The Mays of Ventadorn

by W.S. Merwin

W.S. Merwin, one of the great contemporary English-language poets, turns to prose here in a brilliantly evocative re-creation of a distant past?as well as an exquisite rendering of his own romance with an abandoned farmhouse in the magical countryside of Southwest France. The Mays of Tales from Southwest France illuminates the origins of the famous 12th-century Provencal troubadours, beginning with the great Bernart de Ventadorn whose work Merwin first encountered as a young translator of the archaic language known as Old Occitan. The timeless beauty of the troubadours? pastoral songs and narrative poems has enabled them to survive for 900 years, far outlasting the language from which they sprang. As he reveals the lyrical pleasures in Southwest France?s medieval courts, Merwin also acquaints readers with the ruins of the chateau of Ventadorn, Bernart?s home, as well as the elegantly careworn farmhouse that the poet himself has owned for decades. Merwin brings a sense of historical continuity to his narrative as he writes of how the warm enchantments that distinguish the farmhouse, the local patois, and the area?s rural traditions are in many respects the direct progeny of the troubadours? storied culture and language of old.

Genres: Poetry, History, Travel, France, Biography, Nonfiction

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

William Stanley Merwin was an American poet, credited with over fifty books of poetry, translation and prose.

William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island's rainforests.

Merwin received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 and 2009; the National Book Award for Poetry in 2005, and the Tanning Prize—one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets—as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2010, the Library of Congress named him the 17th United States Poet Laureate.

Reviews

[max · Rating 5 out of 5]

W.S. Merwin meets with Ezra Pound, locked up in a sanatorium, and on that Delphic advice, proceeds to buy a house in Occitan France shortly after WW2.

So begins a lifelong affair with the language and culture of Languedoc, which Merwin champions as the soul of the lyric tradition, the mother tongue of the sonnet, sestina, villanelle, and all the other innovations which the troubadours brought over Persian winds into the courts of Southern France.

Part memoir, part literary history, and part travelogue, Merwin occasionally overindulges himself in descriptive passages veering away from prose, but it's always pleasant and never so sustained as to forget his reader. If Merwin wrote more books on these subjects, history may well consider him the better guide than his old, mad mentor ever was.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful prose book by my favorite poet, W.S. Merwin. It's a lyrical little book about the south of France, where Merwin sometimes lives, but it bounces back and forth in time to take into account the age of the troubadours as well as the more contemporary landscape. Merwin has an amazing feel for the region, and his love for it and for the medieval poets is obvious on every page. After you finish with this the poetry is well worthwhile too. And I've met Merwin, he's just as nice a person as you'd suppose, he personally answers letters, and he's an active environmentalist. How much better a person can you be?

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whenever I really need a break from life, I pick this book up. It hasn't failed in... 5 years.

I don't really know how to describe this work of Merwin's. It is part travelogue, part history, part poetry and part autobiography. It's a slice of life, and it shows all the fantastic bisections and crossings each life has with another and the debts everything owes to those things it doesn't even know existed and were lives of their own.

[Eileen Daly-Boas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is a lovely book if you know something about Bernart de Ventadorn. I didn't, and feel like I still don't. I've read Dante, who gets a mention, and I know a tiny bit about Richard the Lionhearted and Eleanor of Aquitaine, who Ventadorn was associated with. So, it's not that I didn't like the book, but I am definitely not the target audience.

[Keeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merwin's observations are always poetic; the language of the essays ranges from poetic to journalistic. This is the thinking person's Peter Mayle, with frequent suggestions of different paths you could charge off onto to learn more about the south of France.

[Brenda Neufeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful; I like his prose as much as his poetry.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poet who translated the poetry of the French troubadours writes about where a family with roots in that historical period lived and what he learned by living nearby.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely book.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks Sis 😉!

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

An account of a place and its importance in the history of troubadour poetry and music.

[Marco · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful little book about troubadors, a house in the South of France, a castle and poetry, an hidden gem

[Evan Rail · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. There's some good travel writing here, especially at the beginning, lyrical descriptions of this part of southwest France, but the book feels overlong at a scant 150 pages. To fill up the space, Merwin ballasts the text with laundry lists of obscure names, not all of them germane to the subject, and details that read as pure, unadulterated filler. A typical example: "He survived the war and died on December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the American entry into World War II." Which is great, except the relevance of that date, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent involvement of the US in World War II has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. And the "he" in question is not even close to a central figure. It's just bulk.

While he overwrites part of the text, at other times Merwin holds way too much back. A good deal of the reader's interest in a book like this is interest in the author's own story — this is MERWIN, after all, one of the most famous and longest-lived of American poets, and a man who has traveled and lived in southwest France for more than half a century. Although he does give us a highly mythopoeic account of meeting Ezra Pound — asserting his own poetic lineage, as it were — there's very little else of Merwin's own life to see here. He tells us he visited the region with his wife, who remains unnamed, and then returned again later with another wife, who apparently also remains unnamed. Okay then.

The book is at its best when describing the lives and the lineage of the troubadours, and a student of French literature might enjoy these sections, which make up less than half of the book. Otherwise, this is pretty damn boring stuff. It took me forever to finish, and I write that as someone who is interested in poetry, W.S. Merwin, travel writing, southwest France, and the troubadour tradition.

[Kitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book jacket has the usual laudatory blurbs for something written by one of my favorite poets -- "eloquent simplicity" sums it up for me.
A slant shaft of light that is part biography, with connections to Ezra Pound, Dante, Bernart de Ventadorn and the troubadours of 12th century with a sprinkling of occitan. It is true, by translating, you learn your own language to find out what you can do with it -- and so did Merwin. The title comes from the hawthorn, or mayflower," that wild, white flower opening in clusters or corymbs with almond fragrance not altogether sweet, needle-sharp thorns. It is the season of love and hope of its return" -- the end of winter, unlike the rose, which came later. I was reading an interview (Chard DeNiord and Galway Kinnell, APR Jan/Feb 2011) where Kinnell says, " Art is wonderful, but the moment love is smashed, darkness falls, deafness falls, nothing survives as it was."
The Mays of Bernart sing the depth of love --
"What do I care for the strange way
they talk to keep my love away?
"I know how words are, how they go
everywhere, one hint is enough.
They talk of love -- what do they know?
We have the morsel and the knife."

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merwin's book is part memoir and travel story and part literary history. His exploration of Quercy and Ventadorn in southern France, his descriptions of the countryside, the people, an older way of farming life passing to industrial farming, the buildings and ruins are some of the most beautiful prose I have read. He works less magic as he recounts the early history of troubadours. He increased my interest, especially with the Dante connection, but too often the prose here reads more like a tired book report. The writing does not sparkle as he relates the potential details of early troubadour lives and he does little to evoke the setting or the time. He also lets his anti-medieval Catholic anger take over for brief moments as well. Not saying there is not some cause, it is just not interesting reading. A book that started in the air and ground to a conclusion.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not for many or even most. You must by necessity love Southern France, what is also known these days as Occitan. You would also do well to be at least acquainted with the troubadours of the region.
And of course you should enjoy W. S. Merwin. I think the world of him. He is a great poet and writer with an incredible cosmopolitan background.
This book combines a history of the region with Merwin's personal history--his relationship to this place where he once lived. It he also discusses how the forms the troubadours used in their songs derived from Islamic Iberia, and how critical they were for Dante, Cavalcanti, and Petrarch.
I love Occitan, Merwin's work and have enjoyed his voice wherever I've found it. And it was such a pleasure to reacquainted myself with the troubadour and jongleur tradition, which I hadn't delved in since Pound's Spirit of Romance.

[Baklavahalva · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story of one man's journey to troubadours, especially to Bernart de Ventadorn, this book combines various genres: memoir, travelogue, biography, history, ecocriticism, literary criticism, and poetic translation. Merwin writes beautifully about an enormous slice of Occitan history, moving back and forth from medieval to post-medieval, using both primary and secondary sources (though he does not provide a bibliography at the end, which would've been useful). His sympathies are clear; he hates dogma and war, and loves love, art, free thinking, nature, heroic individuals. I wish the book were longer and had more translations of poetry.

[L. O'Neil]

....that the troubadors and the travelling poets of France eight or nine hundred years ago were closer to us in terms of intellect, imagination and emotion than the extremist religious zealots of all stripes who populate much of the planet now.

[Kati · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a charming book. W.S. Merwin mixes ancient history with personal narrative in this tale about a chateau in France and the troubadors that lived there. It makes me sad for things that have been lost and can never be regained and glad that someone took the time to write about them.

[Telyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poetic and introspective look at the landscape of the medieval French troubadours from a post-modern perspective.

[Mills College Library]

818.5403 M576m 2002

[Regine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely, with indigestible historical bits of lineage, history, and poetic analysis.

[Thomas Perscors · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Beautifully written with many memorable passages. A particular favorite was Merwin’s meditation on the hawthorne and it’s relation to poetry.