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99 pages

English

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The word "domnei" refers to the ritualized devotion that knights were required to display toward their ladies in the medieval period. James Branch Cabell's novel of the same title explores the concept in a rich, meditative look at femme fatale Melicent and the ultimately ruinous sparring her love inspires among her coterie of husbands, knights, and suitors.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776584291
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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DOMNEI
A COMEDY OF WOMAN-WORSHIP
* * *
JAMES BRANCH CABELL

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Domnei A Comedy of Woman-Worship First published in 1920 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-429-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-430-7 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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A Preface The Argument PART ONE - PERION 1 - How Perion was Unmasked 2 - How the Vicomte was Very Gay 3 - How Melicent Wooed 4 - How the Bishop Aided Perion 5 - How Melicent Wedded PART TWO - MELICENT 6 - How Melicent Sought Oversea 7 - How Perion was Freed 8 - How Demetrios was Amused 9 - How Time Sped in Heathenry 10 - How Demetrios Wooed PART THREE - DEMETRIOS 11 - How Time Sped with Perion 12 - How Demetrios was Taken 13 - How They Praised Melicent 14 - How Perion Braved Theodoret 15 - How Perion Fought 16 - How Demetrios Meditated 17 - How a Minstrel Came 18 - How They Cried Quits 19 - How Flamberge was Lost 20 - How Perion Got Aid PART FOUR - AHASUERUS 21 - How Demetrios Held His Chattel 22 - How Misery Held Nacumera 23 - How Demetrios Cried Farewell 24 - How Orestes Ruled 25 - How Women Talked Together 26 - How Men Ordered Matters 27 - How Ahasuerus was Candid 28 - How Perion Saw Melicent 29 - How a Bargain was Cried 30 - How Melicent Conquered The Afterword Bibliography Endnotes
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" En cor gentil domnei per mort no passa ."
To
SARAH READ McADAMS
IN GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION
"The complication of opinions and ideas, of affections and habits,which prompted the chevalier to devote himself to the service of alady, and by which he strove to prove to her his love, and to merithers in return, was expressed, in the language of the Troubadours, by asingle word, by the word domnei , a derivation of domna , which maybe regarded as an alteration of the Latin domina , lady, mistress."
—C. C. FAURIEL, History of Provencal Poetry .
A Preface
*
ByJoseph Hergesheimer
It would be absorbing to discover the present feminine attitude towardthe profoundest compliment ever paid women by the heart and mind of menin league—the worshipping devotion conceived by Plato and elevated toa living faith in mediaeval France. Through that renaissance of asublimated passion domnei was regarded as a throne of alabaster bythe chosen figures of its service: Melicent, at Bellegarde, waiting forher marriage with King Theodoret, held close an image of Perion made ofsubstance that time was powerless to destroy; and which, in a life ofsingular violence, where blood hung scarlet before men's eyes like atapestry, burned in a silver flame untroubled by the fate of her body.It was, to her, a magic that kept her inviolable, perpetually, in spiteof marauding fingers, a rose in the blanched perfection of its earlyflowering.
The clearest possible case for that religion was that it transmuted theindividual subject of its adoration into the deathless splendor of aMadonna unique and yet divisible in a mirage of earthly loveliness. Itwas heaven come to Aquitaine, to the Courts of Love, in shapes of vividfragrant beauty, with delectable hair lying gold on white samite workedin borders of blue petals. It chose not abstractions for its faith, butthe most desirable of all actual—yes, worldly—incentives: the sister,it might be, of Count Emmerick of Poictesme. And, approaching beatitudenot so much through a symbol of agony as by the fragile grace of awoman, raising Melicent to the stars, it fused, more completely than inany other aspiration, the spirit and the flesh.
However, in its contact, its lovers' delight, it was no more than aslow clasping and unclasping of the hands; the spirit and flesh,merged, became spiritual; the height of stars was not a figment....Here, since the conception of domnei has so utterly vanished, thebreak between the ages impassable, the sympathy born of understandingis interrupted. Hardly a woman, to-day, would value a sigh the passionwhich turned a man steadfastly away that he might be with her foreverbeyond the parched forest of death. Now such emotion is held strictlyto the gains, the accountability, of life's immediate span; women haveleft their cloudy magnificence for a footing on earth; but—at least inwarm graceful youth—their dreams are still of a Perion de la Forêt.These, clear-eyed, they disavow; yet their secret desire, the mostElysian of all hopes, to burn at once with the body and the soul, mockswhat they find.
That vision, dominating Mr. Cabell's pages, the record of his revealedidealism, brings specially to Domnei a beauty finely escaping thedusty confusion of any present. It is a book laid in a purity, aserenity, of space above the vapors, the bigotry and engendered spite,of dogma and creed. True to yesterday, it will be faithful ofto-morrow; for, in the evolution of humanity, not necessarily the turnof a wheel upward, certain qualities have remained at the center,undisturbed. And, of these, none is more fixed than an abstract love.
Different in men than in women, it is, for the former, an instinct, aneed, to serve rather than be served: their desire is for a shiningimage superior, at best, to both lust and maternity. Thisconsciousness, grown so dim that it is scarcely perceptible, yet stillalive, is not extinguished with youth, but lingers hopeless ofsatisfaction through the incongruous years of middle age. There isnever a man, gifted to any degree with imagination, but eternallysearches for an ultimate loveliness not disappearing in the circle ofhis embrace—the instinctively Platonic gesture toward the onlyimmortality conceivable in terms of ecstasy.
A truth, now, in very low esteem! With the solidification of society,of property, the bond of family has been tremendously exalted, the merefact of parenthood declared the last sanctity. Together with this,naturally, the persistent errantry of men, so vulgarly misunderstood,has become only a reprehensible paradox. The entire shelf of JamesBranch Cabell's books, dedicated to an unquenchable masculine idealism,has, as well, a paradoxical place in an age of material sentimentality.Compared with the novels of the moment, Domnei is an isolated, aheroic fragment of a vastly deeper and higher structure. And, of itsmany aspects, it is not impossible that the highest, rising over evenits heavenly vision, is the rare, the simple, fortitude of itsstatement.
Whatever dissent the philosophy of Perion and Melicent may breed, noone can fail to admire the steady courage with which it is upheld.Aside from its special preoccupation, such independence in the face ofponderable threat, such accepted isolation, has a rare stability in aworld treacherous with mental quicksands and evasions. This is a valornot drawn from insensibility, but from the sharpest possiblerecognition of all the evil and Cyclopean forces in existence, and adeliberate engagement of them on their own ground. Nothing more, inthat direction, can be asked of Mr. Cabell, of anyone. While about thestory itself, the soul of Melicent, the form and incidental writing, itis no longer necessary to speak.
The pages have the rich sparkle of a past like stained glass called tolife: the Confraternity of St. Médard presenting their masque ofHercules; the claret colored walls adorned with gold cinquefoils ofDemetrios' court; his pavilion with porticoes of Andalusian copper;Theodoret's capital, Megaris, ruddy with bonfires; the free port ofNarenta with its sails spread for the land of pagans; thelichen-incrusted glade in the Forest of Columbiers; gardens with thewalks sprinkled with crocus and vermilion and powdered mica ... all areat once real and bright with unreality, rayed with the splendor of anantiquity built from webs and films of imagined wonder. The past is, atits moment, the present, and that lost is valueless. Distilled by time,only an imperishable romantic conception remains; a vision, where it issignificant, animated by the feelings, the men and women, which only,at heart, are changeless.
They, the surcharged figures of Domnei , move vividly through theirstone galleries and closes, in procession, and—a far more difficultaccomplishment—alone. The lute of the Bishop of Montors, playing as herides in scarlet, sounds its Provençal refrain; the old man Theodoret,a king, sits shabbily between a prie-dieu and the tarnished hangings ofhis bed; Mélusine, with the pale frosty hair of a child, spins themelancholy of departed passion; Ahasuerus the Jew buys Melicent for ahundred and two minae and enters her room past midnight for his act ofabnegation. And at the end, looking, perhaps, for a mortal woman,Perion finds, in a flesh not unscarred by years, the rose beyonddestruction, the high silver flame of immortal happiness.
So much, then, everything in the inner questioning of beings condemnedto a glimpse of remote perfection, as though the sky had opened on acity of pure bliss, transpires in Domnei ; while the fact that it islaid in Poictesme sharpens the thrust of its illusion. It is by thatmuch the easier of entry; it borders—rather than on the clamor ofmills—on the reaches men explore, leaving' weariness and dejection forfancy—a geography for lonely sensibilities betrayed by chance into theblind traps, the issueless barrens, of existence.
JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER.
CRITICAL COMMENT
And Norman Nicolas at hearté meant (Pardie!) some subtle occupation In making of his Tale of Melicent, That stubbornly desiréd Perion. What perils for to rollen up and down, So long process, so many a sly cautel, For to obtain a silly damosel!
—THOMAS