"A Santiagu em rromaria vem El Rey, madre, praz-me de coraçom Et meu amigo que vem com el hy."1 bem: (The King to Santiago presently, Portugal underwent foreign influence in yet another way, for its coast was passed by Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land, and they were frequently driven by stress of weather to take refuge there. Thus, in 1147, a force of thirteen thousand Crusaders from Flanders, Lorraine, Aquitaine and England, who had embarked in two hundred ships at Dartmouth, assisted King Affonso to recapture Lisbon, and some of them settled in the country. more than ever-e.g., hymno, hino, ino (hymn); cousa or coisa (thing)— that in the quotations no uniformity of spelling has been attempted (cf., um, hum, hun, huma, hũa, uma, ũa, for the indefinite article). Wherever two vowels have run into one the acute accent has been used-as Sá (for Saa) de Miranda-and the circumflex where two syllables have been contracted- dôr (dolor), môr (maior), but flor (flos). Another apparent inconsistency-the spelling of Luis de Camões and Thomaz Ribeiro-is due to the fact that, while the latter wrote his name with a z, Luis, not Luiz, appears on the title-page of the first edition of the Lusiads (1572) and in contemporary documents. It may be said here that the verse translations throughout are but miserable echoes of the originals. Care has been taken to make them as literal as possible, but if any reader, not knowing Portuguese, judge Portuguese poetry from these translations he will err sadly in his judgment. 1 C. da Vat., No. 458 (cf. Nos. 429, 455, 689). It is certain that Galicia and Portugal adopted the Provençal poetry earlier than Castille, although it had first entered the Peninsula in Catalonia and Aragon.1 Portugal was as yet scarcely a nation. She had no great historical poems and traditions. Spain had her own heroic poems to withstand the Provençal influence, and when singing in softer mood the Spanish poets sang in Galician or Portuguese. The Cancioneiro of King Diniz contains many Portuguese poems written by Spaniards, and Alfonso the Learned (1220-1284), in his prose so great a master of Castilian, wrote his Cantigas de Santa Maria in Galician (or Portuguese, for there was still but little difference between the two). The Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458), in an oftenquoted passage of his letter to Dom Pedro, Constable of Portugal, says that Galicia and Portugal first adopted the poetry of the arte mayor and arte comun, so much so that not long before his time all poets of Castille, Andalucia or Estremadura, wrote all their works in Galician or Portuguese.2 But the fact that it was the Galician-Portuguese imitations of Provençal poetry that thus prevailed for a time in Spain in itself implies 1 Sancho, second King of Portugal, married a daughter of the Count of Provence and King of Aragon. 2 Colección de poesías castellanas anteriores al siglo XV. Tom. i. Madrid: Antonio de Sancha, 1779: "E despues fallaron esta arte que mayor se llama è el arte comun, creo, en los Reynos de Galicia è Portugal; donde non es de dubdar que el exercicio destas sciencias mas que en ningunas otras regiones u provincias se acostumbró; en tant grado que non ha mucho tiempo qualesquier decidores è trovadores destas partes, agora fuesen Castellanos, Andaluces ò de la Estremadura todas sus obras componían en lengua Gallega ò Portuguesa. E aun destos es cierto rescebimos los nombres del Arte, asi como Maestria Mayor è menor, encadenados, lexapren è mansobre." that these Provençal lays were more in harmony with the genius of the Portuguese people than with that of the Spanish, and were with the former far less a passing fashion than with the latter. Their influence in Portugal lasted on into the sixteenth century, so that Christovam Falcão (first half of sixteenth century) has been called the last echo of the Provençal lute.1 As to how far the early Portuguese lyrics were entirely artificial and due to Provençal influence, and to what extent they were the outcome of a really national or popular poetry, there has been some difference of opinion. It would appear to admit of no doubt that at the introduction of Provençal poetry an earlier native poetry existed in Portugal, and that this native popular poetry maintained itself when the influence of Provençal song was at its height, and continued (as references to it in Gil Vicente prove) after that influence had waned. Monaci, in the preface to his edition of the Cancioneiro of King Diniz (or da Vaticana), distinguishes between the Provençal poetry, which never became national in Portugal, and a "poetry entirely indigenous and truly original," which "the poets of the Dionysian cycle learnt from the lips of the people and borrowed from the people, giving to it the finishing touch of art."2 Lang holds that the real debt of Portugal to "Em 1 "O ultimo ecco de alaude provençal": Epiphanio da Silva in his edition of Chrisfal. T. Braga. Trovadores galecio-portuguezes : Portugal as condicões vitaes da nacionalidade não eram tão profundas, e a poesia dos trovadores conservou-se quasi até o tempo do Cancioneiro de Resende [1516]." 2 "I portoghesi accanto alla poesia artistica d'imitazione straniera una altra n' ebbero del tutto indigena e veramente originale. I Provençal poetry was that through it the native poetry was encouraged to take a place in literature.1 66 M. Alfred Jeanroy, on the other hand, would refuse to derive even the cantigas de amigo directly from a popular source. 'Si elles sont populaires c'est par le rythme, la simplicité du style, non par la pensée." "On retrouve en eux à chaque pas les imitateurs de la poésie provençale et française." The themes "paraissent plutôt être l'écho d'une poésie populaire que cette poésie populaire elle-même." And he sums up as follows: "Il nous paraît non pas certain mais probable que la plupart des thèmes populaires que nous offre le chansonnier du Vatican ont passé de France en Portugal et que la poésie portugaise n'a fait que modifier quelques détails sur la façon dont ils ont été traités; on peut être plus affirmatif et dire que l'imitation française y est évidente." He admits, however, that in Portugal this poetry has "traits plus archaïques qu'en aucun autre pays roman personnages and " trovatori del ciclo dionisiaco la conobbero dalla bocca del popolo, dal popolo la raccolsero, ritoccandola coi magisteri dell' arte." As to the Provençal-Portuguese poetry: "Sorta per impulso di una moda più que del genio, quella litteratura non giunse ad avere una forza organica sua propria, nè punto compenetrossi colla vita reale da nazione. Per il che, non appena nuove correnti [i.e., Spanish and Italian] prevalsero alla corrente occitanica che l'aveva destata essa repentinamente decadde nè pote guari sopravivere all' ultimo dei suoi protettori [King Diniz].” 1 Das Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal, zum ersten mal vollständig herausgegeben und von Einleitung, Anmerkungen und Glossar versehen von Henry R. Lang. Halle a. S., 1894: "Das wirkliche Verdienst das sich die Provenzalen um Portugal erworben besteht darin dass sie durch ihr Beispiel dieser Volkslyrik die Bahn in die Litteratur brachen und sie ans Licht zogen." empruntés au peuple." This was, precisely, the view held by Ferdinand Wolf.2 The cantigas de amigo were undoubtedly of native and popular origin. Their simplicity of form and fresh vividness would not easily have been imported by Court poets from abroad. Their musical wailing cries are the echo of the native poetry of Galicia ;3 sometimes they have a dirge-like rhythm as in that of Pero da Ponte: 1 Les origines de la poésie lyrique en France au moyen-âge. Études de littérature française et comparée, suivies de textes inédits. Par Alfred Jeanroy. Paris, 1889 (pp. 308-338: "La Poésie française en Portugal'). 2 Studien zur Geschichte der spanischen und portugiesischen Nationalliteratur. Von Ferdinand Wolf. Berlin, 1859 (IV. : "Zur Geschichte der portugiesischen Literatur im Mittelalter"): "hat sich die portugiesische Poesie aus einem ganz kunstmässigen, in der Fremde würzelnden Principe entwickelt, bevor noch die heimische Volkspoesie eine hingänglich breite Basis bieten konnte um darauf kunstmässige Werke mit nationalem Typus aufzuführen."' "So erscheint die galicisch-portugiesische Hofpoesie nicht nur nach äusserem Zeugnisse sondern auch in Geist, Ton und Form als eine Tochter und Schülerin der provenzalischen." But he speaks of the cantigas de amigo as "sich näher an das Volksmässige anschliessend, in mehr objektiv-naïver Haltung und oft in lebendigdramatischer Form." See also Friedrich Diez, Ueber die erste portugiesische Kunst- und Hofpoesie (Bonn, 1863), and Die alten Liederbücher der Portugiesen, oder Beiträge zur Geschichte der portugiesischen Poesie vom dreizehnten bis zum Anfang des sechzehnten Jahrhundert, nebst Proben aus Handschriften und alten Drucken herausgegeben von Dr. Christ. Fr. Bellermann. Berlin, 1840. And especially Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos (Grundriss der rom. Phil., Bd. 2, Abtg. 2, pp. 132, 146-154, 167-203). 3 Similar popular cantigas de amigo are said to exist in modern Portugal and in Asturias. Senhor Braga quotes a modern Galician cantiga de amigo from Baret's Les Troubadours: "Donde le dexas al tu buen amigo? Donde le dexas al tu buen amado? |