NEMANJA: SMIRENOUMLJE

ARNAUT DANIEL

...he was lauded by Ezra Pound as the greatest poet to have ever lived...

IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

No one travels
Along this way but I,
This autumn evening.
Basho

Frank Sinatra, Autumn Leaves





Quan chai la fuelha
dels aussors entressims
el freg s'erguelha
don seca 'l vais e'l vims,
del dous refrims
vei sordezir la bruelha:
mais ieu sui prims
d'Amor qui que s'en tuelha.

Tot quan es gela,
mas ieu no puesc frezir
qu'amors novela
mi fa'l cor reverdir;
non dei fremir
qu'Amors mi cuebr'em cela
em fai tenir
ma valor em capdela

Bona es vida
pus Joia la mante
quei tals n'escrida
qui ges non vai tam be;
no sai de re
coreillar m'escarida
que per ma fe
de mielhs ai ma partida.

De drudaria
no'm sai de re blasmar,
qu'autrui paria
trastorn en reirazar;
geb as sa par
no sai doblar m'amia
q'una non par
que segonda no'l sia.

No vuelh s'asemble
mos cors ab autr'amor
si qu'eu ja'l m'emble
ni volva'l cap alhor:
no ai paor
que ja selh de Pontremble
n'aia gensor
de lieis ni que la semble.

Tant es per genta
selha que'm te joios
las gensors trenta
vens de belhas faisos:
ben es razos
doncas que mos chans senta
quar es tan pros
e de ric pretz manenta.

Vai t'en chanzos,
denan lei ti presenta,
que s'ill no fos
no'i meir'Arnautz s'ententa.



When the leaf sings
from the highest peaks
and the cold raises,
withering the kernel and willow,
of its sweet refrains
I see the wood grow dumb;
but I'm close to love,
whosoever might leave it.
Everything is iced,
but I cannot freeze
because a love affair
makes my heart lush again;
I should not shake,
because Love covers and hides me
and makes me preserve
my merit, and leads me.
Life is good,
if joy holds it,
though some, whose things
do not go well, complain;
I don't know how
to accuse my lot
since, by my troth,
I have my share of the best.
As of flirting,
I don't know what to blame,
and of the others
I spurn the togetherness;
since, of all her peers,
no one is like mine,
since there doesn't seem to be one
who comes not after her.
I don't want my heart
to join another love
lest she flees me
and turns her head elsewhere:
I have no fear
that even the one from Pontremoli
has one worthier
of her, or that so seems so.
She's so kind,
the one that keeps me in joy
that the kindest thirty
she wins by her fair look:
that's a good reason
for her to hear my songs,
because she's so noble
and so preciously deserving.
Go, then, song,
show before her:
if it were not so,
you wouldn't deserve Arnaut's toil.

Djivan Gasparyan



Arnaut Daniel


Arnaut Daniel was an Occitan troubadour of the 13th century, praised by Dante as "il miglior fabbro" (the best craftsman/creator, literally "the best smith") and called "Grand Master of Love" by Petrarch. In the 20th century he was lauded by Ezra Pound as the greatest poet to have ever lived in his work The Spirit of Romance (1910).

According to one vida, Daniel was born of a noble family at the castle of Ribérac in Périgord; however, the scant contemporary sources point to him being a jester with pernicious economic troubles. Raimon de Durfort calls him "a student, ruined by dice and shut-the-box". He was the inventor of the sestina, a song of six stanzas of six lines each, with the same end words repeated in every stanza, though arranged in a different and intricate order. Longfellow claims he was also the author of the metrical romance of Lancillotto, or Launcelot of the Lake, but this claim is completely unsubstantiated; Dante's reference to Daniel as the author of prose di romanzi ("proses of romance") remains, therefore, a mystery.

In Dante's The Divine Comedy, Arnaut Daniel appears as a character doing penance in Purgatory for lust. He responds in Occitan to the narrator's question about who he is:

«Tan m'abellis vostre cortes deman,
qu'ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire.
Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;
consiros vei la passada folor,
e vei jausen lo joi qu'esper, denan.
Ara vos prec, per aquella valor
que vos guida al som de l'escalina,
sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor»
(Purg., XXVI, 140-147)
Translation:

"Your courteous question pleases me so,
that I cannot and will not hide from you.
I am Arnaut, who weeping and singing go;
Contrite I see the folly of the past,
And, joyous, I foresee the joy I hope for one day.
Therefore do I implore you, by that power
Which guides you to the summit of the stairs,
Remember my suffering, in the right time."
In homage to these lines which Dante gave to Daniel, the European edition of T.S. Eliot's second volume of poetry was titled Ara Vos Prec. Eliot's poem The Waste Land opens and closes with references to Dante and Daniel. The Waste Land is dedicated to Pound as "il miglior fabbro" which is what Dante had called Daniel. The poem also contains a reference to Canto XXVI in the line "Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina" ("Then hid him in the fire that purifies them"), which immediately follows them in to end Dante's Canto, and appears in Eliot's closing section of The Waste Land.

Edith Piaf, Autumn Leaves



Arnaut's Xth canto contains the lines that Pound claimed were "the three lines by which Daniel is most commonly known" (The Spirit of Romance, p. 36):

"leu sui Arnaut qu'amas l'aura
E chatz le lebre ab lo bou
E nadi contra suberna"
Translation:

"I am Arnaut who loves the wind,
And chases the hare with the ox,
And swims against the torrent."
There are sixteen extant lyrics of Arnaut Daniel; there is music for at least one of them, but it was composed at least a century after the poet's death by an anonymous author. No original melody has survived.

Bonustrack

Kad se bolje pogleda, ovaj Arnaut je lipov kurac. Nema to veze s poezijom. E moj Ezra, da nema onih sovolikih arhajskih Yeux Glauques, i tebe bih ja nabio na - križ!
Usporedimo daklem Arnaut Daniela s izistinskim il miglior fabbreom, pesnikom i humanistom s kraja XX. veka, Carem Nemanjom. Donosimo ovde sada već klasično delo zrele faze, čuvene 'Jagode':