No More Learning

I would be close to her like flesh to nail,

And not heed the warning of friend or uncle.

Never have I loved sister of my uncle

Longer or more deeply, by my soul,

For, as close as is the finger to the nail,

If she pleased, would I be to her chamber.

More can love bend, that in my heart enters,

Me to its will, than the strong some frail rod.

Since there flowered the Dry Rod,

Or from Adam sprang nephew and uncle;

Such true love as that which my heart enters

Has never, I think, existed in body or soul:

Wherever she is, abroad or in some chamber,

My heart can't part from her more than a nail.

So clings to her, is fixed as with a nail,

My heart, as the bark cleaves to the rod,

She is of joy my tower, palace, chamber;

And I love her more than brother, or uncle:

And twice the joy in Paradise for my soul,

If any man there through true loving enters.

Arnaut sends out his song of nail and uncle,

For her joy, who arms him with rod, his soul,

His Desire, that with worth her chamber enters.

Notes: Arnaut here invents the sestina, with its fixed set of words ending the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time; numbering the first stanza's lines 123456, then the words ending the following stanzas appear in the order 615243, then 364125, then 532614, then 451362, and 246531. These six rhymes then appear in the tercet as well.

The manuscript reading of the last two lines has proved contentious, a grat de lieis que de sa vergua l'arma, son Dezirat, c'ab pretz en cambra intra is assumed. The subject of the verb 'enters' is then ambiguous. For 'uncle' read guardian, or keeper, throughout.

The music for this sestina survives in manuscript.

En cest sonnet coind'e leri

To this light tune, graceful and slender,

I set words, and shape and plane them,

So they'll be both true and sure,

With a little touch, and the file's care;

For Amor gilds and smoothes the flow

Of my song she alone inspires,

Who nurtures worth and is my guide.

Each day I grow better, purer,

For I serve and adore the noblest woman

In all the world - so I claim, and more.

I'm hers from my feet to my hair,

And even if the cold winds blow

Love reigns in my heart, and it acquires

Heat that the deepest winters hide.
A thousand masses I hear and offer,

Burn oil, wax candles in my hand,

So that success God might ensure,

For striving alone won't climb her stair.

When I gaze on her hair's golden glow

And her body's fresh delicate fires,

I love her more than all else beside.

I love her deeply and long for her,

Fear desire may lose her, if one can

Prove loving too well a fatal flaw!

For her heart floods mine everywhere,

It never subsides, that tidal flow;

Usury gains her the man she hires:

Worker, workshop, and all inside.

I'd not wish to be Rome's Emperor,

Nor Pope, nor Luserna's castellan,

If I can't return and haunt her door,

For whom my heart must crackle and flare;

And if she soothes not pain and sorrow

With a kiss, before the year expires,

She'll have damned herself, and I'll have died.

Despite all the torment that I suffer

To renounce true love is not my plan,

Though I'm exiled to a desert shore,

These words shall rhyme the whole affair:

More than ploughmen, lovers toil so;

In the tale, Monclis no more admires

Audierna, than I for my love have sighed.

'I net the breeze, I am Arnaut,

Who with an ox the swift hare tires,

And swims against the rising tide. '

Notes: I have altered the position of the reference to Luserna in the poem for clarity. Its location is unknown but might have been Lucena, northwest of Castellon in Valencia.

Moncli (Monclis, Monclin, Mondis) and his lady, Audierna, are presumed to be characters in a lost romance.

I offer here an alternative translation of the tercet to fulfil Arnaut's rhyming scheme according to my choice of end-rhymes. The original is far more musical, as you can gather from the text at the start of this selection of his verse.

Peire Vidal (1175 - 1205)

Reputedly the son of a furrier, he started his career as a troubadour in the court of Raimon V of Toulouse and was also associated with Raimon Barral the Viscount of Marseille, King Alfonso II of Aragon, Boniface of Montferrat, and Manfred I Lancia. He may have taken part in the Third Crusade. Legend has it that he fled the court of Barral after stealing a kiss from his wife Alazais de Rocamartina, that is Roquemartine near Aix, and that he dressed in wolf-skins to woo Loba, the 'she-wolf', Loba de Penautier of Carcassonne, and was savaged by her dogs, and that he subsequently married the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor in Cyprus.

Ab l'alen tir vas me l'aire

I breathe deeply, draw in the air,

That blows here from Provence!