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W.
S. Merwin.
The Mays of Ventadorn.
Washington D.C.:
National
Geographic, 2002.
Literary Travel series.
163pp.
Hardback ISBN
0792265386.
Publisher's
recommended price US$20.00/Can$31.00/£12.99
W.S.
Merwin, one
of the great contemporary English-language poets, turns to prose here
in
a brilliantly evocative re-creation of a distant past - as well an
exquisite
rendering of his own romance with an abandoned farmhouse in the magical
countryside of Southwest France. The Mays of Ventadorn: Tales from
Southwest
France illuminates the origins of the famous 12th-century Provencal
troubadours, beginning with the great Bernart de Ventadorn whose work
Merwin
first encountered as a young translator of the archaic language known
as
Old Occitan. The timeless beauty of the troubadours' pastoral songs and
narrative poems has enabled them to survive for 900 years, far
outlasting
the language from which they sprang.
As he
reveals
the lyrical pleasures in Southwest France's medieval courts, Merwin
also
acquaints readers with the ruins of the chateau of Ventadorn, Bernart’s
home, as well as the elegantly careworn farmhouse that the poet himself
has owned for decades. Merwin brings a sense of historical continuity
to
his narrative as he writes of how the warm enchantments that
distinguish
the farmhouse, the local patois, and the area’s rural traditions are in
many respects the direct progeny of the troubadours' storied culture
and
language of old.
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