Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Among the Nightmare Lovers of Hades
- 1 Eliot as Revolutionary
- 2 Goethe and Modernism: The Dream of Anachronism in Goethe's Roman Elegies
- 3 Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano
- 4 Does Time Exist?
- 5 The Age of Authenticity: An American Poet in England
- 6 Whitman and Wilde in Camden
- 7 Dangerous Thoughts, Puzzling Responses
- 8 Scaling the Wall
- 9 Mass Death and Resurrection: Notes on Contemporary, Mostly American, Jewish Fiction
- 10 Rilke, Einstein, Freud and the Orpheus Mystery
- 11 Shrouds Aplenty (on poems of Janowitz, et al)
- 12 Ambushes of Amazement (on poems of Wakoski)
- 13 Dangerous and Steep (on poems of Jacobsen)
- 14 Small Touching Skill (on poems of Ponsot)
- 15 Language Mesh (on Paul Celan)
- 16 Sweet Extra (on poems of Cuddihy, Ray)
- 17 Maze of the Original (on translating poetry)
- 18 Approaching the Medieval Lyric
- 19 Dark Passage (on poems of Stafford)
- 20 Mistress of Sorrows (on Ingeborg Bachmann)
- 21 The Innocence of a Mirror (on poems of Oliver)
- 22 Peskily Written (on Sade)
- 23 Is There Sex after Sappho?
- 24 Saving One's Skin (on medieval poetry)
- 25 Brilliant White Shadow (on poems and prose of Saba)
- 26 Serpent's Tale (on Minoan archeology)
- 27 How Honest Was Cellini?
- 28 The Poetry of No Compromises (on poems of Rehder)
- 29 Assigning Names (on poems of Nurkse)
- 30 History and Ethics: Bruni's History of Florence
- 31 Virgil's Aeneid Made New (a translation by Robert Fagles)
- 32 Painting with Poetry (on the poems of Annie Boutelle)
- 33 Vampires and Freedom (on the work of Erik Butler)
- 34 How the West Learned to Read and Write: Silent Reading and the Invention of the Sonnet
- List of Publications
- Index
24 - Saving One's Skin (on medieval poetry)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 April 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Among the Nightmare Lovers of Hades
- 1 Eliot as Revolutionary
- 2 Goethe and Modernism: The Dream of Anachronism in Goethe's Roman Elegies
- 3 Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano
- 4 Does Time Exist?
- 5 The Age of Authenticity: An American Poet in England
- 6 Whitman and Wilde in Camden
- 7 Dangerous Thoughts, Puzzling Responses
- 8 Scaling the Wall
- 9 Mass Death and Resurrection: Notes on Contemporary, Mostly American, Jewish Fiction
- 10 Rilke, Einstein, Freud and the Orpheus Mystery
- 11 Shrouds Aplenty (on poems of Janowitz, et al)
- 12 Ambushes of Amazement (on poems of Wakoski)
- 13 Dangerous and Steep (on poems of Jacobsen)
- 14 Small Touching Skill (on poems of Ponsot)
- 15 Language Mesh (on Paul Celan)
- 16 Sweet Extra (on poems of Cuddihy, Ray)
- 17 Maze of the Original (on translating poetry)
- 18 Approaching the Medieval Lyric
- 19 Dark Passage (on poems of Stafford)
- 20 Mistress of Sorrows (on Ingeborg Bachmann)
- 21 The Innocence of a Mirror (on poems of Oliver)
- 22 Peskily Written (on Sade)
- 23 Is There Sex after Sappho?
- 24 Saving One's Skin (on medieval poetry)
- 25 Brilliant White Shadow (on poems and prose of Saba)
- 26 Serpent's Tale (on Minoan archeology)
- 27 How Honest Was Cellini?
- 28 The Poetry of No Compromises (on poems of Rehder)
- 29 Assigning Names (on poems of Nurkse)
- 30 History and Ethics: Bruni's History of Florence
- 31 Virgil's Aeneid Made New (a translation by Robert Fagles)
- 32 Painting with Poetry (on the poems of Annie Boutelle)
- 33 Vampires and Freedom (on the work of Erik Butler)
- 34 How the West Learned to Read and Write: Silent Reading and the Invention of the Sonnet
- List of Publications
- Index
Summary
The news has long been out: behind the serene facades of medieval churches in the streets and taverns of high- medieval European towns, cities and villages consecrated to Christian prayers and ideals, there daily erupted among scholars and poets— in the thirteenth century the two were often the same— such a spate of drinking, wenching, fucking, dicing, pummeling, singing, battering, shrieking, moaning and celebrating as has seldom been seen anywhere on earth. Scholarship incited clarity rather than murk. It in turn provoked lyrics as brash as clerical hypocrisy, as refreshing as cheer in winter. Golias, the “Archpoet,” himself of the twelfth century, may have proclaimed his “fierce indignation” over his poverty, but he also rejoiced in his “levity,” his love of Venus, or “a young girl's beauty” and his determination, now that “the soul in me is dead,” to “save [my] skin.”
Among medieval poet- scholars, saving one's skin was the grand theme. A churchly post would do. It guaranteed fine food and a dry bed. Often, though, the singer had already achieved his plummy appointment. His selfpromotion was a pose to elicit sympathy for his persona. Impoverishment was a medal. What is more, not all of the “Goliard” carousers in Latin— for most of their poetry was composed to be sung on the exquisite instrument of succinct and rhyming medieval Latin— were wandering rogues, despite their interesting notoriety which over a century of modern scholarship has failed to disturb.
Their drinking and wenching were real enough. Bacchus and promiscuity, satire and mild bawdiness, coupled with an effusive praise of springtime flowers, might camouflage the universal damp. They might brighten the candle- dim long tables on which the steins of mead and ale clashed in merriment against official primness. They might even open one's mind to liberal ideas of sin. “To drink and wench and play at dice/ Seem to me no such mighty sins,” writes one poet (they were nearly all anonymous), tossing his insolence into his Credo, or death- bed confession, to shock his attending priest.
Rooting in the pagan past was no vice. Horace had coaxed the fragrance of peonies and the white Euganean hills clad in robes of roses into his odes. Ovid's Art of Love was known to all educated people. Its sexual candor was overlooked on the grounds of its superior style.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Poetry and FreedomDiscoveries in Aesthetics, 1985–2018, pp. 151 - 154Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2020