

And know my spirit is fled afar;

Never such sadness that my heart

Is far from where my lover lies;

Yet when the clouds of morning part,

How swiftly all my pleasure flies.

I know I’ve never had joy of her,

Never will she have joy of me,

Nor promise herself, nor will she

Ever now take me as her lover;

No truth or lie does she utter,

To me: and so it may ever be.

-Jaufre Rudel [Quote read by Roberto Toro of Tsar Power Podcast]

            I was once an aspiring writer. More than history, I loved stories and wanted to create my own. I grew up reading fantasy and Greek and Norse mythology. I started seriously writing short stories when I was 16 years old and published my first in a literary magazine when I was 18. I published a dozen more short stories and even two novels but since they weren’t with a big publishing house I have a day job as a history professor and podcast on the side.

While I was getting my undergraduate degree I knew a fellow aspirant writer who we’ll call ‘Dave.’ Dave was like many young people who wanted to be writers: he didn’t write. This is a strangely common thing but a lot of people I’ve met who wanted to be writers just liked coming up with ideas and didn’t like the actual work of creating a story out of it. He also did not like to do much and would not join our cohort on the silly misadventures we had as college kids. One day, Lucy, the 3.2 million year-old skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis, was going to be featured in a museum just a few blocks from our apartment in Orange County, California. I was excited and got all my friends to go but Dave did not want to go. He was generally lazy and looked for any excuse to avoid doing things. When I told him about the event he said it was lame because, “it was just a bunch of old bones.” I told Dave that he couldn’t act like this and be a writer. I told him that being a writer wasn’t just a job but a life and that you can’t interest people in your work without doing something meaningful with your life. He still didn’t join us. He ended up never becoming a writer and I tell stories for a living, so I think I was right.

This is not to say that I have lived the most spectacular or incredible life, but I have always tried to go on adventures when I could. I spent a year teaching primary school children English in southern France. I climbed cliffsides in Wales, mostly because I tried to take a shortcut and got lost. I got proposed to by a homeless man in Paris. I scaled rural torii shrines to a cemetery near Kyoto. I went stargazing at Black Mesa with friends who swore they’d seen aliens. I got assaulted by a prostitute in Barcelona while walking down the central boulevard to the sea (I swear it wasn’t my fault). I spoke to the late Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel in French. I celebrated my birthday in New Orleans with alligator soup and indie jazz bands. I took absinthe and hallucinated in York. I have performed a handful of spells. I’ve saved a number of lives in various ways and nearly died many times, most dramatically when the plane I was in nearly exploded over Greenland and had to make an emergency landing in Boston. I wouldn’t be able to find meaning in these stories that I tell nor tell them with such passion had I not lived through a few stories worth telling myself. Yet, I am not sure I could compare with the troubadours.

The troubadours were adventurers by nature who lived in exciting times, which gave them a lot to sing about. They came from diverse origins, some lords, some poor, but all dreamers. They traveled dangerous roads, defying bandits and brigands. Their life was transcendent transgression, as is the life of any good artist. They loved in secret ladies at court when their husbands were not watching. They defied church morals, holding as their standard only that God is love and wishes us to love in turn. Some made diatribes against political leaders they opposed and earned their wrath in turn. They lived amidst Reconquista, Crusade abroad and at home and somehow lived through the most vibrant culture of their age in the sunny Mediterranean landscape that stretched from Catalonia through Occitania and into northern Italy.

            Of the thousands of poets, singers and performers who made up this great tradition only around 460 are known to us today. Most of them had acceptable skills, though a select few rank among the greatest poets of their age and of all time.

            Jaufre Rudel was a hopeless romantic to the point that the ever-cynical Marcabru personally mocked him as a fool. All of Jaufre’s songs were about love. Jaufre’s love was a pure, unblemished love which could be simultaneously longing for a woman, adoration of God and dedication to living an upright life. His love could also be heartbreaking. He describes being held captive by his passions, comparing it to being in the chains of a Saracen, something which may have actually happened to him while he was on crusade.

            Jaufre was a fascinating figure both for what we know about him and what we don’t. The patriarchs of his house held the title ‘prince of Blaye’ and were vassals of the dukes of Aquitaine. Despite this, Jaufre’s father regularly rebelled against Guillaume IX who seized the castle and razed it to the ground. Then the expansionist Count of Angoulême remade Blaye castle only for its ruler to rebel against him! Jaufre’s father did not play well with others and regularly found himself opposite the most powerful men in the south.

            Jaufre did not inherit his father’s lands and wealth until late in his life and for that reason he has been called ‘a prince without a castle.’ Without a lordship but with enough wealth to support himself, Jaufre became a traveling minstrel. His songs were about a love that he could not have, one which was not so much forbidden as it was too far to touch.

His most famous work, Lan qand il jorn son lonc en mai, reuses common troubadour tropes but imbues them with more beauty and sorrow. Spring and birdsong, often symbols of new love, new beginnings and new joy, only deepen his melancholy as he yearns for a love beyond his grasp. In full, the poem is as follows:

When the days are long, in May,

Sweet the songs of birds afar,

And when I choose from there to stray,

I bring to mind a love that’s far.

I walk face lowered, and I glower,

And neither song nor hawthorn flower,

Can please me more than winter’s ice.

I hold the Lord for truth always

By whom was formed this love afar,

But for each good that comes my way

Two ills I find, since she’s so far.

Would I were a pilgrim at this hour,

So staff and cloak from her tower,

She’d gaze on with her lovely eyes!

What joy it will be to seek that day,

For love of God, that inn afar,

And, if she wishes, rest, I say,

Near her, though I come from afar,

For words fall in a pleasant shower

When distant lover has the power,

With gentle heart, joy to realise.

Sad, in pain, would I go away,

Should I not see that love afar.

For I don’t know when I may

See her, the distance is so far.

So many the roads and ways lower,

That indeed I can say no more,

But let all things be as she likes.

The delights of love I never may

Enjoy, if not joy of my love afar,

No finer, nobler comes my way,

From any quarter: near or far.

So rich and high is her dower,

That there in the Saracen’s tower

For her sake I would be their prize.

God that made all that goes or stays

And formed this love from afar

Grant me the power to hope one day

I’ll see this love of mine afar,

Truly, and in a pleasant hour,

So that her chamber and her bower,

Might seem a palace to my eyes.

Who calls me covetous, truth to say,

Is right, I long for a love afar,

For no other joy pleases me today

Like the joy in my love from afar.

Yet what I wish is not in my power,

It is my godfather’s curse, so sour,

That I love, yet love should be denied.

For what I wish is not in my power,

Cursed my godfather’s word so sour,

Who has ruled my love should be denied.

            The poem tugged on many heartstrings across cultures. It was popular in Germany where the Minnesang, or ‘love song,’ movement lifted heavily from the troubadours. Walther von der Vogelweide, often called the greatest German poet until Goethe, used it as inspiration for his crusade song, Palästinalied, the Palestine Song.

Jaufre’s ideal of a faraway love became personified in the Countess of Tripoli. According to legend, pilgrims returning from crusade told of her immaculate beauty. Caught up with a romantic spirit, Jaufre voyaged to the east to fight in the Second Crusade. He may have been captured by Turkish or Arab forces at some point, though if so he gained his freedom and went to Tripoli. Unfortunately he had fallen ill along the way and his tragic tale ends with him dying in the Countess’ arms.

            Jaufre Rudel was admired in his time, though more for his musical skill than for his poetic abilities. In death, he became a mythic figure, an archetype of the French doomed lover. During the 19th century writers in the Romantic movement from England, France, Italy, Germany and beyond regularly retold his story. One of his most fervent admirers was the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne who comprised his own short poem about Jaufre, which is as follows:

There lived a singer in France of old

By the tideless dolorous midland sea.

In a land of sand and ruin and gold

There shone one woman, and none but she.

And finding life for her love's sake fail,

Being fain to see her, he bade set sail,

Touched land, and saw her as life grew cold,

And praised God, seeing; and so died he.

Died, praising God for his gift and grace:

For she bowed down to him weeping, and said

"Live"; and her tears were shed on his face

Or ever the life in his face was shed.

The sharp tears fell through her hair, and stung

Once, and her close lips touched him and clung

Once, and grew one with his lips for a space;

And so drew back, and the man was dead.

            Another troubadour with a remarkable personal story is Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. Unlike most troubadours, Raimbaut grew up poor. He became a jongleur, performing acrobatic routines, playacting and singing, possibly even as an apprentice to an established troubadour. Over time his talents became apparent and he became a troubadour in his own right. He spent most of his career in northern Italy, which was highly receptive to troubadours given the similar culture with Occitania. He became a personal favorite of Boniface I, the Frankish lord of Monferrato, a county in northern Italy.

            Boniface I and Raimbaut became friends and the two traveled together on campaign. Raimbaut proved a fearless warrior. At a battle in Messina, Boniface I was beset by enemies launching darts and javelins at him when Raimbaut intervened, using his own shield to save his patron. For his bravery, Boniface I knighted Raimbaut, making him the only poor troubadour to ascend to the status of a knight.

            In the year 1200 Boniface I left for Soissons for a meeting of great lords who planned the route of the Fourth Crusade. Raimbaut did not want to go fight in the Holy Land, but joined out of loyalty for his friend and patron. As it turned out, they would not travel so far as West Asia; the Fourth Crusade took a figurative and literal turn when, instead of setting out for Jerusalem, the Crusaders decided to conquer Constantinople. The Westerners toppled the Greeks and established themselves as lords in the east, with Boniface I becoming King of Thessalonica.

            Raimbaut was among the combatants and was even wounded during the siege of Constantinople. Yet, he truly earned his place in history when he wrote his Epic Letter. Written like a northern French chanson de geste, this epic documents the Western perspective of those who brought down the Eastern Roman Empire and replaced it with Frankokratia, ‘Frankish Rule.’

            Raimbaut’s poetry was remarkably ambitious and shows the heart of an artist who wanted to further his craft. Aside from his Epic Letter he also wrote the first known torneyamen, a debate between three singers as opposed to the usual two. He was also a master of languages; in one poem he sang in Occitan, French, Gascon, Galician-Portuguese and Tuscan. Like a James Joyce of his time, he could jump from one language to another to showcase his own far-ranging experiences and further his own legend. This was particularly innovative as no other poet that we know of was composing in multiple languages and Raimbaut proved centuries ahead of his time in this regard.

Raimbaut also loved dance music and composed some of the finest melodies of his age that would set feet to stomping. While his lyrics are not regarded as on par with some of the other masters, he made up for them with beats, innovation and passion.

            Like any good artist, Raimbaut met his end at the height of his fame. After following his friend to mainland Greece and serving at his court for two years, eating olives, drinking wine and enjoying all that Greece had to offer, he rode north to meet the Wallachians only to fall prey to an ambush. He had lived an incredible life, rising from poverty in Occitania, becoming a respected artist and knight in Italy, overthrowing a thousand year-old empire with his best friend and dying brutally in a foreign land.

            Our next great troubadour was also an adventurer, though quite possibly his end was even worse than Raimbaut’s, for while he likely died peacefully from old age he has since been condemned to eternal shame. Bertran de Born was the steward of Hautefort castle in the Dordogne region, almost halfway between Bordeaux and Clermont-Ferrand. The Born family held the castle on behalf of their lords, the Lastour family, which they had intermarried with. When Bertran was 40 years old he became the castle’s sole steward, though his reign proved tumultuous in no small part because of his big mouth, incessant need to make enemies and criticize the powerful and his inability to choose the winning side.

            As the new lord of a fine castle Bertran was caught in the midst of an ever-changing political landscape. The cause of the chaos was none other than House Plantagenêt. The house’s patriarch, King Henri II, ruled the Angevin Empire, which included the western half of France and the Kingdom of England. Yet, Henri II faced consistent rebellion from his sons who wanted to seize as much territory and power as possible as early as possible. In 1182 Bertran lent his sword and his voice to Richard’s elder brother, Henri the Younger. In this case, Henri was ‘Younger’ than his father, Henri II, he was not in fact younger than his younger brother, that would be silly. Bertran composed sirventes, which was a genre of politically-charged songs. In these musical diatribes the minstrel called upon other lords and knights to join the rebellion against the Lionheart.

            While Bertran supported Henri the Younger, he quickly became incensed when Henri abandoned the war to go partying. Even as the Lionheart pressed into their lands, Henri took time off to attend a jousting tournament hosted by his brother-in-law the King of France. For that reason, an angry Bertran berated Henri in another sirvente, singing.

I want to give advice to the tune of ‘Lady Alamanda’,

to Sir Richard over there even if he’s not asking me for it,

he should never treat his men favorably on his brother’s account.

And neither does he! Instead he sets siege, erodes their possessions,

steals their castles and demolishes and burns on all sides.

Let the king go tourneying with the men of Garlanda, and the other one, his brother-in-law.

            That was a sick burn. First, Bertran laughs that Richard is demolishing Henri the Young King’s fortresses and that by implication his followers are fools who will lose everything. At the same time he mocks Henri for going to a tournament with his brother-in-law, the King of France, even as Richard wipes the floor with his vassals. Likely, this was meant to shame Henri into acting right, though what impact it had we can only guess.

            The 1182 conflict ended when King Henri II stepped in and said, “Boys, boys, boys, enough fighting, there’s plenty to go around for everyone.” King Henri II then held a marvelous Christmas court at Caen. Bertran attended the ceremonies, though likely against his will. Bertran had been summoned to account for his role in the rebellion and perhaps explain the two diss tracks he released, one against Richard and the other against Henri the Younger. As punishment for participating in the uprising and releasing an anti-Plantagenêt mixtape, Bertran lost control of his castle, which went to his brother.

            In 1183 a new rebellion broke out and Bertran again joined Henri the Younger. Bertran really knew how to pick the losing side, as Richard and his ally Alfonso of Aragon retook the fortress at Hautefort almost immediately after Bertran had won it back. To make things even worse, Henry the Younger died of dysentery.

            Things were looking bad for Bertran. He had lost his castle and his patron. But then he did something remarkable: he composed a planh, a song of mourning, for Henri which was utterly beautiful and tragic. It is as follows:

If all the grief and woe and bitterness,
All dolour, ill and every evil chance
That ever came upon this grieving world
Were set together they would seem but light
Against the death of the young English King.
Worth lieth riven and Youth dolorous,
The world overshadowed, soiled and overcast,
Void of all joy and full of ire and sadness.

Grieving and sad and full of bitterness
Are left in teen the liegemen courteous,
The joglars supple and the troubadours.
O’er much hath ta’en Sir Death that deadly warrior
In taking from them the young English King,
Who made the freest hand seem covetous.
‘Las! Never was nor will be in this world
The balance for this loss in ire and sadness!

O skilfull Death and full of bitterness,
Well mayst thou boast that thou the best chevalier
That any folk e’er had, hast from us taken;
Sith nothing is that unto worth pertaineth
But had its life in the young English King
And better were it, should God grant his pleasure,
That he should live than many a living dastard
That doth but wound the good with ire and sadness.

From this faint world, how full of bitterness
Love takes his way and holds his joy deceitful
Sith no thing is but turneth unto anguish
And each to-day Vails less than yestere’en,
Let each man visage this young English King
That was most valiant ‘mid all worthiest men!
Gone is his body fine and amorous,
Whence have we grief, discord and deepest sadness.

Him, whom it pleased for our great bitterness
To come to earth to draw us from misventure,
Who drank of death for our salvation,
Him do we pray as to a Lord most righteous
And humble eke, that the young English King
He please to pardon, as true pardon is,
And bid go in with honoured companions
There where there is no grief, nor shall be sadness.

            When the rebellion ended King Henri II restored Bertran to his castle and made him lord of Hautefort in his own right without dependence on the Lastours. We do not know exactly why, though it has been suggested that King Henri II was moved to pity by the troubadour’s planh. Whatever disagreements they had, King Henri II had loved his eldest son, and had wished to give him his crown. Father and son might have been on opposite sides of battle but no father can fail to shed a tear when burying their son, especially one as strong and proud as Henri had been.

            As Bertran reached his forties he put aside the sword and picked up the lyre in earnest. In 1187 Jerusalem fell to Muslim forces and Bertran vociferously joined in the chorus of singers calling upon younger knights to leave on the Third Crusade. Bertran praised his lord and patron Richard, now the leader of the Angevin Empire, for committing to lead the holy war, though the aging troubadour stayed home. Bertran said he could not go to war because he had recently fallen in love with a ‘beautiful blond lady,’ and couldn’t possibly risk his life at this time.

            The veteran minstrel continued composing and performing songs until roughly the age of 60. While he was skilled in many fields and could write love songs with the best of them, he was at his heart a political writer. The primary aim of his works was to push lords into waging war. When Richard and the King of France, Philippe II Auguste enjoyed a rare period of peace, Bertran berated the kings for their lack of manliness and egged them on to wage war.

            Bertran truly loathed peace, such that he wrote:

When there is peace on every hand, let there be a strip of

war left for me. Blight his eyes who parts me from it,

although I may have begun it first! Peace gives me no

comfort; I agree with war, for I neither hold nor believe

any other law.

And I do not care for Monday, or Tuesday, or weeks or

months or years, nor for April or May do I stop planning

how harm may come to those who do me wrong. Never

from me by force shall three men conquer the worth

of a strap.

Whoever may plough and cultivate his land, I have always

taken trouble about how I may get bolts and darts,

helmets and hauberks, horses and swords, for thus do I

please myself; and I take joy in assaults and tournaments,

in making gifts and making love.

            Like a modern day rapper he glorified the traditional masculine pursuits of conquest in battle and the bedroom. Why did Bertran love war so much, especially when he was so often on the losing end of it? In another work he recounted that war led nobles to spend money on troubadours. Those who successfully raided their enemy’s lands came away with wealth and threw marvelous celebrations at their courts. Lords and ladies gathered for merriment and drink, all while the finest troubadours played. For Bertran, war was good business and he was not ashamed to say it.

            For ten years Bertran supported Richard the Lionheart in his conflict with Philippe II Auguste. Somehow, for the third time in a row, Bertran picked the losing side. Richard took a stray bolt in 1199 and died. Bertran found himself again in a tight spot, as the King of France spread his power across the realm. Moreover, the aging troubadour’s life was entering its winter period. His second wife, perhaps the ‘blond lady’ he mentioned that kept him from crusade, had passed, leaving him a widower. As he approached the age of 60 he could not travel and perform as he once did. Left with few options, he retired to a monastery where he spent the last years of his life.

            Bertran de Born left behind a remarkable, if complex legacy. The Italian poet Dante Alighieri regarded him as the greatest poet of political tracts of his age. No one could so powerfully stir hearts to battle as he could. Yet, while Dante admired his skill, he also believed that Bertran was a horrible person. It is for this reason that Bertran found himself in the Eighth Circle of Hell.

            In Dante’s classic The Divine Comedy, the poet travels to Malebolge, ‘the evil pits,’ which are reserved for fraudsters and the malevolent. Dante travels to Malebolge’s ninth pit, where sowers of discord are forced to walk in a circle as a demon chops up their bodies with a sword, just as they tore up apart the body of their communities in life. Their wounds heal and they forever circle around and around, suffering sword blows, healing and again being torn apart. It is there that Dante encounters none other than Bertran de Born, who is forced to carry around his own severed head. In the 28th Canto of the Inferno, Bertran looks at the poet and declares

And so that thou may carry news of me,

Know that Bertran de Born am I, the same

Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort.

I made the father and the son rebellious;

Achitophel not more with Absalom

And David did with his accursed goadings.

Because I parted persons so united,

Parted do I now bear my brain, alas!

From its beginning, which is in this trunk.

Thus is observed in me the counterpoise.

            Thus ends the tale of Bertran de Born. Greatest of the political poets of his age, master of sirventes, doomed to Hell for all eternity.

            Speaking of someone who probably deserved hell: Marcabru. If Bertran de Born was the greatest political writer of his time, then Marcabru was the greatest satirist. He was the Mark Twain or Jonathan Swift of the medieval period except even more insufferable. Given his frequent insults at the elite in general, specific members of court, his fellow troubadours, religious leaders and all women it’s no surprise that the people of Gascony eventually decided to execute him, at least according to legend.

            We know very little about Marcabru, and what we do know is mostly false. According to his vida he was born to a poor woman who left him on a noble’s doorstep as a babe. From there he became an apprentice to the great early troubadour Cercamon. The only truth in this story is that Marcabru was born poor and he had to scrape out a living from his songs, something we can derive from his frequent attacks on wealthy lords for not paying their minstrels enough money for their services. Despite these gripes, Marcabru did have two major things going for him which ensured he always had enough money to survive. First, he was one of the first poets to call for holy war in Iberia. He mocked the obsession that some lords had with the Holy Land when Spain was right on their doorstep. Because of this he was a regular at Iberian courts and played for some of the wealthiest kings down south. Another thing that ensured he always had an audience was that he was one of the greatest poets and composers of his age and among the most influential.

            Sixteen of Marcabru’s poems and four of his melodies survive. Troubadour scholars hail him as an innovative master, who could compose musical tracts meant to be performed by professional singers with wide vocal range and other music that was so simple that crowds could pick up the beat and sing along to. He was also a master wordsmith and was the opposite of every modern rock band that rhymes “girl” with “world.” Marcabru had a vast vocabulary and every word in his poems was chosen carefully to express specific thoughts, maintain a consistent sound when spoken with other words and provide multiple meanings.  

            If Bertran owned the sirventes, Marcabru was the king of the partimen. His often comedic dialogues saw him adopt multiple roles, at least one of which played the naïve fool who believed in true love, fidelity and other such nonsense. His most frequent target was women, who he viewed as insatiable harlots without exception. In a segment of one poem he writes:

Solomon says and grants

that, at first, she is as sweet as mulled wine

but, when parting, she is more scalding,

bitter and cruel as a snake:

she knows so much about cheating,

the sinner,

that he who ties himself to her

departs confounded.

She bears resemblance to the Chimera,

which is snake in the rear, lion in the front,

[and] ox in the middle, which makes it stand out

from the bay horse and the elephant!

Cover the beast in pitch,

you [still] won't go wrong

about what the traitress

means [to do].

The whore is like a lion in that

she is fierce and proud in the beginning,

but then, when she has sated her desire,

until she's had a thousand [lovers], she doesn't care a fig.

For, often, through whoring,

the prostitute reeks,

as does, in a butchery,

rotten carrion.

            Marcabru would have fit in nicely with the incel community and manosphere of today. When he wasn’t lambasting women he also derided noblemen as being useless cuckolds or for cuckolding each other with their animalistic lasciviousness. He was particularly concerned with Occtian’s cheating culture, which he claimed degenerated the population, though perhaps he was just jealous he wasn’t getting in on it. Still, as offensive as he was, Marcarbru’s talent is undeniable. It had to be; his works were so offensive that they had to be amongst the best of his age such that people could overlook the awful things he said.

            Our next great has the honor of making it into Dante’s The Divine Comedy, though this time in Purgatory. In the 26th canto Dante encounters Arnaut Daniel, who is honored above all other vernacular poets. Like any good person, Arnaut has passed through the various trials of purgatory and made it to the seventh layer, the Lust Terrace, which I’m pretty sure is also the name of a nightclub in LA. The very last suffering Arnaut must face is to pass through a wall of purifying fire to rid himself of any final impure thoughts and urges before he can pass through into Paradise. There were probably quite a few less-than-Christian thoughts in his mind. Arnaut was, after all a troubadour, and every single poem he wrote was a love poem, except for one which was a scatological dialogue. Arnaut speaks to Dante in his native language, which demonstrates Dante’s respect for his fellow poet and for the Occitan tradition which he so loved.

Dante was not the only poet who admired Arnaut Daniel. Dante’s contemporary Petrarch called Arnaut the gran maestro d'amore, “grand master of love.” The eccentric 20th century American poet Ezra Pound dubbed Arnaut, “the greatest poet who ever lived.” Likewise, T.S. Eliot, the 1948 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, made many references to Arnaut who he clearly adored.

            What made Arnaut so special was his absolute mastery of wordplay. His equivalent in our modern times would be artists like Lenoard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Kendrick Lamar or Aesop Rocky, all of which are known for interlacing their songs with deep meaning, each word furthering the general feelings and thoughts meant to be conveyed all while interweaving phrases which contained triple or even quadruple entendres.

            Arnaut was one of the most innovative troubadours who constantly pushed the boundaries of the medium in ways that other artists did not know was possible. His song, L’aur’amara takes up the standard theme of birdsong as a herald of spring and new love. What makes this so unique was the delivery. Arnaut sang in short, sudden, swift and flitting back-and-forth sequence such that he sounded like a bird even as he sang about birdsong.

            Arnaut’s most ambitious contribution to the troubadour tradition was the sestina. What, might you ask, is a sestina? A sestina is a remarkably complex and engaging type of poem that involves a great deal of skill to pull off. A sestina is a poem that has six lines in each stanza. Each of these lines ends with a word, naturally. In the next stanza these same ending words are placed at the end of new lines but in different orders. Thus, you have a repetition of six ending words but as they are used in different contexts they carry all new meanings.

            If this sounds confusing let me give you an example of a sestina in English. Here are three stanzas from Rudyard Kipling’s “Sestina of the Tramp-Royal,” in which his chosen ending words are: all, world, good, long, done and die. To make it simple I will annunciate the ending word of each line.

Speakin’ in general, I ’ave tried ’em all—

The ’appy roads that take you o’er the world.

Speakin’ in general, I ’ave found them good

For such as cannot use one bed too long,

But must get ’ence, the same as I ’ave done,

An’ go observin’ matters till they die.

What do it matter where or ’ow we die,

So long as we’ve our ’ealth to watch it all—

The different ways that different things are done,

An’ men an’ women lovin’ in this world;

Takin’ our chances as they come along,

An’ when they ain’t, pretendin’ they are good?

In cash or credit—no, it aren’t no good;

You ’ave to ’ave the ’abit or you’d die,

Unless you lived your life but one day long,

Nor didn’t prophesy nor fret at all,

But drew your tucker some’ow from the world,

An’ never bothered what you might ha’ done.

            As you can tell, the poem uses six key words meant to convey certain emotions and ideas which are thoroughly explored through new contexts. What makes a sestina so unique is that these words can be rearranged in practically any order. If the first stanza proceeds with the ending words arranged like A-B-C-D-E-F then the next stanza can flip the order to F-E-D-C-B-A. Alternatively, the author can mix them up so they go from one half-end to another such as C-B-A-F-E-D or A-B-C-F-E-D or jumble them up completely. Sestinas allow for numerous patterns based on what type of composition the artist wants to make. A great artist will not just use the form of a sestina but will repeat sound patterns and lyrical themes to develop a narrative or idea based around this ever-fluctuating repetition.

            When you read his poetry it is unsurprising that Arnaut Daniel is so beloved by artists and scholars. His skill is unmatched by any of his contemporary troubadours, as is his passion. He is best remembered by the autobiographical statement in his vida:

I am Arnaut who gathers up the wind,

And chases the hare with the ox,

And swims against the torrent.

            The last of the great troubadour poets we’ll cover is Bernard de Ventadorn. Bernard is often called one of the greatest love poets of all time. Perhaps no person better embodied the troubadour spirit than Bernard. Despite being friends with Arnaut Daniel, Bernard chose not to use complex poetic forms or large words in favor of placing all his energies into unbridled emotion. Much like Ernest Hemingway, he used the simplest words in such a subtle way as to convey the deepest meanings.

            Bernard openly defied Marcabru’s cynical views of love, responding that love is what imbues everything with meaning. Moreover, the love that he speaks of was a pure emotional feeling, rather than the traditional Christian definition of love as ideological. Bernard declared boldly:

Singing proves merely valueless

If the song moves not from the heart,

Nor from the heart can song progress,

If it lacks noble love, heart’s dream.

So of all songs mine reign supreme,

For with love’s joy I seek to bind

Mouth, and eyes, and heart, and mind.

May God never grant me power

Not inspired by true love’s art!

If I never knew how to gain its flower,

Without every day enduring pain,

I’d be of good heart still, that’s plain,

And my joy is therefore more alive,

Since I’m of good heart, and for it I strive.

            Bernard further rejected the idea that love had to be regulated within social boundaries, saying that love was based on mutual desire. For Bernard, love did not have to be within the confines of marriage and existed wherever two people were willing to give themselves to each other.

            Bernard was thus the master of the canso, the most popular form of music of his age. His Can vei la flor was the model for cansos and spread the style across Western Europe.

            This concludes a non-comprehensive list of the greatest troubadours. Any complete list would include others such as Cercamon, Giraut de Bornelh and the Comtessa de Dia. On the latter, you may have been wondering where all the women were in this list of the greats. Well, I specifically said we were covering the greatest troubadours. Next time we shall look at the trobairitz, one of the most important groups of female artists of all time.