Bernard of Cluny by John Balnaves.
For further information contact ejb@prosentient.com.au
Home   | Intro  | Ch.1  | Ch.2  | Ch.3  | Ch.4  | Ch.5  | Ch.6a  | Ch.6b  | Ch.6c  | Ch.7  | Appendices  | Bibliography |  PDF (full thesis)

CHAPTER 6 METRE AND RHYME



Metre

Bernard of Morlaix was familiar with classical prosody, though his quantities were not always those of the ancients. Two of his poems, De castitate servanda and In libros Regum, are classical in metrical form. The first consists of 523 lines1 and the second of 1018 lines in elegiac couplets and they are for the most part perfectly regular in metre. They have no rhymes.



Bernard is well aware that his quantities are not always classical, and that his metre is sometimes faulty. In the De castitate servanda, in the middle of a discussion of Saint Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, and again in the In libros Regum, in the middle of a commentary on a passage about Solomon's wealth (3 Kings 4,1-34), he apologises. He explains that it is not due to carelessness or ignorance ("prudens atque sciens") but to problems of using non-classical words ("nescia nomina") in a classical metre and to his attempts to express his meaning concisely ("forsan et obscurus fio brevis esse laborans").4



The Carmina de Trinitate et de fide Catholica commences with reasonably regular hexameters.



"Numero, deus, inpare gaudes" is adapted from Vergil's eighth Eclogue (line 75), "numero deus inpare gaudet." The regular metre of the hexameter continues until line 817. That is, more than half the length of the poem, which has 1402 lines. At line 817 an internal rhyme is introduced. Thereafter, internal rhymes appear sporadically until the end of the poem.



The first pair and the last pair of lines of the passage quoted above (816-817 and 821-822) have end rhymes. Such end rhymes appear sporadically and less frequently than internal rhymes, from this point on.



At line 1006, after a discussion of the second person of the Trinity, Bernard has this comment on his metre:



Ipsi personam quasi fantem nunc tibi ponam.
Metra carens zelo mea maiorumque revelo.
Non mea sunt tantum sed patrum metrificantum.
In cruce pendentem tibi nunc induco loquentem.
Accipe dicentem, dicenti porrige mentem.8



Now I present the person of Christ, just as if he were speaking to you yourself. I am not jealous of my forebears. The metre I am using is theirs. It is not mine only, but also the metre of the Fathers. I now present Christ hanging on the cross and speaking to you. Listen to what he says. Open your mind to his words.



There follows a poetic rendering of imaginary words of Christ from the cross. "I die that you might live. There is no greater love. Think about who it is that is suffering for you, and how much I am suffering, and why ..."9 The words of Christ continue for forty-eight lines, all in the same metre, with internal rhymes but no end rhymes. Then Bernard says:



Haec ita. Cetera iam planis tibi versibus edam,
Danda Leonino quamvis restent pede quaedam.
Ne stupeas, lector, quia sepe Leonica sector.
Gratis grata sonis admisceo metra Leonis.
Nunc versus planos aro scilicet Ovidianos,
Nam querunt illos quidam, quidam magis istos.
Est aliud, quare metro parco Leonis arare:
Versus enervat qui verba Leonica servat,
Nec succintus erit qui dicta Leonica querit.
Ergo conmixtos nunc illos, nunc sequor istos.10



So much for that. The rest I will write for you in plain verses, although certain parts will still be rendered in the Leonine metre. Do not be surprised, reader, that, although I often follow the Leonine style, and add to a pleasant metre the pleasant sounds of Leonine rhymes, I am now ploughing straight furrows,11 like Ovid's verses. The reason is that some people like the one kind of verse, while others prefer the other. There is another reason why I do not always use the Leonine metre. A poet who keeps to the Leonine style weakens his verses, and a poet who uses Leonines will not express his meaning concisely. That is why I sometimes use one metre and sometimes the other.





De octo vitiis also employs hexameters. Internal rhymes are consistently used throughout all of its 1399 lines, and stress begins to become as important as quantity in reading the poem.



The prologue to the Mariale is in the same metre with the same rhyme scheme.



The De contemptu mundi, which, at about 3000 lines, is the longest of the poems, is also in hexameters. There are both internal rhymes and end rhymes consistently throughout. The verse form is called "dactylici tripertiti."15 It is possible to read the metre quantitatively, ignoring the rhymes, but the effect is monotonous, because every foot except the last of each line is a dactyl and there is no caesura. The rhyme scheme demands that the metre be read according to stress rather than quantity.



The effect is similar to that of the Rhythmus in laude Salvatoris of Peter the Venerable, which could not possibly be read quantitively. Nor, since each "line" ends with a dactyl, does it give any impression of hexameters.



Gaude, mortalitas,
Redit aeternitas,
Qua reparaberis!
Quidquid de funere
Soles metuere,
Iam ne timueris.



Dat certitudinem
Vita per hominem
Et Deum reddita,
Quam in se praetulit
Ac tibi contulit
Morte deposita.17



The metre and rhyme of the De contemptu mundi go well in Latin. Ernst Robert Curtius writes of the "heights of impassioned greatness in hexameters rhymed in couplets with double internal rhymes, as in Bernard of Morlaix's poem on the Last Judgement and Paradise."18 They are very difficult to render in English. There were several attempts at Englishing the metre and rhyme of small parts of the first book of the poem in the wake of its popularisation as an English hymn by J.M. Neale in the 1860's.19 None of them is successful. The following, for example, is Charles Lawrence Ford's translation of the opening lines:



Late is earth's history; ripe is sin's mystery; slumber no more!
Vengeance is looming, the Arbiter dooming, the Judge at the door;
Nigher and nigher, to evil a fire, of right the reward,
Paradise bringing, and crowning with singing the saints of the Lord.20



Even Swinburne, with his facility for rhyme, did not manage much better. Part of his translation goes as follows:



O land without guilt, strong safe city built in a marvellous place,
I cling to thee, ache for thee, sing to thee, wake for thee, watch for thy face:
Full of cursing and strife are the days of my life, with their sins they are fed,
Out of sin is the root, unto sin is the fruit, in their sins they are dead.21



The rhythmi and the epilogue of the Mariale are similar to the De contemptu mundi only in that their metrical systems are based on stress rather than quantity, and that they use a consistent and complex rhyme scheme. But the metre and rhyme scheme of the rhythmi are different from those of the epilogue, and both are different from those of the De contemptu mundi.



(...continues on Chapter 6b )