IT is six hundred and fifty years since Chretien de Troyes wrotehis Cliges. And yet he is wonderfully near us, whereas he isseparated by a great gulf from the rude trouveres of the Chansonsde Gestes and from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was stilldragging out its weary length in his early days. Chretien is asrefined, as civilised, as composite as we are ourselves; hisladies are as full of whims, impulses, sudden reserves,self-debate as M. Paul Bourget's heroines; while the problems ofconscience and of emotion which confront them are as complex asthose presented on the modern stage. Indeed, there is no breakbetween the Breton romance and the psychological-analytical novelof our own day.
Whence comes this amazing modernity and complexity? From manysources:—Provencal love-lore, Oriental subtlety, and Celticmysticism—all blended by that marvellous dexterity, style,malice, and measure which are so utterly French that English hasno adequate words for them. We said "Celtic mysticism," but thereis something else about Chretien which is also Celtic, thoughvery far from being "mystic". We talk a great deal nowadays aboutCeltic melancholy, Celtic dreaminess, Celtic "other-worldliness";and we forget the qualities that made Caesar's Gauls, St. Paul'sGalatians, so different from the grave and steadfast Romans—thatloud Gaulois that has made the Parisian the typical Frenchman. Adifferent being, this modern Athenian, from the mystic Irishpeasant we see in the poetic modern Irish drama!—and yet bothare Celts.
Not much "other-worldliness" about Chretien. He is as positive asany man can be. His is not of the world of Saint Louis, of theCrusaders, of the Cathedral-builders. In Cliges there is noreligious atmosphere at all. We hear scarcely anything of Mass,of bishops, of convents. When he mentions Tierce or Prime, it ismerely to tell us the hour at which something happened—and thissomething is never a religious service. There is nothing behindthe glamour of arms and love, except for the cas de consciencepresented by the lovers. Nothing but names and framework areCeltic; the spirit, with its refinements and its hair-splitting,is Provencal. But what a brilliant whole! what art! what measure!Our thoughts turn to the gifted women of the age—as subtle, asinteresting, and as unscrupulous as the women of theRenaissance—to Eleanor of Aquitaine, a reigning princess, atroubadour, a Crusader, the wife of two kings, the mother of twokings,