A GEORGIAN VARIANT OF AMOUR COURTEOUS

The object of this paper is to compare, and to discuss possible connections between, the convention of Amour Courteous which makes its appearance so sliddenly and stiancly in Provence in the twelfth country, to assume forthwith a commanding position in the culture of Western Europe, and the cuit of chivalric love which seems to emerge with a contemporaneousness which is tiliite startling in Georgia during the reign of Queen T'amar (1184-1213) - the epoch in which this power and civilization of the medieval kingdom reaclied their zenith.

The works of medieval Georgian imaginative literature which have survived arc sadiy fcw. Amiran-Daredjaniani, a cycle of heroic taies which may date in soinetiling like its present form froni the beginning of the twelfth century, is more concemed with the slaying of monsters than with the service of ladies: Visramiani, of a somewhat later date, will hc referred to again, but inasmuch as it is a translation from the Persian it is of oniy limited significance for our present purpose. Putting aside some works of courtiy eulogy, we are lcft with Vepkhis-tkaosani - "Panther-skin Cl ad" - the cciebrated romantic épie in approximately IGOO quatrains which tradition assigns to onc Shota Rustaveli, held to have flourished in the reign of Tamar What seems to bc reasonably certain (tholigh even this has been challenged) is that the poem was corn" posed before the medieval civilization of Georgia had been destroyed by the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century in a fashion somewhat similar to that in which the distinctive culture of Province was ruined by the almost contemporary Albigensian Crusade undertaken by the Northern French. - l may here remark that'if we compare Amiran-Daredjaniani on. the one hand witli Visramiani and Vepkhis-tkaosani on the other, we feci that in the course of the tweifth century Georgia has made the saine transition as did France in the same period in moving ont of tlie worid of the Chanson de Roland into that of the romances of Chrétien de Troyes.
In the Prologue to Vepkhis-tkaosani - which, incidentally, may well not bc from the same hand as the main body of the poem, having a somewhat exegetical air - wc find this characterization of the truc lover, or mijntlri (a georgianisation of the Arabia mcijntln).
the poet, wc arc told, is to tind "onc worthy of his love; to lier must lie dévote hirself uHcr-ly; to her praisc must hc bcnd ail his skill... of nought eisc will he bc abic to think... His mind will have room for her image alone."

With this we may compare the assertion of the sovereign daims of Love made by perhaps the greatest of the poets of Provence, Bernard de Ventadour: "So drawn to Love am   that no-thing eise in the worid hoids aiiy interest for me." Rust'aveli -- to avail myscif of the traditional ascription - is aiso at onc with hîs Western peers in holding that the true nature of the passion is not rcadily to be comprehended by the vlilgar. Thus while Bernard de Ventadour asserts: "Through lack of undertsnnding fools cast reproach iipon Love" - the author of Vep'khis-tkaosani declares: "Love is of a rare quality hard is it to understand."

the Georeian poet aiso shares the troubadours' tenet that the lover must not noiso his nassion abroad. Beside Giraut de Bornclh's- "How l would rejoice did l but darc to sing lier praises! All the word would listen witli pleasiirc: but l fear lest false slanderers, vile and destested, shoiild understand me" -- we can place Rust'-aveli's.

"The lover will betray his secret to none... He must not bring disgrâce iipon the loved onc: in no way miist lie let hîs love he seen... How can any man in his wits trust him who chatters of his love? Such a one will bring grief upon the lady and upon hirnscif likewise," There are other statements to the same effect.

Nor is hc less concemed tlian the troubadours with the ethics of Love. He parallels Marcabru's "False and faithless loyers debase Love and pro-mote crime" - with his precepts that the lover "must be constant, not lewd, ignoble, and faithless... Love that docs not corne from the heart l abhor... Do not call them lovers who désire this onc today, that one tomorrow."

No more than the fin' amador of Provence can Rust'aveli's good mijnuri look for a rcady gratification of his passion: indeed Jaufre Rudels' ''Beloved in a distant land, for your saké does my heart give me pain" - seems strangely close in feeling to the Georgian poefs statement that the lover's "Fainting, dying, burning, arc ail from afar." More than this, the bard hirnself is made to appear in the character of a troubadour - onc can use no other term - cherishing a hopeles passion for his Queen: "For the saké of her whom great hosts obey l am going mad, l am dving! l am wasting away for Love, and no-whcre is therc any remedy, uniess she herscif sholild give me hcaling, or the carth a grave."

Hère, theii, about the year 1200 as onc may hazard. wc hâve the idéal ficurc of a lover show-ing many striking reseniblances - for the com-parison could be developcd at greater length - to an exactiv contemporary Western counterpart. Tt is triic that when we tum from the Prologue of Vepkh'is-tkaosani to the story which follows wc discover a cardinal diverrence betw^een the two conventions - so cardinal, indeed, as perhaps to render the title of this paper uniust-ifiable. For whercas rîust'aveli's two héroïnes, T'inafin and Nestan, are maidens to whose hands their soiinirants aspire - in the West, "La femme mariée seule a été idéalisée par la chevalerie" - and the rcceivcd doctrine is. in the words of the De Arte Hone.iti Amandi of Anill-cas C.ipcllanlis, "...scd cl siiiH1-vciiii'iis fw clerationuptiarum violenter fligat amorem." Noue the less it is porhaps permissibic to ask whether thèse two romantic conventions, so far apart in their fielfis of exercise, an(l eertainly tuite linaware of cacli other's existence, may hâve had some source in common.

At the ontset, we may recognise an essential similarity of social structure in the feudalism of the two lands in whicli thèse cuits appear: the worifi of chivalry inirrored and idealised foi- us in the work of Bust'aveli lias close and obvions afflnitics vvith that reflected in the narratives ol' his French contemporary Chrétien de Troyes -a maii of l-angiic d'oïl, but mueli iniluenced hy Provence . the chances of a happy climate and an innate vivacity of tempérament likcwisc hâve their cicar importance in onc région as in the other. Onc may speculate, too, on the possible effects of the circumstance that for considérable periods in the epoch with which \vc are concern-cd womcn - Queen T'amar in tlic East, in the West Eleanor of A(iuitaine and her diili^hter Marie, Gountess of Champagne -- occupicd positions of the greatest prominence. But the question must obviousiy be pursued further than tilis, and we may now turn to a considération of the several quarters in which the origins of the Amour Courtois of the West hâve cominonlv been sought. Thèse are fixe in number and singularly diverse in character: the Ars Amotoria of Ovid; the growth in popularity of the cuit of tlie Vir-gin, which, so it is argued, wrought in time a révolution in the manncr in which woliien werc regarded; tliat long-flourisiling liercsv wliieli lias at variolis times and in varions places been known as Manichaeanisni, Bogomilisiii. and C'.\~ tharism; the Moorish socicty oF Andallisia, esta-blished so relatively close to tlie Provence wlicre the troubadours with their code of I.DVC first appear; and Neo-Platonisin, familiar to tlie Wcsi in Erigcna's translation of tlie Pseudo - Diolivsius, sensc, tlie inihience of Ovid is a glance al the liandhook for mentioued aiJOve. tlie J)(' Ai'lc is eiiougli to convince one on it is not easv to coiiiprcliend Ilow Ovid's sophisticatcd verses coiild liave sei'v-cd, eitlier directiv or indirectiy, as a source of genuine inspiration to tlie troubadours, tlie Minnes;iuger, and Slich narrative poets as Chrétien de Troyes and Ci0ttfried von Strassburg. Tlie cil'ect of tlie iiicrcasing popularity of the cuit of the Virgin is more difficult to assess, but Iliere seems to be littic in the imagery employed l)y the pocts undcr considération to siiggest siicli an influence. Tt lias indecd l)('cii assertcd tlial .lau-frc Rudcl's famous "Beloved in a distant land". to wlücli référence lias aircady been mude. signifies tlie Virgin (.Tciiisalein is anotlier identification) - but the spéculation lacks any kind of support.

Tlie Manichacan argiinient lias been put for-ward witli much force l)v M. de Piougeniont in Ilis inost interesting book. "T/Ainour et l'Occident". It is a fact tliat tlie Manichaean-iilinded Cathuri and Ilie ti-oiibadonrs lluiirislied at tlif saine lime and in the sume place, and werc iin'm-bers togetlier of tliat distinctive Provençal civilisation wliieli was dcstroycd by the Albigensian Crusade. Some of the litterances of tlie troubadours hâve indecd a cicarly Manichacan implication. Thus Daude de Pradas tells us, "Hc wlio would hâve entire possession of 1ns lady knows nothing of the service of Love. No longer is it Amour Courtois if it bc of the body, or if the lady yield herself in récompense. A man should dccm hiluself King of Castille if lie reecive a ring or a ribbon." Ciliilliem Montanhagol puts the matter sliceinctiv: "Ont of l.ove cornes chast-ity."

Yct tilis view cannot be considered typical. Capellaniis, an antliority not to bc disregarded, would hâve hand noue of it: Bernard Venta-dour and many of his pcers sing of a love which clearly secks a normal gratification of the sensés, and that which inspires slich lierocs of romances as Tristan and Lancelot is of the same usual, if in their case higlily mannered, character.

Tliese tlii-ec llypotliescs, tlien, would appear to provide inadéquate explanations of the develop-ment of Provençal Amour Courtoin. Evcn if thcy scemed more cogent, however, tlicy would be of littic assistance in our présent inqlliry.

the daims of tlic Moors to liave called forth the verse of the troubadours hâve been urged many times since Warton piiblislicd Ilis Historif of Enfftish Poetnf in 1785 - if not frorn an evcn earlier date. In 1795 Herder asscrtcd categoric-ally that chivalry and Amour Courtois as known in the West werc of Moorisli provenance, and in the next ccntiiry Stendhal was to write in his "De l'Amour" "C'est sous la tente noirâtre de TArabe-Bedouin (m'il faut chercher le modèle et la patrie du véritable amour" - - and to maintain that tilis "véritable amour" had arrived in Western Christendoni by way of the Therian penin-sula.

Tn récent years the importance of the Moorish contribution tn the art of the troubadours has been rated higlily by, among others, Ecker and Nyki. and assessed more calitiousiy hy Errante and Denomy. tlie lutter of ^^011], T may observe, is however inclincd to think tliat Aviccnna's Trentise ou Loue may hâve plavcd its part in the dcvclopment of Amour Courtois.

At tilis point the attractive hypothesis of the hurgeoning of a cuit of Frauendienst in tlic Christian and martial societics of both France and (leorgia being the result of the stimulating impact oF Musiim civilisation présents itself. Tliere is indecd no (luestion tliat the impress of Tsiainic culture on Biist'aveli is strong. the Prologue netlially tliough, as it would scern, without any justification claims a Persian original for tlie work, and in tlic narrative référence is made to Oays. tlie distraught lover of the T.fiiln n>n-llnjnuu of his elder contemporary and fellow-Transcaucasian Nixami, the state-ment in tlie Prologue, "Tn the Arabie, tongue they call tlic lover "madman" (referring of course to tlie mahiuli of which mijnuri is. as lias aircady been observed, ;i geoi-giaiiisation) -- doubtiess Libinces at tlie sauie poein. Biist'aveli aiso speaks of Bustam, the hero of ilie Sl»itmii.w(, and. of the Snliiiiiaii wlioso stol'y ^'ns liitl'i' lo IK' iiindv lainolis by Jailli. More tliaii tilis, on no less thaii three occasJons hc compares the expériences of his principle characters witli those of Vis an(l l^amin, the lovers in tliat Visrumiani whicli lias aiready been referred to as a Georgian translation from a Persian original, an(l which a number of scliolars liave lickl to be tlie ultimate source of the legend of Trfistan and Iseult, in which connexion onc of them, Golther, committed hirnself to the imposing statement, "Die lUtterrom.ine haben ihre Heimat nicht bel den brittischen Vol-kern wie noch allgemcin gclehrt wird, sondern im Orient".

Tholigli attractively comprehensive, slich a "Mllsiim" theory woiild, howcvcr, be open to gr<1ve objections. In the flrst place, even slich a staunch believer in the significance of the Moor-ish contribution to the poetry of Europe as Ecker readily admits that in Spain distinctive reslilts werc produced by racial and cuitliral blendings, and while wc niay agrée that the debt of the Provençals to such Andalusian writers as Abu Hazm and lbn Zaïdun can be a matter for argument, no-one, slirely, woiild maîntain in so many words that the culture which in the tenth and eleventh centuries centred on Cordoba was in any way typical of médiéval Perso-Arabian civilisation. Nor, for ail the Persian cololiring of Vep'khis-tqao!i(mi, can onc flnd anything in the condllct of its lieroes - still less, if possible, in that of its mettlesome licroincs - reminiscent of Nizami's Majnun, or indeed of any otiier figure in Persian literature.

Our fifth hypothesis, tliat whicli seeks for the origins of chivalric love priinarily in the diffusion of Neo-Platonic habits of tliought, appears to me to be the most liopefui, althoiigli mucli more investigation will bc required before tlierc can be any question of the matter's being satis-factorily proved. As regards the West, l shall oniy repeat that by the period with which we (ire concerned Neo-Plntonism hnd long heen fainiliar Iliroiigli Kl•igcn;l's translation of the Pseudo-Dionysius, aiid point ont hat the général temper of Western thought was still Platonic, Aristotle not yet liaviiig been reccived.

On the other side tlie issue is a good dcal clearer. By the tinie of T'amar Geoi'gia was possesscd of an intellectual tradition of long standing, based on a number of iiioiiasterics scat-tered throligh the région of tlie Eastern Mediter-rancan, most notably on tlie famolis house on Mount Athos wliieli llad been folinded at the end of tlie tenth ccntiiry. In tilis tradition oiie of tlie most prominent éléments was a reiiiarkably vigorous streâm of Neo-Platonic thoiiglit, the most distinguished contriblition to wliieli came from the encyclopaedically crudité jolui Petristi. Rlist'aveli's pocin, which iiicidentally contains two références to tlie Pselido-Dionysilis, seems to me to be satlirated in tlie atmosphère of this philosophising - to wliieli indeed legend would directiy expose him, as a sojolirner at tlic Athos monastery - in very iiiiicli tlic siime manner as the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney (a work witli which, in my view, Vep'khis-tqaosani lias much in common) - is saturated w^ith the Platonism of the Renaissance.

lt will be évident that in this paper it lias not been my design to put forward any confident and cicar-cut conclusions, lîathcr lias it been my liope to induce otiiei-s to pursuc in fieids of Oriental study wliieli niay well lie quite beyond my own compétence, tlie quest for more évidence which may bc brought to bcar lipon the problein of the origin and developmcnt of this strange doctrine of romantic love. the scarch is not, l think, withont its importance, for althoiigli in its original guise Amour C.onrlois did not for long survive in citlier East or West, its influence pcrsistcd, often in fornis more sinis-ter than any its doubtiess carefree formiilator.s colild liave dreamed of, and is witli lis still.

R. H. STEVENSON de l'Université de Cambridge