Mimesis (20 page)

His style is wholly different from that of the authors of late antiquity, even the Christians among them. A complete change has taken place since the days of Ammianus and Augustine. Of course, as has often been observed, it is a decadence, a decline in culture and
verbal disposition; but it is not only that. It is a reawakening of the directly sensible. Both style and treatment of content had become rigid in late antiquity. An excess of rhetorical devices, and the somber atmosphere which enveloped the events of the time, give the authors of late antiquity, from Tacitus and Seneca to Ammianus, a something that is labored, artificial, overstrained. With Gregory the rigidity is dissolved. He has many horrible things to relate; treason, violence, manslaughter are everyday occurrences; but the simple and practical vivacity with which he reports them prevents the formation of that oppressive atmosphere which we find in the late Roman writers and which even the Christian writers can hardly escape. When Gregory writes, the catastrophe has occurred, the Empire has fallen, its organization has collapsed, the culture of antiquity has been destroyed. But the tension is over. And it is more freely and directly, no longer haunted by insoluble tasks, no longer burdened by unrealizable pretensions, that Gregory’s soul faces living reality, ready to apprehend it as such and to work in it practically. Let us look once again at the sentence with which Ammianus begins the narrative which we discussed in the preceding chapter:
Dum has exitiorum communium clades
, etc. Such a sentence surveys and masters a many-faceted situation, as well as supplying in addition a clear connection between what came first and what followed. But how labored it is and how rigid! Is it not a relief to turn from it to Gregory’s beginning:
Gravia tunc inter Toronicos bella civilia surrexerunt …?
To be sure, his
tunc
is only a loose and vague connective, and the language as a whole is unpolished, for
bella civilia
is certainly not the proper term for the disorderly brawls and thefts and killings which he has in mind. But things come to Gregory directly; he no longer needs to force them into the straitjacket of the elevated style; they grow or even run wild, no longer laced into the apparatus of the Diocletian-Constantinian reform, which brought only a new rule, being too late to bring a new life. Sensory reality, which, in Ammianus, where it was burdened by the fetters of tyrannical rules and the periodic style, could show itself only spectrally and metaphorically, can unfold freely in Gregory. A vestige of the old tyranny remains in his ambition to write literary Latin at all costs. The vernacular is not yet a usable literary vehicle; it obviously cannot yet satisfy the most modest requirements of literary expression. But it exists as a language which is spoken, which is used to deal with everyday reality, and as such it can be sensed through Gregory’s Latin.
His style reveals to us a first early trace of the reawakening sensory apprehension of things and events, and this trace is all the more valuable to us because so few texts that can be used for our investigation have survived from his period and indeed from the entire second half of the first millennium.

5

ROLAND AGAINST GANELON

LVIII
737
Tresvait la noit e apert la clere albe …

Par mi cel host (sonent menut cil graisle).

Li emperere mult fierement chevalchet.

740
“Seignurs barons,” dist li emperere Carles,

“Veez les porz e les destreiz passages:

Kar me jugez ki ert en la rereguarde.”

Guenes respunt: “Rollant, cist miens fillastre:

N’avez baron de si grant vasselage.”

745
Quant l’ot li reis, fierement le reguardet,

Si li ad dit: “Vos estes vifs diables.

El cors vos est entree mortel rage.

E ki serat devant mei en l’ansguarde?”

Guenes respunt: “Oger de Denemarche:

750
N’avez baron ki mielz de lui la facet.”

LIX
Li quens Rollant, quant il s’oït juger,

Dunc ad parled a lei de chevaler:

“Sire parastre, mult vos dei aveir cher:

La rereguarde avez sur mei jugiet!

755
N’i perdrat Carles, li reis ki France tient,

Men escientre palefreid ne destrer,

Ne mul ne mule que deiet chevalcher,

Ne n’i perdrat ne runcin ne sumer

Que as espees ne seit einz eslegiet.”

760
Guenes respunt: “Veir dites, jol sai bien.”

LX
Quant ot Rollant qu’il ert en la rereguarde,

Ireement parlat a sun parastre:

“Ahi! culvert, malvais hom de put aire,

Quias le guant me caïst en la place,

765
Cume fist a tei le bastun devant Carle?”

LXI
“Dreiz emperere,” dist Rollant le baron,

“Dunez mei l’arc que vos tenez el poign.

Men escientre nel me reproverunt

Que il me chedet cum fist a Guenelun

770
De sa main destre, quant reçut le bastun.”

Li empereres en tint sun chef enbrunc,

Si duist sa barbe e detoerst sun gernun,

Ne poet muer que des oilz ne plurt.

LXII
Anpres iço i est Neimes venud,

775
Meillor vassal n’out en la curt de lui,

E dist al rei: “Ben l’avez entendut;

Li quens Rollant, il est mult irascut.

La rereguarde est jugee sur lui:

N’avez baron ki jamais la remut.

780
Dunez li l’arc que vos avez tendut,

Si li truvez ki trés bien li aiut!”

Li reis li dunet e Rollant l’a reçut.

(
LVIII
737
Night goes and bright dawn appears …

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Proudly the Emperor rides on horseback.

740
“Lords Barons,” says Emperor Charles,

“See those gaps and those narrow passages;

Now decide for me who shall be in the rearguard.”

Ganelon answers: “Roland, my stepson:

You have no baron of such great prowess.”

745
When the King hears this, he looks at him fiercely,

And thus he spoke to him: “You are a living devil.

Into your body mortal rage has entered.

And who will be before me in the vanguard?”

Ganelon answers: “Ogier the Dane:

750
You have no baron who would do it better than he.”

LIX
Count Roland, when he hears himself chosen,

Then spoke as befits a knight:

“Sir stepfather, I must hold you very dear:

The rearguard you have adjudged to me!

755
Thereby shall Charles, the king who holds France, lose,

If I know rightly, neither palfrey nor charger,

Neither mule nor hinny which he is to ride,

Nor shall he lose thereby either hack or sumpter

Which has not first been fought for with sword.”

760
Ganelon answers: “You speak true, I know it well.”

LX
When Roland hears that he will be in the rearguard,

Angrily he spoke to his stepfather:

“Ah! wretch, bad man of stinking birth,

Did you think the glove would drop from my hand in this place

765
As the staff did for you before Charles?”

LXI
“Just Emperor,” said Roland the baron,

“Give me the bow which you hold in your clenched hand.

If I know rightly, none shall reproach me

That it dropped from my hand as it did for Ganelon,

770
From his right hand, when he received the staff.”

The Emperor kept his head bowed,

Stroked his beard and twisted his mustache,

He cannot keep his eyes from weeping.

LXII
After this Naimes came there,

775
There was no better vassal than he at court,

And he said to the King: “Well have you heard it;

Count Roland, he is very angry.

The rearguard is allotted to him:

You have no baron who could (would?) change this.

780
Give him the bow which you have drawn,

And find him some to help him very well!”

The King gives it to him, and Roland received it.)

These lines are from the Oxford manuscript of the
Chanson de Roland
. They relate the appointment of Roland to a dangerous post, that of commander of the rearguard of the Frankish army, which is on its way back through the Pyrenees after the campaign in Spain. The choice is made at the suggestion of Roland’s stepfather Ganelon. The manner of it corresponds to an earlier episode, the choice of Ganelon for the post of Charles’s emissary to Marsilius, King of the Saracens, at the suggestion of Roland (ll. 274ff.). Both occurrences
are rooted in an old enmity between the two barons, who are at odds over matters of money and property and seek to destroy one another (l. 3758). Any emissary to Marsilius, it was known from earlier experiences, was in great danger of losing his life. The events of Ganelon’s mission showed that it would have cost him too his life, if he had not proposed to the Saracen King the treacherous bargain which at the same time would satisfy his own hatred and thirst for revenge: he promises the King that he will deliver into his hands the rearguard of the Frankish army, with Roland and his twelve closest friends, the douzepers, whom he represents (rightly) to be the war party at the Frankish court. He has now come back to the Frankish camp with Marsilius’ insincere offer of peace and submission. The return of the army to France has begun. And Ganelon, to carry out the plan he has agreed upon with Marsilius, still has to arrange that Roland shall be appointed to the rearguard. This takes place in the lines quoted above.

The occurrence is related in five strophes (
laisses
). The first contains Ganelon’s proposal and Charles’s immediate reaction. The second, third, and fourth are concerned with Roland’s attitude toward the proposal. The fifth takes up Naimes’s intervention and the final appointment of Roland by the Emperor. The first laisse begins with an introduction of three lines, three paratactically juxtaposed principal clauses which describe the early-morning departure of the army (the subject immediately preceding was the past night and a dream of the Emperor’s). Next comes the scene of the proposal, which is given in the form of a double exchange of speech and rejoinder: demand that a choice be made, reply (with proposal), counterquestion, and counterreply. Both pairs of speeches are fitted into the simplest stereotyped frame (
dist, respunt, dit, respunt
). After the first pair, they are interrupted by line 745, the only one containing a brief temporal hypotaxis. Everything else is in the form of principal clauses, juxtaposed and opposed like blocks, with a paratactic independence still further emphasized by mention of the speaking subject each time (especially striking, 740,
li emperere Carles
, although he is also the subject of the preceding sentence). Let us now examine the individual speeches. Charles’s demand contains a causal train of reasoning: since we are to traverse a difficult terrain, choose for me. … But in keeping with the Emperor’s proudly confident demeanor (
mult fierement
), it is presented paratactically in two principal clauses, a demonstrative clause (see the difficult terrain) and an imperative clause. In answer—like a gauntlet flung down—comes Ganelon’s proposal, again a parataxis,
with three members: first the name, then a reference, filled with triumphant revenge, to the kinship (
cist miens fillastre
, as a reminiscence of the corresponding
mis parastre
, l. 277, and l. 287,
ço set hom ben que jo sui tis parastres
), and finally the supporting argument with its conventional praise, no doubt uttered in a tone of scornful irony. After this we have the brief dramatic pause with Charles’s fierce look. His reply—likewise purely paratactic in form—begins with violent expressions which show that he sees through Ganelon’s plan, but also, as is later confirmed by Naimes, that he has in his power no effective means of rejecting the proposal. Perhaps we may interpret his concluding question as a sort of counterattack: I need Roland for the vanguard! If this interpretation is correct, Ganelon at any rate disposes of the counterattack at once, and the identity of structure between his second speech and his first emphasizes the slashing abruptness of his demeanor. His position is apparently very strong, and he is quite certain of victory. In syntax too, this laisse answers blow with blow.

To this keenness and finality of statement there is a certain contrast in the fact that many things in the scene are not particularly clear. We can hardly be expected to assume that the Emperor is bound by the proposal of a single one of his barons. In fact, in similar cases elsewhere (for example in the previous case of Ganelon’s appointment, ll. 278-9 and 321-2; see also l. 243), explicit mention is made of the assent of the entire army. It may be conjectured that in the present instance the same assent is given without its being mentioned, or that the Emperor knows that there can be no doubt that it would be given. But even so, even if our text conceals a portion of the tradition—the fact that Roland has enemies among the Franks, who would be glad to see him given a dangerous assignment and removed from the Emperor’s entourage, possibly for fear his influence might reverse the decision to end the war—even so it is puzzling that the Emperor should have failed to make arrangements beforehand for a solution agreeable to him, so that his call for a choice puts him in a position from which he knows no escape. He must after all be aware of what currents of thought prevail among his men, and in addition he has been warned by a dream. This connects with another enigma: how well does he see through Ganelon, how well does he know beforehand what is going to happen? We cannot assume that he is informed of Ganelon’s plan in all its details. But if he is not, his reaction to the proposal (
vos estes vifs diables
, etc.) seems exaggerated. The Emperor’s entire position is unclear; and despite all the authoritative definiteness which he manifests
from time to time, he seems as it were somnambulistically paralyzed. The important and symbolic position—almost that of a Prince of God—in which he appears as the head of all Christendom and as the paragon of knightly perfection, is in strange contrast to his impotence. Although he hesitates, although he even sheds tears, although he foresees the impending disaster to some not clearly definable extent, he cannot prevent it. He is dependent upon his barons, and among them there is none who can change the situation at all (or should we say, who will? That depends on how we interpret line 779). In the same way, later on, at Ganelon’s trial, he would be obliged to leave his nephew Roland’s death unavenged were it not that, finally, a single knight is prepared to defend his cause. It is possible to find various explanations for all this: for example, the weakness of the central power in the feudal order of society, a weakness which, though it had hardly developed by Charlemagne’s time, was certainly prevalent later, at the time when the
Chanson de Roland
originated; then, too, semireligious, semilegendary concepts of the kind found with many royal figures in the courtly romance, concepts which, to the personification of the great Emperor, add an admixture of passive, martyrlike, and somnambulistically paralyzed traits. Furthermore, his relation to Ganelon seems to contain elements of the Christ-Judas pattern.