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Bertran de Born and Paratge in "B'em platz lo gais temps de pascor"

Statement of intent: I hope to explore the material grounding of lineage and honor in Betran de Born's canos "B'em platz lo gais temps de pascor" in this project.Thicker than Water:Bertran de Born’s Quest for Rebirth in “Be’m platz lo gais temps de pascor”To reach the castle at Quéribus, tourists climb a craggy, sandy path that weaves steeply up the mountainside. From outside, the castle looms darkly down at the viewer; from inside, it corners the inhabitant with its angled walls. Gérard Zuchetto begins to chant Bertran de Born’s “Be’m platz lo gais temps de pascor” and his voice echoes in an eerie, thin way. No one speaks. The song enters my ears from a distant, unknowable past, a past that does not belong to me. It speaks to a people rooted for generations in the landscape and feudal traditions of Occitania. In his 12th century canso “Be’m platz lo gais temps de pascor,” Bertran de Born wishes to revive a local pride in lineage and honor in battle in order to call his men to arms. In doing so, he posits the system of paratge as a means to Christ-like bodily resurrection through physical communion with both lovers and foes.“Be’m platz lo gais temps de pascor” speaks to Bertran de Born’s historically evidenced appetite for war. He made war with the count of Périgord, the count of Limoges, his brother Constantin, and with Richard the Lionheart during his time as châtelain of Hautefort (Zuchetto 1.) In much of his poetry, he sexualizes and glorifies battles and sieges, although he writes cansos as well as tensos. In Dante’s Inferno, Dante and Vergil see Bertran beheaded and forced to carry his own head forever as a punishment for sowing discord between Henry II Plantagenet and his son Henry the Young King (Alighieri 3.) “Be’m platz lo gais temps de pascor” expresses this drive to war-making through the lens of paratge, an Occitan word whose meanings include “peerage,” “natural order” and “birth.” In the canso, Bertran suggests that a return to honorable participation in battle will lead to a rebirth and revival of the values implicit in paratge.Bertran de Born’s narrative persona in “Be’m platz lo gais temps de pascor” witnesses both violent and sexual invasions of the human body. Fajardo-Acosta views the invasion and consumption of bodies as a communion of self and other: “[Cannibalism] achieves…the effacing of the boundary between subject and object” (Fajardo-Acosta 67.) The unity of two bodies in violent, consumptive contact bridges the gap created by seriality for Fajardo-Acosta. Frank situates troubadour poetry within a medieval naturalistic dualism of body and soul: “The distinction between body and spirit was lessened” (Frank 71-72.) Frank fits the secular eroticism of troubadour songs into a Thomistic dualist paradigm. For Rouben Cholakian, penetrating the castle tower to plead with the domna becomes a phallic play for power: “At the heart of the matter…is the unceasing gamble for mastery” (Cholakian 30.) The lady becomes a signifier of social status and the troubadour a social climber. However, Cholakian, Frank, and Fajardo-Acosta do not explicitly state that in participating in a communion with his enemy’s body, the narrator renews his commitment to the contract of paratge that binds him to his lineage and his community.Bertran’s narrator mimics the canso’s natureingang, or nature opening, in order to posit a revival of the system of paratge:B’em platz lo gais temps de pascorQue fai fuolhas e flors venir (1-2)Bertran mirrors the birdsong of a natureingang in line 3 in order to parallel the creation of a conventional canso, as well as that of the fin’amors usually expressed. However, he diverges from tradition in two ways: first by explicitly mentioning Easter in the opening line of the poem, then by introducing the imagery of war tents, armed knights, horses in line 7. Bertran’s songbird heralds the creation of war. He resolves the contrastive tension between the renewal of the land and song that springtime suggests and the destruction of life on the battlefield by alluding to Christ’s resurrection. Just as the landscape comes to life again each spring, Easter celebrates Christ’s revival every year. Christ’s resurrected body mirrors the structure of paratge, of the natural order of theological and social hierarchies, in its perpetual renewal in blood. Just as many Christians renew their faith by eating of the body and blood of Christ during communion, participants in the social order of paratge renew their commitment to their ancestry, land, and community by engaging in communion through battle. By consuming the enemy’s body in penetrating its integrity in battle, knights and other fighters avow their devotion to the place and people for whom they fight.             Bertran’s narrator’s communion with the body of the landscape and, correspondingly, with the body of his community also comes to light in the word “pascor.” In the ceremony of the Eucharist, believers partake of the body and blood of Christ. Similarly, Bertran suggests that the narrator comes into spiritual contact with these materials by partaking of the blood of his fallen enemy, which reflects the vein of Occitan feudal tradition in the context of the canso’s setting in Betran’s native Périgord. Just as those who participate in the Eucharist drink wine that becomes Christ’s blood, Bertran alludes to trees, leaves, and birds that become Périgord’s material essence, its landscape. In the springtime opening, Bertran imagines a revival of this basic substance, a renewal of the most key elements of Périgord’s tradition. The central placement of the word paratge in stanza IV, as well as Bertran’s references to components of it such as agradatge and ses temor, suggests that this system of courtly order forms the base of this material. Bertran posits paratge as the lifeblood of Périgord’s springtime renewal.In the sole physical exchange in “Be’m plai lo gais temps de pascor”, Bertran’s narrator extolls the communion of fighters’ bodies:e segre’l d’agradatgeque nuills hom non es re presatztro q’a mains colps pres e donatz (28-30)The plurality of negations in line 28 (“nuills,” “non,” “re”) creates an ambiguous subject-object relationship in order to demonstrate the need for a concrete code of conduct. The stress of the line falls on “re,” the most ambiguous term in the phrase: it could mean anything or nothing, like the French rien; it could mean “body” or even “meat.” The negations “nuills” and “non” that precede it open up a poetic and metrical space for a concrete object – they raise the question of what the man lacks. However, Bertran subverts this expectation by centering the line on the vacillating “re.” Because the word has so many meanings, it profoundly devalues the subject of the sentence. He cannot take part in communion with his enemy’s body or commune with his fellow men due to his conditional lack of respect: he must give and receive blows to be worth anything. The shifting “ren” acts as a lock to which only Bertran possesses the verbal key; he uses it to demonstrate the vacuum of courtly cultural structure that would come about without the rules of warfare. Once again, Bertran positions communion with one’s enemy in battle as the means to reviving the honor code of paratge.The knights within the lyric participate in communion through the interpenetration of their bodies in line 29. Knights must both receive and give violent blows before gaining respect as courtly men: “q’a mains colps pres e donatz” (29.) Once attacked, a knight must retaliate; inaction would suggest lack of dignity. However, to earn respect, one must also receive a blow. A knight must accept an invasion of his bodily space in order to become a man; he must accept the risk implicit in his role as a protector of the existing structure. Paratge becomes evident in this relatively equal exchange of blows: a knight can gain no honor fighting against someone who does not fight back. He must desire the enemy’s reaction in order to continue the battle. The fight forms both men in building their resistance to fear as well as their desire for war and its danger. Their bodily interchange reflects the value of equal exchange inherent in paratge as the economic building block of the social hierarchy created by paratge.The feudal lord must follow the patterns of paratge as well in order to inspire the knights who serve him. Knights must follow him gladly into battle in order to fight at all: “e segre’l d’agradatge” (28.) Not only must they receive and give blows, but they must also desire war. The happiness (agradatge) of the knights reflects an unhesitating commitment to the role they must play both as chivalrous fighters and as subjects of the lord. Bertran’s code of conduct demands that they enjoy whatever the form of warfare they must participate in according to the need. The knights’ physical desire for war reveals their bloodline, which holds long ties to the land and people that they defend. Not only does their willingness to fight reflect their dedication to their families, land, and communities, but it also unveils their lineage. Because generations of their ancestors fought to defend their land and people, so should future generations tied by blood to their predecessors. Betran roots his code of paratge in the bloodlines of the knights who fight to renew the social order that their ancestors protected with their lives.Moreover, Bertran’s liberal use of fricatives to fracture rhythm and sound reflects the fragmentation of deserters’ bodies in “Be’m plai lo gais temps de pascor”:chascus hom de paratgenon pens mas d’asclar caps e bratzcar mais val mortz qe vius sobratz (38-40)Each man of high rank must enter the fray in order to fulfill the promise of his bloodline: “chascus hom de paratge” (38.) As courtly knights within a tradition of chivalric war, men of rank must participate in battle partly as a result of an unseen cultural expectation. The harsh fricative sounds “p,” “ch,” “s,” and “g” evoke the sounds of swords clashing in battle as well as the fixed role for each nobleman. Each knight must comply with the actions expected of him not just by his community, but also by the Occitan chivalric tradition within which he lives and acts. Bertran’s use of fricatives and a tightly structured meter mostly composed of masculine rhymes reflects each man’s duty to fulfill these rigid hierarchies.  Finally, Bertran utilizes fricatives to condemn those who do not feel and participate in the desire for war that he glorifies: “mortz qe vius sobratz” (30.) The “s” and “tz” sounds of “sobratz” condemn the treachery of the vanquished survivors with their harsh noises, which recall serpents’ hisses. These defeated men occupy a liminal space, both literally and figuratively: they must concede land to their conquerors but they do not usually join them. Furthermore, they do not fragment their enemies’ bodies to the extent that they win, but they do not receive enough blows to die. This ambiguity reflects their lack of commitment to their bloodlines for Bertran de Born. He can neither view them as agents who play their part, nor as martyrs; he believes their desire for peace reveals a weakness in their blood. Bertran condemns the deserters for failing to follow the chivalric code of honor in valuing their lives over the defense of their land and people – their refusal to partake in communion with their enemies reflects their rejection of their social and familial obligations to paratge.Bertran’s poetic persona aspires to know the body of a lady for the same reasons as he wishes to kill his foes: because his blood tells him to do so. His idealized knight, in entering the domna’s body, divides her from her sins:E domna c’ab aital drut jazes monad de tots sos pechatz (59-60)The imagined woman occupies the role of a domna, a masculine figure who has a specific role in the narrative as a signifier of courtliness. She acts as the subject of the sentence in choosing to engage in sexual intercourse with the imagined ideal knight due to his prowess in battle and his courtliness. Her desire, too, stems from a belief in cortezia, in the unwritten rules of conduct in the court that run in her aristocratic blood. Because the knight shares the same kind of courtly and chivalric code, he can fulfill her desires in a way that his fellow knights will accept and even cleanse her of her sins through his very courtliness. The material grounding of the act of purifying sexual contact reflects the role of the knight’s lineage, paratge, in his renewing powers. Just as he renews Périgord’s landscape through his commitment to the natural order of paratge, so does he renew the purity of his domna through his courtly devotion.Ultimately, the imagined lady benefits from the act of love, because the idealized knight cleanses her of her sins (“sos pechatz.”) His martial and sexual desires better even the sacred domna as a result of their grounding in the courtly rules of paratge. The knight’s desires find form in the bodies of his enemies and his lovers, in battle and in bed, but they spring from an internal, material desire coded in his blood. In this way, Bertran posits a revival of true paratge, by including its internality, its basis in blood. The knight’s desire for fin’amors and for battle offer a means to salvation through renewal of old codes written in the bloodlines of the local lords. He desires love and war spontaneously and then follows these codes materially. In doing so, he fulfills their promise of order and balance. The equal weight that he gives to his enemies, the worthiness of his lovers and his foes, and his desire to engage with each of them correctly renews the overarching system of paratge with the blows he gives to his enemies and the refined love he submits to his lady. In a communion with past generations, his peers partake of his body and blood to create a new future grounded in old codes and old blood. Bertran’s unnamed knight becomes a Christ-like figure for the resurrection of Occitan paratge through physical desire.
In “Be’m platz lo gais temps de pascor,” Bertran de Born represents both love and war as means to renew one’s community through material desire. The impulse to commune with the internal spaces of someone’s body, he argues, reveals a knight’s own interiority, both material and spiritual. Bertran’s knight sacrifices his body willingly, through both his base and courtly desires, and in doing so revives the spirit of war as well as that of courtly love. His bloodline and his spiritual grace anchor his community in the generations-old, coded system of paratge that Bertran extolls. This system demands a willing desire, which the knight manifests openly and naturally, reflecting the natural order that paratge creates. Gérard Zuchetto closed his eyes with emotion when he sang “Be’m platz lo gais temps de pascor” in the castle’s throne room at Quéribus; his voice fell easily into the marching meter of the song. Even today, Bertran writes a code that governs the land and the people in Occitan spaces; his song renews itself in the blood of its inhabitants.

Course: 
Songs of Love and War: Gender, Crusade, Politics (Winter 2014)
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