The Representation of Time in the "Libre" of Guiraut Riquier

Abstract

THE REPRESENTATION OF TIME IN THE "LIBRE" OF GUIRAUT RIQUIER At the bottom right-hand corneroffolio 288r oftroubadour ms. C(BibliothèqueNationale fr. 856), onefindsthe followingstatement: Aissi comensan lo cans den: Guiraut riquier de narbona en aissi cum es de cansos, e de uerses. e de pastorellas. e de retroenchas. e de descortz. e dal bas. e dautras diuersas obras en aissi ad ordenadamens cum era adordenat en lo sieu libre, del qual libre escrig per la sua man fon aissi tot translatât, e ditz enaissi cum de sus se conten. (Here begins the song of sir Guiraut Riquier of Narbonne, made up as it is of cansos, verses, pastorellas, retroenchas, descortz, albas, and various other works, in the same order as it was ordered in his book, from which book, written by his own hand, it was all copied here, and it says the same [there] as is contained above.)1 The first verb "comensan," which is actually plural, is linked with a singular subject, "Io cans." I have insisted on translating the noun as "the song," and not emending it into a plural ("Ii can"), or choosing a lessjarring, indefinite noun such as "the singing," because I believe that its singularity is significant. The grammatical inconsistency points to the underlying tension, in the poems (or poem?) which follow(s), between unity and multiplicity, between the poet's apparent efforts to make his poems cohere into an organic whole, a "libre," and thefragmentary, non-narrative nature ofboth the individuallyrics and the entire multi-authored manuscript. TIME IN GUIRAUT RIQUIER127 What follows the statement cited above is not, in fact, a "book" as we usually conceive of one—that is, as a set of sheets bound together into a single volume—but 68 poems by Guiraut Riquier, ordered, presumably, as they were ordered "in his book," followed by other poems by other authors. Such clear evidence that an authorsupervised codex did once exist is unique in the entire corpus of troubadourpoetry.2 Riquier's works werecomposed, however, about a century after the "classical" period, in which many of the most famous troubadours flourished. Coming as late as it did, his poetry was influenced by thecontemporaneous emergence ofthe new "book culture" establishing itselfin the second halfofthe thirteenth century, which was transforming the idea of the vernacular text from a verbal and varying artifact to a visually fixed one. So as to stabilize the order of his songs, and to weave them together into a larger whole, he constructed a definite sequence. Riquier's libre actually appears in another codex as well, ms. R (Bibl. Nat. fr. 22543).3 The essential agreement between the two renditions of the libre is remarkably close, especially since the manuscripts, although both produced in the south of France and probablyrelated, often provide different versionsand orderings ofthe otherpoems thatthey have in common. AntoineTavera hassuggested that these differences attest to "l'importance énorme de la tradition purementorale . . . danslaFranced'ocautempsmêmeoùsecompilaient les grands chansonniers" (247-48), the discrepancies between recorded versions of the poems reflecting differences in performance. The considerable fidelity of the two extant versions of the libre, however, as compared to the differing reproductions of other poems and sequences ofpoems in both Cand R, might be seen as confirming the ultimate derivation of the two editions of Riquier's "book" from one authoritative, written compilation. Amelia Van Vleck has suggested that associating "the author's proprietary interest in his creation with the manufacture of books is too modern an impulse" (66), however, and argued convincingly that 128OLIVIA HOLMES the early troubadours were not, on the whole, concerned with avoiding textual instability. The order in which one troubadour's works actually appears in different manuscripts often fluctuates wildly, as does the order in which stanzas appear within the single poem. Yet although stability may not, in fact, have been of major concern to earlier troubadours, Guiraut Riquier falls outside the period to which Van Vleck's study applies, and his work may be seen as evidence of changing attitudes towards concepts of literary property. He clearly conceived ofhis work as something vaster than the individual songs. Riquier dated and numbered the poems of his libre in...