MINNESANG AND THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’

BY RUTH HARDY

AT first sight the world of courtly Minnesang and the world of Tin Pan Alley are about as u&e as any two manifestations of the same broad cultural tradition could possibly be. In most respects they are, indeed, at opposite poles from each other. But one dung they have in common: of twentieth-century Subtopia, as of the medieval court and castle, it could with equal truth be said that, in the words of Spenser’s Colin Clout:

. . . all the walls and windows there are writ, All f d of loue, and loue, and loue my deare, And all their take and studie is of it. . . Nor any one himselfe doth ought esteeme, Vnlesse he swim in loue up to the eares . . .

And it is further true to say that in each case this preoccupation, amounting almost to an obsession, with the idea of romantic passion finds its fullest and most characteristic utterance in song. Granted, there is a difference, but the difference is essentially one of degree rather than kind.

In the twelfth, and even the thirteenth, century the cult of love was still an intoxicatingly fresh discovery. Within these new-found ranges of experience no corner was left unexplored, and the ‘Carte de Tendre’ was plotted in minutest detail for the guidance of travellers and pilgrims. Today this magic country has become a dingy and overcrowded park, thrown open to all and sundry; but every now and then, if one looks carefully, it is possible to see that underneath the asphalt paths and the cigarette-cartons and the ice-cream wrappers lies something that was once enchanted ground.

As with thought, so with language. In the courtly period a special technical vocabulary was evolved, whose terms-joie, solatz, cortexia, undertin, gendde, giiete, kumber doln, klagen, and the rest-must have vibrated with an intensity of meaning at whch we today can barely guess. The words, the turns of phkase, the imagery, of this diction of love are now stale and jaded from centuries of repetition, but fundamentally they remain unchanged. To take only one example-the well-known topos of the keys of the heart: in ‘DQ bist mh, ich bin din’ the image, though neither profound nor (probably) original, is as bright and clear-cut as a penny fresh from the Mint; when the modern song-writer says: ‘My heart is yours forever,/Only to hold the key’, or ‘Love held the key to the door of your heart’, the outlines are blurred and worn from constant use-but it is still the same coin, nor are we entitled to assume that because the sparkle has gone its currency value has necessarily diminished.

M I N N E S A N G A N D THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’ 1 5

The same thing is no less true in the sphere of lyric poetry. The repercus- sions of the literary explosion that produced the art of the troubadours, the ‘trouv&res’, and the ‘Minnesbger’ have not even yct died away, for all the subsequent love-lyric, and especially the love-song, of Western Europe has its ultimate source in their writings, from the Canzoniere of Petrarch to our own age, where the manufacture of love-songs is an international industry (‘racket’ is perhaps too harsh a word), operating with the most ruthless effi- ciency on a scale that would have left the medieval poets dumbfounded.

But though they would probably be repelled by contemporary methods of mass-production, mass-distribution and mass-presentation, much in the songs themselves might strike them as oddly familiar. What has changcd is less the substance than the outward vesture-the quality of expression, the level of emotional or intellectual refinement, the musical or vocal idiom. For the present-day ‘sweet lyric’, i.e. not the gimmick or patter song, not the crazy mixed-up song for hypnotized teenagers, but the straightforward sentimental love-ditty, the ‘ballad’ as it is called in the trade, best typified perhaps by the ‘evergreens’ of the ’thirties-this ‘sweet lyric’ reveals itself on closer scrutiny as no mere disreputable trash, but an art form, debased and vulgarized indeed, yet preserving many of the essential features of a long and glorious tradition.

Both genres, to begin with, share the same fascinated curiosity about the nature and psychology of love. For the Minnesinger this was a topic of never-ending interest; ‘Minne’ was probed, dissected, defmed, interrogated, apostrophized, pleadedwith, reproached, adored, to the point of weariness. In precisely the same way the modem song-writer loves to theorize about the anatomy of Love-its attributes and tokens, its paradoxes and mysteries, its place in the scheme of things, its tyranny, its universality. ‘What is this thing called Love?’, cries Cole Porter, as Hausen had cried: ‘Waz mac daz sin daz diu werlt heizet minne?’ (MF. 53, IS), and back comes the answer in a hun- dred different keys: ‘Love is the greatest thing, the sweetest thing, a funny thing, a many-splendoured thing, a plaintive thing, a now-and-then thing, or just “the thing”; it is a tender trap, a lonely place, a bad habit, a cheat, a clown, a firefly, an almanac; it is strange, it is,all that matters, it is in the air, and (Jnal grand chorus) it is here to stay.’ It is still twingende minne, the gewalterinne: ‘Love rules you, Love fools you,/Love moulds you, Love holds you,/Love, wonderful Love.’ The singer may even attempt to differ- entiate between various levels of love, the modern equivalent of ‘hohe’ and ‘niedere Minne’: ‘My heart is tossed on a sea of emotion,/One love offers romance, the other devotion’, ‘romance’, as we are told elsewhere, being ‘just a song and dance’, while ‘devotion’ is ‘deep as the ocean’. The effect of love on its votaries is discussed in the utmost detail. It overtakes the lover with the force of destiny (MF. 134’3 3 , MF. I 59,26 E), and a kindly power is

16 MINNESANG A N D THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’

there to guide his choice (MF. 50~19 E) : ‘It must have been something that lovers call Fate/Kept on saying I had to wait./I saw them all, but just couldn’t fd , / I t had to be YOU.’ It is something magic: ‘Love, your spell is everywhere.’ The lady herself is in league with the enchanter; as Morungen is uon gr6zer minne en& (MF. 126. 9), so the modem lover is ‘bewitched, bothered and bewildered’ by ‘the magic that you do’. Under the influence of this sorcery of love, the lover’s reason abdicates, and he f d s into folly, or even madness; such phrases as der minnend unsin, tumber wdn, der sinne beroubet, dne witze, toben, gouch, find their exact contemporary analogy in ‘the madness of love’, ‘my foolish dream’, ‘this crazy romance’, ‘crazy me’, ‘little fool’, and so forth. Disorder of the mind is matched by disorder of the body. Those who fall a prey to ‘the Love Bug’ still display those selfsame pathological symptoms-sleeplessness, going off one’s food, fiequent changes of colour, trembling, going hot and cold all over, and the rest-which had been noted and catalogued as early as Ovid. The modern singer is only one degree less eloquent than his many medieval predecessors (MF. 32,9 E ; KDL. 25, IV, 2, 5 f. ; KDL, 59, Lied I, 3, I K) in complaining: ‘I’m losing my appetite, losing my mind,’ ‘Don’t eat or drink, can’t sleep a wink’, ‘Not feeling right, can’t sleep at night./It’s got a hold on me’, while those about him offer diagnosis or advice: ‘My knees were all shaky and my eyes were red,/I went to the doctor and the doctor said:/It’s Love’, ‘There is nothing you can take,/To relieve that pleasant ache./You’re not sick, you’re just in love’.

And yet, by a strange paradox, the singer today, like the Minnesiinger before him, claims with no uncertain voice that love is capable of producing in him a condition of extreme euphoria, confidence, joyousness, heightened vitality and general well-being. No h6her muot was ever proclaimed with more enthusiasm than this: ‘Why am I smding and why do I sing ?/Why does December seem sunny as spring?/ Why do I get up each morning to start,/ Happy and het up with joy in my heart?/Why is each new task a trifle to do ?/Because I am living a life f d of you.’

As courtly love was felt to be the source of all chivalric excellence, so today likewise it is alleged to kindle in the lover a new ardour for virtue, a new capacity for energetic action: ‘There’s been a change in me./I have a lovely disposition,/I’ve lots of courage and ambition,/From every care my life is free.’ But the chief lodestar of his existence is not so much love in the abstract as the person of the lady: ‘My inspiration, the whole day through. . ./ If I find my fortune and fame,/I’ll tell them I owe it to you’, ‘With your love to guide me on my way,/T11 never go astray in anything I do. . . / I swear by every star above,/My life won’t mean a thing/Unless it’s with your love.’

This extravagant veneration on the part of the lover for the object of his devotion is one of the most striking parallels between Minnesang and its

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M I N N E S A N G A N D T H E ‘SWEET LYRIC’

modern equivalent. Like any medievalfrouwe the She (or more usually the You) of the sweet lyric stands high on her pedestal, remote, idealized, all but unattainable: ‘Too wonderful to be what you seem’, ‘So heavenly, much too much for me’. The dream-visions of Hausen (MF. 48,23 E) and Morun- gen (MF. 145,9 fE) are echoed by innumerable phrases like ‘You stepped out of a dream’, ‘Dream dust gets in your eye’. Again, the cosmic or luminous imagery of which Morungen is the most celebrated exponent recurs in such expressions as: ‘Got my eye/On a star in the sky’, ‘I found the sun, I found the stars,/Shining in your eyes’, ‘Because I’ve bought you the golden moon,/ Come here and smile me the sun’. Occasionally the dream- and star-images are combined: ‘Dizzy me, silly moon, crazy quilt of a sky,/Are you real, or a dream that’s got caught in my eye?/When I look at you, stars come tumbling down from above. . . ’

The lover, for his part, is content to adopt a posture of abject humility: ‘Baby, I’m the bottom, you’re the top’ (cf. Gutenburg, MF. 72, 40; sist obe, so” bin ich unden). ‘Oh, if you only knew/How I looked up to you’, ‘When I’m with you I feel so small/Right in my shell I want to crawl’. Her power over him is absolute: ‘A heart that’s full of devotion/I place at your beck and call’, ‘Yours to command./Every day that I live I live to serve you’. Service can pass into servitude, as in Minnesang the vassalage of the undertiin can become the unfree condition of the eigenman or the captive, irgevangen (MF. 130. 18); ‘I’d be a willing slave to you’, ‘Day and night your prisoner and your slave’. Rudolf von Rotenburg’s avowal (KDL. 49, Leich 111, I 10 E) is echoed almost word for word by the pop singer: ‘If they made me a lung,/If I had every- thing,/I’d still be a slave to you’.

Vows of eternal constancy are as common today as they were in the Middle Ages: ‘Time will alter GibraltarJBut nothing ever changes my love for you), ‘Although this is my first love,/It is my first and last love’ (cf. MF. 86, I f.; MF. 123, 10 E). One is reminded of the Minnesanger’s repeated claim to have lovcd his lady from a squire (MF. so, 11 f.; MF. 90, 16 f.; KDL. IS , VII, 2 , 5 , etc.).

Then as now, this patient devotion protests itself well repaid by the smallest response of graciousness. A single kiss is enough to cure all the Minnesanger’s ills (MF. 49, 17 fE; MF. 142, 8; KDL. 2, 11, I, 8; KDL. IS , XXXII, 3 , 8 L), and in the same way his modern counterpart implores: ‘Just one little hug/And I’d fly around like a lightning bug.’ When all favours continue to be withheld his pleadings take on almost a note of desperation (MF. 137, 10 E; KDL. IS, VII, 2): ‘This suspense is killing me,/I can’t stand uncertainty./Tell me now, I’ve got to know,/ Whether you want me to stay or go’, ‘Give me a look, give me a word, give me a sign !’. If in spite of all the lady remains unmoved, the passionate supplication turns to equally im- passioned reproach; Siinde, missetit, roubertn: klagte ich ir mtn jiirner, so” stuont ir

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18 MINNBSANG AND THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’

dus herze h6 (MF. 132, 30), ‘Mean to me’, ‘Mean as can be’, ‘It seems to me/ You love to see me crying’.

Should she allow herselfto be so far softened as to look with approval on the suppliant, he is at once rocketed into the highest heaven of bliss, all the more wonderful for being, as he alleges, so wholly unexpected and un- deserved: H6he ulsum diu Sune sttt daz herze mi’n (MF. 182, 14 C), Sdic sf diu z i t , der werde tuc,/do” duz wort gie von ir mrrnde-(MF. 126, 2 a), ‘The sun is shining, 0 happy day!/No more troubles and no skies of grey,/Ever since you said those words to me./O happy day, 0 lucky me!’ Should she, on the other hand, continue to harden her heart beyond the limits of what is expected of her, the lover w d quit her service, like Hausen (MF. 46,29 E) and Ulrich von Lichtenstein (KDL. 58, XXIII, 4, I E) with dark hints that she may one day come to regret her unkindness (MF. 186, 15 E; W. 73, 17 E). This motif of the scorner scorned is even more frequent today: ‘I cried for you,/ Now it’s your turn to cry over me’, ‘You had your way, now you must pay,/I’m glad you’re sorry now’, ‘I may learn to forget some day,/And you may learn to care’.

In all this the lady herself is seldom allowed a hearing. Sometimes (perhaps increasingly so in the last few years, with the proliferation of female vocahts on radio and television), we find songs corresponding to the ‘Frauenlied’, such as Don’t Show u GentZemun You’re Curing. But today, as in the Middle Ages, the great majority of songs are put into the mouth of the man. This onesidedness shows perhaps more clearly than anything else how little these histrionics reflect any genuine emotion at all, let alone a coherent sequence of emotions. The joy and sorrow, the pleading and anger are alike make- believe, stereotyped attitudes into which the singer falls at will vis-bvis that shadowy abstraction which he calls ‘you,.

But although this solo performance can be sustained for a time, eventually it begins to pall. It is too monotonous, too static, altogether too restricted in scope. So the singer begins to cast round him for ways in which the possibili- ties of his theme may be developed. And in both Minnesang and the sweet lyric the devices used to achieve variety are identical. In the first place, the dramatis personae are increased. To the I and You is

added an equally vague and anonymous They. Sometimes, like the medieval merkere, huote, nidme, Ziigencere, they are hostile to the lovers: ‘Who are they who dare to saylour love can never be?’, ‘Who are they to say we mustn’t ?’. More often they are, or at least call themselves, his friends. The role of the friend in these songs is interesting. He may be sympathetic, as one who will klugen he& (MF. 188, zz), in which case he is normally termed a ‘ ’ He may be appealed to for aid, as Richart de Berbezilh calls on his frienk:d assist him to his feet again, as elephants will come to the rescue of a fallen comrade.1 True, the comfort he has to offer, theguotmfriunde r& (MF. p. 41,

MINNESANG A N D THE ‘SWEET L Y R I C ’ I9

41C, I), getriuiverfriunde ra”t (MF. 166, 25) is usually of a rather astringcnt kind: ‘They told me to be sensible’, ‘They say I’m a fool to be pining the whole day through‘. Again, he can be uncomprehending, callous, even derisive-diefriunt verdriuzet mi’ner kluge (MF. 165, 12: cf. MF. 71, 33 a; MF. I 12, 19 fi ; MF. I 3 3 , I 5 E)-‘The friends that I knew and gave up for you/Turn away whde they’re passing mc by’, ‘Now laughing friends deride/Tears I cannot hide’. This sense of isolation (‘I’m alone because I love you,’) applies still more w i t h the wider sphere of society in general. Al- though the lover’s feelings are apparent to all the world (‘Anyone can see/ What you’ve done to me./Surely my eyes reveal it.’), he moves solitary through the joyous throng like a being apart, unheeded or misjudged (MF. 133,27) : ‘They call it vanity,/Because I’d rather be/All by myselfthan laugh- ing with the crowd./But how are they to know/I’m looking high and low/For love.’ He is so absorbed in his passion that he walks about as though in a dream, and lrkc Hausen (MF. 46,3 6) and Gutcnburg (MF. 76, 17 E) cuts his acquaintance or greets people with Good-morning in the evening. When etiquette demands it of him he assumes an air of gaiety, but it is only a pretence (MF. 5 2 , 3 fE; MF. 155,27; KDL. 25, IVY 2, 8): ‘I may seem proud, 1 may seem gay,/It’s just a pose, I’m not that way’, ‘I may be laughing, but I’m not happy,/And when I’m laughing, I only play a part’. Then as now, the burden of concealment weighs particularly heavily on the singer-poet, whose private feelings may well come into conflict with his public obligations. On one hand nothing must interfere with his duty towards those whom it is his task to entertain (MF. 133,zI ff; MF. 164,37 f.; KDL. 59, XXI, I , 3), on the other the pop singer, W<e the Minneshger, must claim that his art is focused exclusively on the person of the lady, Df scdne di’ mich singen ddt (MF. 60, 21 ; cf. MF. 8 0 , 2 5 ; MF. I 17 ,6 E) : ‘You brought the light of dawning,/And so inspired my song’, ‘You put my dreams to music,/I learned how a song could start’. It is ostensibly to her alone that he addresses himself (MF. 135, 26 E; KDL. 18, 111, I , 5 6): ‘The whole world is singing my song,/But I sing only to you’, ‘I gave the world my music,/But I gave you my heart’. None the less he is well aware of the talents that enable him to unbosom himself to an audience, and today, in spite of Reinmar’s hundert tdsent herze (MF. 184, 31), an audience far vaster than any of which the Minnesanger dreamed: ‘Ten hundred thousand people/Can wirness what I’ve just sung;/ That I’m singing to a million,/But meaning itjust for one.’

Yet there are other, more private, channels by which his songs may reach the lady’s ears, and the ‘Botenhed’ convention (MF. 5, 16 fE; MF. 51.27 fE; MF. 1 1 3 , 3 5 K; KDL. 18, I, 3 , 6 f.) s t d hgers on as a poetic fancy: ‘I send a love-song,/Wrapped up in my heart and tied with a dream.’

Another favourite device by which both the medieval and the modern singer try to enlarge their stock-in-trade of thematic material is the conjuring

20 M I N N E S A N G A N D THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’

up of certain fictitious situations involving themselves and the lady, not based on any genuine experience, but falling into one of a small number of frankly stylized types. Time and again, for instance, they both imagine themselves granted an interview with the beloved and planning all the witty and persuasive things they will say to her, only to find that in her presence the capacity for speech deserts them utterly (MF. 135,29 fE; MF. 136, 15 f.; MF. I 5 3 , 2 5 ; MF. 164,21 fE) : ‘I make up things to say on my way to you./ But when you are near, my lips go dry,/ When you are near, I can only sigh‘, ‘Longing to tell you, but afraid and shy,/I’d let my golden chances pass me by’. Scenes of leave-taking are no less frequent. Sometimes there is a recog- nizable reason for the parting, as with the crusader’s valedictions (e.g. KDL. 47, XXII), which find a parallel in many songs composed during the last war. More often the purpose of the song is simply to evoke a mood of farewell, unser zweier scheiden (MF. 7, 12), mir tuot ein scheiden dd we“ (MF. 34, 29): ‘Don’t say that we must part,/Don’t break your baby’s heart’.

A specialized form of the song of leave-taking is, of course, the ‘Tagelied‘. One might expect that the nature of the subject would render it unsuitable for public presentation in song today, and in fact the situation is often thinly disguised by some innocuous mise-en-sche such as a dance-floor (‘While the music plays the last sweet waltz,/Just one more embrace before this night of nights is gone.’), or a doorstep, with the milkman inheriting the role of the wahtrere (‘Goodmght, baby, goodnight,/Milkman’s on his way’, ‘In my arms you w d be found,/Till the &man calls around’.). Sometimes, how- ever, the treatment is more explicit, as in One Night o f l o v e , or ‘Came the dawn,/And my heart and her love and the night were gone’, or ‘Heart- broken with the break of dawn,/Grey is the day since you’ve been gone’, or, most startling of all, because it captures not only the external setting but the full social implications of the ‘Tagelied’: ‘Although you belong to some- body else,/Tonight you belong to me.’

Another favourite device in both Minnesang and the sweet lyric is to in- voke the aid of Nature. Occasionally it may become an actor in the drama, as when both Herzog Heinrich von Breslau (KDL. 23, 11) and Hoagy Carmichael in I f You Don’t Love M e appeal to the world of springtime nature to punish the lady for her cruelty by withholding its delights. More frequently the cycle of thc seasons is made to reflect or contrast with the changing moods of love. The many contemporary descriptions of spring as the season of love, ‘the sentimental season’, ‘the beautiful month of May’, tally almost word for word with the stock phraseology of the medieval ‘reverdie’ : ‘Spring again comes to reign,/Nature everywhere hears a magic song in the air,/Calling every one to meet the sun’. More rarely we find an original image, an authentic note of gaiety and rejuvenation: ‘Mother Nature’s dressed in green,/A ribbon in her hair;/She’s about to set the scene/

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For lovers everywhere./The air is heavy with dreams,/The buds are bursting their seams,/The trout are churning the streams ;/They know it’s spring again!’, or a sudden unexpected touch of fantasy, such as: ‘To itself each amoeba/Softly croons: “Ach, du lieber !” ’ .

When the lover is happy, even frost and snow are powerless to depress him (MF. 6, 9 K ; MF. 35, 15 K; MF. 39, 3 0 E; KDL. 2, I, I, I E; KDL. 43, IV, I, I K); ‘It’s June in January’, ‘I’ve got my love to keep me warm’, ‘Two hearts are thrilling in spite of a chill in the weather’. To the unhappy lover, on the other hand, the beauties of springtime are nothing but a cruel mockery(MF. 56, I K;MF.77,36g;KDL. IO,VI,Z, I 6; KDL. 32,II,2, I E); ‘With no more you there’s no more spring’, ‘What a beautiful day !/Not a cloud in the sky’/Guess I ought to be happy,/ But I’m not, and you know why./Pretty flowers in bloom,/Little birds on every tree;/But if you don’t love me, dear,/What do they mean to me?’. And when winter and un- happiness coincide, his plight is sad indeed (MF. 37, 18 K ; KDL. 59, 111, 2, I E) : ‘The lovely rose has lost her crimson gown,/And autumn leaves have tumbled over town,/And I have lost my lovely world and you.’ Nature is also used as a source of imagery. Both in Minnesang and the sweet lyric the use of imagery is an important stylistic feature, as it provides a perilously handy way of giving a new twist to an old theme. If the metaphors and similes of Minnesang were already in danger of becoming laboured or con- ventionalized, the modern singer often finds himself on paths so well trodden, that he hardly bothers to look where he is going: ‘I was a vine without a rose,/Now you are mine, my happiness shows’, ‘There’s sweetness in the rose with its symbol of love/Floating on the summer breeze’. The widespread use of sun, moon and star imagery has already been mentioned. Fire and flame images are only one degree less popular, including the ‘topos’ of the moth and the flame, borrowed from Folquet dc Marseille by Rudolf von Fenis, MF. 82, 20 ff.: ‘A dangcrous game, this playing with fire’, ‘Pity the fool who plays with fire;/You always get your fingers burned’, ‘Though I yearn, you will spurn and I’ll burn,/For with you it’s not new but the game/Of a moth and a flame’.

The moth-metaphor is already passing from the pure contemplation of natural objects into the world of natural history. Scientific imagery in medieval love-poetry is for the most part restricted to bestiary lore such as phoenixes (KDL. 44, IV, I , a), bashsks (HMS. 11, 385b), and Richart’s elephants, or to observations on thc properties of the diamond (BDL. LXXXVIII, 21 E ) or the reflected light of the moon (MF. 84, 8; 124, 35 E). Nowadays the advance of science has opened up rich possibilities: ‘When you hold my hand I’m a prehistoric man,/I go ape every time you smile’, ‘My baby’s high in the stratosphere’, ‘The sun contains a ray/They label Vitamin D . . . /But I am here to say/That I like Vitamin Love.’ .

22 MINNESANG A N D THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’

Art, as well as science, has its part to play. Just as the Minneskger loves to extol his lady as a masterpiece ofgotes vlrlz, gotes kunst, so the modem singer, more secular but no less fervent, cries: ‘You’re as pretty as a picture,/A beautiful exhibition of art.’ Many other analogies of a similar kind could be drawn-Love as warfare, Love as a game or gamble, Love as a snare, Love as a prison, Love as a crime. The Minneshger appeal for justice to the king (KDL. 59, X, 4, I fE) or emperor (KDL. 27, I, 4, 6); for the modem singer ‘ . . . you’re my judge and jury,/What do you assure me?/What is the verdict ?/My fate is in your hands’.

But the song writer has other rhetorical figures of speech at his disposal. There is the antithesis of Hate and Love (‘I love you, I hate you;/love and hate, how will it end,’), or that of Yes and No (MF. 137, 21 E; MF. 189, 18 f.; 194,38 6) : ‘Don’t say No, baby, . . . /Because in time, I know,/You’ll wind up saying Yes’, ‘Your lips tell me No, no,/But there’s Yes, yes, in your eyes’. There are attempts at paradox: ‘Though you’re in my arms, you’re out of reach‘, ‘I’m glad to be sad, thinking of you’. There is personification, includmg reminiscences of classical mythology, Venus and Cupid are stdl invoked (MF. 13 8,3 3 ; KDL. I, VII, 65,85 ; KDL. 59, XVI, 4,6) : ‘My Venus in blue jeans’, ‘Venus, goddess of love that you are,/Oh Venus, make my wish come true’, ‘Cupid, you’re a real mean guy,/Stop picking on me’, ‘My hopes are strung about that Cupid Fellow’. Fd Salde (MF. 92,35; KDL. 47, XII, 5) is also there under her modern name: ‘My heart took off on a spree,/ When Lady Luck smiled at me’, ‘Lady Luck and I are walking hand in glove’. Even the allegory of Fortune’s wheel s t i l l survives: ‘The wheel of Fate is spinning round,/And your luck goes up and it comes back down’.

But the subject on which both the medieval singer and his modem counter- part wax endlessly eloquent is their own behaviour, as they twist themselves into knots trying to analyse the doings of their hearts or eyes or minds (MF. 101, 3 I f. ; KDL. 6, IX, I, I E). The heart is divorced from the head (‘Here am I with a heart and head/That don’t see eye to eye’) ; it can be differentiated from its owner (MF. 82,23) : ‘We are in love with you,/My heart and 1’, ‘My heart and I are just two fools’; it can thus be addressed like a person (MF. 70, 20; MF. 112, 26): ‘Poor little heart, what have you done?’, ‘Look out, little heart,/There’s danger, travel slow !’. However hard the lover tries to control this unruly member (‘Keep your mind on your heart,/Keep an eye on your heart’), the heart not only manages to control the mind (‘You’ll find your heart will rule your mind’), but even develops a mind of its own (‘If you fmd/That your heart has changed its mind’). It is in leape with the eyes, or even outstrips them (‘The heart is quicker than the eye ). At the same time, it is not there at all, having passed into the keeping of the lady (MF. 0, 8 f.; MF. 194, 32). If the lovers have to separate, the situation becomes s t i l l more

MINNESANG AND THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’ 23

complicated for the heart is in two places at once. One solution, then as now (MF. 47,9 fE; MF. 215, 3 0 fJ, was for the lady to retain the heart, leaving the man only eyes to weep with: ‘Darling, if we part,/With you goes my heart’, ‘Your good-byes left me with eyes that cry;/You took the part that was once my heart’. The lady’s eyes too come in for much attention (MF. 7 2 , 2 ; MF. 78, 22 f. etc.): ‘Dreamy eyes, who holds the key to your heart,’, ‘Your devil eyes are to blame’, ‘Your eyes have set me dreaming all night long,/ Your eyes have set me scheming right or wrong’.

Another form of conceit is the literary allusion. Biblical references (KDL. 8, I, 1 3 E) are rare: ‘Like Goliath when he met his foe,/ Like the walls of Jericho . . . /I’ve got a f e e h g I’m falhg,/And it’s all because of you’. More often the lovers compare themselves-naturally to their own advantage- with famous heroes and heroines of fiction. The comparison may be drawn from contemporary literature; for the Middle Ages, Tristan and Isolde (MF. 58, 35 &; MF. 112, I E; KDL. 5 8 , XII, 3, 2), or Flore and Blanschc- flore (MF. 74, 23 C), for the twentieth century Gone with the Wind: ‘Those famous lovers we’ll make them forget,/From Adam and Eve to Scarlett and Rhett.’ Or it may introduce classic figures of romance; for the Minne- sanger Paris and Helen (MF. 137, 9a; KDL. I , VII, 138 fE), or Dido and Aeneas (MF. 42, 3 E ) or Pyramus and Thisbe (Gottfried’s Tuistan, 3612 E), whereas today the favouritc pair arc Romeo and Juliet: ‘I fell like a Romeo too’, ‘Romeo and Juhet/Are just a penny novelette’, ‘Though Juliet may play her part,/A great romance can never start,/When poor Romeo is faint of heart’. In the same way, the lady’s lovehess eclipses that of all the celebrated beauties of history or legend (W. 119, 10): ‘Though I’m no flatterer,/If classics are true,/Dame CleopatraiHad nothing on you.’

Finally there is the question of form. It must be admitted that the present- day craze for sensational effects in the ‘pop’ song has led to a good deal of eccentricity, bordering at times on positive formal disintegration. But the more classic ‘sweet lyric’ is by no means haphazard in its construction, being governed by conventions of prosody and musical structure almost as precise as those of Minnesang. It consists of a single basic strophe or ‘refrain’, which was formerly preceded by a ‘verse’, or set of verses, in practice usually ignored and now generally replaccd by a second ‘half-refrain’ repeated after a musical interlude. This strophe is fitted to a musical setting nearly always thirty-two bars in length and subdivided according to a limited number of patterns. In a few instances, e.g. Cole Porter’s Night and Day, and I’ve Got You Under my Skin, we still have the tripartite scheme AAB b d t up of two identicalperlrs, or Stollen, and a longer and more elaborate coda, or Abgesang. Other accepted patterns are the binary AB e.g. Be my Love, Looe is Here to Stay, consisting of two sixteen-bar strains, corresponding to the medieval

j o n s and versus; and the very common four-square type, AABA, composed

24 MINNESANG A N D THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’

of four eight-bar strains, as in Heart and Soul, I f I Loved You.2 It is common practice to extend the closing strain in all types of structure by one or two bars, and to repeat the opening phrase of the refrain at the close, often with a slight play on meaning.

Within this fairly rigid framework, diversity is achieved by a number of devices, all of which are equally characteristic of Minnesang. The length of the lines and the rhyme-scheme can be varied almost ad infiniturn. A single unrhymed line can be introduced, usually, U e the ‘Wake’, near the end of the strophe. Stresses can also be arranged flexibly, to produce an effect of surprise or break the monotony of the regular beat.3 Both points are well exemplified by the last lines of the coda of Night and Day: ‘And its torment won’t be through,/Till you let me spend my life/Making love to you,/Day and night, night and day.’ Another frequently used-or abused-trick is internal rhyme or assonance. The Minnesanger were virtuosos in th is art, and the modern singer is fully their equal: ‘Whether near to me orfar,/No matter, darling, where you are,/I thmk of you’, ‘I’m through with jpen‘ding time pretending I’m a rover’, ‘We both told a lie and we both regret it,/Forgrt it, that’s all we can do./Where are you? Here am I, and you cry, I know why;/ Whatfools we have been, we two’.

Like Minnesang, the sweet lyric relies on a certain conventional repertoire of vocables from the current jargon of love, which are used over and over again hke cards in a pack. Creative originality of expression is rare indeed, though not, be it said, unknown: ‘You are my Nemesis,/Iought to throw you off the premises’, ‘There ought to be a society for the prevention of cruelty to poor unfortunate lovers like me.’

So far Minnesang has only been compared with the modern sweet lyric. But a comparison could equally well be made with the Elizabethan madrigal and lutenist Ayre, or with the French ‘chanson’ and ‘brunette’ of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries: where precisely similar analogies could be traced, from the major assumptions of the cult of Love down to details of imagery or technique. Indeed, all that has been said would probably apply with equal justice to any fully developed convention of love-song in any country at any period.

In all this, universal human experience, emotional or biological, admit- tedly counts for much, but the similarities are too numerous and too close for that to be the sole explanation. Direct borrowing on the part of the modem song-writer can likewise, one feels, be dismissed. Very very seldom he does appear to take cognizance of the love-song of former periods; a song from Germany, for instance, circulated in this country under the title Underneath the Linden Tree, may have a distant acquaintance with Walther’s Under der linden. For the rest, thou h he may say: ‘When the whole world seems wrong,/Just learn the wor I f s of a simple song./Be a troubadour and all is love’,

MINNESANG A N D THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’ 25

it is hkely that he has only the haziest notion of what a troubadour was, let alone what kind of songs he wrote.

In other words, the answer lies in the intrinsic nature of love-song as dis- tinct from the love-lyric. The difference between them is fundamental. The love-lyric is subjective and intimate, it can be read over and pondered in private by the person for whom its message is designed, or by anyone else who wishes to enter into the experience by which the poem was originally inspired. The love-song is by definition vocal. To have any real existence at all it must be performed aloud and therefore thrown open to, at any rate, a potential public. This inevitably gives it a more objective and stylized char- acter, even when, as in the case of ‘Minnesang’ and a large proportion of modern songs, the same man is poet, composer and singer, and might thus be considered as having every motive for using the song-form as a medium of transmitting personal emotion.

That is, the mere fact of the musical setting places the words at one further remove from spontaneous utterance. It is inherent in the nature of song that the content should be in some degree subordinate to the outward form. The song-writer does not as a rulc have recourse to melody because the ideas he seeks to convey are such that they require the joint impact of text and music to be effective. He is rather relying on the all-but inexhaustible range of musical expression to provide him with an extended variety of form in which to clothe themes that lie already to hand and may well be standard- ized. This, naturally, does not apply to the song-writer of genius, who remains as always a law to himself, even within the reigning convention. But run-of-the-mill song-writing inevitably tends to resolve itself into certain well-defined types. And of all these types, the love-song is perhaps the most artificial, because it combines essentially subjective content with essentially objective presentation. Song is not a natural means of conveying direct emotion. When used as a vehicle for personal feelings between two individuals it is apt to sound unreal and a little embarrassing-the lover solemnly singing of his passion to the beloved’s face like the Owl and the Pussycat.

The love-song therefore demands a social setting of some kind, where the expression of personal emotion matters less than the communal mood or sentiment which it is intended to evoke. For this reason it sounds per- fectly in place when sung by a soloist before an audience (as with revue or cabaret, the radio or TV programme, the lutenist Ayre, and probably the majority of Minnelieder), by a group of voices (as in thc case of the mad- rigal), or even-most impersonal of all-as a mere vocal accompaniment to the dance, a functional approach to love-song which today has come to be taken for granted, and which was in all likelihood more widcspread among the Minnesinger and their public than has often been supposed.

26 MINNESANG AND THE ‘SWEET LYRIC’

The identity of the author or singer, the I of the song, is comparatively unimportant. True, there are those who, by virtue of superior talent or appeal, wear their rue with a difference, whether they are called Heinrich von Morungen or Cole Porter. But there are also the lesser men, the hosts of minor Minneskger, the gentlemen with improbable names who today gather in odd little syndicates of twos and threes on both sides of the Atlantic and turn out songs as though on a conveyor belt. Who wrote what is here quite irrelevant. In the same way the object of their affections, the You of the song, may be a real person, like Sidney’s Stella, but again she may not. It simply does not matter. What matters is the particular fiame of mind, the shared impulse of emotion, in which the poet or singer and his audience are for a time united as though by common consent. The greatest song-writer is not the man who follows his artistic conscience uncompromisingly, but the man who succeeds in fusing individual and collective inspiration into a single organic unity.

We can go still further. Any social art-form, whose function is to please a public rather than an individual, will inevitably tend to conform to certain prescribed canons of taste, and there is a strong likelihood that it will also be produced in quantities to satisfy public demand. So we have various schools of song-writing at different periods, rather than a succession of creative artists operating on their own terms. In other words, the song, and especially the love-song, is a child of fashion.

And fashion demands a certain social environment in which to flourish, for any convention within the arts is liable to be a class phenomenon, produced and fostered by a section of the community rather than by society as a whole. The background of Minnesang was an aristocratic Clite; the background of the sweet lyric is a multitude, in particular an urban and suburban multitude. But though it has come down so much in the world, it does not wholly belie its noble ancestry; hence this essay at rehabilitation.

NOTE5

(Space forbade the inclusion ofmore than a small proportion of the refmences that could be quoted in support of the comparison: for the same reason, the examples drawn from Minnesang are for the most part given in the form of page-references to the following works: Des Minncsangs Fruhling, 1950 edn. (MF); v. Kraus, Deursche Liederdichter des 13. Juhrhunderts, Tiibingen, I952 (KDL) ; Bartsch, Deutsche Liederdichter des 12. bis rq.]ahrhunderts, 7th edn., Berlin 1914 (BDL); v.d. Hagen, Minnesinger, Leipzig, 1838 (HMS); ed. v. Kraus, Die Gedichte Wulfhers uon der Vogelweide, Berlin 1950 0.) 1 C. Appel, Provenzulische Chrestomathie (Leipzig, 1920). p. 70 f. 2 The type A.A.B.A. was not unknown in Minnesang; cf. the song by Wizlav von RUgen quoted by

W. Mohr, ‘Zur Form der mittelalterlichen deutschen Suophediedes’ (Der DeuLtche Minncsung, ed. Fromm, Gentner Verlag, Bad Homburg, rg61) .

9 For a good medieval example of this type of!spcopated cross-beat, see the song by Wizlav von Rtigen, quoted by Mob, lor. cif., p. 246.

4 For example, d. MF. 2og,r5 A. and the song of the ‘maitre de musique’ in the opening scene of Lc Bourgeois genrilhomme.

(The foregoing is an abridged version of a paper read to the Linguistic Circle, St Andrews).

251.