Il bacio di PAOLO MALATESTA: amore cortese -- e Galeotto -- ADIEU, fair sweet friend"

Speranza

Here follows (with a very little surplusage removed perhaps) the scene which Alighieri makes world-famous, but which Malory (I think for reasons) has "cut."

 

I trust it is neither Philistinism nor perversity which makes me think of it a little, though only a little, less highly than some have done.

 

There is (and after all this makes it all the more interesting for us historians) the least little bit of anticipation of Marivaudage about it, and less of the adorable simplicity such as that (a little subsequent to the last extract given) where Lancillotto, having forgotten to take leave of Ginevra on going to his first adventure, and having returned to do so, kneels to her, receives her hand to raise him from the ground, "and much was his joy to feel it bare in his."

 

But the beauty of what follows is incontestable, and that Ginevra was "exceeding wise in love" is certain.]

The scene of the kiss -- la scena del bacio.

"Ha!" said GINEVRA then.

 

"I know who you are— LANCILLOTTO DAL LAGO is your name."

 

And he was silent.

 

"They know it at court," said Ginevra, "this sometime.

 

Messire Gawain was the first to bring your name there...."

 

Then GINEVRA asks LANCILLOTTO why he had allowed the worst man in the world to lead him by the bridle.

 

"Lady," says LANCILLOTTO "as one who had command neither of his heart nor of his body."

 

"Now tell me," says GINEVRA, "were you at last year's assembly?"

 

"Yes, Lady," said LANCILLOTTO.

 

"And what arms did you bear?"

 

"Lady, they were all of vermilion."

 

"By my head," says GINEVRA, "you say true."

 

"And why did you do such deeds at the meeting the day before yesterday?"

 

Then LANCILLOTTO begins to sigh very, very deeply.

 

And the Queen cut him short as well, knowing how it was with him.

"Tell me," GINEVRA says "plainly, how it is."

 

"I will never betray you."

 

"But I know that you did it for some lady."

 

"Now, tell me, by the FAITH you owe me, who she is."

 

"Ah, Lady," says LANCILLOTTO,

 

"I see well that it behoves me to speak. Lady, it is YOU."

 

"I!" says GINEVRA.

 

"It was not for me you took the spears that my maiden brought you."

 

For I took care to put myself out of the commission."

 

"Lady," says LANCILLOTTO "I did for others what I ought, and for you what I could."

 

"Tell me, then, for whom have you done all the things that you have done?"

 

"Lady," said he, "for YOU"

 

"How," said she, "do you LOVE me so much?"

 

"So much, Lady, as I love neither myself nor any other."

 

"And since when have you loved me thus?"

 

"Since the hour when I was called "knight", and yet was not one."

 

"Then, by the faith you owe me, whence came this LOVE that you have set upon me?"

 

Now as GINEVRA says these words it happens that the Lady of the Puy of MALOALTO

coughs (on purpose), and lifts her head, which she had held down.

 

And LANCILLOTTO understands La Dama di MALOALTO now, having oft heard her before.

 

And LANCILLOTTO looked at the Dama di Maloalto and knew her.

 

LANCILLOTTO feels in his heart such fear and anguish that he can not answer GINEVRA.

 

Then began Lancillotto to sigh right deeply.

 

The tears fell from his eyes so thick that

the garment he wore was wet to the knees.

 

And the more LANCILLOTTO looked at the Lady of Malahault the more ill at ease was his heart.

 

Now GINEVRA notices this and saw that LANCILLOTTO looks sadly towards the place where her ladies were, and she reasoned with him.

 

"Tell me," she said, "whence comes this love that I am asking you about?"

 

Aand he tried as hard as he could to speak.

 

LANCILLOTTO says:"Lady, from the time I have said."

 

 "How?"

 

"Lady, you did it, when you made me your friend, if your mouth lied not."

 

"My friend?" she said; "and how?"

 

"I came before you when I had taken leave of my Lord the King all armed except my head and my hands.

 

And then I commended you to God, and said that, wherever I was, I was your knight.

And you said that you would have me to be your knight and your friend.

 

And then I said, 'Adieu, Lady,' and you said, 'Adieu,

 

fair sweet friend.'

 

And never has that word left my heart, and

it is those words, "Adieu, fair sweet friend" that has made me a good knight and valiant if I be so.

 

Nor ever have I been so ill-bested as not to remember those words. 

 

Those words comforts me in all my annoys.

 

Those words have kept me from all harm, and freed me from all peril, and fill me whenever I hunger.

 

Never have I been so poor but those words have made me rich."

 

"By my faith," said GINEVRA, "that word was

spoken in a good hour, and

God be praised when He made me speak it.

 

Still, I did not set it as high as you did.

And to many a knight have I said it, when I gave no more thought to the saying.

 

But your thought was no base one.

 

Your thought was gentle and debonair.

Wherefore joy has come to you of it, and it has made you a good knight.

 

----

 

Yet, nevertheless, this way is not that of knights

who make great matter to many

a lady of many a thing which

 they have little at heart.

-----

 

And your seeming shows me that you love

one or other of these ladies better than you love me.

 

----

 

For you weep for fear and dared not look straight at them.

So that I well see that your thought is not so much of me as you pretend it to be. 

 

So, by the faith you owe the thing you love best in the world, tell me which one of the three ladies out there you love so much?"

 

"Ah! Lady," said he,

 

"for the mercy of God, as God shall keep me,

never had any one of them my heart in her keeping."

 

"This will not do," said the Queen, "you cannot dissemble.

 

For many another such thing have I seen, and I know that your heart is there as surely as your body is here."

 

And this GUINEVERE says that she might well see how she might put Lancillotto ill at ease.

 

For she thought surely enough that he meant no love save to her, or ill would it have gone on the day of the Black Arms.

------

 

GUINEVERE takes a keen delight in seeing and considering Lancillotto's discomfort.

 

But Lancillotto was in such anguish that he wanted little of swooning, save that fear of the ladies before him kept him back.

 

And GINEVRA herself perceived it at the sight of Lancillotto's changes of colour, and catches him by the shoulder that he might not fall, and called to GALEOTTO.

 

Then Il Principe GALEOTTO springs forward and runs to Lancillotto.

 

Galeotto sees that Lancillotto was disturbed thus, and had great pain in his own heart for it, and said,

 

"Ah, Lady! tell me, for God's sake, what has happened."

 

And the Queen told him the conversation.

 

"Ah, Lady!" said Galahault, "mercy,

for God's sake, or you may lose me him

by such wrath, and it would be too great pity."

 

"Certes," said she, "that is true.

 

But know you WHY he has done such feats of arms?"

 

"NAY, surely, Lady," said Galeotto.

 

"Sir," said GINEVRA, "if what Lancillotto tells me is true, it was for me."

 

"Lady," said Galeotto "as God shall keep me, I can believe it.

 

For just as he is more valiant than other

 

men, so is his heart truer than all theirs."

 

"Verily," said GINEVRA, "you would say well that he is valiant if you knew what deeds he has done since he was made knight".

And then Guinevere tells Galeotto all the chivalry of Lancelot and how he had done it all for a single phrase of hers -- "Adieu, sweet fair friend"

 Galahault tells her more, and begs mercy for Lancillotto.

 

 

"He could ask me nothing," sighed she, "that I could

fairly refuse him.

But he will ask me nothing at all".

 

"Lady," said Galahault, "certainly Lancillotto has no power to do so.

 

For one loves nothing that one does not fear.

 

And then comes the immortal kiss,

asked by the Prince,

delayed a moment by the Queen's

demur as to time and place,

brought on by the "Galeotto"-speech.

 

"Let us three corner close together as if we were talking secrets," vouchsafed by Guinevere in the words,

 

"Why should I make me longer prayer for what I wish more than you or he?"

 

Lancelot still hangs back, but Ginevra

 

takes him by the chin and kisses

him before Galahault with a kiss long enough

so that the Lady of Malahault knows it.

 

And then said the Queen, who was a right wise and gracious lady,

 

Fair sweet friend, so much have you done that I am yours,

and right great joy have I thereof.

 

Now see to it that the thing

be kept secret, as it should be.

 

For I am one of the ladies of the world who have the fairest fame,

 

and if my praise grew worse through you, then it would be a foul and shameful thing.

 

 

A little more comment on this cento, and especially on the central passage of it, can hardly be, and ought certainly not to be, avoided in such a work as this, even if, like most summaries, it be something of a repetition.

 

It must surely be obvious to any careful reader that here is something much more than—unless his reading has been as wide elsewhere as it is careful here—he expected from Romance in the commoner and half-contemptuous acceptation of that word.

 

Lancelot he may, though he should not, still class as a mere amoureux transi—a nobler and pluckier Silvius in an earlier As Yon Like It, and with a greater than Phoebe for idol. Malory ought to be enough to set him right there: he need even not go much beyond Tennyson, who has comprehended Lancelot pretty correctly, if not indeed pretty adequately.

 

But Malory has left out a great deal of the information which would have enabled his readers to comprehend Guinevere; and Tennyson, only presenting her in parts, has allowed those parts, especially the final and only full presentation, great as it is, to be too much influenced by his certainly unfortunate other presentation of Arthur as a blameless king.

I do not say that the actual creator of the Vulgate Guinevere, whoever he was, has wrought her into a novel-character of the first class.

 

It would have been not merely a miracle (for miracles often happen), but something more, if he had. If you could take Beatrix Esmond at a better time, Argemone Lavington raised to a higher power, and the spirit of all that is best and strongest and least purely paradoxical in Meredith's heroines, and work these three graces into one woman, adding the passion of Tennyson's own Fatima and the queenliness of Helen herself, it might be something like the achieved Guinevere who is still left to the reader's imagination to achieve.

 

But the Unknown has given the hints of all this; and curiously enough it is only of English novel-heroines that I can think in comparison and continuation of her. This book, if it is ever finished, will show, I hope, some knowledge of French ones: I can remember none possessing any touch of Guineveresque quality. Dante, if his poetic nature had taken a different bent, and Shakespeare, if he had only chosen, could have been her portrayers singly; no others that I can think of, and certainly no Frenchman.

.

But here Guinevere's creator or expounder has done more for her than merely indicate her charm. Her "fear for name and fame" is not exactly "crescent"—it is there from the first, and seems to have nothing either cowardly or merely selfish in it, but only that really "last infirmity of noble minds," the shame of shame even in doing things shameful or shameless. I have seldom seen justice done to her magnificent fearlessness in all her dangers. Her graciousness as a Queen has been more generally admitted, but, once again, the composition and complexity of her fits of jealousy have never, I think, been fully[Pg 50] rationalised. Here, once more, we must take into account that difference of age which is so important. He thinks nothing of it; she never forgets it. And in almost all the circumstances where this rankling kindles into wrath—whether with no cause at all, as in most cases, or with cause more apparent than real, as in the Elaine business—study of particulars will show how easily they might be wrought out into the great character scenes of which they already contain the suggestion. This Guinevere would never have "taken up" (to use purposely a vulgar phrase for what would have been a vulgar thing) with Mordred,^[55] either for himself or for the kingdom that he was trying to steal. And I am bound to say again that much as I have read of purely French romance—that is to say, French not merely in language but in certain origin—I know nothing and nobody like her in it.

That Guinevere, like Charlotte, was a married lady, that, unlike Charlotte, she forgot the fact, and that Lancelot, though somewhat Wertheresque in some of his features, was not quite so moral as that very dull young man, are facts which I wish neither to suppress nor to dwell upon.

 

We may cry "Agreed" here to the indictment, and all its consequences. They are not the question.

The question is the suggesting of novel-romance elements which forms the aesthetic solace of this ethical sin. It should be seen at once that the Guinevere of the Vulgate, and her fault or fate, provide a character and career of no small complexity.

 

It has been already said that to represent

her as after a fashion intercepted by love

for Lancelot on her way to Arthur, like Iseult of Ireland or Margaret of Anjou, is, so to speak, as unhistorical as it is insufficiently artistic.

 

We cannot, indeed, borrow Diderot's speech to Rousseau and say,[Pg 51] "C'est le pont aux ânes," but it certainly would not have been the way of the Walter whom I favour, though I think it might have been the way of the Chrestien that I know. Guinevere, when she meets her lover, rescuer, and doomsman, is no longer a girl, and Lancelot is almost a boy. It is not, in the common and cheap misuse of the term, the most "romantic" arrangement, but some not imperfect in love-lore have held that a woman's love is never so strong as when she is past girlhood and well approaching age, and that man's is never stronger than when he is just not a boy.

 

Lancelot himself has loved no woman (except his quasi-mother, the Lady of the Lake), and will love none after he has fulfilled the Dead Shepherd's "saw of might."

 

She has loved; dispute this and you not only cancel gracious scenes of the text, but spoil the story; but she has, though probably she does not yet know it, ceased to love,^[56] and not without some reason.

 

To say no more about Arthur's technical "blamelessness," he has, by the coming of Lancelot, ceased to be altogether heroic. Though never a mere petulant and ferocious dotard as the Chansons too often represent Charlemagne, he is very far from being a wise ruler or even baron. He makes rash promises and vows, accepts charges on very slight evidence, and seems to have his knights by no means "in hand." So, too, though never a coward or weakling, he seems pretty nearly to have lost the pluck and prowess which had won Guinevere's love under the walls of Carmelide, and of which the last display is in the great fight with his sister's lover, Sir Accolon. All this may not excuse Guinevere's conduct to the moralist; it certainly makes that conduct artistically probable and legitimate to the critic, as a foundation for novel-character.

Her lover may look less promising, at least at the moment of presentation; and indeed it is true that while[Pg 52] "la donna è immobile," in essentials and possibilities alike, forms of man, though never losing reality and possibility, pass at times out of possible or at least easy recognition.

 

Anybody who sees in the Lancelot of the foregoing scene only a hobbledehoy and milksop who happens to have a big chest, strong arms, and plenty of mere fighting spirit, will never grasp him. Hardly better off will be he who takes him—as the story does give some handles for taking him—to be merely one of the too common examples of humanity who sin and repent, repent and sin, with a sort of Americanesque notion of spending dollars in this world and laying them up in another. Malory has on the whole done more justice to the possibilities of the Vulgate Lancelot than he has to Guinevere, and Tennyson has here improved on Malory.

 

He has, indeed, very nearly "got" Lancelot, but not quite. To get him wholly would have required Tennyson for form and Browning for analysis of character; while even this mistura mirabilis would have been improved for the purpose by touches not merely of Morris and Swinburne, but of lesser men like Kingsley and even George Macdonald.

 

To understand Lancelot you must previously understand, or by some kind of intuition divine, the mystical element which his descent from the Graal-Wardens confers; the essential or quintessential chivalric quality which his successive creators agreed in imparting to him; the all-conquering gift so strangely tempered by an entire freedom from the boasting and the rudeness of the chanson hero; the actual checks and disasters which his cross stars bring on him; his utter loyalty in all things save one to the king; and last and mightiest of all, his unquenchable and unchangeable passion for the Queen.

Hence what they said to him in one of his early adventures, with no great ill following, "Fair Knight, thou art unhappy," was always true in a higher sense. He may have been Lord of Joyous Gard, in title and fact; but his own heart was always a Garde Douloureuse—a cor luctificabile—pillowed on idle triumphs and fearful[Pg 53] hopes and poisoned satisfactions, and bafflements where he would most fain have succeeded. He has almost had to have the first kiss forced on him; he is refused the last on grounds of which he himself cannot deny the validity. Guinevere is a tragic figure in the truest and deepest sense of the term, and, as we have tried to show, she is amply complex in character and temperament. But it is questionable whether Lancelot is not more tragic and more complex still.

Books.

It may perhaps without impropriety be repeated that these are not mere fancies of the writer, but things reasonably suggested by and solidly based upon "the French books," when these later are collated and, so to speak, "checked" by Malory and the romances of adventure branching off from them. But Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot by no means exhaust the material for advanced and complicated novel-work—in character as well as incident—provided by the older forms of the Legend.

 

There is Gawain, who has to be put together from the sort of first draft of Lancelot which he shows in the earlier versions, and the light-o'-love opposite which he becomes in the later, a contrast continued in the Amadis and Galaor figures of the Spanish romances and their descendants. There is the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors, of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later Idylls; and others. But it is probably unnecessary to carry the discussion of this matter further.

 

It has been discussed and illustrated at some length, because it shows how early the elements, not merely of romance but of the novel in the fullest sense, existed in French literature.