Pour un autre soleil... Le Sonnet occitan des origines à nos jours: une anthologie (review)

Abstract

REVIEW Pierre Bec, ed. Pour un autre soleil... Le Sonnet occitan des origines à nos jours: une anthologie. Préface de Jacques Roubaud. Orléans: Paradigme, 1994. Pp. 351. As Pierre Bec says, the title is a paraphrase of the one Jacques Roubaud gave to the anthology he devoted to the French sonnet. This is a conscious choice by Bee in order to "préparer une certaine injustice. Dire en effet qu'il n'existe pratiquement rien sur le sonnet occitan n'est un secret pour personne" (vii). Jacques Roubaud's preface sets the tonefrom thefirstsentence: "La poésie en langue occitane n'a pas eu de chance avec la forme-sonnet" (iii). The "rival malheureux de frères plus chanceux" (vii) is scarcely mentioned except in Roubaud's own book and in a number ofthe Revue des langues romanes given over to this poetic form in the period 1550 to 1630. The sonnet is not amongthe forms adopted by the troubadours but it owes its origin to the prestige of troubadour poetry at the court of Frederick II ofHohenstaufen, where, between 1230 and 1250, the genre was established by a notary of the Palermo court, Giacomo de Lentini, the great mover of the Scuola siciliana. From there it penetrates into central Italy and is taken up by Guittone d'Arezzo so that, through Guido Guinizelli, the link is made with the dolce stil nuovo. The rest is history. The first extant sonnet is due to Giacomo de Lentini but the Scuola constitutes an important group ofsonnet writers, among whom Dante da Maiano and Lanfranchi da Pistoia experimented by writing sonnets in Occitan, of which there are still three. But the Occitan sonnet not only does not come anywhere near the number of those composed in French but the thousand or so which are extant have only been discovered relatively recently in some cases. Whereas the vogue for this genre in French tends to wane from about 1650, making a timely reappearance, however, in the 19th century, the Occitan sonnet has tended to grow in strength, undiminished. The success of this form is put down to the 52 REVIEW admirationand imitationofthegreatmodelsboth FrenchandPetrarchan, but it has always been the case, according to Pierre Bee, that, while certain writers take it up unreservedly, others confess to not having any predilection for it at all. The poems presented fall into two sections: Sonnets anciens (13th to 18th century) and Sonnets modernes et contemporains (18th century to the present). There are92 in the firstfrom 28 poets (one anonymous) and 183 in the second from 75. In addition, there are three 16th-century sonnets included, in an appendix, from a manuscript ofthe Bibliothèque Inguimbertine in Carpentras, which contains 118 pieces, accompanied by seven sizains, of an anonymous Provençal writer. Each of them is accompanied by a translation into French and an occasional note to clarify a linguistic or biographical element. In the ñrstAnnexe, the poets are identified with a biographical entry and details of their works. This is followed by a succinct glossary and a short bibliography. The choice of poems for inclusion is based on several criteria:the fame of the poet, the importance of the sonnet to the output of the poet, the value of the piece intrinsically and as a representation of its genre, and, finally, the dialect in which the poem is written. The sonnets relating to the early period are of great interest to the medieval scholar and there is certain ground for speculation on the original output ofsonnets and whether many were lost or have not come to the attention of scholars. The three sonnets written in the medieval form of the language are due to Italians with a passion for Occitan. Not much is known about Lanfranchi da Pistoia except that he lived around the end of the 13th century and apparently wrote his sonnet in Occitan in Catalonia. Dante da Maiano was a contemporary ofLanfranchi and his two love sonnets are very much in sympathy with the tenets oifin'amor. But we are then launched into the 16th century with the famous Jehan de Nostredame, whose sonnets are but part ofa more ambitious output. Thereafter, one...