ABSTRACT
The date of composition is unknown, but a connection has plausibly been made with B.'s studies of troubadour literature for Sordello ( 1840). B. might have met the legend of Jaufre Rudel, Prince de Blaye, in Anna Jameson's Loves of the Poets (1829), or in many other versions (see DeVane Handbook 121; Oxford adds a poem by John Graham called Geoffrey Rudel; or, The Pilgrim of Love, 1836). All these accounts derive ultimately from the largely apocryphal 'Vida' ('Life') attached to some MSS of Rudel's songs. Sismondi Lit., which B. used for Sordello, paraphrases the 'Vida', adding some equally inauthentic dates:
The knights, who had returned from the Holy Land, spoke with enthusiasm of a Countess of Tripoli, who had extended to them the most generous hospitality, and whose grace and beauty equalled her virtues. Geoffry Rudel, hearing this account, fell deeply in love with her without having ever seen her; and prevailed upon one of his friends, Bertrand d' Allamanon, a Troubadour like himself, to accompany him to the Levant. In 1162, he quitted the court of England, whither he had been conducted by Geoffrey the brother of Richard I, and embarked for the Holy Land. On his voyage, he was attacked by a severe illness, and had lost the power of speech, when he arrived at the port of Tripoli. The countess, being informed that a celebrated poet was dying oflove for her, on board a vessel which was entering the roads, visited him on shipboard, took him kindly by the hand, and attempted to cheer his spirits. Rudel, we are assured, recovered his speech sufficiently to thank the countess for her humanity, and to declare his passion, when his expressions of gratitude were silenced by the convulsions of death. He was buried at Tripoli, beneath a tomb of porphyry, which the countess raised to hts memory (i 104-5)
Sismondi then quotes a 'Proven\al fragment' which he attributes to Rudel and calls 'his verses on distant love' ('amor de lonh'); this may have attracted B.'s interest, although the lines are only generally related in theme to his poem. Other poems by Rudel have more suggestive passages, e.g. Lanquan li jorn: 'Ah! if 1 were only a pilgrim there I so that my staff and cloak I were reflected in (beheld by) her beautiful eyes' (11. 12-14) and Lo sap cantar qui so non di: 'A far-away love kills me I and the sweet desire remains near me, I and when 1 imagine that I go away there I in the form of a good pilgrim, I my desires are thus ever hers I for my death, because it will not be otherwise. II Peironet, cross over the stream; tell her I that my body will pass over to her' (11. 25-32). The sending of a poem as an oral message also appears in Quan lo rius de Ia fontana: 'Without any writing on parchment, I I transmit the poem
singing I in the plain vernacular language I to lord Hugo the Brown my Godson'. See The Songs of]aufre Rudel, ed. R. T. Pickens (Toronto 1978), for the texts, translations, and a compilation of all the MSS variants of Rudel's songs. The extent of B.'s familiarity with Rudel's work is not known, but Or Sheila Kay has suggested to us that if, as is possible, MS C of Rudel's songs was in Paris during the 1830s, B. could have seen it during his visit there in 1837 (for this visit, see Maynard 124-9); this possibility is strengthened by the fact that in 1834 B., through his friend Monclar, became a member of the Paris Institut Historique in 1834 (see headnote to Paracelsus, p. 101). The sunflower motif is a common one, both in troubadour literature and later m Elizabethan emblem books, where it figures the faithful soul's relation to God (since it follows the movement of the sun: cp. II. 7-8); it does not however appear in Rudel's work. B. might recently have read Blake's 'Sunflower' (Songs of Experience, pub!. 1839), which connects the emblem specifically with frustrated love-longing. In DL 1st proof a sunflower is doodled opposite the poem. For the motif of a love based on report, cp. the Jules-Phene episode in Pippa. There is a striking resemblance to One Word More, which B. recognized by juxtaposing the two poems in c86J (see Appendix A, II 464). The collective title Queen-Worship under which the poem was originally pub!. relates to one of the major preoccupations in B.'s work; in this period, it appears in e.g. Pippa (ii 195-210), Colombe, Flight, and Glove; cp. also In a Balcony and Misconceptions.
