The poems by Marcabrun and Ugo Catola and the first verses of the Minase renga of Sogi, Shohaku, and Socho are appended in both the original and in translation.
The very idea of poems with more than one
author radically challenges the Romantic notion of individual genius. In spite of the fact that art has as often
been shaped by the beliefs and values most members of a culture share, many readers
remain Romantic enough to view proper poetry as the product of a single person’s
vision. The artist is often imagined as
a hero, the possessor of a titanic sensibility, striking out alone, innovative,
ignoring established norms, and such a concept seems inimical to the compromise
and negotiation that collaboration would entail. And yet one hears that the great mythic texts
on which the Kalevala was based were regularly performed by two poets, taking
turns (albeit one with a secondary role), often while facing each other astride
a log. Seventy-two scholars wrote the
Septuagint and forty-seven the King James Bible. Collaboration may, as these examples imply,
be deeply traditional, but it is equally likely to appear radically innovative. A good number of modern ventures in
collaborative poetry have occurred more or less under the aegis of the
avant-garde: the exquisite corpses of the Surrealists, Ralentir Travaux (1930)
by André Breton, Paul Éluard and René Char, and the chainpoems of the Japanese
Vou group and Charles Henri Ford [1].
Practices can differ widely. Sometimes two writers present debate, taking
different sides of an issue; sometimes they reinforce each other. Some seek to meld their imaginations so that
a single text represents not either or both, but a unique synthetic writer,
called into existence for the project.
In some the linkages are more complex; for instance, one contribution
may relate only to contiguous passages or all contributors may follow a
predetermined pattern.
The simplest relation between multiple
authors is contention, either in the form of an insult war or a debate. The first of these possibilities was
formalized among Germanic and Celtic peoples as the flyting (in Irish immarbág
or iomarbháigh). In perhaps the
best-known of such works “The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie” (ca. 1500) William
Dunbar addresses his opponent with a veritable flood of invective, the direction
of which is perfectly clear today on spite of archaic Scots dialect.
Mauch mutton, bit button, peeled glutton, heir to Hillhouse,
Rank beggar, oyster dredger, flay fleggar in the flet. flea catcher? in hall
Chitterling, rough rilling, lick shelling in the millhouse,
rough hide, husk-licker
Bard rehator, thief of nature, false traitor, fiend’s get, worthless poet
Filling of tauch, rak sauch, cry crauch, thou art o’erset! of tallow, stretched rope, surrender
Mutton driver, girnall ryver, yad swiver, foul fall thee!
granary robber, mare mounter
Heretic, lunatic, purspick, carling’s pett, old hag’s fart?
Rottin crok, dirtin dok, cry cok, or I shall quell thee!
(ll. 241-248)
Walter Kennedy responds in kind.
Dathan, devil’s son, and dragon despitous,
250 Abiron’s birth and bred with Belial,
Wod werewolf, worm, and scorpion venomous,
Lucifer’s lad, foul fiend’s face infernal,
Sodomite separate from saints celestial.
(ll. 249-253)
Though frequently scatological, such
flytings amused the court of James IV.
Americans may well be reminded of the custom of playing the dozens. [2] The game so permeated American culture that
even in my benighted white suburb elementary school children used the line “your
mother wears combat boots” with no suspicion of its origin or implications. Like the flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, the
insults traded among dozens players have ordinarily no relation to actual
weaknesses of the individuals involved; both contestants are indulging in a
competitive verbal game, performed in a social setting and encouraged by
onlookers.
While the classic form of the dozens
persists, other genres of Black vernacular insult wars have emerged. Only a few weeks ago the New York Times
Magazine [3] featured a story on “battle rap,” calling it “an art form and
a sport, as well as an industry.” One
participant is given an extended opportunity for boasting and insults before
the other responds, followed by further rounds.
Sexual themes remain common, including impugning the other’s masculinity
and bragging of one’s own. Here is a
sample from Caustic vs. Rone, the latter speaking first.
Your baby mom looks like a drag queen, I'll get your queen dragged
Rip his beard off, do his Adam's apple like a speed bag
I don't care if Soul's punch was softer than a fucking bean
bag
You got slapped and just stood there just like that shit was freeze tag
A portion of Caustic’s comeback.
You know, that's a hard thing to live up to
But he makes up for it with a strong back rub and a solid
"I love you."
He be kissing that bitch on the mouth like it's the love of
his life
But deep down he knows he just ain't fucking her right
She's got the Black Snake Moan she likes a little mud in her pipes [4]
In other genres the contention is more
substantial, and actual views are exchanged as in a débat,
called in Occitanian a tenso or partimen, like that between the
twelfth century poets Marcabrun and Ugo Catola on the nature of love [5]. The discussion is highly organized. First Ugo (also called Uc) states the topic --
”un vers d’amor” -- to which Marcabrun answers with a condemnation of “false
love” (“faus’amistat”) involving deceit citing the example of the Eve
and the Fall. Ugo will hear nothing
negative about love since it is love alone that “bore him and nurtured him” (“que
d’amor fui naz e noiriz”). The
argument continues until in the end Ugo presents his clinching image which
bears the undeniable evidence of lived experience. “Marcubrun, when I am worn out and feeling
low and my good friend receives me and kisses me, and I undress, I go from her
healthy and healed.” [6] Unconvinced,
Marcabrun calls him an addict, like a drunk or a spendthrift.
They are both right. The poem presents a three-dimensional
ambivalent picture of love. The
vulnerability entailed in the commitment of oneself to the other means that
love must always involve risk as well as pleasure. The point that might be developed in another
work through the modulation of a single relationship or through the contrast of
two successive loves is here presented in two voices.
In another tenso weaving two points
of view Giraut de Bornelh and Raimbaut d”Aurenga
argue whether the obscure style (trobar clus) or a more light and
transparent treatment (trobar leu) is preferable. Raimbaut defends difficult verse, saying that
fools will never have the taste to appreciate fine things. For his part Giraut cannot understand why
anyone would write anything that is not “light and popular” (“levet e
venersal”). The contention
collapses, though, as they both declare their helplessness in the face of
love. Both in the end note the utter
confusion wrought by passionate love, for Raimbaut a natural and noble pleasure
(“un fin joi natural”) that leaves him feeling “knocked about” (“torbatz”),
for Giraut passion leads to his wishing to cry out “God help me” (“Qu'eu
voill dir a Deu mi coman"). The
poem concludes with their affection for each other, a fellow-feeling based on
both experiencing the same tumult of love, though expressed in different
styles.
Whereas the flytings, dozens, and battle
raps are displays of bravura fighting for the pleasure of making the sparks
fly, the Occitanian poems actually present two sides of an issue. Neither speaker is necessarily the winner, as
both positions are in part correct. The
complex picture that might in a novel be represented by several characters or
by a succession of time is here two authors.
The poem produced by juxtaposing two points of view has the liveliness
that is characteristic of disputation.
Perhaps the most sophisticated and
conventional collaborative form is the Japanese renga. The practice arose of improvising or capping
verses and developed into a collective writing technique with extremely
elaborate rules. [7] In the mature era
of the renga, when organized competitions were common, a poet had
perhaps three minutes to improvise a stanza appropriate to the preceding
passage and well-integrated with the tradition.
Renga composition is shaped by
system of intricate rules that here can only be suggested. Indeed, an intimate acquaintance with
Japanese poetry is required even to understand renga’s place. The poets’ choice of words is restricted to
the lexicon of the classical poetic tradition which stresses elegance and
refinement (ga). Thus each term
carries significant literary associations, with the subtlest of variation and virtually
no content arises directly from lived experience. The genre is poetry about poetry.
The season must be established in
the first verse while (In a hundred verse renga) one quarter of
the following verses must have the word flower (hana) and one quarter
the word moon (tsuki). (In the
flower verses writers often defer to their superiors.) Topics are divided into seventeen categories
(luminous things, living things, rising things, Buddhism, etc.) with some (such
as mountains, shores, and dwellings) then further divided between essence (tai)
and attribute (yū). Certain
words may be used only once in the hundred verses while others are restricted
to a specific occurrence. Usually,
elements in common must be well separated; for instance, verses on human
relations must be separated by two verses while those of reminiscences must
have three. Certain series, though, must
be continued for three to five verses.
Of course, students of oral literature
understand that such demanding requirements, while they seem to make the poet’s
task more difficult, in fact enable improvisation. The conventions are so rigorous that, even in
the practice of experts, the verses are often imperfect and are edited by the
poem’s recorder to conform to the rules.
The product is primarily structural in its appeal, rather like a Bach
fugue, directing attention to the variegated play of the chain of verses,
always unpredictable since each related only to the line immediately preceding
and following. Thus, with every new
stanza a new linkage is established and an old one abandoned.
According to Jin'Ichi this procedure
renders the subject entirely irrelevant: “the essence of renga is the
essentially meaningless pattern of images.” [8]
For one critic, this form is emptied of content and thus conveys a
Buddhist sense of “impermanence” and “nonself.” [9]
Among the most celebrated renga
sequences is the fifteenth century Minase Sangin Hyakuin by Sogi, and
his students Shohaku and Socho. The
master’s opening verses seem a sketch from nature, noting the early spring
season with the mention of mist, while snow persists on the mountainside. In fact even in this first few lines there
is no solitary author; the entire project is bound in convention and
intertextuality. The poets are visiting
the shrine for the twelfth century Emperor Gotoba and their renga is in
fact an offering presented as part of the memorial observances on the
anniversary of the death of this ruler who was also a poet.
The opening lines by Sogi quote one of
Gotoba’s poems.
SogiI look over the misty base
of the mountain where
the Minase River runs through —
Why did they say the evening
was best in autumn?
Shohaku’s lines abandon the allusion, but
mention the river which Gotoba had not, and extend the reference of the world’s
regreening by imagining the warmer downstream town where the plum blossoms are
already blooming, again reinforcing the theme of springtime’s beauty. In the
next link Socho picks up the reference to the river, adding the element of the
willow branches stirred by the breeze.
Sogi’s next contribution adds the boat and the dawn of day; the evening
with which the series opened is gone, as is the snow, the mountain, the
village, and the plums.
Perhaps this superficial glance, founded
on translations, can suggest something of the dynamism of the renga form. Decentered, always shifting and changing,
tracing the connections between all things while preserving the apparent
randomness of phenomena, such poetry seems profoundly Buddhist. For all its contrivance it reflects the
elusiveness of mental life, the fluid characteristics of consciousness as
experienced, and in this sense is more “realistic” than more straightforward
utterances.
The permutations of authorship of
collaborative works transform and proliferate as do all conventions. The first authors in examples here cited,
Dunbar, Kennedy, Caustic, and Rone followed a pattern of ludic mutual ridicule,
a purely aesthetic simulation of a contest for dominance resembling the
aggressive posturing of male sexual displays among many species. There followed
Marcabrun and Ugo Catola who presented their topic dialectically, foregrounding
the unique capacity of poetic discourse to accommodate ambiguity and
self-contradiction. Then in the renga
of Sogi, Shohaku, and Socho a more complex use for collaboration emerged, the
virtuoso construction of a tracery of cause and effect, the earlier portions of
which fade to invisibility as each new link is added.
Numerous other possibilities exist either
in fact or potentially. The process of
oral literature is particularly collective, but all literature has sources and
influences. Some modern authors have
preferred to work as one with a unified product like Louis and Celia Zukowsky
sometimes did or Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton have done in Exquisite
Politics (1997), Oyl (2000) and Little Novels (2002) [10]. The contributions can be entirely separate as
when a group of poets write on a given theme.
The Romantic view of composition led
Edward Young to argue in the eighteenth century that “originals can arise from
Genius only,” and the genius is not essentially a scholar, but rather a “divinely-inspired
Enthusiast,” who may provide readers access to his own consciousness, “a
fertile and pleasant field, pleasant as Elysium, and fertile as Tempe; it
enjoys a perpetual Spring.” Young finds
allusive or learned poetry to be of only secondary value as it necessarily
dilutes the power of individual vision.
Yet no work is independent of its predecessors, nor is any work univocal
except the briefest and simplest. There
is even then an irreducible second layer as the persona is shaped by the
author. Further, poetry excels at
conveying ambiguity and ambivalence. To
W. E. B. DuBois the Black writer was not confused by “double consciousness,” but rather was allowed
more insight and precision.
Collaboration is simply a technical means to guarantee that the
incongruities and self-contradictions that we experience daily find concrete
form on the written page. In the end the
various sorts of ways that writers interact in collaborative forms only
foreground the tensions inherent in any human interaction, indeed, even within
a single mind.
1.
John Berryman’s review in the Kenyon Review III, 3 (Summer 1941)
found the “chainpoems” entirely unsuccessful, “excruciating” and “painful.”
2.
The pioneering study of the dozens was published by John Dollard, “The
Dozens: dialectic of insult,” American Imago, 1(1), 1939. An excellent later survey with a good sample
of collected verses is found in Roger D. Abrahams, "Playing the
Dozens" The Journal of American Folklore Vol. 75, No. 297, Symposium on
Obscenity in Folklore (Jul. - Sep., 1962).
Amuzie Chimezie provides a convincing link to African practice as well
as critiquing his predecessors with some asperity in “The Dozens: An
African-Heritage Theory,” Journal of Black Studies Vol. 6, No. 4 (Jun.,
1976).
3.
Ben Barzilai, “The Fierce, Flourishing World of Battle Rap,” New York
Times Magazine, June 14, 2023.
4.
These and other lyrics are available at https://battlerap.com/lyrics/2016/09/28063-caustic-vs-rone.
5.
The poem acknowledges its genre by the use of the word tenson in
l. 11, its occurrence presaged by the verb partiram in l. 3.
6.
Marcabrun, quant sui las e·m duoill,
E ma bon'amia m'acuoill
Ab un baisar, quant me
despuoill,
M'en vau sans e saus e garitz.
(ll. 49-52)
7.
Poetic improvisation has its own history. Fude ( 賦得)or composition of poems on assigned
topics was a recreation in China and became during the Tang Dynasty a part of
the civil service examinations.
8.
See Konishi Jin'Ichi (tr. And introduced by Karen Brazell and Lewis
Cook), “The Art of Renga,” The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 2, No.
1 (Autumn, 1975). His exposition is the
basis for this description.
9.
David Landis Barnhill, “Renga: The Literary Embodiment of Impermanence
and Nonself,” available at https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Literary-Embodiment-of-Impermanence-and-Nonself-Barnhill/4c618825d256d06d9a6a0685fc8aafc06565a6c0.
10. See also the recent anthology edited by Dean
Rader and Simone Muench They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary
Collaborative Writing. Parallels
such as the work of Gilbert and George exist in visual art.
11. Young, “Conjectures on Original Composition”
(1759).
Amics Marchabrun, car digam
Un vers d'Amor, que per cor am
Q'a l'hora qe nos partiram
En sia loing lo chanz auziz.
Ugo Catola, er fazam,
Mas de faus' amistat me clam,
Q'anc pos la serps baisset lo ram
No foron tant enganairiz. 8
Marcabrun, ço no m'es pas bon
Qe d'Amor digaz si ben non!
Per zo·us en mou e[u] la tenson,
Qe d'Amor fui naz e noiriz.
Catola, non entenz razon,
Non saps d'Amor cum trais Samson?
Vos cuidaz e'ill autre bricon
Qe tot sia vers quant vos
diz. 16
Marcabrun, no·s troban auctor
De Sanso·l fort e de sa'uxor
Q'ela n'avia ostat s'amor
A l'ora que ce fo deliz.
Catola, qar a sordejor
La det e la tolc al meillor,
Lo dia perdet sa valor,
Qe'l seus fo per l'estraing
traiz. 24
Marcabrun, si cum declinaz
Qu'Amors si' ab engan mesclaz,
Dunc es lo almosna pechaz,
La cima devers la raiz
Catola, l'Amors dont parlaz
Camja cubertament los daz,
Aprop lo bon lanz vos gardaz,
Co diz Salomons e Daviz. 32
Marcabrun, amistaz dechai,
Car a trobat Joven savai!
Eu n'ai al cor ir' et esclai,
Qar l'en a levaz tan laiz criz.
Catola, Ovides mostra chai
E l'ambladura o retrai
Que non soana brun ni bai,
Anz se trai plus aus achaiz. 40
Marchabrun, anc non cuit t'ames
L'Amors, ves cui es tant engres,
Ni no fo anc res meinz prezes
D'aitals joglars esbaluiz.
Catola, anc de ren non fo pres
Un pas, que tost no s'en loignes,
Et enquer s'en loingna ades,
E fera, tro seaz feniz. 44
Marcabrun, quant sui las e·m
duoill,
E ma bon'amia m'acuoill
Ab un baisar, quant me despuoill,
M'en vau sans e saus e garitz.
Catola, per amor deu truoill
Tressaill l'avers al fol lo
suoill,
E puois mostra la via a l'uoill
Aprop los autres escharniz. 48
Marcabru, my friend, let's compose
a love poem, for I've set my heart
to that,
by the time we part,
its tune be heard far away.
Uc Catola, let's do it
but I accuse you of false
friendship
for, ever since the serpent
lowered the branch [to Eve],
there haven't been as many
deceitful women.
Marcabru, it doesn't please me
that you say anything but good
about Love!
I begin this tenso
because Love gave me life and
raised me.
Catola, you don't listen to
reason.
Don't you know how Love betrayed
Samson?
You and the other suckers,
do you think that everything
[love] tells you is true?
Marcabru, we do not find people
who say,
about the strong Samson and his
wife,
that she had removed her Love
at the time his life ran out.
Catola it's to the worst
she gave [her love] and took it
away from the best
and lost her worth the day
her husband was betrayed for the
foreigner.
Marcabru, since you imply
that Love is mixed with deception,
is almsgiving sin
and the top below the root?
Catola, the Love you talk about
secretly changes the dice.
Stop after a good roll,
say Solomon and David.
Marcabru, Friendship decays
because it has found Youth
uncouth!
I have anger and revulsion in my
heart
because it has caused such ugly
cries.
Catola, Ovid shows here,
and the look of things confirms
it,
tha [Love] does not discriminate
against brown or bay,
but appeals mostly to degenerates.
Marcabru, I do not think you ever
loved
Love, towards which you are so
vehement,
nor that it ever esteemed anything
less
than certain brainless jesters.
Catola, Love never took
a step [towards me] without
fleeing right away,
and it still tirelessly flees
and will do so till it is undone.
Marcabru when I'm tired and sad
and my good friend greets me
with a kiss while I take off my
clothes,
I go away well, and safe, and
cured.
Catola, out of love of the
wine-press,
money makes the fool cross the
threshold
and then shows the eye the way
towards the other laughable
people.
The Minase Sangin Hyakuin by Sogi,
Shohaku, and Socho
雪ながら山もとかすむ夕かな 宗祇
Yuki nagara yama-moto kasumu yube
kana
As it snows the base
of the mountain is misty
this evening (Sogi)
行く水とほく梅にほふ里 肖柏
Yuku mizu toku ume niou sato
Far in the way the water goes
a plum-blossom-smelling hamlet
(Shohaku)
川かぜに一むら柳春みえて 宗長
Kawakaze ni hitomura yanagi haru
miete
The wind from the river
sways weeping willows
now it’s spring (Socho)
舟さすおとはしるき明がた 宗祇
Fune sasu oto wa shiruki akegata
The pole of a boat makes
a clear sound at dawn (Sogi)
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