I am copying the handouts from today’s class below:
Rules of Love
The following set of rules is based on the De Amore of Andreas Capellanus, as adapted in Appendix 1 of Ann S. Haskell’s A Middle English Anthology (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1985). To find out more about Andreas Capellanus, click here.
1. Marriage should not be a deterrent to love.
2. Love cannot exist in the individual who cannot be jealous.
3. A double love cannot obligate an individual.
4. Love constantly waxes and wanes.
5. That which is not given freely by the object of one’s love loses its savor.
6. It is necessary for a male to reach the age of maturity in order to love.
7. A lover must observe a two-year widowhood after his beloved’s death.
8. Only the most urgent circumstances should deprive one of love.
9. Only the insistence of love can motivate one to love.
10. Love cannot coexist with avarice.
11. A lover should not love anyone who would be an embarrassing marriage choice.
12. True love excludes all from its embrace but the beloved.
13. Public revelation of love is deadly to love in most instances.
14. The value of love is commensurate with its difficulty of attainment.
15. The presence of one’s beloved causes palpitation of the heart.
16. The sight of one’s beloved causes palpitations of the heart.
17. A new love brings an old one to a finish.
18. Good character is the one real requirement for worthiness of love.
19. When love grows faint its demise is usually certain.
20. Apprehension is the constant companion of true love.
21. Love is reinforced by jealousy.
22. Suspicion of the beloved generates jealousy and therefore intensifies love.
23. Eating and sleeping diminish greatly when one is aggravated by love.
24. The lover’s every deed is performed with the thought of his beloved in mind.
25. Unless it please his beloved, no act or thought is worthy to the lover.
26. Love is powerless to hold anything from love.
27. There is no such thing as too much of the pleasure of one’s beloved.
28. Presumption on the part of the beloved causes suspicion in the lover.
29. Aggravation of excessive passion does not usually afflict the true lover.
30. Thought of the beloved never leaves the true lover.
31. Two men may love one woman or two women one man.
Selections from troubador poets (Provencal)
>When I See The Lark Beating (From the Original Language, Provencal) When I see the lark beating Its wings in joy against the rays of the sun That it forgets itself and lets itself fall Because of the sweetness that comes to its heart, Alas! Such great envy then overwhelms me Of all those whom I see rejoicing, I wonder that my heart, at that moment, Does not melt from desire.
Alas! How much I thought I knew About love, and how little I know, Because I cannot keep myself from loving The one from whom I will gain nothing. She has all my heart, and my soul, And herself and the whole world; And when she left, nothing remained But desire and a longing heart.
I have never had power over myself Nor been by own man from the very hour When she let me see into her eyes, Into a mirror that pleases me so much. Mirror, since I saw myself in you, I have been slain by deep sighs, That I have lost myself just as the handsome Narcissus did in the fountain.
I despair of ladies; I will never trust them again; As I used to defend them Now I shall abandon them, Because I see no one who does any good for me Against her who destroys and confounds me, I fear and distrust them all, Because I know very well that they are all alike.
She really shows herself to be a woman in this, My lady, for which I condemn her; Because she does not want what she should want, And what she shouldn’t do, she does. I have fallen on an evil grace, And I have indeed acted like the fool on the bridge And I do not know how this happened to me, Unless I tried to climb too high on the mountain.
Mercy is indeed lost, And I never knew it, Because she, who ought to have most of it, Has none, and where will I look for it? Ah! It would never seem, when looking at her, That she would let this love-sick wretch, Who will never be well without her, To die, without helping him.
Since these things will never bring me good from my lady, Neither prayers, pity, nor the rights I have, Nor is it a pleasure to her That I love her, I will never tell her again. Thus I part from her and give her up. She has slain me, and through death I will respond, And I go away, since she does not ask me to stay, Wretched, into exile, I know not where.
Tristan, you will have nothing more from me, For I go away, wretched, I know not where. I will withdraw from singing and renounce it, And I hide myself from joy and love.
Quan chai la fuelha (When the leaf sings) When the leaf sings from the highest peaks and the cold raises, withering the kernel and willow, of its sweet refrains I see the wood grow dumb; but I’m close to love, whosoever might leave it.
Everything is iced, but I cannot freeze because a love affair makes my heart lush again; I should not shake, because Love covers and hides me and makes me preserve my merit, and leads me.
Life is good, if joy holds it, though some, whose things do not go well, complain; I don’t know how to accuse my lot since, by my troth, I have my share of the best.
As of flirting, I don’t know what to blame, and of the others I spurn the togetherness; since, of all her peers, no one is like mine, since there doesn’t seem to be one who comes not after her.
I don’t want my heart to join another love lest she flees me and turns her head elsewhere: that even the one from Pontremoli has one worthier of her, or that so seems so.
She’s so kind, that the kindest thirty she wins by her fair look: that’s a good reason for her to hear my songs, because she’s so noble and so preciously deserving.
Go, then, song, show before her: if it were not so, you wouldn’t deserve Arnaut’s toil.
Anc ieu non l’aic, mas elha m’a (I don’t hold it, but it holds me) I never held it but it holds me all the time in its bail, Love, and makes me glad in anger, fool in wisdom as one that never can fight back, because one who loves well cannot defend himself. ’cause love commands that men serve and soothe it: for which I expect, suffering, a good reward, whenever it is granted.
I tell little of what’s in my heart: fear makes me silent and scared; tongue hides but heart wants what on which, in pain, broods so: I languish, but I do not complain because so far as the sea embraces the earth there’s none so kind, actually, as the chosen one for whom I long.
I so know her value, certain and true, that I cannot turn elsewhere; I do so that my heart aches, when the sun sets and rests: I don’t dare say who inflames me; my heart burns but my eyes are fed, because only seeing her has been left to me. See, you, what keeps me alive!
Foolish is he who, for the sake of speech, turns his joy into pain, because slanderers, God curse them, never have a nice tongue: one whispers, the other brays, and so withdraws a love that would be great; but I fight back, disguising, their blame, and love with no hesitation.
That’s why it keeps me happy and fine with a favour with which it has raised me; but it will never pass trough my throat, for fear that she gets gloomy, since I still feel the flame of Love, that orders me not to spread my mind: I swear it, frightened, because I’ve seen many a love deleted by its fame.
Many a light and easy song I would have made, had she come to my help, the one who gifts me with joy and takes it away, ’cause now I’m glad and now she turns me: I am bound to her will. Nothing asks my heart, nor does it flee her, but, earnestly, I surrender to her: if she then forgets me, mercy is dead.
Tell Better-Than-Good, if she takes you, gracious song, that Arnaut does not forget. Ab gai so cuindet e leri (On a nice, gleeful and happy melody) On a nice, gleeful and happy melody I write, and polish and plane words that will be true and certain when I have filed them smooth, since Love soon levigates and gilds my song, which moves from her upon whom Worth wakes and rules.
Every day I improve and polish, because I love and crave for the kindest one in the world: here I tell you openly I’m hers from head to heel, and even if the cold wind blows, the love that rains in my heart keeps me the warmer the colder it is.
I attend and offer a thousand masses, and burn candles of wax and of tallow for God to gift me with success with her with whom fencing is useless; and when I see her blond hair, her body lean and fresh, I love her more than [I would] one who’d give me Luzerne.
So much I love her and want her in my heart that I fear to lose her out of excessive desire, (if one can lose something out of excessive love) because her heart overcomes mine and doesn’t part from it: so, indeed, she holds me like the inn holds the worker.
I don’t want the throne of
Rome nor to be made Pope if I can’t find refuge near her for whom my heart burns and flares; and if she doesn’t correct the wrong with a kiss within a year, she kills me and damns herself.
In spite of the pain I endure, I don’t sway from loving well; even if she deserts me, I write melody and rhyme for her: I suffer more loving than one who labours because, compared to me, the one from Moncli didn’t love Audierna more than an egg.
I am Arnaut who hoard the air and hunt the hare with the ox and swim against the flow.