Talk:Arnaut Daniel
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As pointed out by a number of Provencalists (among which, if memory doesn't fail me, Sharman), the fortune of a number of authors is rather arbitrary. Fond as I might be of Arnaut, I am forced to admit that his reputation is due merely to a fortunate chain of events, namely:
1 - His sextain struck Dante's fancy; he wrote the first non-Occitanic example ("Al breve giorno e al gran cerchio d'ombra"), and was so impressed by the form that he wrote his famous praise in his "Purgatorio". Dante also wished to point out that he preferred the trobar clus, championed by Arnaut to the trobar leu championed by Giraut de Bornelh, of whom exorbitant praises were made in his time. Elsewhere ("De vulgari eloquentia"), Dante professes his penchant for other Provencal poets, for example Bertran de Born.
2 - Petrarca, who devoted an incredible amount of time to self-promotion, saw this fact quite clearly, and wrote a deluge of frankly uninteresting sextains on the basis that if one had been enough for Arnaut to be so praised by the most known poet of his age, a couple dozens would have helped the cause. He also threw in a couple of good words for Arnaut, just to reinforce the idea.
3 - Pound praised Arnaut based on his appreciation of Dante and little else. His translations of Arnaut, like most of Pound's translations, show a good level of personal skill and very little understanding of the original.
4 - T.S.E.'s relationship to Arnaut revolves around his homage to Pound, and perhaps to Dante, with hardly any sign that he knows the originals.
To this, add the elitistic delirium of Longfellow, who pretends to believe the notoriously fanciful vidas and makes him a nobleman and an arthurian writer, and you have a rather clear idea of why this is the second-largest troubadour entry on wikipedia, and why it talks a lot more about Arnaut's flatterers than about him. Complainer
