The most primitive poetry of all nations was certainly lyrical, and intended to be sung in accompaniment to the dance. In the rendering of the earliest Romance lyric songs, it is probable that the solo and chorus alternated, and that the role of the chorus, at first at all events, consisted only in the repetition of that part of the song sung by the soloist. Thus the earliest form of the strophe must have consisted of one line and its repetition. From this rudimentary form were evolved the simple strophes of early French popular poetry, which consist of three, four, five, or six monoassonanced verses at most, with a short refrain. Unfortunately only scattered fragments (frequently refashioned) of these graceful romances have come down to us-Rainaud, Orior, Belle Idoine, Belle Doette, &c. A strophe from Rainaud is appended: Sire Raynaut, je m'en escondirai : A cent puceles sor sainz vos jurerai, E Raynaut amis ! Also one from Belle Doette: (Bartsch, Rom. und Past., p. i.) Bele Doette as fenestres se siet, Lit en un livre, mais au cuer ne l'en tient: De son ami Doon li ressovient, Qu'en autres terres est alez tornoier. E or en ai dol. (Ibid. p. 5.) In Orior the strophe is of three lines only, and the refrain of two: Lou samedi a soir, fat la semaine, Ki s'antraimment soweif dorment. (Ibid. p. 8.) Although these popular romances do not seem to have continued beyond the twelfth century, such short monoriming strophes are found throughout the O.F. period, more especially in didactic and religious poetry: Cil Diex qui par sa mort vout la mort d'enfer mordre (Rutebeuf, p. 59.) Pur l'iglise del Nort e en l'ele del Nort E vers le Nort tornez suffrit sainz Thomas mort. (Garnier du Pont Ste.-Maxence 1.) From the earliest times, however, and increasingly as poetry became literary, many other more complicated strophic forms were introduced by splitting the longer lines into parts, by repeating or intercalating members of simpler strophes, and by introducing single additional lines in different parts of existing combinations. From the twelfth century onward, a large number of types were also borrowed from the highly developed and artistic poetry of the troubadours, who found ready and skilful imitators in the trouvères of the north of France. In the Middle Period of French there was a great decrease, not only in poetic talent, but also in poetic invention. The poets of this period abandoned the majority of the more graceful and ingenious strophes of Old French lyrical poetry, and those they did keep they elaborated past recognition into poems with a fixed form. No great improvement is discernible in the variety of strophes used till the advent of the Pléiade, and especially of their leader Ronsard, who, during his long and brilliant career, attempted more than a hundred different strophic combinations. Malherbe only selected a few of Ronsard's strophes, erecting them into stereotyped forms beyond which the poet was not to wander, and left the rest to fall into oblivion, till they were revived in greater part by the Romanticists, who in their turn have invented a certain number and borrowed a few others from foreign literatures. As practically all the measures that exist in French poetry can be used in the strophe, either alone or combined with any other line, it can be readily imagined how large and varied is the number of strophes at the poet's disposal. Speaking of this almost inexhaustible treasure of poetic invention, Théodore de Banville says in his Petit Traité2: Il faudrait être un Homère pour les énumérer, même en ne choisissant que celles qui sont solides et belles.... Dans une vie de poète, on a à peine le temps de les étudier et on n'a jamais 1 Paul Meyer, Recueil d'Anciens Textes, ii. p. 321. 2 Pp. 159 and 183. l'occasion de les employer toutes. Generally speaking, the strophe in French poetry does not comprise more than twelve lines, although strophes of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, and even twenty lines can be found in the works of Ronsard. With modern poets, however, strophes of more than twelve lines, such as those of thirteen occurring in Victor de Laprade's Corybantes1, or of seventeen and nineteen lines, as in André Chénier's Jeu de Paume, are merely experiments, more or less able and interesting. The reason for this observance is that if the strophe is too extensive it becomes difficult for the reader to grasp the ensemble of the rhythmic period. It follows from the above remarks that it would be impossible, in a book of this scope, to exhaust all the different types of the French strophe. Our purpose will be served by giving examples of the more usual types, dividing them into isometric and heterometric strophes. It has already been mentioned that it is a rule, both of Old and Modern French strophic poetry proper, that the rimes of the same lines in corresponding strophes must have the same gender (masc. or fem. rime). In Modern French strophic poetry, though the rimes have the same gender, the rimes themselves change from strophe to strophe. In O.F., on the contrary, this method is very rare. It was much more usual to carry on the rimes of the first strophe throughout the remaining strophes of the whole poem 5: La douche vois del rosignol salvage K'oi nuit et jor chantoier et tentir Se ne li os mon penser descovrir; 1 Odes et Poèmes, p. 141. 2 Poésies, p. xcv. 3 For a few exceptions in Old and Middle French see Tobler, p. 16 sqq. 4 Cf. De Coucy, ed. Fath., no. xv. 5 Cf. De Coucy, no. xii, and Gautier d'Épinal, ed. Lindelöf et Wallensköld, nos. vi, ix, xii, and xiii. Car sa biautés me fait si esbahir, (De Coucy, no. vii.) Another favourite practice of the trouvères, which has its equivalent in Provençal lyric poetry, was to divide the totality of strophes into two, three, or four (rarely more) groups, in each of which the rimes agreed, while the several groups stood in a certain symmetrical relation to one another : As a simple and typical example may be quoted the rimes of the fourteenth chanson of the Chastelain de Coucy, in which the relation between the several parts is 1+ 2: 3 + 4:5: Besides these different ways of linking the strophes together more closely, the O.F. lyric poets made use for the same purpose of more complicated and artificial methods, which they borrowed from the troubadours, and even occasionally combined with the ones just described. Such, for example, was the practice of retaining (in a succession of strophes which otherwise had not the same rimes) a certain rime of the first strophe in the corresponding places of the remaining strophes, or again of repeating a certain rime of the first strophe in different places in the several strophes1. The separate strophes could also be brought into closer connexion by repeating the rime of the last line of the pre 1 For details see p. 62 sqq. of Orth, Ueber Reim und Strophenbau in der altfranzösischen Lyrik, Strassburg dissert., 1882. Also Romania, xix. p. I sqq. ceding strophe at the end of the first line of the next. This is not an uncommon device with the troubadours, such strophes being known as coblas capcaudadas or vers capcoatz1. A table of the rimes of one of Conon de Béthune's songs will illustrate the process: A variation, termed cobla capfinida in Provençal, consists in repeating the last word in the same position and according to the same arrangement. It also occurs, though more rarely, in the lyric poetry of the north of France, as for example in the song of Gace Brulé beginning with the words: De bone amor et de loial amie1. I. ISOMETRIC STROPHES. STROPHE OF TWO LINES. The strophe of two lines is little more than a succession of rimes plates. The typographical arrangement and the pause in the sense alone distinguish it from a succession of such rimes. The strophe of two lines is nearly always isometric, as in the introductory poem to Verlaine's Sagesse: Bon chevalier masqué qui chevauche en silence, L'ombre éteignit mes yeux, un cri vint à ma bouche Il a mis pied à terre et sa main m'a touché, &c. Or in this Berceuse of Fernand Gregh: L'heure est plaintive et le soir est bleu, 1 See Las Lays d'Amors (1356), the standard authority as regards Provençal versification, in Monumens de la littérature romane, publ. par Gatien-Arnoult, i. pp. 168 and 236. Cf. De Coucy, pp. 41, 47, and 57, for further examples. 3 Gatien-Arnoult, op. cit., i. p. 280. + W. Wackernagel, Altfranzösische Lieder und Leiche (1846), p. 45. |