'Sies mijn vlien, mijn jaghen'. Over vorm en inhoud van een corpus Middelnederlandse spreukachtige hoofse lyriek. Lund, UB, Mh 55 en Brussel, KB, Ms.IV 209/II

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Summary

‘Sies mijn vlien, mijn jaghen’ [‘She is what I flee, what I pursue’] On form and content of a corpus of Middle Dutch pseudo-proverbial courtly love lyrics: Lund, UB, Mh 55 and Brussels, KB, Ms. IV 209/11

1 Preface

In 1926 E. Rooth discovered in the University Library of the Swedish town of Lund (henceforth: L) a damaged parchment bifolium on which sixteen courtly poems in Middle Dutch had been written. In the course of his correspondence about this discovery with W. de Vreese, Rooth learned that some thirty years earlier de Vreese had found two damaged fragments in a binding, containing eight courtly love poems that were similar in form and content. They are now in the Royal Library in Brussels (B). The introduction to Rooth's diplomatic edition of the Lund texts in 1928 provides information on the two small groups of texts as well as quotations. However, unfortunately Rooth was unable to put his plans for a critical edition with linguistic and stylistic commentary into effect.

For over fifty years these ‘Lund lyrics’ enjoyed intermittent scholarly interest. Then, in 1984 F. Willaert revived interest in the poems by discussing them as a starting point for his analysis of the Dutch mystic Hadewijch's poetics in his book De poëtica van Hadewijch in de Strofische gedichten. In this work Willaert looked for connections with Old French/Occitan poems and other Middle Dutch lyrics, suggested a convincing date of composition for the Lund lyrics, and demonstrated through the analysis of one poem (L 2) their specific character.

The thesis of this book focuses on three questions: how should the poems be interpreted, which literary conventions underlie these texts, and is there a particular reason for their form and content? Chapter 2 seeks to answer the question of interpretation; the poetics are discussed for the main part in chapter 3. There an attempt will also be made to find an answer to the third question on the basis of the information found earlier. As interpretation and poetics cannot be separated and overlap, they will to some extent be discussed in both these chapters. The Besluit [Conclusion] (4) combines findings and conclusions reached, in a new discussion of the poems, their scribes, their poet(s) and the public that was envisaged for them. As early Middle Dutch lyrical poetry survives only in very small numbers, each text is of the utmost importance. For this reason even the minutest detail will be given full attention.

A comparison of the size (L ca. 183 × ca. 155, B ca. 151 × ca. 102 mm), page layout, script and presence or absence of rubrication between the Lund bifolium on the one hand and the Brussels fragments on the other makes clear at once that the fragments and double page did not originate from the same manuscript, and that

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they were written by two different hands. Certain errors and impure rhymes also show that they were probably copied from an exemplar. An analysis of the damage to the bifolium suggests that this piece of parchment was used at a later stage as backing to which paper quires containing archival material were attached. How it ended up in Lund can only be guessed at (through Dutch merchants or Swedish students, from Queen Christina's library, through her librarian Edmund Figrelius (Gripenhielm) or Erik Johan Meck?). The two small leaves of the Brussels fragments were probably glued as flyleaves against the inside of the binding of a book.

The dialect colouring of the rhymes primarily suggests Limburg, Brabant and the eastern regions where Middle-Dutch was spoken as the area of the poet's origin or work-place. The texts may, therefore, originate in the transitional region between Limburg and Brabant. The two scribes, who upset the rhymes a number of times in their efforts to efface such traces of dialect, and whose interventions are also manifest sometimes in the body of the lines, will probably have worked further west (in the middle or the west of Brabant?).

2 Text and Interpretation

All poems in L and B have courtly love for their subject. In this chapter they are published in parallel, in two different ways, after a discussion of their textual survival. In the left-hand column they are reproduced diplomatically, that is, reflecting their appearance in the manuscript as closely as possible, while in the right hand column a critical edition is found, representing the form which is probably close to the poet's original intentions. In this way the reader is able to see at a glance which editorial decisions have been made apart from the addition of punctuation and emendations. An approach based on reluctance to make changes usually gives priority to the authenticity of the text over the convenience that a newly spelled form offers readers and users of the text. Every poem is followed by a discussion which does not assume knowledge gained from the discussion of preceding poems in the volume; it should be possible to read and understand each poem as a separate entity. This discussion aims in the first place at an interpretation of the poem, but uncertainties are not shunned and emendations accounted for. In addition poetical aspects of the lyric are given their due.

3 Poetics

Each poem consists of three recurring elements, the beginning of which is marked by a red intial (B) or the space for such an initial (L) in the manuscript. First there is a so-called spreukstrofe (homiletic stanza), a self-contained unit of six lines of verse rhyming aabccb, in which in the third person and the present tense a general, didactic statement about love is found. Next, in the medial section, a lyrical ‘I’ laments in ten lines of verse (rhyming dedeededee) the lady's attitude and his

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resulting disappointment in love, in accordance to what was already hinted at in the preceding homiletic section. Finally a new homiletic stanza summarizes the end of the medial section. B has a proverbial couplet on love directly before each poem which, written in red, gives an indication of the essence of the poem's content in the way of a rubric. After an empty line a similar proverbial couplet ends the poem with a general statement on courtly love which, however, does not appear to relate to the preceding or the next text.

The lexical, prosodic, syntactical and thematic processes - the so-called register - show in what way one or more poets (a subject that will be discussed in the Besluit [Conclusion]) fill this poetical space. The similarities and differences that result from this analysis will have to be used to determine whether or not these texts should be regarded as belonging to one corpus. Like the lyrical poetry written by Veldeke and Hadewijch, L plus B are found to use a rather limited vocabulary, containing few unexpected words and a number of similar dominant ones (table 1). Frequently combinations of words, such as doublets like lijf ende leven and formulaic phrases often found at the beginning of the line, are formed from these words, as are other key concepts that are typical of courtly love discourse. However, these texts do not display series of verbal repetitions (polyptota); they repeat a comparatively large number of words only sparingly in a limited number of poems.

The d-rhymes in the medial section dedeededee are mostly masculine, whereas the e-rhymes are feminine. Apart from the usual end rhyme there is another rhymed repetition in L and B in those instances where a d-rhyme is followed immediately by an e-rhyme. In these cases, instead of the vowel and following sounds constituting the rhyme, it is the stem of the rhyme word which is concerned, to which a letter or a syllable (-e, -n, or -en) is added (as in L 4 ghenat: ghenade, B 8 ure:uren, L 7 wanc:wanghen). These so-called grammatically rhyming words usually belong to the same grammatical category or combine a verb and a noun. A difference in meaning only occurs in the case of homonyms. Incidentally this special rhyme is found as part of the homiletic stanza, or between homiletic stanza and medial section, sometimes incorporating the variant with the various tenses of the strong verb not found in the medial section (as in B 6 liet: la-ten). Elsewhere in lyric poetry in Middle Dutch and in other languages this type of rhyme is also used - with varying degrees of frequency and exuberance - by troubadours, trouvères, Minnesänger and poets of medieval Latin poetry. It is likely that the practice originates in the artes poeticae.

The reservoir of rhyming words in L and B is limited, as is apparent from the small number of favourite syllables found in a large part of the total number of rhyming words. About one third of these words is used more than once (table 2). Most of the poems contain one or more (a couple even four to six) fixed combinations that are repeated no more than twice and usually belong to the group of favourite rhymes. Sometimes one of the partners forms a new, fixed combination with another rhyme. In a different type of repetition of rhymes a rhyming syllable, even a word, from the homiletic stanza or the medial section is used again in another part of the poem.

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Alliteration and assonance are used serially, extending to one or more lines. The poet clearly favours certain sounds and rhymes, mostly key-words, appear to herald a series which has subsequently been arranged around it in a predictable fashion. Fixed combinations of alliteration or assonance are rare.

Having explored the possibilities of analyzing the potential metrical pattern underlying the line, and having examined the number of syllables in it, scanning the lines seems the best method after all; first this is done strictly formally, subsequently by taking into account stipulated deviations like synaloefe and syncope in those cases where the distribution of stressed or unstressed syllables is unclear. It then appears that in the homiletic stanzas the majority of the lines has one unstressed syllable between the two usual stresses, while the majority begins with an anacrusis and thus contains an fixed number of syllables. By taking into account deviations the number of regularly alternating lines increases. In the medial section the number of stresses in the line varies: in lines ending in a d-rhyme, there are nearly always four, and in those ending in an e-word usually three. In most of these lines, half of which do not have an anacrusis, the procedure sketched here also results in a regular alternation of one stressed and one unstressed syllable and a fixed number of syllables for the lines of the varying types. The conclusion is that under all regularly alternating lines with an anacrusis a iambic metre, and under lines lacking the anacrusis a trochaic metre can be detected. The trochaic start of the line may, however, be regarded as a tolerated variant on the iambic pattern. Consequently, most of the Lund and Brussels poems are based on a tendency towards a iambic metre.

Syntactically the poems also obey a set of rules. Many homiletic stanzas are divided into two half stanzas (aab-ccb) which are given equal weight grammatically and semantically in a so-called balance construction through a repetition or a contrast, a phenomenon that may also be found within the half stanza. Where the lines run on (enjambement) the syntactical limit is always after the first word of the next line, which is frequently es. A typical feature of the homiletic stanzas is an opening with the relative pronoun die, both with and without assumed antecedent, and a preference for lines 1 and 4 for positioning the subject of the main clause. In the medial section the enjambements include two or three words of the next line. In addition all poems have a grammatical caesura - usually precisely in the middle -, the first half sketching a particular situation, while in the second a newly introduced, frequently contrasting line of thought is developed, often in the conjunctive and stating a certain lapse of time. In grammatically rhyming lines there is rather a tendency to make a subject and object of the first line (si-mi) exchange places in the next line, making them object and subject (haer-ic) respectively. These exchanges that have not always been realized in full would seem to be a way for the poet to achieve a (grammatical) rhyme in the second line.

Possibly other parallel and opposite constructions, which appear especially in the medial section and within that section preferably in grammatically rhyming couplets, complement this technique. Apart from this formal element, there is an element of play in the way words, groups of words or lines may yield subtle or even considerable differences of interpretation through a different syntactical or semantic approach.

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Apart from the differences found between the homiletic stanzas and the medial section the three parts of the poem are also tightly linked by verbal and paraphrasing repetitions: words from the homiletic stanza at the beginning of the poem return literally or in paraphrased form in the first half of the medial section, while in the second half the homiletic stanza that ends the poem is similarly repeated. Except in the damaged B 3 these kinds of links are found in all the poems with considerable differences in frequency. Most of the repetitions that do not fit into this pattern concern key words and concepts that are typical of courtly love. As a result the construction of the poem resembles a triptych with specific characteristics for each of the three panels. When the two side panels are closed, they cover precisely that part of the medial section with which they show similarities. The relational and grammatical division lies where the two ‘homiletic stanza panels’ touch and the repetition of the rhyme pattern (dedee) begins.

The motifs, largely derived from feudal relationships, illustrate the situation of the courtly lover (ic, hi-die) who cherishes feelings of passionate but unrequited love for a lady (si). The main motif, recurring in each poem, is the distress he suffers because of her, while there is very little past joy to compensate for it. In the medial section the ‘I’ usually hopes for an improvement of the situation or fears deterioration, after which that section generally ends in a minor key. Whereas in L the ‘I’ is fatalistic and dependent on the lady's attitude, in B, stating that he will never part from her, he seems a little more assertive. In B 5 the ideal of equality between the two lovers is remarkable. L is exclusive in having a water metaphor, while both lack the motif of the joy the lover experiences when thinking that love will make him a better person, or that of the Natureingang. Thematically the poems do not essentially deviate from what may be expected from courtly love lyrics; however, the two homiletic stanzas consider the phenomenon from a didactic standpoint.

Apart from features like grammatical rhyme there are other, specifically formal similarities between L plus B and early Middle Dutch, Middle High German, Old French and medieval Latin lyrical poetry. The homiletic stanzas found repeatedly in Middle Dutch, sometimes followed by a summarizing proverbial couplet, appear (as yet) to be absent in Middle High German. However, such rather didactic stanzas ending in an aphorism or proverb are found in Old French towards the end of the twelfth century. Could it be that the origin of this type of stanza is found in a different notation of (ecclesiastical) sequences with a bisyllabic endrhyme and internally rhyming caesuras, or of two rhyming hexameters with an internal rhyme of the second and fourth foot? Apart from one song composed in Atrecht at the end of the twelfth century no other occurrences of the stanzaic form of the medial section has been found.

There are lexical similarities with the lyrical poetry written by Veldeke, Jan van Brabant and especially Hadewijch; in later works comparable formulations may sometimes be found. This does not necessarily indicate that a poetical tradition native to Limburg and Brabant is found here. The similarities may equally well be occasioned by references to a poetical register from other regions, which influenced these poems. Few words have been derived from Old French poetry, but

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as many words and word combinations are also found in the lyrical poetry of the Minnesänger this might indicate the existence of connections with the flourishing literature of the Lower Rhine/Meuse region.

With their short, single stanza texts, in which the didactic message in a gripping beginning and equally arresting end stands out, the construction of the lines with anacrusis and four stresses that may contain internal rhyme (L), and their special rhyme pattern, the poems of L and B are reminiscent of the Middle High German genre of the courtly Sangspruch. However, the presentation and the content of L and B do not provide any indication that - like the Sangspruch - these poems were sung. On the other hand, as it is not possible to draw a clear distinction between courtly love song and Sangspruch, the purely lyrical style of the medial section does not mean that such a relationship is impossible. From an elaboration and illustration of the moral lessons incorporated in the homiletic stanzas the medial section might derive an obvious didactic value, as a result of which the resemblance of the poems to the Sangspruch would increase.

The relatively slight differences between L and B, analysed in this chapter, which are largely found in formal, lexical and thematic fields, do not detract from the considerable agreement in register that was also found, so that all the texts may be considered as belonging to one corpus. However, there are no grounds for assuming that they were meant to be sung.

This makes it impossible to regard the poems as true, Middle Dutch representatives of the courtly Sangspruch; instead they should be considered pseudoproverbial courtly lyrics which are very similar to this form of poetry.

4 Conclusion

The poems in L and B, with their triptych construction and lyrically illustrated didactic homiletic stanzas, will, in view of the dialect features that they display, probably have originated in the area between Limburg and Brabant. The many resemblances to the works of the Minnesänger and the genre of the courtly Sangspruch would suggest influence from German border regions, possibly the Lower Rhine/Meuse area.

There is no consensus as regards the date of composition of these poems: dates have been suggested as early thirteenth century as well as the middle or second half of that century. The similarities that have been found with the lyrical poetry by Hadewijch, whose literary activities may be situated around 1300, rather than 1250, might suggest a date as late as the second half, perhaps even the last quarter or the end of the thirteenth century. Other criteria for dating the poems, such as the abundant application of grammatical rhyme, the homiletic stanza, the so-called forme fixe and the flourishing of literature in the Lower Rhine/Meuse region, do not invalidate this date any more than the older forms of writing on the Lund bifolium (around 1300) and the Brussels fragments (first half of the fourteenth century).

From the way in which the poems survive it may be deduced that L and B do not belong to the same manuscript and that their texts are copies. The catch words

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at the bottom of the last page of the bifolium betray the appearance of a similar sort of poem on the next quire. Questions as to the type of text contained in the manuscripts of which the bifolium and the fragments once formed part, and whether L and B derive from one original or that the surviving poems were collected from different sources, cannot be answered. The scribe working on B generally did a good job, making few errors which escaped his notice. However, the L scribe made many scribal errors and frequently failed to correct his sometimes serious mistakes. He gives the impression of having been given a task that was not part of his daily occupation; his script suggests that he was used to copying official documents rather than lyrical texts.

His work shows that the poet must have been conversant with poetical conventions, knowledge probably gained in the course of his education. The study of the artes poeticae, for example, had taught him how to express himself correctly and elegantly in Latin. In his third book of Der leken spiegel (1325-1330) the poet Jan van Boendale specifies this ability as indispensable for his literary colleagues, whether they rhyme in Latin, ‘Walsch’ or ‘Diets’. He also discusses there the ideal approach to a story or argument by means of a three-fold construction, of which L and B may display traces. Possibly the resulting profile - educated and scholarly, a cleric (?) - which is similar to that generally assumed of Sangspruch poets applies also to his itinerant way of life as a professional singer, often of low social status, obliged to fend for himself and only incidentally supported by a court or a member of the urban patriciat.

If there is an argument for L and B as having been written by two different poets, this is supported by the thematic content of the poems, rather than by the small number of formal differences found. The surviving texts might indicate that the poet of L is a different person from the B poet on the basis of the direct or veiled indication of jealous gossipmongers, the fatalistic or more assertive attitude of the ‘I’, and the feudal relationship between lover and lady as opposed to the ideal equality of the lovers. However, the considerable agreement in form, dialectically coloured rhymes and courtly love themes calls such a conclusion into question. There is no ground at all for assuming an even greater number of poets.

The arrangement of the text with red initials (B) or space left open for them (L), the summarizing proverbial couplets in red above each poem (B) and the punctuation in the text would suggest that the bifolium and the fragments were meant in the first place for private reading, as they will hardly have been suitable for recitation. After all, listeners will barely have had a chance to detect the pure eye rhymes and the extremely complex construction of the poems. Whether in their original form they were meant for one or more patrons intending to read rather than listen to the poems can no longer be ascertained. However, they, too, must have been interested in the theme of courtly love, and may be assumed to have appreciated the didacticism in combination with the complex form and conventional contents of the poems.

Translation: Thea Summerfield