Portuguese literature
Portugal ha mais talento e menos cultivação que em paiz nenhum da
Europa_.
I
1185-1325
§ 1
_The Cossantes_
Under the Moorish dominion we know that poetry was widely cultivated in
the Iberian Peninsula, by high and low. At Silves in Algarve ‘almost
every peasant could improvise’.[30] But the early Galician-Portuguese
poetry has no relation with that of the Moors, despite certain
characteristics which may seem to point to an Oriental origin. The
indigenous poems of Galicia and Portugal, of which thirteenth-century
examples have survived, are so remarkable, so unlike those of any other
country, that they deserve to be studied apart from the Provençal
imitations by the side of which they developed. Half buried in the
_Cancioneiros_, themselves only recently discovered, these exquisite
and in some ways astonishingly modern lyrics are even now not very
widely known and escape the attention of many who go far afield in
search of true poetry. The earliest poem dated (1189) by D. Carolina
Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, in which Pay Soarez de Taveiroos, a nobleman
of Galicia or North Portugal, addresses Maria Paez Ribeira, the lovely
mistress of King Sancho I, _mia sennor branca e vermelha_, does not
belong to these lyrics[31]; but the second earliest (1199), attributed
to King SANCHO I (1185-1211) himself, is one of them (C.C.B.348). This
unique form of lyric requires a distinctive name, and if we adopt that
used by the Marqués de Santillana’s father, Diego Furtado de Mendoza
(†1404), we shall have a word well suited to convey an idea of their
striking character.[32] His Spanish poem written in parallel distichs,
_A aquel arbol_, is called a _cossante_.[33] In an age when all that
seemed most Spanish, the _Poema del Cid_, for instance, or the _Libro
de Buen Amor_, has been proved to derive in part from French sources,
it is peculiarly pleasant to find a whole series of early poems which
have their roots firmly planted in the soil of the Peninsula. The
indigenous character of the _cossantes_ is now well established, thanks
chiefly to the skilful and untiring researches of D. Carolina Michaëlis
de Vasconcellos.[34] They are wild but deliciously scented single
flowers which now reappear in all their freshness as though they had
not lain pressed and dead for centuries in the library of the Vatican.
One of the earliest is quoted by Airas Nunez (C. V. 454) and completed
in _Grundriss_, p. 150:
1. Solo ramo verde frolido
Vodas fazen a meu amigo,
E choran olhos d’amor.
2. Solo verde frolido ramo[35]
Vodas fazen a meu amado,
E choran olhos d’amor.
What first strikes one in this is its Oriental immobility. The second
distich adds nothing to the sense of the first, merely intensifying it
by repetition. Neither the poetry of the _trouvères_ of the North of
France nor that of the Provençal _troubadours_ presents any parallel.
The scanty Basque literature contains nothing in this kind. But it is
unnecessary to go for a parallel to China.[36] None more remarkable
will be found than those contained in the books of that religion which
came from the East and imposed its forms if not its spirit on the
pagans of the Peninsula. Verses 8, 9 of Psalm 118 are very nearly a
_cossante_ but have no refrain. The resemblance in Psalm 136, verses
17, 18, is still more marked:
To him which smote great kings,
For his mercy endureth for ever,
And slew famous kings,
For his mercy endureth for ever.
The relations between Church and people were very close if not always
very friendly. The peasants maintained their ancient customs, and their
pagan jollity kept overflowing into the churches to the scandal of
the authorities. Innumerable ordinances later sought to check their
delight in witchcraft and mummeries, feasts and funerals (the delight
in the latter is still evident in Galicia as in Ireland and Wales).
Men slept, ate, drank, danced, sang profane songs, and acted plays and
parodies in the churches and pilgrimage shrines. The Church strove to
turn their midsummer and May-day celebrations into Christian festivals,
but the change was rather nominal than real. But if the priests and
bishops remained spiritually, like modern politicians, shepherds
without sheep, the religious services, the hymns,[37] the processions
evidently affected the people. Especially was this the case in Galicia,
since the great saint Santiago, who farther south (as later in India)
rode into battle on a snow-white steed before the Christians, gave
a more peaceful prosperity to the North-west. Pilgrims from all
countries in the Middle Ages came to worship at his shrine at Santiago
de Compostela. They came a motley company singing on the road,[38]
criminals taking this opportunity to escape from justice, tradesmen and
players, jugglers and poets making a livelihood out of the gathering
throngs, as well as devout pilgrims who had ‘left alle gamys’ for their
soul’s good, _des pélerins qui vont chantant et des jongleurs_. Thus
the eyes of the whole province of Galicia as the eyes of Europe were
directed towards the Church of Santiago in Jakobsland. The inhabitants
of Galicia would naturally view their heaven-sent celebrity with pride
and rejoice in the material gain. They would watch with eager interest
the pilgrims passing along the _camino francés_ or from the coast
to Santiago, and would themselves flock to see and swell the crowds
at the religious services. When we remember the frequent parodies
of religious services in the Middle Ages and that the Galicians did
not lag behind others in the art of mimicry,[39] we can well imagine
that the Latin hymns sung in church or procession might easily form
the germ of the profane _cossante_. A further characteristic of the
_cossante_ is that the _i_-sound of the first distich is followed by
an _a_-sound in the second (_ricercando ora il grave, ora l’acuto_)
and this too maybe traced to a religious source, two answering choirs
of singers, treble and bass.[40] It is clear at least that these
alternating sounds are echoes of music: one almost hears the clash
of the _adufe_ in the _louçana_ (answering to _garrida_) or _ramo_
(_pinho_). The words of these poems were, indeed, always accompanied by
the _son_ (= music). But if born in the Church, the _cossante_ suffered
a transformation when it went out into the world. The rhythm of many
of the songs in the _Cancioneiros_ is so obtrusive that they seem to
dance out of the printed page. One would like to think that in the
ears of the peasants the sound of the wheel mingled with the echo of a
hymn and its refrain as they met at what was, even then, no doubt, a
favourite gathering-place--the mill[41]--and thus a lyric poem became a
dance-song. The _cossante Solo ramo_ would thus proceed, sung by ‘the
dancers dancing in tune’:
(Verses 3 and 4) Vodas fazen a meu amigo (amado)
Porque mentiu o desmentido (perjurado)
E choran olhos d’amor,
the first line of the third distich repeating the second line of the
first (and in the same way the first line of the fifth the second
line of the third), in _leixa-pren_ (_laisser prendre_) corresponding
evidently to the movements of the dance.[42] The love-lorn maidens
danced together, the men forming a circle to look on. St. Augustine
considered the dance to be a circle of which the Devil was the centre;
in real life the Devil was often replaced by a tree (or by a _mayo_).
The refrain was a notable feature of the _cossante_ in all its phases
as it went, a _bailada_ (dance-song) from the _terreiro_, to become
a _serranilha_ on the hills, or at pilgrimage shrines a _cantiga de
romaria_,[43] or a _barcarola_ (boat-song) or _alvorada_ (dawn-song).
A marked and thoroughly popular characteristic of the _cossante_ is
its wistful sadness,[44] the _soidade_ which is already mentioned more
than once in the _Cancioneiros_,[45] and, born in Galicia, continued
in Portugal, combined with a more garish tone under the hotter sun of
the South. Thus we have the melancholy Celtic temperament, absorbed in
Nature, acting on the forms suggested by an alien religion till they
become vague cries to the sea, to the deer of the hills, the flower
of the pine. The themes are as simple and monotonous--the monotony of
snowdrops or daffodils--as the form in which they are sung. A girl in
the gloom of the pine-trees mourning for her lover, the birds in the
cool of the morning singing of love, the deer troubling the water of a
mountain-stream, the boats at anchor, or bearing away _meus amores_, or
gliding up the river _a sabor_. The _amiga_ lingers at the fountain,
she goes to wash clothes or to bathe her hair in the stream, she meets
her lover and dances at the pilgrim shrine, she waits for him under
the hazel-trees, she implores the waves for news of him, she watches
for the boats _pelo mar viir_. The language is native to the soil,
far more so, at least, than in the _cantigas de amor_ and _cantigas
de amigo_ written under foreign influence. Their French or Provençal
words and learned forms[46] are replaced in the _cossante_ by forms
Galician or Spanish. Despite its striking appearance to us now among
_sirventes senes sal_ in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, it must
be confessed that the early _cossante_ of King Sancho has a somewhat
meagre, vinegar aspect, and the _genre_ could hardly have developed
so successfully in the next half-century had it not been fixed in the
country-side, ever ready to the hand of the poet in search of fresh
inspiration. It is possible to exaggerate the effect of war on the life
of the peasant. Portugal in the twelfth century was only gradually
and by constant conflict winning its territory and independence. It
had no fixed capital and Court at which the Provençal poets might
gather. But while king and nobles and the members of the religious and
military orders were engaged with the Moors to the exclusion of the
Muses, so that they had no opportunity to introduce the new measures,
the peasants in Galicia and Minho no doubt went on tilling the soil
and singing their primitive songs. In the thirteenth century Provençal
poetry flourished in Portugal, but so monotonously that it failed to
kill the older lyrics, and they reacted on the imported poetry. In the
trite conventions with which the latter became clothed the _cossante_
had a new opportunity of life. _Trobadores_ wearied by their own
monotony, _jograes_ wishing to please a patron with a _novidade_, had
recourse to the _cossante_. The _jogral_ wandering from house to house
and town to town necessarily came into close touch with the peasants.
Talented men among them, prompted by patrons of good taste, no doubt
exercised the third requisite of a good _jogral_ (_doair’ e uoz e
aprenderdes ben_, C. C. B. 388)--a good memory--not only in learning
his patron’s verses to recite at other houses but in remembering the
songs that he caught in passing from the lips of the peasants, songs of
village mirth and dance, of workers in the fields and shepherds on the
hills. These, developed and adorned according to his talent, he would
introduce to the Court among his _motz recreamens e prazers_. When
Joan de Guilhade in the middle of the thirteenth century complained
that _os trobadores ja van para mal_ (C. V. 370), he might almost be
referring to the fact that the stereotyped poems of the Portuguese
_trobadores_ could no longer compete with the fresh charm of the
_cossante_. Alfonso X reproached Pero da Ponte for not singing like a
Provençal but, rather, like Bernaldo de Bonaval (first half 13th c.).