by Ezra Pound
. . . . .
Chaucer is aware of life … parity with Shakespeare. He is informed, and understands the intellectual conquests of Europe … in a way that Will Shakespeare probably did not. …..
He is open minded, let us say to folk-lore, to the problems Frazer broaches, in a way that Shakespeare certainly was not.
Shakespeare was greatly indifferent. He was fanciful. He was a technical master. The gross and utter stupidity and obtuseness of Milton was never more apparent than in his supercilious reference to ‘Woodnotes wild’.
The best thing I ever heard in Dr. Schelling’s class-room was the theory that Shakespeare wanted to be a poet but that he had to take to the writing of plays.
He is, probably, if terms of magnitude mean anything, ‘the world’s greatest dramatist’. Along with Ibsen and Aeschylus.
But it would be very rash to say that he is a better poet than Chaucer, or that he knew more (or ? as much) about life.
Chaucer’s culture was wider than Dante’s. Petrarch is immeasurably inferior to both. You would not be far out if you chose to consider Chaucer as the father of ‘litterae humaniores’ for Europe.
Not that the continent found it out. But for our purposes we can perfectly well base the whole of our study of the renaissance on Master Geoffrey, the savant who knew as much of the hostler as did the deer-snatcher of Stratford, who knew probably a great deal more of the merchant, certainly more of diplomacy and the ways of the world of power. Which doesn’t mean that he has left a better record, or anticipated the revolt of later time.
VILLON by contrast
IF Chaucer represents the great mellowing and the dawn of a new paideuma, Villon, the first voice of man broken by bad economics, represents also the end of a tradition, the end of the mediaeval dream, the end of a whole body of knowledge, fine, subtle, that had run from Arnaut to Guido Cavalcanti, that had lain in the secret mind of Europe for centuries, and which is far too complicated to deal with in a primer of reading.
The hardest, the most authentic, the most absolute poet of France. The under dog, the realist, also a scholar. But with the mediaeval dream hammered out of him.
An insuperable technician. Whose art also came from Provence.
I have scamped this paragraph. I have used mediaeval dream to avoid writing a folio in 900 pages.
I don’t use the term to mean merely fanciful ornamentation with daisies and dickey birds; I don’t mean an escape mechanism. I mean a very complicated structure of knowledge and perception, the paradise of the human mind under enlightenment. All of which, I repeat, cannot be dealt with in a ‘first book on reading’.
Technically speaking, translation of Villon is extremely difficult because he rhymes on the exact word, on a word meaning sausages, for example.
The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and Villon. I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them. Swinburne and Rossetti have done some of their own best poems taking Villon as starting-point. The net result is ‘more like Marie de France, Crestien de Troyes, or Froissart’.
EXHIBIT CHAUCER 1340-1400
I have of sorwe so grete woon1
That joye gete I never noon
Now that I see my lady bright
Which I have loved with al my myght
Is fro me deed and is a-goon.2
Allas, Deeth, what ayleth thee
That thou noldest3 have taken me
Whan thou toke my lady sweete
That was so fayr, so fresh, so fre,
So good, that men may wel se
Of al goodnesse she had no meete.4
1 of sorrow great extent 2 gone 3 wouldst not 4 mate, equal
* * *
English lyric, the technique for singing already complete, no augmentation of singability from Chaucer’s days to our own. The French fourteenth-century lyric mode, common to all Europe. Idiom has changed, but no greater fitness to be sung has been attained. Not even by Shakespeare with the aid of later Italian song-books.
EXHIBIT CHAUCER 1340-1400
But as I romed up and doun
I fond that on a walle ther was
Thus written on a table of bras:
I wol now synge, gif that I can
The armes and also the man
That first cam, through his destinee
Fugitif of Troy contree
In Italie …..
Ther saw I how the tempest stente
And how with allé pyne he wente
And prevely took arryvage
In the contree of Cartage
And on the morwe, how that he
And a knyght hight Achaté
Metten with Venus that day
Goyng in a queynt array
As she hadde been an hunteresse
With wynd blowynge upon hir tresse.
* * *
Chaucer giving his tentative impression of Virgil.
Chaucer deriving from Latin is possibly bookish. He is better when French, he is greatest in drawing the Pardoner, Wife of Bath and live people, putting often the results of his own READING into their mouths, and drawing their character in the way they make use of it. The pardoner takes two hundred lines to get to his story. By that time the reader is very much surprised that he has a story at all.
Chaucer’s observed characters are perhaps more real to us than Shakespeare’s dramatized figures, or come at one more suddenly from the page as living, whereas the actor intervenes, or needs to intervene, to ‘re-create’ the Elizabethan dramatic personage.
This must be taken as a tentative statement, with all grades of faintness and vividness implied.
EXHIBIT CHAUCER 1340-1400
Hyd, Absalon, thyne gilte tresses clere
Ester, ley thow thy mekenesse al adoun,
Hyde, Jonathas, al thy frendely manere;
Penelope and Marcia Catoun,
Mak of youre wyfhod no comparisoun,
Hyde ye youre beuteis, Ysoude and Elene,
Alceste is here that al that may destene1
Thyn fayre body lat it nat apeere,
Laveyne, and thow, Lucresse of Rome town
And Pollexene that boughte love so dere
Ek Cleopatre with al thyn passioun
Hide ye youre trouth in love and youre renoun
And thow Tysbe, that hast for love swich peyne,
Alceste is here that al that may desteyne.
Herro, Dido, Laodamya alle in fere2
Ek Phillis hangynge for thyn Demophoun
And Canace espied by thyn chere3
Ysiphile betrayed with Jasoun
Mak of youre trouthe in love no host, ne soun
Nor Ypermystre, or Adriane ne pleyne,
Alceste is here that al that may desteyne.
1 overshadow 2 company 3 face
* * *
Provençal tradition, via France, the mediaeval, that lasted to Villon’s time. Cf. Neiges d’Antan; and other ballades. Villon born over a century after Chaucer, England not lagging behind France.
You do not have to apologize for Chaucer or say that he was an Englishman or only an Englishman, you can cast about in your mind without inhibition when seeking comparisons either for his singableness or for his character drawing.
Where, for example, in anterior literature can you find better or as good?
There is some such drawing in the sagas, less in Boccaccio, less variety in Petronius, if you try to think of something more or less ‘like it’ you may be reminded of Plato’s humour, for example in dealing with the apoplectic army captain (colonel) who is so annoyed with Socrates because the old inquirer’s mind happens to function. Pardoner and host do not suffer by comparison. Daphnis and Chloe evinces probably a higher degree of civilization, a more refined but not a more active perception.
There is no need to invent or take for granted a special and specially lenient set of LOCAL criteria when valuing Chaucer.
Collateral reading. W. S. Land
or, the conversations of Chaucer, Petrarch and Boccaccio.
EXHIBIT CHAUCER 1340-1400
Lenvoy to King Richard
O prince desire for to be honourable,
Cherish thy folk and hate extorcioun!
Suffre no thing, that may be reprevable
To thyn estat, don in thy regioun.
Shew forth thy swerd of castigacioun,
Dred God, do law, love trouth and worthynesse
And dryve they folk ageyen to stedfastnesse.
* * *
Provençal tradition maintained.
______________________
Thus gan he make a mirrour of his minde
In which he saw al hoolly1 her figure,
1 wholly
* * *
Provençal tradition in flower.
EXHIBIT CHAUCER 1340-1400
Madame ye ben of beaute shryne
As fer as cercled is the mappemounde
For as the cristal glorious ye shyne
And lyke ruby ben your chekes rounde
Therewith ye ben so mery and jocounde
That at revel whan I see you daunce
It is an oyntement unto my wounde,
Though ye to me ne do no daliaunce.
* * *
Among the doubtful minor poems we find:
Your yën two wol sleye me sodenly.
That might be by Froissart had he written in English.
Chaucer’s work has been left us almost unsorted. The perspicacious reader will not fall to thinking it is all of equal value. Having felt the best, it is probably advisable simply to browse and read what one enjoys; there are parts he might have cut had he been used to the multiplication of books by the printing press; parts that he could have rewritten had he thought it worth while. No good purpose is served by merely falling into an ecstasy over archaic forms of the language.
A rough division might perhaps be tried.
1 Poems magnificently maintaining Provençal tradition.
2 Poems akin to those of his French contemporaries.
3 Passages showing the particular Chaucerian enrichment, or humanity.
4 Inferior passages where he hasn’t bothered to do more than a rough translation, or has left ineffective lists, or scuttered over less interesting matter.
Intending writers can read him with fair safety, in so far as no one now can possibly use an imitation of Chaucer’s manner or the details of his speech. Whereas horrible examples of people wearing Elizabethan old clothes, project from whole decades of later English and American writing.
The modern writer if he learn from Chaucer can only learn from CHAUCER’S art, its fundamentals.
The question of using another man’s manner or ‘style’ is fairly simple. Good writing is coterminous with the writer’s thought, it has the form of the thought, the form of the way the man feels his thought.
No two men think in precisely the same way. Mr. Wyndham Lewis may have an excellent coat, but it would not give sartorial satisfaction on the back of Mr. Joyce, or Mr. Eliot, and so in varying degree, until a writer uses a speech of his own, there will be odd bulges, or a slackness over narrower shoulders.
The particular English component is in Chaucer. From now on, the student in computing the later poets and prose writers, can ask himself:
What have they that was not in Don Geoffrey? You can ask this of Shakespeare; you can ask it of Fielding.
EXHIBIT
The battelis and the man I will discruive
Fra Troyis boundis first that fugitive
By fate to Italie come, and coist Lauyne
Ouer land and se cachit1 with meikill pyne
Be force of goddis aboue, fra euery stede2
Of cruel Juno throw auld remembrit feid3
Grete payne in batteles sufferit he also
Or4 he is goddis brocht in Latio
And belt the ciete, fra quham of nobil fame
The Latyne peopil taken has thare name,
And eike the faderis princis of Alba
Come, and the walleris of grete Rome alsua,
O thow, my muse, declare the causis quhay,5
Qyhat maiesty offendit; schaw quham by,
Or zit quharefor, of goddis the drery6 Quene.
So feil7 dangeris, sic trawell maid sustene
Ane worthy man fulfillit of pietie:
Is thare sic greif8 in heuinlie myndes on hie?
1 chased 2 stead = place 3 feud, hatred 4 Ere 5 qu for w
6 orig. Sax, means bloody 7 many 8 greif, indignation for offence
* * *
1474 to 1521 or ’22.
Gavin Douglas, set on a particular labour, with his mind full of Latin quantitative metre, attains a robuster versification than you are likely to find in Chaucer. It is not fair to compare these particular passages to Chaucer’s Virgilian fragments as if Chaucer had done nothing else. But the texture of Gavin’s verse is stronger, the resilience greater than Chaucer’s.
EXHIBIT GAVIN DOUGLAS 1474-1522
With wappinnis like the Virgins of spartha
. . . . .
For Venus efter the gys and maner thare
Ane active bow, apoun her schulder bare
As sche had bene ane wilde huntereis
With wind waffing hir haris lowsit of trace
. . . . .
And on this wise with hart burning as fyre
Musing alone full of malice and yre
To Eolus cuntre that wyndy regioun
Ane brudy1 land of furious stormy soun
This goddes went quhare Eolus the King
In gousty cauis2 the windis loud quhisling
And braithlie tempestis by his power refranys
In bandis hard, schet in presoun constrenys.
1 fertile 2 u for v
* * *
The translation was made during the eighteen months, beginning in January, 1512 and ending on the 22nd of July 1513, with two months’ intermission, the work going faster as he proceeded, 7th book begun December 1512.
Printed ‘at London’ by 1553.
EXHIBIT GAVIN DOUGLAS 1474-1522
Thay vmbeset the seyis bustuously
Quhill fra the depe till euyrye coist fast by
The huge wallis1 weltres apon hie
Rowit at anis2 with stormes and wyndis thre
Eurus, Nothus, and the wynd Aphricus
(Quhilk Eist, South and West wyndis hate3 with us.)
Sone eftir this of men the clamour rais,4
The takillis graffillis, cabillis can frate5 and frais.
With the cloudis, heuynnys son and dayis lycht
Hid and brest out of the Troianis sycht
Derknes as nycht, beset the see about,
The firmament gan6 rumyllyng rare and rout.
The skyis oft lychtned with fyry leuyn
And schortlie baith are, see and heuyn
And euery thyng manissis the men to de
Schewand the dede present before thare E.
1 waves 2 Rolled at once 3 are called 4 rose
5 crackle 6 gan = began beat and bang
* * *
Go slow, manissis = menaces, the key to most of the unfamiliar-looking words in the sound. Don’t be afraid to guess. Rare = roar, rout = bellow, E = eye.
EXHIBIT GAVIN DOUGLAS 1474-1522
‘BISHOP OF DUNKELD AND UNKIL TO THE EARL OF ANGUS’
And all in vain thus quhil Eneas carpit1
Ane blasterend bub2 out fra the narth braying
Gan ouer the foreschip in the bak sail ding
And to the sternes up the flude can cast3
The airi,4 hatchis and the takillis brast5
The schippis steuyn thrawart hir went can wryith6
And turnit her braid syde to the wallis swyth7
Hie as ane hill the jaw of the watter brak
1 carped 2 blustering storm 3 (old ships higher at stern)
4 oars 5 burst
6 ? also technical nautical ware ‘faire virer’, cause to turn. Poss
ibly a textual error, I don’t make out whether the ship’s stem, main keel timber twists forward, i.e. wryd or wrything loose from the ribs, or whether it is merely a twisted forward lurch of the ship 7 quickly
* * *
I am no great shakes as a Latinist, but I do read Latin for pleasure, and have read a good deal, and have possibly brought to light several qualities of Propertius’ writing which the professional Latinists had ignored, and in such passages as this I get considerable more pleasure from the Bishop of Dunkeld than from the original highly cultured but non-seafaring author.
EXHIBIT GAVIN DOUGLAS 1474-1522
…..
The religious woman quham thay socht
Baith consecrate to Diane and Phebus