(Bernard of Ventadour)
(ca. 1130–ca. 1195)
The most popular and influential of all the Provençal TROUBADOURS was almost certainly Bernart de Ventadorn. Some 45 of his lyrics survive (18 of them with music), which is more than any other troubadour. The number of manuscripts of his work and the widespread imitations of and allusions to his poetry reinforce Bernart’s status as the best known of the Provençal poets. We have no real facts about Bernart’s life. His vIDA repeats a number of legends about him, including his humble origins (his mother was purportedly a serf and his father a baker), his birth in the castle of Ventadour near Limoges in the province of Limousin, his love affair with his lord’s wife and later with Queen ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE, and his death in the monastery of Dalon.Much of this is simply legend inspired by his poetry and, in part, by a stanza in PEIRE D’ALVERNHE’s satiric poem about his fellow troubadours that speaks of Bernart’s low-born parents.
Bernart clearly had a long association with the castle of Ventadour, and he may have been born there. In one of his poems he mentions the “school” of Ebles. Ebles II was viscount of Ventadour from 1106 to ca. 1147, and was well known as a poet himself, though none of his lyrics are extant. Bernart may mean he learned poetry from his patron Ebles, or that in his poetry he follows the TROBAR LEU style of Ebles, idealistically extolling COURTLY LOVE, rather than the darker and more pessimistic TROBAR CLUS style. But the details of Bernart’s life are so sparse that it is not clear whether he refers to Ebles II or his son and successor Ebles III, both of whom were known to be patrons of troubadours.
It seems certain that Bernart was associated with Eleanor of Aquitaine, to whom he alludes several times in his poems. Probably he was attached to her court in the early 1150s, and very likely he traveled to England in 1154 for the coronation of HENRY II, Eleanor’s husband.But Bernart seems to have returned to southern France shortly thereafter.Many of his poems mention Raymond V, count of Toulouse, and it is likely he was a member of Raymond’s court, perhaps, as tradition says, even until Raymond’s death in 1194. There is no evidence that he joined a monastery upon Raymond’s death. Of the 45 lyrics attributed to him, all but three TENSOS (debate poems) are love poems in the CANSO form, and all seem to date from between 1150 and 1180. He was widely admired in his own day and remains the most popular of troubadours. Frederic Goldin praises Bernart for his skillful playing on the variety of perspectives among his immediate audience (the lady herself, sympathetic lovers in the group, and enemies of the lovers). Others admire Bernart for the beauty and clarity of his language and for the varied range of the emotions he expresses. In one poem, he is the helpless lover, overcome by the power of love:
Whenever I see her, you can see it in me,
in my eyes, my look, my color,
because I shake with fear
like a leaf in the wind.
I don’t have the good sense of a child,
I am so taken over, ruled by love;
and when a man is overcome like this,
a lady may let herself feel great pity.
(Goldin 1973, 129, ll. 41–48)
In another, reacting to his lady’s disdain, he expresses his disillusionment and skepticism about love and about women in general:
This is how she shows herself a woman indeed,
my lady, and I reproach her for it:
she does not want what one ought to want,
and what is forbidden to do, she does,
I have fallen in evil grace,
I have acted like the madman on the bridge,
and how this came about I cannot say,
except that I climbed too high on the mountain.
(Goldin 1973, 147–149, ll. 33–40)
Bernart is the most important practitioner of the trobar leu style, and certainly much of his popularity was the result of his having composed in this very clear and natural language. The sheer number of musical settings that have survived suggest that Bernart was as popular as a musician as he was as a poet. Finally Bernart’s association with courts of northern France and England in the 1150s suggest that he is to a large extent responsible for spreading the art and style of the vernacular Occitan poets into northern Europe and for stimulating the beginning of the TROUVÈRE tradition in France.
Bibliography
■ Bernart de Ventadorn. Songs: Complete Texts, Translations, Notes and Glossary. Edited by Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., et al. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962.
■ Goldin, Frederick, ed. and trans. Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology and a History. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1973.
■ Treitler, Leo. “The Troubadours Singing Their Poems.” In The Union of Words and Music in Medieval Poetry, edited by Rebecca A. Baltzer, Thomas Cable, and James I. Wimsatt, 15–48, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991.
■ Wilhelm, James J. Seven Troubadours: The Creators of Modern Verse. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970.