Summer Reading Reviews, Part 3:
Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach

Wolfram von Eschenbach. Parzival, with Titurel and the Love-Lyrics. Cyril Edwards, tr. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004. Pp. xxxiii, 329. 1 chart, 7 illustrations. £50.00.

God bless Wolfram von Eschenbach for being so weird. I'll talk about his particular Saracen-weirdness in a minute (and see previous post for my justification of the word "Saracen"), but for now let me say that this is by far one of the most readable and entertaining romances I've ever come across. Like Chretien before him, he's obsessed with details: how people look, what they're dressed in, how their horses look, what their horses are dressed in, the color of the damn grass even—it's all there. To give you one example, Gahmuret, Parzival's father, constantly looks like a million marks, kitted out in ermine and those damn anchors. Nor is clothing Wolfram's only poetic vice, as he is fond of multilingual puns, strange phrasing like "God was in a sweet mood for breeding when he wrought Parzival" (48), and one of my favorite episodes ever, the fight between Gawan and. . . a lion:

er hetem den schilt nâch genomn:
sîn êrster grif was alsô komn,
durch den schilt mit al den klân.
von tiere ist selten ê getân
sîn grif durch solhe herte.
Gâwân sich zuckes werte:
ein bein hin ab er im swanc.
der lewe ûf drîen füezen spranc:
Ime schilde beleip der vierde fuoz. (f. 571-2)

The lion had almost succeeded in taking the shield from him. Its first lunge had gone through the shield, along with all its claws. Seldom before has a beast clawed with such force! Gawan prevented it from snatching his shield. He hewed one leg off it! The lion leapt about on three feet, the fourth foot stuck in the shield.

See what I mean? I can only imagine Gawan yelling "getitoffgetitoffgetitoff!" while flailing wildly at it with the sword. It's not heroic, but I grew up with Monty Python.[1]

You can also see here how readable Cyril Edwards' translation is. It's modern, but it retains Wolfram's diction pretty well. The Boydell and Brewer edition is, as one might expect from that publishing arm, a fine one indeed. The introduction is focused but explanatory, and seems aimed for the general educated reader—exactly the sort of person who might have need of the book in the first place. Edwards includes many footnotes—a convenience often overlooked or, as in the Oxford edition of the same translation, relegated to far-less-accessible footnotes—and while it seems in places a few more might be useful, one sees why they might have been life out. The critical material, including a short explication of the illustrations in the Munich manuscript, is also well done. The only downside I see is that common to many of Boydell and Brewers' editions: a lack of a bibliography, with the result that one has to comb footnotes to find a citation.

Saracen Decorations

Save for Gahmuret's episode in the holy land/Outremer/Over There, the Orient shows up mostly as "Saracenerie," moveable goods from the luxurious East, and the standard furs, gems, and silk. It's everywhere in Parzival, from the one-off ruby to the ever-present Syrian silk to the gold braidwork on the Fisher-king's robes. "Arab," "Moor," "Saracen": these are just color-words for Wolfram—pun slightly intended, for while he primarily uses them as one-off references or flavorful adjectives attached to consumer goods (Moorish horses, Arabian silk, etc), he does of course "color" the Moors/Arabs black. Yet unlike many of his fellow epic-romance writers, Wolfram spends little time attributing to that color any significance other than wonder: the Moors are black, so it seems, because the spectacle of a literally half-black, half-white half brother for Parzival is just too good to pass up. One gets the impression that they do not function as allegorically for Wolfram as they do for, say, "Turold" or the compositor of El Cid, in part because when Wolfram wishes to be allegorically nasty, he is.

Witness the sorceress Cundrie (100 ffl), whose monstrosity is evident from the start. She is marked as other both physically, through the use of animal-derived signifiers such as bristles and tusks, and mentally, though her learning. For, as Wolfram tells us, "she spoke all languages well: Latin, heathen and French. She had a cultivated mind, encompassing dialectic and geometry: known to her, too, were the skills of astronomy" (100). This catalog seems to be as monstrous an indicator as her tusks, yet it is less so because of what she knows than the fact that she knows it at all. However, I know less than nothing about the expectations of women's education in medieval Germany, much less the education of sorceresses, and so can't be sure to what degree such erudition is normal for Wolfram's audience. I suspect it isn't quite normal, because Wolfram takes the time to single it out. The point is: some things in Wolfram might be monstrous, but Saracens aren't, and that alone makes him interesting.

Cundrie is not alone: she and her brother Malcreature [2] were sent to the Fisher-king by Queen Secundille, wife of Feirefiz, Parzival's half-brother and ruler of all of Tribalibot (aka India). This gift is interesting, because it sets up a reciprocal relationship between heathenesse and the Grail: the Fisher-king sends gifts to her in response, and both are pleased. But this makes little sense, for as we are told later, no pagan can see the Grail or, presumably, use it to gain its riches. Of what use is the pagan connection to the holiest of Christian relics?

The Saracens have interesting connections to the entire legend. Wolfram, admitting to his audience that Chretien's narrative is defective, invents a bard named Kyot, who "found in Toledo, lying neglected, in heathen script, this adventure's fundament. The a b c of those characters he must have learned before hand, without the art of necromancy" (145). As Cervantes would do some four centuries later, Wolfram imagines the Orient as a place of secret knowledge as well. In the latter's case, however, the knowledge isn't just a story, but the "Truth" of Christianity, written down in "heathen script," which can presumably be read by "heathens." The knowledge they possess is, like possessing the Grail itself, useless to them. One suspects that beneath his relatively benevolent position, Wolfram is suggesting that the heathens are sinister, keeping truth from not only themselves but all of Christendom as well, just for spite.

Or perhaps it is this: we are told many times that no-one can take the Grail by force, but must be summoned to it (250). Yet the Grail calls to Christian and heathen alike, and does not distinguish. Wolfram's portrait of Christianity is nicely universalizing, even if disturbing in its treatment of the heathen, who is all too willing to let go of "Jupiter and Juno" in the face of Christian "truth." [3] We may praise Wolfram for letting the Saracens off so easily, but we should remember that his is the most distorted view of Islam yet (of the three I've read, that is): unlike the Spanish Saracens in Roland, Parzival's pagans don't even name-drop Mohammed. Again, Wolfram understands the Orient as a source of wealth and the location of earthly paradise, but he displays even less knowledge of the east than John Mandeville.
_____
[1] Which reminds me, while we're on the subject of Python and Germans: I watched the Staatsoper Stuttgarts rendition of Das Rheingeld a few days ago, and couldn't finish it, primarily because the guy who sang Wotan did so out of the side of his mouth like Terry Jones (albeit Terry Jones with eczema, poor guy).
[2] Wolfram has hit the bottom of the name bag now.
[3] In typical knightly fashion, Feirefiz is won over to Christianity by the radiant beauty of the Grail-maiden, and not out of any desire to see the Grail as such.

Summer Reading Reviews, Part 2:
La chanson de Roland

Note to the reader: This review is in three parts: the first is an exercise in writing an academic review (here to keep the punters happy), the second is a reaction to the text itself, and the third is a list of questions I’ve yet to fully ponder that arise from the text. If you’re interested in my reactions, skip to the part so labeled. -- Ed

Review

Brault, Gerard. La Chanson de Roland: Oxford Text and English Translation. Student Edition. University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 1984. Pp. xxxiii; 245. $15.00.

A student edition of a larger work is often necessary, since we expect our students to be less interested in the sorts of minutiae that we tedious academics get lost in. Yet a student edition must be helpful and useful to the students’ understanding of the text, and that goal is in Gerard Brault’s 1984 edition of the Chanson de Roland, occasionally lacking. On the one hand, the introduction seems largely useful, helping to distinguish all the cultural and genere forms that produced this text. He moves quickly through the kinds of narrative poetry that France produced in the High Middle Ages to the “Historical Event” of Charlemagne’s disastrous campaign into Andalusia in the late eighth century. From there he discusses the development of the legend, then of the chanson itself, before analyzing its usefulness as an historical document. All this is done in a clear and concise prose style that would seem to work quite well for the general undergraduate reader.

There are, however, flaws in this introduction, as well as in the edition itself. These are in some places stylistic issues and in others questionable choices about what and how certain information is presented. He cites, for instance, Schliemann excavating at Troy as a reason to give some credence to the poem’s historical relevance (xix); not only is this an old chestnut, but it is not a very meaty one at that (Schliemann’s methods were not the best, nor was his poly-chronic reconstruction of “Troy” the Homeric city). Too, he occasionally lapses into strange idiom, such as the puzzling notion that “as in contemporary society, individuals in this epic are also bound together by feudal ties involving mutual obligations between lord and vassal” (xx). Unless Brault has been living in an alternative France, one can only assume he means “contemporary to the poem,” or perhaps to AD 778, something that in any case is not clear from the context. While later usage seems to indicate the former meaning, such imprecision in the introduction does not bode well for the translation ahead.

Perhaps most annoying is the lack of an apparatus criticus and footnotes, both crucial features for understanding a poem no matter what one’s academic standing. Taken in conjunction with his abbreviated bibliography of works largely in French, and his quasi-literal translation of the poem, one is not certain for what sort of “students” Brault expects this volume to be useful. French majors are presented with a ready-made trot; literature majors are not presented with a very literary rendition of the text; and the majority of today’s undergraduates, lacking a guide to the meaning of the text, will see the poem as just another incomprehensible relic of the middle ages.

Reactions to the text

The ideological machine that this text contains is centered largely on the dehumanization of the Saracen. I use “Saracen” deliberately here, since it contains the European idealization of the Muslim other. (Note: I’m almost certain I’m not the first person to say this, and if I’ve not given credit for this idea it’s because I can’t remember where I’ve read it). The Saracen in this text is dehumanized in a number of ways, some subtle, some less than that.

An example of the more subtle dehumanization occurs in brief moments such as this: Oliver, Roland’s companion, [1] looks out over the field of battle and says:

Jo ai veüt les Sarrazins d’Espaigne,
Cuverz en sunt li val e les muntaignes
E li lariz e trestutes les plaignes.
Granz sunt les oz de cele gent estrange (laisse 84)

I have seen the Saracens from Spain; the valleys and mountains are covered with them, the hillsides, too, and all the plains. The armies of that foreign people are huge.

The Saracen other becomes a blight on the land, like a plague of locusts.

In another sense, they are a blight since they are comprised of things that are always “almost knights,” people who ben resemblet barun (look a good deal like a true knight, laisse 229). They follow the same martial culture as Charles and his men, but they cannot be true knights, quite likely because they employ monsters:

De Micenes as chefs gros:
Sur les eschines qu’il unt en mi les dos
Cil sunt seiet sensement cume porc (laisse 232)

Of large-headed men from Misnes: on their spines, along their backs, they have bristles like pigs.

This detail, coming at the start of a list of the different nations that make the Saracen army, throws suspicion on all the “normal” people who follow in the list, not only those ki uncles ben ne volt (never wished to do good, laisse 232) but monstrous races as well. This highlights something about monsters that I’d not considered before: the Monstrous Races are always objectified. At no time does anyone expect a man to live, work, worship, or fight alongside monsters, for there is always the chance that you yourself will become one by proximity. Furthermore, no monster ever speaks nor has it own agency; those that speak at all, e.g. the Donestre, do so in the voices of others.

I’m reminded, too, of an essay by Greta Austin, in which she points out that the line between nation and race is paper-thin in the middle ages, and the line between race and monster is equally porous. [2] One could easily collapse the categories depending on polemical need, and thus it seems almost anticlimactic to discover that some of the members of the Saracen army aren’t human; after all, to the medieval European eye, nothing from the Orient was ever really human.

The Saracen is also marked by conspicuous wealth. From the start, they may not have a good army, but they can bribe Charlemagne with:

curs e leons e chens
set cenz camelz e mil hosturs muërs
d’or e d’argent iiiiC muls cargez
cinquant carre qu’en sent carier (laisse 3)

bears, lions, dogs, seven hundred camels laden with gold and silver, and fifty carts for a wagon train.

Ironicallly, Blancandrin, the speaker and “one of the most cunning pagans” (de plus saives paiens, laisse 3) next says that with such a bribe, Charlemagne “will be able to pay his soldiers well” (ben en purrat luër ses soldeiers, laisse 3). One wonders why King Marsile of Saragossa hasn’t bought his own army with such a treasure-hoard, or indeed why he should in effect become paymaster of the Christian army. The obvious answer—because God wills it—is not enough. Rather, I think it has much to do with the idea that Muslims are Orientals and therefore rich and stupid. Something in me also suspects that this is a post-Crusades mentality; while the Andalusian Caliphate was rich, I think, to borrow Professor Tolkien’s famous phrasing, “the tale grew in the telling.” After the mentality arose that one could go East and seek one’s fortune along with penance, I suspect it became much more common to assume that the Oriental would be a source of wealth for the Occidental. However, this is mere assumption, and I haven’t a thing to back it up with yet.

There is, however, this: the Saracens in this poem are an often indirect source of European wealth. Consider Roland’s “oliphant,” the elephant-tusk horn he carries with him. There being precious few oliphants in Europe since the last Ice Age, how else might he have gotten it but from Saracen traders? It is a surprisingly Oriental signifier in the midst of all this anti-Oriental luxuria.

Indeed, the portrait of the Franks is at times as disturbing as that of the Saracens. Their motives are typically rather thin; Ganelon, for instance, displaces the impetus for conquest off of Charlemagne and onto Roland: it is Roland who because “he holds sway over the Emepeor himself / will conquer for [Charlemagne] all the lands from here to the Orient” (l’emperere meïsmes ad tut a sun talent / cunquerrat li les teres d’ice qu’en Orient, laisse 30). No other reason is given for conquest—the famous “pagans are wrong and Christians are right” must wait until the battle begins, some 600 lines from this point—and one is led to assume, as Blancandrin says here, that “Roland is a maniac” (mult est pesmes Rollant, laisse 30).

The Franks also have curious rituals surrounding death: The cultural anthropologist in me is more interested in the death ritual that Roland performs (laisse 174) including the choice of a pine tree, placing his valuable weapons beneath him, turning his face to the enemy, and—most curious of all—pur ses pecchez, we are told, Deu en puroffrid lo guant (he offered his gauntlet to God for his sins), as if he is pledging his service to God in the afterlife. It all seems quaintly Germanic: dying under a tree, showing no fear, soldiering for God when you’re dead. I’m reminded most of all that I need to pick up James Russell’s The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity. To make matters stranger, after the Franks cut out Roland, Turpin, and Oliver’s hearts and set them in a casket while wrapping the bodies in stags’ skins (ritual!), the pagans arrive, and in a rather disturbing scene of re-arming, all the regions of the Carolingian empire are mentioned, as if this were a 12^th-century rendition of Triumph of Will: each region is strong, proud, and unafraid of battle (laisses 218-225)

In the end, neither portrait really matters, since the end result of this conquest is rabid anti-Semitic fantasy, as “idols” are smashed in Saragossa:

A mil Franceis funt ben cercer la vile
Les signagoges e les mahumeries
A maliz de ser e a cuignes qu’il tindrent
Fruissent les ymagenes trestutes les ydles
N’i remendrat ne sorz ne falserie (laisse 266)

Orders are given for a thousand Frenchmen to search the city, the synagogues and the mosques; holding iron hammers and axes, they smash the statues and all the idols. No sorcery or false cult will remain there.

The point here being that of course this did not happen: Saragossa was steadfastly Muslim until well into El Cid’s day.

I’m leaving out a lot, I know—battle scenes, the quick and surprising conversion of Bramimonde—but these are some of the weird images I’ll take away from the text, along with a general idea that, although we are supposed to believe the Christians are right, neither side comes out very well in the telling.

Notes

[1] I have an idea that “companion” here might have something to do with Alan Bray’s notion of the “friend” (see The Friend), but swive me if I can see anywhere to run with this idea.

[2] Greta Austin "Marvelous Peoples or Marvelous Races? Race and the Anglo-Saxon Wonders of the East.” Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger, eds. Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations. Kalamazoo: U of Michigan Press, 2002. 25–51.

Questions

• How demonized were the “Saracens” in heroic literature before the Crusades?
• What else—besides the ambiguous wascones in the Carolingian chronicles—did the “universal enemy” of Saracen replace?
• Is the choice of “Saracen” as enemy a deliberate (or “accidental”) internationalizing of the story from something only locals would know to something all who read it would understand as “other”?
• Is Roland more of a hero fighting Saracens than if he were fighting “Wascones”?
• How did later ages in France treat the Carolingians?
• Is it even worth being surprised anymore that the luxurious and effeminate Saracens also use as soldiers monsters from farthest Ethiopia (laisse 143 ffl)?
• What’s with the beard fetishism in medieval heroic texts? El Cid grows his out, Charles exposes his beard to show he’s unafraid (so does the pagan king)—what gives? Weird masculinity signifiers?

Summer Reading Reviews, Part 1:
Poem of the Cid

The Poem of the Cid: Dual Language Edition. Tr. Rita Hamilton and Janet Perry. New York: Penguin Classics, 1985. 256 pages.

This summer, I'm doing a readings course that is mostly about the literature of the Muslim-Christian contact in the Middle Ages. I'll read The Poem of the Cid, The Song of Roland,Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal, Arab Historians of the Crusades, The Arabs and Medieval Europe, Europe and the Mystique of Islam, and The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance. I'll probably also read The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, if I have time. My plan is to read them, then blog about them here, mostly because I haven't heard otherwise yet.

We start this week with the Penguin edition of the Cantar del mio Cid, which was probably composed in the 12^th century, but exists in a single manuscript dated to the 14^th century. Like any good scholarly edition for those of us whose linguistic training doesn't extend as far as it ought, it's nicely dual language so you can fake your quotes later (owning copies of the Loeb library classical editions is also paramount). The translation is quite readable, and kept parallel with the text so that by triangulating between the English, my Latin, and the Castilian, I can make out what the Castilian is saying.

That said, this is my first time reading the Cantar (or Poema; no-one's really clear about the preferred term, and it may just be the idiosyncrasy of the manuscript compiler) and let me tell you, it's weird. To be honest, it first put me in the mood for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, in that el Cid, having been exiled, decides to randomly besiege the neighboring taifa until he has enough money and prestiege to buy his way back into the king's heart. It's insane, and poorly justified, and has a nice bit of the usual medieval antisemitism in the front, in which Ruy Diaz fills two chests full of sand, pretends they're full of gold, and gets the Jews to loan him 400 marks (about £270 sterling, assuming a mark was about 13/6—a nice little sum).

What else? It's a national epic, they say, and that's not surprising; it's pure Castilian, in that—to borrow the refrain from La chanson de Roland—the pagans are wrong and the Christians are right. There are a few of the virtuous heathen, but they're in the minority; most of the Moors are awash in luxury, so much so that only a few years and battles later, Ruy Diaz has his entire fortune back twice over, and has a retinue that could seriously threaten the King of Castile. Good thing he's distracted from all that by the marriage of his daughters to the Infantes of Carrion, who turn out to be jackasses.

I'm sure all the Moors were relieved.