The Song of Roland/Note on Technique

by George Saintsbury

Note on Technique

Carles li reis, nostre emperere magne
Set anz tus pleins ad ested en Espaigne,
Tresqu’en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne;
N’i ad castel ki devant lui remaigne,
Mur ni citet n’i est remés à fraindre,
Fors Sarraguce, k’est en une muntaigne.
Li reis Marsilie la tient, ki Deu n’enaimet,
Mahummet sert e Apollin reclaimet;
Ne s’poet guarder que mals ne li ataignet.

It is considerably more than forty years since the present writer first read the Chanson de Roland in the original, of which the above lines form the first section, and, up to a few months ago, he would have said, though in the interval he has read it often in various forms, that a satisfactory modernisation or translation of it was so difficult as to be nearly impossible, and that such an enterprise in English was the darkest tower of all. Among the considerations which determined this opinion we have nothing, in this particular place, to do with those affecting the spirit of the poem. It is with the language to some, though the least extent, with the prosodic character mainly, that it is proposed here to deal.

The above specimen of the original itself should make it tolerably easy for any one who can get rid of that singular terror of the unknown which still seems to beset Englishmen as to Old English and even Frenchmen as to Old French, to see what has to be done. There is a language, somewhat rough and uncut, but with the grandeur of uncut precious stones about it, and of a remarkable sonority. There is a measure, very exact and possessed of more definitely metrical rhythm than modern French poetry usually aims at. And lastly, there is the pre-eminent characteristic of the lines of this measure, each of which is strikingly “single-moulded,” as the word has been used of English—that is to say, held up at the end, and constructed all through so as to run to that end and stop. This arrangement is neither “blank”—that is to say disregardful of, and in fact shunning, any agreement of vowel sound at the end; nor rhymed—that is to say, constructed with couplet or some other arrangement so as to effect consonance of sound ending; nor stanzaed—that is to say, shaped in corresponding sets of rhymed or even unrhymed verses. It consists of bundles—to use the least flattering term—of lines—bundles quite arbitrary in size or number, but closely connected by assonance—that is to say, identity of vowel sound in the last syllable, but independent of the agreement in consonantal clothing which rhyme requires.

Now, the difficulty of competition under the first of these heads—that of language—rests upon all competitors in modernising or translating, and indeed is only an intense form of the general difficulty of translation itself. I do not propose to say much about it, though I think Captain Scott Moncrieff has wrestled well with it. It is the metrical and generally prosodic character which is so specially hard to retain. Translators have, naturally enough, tried all sorts of outflankings in their attack; but the worst point of these is that the adventure is not achieved, only evaded. If you do not convey the steady, fearless, ruthless tramp of the single line repeating itself; if you fail to reproduce the dropping fire of the assonance with its strangely combined advantage of repetition in the individual laisse or bundle, and freedom from monotony both in character and in quantity of sound in the several laisses—you do not give the effect of the Chanson de Roland to those who do know it, while you give something else to those who do not. Prose, even rhythmed prose is a flat refusal; blank verse loses half, and the most characteristic half, of the effect; couplet substitutes something foreign and very difficultly reconcilable; regular stanza something more of the same kind; while rhyme in any form alters, and in the case of the longer laisses has a terrible tendency, both in French and English, to “overdraw its account.” The very latest French version, M. Henri Clamard’s (of which a notice by the present writer appeared in the Athenæum for September 5th, 1919) tries different rhymes, some of them rather free according to orthodox standards, in the same laisse. But this not merely alters, but actually destroys, the music of the single assonance throughout.

In his directer grapple with the problem Captain Scott Moncrieff has had advantages in regard to the single line which few Frenchmen, except Agrippa d’Aubigné and Victor Hugo, have ever been able to reach. Our earlier Elizabethans gave us the single-moulded line in perfection: and the thud of the iamb (Marlowe trochaically scanned provokes a mixture of laugh and shudder) rises to the final assonance note with perfect effect. But, of course, it is in the attaining and retaining of that assonance note itself that the work, and the labour, and the crown of both lie.

I confess that, as I hinted at the beginning of this paper, I was, until very recently, under the impression that the attainment was difficult and the retainment impossible—first, owing to the peculiar obstacles to assonance in English, and secondly, because of its doubtfully agreeable effect even when obtained. If I say that Captain Scott Moncrieff has not wholly converted me, I shall only, I hope, be speaking with the frankness allowable between old professor and old student; if I add that he has brought me a long way towards conversion I am sure I use that other frankness which befits the scholar whether old or young. It seems to me that this is not merely in detail but in general effect, the most faithful version I have ever seen of the great Song that Turoldus did something absolutely uncertain with.^[1]

The obstacles to assonance in English, and its probable disagreeables, are many and various. In the first place (and no wise person will minimise or misunderstand this) we “have not proved it;” it has never been an accepted and familiar form with us. In the second, we know it best as a failure of something else—a slovenly or careless substitute for rhyme. Thirdly, there are certain stumbling-blocks hard to get over or avoid in the sound-habits (I never use the word phonetic if I can possibly help it) of English as a language. We are so fond of throwing back the accent that we have comparatively few words sounding fully on the ultimate. The habit of slurring vowel-sound, though not so usual with well educated and well-bred people as phoneticians seem to think, does to too great an extent deprive us of the sharp, full ringing effect that assonance requires, and that Old French, and Spanish of all times, afford. Lastly, there is the multiplicity,—valuable in itself and not to be sacrificed to any simplifying simpleton,—of our sound-values for the same vowel. All these are dangerous lions in the path (to vary the comparison), and some of them are disagreeable beasts as well as dangerous ones. Captain Scott Moncrieff has, I think, managed the stumbling blocks, and met the beasts, with a most creditable amount of skill and courage and with a very considerable success. He has had, of course, to avail himself of some licenses, none of them, however, unjustified by good precedent. He has availed himself of the accenting of finals like ’ing and ’eth which was common from Chaucer to Wyatt, and did not quite cease with Surrey as well as though not too often of Chaucerian “French accentuation” generally. Some slight archaisms in language pay a double debt, and therefore justify their own borrowing doubly. Nor does he always require these. I take for instance a sors of the honestest kind and light upon Stanza XC:—

“The Franks arise and stand upon their feet,”

in which no liberty of any kind is taken with rhythm, vocabulary or vowel-sound, and the effect of which is excellent.

One feature only I do not like, and that is furnished by the laisses in which the assonance is supplied by the penultimate: for instance, CXXX, where the end words are “battle,” “Charlès,” “vassal’s,” “wrathful,” “damage,” “army,” “hereafter,” “Aide,” “clasp you.” English is a very queer language—one of the few points in which foreigners are perhaps nearer the truth about it than some of its own children—and there are all sorts of perhaps unexpected and perhaps inexplicable things that it will not bear—a fact of which some students of its prosody seem specially ignorant. In this matter of assonance it is like some thoroughbreds. It is suspicious of the single assonance, and has to be carefully familiarised, whilst it simply bucks and lashes out at the double. At least so it seems to me.

But it also seems to me, if I may borrow the phrase by which, actually borrowing from Seneca, poor Ben Jonson got himself into such complicated trouble, that there is more—very much more—in this version to be praised than to be pardoned. It is quite certainly nearer to the original than any other version that I have read, and though this of itself would cover a multitude of sins there appear to me to be, in that region of technique with which it has been my privilege to deal, no multitude of sins at all and a good deal of virtue.

George Saintsbury.

1. Turoldus declinet. The Colophon of the Poem is a hopeless puzzle.