INTRODUCTION
IT is six hundred and fifty years since Chretien de Troyes wrote his
Cliges. And yet he is wonderfully near us, whereas he is separated by a
great gulf from the rude trouveres of the Chansons de Gestes and from the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was still dragging out its weary length in
his early days. Chretien is as refined, as civilised, as composite as we are
ourselves; his ladies are as full of whims, impulses, sudden reserves, selfdebate
as M. Paul Bourget\'s heroines; while the problems of conscience
and of emotion which confront them are as complex as those presented on
the modern stage. Indeed, there is no break between the Breton romance
and the psychological-analytical novel of our own day.
Whence comes this amazing modernity and complexity? From many
sources:--Provencal love-lore, Oriental subtlety, and Celtic mysticism--all
blended by that marvellous dexterity, style, malice, and measure which are
so utterly French that English has no adequate words for them. We said
"Celtic mysticism," but there is something else about Chretien which is
also Celtic, though very far from being "mystic". We talk a great deal
nowadays about Celtic melancholy, Celtic dreaminess, Celtic "otherworldliness";
and we forget the qualities that made Caesar\'s Gauls, St.
Paul\'s Galatians, so different from the grave and steadfast Romans--that
loud Gaulois that has made the Parisian the typical Frenchman. A different
being, this modern Athenian, from the mystic Irish peasant we see in the
poetic modern Irish drama!--and yet both are Celts.