Romance of the Rose (Ellis)/Prologue
PROLOGUE
Among the books which throw light on the lives, minds, and ways of men in the wonderful thirteenth century—the century of Roger Bacon, of St. Francis, of S. Louis, of S. Thomas Aquinas, of Duns Scotus, and of the youth of Dante—there are three which, while they had for three hundred years as great vogue as the most widely read of nineteenth-century romances enjoy for a few months, have, nevertheless, been neglected by succeeding ages to a degree that must be regretted. A knowledge and study of them will afford a far clearer insight into the daily life, and the spirit working within the people for whom they were written, than the annals of the wars that raged during the same period between kings and nobles. The three books referred to are “The Romance of the Rose,” “Reynard the Fox,” and the “Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend.” The first presents us with pictures of mediæval everyday life that we shall look for in vain elsewhere, till in the next century the lanterns of Froissart, Chaucer, and William Langland illumine the darkness. The second presents us with a scathing political satire applicable to all time; and though the key to its special purpose and object has been irrecoverably lost, its brilliant humour and keen sarcasm on the follies of human nature are imperishable. The third, no one who cares to understand the spiritual atmosphere in which our ancestors lived and breathed can afford to neglect.
It has fallen to the lot of the writer of the present notice to have no small share in bringing “Reynard the Fox” and the “Golden Legend” under the notice of the reading public of to-day, and he has now the gratification of presenting the “Romance of the Rose” in such form as he hopes may find acceptance.
He is but too well aware that to produce an ideal translation of such a book would demand a knowledge of old French approaching that possessed by a Gaston Paris, or a Langlois; as intimate an acquaintance with mediæval lore as might be expected from the combined knowledge of a Skeat, a Furnivall, and a Gollancz, and the poetic capacity of a William Morris; while he is fully conscious of the degree to which he falls short of the requirements he has indicated. But the task having been proposed to him by two of the scholars above named, he became, on looking into the book, so greatly interested and fascinated by it, that he determined to undertake the work, or he would rather say the pleasurable pastime; for he is fain to acknowledge that the eighteen months which were occupied by the actual translation embraced some of the most agreeably spent hours of a long life.
The task of translating the “Romance of the Rose” in its entirety has often been referred to as a gigantic undertaking, but it contains only eight thousand lines more than the “Divina Commedia,” which has been translated into English innumerable times. The file of a newspaper for eighteen months, set aheap, would be an appalling task indeed to peruse with mode-rate attention; but taken in daily portions, one makes little of the business, dreary though it be—so has it been that the two-and-twenty thousand six hundred and eight lines of “The Romance of the Rose” have melted imperceptibly as the days followed on, the work of each presenting some pleasant variety.
The extreme popularity enjoyed by this famous book from the last quarter of the thirteenth to the close of the fifteenth century is attested by the fact that not less than two hundred manuscript copies of it have survived the waste of centuries (while of the “Canterbury Tales” no more than fifty-nine are known), and printed editions followed in rapid succession from about 1480 till 1538. But, strange to say, except the translation made by Chaucer, and either one or two other contemporary hands, of seven thousand six hundred and ninety-eight lines, no attempt has been made to present it in any other European language, with the single exception of a German rendering into verse of the first part, by H. Fahrmann, printed in 1839.
The new literature which arose in France, when once the renaissance had taken firm hold, effectually clouded the fame of the “Romance of the Rose” for close upon two hundred years; but in 1735 a new edition was given by L. du Fresnoy, followed in 1737 by a volume of notes by M. Lantin de Damerey. In 1798 appeared a second edition of Du Fresnoy’s text accompanied by the notes, and in 1814 M. Méon published a new text from better MSS. in four volumes, which was reproduced in 1865 under the editorship of M. Francisque Michel. In 1878-80 Mons. Croissandeau (under the pseudonym of Pierre Marteau) put forth an edition at Orleans, accompanied by a translation into modern French, in five volumes. Now happily we may look forward to the critical edition which is to be published in 1901 under the able editorship of M. Ernest Langlois.
Mr. Hallam in his “History of the Literature of Europe” has no more to say of so great a landmark in the field he is earing than that “a very celebrated poem, the ‘Roman de la Rose,’ had introduced an unfortunate taste for allegory into verse, from which France did not extricate herself for several generations.” The reproach of allegory might with equal justice be applied to all the romantic and religious poetry of the Middle Ages, including the “Divina Commedia,” the author of which can scarcely be supposed to have been influenced by Jean de Meun, who in truth merely adopted the style already in vogue. It is probable that the learned historian did not trouble himself to look at the book he so curtly condemned. He appears but to echo in one short sentence the dictum of Sismondi, in whose day the revival of interest in mediæval literature had hardly begun. The charge of dulness once made against this highly imaginative and brilliant book, successive English writers, until quite recent times, have been content to accept the verdict, though Professor Morley and others have of late ably repelled the charge. If further testimony were necessary as to the falsity of the accusation, and the opinion of one who has found a grateful pastime in translating it might be considered of any weight, he would not hesitate to traverse the attribution of dulness, and to assert that it is a poem of extreme interest, written as to the first part with delicate fancy, sweet appreciation of natural beauty, clear insight, and skilful invention, while J. de Meun’s continuation is distinguished by vigour, brilliant invention, and close observation of human nature. The thirteenth century lives before us.
How greatly Chaucer was indebted to his French predecessor can only be appreciated by those who will be at the pleasurable pains of studying the work of both poets; but as we read the earlier of the two, the conclusion forces itself upon us that Chaucer’s mind was, so to speak, permeated with the “Romance of the Rose.” It must not, however, be forgotten that both Chaucer and Jean de Meun were diligent students of Boethius “De Consolatione Philosophiae” and Alanus de Insulis “De Planctu Naturae.” Here and there Chaucer has appropriated passages from the “Romance”; notably in the description of the refined and dainty manners of the lady prioress, which is found under another guise in Chapter LXXIII. of the “Romance.” Nor is it easy to read Jean de Meun’s dramatic picture of the jealous husband without feeling that it suggested to Chaucer the prologue to the wife of Bath’s tale by way of a counterblast.
In considering the remarkable place that the “Romance of the Rose” holds in European literature, it is well to bear in mind that the first part was written more than a hundred years, and the second part seventy years, before Chaucer was born. When we turn to English literature contemporary with the work of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun we cannot but be struck, with a sense of humility at the wide gulf in human interest that lies between the two. A doubt steals over one whether there is not ground for the assertion sometimes heard made, that we were indebted to the inspiration of northern French architects and artists for the glories of our architecture, glass painting, and miniature painting in the thirteenth century.
Though the “Romance of the Rose” is commonly described and spoken of as one book, its two parts are in truth only nominally linked together by the names of the characters being carried on from the one to the other. The two parts are, in fact, the outcome of two widely differing minds, and though Jean de Meun professes to continue the work of his forerunner, his portion is altogether different from it, both as to style and purpose. Guillaume de Lorris sets out to write a love pastoral or idyll, and Jean de Meun, seeing its popularity, takes advantage thereof to give expression to the heterogeneous thought with which his brain teems.
Of the history of Guillaume de Lorris we know no more than the slight indications given by his continuator (Cap. LX. ll. 10991—11158). All that is known of Jean de Meun is likewise derived from the passage indicated above—namely, that he was born at Meun sur Loire, and was surnamed Clopinel (the Halt)—except that, as I learn through an obliging communication from M. Ernest Langlois, it has now been ascertained that he died at Paris in the Rue S. Jacques.
The work of G. de Lorris ends somewhat abruptly at line 4202. It will be seen that it is a simple allegory of the love of a young man for a beautiful girl, and while the poet introduces some charming descriptions of the country in spring-time, redolent of fresh air and sunshine, and gives some forcible characterisations of human passions and vices, he keeps within the plan of a romance, conjoined with instructions in the art of love, drawn from Ovid’s poem “De Arte Amandi,” in accordance with the title of his book.
The question whether the earlier author completed his work or not is left an open one by Mons. E. Langlois, who has fully discussed it in his masterly account of the whole work printed in the second volume of “Histoire de la langue et de la litterature Française,” edited by M. Petit de Julleville. Paris, 1878-1900. He notes that among the two hundred manuscripts of the book that have come down to us, two only give the eighty lines, manifestly spurious, which round off the story, but he hesitates to say that it may not have had an ending which the continuator suppressed.
The work of Jean de Meun or Clopinel is widely different from that to which it professes to be a complement. Leaving the idyllic strain, the author takes occasion to introduce a variety of episodes which afford him the opportunity of disburdening his mind of his views on most subjects which occupy the attention of men, while he brings the story to a conclusion, after a fashion which would have amazed his predecessor, could he have foreseen it.
But if he wanders again and again into by paths apart from the main road of the story, it is to these digressions that we owe the lifelike pictures which throw light on his surroundings, in the dramatic episodes of the jealous husband (Chapters XLVIII.-LII.), the duenna’s tale of her own wasted life (Chap. LXXII.), and elsewhere.
Jean de Meun is commonly censured for his depreciation and abuse of women; but may not that censure have been too freely applied from the reading of isolated passages, without taking into account the fact that he is writing dramatically, and is in truth rather representing the views of a jealous and angry husband than expressing deliberately his own? What can be more tenderly pathetic than the picture he draws in Chap. LII. ll. 9901-9948 of a woman’s position before and after marriage?
In the same way, might not the communistic doctrines charged against our author with equal or greater justice be laid at the door of Boethius, from whom he derives his picture of the Golden Age, when all things were common and laws needless, or at that of Geoffrey Chaucer, for his charming poem of “The Former Age,” drawn from the same source?
That Jean de Meun’s utterances in this regard were taken by his contemporaries rather poetically than didactically may fairly be inferred from the favour with which the book was certainly received by persons of royal and of noble estate. In considering the latter part of the “Romance of the Rose,” and what it was that spurred its author on to give expression to the exhortations contained in it, it will not be beside the purpose to keep in view another popular book of the day which can scarcely have failed to come under his notice.
Towards the conclusion of the “Romance” it will be seen how Nature introduces her high-priest Genius, who holds forth at considerable length in praise of fecundity, assuring those who follow and carry out Nature’s laws thereon, of a participation in the joys of heaven, in a manner somewhat startling.
But it seems by no means improbable that Jean de Meun intended this as a counterpoison to the doctrines which had just then been specially brought forward and enforced by the Dominican monk Jacobus de Voragine, in his “Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend.” Not only is celibacy exalted as being in itself a virtue, but the example is held up to special admiration of wedded couples who lived as celibates in despite of the laws of God and Nature.
M. Langlois, while pointing out certain defects that attach to the work, thus sums up the merits of its author: “Jean de Meun is not only a scholar and a man of letters, he is also a poet, the greatest perhaps of the thirteenth century. In this respect he has commonly been too little considered, inasmuch as other more strikingly brilliant qualities of his mind have absorbed the attention of the critics who have occupied themselves with him, and because, moreover, the numerous poems embedded in his ‘Romance’ are somewhat obscured by the setting. How fine a passage is that (Chapter XXXV.) in which he contrasts the careless happiness en joyed by the labourer with the perpetual anxieties of the banker or money-dealer, who never knows when he is rich enough; of the merchant whose desire for gain is likened to the thirst of a man who fain would drink up the volume of the Seine; of the lawyer or physician each desirous only of selling his services for filthy lucre; of the divine who preaches but for money, and of those heapers up of riches who are mere slaves to the wealth that they imprison in their coffers…. In a manner altogether different, we may remark, among other passages which bear the impress of real poetry, a magnificent description of a storm, with the return of fair weather (Chap. XCVIII)…. The parables, piled one upon another by the author to justify his attacks on the servitude of marriage and the isolation of the cloister, which represent in admirably natural and graceful miniatures the bird in the cage, the fish snared in a bag-net, the kitten that sees a mouse for the first time, and the filly that first catches sight of a horse (Chap. LXXV.).
“The episodes also of Venus and Adonis (Chapters LXXXVII.-VIII.) and of Pygmalion (Chapter CVI.) are charming idylls, which may worthily hold comparison with the pages of Ovid, whence they are imitated. We may further remark that no other author of the thirteenth century writes with such ease as Jean de Meun, his style being invariably on a level with the ideas he desires to express, now powerful and rugged, now graceful and gentle, but always clear, elegant, and picturesque; his verse is flowing and easy, and many of his couplets have become proverbial.”
But one of the finest qualities of the author is his quiet humour, which peeps out as continually and as delightfully as it does in the verse