sirventes

   The sirventes was a special genre of TROUBADOUR poetry that was written in stanzas but that was concerned with politics or moralizing rather than love, the subject of the better-known CANSO. Politics or current events were often the subject matter of the sirventes, as, for example, in the poem by the troubadour BERTRAN DE BORN, beginning “Miei sirventes vuolh far de.ls reis amdos” (“I shall make a half sirventes about both kings”) (Goldin 1973, 233), in which he looks forward to a coming conflict between Alfonso VIII of Castile and RICHARD I of England.

   Most often the tone of the sirventes was satiric, and the poet did not shy from reviling the object of his satire. In the following poem, Peire VIDAL exhorts the cities of Italy to unite against an invasion by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI in 1194–95, and spends some time berating the Germans themselves:

   The Germans, I find, are gross and vulgar,

   and when one of them gets it into his head he’s a courtly man,

   it is a burning mortal agony, an insult,

   and that language of theirs sounds like the barking of dogs.

   (Goldin 1973, 263, ll. 9–12)

   Typically, along with the satire, a sirventes contained a moral or didactic message. The troubadour Peire CARDENAL was the master of this type of poem, particularly in his attacks on the venality of the clergy. In one of his lyrics, for example, he says that all power is now in the hands of the clergy, who are characterized by “stealing, betrayal, hypocrisy, violence, and sermons” (Goldin 1973, 291, ll. 19–21).

   Other common subjects for sirventes were praise of individuals, literary satire, or the Crusades. The word sirventes means “servant” in Provençal, but could also mean “mercenary” or “foot soldier.” The connection between the term and the genre is unclear, but certainly the point of view of a poem like Bertran de Born’s above is that of a mercenary.

   It could also be said that the sirventes came to be considered an inferior and less original genre in troubadour poetry, one that did not require the same amount of creative energy as the canso. Many sirventes were written to the tune, and with the same rhyme schemes, as popular cansos. Though the genre eventually came to be seen as imitative, its greater practitioners produced some remarkably effective and original poetic satires.

   Bibliography

   ■ Goldin, Frederick, ed. and trans. Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology and a History. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973.