Arnaut Daniel

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Arnaut Danièl was a Provençal troubadour of the 13th century, praised by Dante and called "Grand Master of Love" by Petrarch. In the 20th century he was lauded by Ezra Pound as the greatest poet to have ever lived.

According to one vida, Daniel was born of a noble family at the castle of Ribeyrac in Périgord; however, the scant contemporary sources point to him being a jester with pernicious economic troubles. Raimon de Durfort calls him "a student, ruined by dice and shut-the-box". He was the inventor of the sestina, a song of six stanzas of six lines each, with the same rhymes repeated in all, though arranged in different and intricate order, which must be seen to be understood. Longfellow claims he was also the author of the metrical romance of Lancillotto, or Launcelot of the Lake, but this claim is completely unsubstantiated; Dante's reference to Daniel as the author of prose di romanzi ("proses of romance") remains, therefore, a mystery.

In Dante's The Divine Comedy, Arnaut Daniel appears as a character doing penance in Purgatory for lust. He responds in Provençal to the narrator's question about who he is:

«Tan m'abellis vostre cortes deman,

qu'ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire.

Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;

consiros vei la passada folor,

e vei jausen lo joi qu'esper, denan.

Ara vos prec, per aquella valor

que vos guida al som de l'escalina,

sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor»

(Purg., XXVI, 140-147)

Translation:

"Your courteous question pleases me so,

that I cannot and will not hide from you.

I am Arnaut, who weeping and singing go;

Contrite I see the folly of the past,

And, joyous, I foresee the joy I hope for one day.

Therefore do I implore you, by that power

Which guides you to the summit of the stairs,

Remember my suffering, in the right time."

In homage to these lines which Dante gave to Daniel, the European edition of T.S. Eliot's second volume of poetry was titled Ara Vos Prec. Eliot's poem The Waste Land also contains a reference to Canto XXVI in the line "Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina" ("Then hid him in the fire that purifies them"), which immediately follows them in to end Dante's Canto, and appears in the Eliot's closing section of the Waste Land.

The lycée in modern day Ribérac is named for Arnaut Daniel.

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