Courtly Reciprocity in “Laustic” and “Guigemar” by Marie de France (Part 1)

The lai, a short narrative poem from the Middle Ages that treats themes of courtly love, was originally accompanied by music and sung by minstrels. But in the 1170s, poet Marie de France translated a series of Breton lais into French and, in so doing, converted an oral tradition into text. It’s no wonder, then, that her lais’ narratives are so often preoccupied with methods of communication: both the spoken word, with its spiritual, incantatory, or even magical qualities, and the written word—physical, embodied, and analogous to the art object (particularly and, appropriately, the textile, a medium associated since antiquity with female artistry). Wes & Erin discuss two of the poet’s most famous lais—”Laustic” and “Guigemar”—and how their narratives marry the “flesh” of text, art, and symbology, to the “spirit” of the spoken word (via dialogue, oaths and covenants, and authorial commentary), in order, perhaps, to communicate something of the mysterious and dangerous union that is romantic love. Upcoming Episodes: Arthur (1981), Medea (Euripides), A New Leaf (Elaine May). Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Lay, a short narrative poem from the Middle Ages that treats themes of courtly love was originally accompanied by music and sung by minstrels. But in the 1170s, poet Marie de France translated a series of Breton lays into French and in so doing converted an oral tradition into text. It's no wonder, then, that her lais narratives are so often preoccupied with methods of communication, both the spoken word, with its spiritual, incantatory, or even magical quality, and the written word, physical, embodied and analogous to the art object, particularly and appropriately the textile, a medium associated since antiquity with female artistry. Today we're discussing two of the poet's most famous lays, Laustic and Guigemar, and how their narratives marry the flesh of text, art and symbology to the spirit of the spoken word via dialogue, oaths and covenants, and authorial commentary, in order perhaps to communicate something of the mysterious and dangerous union that is romantic love. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. This is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. 1:40 Wes: Point of order. This podcast was a Breton lay, or the Bretons made a lay of this podcast, and now we are just adapting that. 1:50 Erin: We're adapting it. 1:51 Wes: Yeah, she was a great adapter. 1:54 Erin: Yeah. And I wonder, actually, I wonder how much she just came up with herself, where she was like, you know, wanted to give herself the mantle of authority by saying, this is a Breton lay and I'm taking it. And I'm, you know, the Bretons wrote about this. It's totally. She made it up. You're getting to how I wanted to start this conversation, which I was going to ask if you had heard of Marie de France prior to me suggesting this because. 2:15 Wes: Well, it's a coincidence, because I was going to ask you who she is. Tell us who she is and what she's about. I hadn't. No, I had not, actually. Not at all. And I had read some medieval romance stuff like Le Morte d'Arthur, which I was very into in high school, and Arthurian legend type stuff, which this seems to be related to. But I think this is. I don't know if this is categorized as medieval romance exactly, or it's adjacent to it. Yeah. Tell us about her and how you happened upon her. 2:49 Erin: One of the professors on my committee for my PhD qualifying exams is a medievalist and suggested this because the special topic for my qualifying exams is poetic ekphrasis. So if people aren't familiar with. With that word, it's just the vivid description of, usually of a work of art. The Greeks took it to mean any kind of description that brought something vividly before the eye, I think, is what the rhetoric manuals from ancient Greece say. But typically now it's associated with a very vivid description of a work of art, usually some kind of visual art, be it a painting or a statue within a text. So poetic ekphrasis within a poem. So it's kind of an artistic turducken, you might say, one art form encased in another. The classic example is, of course, Homer's description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad. And so anyway, you know, I have a historical section of my reading list which encompasses a broad swath of texts from antiquity to, you know, sort of the early modern era, and have this wonderful medievalist on my committee who suggested Marie de France's poems because they have many instances of ekphrasis in them, particularly in these. These two poems. So, as I think will become clear over the course of our conversation, I'm particularly interested in the descriptions of art here and how these maybe tie her to a classic feminine tradition, like, especially in Laustic, I think, where, as I'm sure you probably caught this connection, where the body of the nightingale is wrapped in the lady's woven message to her lover, which is obviously meant to reference the tale of Philomela in Ovid. And so that places her within a particular kind of tradition. But anyway, yeah, I was really disappointed that I hadn't heard of until there was a book that came out about her a couple years ago, that was when I first heard of her. And I had heard of Lanval, one of her lays, but not her name associated with that Arthurian story. 4:39 Wes: And it's about Guinevere. 4:41 Erin: Yeah, yeah, I think so. It's a knight, I think, who maybe. I think he spurns Guinevere. 4:47 Wes: Maybe it's not another name for Lancelot. Right? It's a different one. 4:51 Erin: No, no, it's a different knight. Yeah. And so medieval. It isn't, you know, isn't my specialty by any means, but the fact that I hadn't heard of her really exposed a huge. Either a huge gap in my education or just a sad lack of recognition for Marie de France. Or both, probably. But if it's the latter. I wonder if it's because she's a woman. I mean, partially. It has to be. Right. But also perhaps she's not writing at length like so many other medieval poets. Most of these are really short, though. Certainly they have the quality of little epics. But. Yeah. So I suggested this because it's on my reading list, and I was bowled over by these. But did you enjoy them or were you as impressed as I was? 5:31 Wes: Yeah, I enjoyed them a lot. I was pleasantly surprised, actually. I don't get excited by the phrase medieval literature, despite. Le Morte d'Arthur is medieval, right? It's like, 15th century. Well, it's not technically. How do you categorize Le Morte d'Arthur? It's sort of at the end of that, but, yeah. 5:48 Erin: You don't like Chaucer. 5:50 Wes: Yes. I mean. I mean, but it's been a long time. We have to do Chaucer. Yes. And sure, I think as an adult, you know, it's been. Since I was basically. Well, I guess, yeah, I did it in college. Honestly, I was too young to fully appreciate it. 6:03 Erin: Sure. 6:03 Wes: But I think I would now. Definitely. What are some of the other medieval big hits? Beowulf. 6:09 Erin: Beowulf, the Pearl poet. The Gawain poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I really love. And then Dante for the other side of the coin. 6:19 Wes: Right. Yes. So all things that we should do. I found these very charming. And this is the sort, again, the sort of thing I was into as a kid and in high school, mainly by way of Tolkien and C.S. lewis and Le Morte d'Arthur and a book called the Once and Future King by TH White, which this kind of. The tone of it reminded me a bit, even though it's not the same. But the use of enchantment and fairy tale, maybe what I'm thinking of is fairy tale to some extent, which I was also very into, but I don't know how you describe it, but the mood or tone of enchantment is very immersive and winning. And it's like this era's version of magic realism in a way. It's hard not to kind of be delighted by it, despite the fact there seems to be a real interest in infidelity as the only true form of love. Who wants to be married? 7:15 Erin: Yeah. 7:16 Wes: Yeah. 7:17 Erin: Well, courtly love continues to fascinate and kind of horrify me. But, yeah, maybe I've talked on the podcast before about my love of Tennyson, and so I was introduced to all this stuff through Idylls of the King and, you know, especially the lady of Shalott and also the musical Camelot, which actually has a lot of, you know, sort of classic qualities of these poems. And then some of the stuff I then read in high school, like the, you know, Chaucer and stuff like that. But anyway, yeah, I mean, you know, and I'm surprised. Cause my mom was really into the medievals, so I'm surprised that this is someone who I. Because I asked her and she hadn't heard of her either. So. Justice for Marie de France. 7:52 Wes: We are going to revive her. 7:54 Erin: Yes, yes. 7:55 Wes: Via this podcast. 7:56 Erin: I hope so. 7:56 Wes: I mean, I'm sure there's an academic sub field now, but yes, for the general public. 8:01 Erin: Well, I think we're going to start with Laustic, which is shorter and it'll just get us right to the heart of condoned infidelity, or infidelity as maybe an important spiritual practice. I don't know. But before we do. So, I found these translations online from. I think it was a 1910 or 11 translation, which actually transposes the poems into prose. And I thought they were pretty good, pretty interesting translations. But there's also one that I found through Wikipedia, which is a verse translation of Laustic that was done in 1991. Which one did you favor or did you read? Both. 8:37 Wes: So I did the Gutenberg translation. I looked a little bit at the others and maybe. Do you want to, since these are short, just give a very high level sketch of the story. 8:48 Erin: Sure. 8:48 Wes: Which is so short it won't take long. But then also, if you want to read some lines from the original from the translation that is closer to the poetry of the original to give the flavor of that. Sure, maybe that's good. Before we do that, did we want to say anything else about Marie de France? Not much is known about her, but apparently she might have been part of the court of our old friend Henry ii, who we seem to keep revisiting. Yes, an old lady, the old Eleanor of Aquitaine. 9:18 Erin: Yeah, we love those courtly ladies. I mean, I suppose we should say that she was living in England. I mean, this is where things get a little confusing because she's taking these Breton lays, translating them into French with maybe quite a bit of her own spin, her own flavor. But she's living in England and so I think that's somewhere. I read that that's why she calls herself Marie de France. Otherwise it would be odd to say, like, I'm Wes, United States, when. Right. 9:49 Wes: So this distinguished her and the Bretons in particular. So there was a Celtic culture. Breton is sometimes called Little Britain. Right. As opposed to Great Britain. 9:59 Erin: Right. 9:59 Wes: And not to mention the fact that a century early, earlier, the Normans had conquered England. Right. And so all the upper classes were French speaking. I don't know what's going on at this point in history, but French and the earlier Celtic and Anglo Saxon admixture of cultures have now undergone their own mixture. But there's a special relationship between this part of northern France and England. 10:23 Erin: Yeah, a special, special colonial relationship. It's special violence. Yeah. No, I think that. I think you're highlighting something which is. Which is also really complex about the heritage of these stories. Right. Because they came originally from Celtic. They came into the Breton language, into Brittany, and then they're sort of fed back to, you know, so they're leached from. And then fed back to this abused population in the United Kingdom. Right. Filtered through French and regurgitated back to the colonized people. 10:57 Wes: Oh, yeah, we can't forget that Beckett, that the fictional version of Becket. Right. Was one of these aggrieved, colonized people. Yeah, forgot about that. 11:05 Erin: Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. No, but, you know, there's something really weird that goes on with these Arthurian legends because of the fact that they're filtered through France, so Heav. And through. You know, there's a whole strain of this also that goes into Italy. And so it's, you know, it's sort of like if we really adopted we as Americans, you know, who came Europeans, if in the 1700s maybe adopted, like the full mythology and different narrative stories within, you know, an indigenous tribe, a Native American tribe, and then made that, like part of our self myth and then like taught the, you know, subsequent generations of Native Americans these stories as if, like, we had come up with them or something. You know, there's a little bit of a mind. They're screwing around with people's minds going on here. 11:56 Wes: I was thinking of William James being the one who wrote Huckleberry Finn or something, but maybe that's not the. Right. The English were communicating American ness back to Americans. They were the great transmitters of. I don't know, is that analogous or 12:13 Erin: maybe not William James, but I think 12:15 Wes: you're thinking of someone else closer to. Well, I'm just picking a random. 12:20 Erin: Oh, sure, sure. 12:21 Wes: Think of. But he's not close enough to who's a writer. English writer. That's closer to Twain's time. 12:29 Erin: Dickens, if Dickens is older. Yeah, I know. 12:31 Wes: There you go. 12:32 Erin: Yeah. 12:32 Wes: Which he probably could do. A really good job of, actually. 12:34 Erin: Probably. Yeah. See, that's. That's part of the problem is, like, you know, these were these Breton minstrels just better at telling these stories. We don't know. 12:44 Wes: Maybe we would be better off as Americans if our self concept. No, I think Twain is. Twain did a good job. So let's. But we would. You know, it would be cool. 12:54 Erin: Yeah, for sure. 12:57 Wes: But anyway. 12:58 Erin: Okay, so it's kind of like when. Here. Here we go. It's when Daniel Day Lewis plays Lincoln in a Spielberg movie. Something that people in my family have still not gotten over. They couldn't find an American to play that part. I'm like, okay, anyway. 13:12 Wes: And also, didn't you need someone with Lincoln's specific condition, whatever that was? I can't remember what it is. 13:18 Erin: Tallness. 13:19 Wes: That made him. 13:20 Erin: Stovepipe syndrome. I don't know. 13:24 Wes: All right, so. Yeah. So it is a very interesting cultural history behind this. So thanks for sharing some of that. 13:31 Erin: Sure. 13:32 Wes: Shall we jump to. You want to summarize and. Yeah, give it a little bit of the flavor of. Yep. 13:37 Erin: Okay, so here's a. Here's a story. There. There are two knights. They're living in adjoining castles. Sort of adjoining. 13:42 Wes: Right. 13:42 Erin: They're butting right up against each other. One is married, one isn't. The bachelor is in love with a married knight's wife, and she's in love with him. 13:50 Wes: It's kind of like an odd couple type. No, I'm just kidding. It's not. 13:54 Erin: Yeah, well, she. 13:57 Wes: One of them is messy. The other one is. 13:59 Erin: No, well, one of them is nice, apparently, and the other one is mean. 14:02 Wes: It turns out to be mean. Surprise, but go ahead. 14:05 Erin: Yeah, yeah. There's something. Something rotten in the marriage. So the unmarried knight, she loves him because the deeds that he was famous for, but also apparently because he lived next door. And there are courtly love prescriptions for honorable adultery. And one of them is, you know, love the one. Maybe not the one you're with, but the one that's nearby with a nice 14:25 Wes: big wall in between. 14:28 Erin: Yeah. 14:29 Wes: Parapets and balconies and kinds of indirect ways of communicating. 14:34 Erin: Yeah, well, they mostly. Yeah, they mostly just talk to each other out their window or they look at each other out there. There's a lot of looking. 14:41 Wes: This could revolutionize dating apps. Instead of this, you know, you just arrange times to kind of gaze at each other from afar through windows and over walls. Let courtly love. Courtlylove.com. that's your new dating app. 14:54 Erin: Didn't they do a Study that. Looking into someone's eyes for something like two or three uninterrupted minutes actually induces love. Like, that's how you fall in love. You just have to stare at them and you can't look away. They made people do this. 15:07 Wes: Either that or they just think you're autistic. I don't know which. But no, I read about going from the eyes to the lips to the eyes. Again, I don't know. 15:16 Erin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. I read about that, too. I can't remember what that's about. Anyway, whatever it was, they were doing it, obviously because they were really in love with each other. After a few months of staring at each other. Okay, so she would get up at night from her bed where her husband was sleeping, and she would go to the window and she and her and the night next door would stare at each other through the window all night long until morning came. And this was the time of year in which the nightingale was singing. So the husband got upset, asked her why she was getting up out of bed and sitting at the window all night. And she said, well, it's just to hear the nightingale's song. So I just want to listen to it all night long. It's like the dopest track there is. So he makes this plan to trap the nightingale so that he gets all his servants to set sticky traps and snares and nets in every tree on the grounds. And soon they catch the bird. And the husband brings it to the wife and says, see, I caught the bird that kept you awake all night. Well, never again. And he breaks the bird's neck and throws its body at the woman in sort of the climax of the story. And it's noted that she gets blood, the bird's blood on her breast, on the front of her garment. She picks up the body of the bird and weeps and says, oh, no, I'm never going to be able to look out the window at my lover again. And then she worries that because she won't be at the window, her lover will doubt her faith. So to send him the message of what has happened, she covers the bird with the fold of samite in all precious gold. And I looked it up. Samite is like a silk woven fabric. She embroiders it and inscribes it, presumably with a message, some kind of indication of what's happened. And she has a servant deliver it to him along with the servant also says something to him. We don't know what it is, but the Servant delivers a verbal message. So there are sort of two messages inscribed, or one inscribed, one delivered verbally. And the knight was very sad and he orders a smith to mold a tiny little casket out of pure gold and precious stones and put the nightingale's body inside as a sort of reliquary that he could carry with him always as memory of their love affair. So presumably the affair was over forever. And I should say, I don't know if I specified this, but the husband obviously had cottoned on to what was really going on between his wife and the guy next door. And so he kills the nightingale to sort of say, haha, now you can't. You can't use an excuse anymore. You can't see him anymore. 17:40 Wes: Oh, is that. Is that okay? Well, we'll talk about that. That's interesting. I don't know if I picked up on that. 17:45 Erin: Oh, maybe that's my interpretation. 17:47 Wes: No, that's interesting because I was just interpreting it as this weird unexplained sadism. 17:52 Erin: Oh, that's a lot more interesting than him being smarter than the total dumbass that he appears to be. 18:00 Wes: Yeah, right, Men. Yeah, we got to bring them back. This word dolent. You said the night was sorrowful or something, and in my translation it's dolent. 18:13 Erin: Nice. 18:13 Wes: Speaking of which, do you want to give some of a. Maybe even of the original French, if you have it, but some of the English translation that captures the poetry. 18:23 Erin: Sure, yeah. I don't have the old French, unfortunately. So this is the Judith Shoaf verse translation. Near St. Malo there was a town somewhere thereabouts of great renown Two nights knights lived there, no lowly vassals in houses that were built like castles. These barons were so good their fame gave their village goodness's own name. One of them had married lately, polite and polished Such a lady she was wise to her own worth, Normal in ladies of high birth. The other lord was a bachelor, Famed for prowess and for valor Loved by all, for he knew how to live, Joust a lot, spend a lot what you have, give away freely. He loved the wife of his neighbor he begged so much and prayed yet more and goodness was his striking feature. So she loved him more than any creature because of the deeds he was famous for and because he lived in the castle next door. Before the tale actually starts, there is a little bit of a preamble that Marie de France adds where she gives us sort of a history lesson of the word for nightingale. So laustic is the Breton word for nightingale in French. She says they Call it a Rossignol. And in good English, nightingale. So we get the three. We get three nightingales in the little preamble to the poem. I like how these stories start with real self consciousness on the part of Marie, of the narrator. She likes to take a kind of authorial credit for what comes, even though she gives nods to, you know, this is a popular lay in Brittany. She also centers herself at the beginning, so, you know, you know who you're hearing this from. She likes to give herself credit. And she also maybe calls attention to the fact that it comes from an oral tradition. So she's, you know, she's giving a little spiel at the beginning that maybe the minstrel would do. So maybe she's kind of transposing that into the text, just as she's sort of, you know, translating the Breton tradition into French in terms of the content of the story. 20:18 Wes: And just in case anyone accuses her of stealing, she's covered. Preamble to Guigemar is quite. We'll talk about that. But that's quite an extensive bit of preemptive self defense against the envy and bad wishes of listeners. 20:33 Erin: Exactly. 20:34 Wes: So maybe there's an element of that as well. It would be embarrassing for me to try to read some of this old French. 20:41 Erin: Okay, so this is in the old French, une aventure vous dirai dont li Bretun firent un lai. Right. 21:01 Wes: I mean, it would be, say, in contemporary French. Right. Just. 21:05 Erin: Yeah, 21:17 Wes: So I don't know if they use. 21:19 Erin: Oh, vieil. Vieil. I see, I see. Yeah. Okay. 21:23 Wes: Anyway, so that. Yeah, so that gives a good flavor of the weird French. 21:27 Erin: It's actually not. It's not that different from regular French. It's a little hard to read because the U's are V's or the V's are U's rather. But otherwise, you know, the vocabulary isn't like an adventure. I will tell you, it was what the Bretons made into a la. You know. 21:46 Wes: Yeah. 21:46 Erin: Like, it's not. It's actually pretty straightforward. I'm surprised. I thought it was going to be way more foreign. 21:50 Wes: Yeah, I did, too. Yeah. 21:52 Erin: I could kind of read it, but not say it. 21:54 Wes: So. Quite charming. Quite charming. And even reading it in this Gutenberg translation, which is a good translation, but the charm, you know, even if you're not getting this sing songy poetry, it's still very charming. All right, so. Yeah. What is this about in the Gutenberg translation? So one night, they're both honorable, I guess I got a very positive impression of the two nights at the beginning, which made it a surprise that one of them ends up being a terrible person. And maybe both of them are. I don't know. It depends on how you interpret the infidelity. But the bachelor knight set his love upon his neighbor's wife and then woos her. She requites it. And then they are private and careful in their loves, so no one notices. And I thought here there's something about the importance of privacy. And maybe the conception of love as something private as opposed to something public. Because you get the impression these women have been married, right. They're not married for love. They're married, and maybe often to older men for political reasons. Which seems to be what makes fidelity implicitly acceptable in these tales. As an expression of courtly love. Real love which is suppressed within the confines of the thing that's publicly acceptable or publicly sanctioned in marriage. As if this is a chance for infidelity. In the situation, including the. The way things are set up with the houses next to each other and the wall and all that. It creates a situation in which romantic intimacy is actually possible in a way that is just not possible within the context of an institution at this time. Or maybe it's not as possible. I don't know. 23:38 Erin: I like that. Yeah. There's something, though, a bit arbitrary, right. About the fact that he sets his love on her. I think because of the fact that we get this description at the beginning that there's well spoken and reputed of all, so everyone likes him. Then we proceed to get a much, much longer description of the bachelor knight and of his particular virtues. So maybe that's why I didn't remember this preliminary section in which. Oh, they're both good guys, right? And then we get this really long list of how wonderful the bachelor knight is. Something about the fact that there are two and that they're in houses right next door to each other. There's definitely not just a fairy tale, but like a nursery rhyme quality to this. That they're these two exact the same guys. They live in the same houses, you know, plagued by the same mouses or, you know, whatever. Whatever. Right. And then it's proximity. I mean, I should mention that in the Shoaf translation. I can't find it in the prose one. It has a note that when she writes or translates. So she loved him more than any creature because of the deeds he was famous for. And because he lived in the castle next door. A very helpful footnote tells us that there were books on the art of courtly Love. And they had basically stipulations for what was proper or honorable when one undertook adultery. So there was dishonorable adultery and honorable adultery. Right. And one of the characters of honorable adultery is propinquity. So it's supposed to be part of the formal considerations in love that lovers should, according to Shoaf, should live close to each other to maximize opportunities for intimacy. So on the other hand, it's noted in these guidebooks that proximity can breed contempt. And also that frequent opportunities to meet are also occasions for discovery, which makes it a risky business. So here, you know, she notes that here proximity brings about disaster. But there's something in the arbitrariness of the fact that there are these two nights. And also, if we're taking into consideration these larger precepts of courtly love, you're supposed to take into account who is closest to you. That also seems to be relatively arbitrary, especially as the woman. Right. You're just going wherever your husband lives. You don't have any choice in the matter. You can, in other words, rent an apartment that, you know, is, you know, in a building that's filled with really cute guys. So then propinquity doesn't become that much of a problem. 26:01 Wes: Rule number one, you do shit where you eat. 26:03 Erin: Exactly. Though it's. Though that causes problems. So they do admit that it's going 26:09 Wes: to end tragically, but that's part of the package. 26:12 Erin: Well, I can't help, perhaps because of the rapidity of the way in which the story is told. I can't help but doubt the strength of this love. Actually, at the same time, I think that there's an inherent safety in this setup. The relationship doesn't seem to be physical in nature. Like it doesn't seem to be, let's say, consummated the adultery. Right. They can lean out of the window. They can kiss each other out of the window. We're also told that they can lean from the casement and speak together, kind of whisper to each other. And they also throw messages in writing and diverse pretty gifts, the one to the other. So they throw things to each other out the window, including messages in writing, which I kind of love. 26:49 Wes: It's like being in prison, right? Throwing the message over the wall. Attached to some floss or something. 26:54 Erin: Yeah, exactly, exactly. 26:56 Wes: Folded up piece of paper. 26:59 Erin: Right. There's intimacy and containment and prophylactic inherent in this arrangement. Right? 27:06 Wes: Yeah. So there's a high, ancient wall. I like that double adjective there. And the idea that it's ancient, being important. And then Yep. The casements, the writing, the gifts that they're sending. Little, I think little gifts. It's important that they not be too lavish. But they could not, quote, unquote, take their pleasure together. And in fact, when the husband was gone, she was even more guarded. He knew. He knew not to. He knew not to trust her. But. Yeah. So I like this, I like what you're saying about the prophylactic creates this opportunity for intimacy. It's for non sexual intimacy. Yeah. 27:47 Erin: And maybe, maybe I'm also attributing the arbitrariness or the sort of, you know, reflex quality to this, to this love. Because also it's associated with spring. I mean, it predates the actual springtime. But then when spring comes and they have the excuse of the nightingale to commune with each other overnight, that seems to represent a kind of full flowering of their love for each other. So, you know, much is made of the transition into springtime. The season, it's noted, became warm and sweet. It was the time when meadow and copse are green, when orchards grow white with bloom and birds break into song as thickly as the bush to flower. And this will become important, right, because the nightingale is the pretext. And so at this time is really when their relationship is taking up the majority of their time. You know, this is where the relationship then takes up a huge chunk of time. Because they're looking at each other all night long. I don't know when they're sleeping, probably during the day. So this is when, this is when they really come alive, just as the world is coming alive. And so she yearned for sight and speech of her friend. And at night, when the moon shone clearly in the sky and her lord lay sleeping at her side, often the dame slipped softly from her bed and hastening to the casement, leaned forth to have sight of him who watched the greater part of the dark. They kept vigil together for. Very pleasant it is to look upon your friend when sweeter things are denied. And then this happens so often in the lady rose so frequently from her bed that her lord was altogether wrathful. This is the first indication that he has an anger problem. And many a time inquired the reason of her unrest. And so she tells him that there is no dearer joy in this world than to hear the nightingale sing. And in fact, now they don't say. They don't say dearer joy. I wondered if this was repeated from earlier. Just as very pleasant it is to look upon your friend. But there's a, you know, the idea of joy from the natural world and from the rites of spring and joy from the lover are in tandem there. One is the excuse for the other. And I think there's something therefore seasonal maybe about the love itself. She just had spring fever and she really wanted to go to spring break in Miami and he wouldn't let her go. So she had this little at home affair instead. 30:02 Wes: Yeah, this is the way Trojan virgin condoms started out, by the way. Selling ancient walls. Get your walls right here. 30:12 Erin: Oh, that's good. 30:14 Wes: Yeah. So spring is here. Everyone's horny. No, just kidding. Everyone's feeling romantic. It's may, but what you said something about the natural world and the nightingale. I was connecting this a little bit to the albatross because I think we had concluded that the albatross in rime of the Ancient Mariner was to some extent representative of our dependency on natural forces in that context, on the types of forces like the wind that determined whether or not your ship is going to get somewhere. Life and death forces. But in this case the nightingale seems to be a representative. Well, there's a few different things and you can help me with this obviously, but it's representative maybe of the other lover or of their love or of her. You know, you could say all of these things, but I. Or you could say it's a representative of spring and the types of natural forces that lead people to seek each other out in this way. So that the significance of the crazy husbands, rageful of husbands act in the end is to extinguish those forces because those forces aren't really what matters. It's the contract of marriage and his and the property relation, let's say, that matters and not the romantic feelings or sexual feelings that courtly love seems to celebrate as something that has its own prerogatives. Something that is more important than the institution of marriage. So in a way I thought whether or not he's cottoning onto the actual affair, intuitively he seems to understand it. Intuitively he seems to understand that her being delighted by the nightingale is being means being delighted by these natural forces that are inherently dangerous to the social arrangement that they're involved in. 32:02 Erin: I think that's right. I think also the way that she describes listening to the nightingale song is so indicative of her guilt. I mean, she's talking about it as if it's like her wedding song that she's, you know. Or that's their song. 32:15 Wes: Right. 32:15 Erin: She says there's no dearer joy in this world than to hear the nightingale sing. It is to hark hearken to the song that rises so sweetly on the night that I lean forth from the casement. What tune of harp or viol is half so fair? Because of my delight in his song and of my desire to hear, I may not shut my eyes till it be mourn. I mean, she sounds like someone who's love addled, right? Who's been listening to too many romantic songs. 32:36 Wes: Well, it's when she called him the nightingale during sex that he really got suspicious. 32:42 Erin: Well, of course. 32:43 Wes: Oh, nightingale, nightingale. 32:47 Erin: Well, of course, it puts me. It puts me in mind of the classical association of the nightingale with the perfect singer, the perfect artist. And this means that there's an association between the nightingale and the poet herself, Marie de France, or the poem itself. So, like the nightingale, the poem is the place where these two lovers are coming together and meeting. It's the field of artistry in which these people come together and then come apart, like the nightingale too, with this third body, this third being introduced into the relationship, of course, I can't help but think of a child. This is the vessel, the third being, in which the love of these two people is meeting. 33:32 Wes: Right? 33:32 Erin: So in a way, it has the quality of a child to it. And I think that there's something significant in the fact that so often the unhappy marriages, it seems, in Marie de France's poems are childless, right? So there's no shared. There's no communion between husband and wife. There's communion in terms of this surrogacy, the surrogate child between wife and lover that maybe then helps us understand the anger, maybe, of the husband against the nightingale, almost as like an evidence of his own cuckoldry. Right. Wrong bird, but same, you know. You know, here the nightingale is the cuckoo, and therefore he must destroy it almost as a matter of propriety or justice, maybe in his own mind. 34:16 Wes: Yeah, that's really interesting. I hadn't thought of that. And you're making me think of the parallel to the envious and potentially outraged readers or listeners to Marie de France's poem, Right. Their potential hostility towards the poem. Because I'm making the association between nightingale and child and poem. Right. So this is the further symbol that you're introducing, which is that the nightingale can be seen as representative of the poem. And the poem is the thing that celebrates love and celebrates desire. So we can see how there's an interesting vindication, right, in her writing the story and then wrapping the bird in that to give it to her lover. So the killing of. I mean, this is all, you know, I hadn't thought of any of this until you said it. But the killing of the bird then is like the killing of an infant that potentially is not his, that he suspects is not his child. And one might say the same for if she's. For the development of her interests, including potentially creative interests, right. That transcend her obligations in marriage, those would be threatening as well, right? So it's not just an interest in the. Her interest in the guy next door that's threatening its interest in work or its interest in being a poet to the extent that he understands that unconsciously that he's induced with the urge to kill all of that off, whether so it's child or poem or sublimating faculties or whatever. 35:39 Erin: I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I think, you know, you're calling my attention to a couple of things. First of all, you know, so they're both knights, but we get long descriptions of the bachelor knight's deeds and his goodness as a knight, right? So one thinks, as I did, that this is supposed to indicate his worthiness as a romantic partner for the lady. But what it also does, right, is it shows actually that he knows how to be a knight, you know, the other one maybe because he doesn't read these nightly tales because he doesn't really care about these types of forms of, you know, a lot of being a knight is about recognizing the art of life, about living in a way that it's informed by these types of cultural values. We're told that he gave hospitality gladly, he bestowed gifts of all that he had. So, you know, being a knight is a cultural construct largely in which you're supposed to behave according to certain forms. You're supposed to dress yourself, you know, with flair. And there are these various, you know, texts also, which tell you how to be a knight. And so to be a knight also means being interested in stories that are informing how it is that you are to behave. You know, another significant moment you're making me think of is just this thing that's mentioned very offhand, which is while her husband was sleeping beside her. She's getting up to the window. It's like, of course, he's not listening to the nightingale. He doesn't care about how beautiful the evening is. And he's not wooing her. He's not. He's not romancing his wife. He's sleeping. You know, this is a great image of, you know, a frustrated wife, right, whose husband is sort of ignorantly sleeping beside her. And of course, the other night knows how to pay a lady proper attention and how to, you know. And he'll sit there at the window and look at you all night if that's all you want to do. He understands something of what it is to be a knight. And I think that readiness for love and for care and for attending to ladies and appreciating these types of feminine concerns, that's tied into what the husband wants to kill in the nightingale. I think not being a proper knight and wanting to kill poetry, it's like the same thing, Right? 37:49 Wes: Very good. You're making me think the grass is greener on the other side of the ancient wall, or the knight that's on the other side of that wall is always more attractive. 37:58 Erin: Right? Right. 37:59 Wes: Not the one in bed next to you. So on my reading, the killing of the nightingale kind of came out the of nowhere. And it's because it's so cruel. So, right. He catches the bird and says, you know, you're not gonna have to worry about this bird waking you up anymore. And she's, please give it to me as a gift. And his answer was to wring its neck so fiercely that the head was torn from the body. Then, Right. Foully he flung the bird upon the knees of the dame, such a fashion that her breast was sprinkled with the blood, which is a wonderful detail that you already drew attention to. Very important. So, wow. It went kind of into Tarantino territory there all of a sudden. 38:40 Erin: Well, this had to happen, right? I mean, the nightingale, as much as it's associated with poetry or with singing being the perfect singer, it's also associated with pain, Right. Both of these things are twinned together in the Ovid story. So this is the idea of being hurt into poetry or hurt into art. I'm riffing off of Auden on Ireland. Apparently, he says of Yeats, mad Ireland hurt you into poetry, right? 39:03 Wes: Oh, yeah, right. 39:04 Erin: But this idea of hurt into artistic making or artistry, as being a sort of cry from, you know, a cri de coeur, we'll put it in the French way, appropriate, is based in the Philomela story in Ovid. So Philomela is brutally raped by Tereus, who's married to Procne, her sister. She's kept prisoner by Tereus for a year or something. And he cuts her tongue out because she says, I'm going to tell my sister what you've done to me. And he cuts her tongue out so she can't speak. And so she weaves the story of her capture and of Tereus' crimes against her in A tapestry and sends it to Procne. And Procne rescues her sister and they get revenge on Tereus by killing Procne's son with Tereus and feeding him his own son for dinner. And when Tereus discovers that he's just eaten his own son, he flies into a rage. And as this happens, the gods transform Procne and Philomela into a swallow and a nightingale. And the sweet song of the nightingale has to do with the pain of Philomela's story and of her. And it's also associated with the tale that she wove and the tapestry, this idea that the nightingale's beautiful song has this origin and horrific pain, and that's part of what makes it so beautiful. So obviously this is being referenced here at the end of the story, when the dead body of the nightingale becomes also the conduit for the tale that she weaves into the cloth and is conveyed to the night. So all of that to say, I mean, the nightingale, I suppose, has to die. Right. This has to be a sad tale if there's a nightingale in it, maybe. 40:38 Wes: Sorry, your character's only lasting one season. It's important that you die. 40:44 Erin: Right, Right. One season is right too, you know. How long would this have lasted? How long would this have lasted anyway? Yeah, it seems like then fall comes and you can't sit at the window all night because it's too cold. So maybe this love affair would have died a much less magnificent death otherwise. So here the nightingale is also. Yeah, it's like the child, but it's imbued with a message via sort of human artistry that goes into this. And then it's like the nightingale in the story, or like Philomela's pain, which then is transposed into a nightingale, so that somehow the nightingale song preserves this story forever and keeps it going forever. The knight, out of, again, a kind of proper reverence for the nightingale, for poetry, for love, makes a casket for the bird and carries it as a reliquary in memory of their love that, you know, sort of preserves even if the love is not preserved. He preserves the memory of the love forever in this beautiful object that he has commissioned. 41:50 Wes: Yeah, that's really interesting. I was thinking a bit with both these stories about this urge to possess and control and imprison the love object. Whereas in actual courting and the actual process of courting and courtly love and desire and its initial stages, it's all indeterminacy and becoming in one does not fully possess the other, and one is Always engaged in the process of. Of trying to win over the other, which is the thing that ends. Well, ideally, it wouldn't end in marriage. Right. In small ways, the courtship process would be sustained. But in a bad marriage to the bad knight like this, it's not sustained. And instead you just end up in a prison because he's mate guarding. And it seems to me there's a parallel between this kind of imprisonment and then what he does with the bird. Oh, which is to put it in a box. Right, point. He's not imprisoning an actual person. He's not trying to preserve the relationship by controlling the love object. He's trying to sustain it by sustaining memory and therefore sustaining desire. So the thing that has to be preserved is not the person, not the love object, but the relation, the desire, and a certain kind of open. Not an open marriage. That's not what I was about to say. But an openness, an open quality to the relationship. 43:13 Erin: I like that. I mean, what do we make of the fact? What do you make of the fact? Because I don't quite have an answer to this, of the fact that the. So the nightingale was the conduit for their relationship in life, in death, it's the conduit of this message. The knight gets three messages. We're told that the message is embroidered somehow in the coverlet made for the nightingale. Seeing the dead nightingale would also convey a kind of symbolic message. And then we're told that the servant told over to him the story and bestowed the nightingale upon him. And then when all had been rehearsed and shown to him, and he, the knight had well considered the matter, the knight was very dolent. So, you know, he gets three. The verbal message from the servant, which the lady tells him to convey verbally what has happened. The written message and the symbolic message of the nightingale, the nightingale's body itself. And I just. I wonder about freighting. Like, why is this bird so freighted with three different messages? Wouldn't it be enough to have the servant go and tell the knight what happened? Do we need the body? Or wouldn't it be enough for somebody to just drop off the. Okay, the nightingale and the little funeral vestment that she's embroidered with the story on it. And we don't know the text either of what's written on the. The vestment for the nightingale or what actually the servant says to him. We don't know. And in other. We know in Guigemar, sometimes we hear exactly what somebody says to someone else, even when we've Already seen what's gone on in the story. We overhear the dialogue where someone is telling a person exactly what's happened to them. And it's not shortened by saying he told them what happened to him. And then he. No, sometimes he goes on for five, six sentences telling the full story. So it's just. It's so interesting. What is. What's left out here? 45:03 Wes: Well, you imagine that she could be the original author of the Breton lay, or there's some recursive quality with the very thing that's written. And it is this story, which is cool. 45:15 Erin: Exactly. Right. This calls attention, if anything. Yeah. To the fact that she's taking an oral tradition and making it a text object and making it, you know, turning it into something now that people are holding in their hands as a, you know, the text now is the reliquary for the story and of the bird. It contains the bird, literally, because it's, you know, as she takes great pains at the beginning, she has the three languages for nightingale, just as we get the three messages at the end. And she has three nightingales, therefore appear in three different languages contained within the text itself. 45:47 Wes: So the three messages are the embroidered tale, the nightingale itself, and then what the messenger says, the servants. 45:55 Erin: The servants told to relate. 45:58 Wes: Yeah. It's interesting because. Right. She's anxious that he's going to think, right. She's not going to be able to communicate with him anymore. So she needs to make one last communication and she needs to tell this tale because she needs him to know that she didn't fall out of love with him. Now, you know, one might think, well, is she inviting violence and revenge? Is she inviting the other night to take action? But of course, we get this line in no wise would he avenge himself wrongfully. Which I was kind of disappointed by. 46:26 Erin: Yes. 46:29 Wes: And I was prepared for a bad outcome in Guigemar as well, but that one had a happier ending. But if one interprets mass violence to win over a lady as happy, but she needs him to know there's the prospect of an invitation to violence. But that doesn't seem to be. Overall, the purpose and the relationship is transformed. Right. It's transformed from courtly love to writer or artist. Artist and audience. You get this interesting transformation. And now he can carry around. Well, there's the potty of the nightingale. So it's a little weird. It's not just like she gave him a poem that he can carry around and say, it's my favorite poem now I'm going to keep it with me. At all times. But it's something sacred and it kind of of calls back to this idea that they were keeping a vigil earlier on, as if there's an inevitability to the death of love and one has to mourn it in a way that's ongoing, which you know, which may be a part of the preservation of desire as well, oddly enough. So you, you don't imprison the love object, you don't preserve it in that way. But as the relationship progresses, things change and you mourn what's past, but you create room for what's in the future. Of course, in this case, there is no future beyond this moment, beyond this perpetual act of mourning that he's engaged in by carrying around this chest. 47:49 Erin: What I love in the Shoaf translation is she notes that I had the exact same reaction. Oh, surely he's going to take revenge. That's going to be his nightly duty to kill the guy who presumed to kill this little bird. Maybe that would have been too much. But Shoaf writes, when he, the servant had told the story and shown the bird, the knight who'd listened to every word was sad as could be at how things had turned out. No vile churl, he though no lazy lout. He ordered the best smith to mould a tiny vessel, all pure gold, no iron or steel, and good stones, precious ones, expensive ones, and make a good tight fitting lid inside the laustic he hid. Then he sealed up this reliquary to ever after with him. Careful. So I really liked this, that he's, he's no vile churl, no lazy lout. So he takes action. It's, you know, this is, this is the antithesis of not acting or of not avenging or properly responding to this. Actually, the best response is to make art. And art of the highest quality. We're told it's all pure gold, no iron or steel, and precious stones. So the highest quality vessel for this dead bird seems to be part of the performance of the duty of the knight toward the relationship. And again, it seems that this is indicative of his quality, that he understands the value of a beautiful reliquary for befitting the memory of this love. So it's his respect for art that again sets him apart. 49:19 Wes: Here, the best revenge is a laustic served cold. 49:24 Erin: The best revenge is living well by carrying a beautiful gold box around your neck. 49:29 Wes: Yeah, okay, that's better. 49:32 Erin: Okay, so we'll end our discussion of Laustic there. And in part two of our discussion of the lays of Marie de France. We'll cover Guigemar. Thank you, Wes. 49:42 Wes: Thank you. If you're a subscriber, you can listen to part two right now. Otherwise, that'll be out in a week. 49:51 Erin: And thanks to everyone who listened. 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