Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy and Machaut's Remede de Fortune
Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and Machaut’s Remede de Fortune
The idea of a narrative with interpolated songs has deep roots, going back to Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, which mixes prose and metrical verse. Indeed, Machaut’s “remedy for Fortune” can be seen as an response to Boethius’s text: where Philosophy argues that the life of the mind is more important than the external gifts of Fortune, Machaut gives Hope as the lover’s remedy against the whims of Fortune.
Boethius’s first-person narrator, like Boethius himself, is in prison, about to be executed for treason. As the narrator writes his complaint against Fortune, a woman appears whom the author later identifies as Philosophy. She determines that the narrator has forgotten his true nature:
It is because forgetfulness of thyself hath bewildered thy mind that thou hast bewailed thee as an exile, as one stripped of the blessings that were his; it is because thou knowest not the end of existence that thou deemest abominable and wicked men to be happy and powerful; while, because thou hast forgotten by what means the earth is governed, thou deemest that fortune's changes ebb and flow without the restraint of a guiding hand. These are serious enough to cause not sickness only, but even death; but, thanks be to the Author of our health, the light of nature hath not yet left thee utterly. In thy true judgment concerning the world's government, in that thou believest it subject, not to the random drift of chance, but to divine reason, we have the divine spark from which thy recovery may be hoped. (Book 1, Chapter 6)
He has also forgotten Fortune’s true nature, which is to change. As such, to expect Fortune to continue to be favorable to him is a mistake. Rather, he should turn back within himself—to philosophy. Hope makes a similar argument to Machaut’s Lover: fame, power, wealth, and other gifts of Fortune cannot provide happiness, for true happiness cannot be based on transitory goods. It rather resides in the divine, whose goodness and unity gives life, and in memory and imagination, where hope serves as an antedote to desire. As Sylvia Huot puts it:
In his opposition of a poetics of desire with one of hope, Machaut presents a courtly, amorous recasting of the Boethian conflict between the songs of the Muses, focused on worldly desire and the associated feelings of deprivation, resentment, and alienation, and those of Philosophy, which release the soul from desire by reminding it that it already possesses spiritual wealth within itself. (Huot 2002, 179)
The influence of this text on medieval authors is profound. Machaut could have encountered it either in the original Latin or in a French translation by Jean de Meung, whose Romance of the Rose is also a major influence on Machaut and other medieval authors.
The interpolated poems are a mixture of songs sung as part of the story by the narrator or by Philosophy, and poems apparently written later, along with the prose story itself. The narrator speaks specifically about the charges against him and names those who accuse him, creating a verisimilitude (or at least appearance of verisimilitude) that is not present in Machaut’s tale. On the other hand, there is no stylistic development in Boethius’s songs (which are not transmitted with music, since no notation was available at the time), so Machaut’s notion of stylistic development as a parallel to intellectual or emotional development does not occur. Boethius (or rather his narrator) develops as a philosopher, but not as a songwriter; Machaut’s Lover develops as a lover, but also as a poet and musician. The three, for Machaut, are parts of the same whole—in fact, the Lover is in some ways more successful as a writer than as a lover.
references
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by H. R. James (London, 1897), Project Gutenberg EBook, 2004, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm, accessed 24 February 2012.
Huot, Sylvia. “Guillaume de Machaut and the Consolation of Poetry.” Modern Philology 100/2 (November 2002): 169-95.
related pages:
The idea of a narrative with interpolated songs has deep roots, going back to Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, which mixes prose and metrical verse. Indeed, Machaut’s “remedy for Fortune” can be seen as an response to Boethius’s text: where Philosophy argues that the life of the mind is more important than the external gifts of Fortune, Machaut gives Hope as the lover’s remedy against the whims of Fortune.
Boethius’s first-person narrator, like Boethius himself, is in prison, about to be executed for treason. As the narrator writes his complaint against Fortune, a woman appears whom the author later identifies as Philosophy. She determines that the narrator has forgotten his true nature:
It is because forgetfulness of thyself hath bewildered thy mind that thou hast bewailed thee as an exile, as one stripped of the blessings that were his; it is because thou knowest not the end of existence that thou deemest abominable and wicked men to be happy and powerful; while, because thou hast forgotten by what means the earth is governed, thou deemest that fortune's changes ebb and flow without the restraint of a guiding hand. These are serious enough to cause not sickness only, but even death; but, thanks be to the Author of our health, the light of nature hath not yet left thee utterly. In thy true judgment concerning the world's government, in that thou believest it subject, not to the random drift of chance, but to divine reason, we have the divine spark from which thy recovery may be hoped. (Book 1, Chapter 6)
He has also forgotten Fortune’s true nature, which is to change. As such, to expect Fortune to continue to be favorable to him is a mistake. Rather, he should turn back within himself—to philosophy. Hope makes a similar argument to Machaut’s Lover: fame, power, wealth, and other gifts of Fortune cannot provide happiness, for true happiness cannot be based on transitory goods. It rather resides in the divine, whose goodness and unity gives life, and in memory and imagination, where hope serves as an antedote to desire. As Sylvia Huot puts it:
In his opposition of a poetics of desire with one of hope, Machaut presents a courtly, amorous recasting of the Boethian conflict between the songs of the Muses, focused on worldly desire and the associated feelings of deprivation, resentment, and alienation, and those of Philosophy, which release the soul from desire by reminding it that it already possesses spiritual wealth within itself. (Huot 2002, 179)
The influence of this text on medieval authors is profound. Machaut could have encountered it either in the original Latin or in a French translation by Jean de Meung, whose Romance of the Rose is also a major influence on Machaut and other medieval authors.
The interpolated poems are a mixture of songs sung as part of the story by the narrator or by Philosophy, and poems apparently written later, along with the prose story itself. The narrator speaks specifically about the charges against him and names those who accuse him, creating a verisimilitude (or at least appearance of verisimilitude) that is not present in Machaut’s tale. On the other hand, there is no stylistic development in Boethius’s songs (which are not transmitted with music, since no notation was available at the time), so Machaut’s notion of stylistic development as a parallel to intellectual or emotional development does not occur. Boethius (or rather his narrator) develops as a philosopher, but not as a songwriter; Machaut’s Lover develops as a lover, but also as a poet and musician. The three, for Machaut, are parts of the same whole—in fact, the Lover is in some ways more successful as a writer than as a lover.
references
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by H. R. James (London, 1897), Project Gutenberg EBook, 2004, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm, accessed 24 February 2012.
Huot, Sylvia. “Guillaume de Machaut and the Consolation of Poetry.” Modern Philology 100/2 (November 2002): 169-95.
related pages:
- the Remede de Fortune
- the songs of the Remede
- the illustrations of the Remede in Machaut MS C
- Machaut's Remede de Fortune and Chaucer's Book of the Duchess