Blog Post 10

You’ve Asked, My Lords, for Song- Bernart de Ventadorn

You’ve asked, my lords, for song:

I sing for my reply

Yet never sing for long—

I’ve lost the heart to try.

How should a troubadour

Sing when his luck’s run dry?

Has love, then, gone awry?

No; better than before.

Then why feel so heartsore?

With gifts beyond compare

The Lord has honored me;

I love a lady, fair,

Who loves me faithfully.

Yet while I languish here

I can’t so much as tell

If she fares ill or well

Which fills my thoughts with care

Since I dare not go there.

Through her, such joys I find

That if men shout or call

While she invests my mind,

I’d never hear at all.

So subtly does she snare

The heart out of my breast

That men swear and attest

That they all see me here

Though my best part’s still there.

Oh Love, what shall I do?

Shall we two live in strife?

The griefs that must ensue

Would surely end my life.

Unless my Lady might

Receive me in that place

She lies in, to embrace

And press against me, tight,

Her body, smooth and white.

I’ll not renounce my love

For troubles or love’s pains.

When God who reigns above

Gave much, I took my gains;

Now when his gifts abate,

I’ll suffer that as much,

Seeing the times are such

Those far apart must wait

To overcome their fate.

Good Lady, thank you for

Your love so true and fine;

I swear I love you more

Than all past loves of mine.

I bow and join my hands

Yielding myself to you;

The one thing you might do

Is give me one sweet glance

If sometime you’ve the chance.

May God give heart and mind

To Escudor and me

Wandering endlessly.

He’ll bring what he can find

To keep him company;

My Magnet goes with me.

Stanza 1:

·         “my lords”- the lord of Ventadorn; the reader knows this because it is in lower case and refers to his patrons who ask him for song.

·         “I sing in my reply”- Bernart sings when he is asked because it is his job.

·         “Yet never sing for long”- Bernart sings but does not put in a lot of effort into very long works. Drawing on the poetic correlation between length and cost, the live-in poet of a castle is generally expected to always sing at length because their lord is the patron of not only their poetry but provides room and board.

·         “I’ve lost the heart to try”- Heart, here, can be related to willingness (i.e. ‘you’ve gotta have heart’ in Damn Yankees) or heart as in his love. The latter interpretation draws on Bernart’s poem The Skylark, where Bernart accuses his love of stealing his heart and his entire being. Heart, in this sense, refers to the emotional and biological functions of the heart. Emotional, in that when our emotions fluctuate, our heart rate changes to reflect the fluctuations. Biological, in that by losing his heart Bernart has lost his entire heartbeat through the loss of his emotional life.

·         “luck’s run dry”- ‘Luck’ in the troubadour sense refers to luck with women, as this is always what they pursue. ‘Runn[ing] dry’ is potentially a sexual innuendo, but it is far more likely Bernart is invoking water (a well running dry) or simply using the colloquialism.

·         “Has love, then, gone awry?”- Love itself ‘going awry’ gives love a sort of procedural quality that can be set off course. It is not a human quality, as it is not love actually GOING somewhere, but instead the process of love being carried out incorrectly. This assumes that there is a correct process for love. This process could refer to the legal process of betrothal. However, as Bernart’s love is actually adultery, it is more likely that he refers to the troubadouric/courtly love that has no set process, simply players who can take the game wherever they so choose. It is perhaps this uncertainty in the way Bernart views love that causes him to ask this as a question, and later answer it in the negative, as he believes that his love loves him as well and it is only others that separate them.

Stanza 2:

·         “Lord”- God. Uppercase, the Lord gave him the lord’s wife. This is the “gift beyond compare” to which Bernart references, illustrated by the fact that his next lines address that a fair lady loves him faithfully.

·         “while I languish here”- The use of languish has a connotation of extreme pain and discomfort. The reader is aware that Bernart doesn’t want to be singing because he has previously stated that he lost the heart to sing. While the duality of sweetbitter love is a possible reading of this text, the fact that he is forced to sing by a force that is not his love eliminates the idea that the languish is due to his love.

·         “I can’t so much as tell/If she fares ill or well/Which fills my thoughts with care/Since I dare not go there”- Presumably, ‘there’ is either the dungeon in which the lady of Ventadorn is kept after their affair is discovered or the idea of discussing whether or not she is happy. The latter is possible if they have not been discovered yet, because any small contact with one another would allow the gossipy court to ask questions about their relationship. ‘Care’ is used here in place of what modernly would be something along the lines of ‘worry’. It is significant because care connotes a protective relationship and a much deeper connection, where worry connotes a sense of nervousness that could relate to worry for himself rather than worry about his love. Care does not offer this potential self-serving interpretation.

Stanza 3:

·         “Through her, such joys I find”- This can be interpreted sexually, emotionally, or both. In either case, it is when he spends time with her that he finds joy. It could also be in a semi-religious type of ‘through’, much like finding love and joy through seeking God and the process of developing a deeper personal relationship. This would also support the ideas in The Skylark that they are one and the same and he cannot live without her, because she is a connected part of him through which he derives joy.

·         “invests my mind”- Given that the troubadours were not particularly economics-savvy (or so it would seem), it is more likely that Bernart is saying that she has a stake in his thoughts and again, become a part of him, rather than that he is saying that she has bought him in any way.

·         “So subtly does she snare/The heart out of my breast/That men swear and attest/That they all see me here/Though my best part’s still there.”- Snare is another reference to thievery of the heart. This is somewhat of the physical dimension of bitter Eros because it is done by his love. The subtlety is illustrated by the idea that while Bernart appears to other men to be standing in his place, singing as he should be, his “best part” (his love and his heart, who have become a part of him) is in his love (“there”) and not where he stands.

Stanza 4:

·         “Oh Love, what shall I do?”- The capitalization of ‘Love’ in this question allows for literal interpretation of his love, the lady of Ventadorn, religious interpretation of God, and introversion interpretation of looking into his own heart that is now himself and his love to find the answer of what the new ‘he’ (who is actually a combination of him and her) should do.

·         “Shall we two live in strife?”- The use of “we two” illustrates the idea of a separation of the we into two that would cause them each strife the way it causes him strife even being apart from her.

·         “end my life”- Given that he loves her very much, it is a possibility that he is being serious. Given that humans value their own lives and fear death, this is more likely an overstatement. However, his metaphorical, temporal life in Ventadorn is going to end, which is possibly what he mentions here; the loss of his life as he knows it.

·         “my Lady”- The new capitalization of “Lady” gives her increased meaning and power for him above the “lord” and closer to the “Lord”.

·         “Receive me in that place/She lies in, to embrace/And press against me, tight,/Her body, smooth and white.”- Use of “receive” has religious connotations of God receiving people into Heaven and people receiving Host at communion. “That place” is her bedroom and/or the dungeon, depending on whether their affair has been discovered. The final two lines are indefinitely a sexual reference.

Stanza 5:

·         “Troubles or love’s pains”- Either a use of the Eros love or the pains of others keeping him from his love. More likely the latter refers to the troubles and former refers to the pains.

·         “When God who reigns above/Gave much, I took my gains;/Now when his gifts abate,/I’ll suffer that as much”- It is evident here that the gifts and gains God gave are the lady of Ventadorn, his love, because ‘now’ he is losing the gifts he formerly received and suffering for it.

·         “Those far apart must wait/To overcome their fate”- Using the trope of distance and the form of a moral to state that he will wait until he can overcome the fact that they are having an affair and currently being kept apart. It is a negative use of fate not to mean their fated love but the fate that they be found out and separated or else that she be married to another man.

Stanza 6:

·         “Good Lady”- Again, the use of uppercase letters allows his love to be put on higher ground than he. In context, the use of ‘Good’ is similar to common introductions to a Catholic prayer (Good Lord).

·         “Thank you for/ your love so true and fine”- Again, utilizes similar language to that of a prayer to God.

·         “I swear I love you more/Than all past loves of mine”- Strange that he would mention other loves; it somewhat diminishes his point regardless of the fact that he says he loves her more. Simply the idea that they were, in fact, loves allows them equal footing.

·         “I bow and join my hands/Yielding myself to you;”- Prostrating and putting one’s hands together are also Catholic practice as a sign of yielding to God.

·         “The one thing you might do/Is give me one sweet glance/If sometime you’ve the chance”- The sheepish, indefinite tone of these three lines indicate his burning desire yet slight fear to ask for something that might be a very large inconvenience to her. A glance would be yet another very large indication of relationship that might reveal their affair.

Stanza 7:

·         Here, he is asking God to help give him a heart and mind, potentially anew rather than his own, because his own is now meshed with that of his love. ‘Escudor’ (and ‘Mon Escudar’) has no translation into anything more modern or relatable. From context, I would have to guess that he is referring to his love or his soul because he will be separate from both and both parties would have a fate of endless wandering.

Stanza 8:

·         This stanza suggests that the Escudor is ‘he’, the ‘Magnet’. It is more likely, then, that he refers to his own soul rather than his love, or else an alternate figure that travels with him.