Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut, Wace [books to get back into reading txt] 📗

ARTHURIAN CHRONICLES: ROMAN DE BRUT

by

WACE


TRANSLATED BY EUGENE MASON


INTRODUCTION

"... In the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights."

SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet cvi.


I.--WACE

In the long line of Arthurian chroniclers Geoffrey of Monmouth deservedly occupies the first place. The most gifted and the most original of their number, by his skilful treatment of the Arthurian story in his _Historia Regum Britanniae_, he succeeded in uniting scattered legends attached to Arthur's name, and in definitely establishing their place in chronicle history in a form that persisted throughout the later British historical annals. His theme and his manner of presenting it were both peculiarly adapted to win the favour of his public, and his work attained a popularity that was almost unprecedented in an age that knew no printed books. Not only was it accepted as an authority by British historians, but French chroniclers also used it for their own purposes.

About the year 1150, five years before the death of Geoffrey, an Anglo-Norman, Geoffrey Gaimar, wrote the first French metrical chronicle. It consisted of two parts, the _Estorie des Bretons_ and the _Estorie des Engles_, of which only the latter is extant, but the former is known to have been a rhymed translation of the _Historia_ of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Gaimar's work might possibly have had a longer life if it had not been cast into the shade by another chronicle in verse, the _Roman de Brut_, by a Norman poet, Wace, which fills an important and interesting place among our Arthurian sources, not merely because of the author's qualities as a poet and his treatment of the Arthurian story, but also because of the type of composition that he produced. For the metrical chronicle occupies an intermediate position between the prose chronicle, one of the favourite forms of mediaeval monastic production throughout Europe, and the metrical romance, which budded and blossomed most richly in France, where, during the last half of the twelfth century, it received its greatest impulse from Crestien de Troies, the most distinguished of the _trouveres_. The metrical romances were written for court circles, and were used as a vehicle for recounting adventures of love and chivalry, and for setting forth the code of behaviour which governed the courtly life of France at that period. Wace's poem, though based upon chronicle history, is addressed to a public whose taste was turning toward chivalric narrative, and it foreshadows those qualities that characterised the verse romances, for which no more fitting themes could be found than those supplied by the stories of Arthurian heroes, whose prowess teaches us that we should be valiant and courteous. Wace saw the greater part of the twelfth century. We cannot be certain of the exact year of his birth or of his death, but we know that he lived approximately from 1100 to 1175. Practically all our information about his life is what he himself tells us in his _Roman de Rou_:--

"If anybody asks who said this, who put this history into the Romance language, I say and I will say to him that I am Wace of the isle of Jersey, which lies in the sea, toward the west, and is a part of the fief of Normandy. In the isle of Jersey I was born, and to Caen I was taken as a little lad; there I was put at the study of letters; afterward I studied long in France.[1] When I came back from France, I dwelt long at Caen. I busied myself with making books in Romance; many of them I wrote and many of them I made."

Before 1135 he was a _clerc lisant_ (reading clerk), and at length, he says, his writings won for him from Henry II. preferment to the position of canon at Bayeux. He was more author, however, than prebendary, and he gave his first effort and interest to his writings. He composed a number of saints' lives, which are still extant, but his two most important works were his historical poems, the _Roman de Brut_ and the _Roman de Rou_ (i.e. Rollo), a chronicle history of the Dukes of Normandy. This latter was Wace's last production, and beside having a literary and historic importance, it has a rather pathetic interest. He had begun it in 1160, in obedience to a command of Henry II, but for some unknown reason Henry later transferred the honour to another poet. Wace laid aside his pen, left his work incomplete, and probably soon after died.

"Since the king has asked him to do this work, I must leave it and I must say no more. Of old the king did me many a favour; much he gave me, more he promised me, and if he had given all that he promised me, it had been better for me. Here ends the book of Master Wace; let him continue it who will." [2]

Some twenty years earlier, in 1155, Wace had completed the _Roman de Brut_. He himself called it the _Geste des Bretons_ ("History of the Britons"), but it is best known under the title that appears in the manuscripts, the _Roman de Brut_, given to it by scribes because of its connection with Brutus, the founder of the British race. The Brut is a reproduction in verse of Geoffrey's _Historia_. To call it a translation is almost to give it a misnomer, for although Wace follows exactly the order and substance of the _Historia_, he was more than a mere translator, and was too much of a poet not to impress his own individuality upon his work. He makes some few additions to Geoffrey's Arthurian history, but his real contribution to the legend is the new spirit that he put into it. In the first place his vehicle is the swift-moving French octo-syllabic couplet, which alone gives an entirely different tone to the narrative from that of Geoffrey's high-sounding Latin prose. Wace, moreover, was Norman born and Norman bred, and he inherited the possessions of his race--a love of fact, the power of clear thought, the appreciation of simplicity, the command of elegance in form. Such a spirit indeed was his as in a finer type had already expressed itself in Caen in the two noble abbeys, under whose shadow he passed the greater part of his life, the dignified and sternly simple Abbaye-aux-Hommes of William the Conqueror and the graceful, richly ornamented Abbaye-aux-Dames of Queen Matilda. Sincerity and truth Wace ever aims at, but he embellishes his narrative with countless imaginative details. As a narrator he has the tendency to garrulity, which few mediaeval poets altogether escaped, but he is by no means without conversational charm, and in brief sentences abounding in colloquial turns, he leads us easily on with seldom flagging interest even through those pages where he is most inclined to be prolix. He is a systematic person with accurate mental habits, and is keenly alive to the limitations of his own knowledge. He doubtless often had to bid his common sense console him with the reflections with which he begins his _Life of St. Nicholas_:--"Nobody can know everything, or hear everything, or see everything ... God distributes different gifts to different people. Each man should show his worth in that which God has given him."

He is extremely careful to give his authorities for his statements, and has all the shyness of an antiquarian toward facts for which he has not full proof. Through Breton tales, for example, he heard of the fairy fountain of Barenton in the forest of Broceliande, where fays and many another marvel were to be seen, and he determined to visit it in order to find out how true these stories were. "I went there to look for marvels. I saw the forest and I saw the land; I sought marvels, but I found none. A fool I came back, a fool I went; a fool I went, a fool I came back; foolishness I sought, a fool I hold myself." [3] The wonders related of Arthur, he tells us, have been recounted so often that they have become fables. "Not all lies, nor all true, all foolishness, nor all sense; so much have the storytellers told, and so much have the makers of fables fabled to embellish their stories that they have made all seem fable." [4] He omits the prophecies of Merlin from his narrative, because he does not understand them. "I am not willing to translate his book, because I do not know how to interpret it. I would say nothing that was not exactly as I said." [5] To this scrupulous regard for the truth, absolutely foreign to the ingenious Geoffrey, Wace adds an unusual power of visualising. He sees clearly everything that he describes, and decorates his narrative with almost such minute details of any scene as a seventeenth-century Dutch painter loved to put upon his canvas. The most famous instance of this power is his description of Arthur's embarkation for the Roman campaign. Geoffrey, after saying simply that Arthur went to Southampton, where the wind was fair, passes at once to the dream that came to the king on his voyage across the Channel. But Wace paints a complete word-picture of the scene. Here you may see the crews gathering, there the ships preparing, yonder friends exchanging parting words, on this side commanders calling orders, on that, sailors manning the vessels, and then the fleet speeding over the waves.[6] Another spirited example of this same characteristic is found in the _Roman de Rou_ [7] in the stirring account of the advance of the Normans under William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings:--

"Taillefer, who sang right well, mounted on a charger that went swiftly, rode before the duke singing of Charlemagne and of Roland, and of Oliver and the vassals who died at Roncesval. When they had ridden until they came close to the English, 'Sire,' said Taillefer, 'a grace! I have served you long; for all my service, you owe me a debt. To-day, an it please you, repay it me. For all my guerdon I beg you and fervently I pray you, grant me to deal the first blow in the battle!' The duke replied, 'I grant it.' And Taillefer pricked on at full gallop, on before all the others he pressed. He struck an Englishman and killed him; beneath the breast, clean through the body he thrust his lance; he felled him down full length on the ground; then he drew his sword, he struck another; then he cried, 'On, on! What do ye? Strike, strike!' Then the English surrounded him at the second blow that he dealt. Hark to the noise raised and the cries!"

Apart from matters of style, Wace made other changes from Geoffrey's narrative that are more important for Arthurian romance. He wrote the _Brut_ under the patronage of Henry II, and, if we may trust Layamon's statement, he dedicated it to Queen Eleanor, who was the ardent propagator in England of the courtly ideals of southern France. Accordingly Wace, perhaps partly because of his own milieu, partly because of his royal patroness, wove into Geoffrey's narrative more pronouncedly chivalric material. The lack of the courtly virtue of mesure (moderation) that is noticeable in Geoffrey's Arthur, Wace is careful to conceal; he gives, furthermore, a place to the descriptions of love, which fill so many lines in the later romances,