Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/295

Rh expression, so much will he be enchanted by the touching intimacy and the incredible perfection of all these details, purely accessory in the eyes of those who ordered and who executed the masterpiece.

Now, in the expression of details the artist is absolutely free. Whereas he is tied down by rigid convention in the composition of his principal theme he may give a free rein to his imagination in all other respects. He may paint the materials, the vegetation, the horizons, the faces, just as his genius prompts him; the wealth of detail will no more overload his picture than flowers weigh down a dress which they adorn.

In the poetry of the fifteenth century the relation of the essential to the accident is reversed. The poet is generally free as regards his principal subject; something novel is expected from him. As to accessories, however, he is tied down by tradition; there is a conventional way of expressing each detail, from which, though he may be unconscious of it, he can hardly deviate; the flowers, the delights of nature, sorrows and joys, all these are sung in a fashion which varies but little. Moreover, the salutary limitation which the dimension of his picture imposes upon the artist does not exist for the poet, as a rule. Hence, to be worthy of this liberty the poet should be relatively greater than the artist. Even mediocre painters may delight posterity, whereas the mediocre poet is forgotten.

To make the effect of the abuse of details in a fifteenth-century poem felt, it would be necessary to quote it entirely. As this is impossible, we must content ourselves with considering a few fragmentary specimens.

Alain Chartier in his day was held to be a great poet. He was compared to Petrarch, and even Clement Marot placed him in the first rank. We may, therefore, fairly compare his work with that of the greatest painters of his time, and set the description of nature with which his Livre des Quatre Dames opens against the landscape of the altar-piece of the Lamb.

One spring morning the poet goes out for a walk, to drive away his persistent melancholy.