Domnei, James Branch Cabell [red scrolls of magic .TXT] 📗

a serious thing, a stark and life-disposing reality. En cor gentil domnei per mort no passa, as Nicolas himself declares. The service of domnei involved, it in fact invited, anguish; it was a martyrdom whereby the lover was uplifted to saintship and the lady to little less than, if anything less than, godhead. For it was a canon of domnei, it was the very essence of domnei, that the woman one loves is providentially set between her lover’s apprehension, and God, as the mobile and vital image and corporeal reminder of heaven, as a quick symbol of beauty and holiness, of purity and perfection. In her the lover views⁠—embodied, apparent to human sense, and even accessible to human enterprise⁠—all qualities of God which can be comprehended by merely human faculties. It is precisely as such an intermediary that Melicent figures toward Perion, and, in a somewhat different degree, toward Ahasuerus⁠—since Ahasuerus is of necessity apart in all things from the run of humanity.

Yet instances were not lacking in the service of domnei where worship of the symbol developed into a religion sufficing in itself, and became competitor with worship of what the symbol primarily represented⁠—such instances as have their analogues in the legend of Ritter Tannhäuser, or in Aucassin’s resolve in the romance to go down into hell with “his sweet mistress whom he so much loves,” or (here perhaps most perfectly exampled) in Arnaud de Merveil’s naive declaration that whatever portion of his heart belongs to God heaven holds in vassalage to Adelaide de Beziers. It is upon this darker and rebellious side of domnei, of a religion pathetically dragged dustward by the luxuriance and efflorescence of over-passionate service, that Nicolas has touched in depicting Demetrios.

IV

Nicolas de Caen, himself the servitor par amours of Isabella of Burgundy, has elsewhere written of domnei (in his Le Roi Amaury) in terms such as it may not be entirely out of place to transcribe here. Beelzebub, as you may remember, has been discomfited in his endeavours to ensnare King Amaury and is withdrawing in disgust.

“A pest upon this domnei!”4 the fiend growls. “Nay, the match is at an end, and I may speak in perfect candour now. I swear to you that, given a man clear-eyed enough to see that a woman by ordinary is nourished much as he is nourished, and is subjected to every bodily infirmity which he endures and frets beneath, I do not often bungle matters. But when a fool begins to flounder about the world, dead-drunk with adoration of an immaculate woman⁠—a monster which, as even the man’s own judgment assures him, does not exist and never will exist⁠—why, he becomes as unmanageable as any other maniac when a frenzy is upon him. For then the idiot hungers after a life so high-pitched that his gross faculties may not so much as glimpse it; he is so rapt with impossible dreams that he becomes oblivious to the nudgings of his most petted vice; and he abhors his own innate and perfectly natural inclination to cowardice, and filth, and self-deception. He, in fine, affords me and all other rational people no available handle; and, in consequence, he very often flounders beyond the reach of my whisperings. There may be other persons who can inform you why such blatant folly should thus be the master-word of evil, but for my own part, I confess to ignorance.”

“Nay, that folly, as you term it, and as hell will always term it, is alike the riddle and the masterword of the universe,” the old king replies.⁠ ⁠…

And Nicolas wholeheartedly believed that this was true. We do not believe this, quite, but it may be that we are none the happier for our dubiety.

Explicit

Bibliography

Les Amants de Melicent, Traduction moderne, annotée et procedée d’un notice historique sur Nicolas de Caen, par l’Abbé. * * * A Paris. Pour Iaques Keruer aux deux Cochetz, Rue S. Iaques, M.D. XLVI. Avec Privilège du Roy. The somewhat abridged reprint of 1788 was believed to be the first version printed in French, until the discovery of this unique volume in 1917.

Armageddon; or the Great Day of the Lord’s Judgement: a Parcenesis to Prince Henry⁠—Melicent; an heroicke poeme intended, drawne from French bookes, the First Booke, by Sir William Allonby. London. Printed for Nathaniel Butler, dwelling at the Pied Bull, at Saint Austen’s Gate. 1626.

Perion und Melicent, zum erstenmale aus dem Franzôsischen ins Deutsche ubersetzt, von J. H. G. Lowe. Stuttgart und Tübingen, 1823.

Los Negociantes do Don Perion, publicado por Plancher-Seignot. Rio de Janeiro, 1827. The translator’s name is not given. The preface is signed R. L.

La donna di Demetrio, Historia piacevole e morale, da Antonio Checino. Milan, 1833.

Prindsesses Melicent, oversat af Le Roman de Lusignan, og udgivna paa Dansk vid R. Knôs. Copenhagen, 1840.

Antiquae Fabulae et Comediae, edid. G. Rask. Göttingen, 1852. Vol. II, p. 61 et seq. “De Fide Melicentis”⁠—an abridged version of the romance.

Perion en Melicent, voor de Nederlandsche Jeugduiitgegeven door J. M. L. Wolters. Groningen, 1862.

Nouvelles Françoises en prose du XIVe et de XVe siècle, Les textes anciens, édités et annotés par MM. Armin et Moland. Lyons, 1880. Vol. IV, p. 89 et seq., “Le Roman de la Belle Melicent”⁠—a much condensed form of the story.

The Soul of Melicent, by James Branch Cabell. Illustrated in colour by Howard Pyle. New York, 1913. This rendering was made, of course, before the discovery of the 1546 version, and so had not the benefit of that volume’s interesting variants from the abridgment of 1788.

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