Throughout The Song of Roland, images of violence
are juxtaposed with images and scenes of grief, especially surrounding the
conflicts between the Saracens and the Franks. For instance, the following
quote follows a gruesome image of dismemberment immediately with an explicit
reference to grief.
“ Baligant
said‘…/
He and Roland
came face to face on the battlefield./
Roland gave him
such a blow with Durenal/
That he severed
his right hand from his body;/
He killed his
son whom he loved so much/
And the men whom
he had brought with him./
Unable to remain
any longer, he took flight;/
The emperor
pursued him hotly./
The king asks
that you come to his aid;/
He surrenders to
you the kingdom of Spain.’/
And Baligant
begins to ponder;/
His grief is so
great that he almost went mad”
(2769-2789)
The way in which
Baligant narrates Roland’s severing of King Marsile’s hand and is afterwards
immediately overcome by his grief suggests the connection between the physical
pain of the battle, the physical violence, and the emotional pain that it causes,
the emotional violence. The words “blow,” “severed,” and “killed” relate
specifically to the physical violence of the scene; conversely, the words
“grief” and “mad” inform the emotional violence experienced by Baligant. In the
above scene, the physical pain causes the emotional pain, and thus physical,
visual violence is a catalyst for turbulent emotions.
Yet, there also
exist in the text two moments at which emotional violence, specifically grief,
causes physical violence, particularly death. For instance, the quote, “When
Marsile hears her, he turns towards the wall;/ He weeps and bows his head low./
He died of grief, oppressed by misfortune” (3644-3647), illustrates how Marsile
dies from his grief when he hears Bramimonde shout, “The emir is slain” (3643).
Alas, Marsile experiences death, or physical violence, as a result of his
grief, or emotional violence.
Moreover, Aude
dies overcome with grief when she learns that Roland, the man she was supposed
to marry, died during battle; her emotional trauma causes her face to become “Drained
of colour” as “she falls at Charlemagne’s feet” (3720). The physical nature of
her death is emphasized by the description of her facial color and her fall to
Charlemagne’s feet. Like Marsile, Aude experiences physical violence as an result
of her emotional violence.
The
juxtaposition of words and images that communicate physical violence with those
that inform grief and thus emotional violence demonstrates the way in which
both types of violence play a role in the events of the story. The discussion
question related to this topic is as follows.
Are there
different types of emotional violence displayed by different characters in The Songs of Roland, or is this
emotional violence limited to grief? How do different characters express their
grief (i.e. with complete sadness, with rage, with vengeance)?
First off, I apologize for the confusion of names (Rollanz=Roland). I purchased the e-text which claimed it was the Penguin classics version with the same translator, but this ended up clearly not to be the case. The passages from this translation and the one the class used were quite close though I believe. Sorry!
ReplyDeleteThe close proximity of moments of grief and moments of violence throughout The Song of Roland is something I noticed while reading as well. As Morgan points out, the violence can be a result of the grief and the grief a result of the violence, thus making a sort of vicious never-ending cycle of the two. I think one moment in the text that particularly illustrates this cycle is in CLXVI-CLXV: "The count Rollanz, when dead he saw his peers, and Oliver, he held so very dear, grew tender, and began to shed a tear; out of his face the colour disappeared; no longer could he stand for so much grief. Will he or nill, he swooned upon the field." Roland experiences this extreme grief from the death of his men and good friend, Oliver. Here, we see the grief resulting out of violence, which soon after Roland's grief registers with him, again results and returns to violence: "whereon ten blows with grief and rage he strikes."
I think the reactions that particular characters have in relation to grief is also a sort of characterization. We can compare the reactions and thus, essentially compare the characters themselves. Roland, for example, expresses his grief with further violence. "the count Rollanz, when Sansun dead he saw. You may believe, great grief he had therefor...goes as he may to strike that baron bold." Roland frequently responds with rage and anger to what saddens him, except in that particular scene where he loses Oliver, his grief results in the physical sickness and loss of color "so feeble he is, no further fare he can." At first I thought this was some sort of character turn--perhaps Roland putting an end to the violence cycle, but alas...he ended up giving ten rage filled blows to a boulder.
I agree: the manner in which emotional and psychological trauma is represented in the poem is really fascinating – especially because, as Morgan points out, grief has radical physical effects: death in the case of Marsile and Aude and, as Clare points out, lots of fainting and swooning. The narrator even equates the two at one point: “And the Franks hack and hew. / Some pagans die, some are made to faint” (1347-8). The story obviously has a difficult time deciding how to depict the exact causes of Roland’s death. Even though he dies on the battlefield, his demise is different from any that the pagan warriors suffer. The story seems unwilling or unable to depict him as dying from any kind of pagan violence. (It’s about a deliberate a death as one could imagine, without it being suicide!) All of Roland’s sympathetic fainting at the fates of Oliver and his peers anticipates the hero’s impending death, but the actual physical cause seems to be some kind on internal rupture induced by his sounding the horn…. Tomorrow in class, I hope we’ll talk about the various representations of suffering in the poem (especially Roland’s suffering) and how the physical effects and emotional effects of violence relate to one another. Great post, Morgan!
ReplyDeleteSean Hackel
ReplyDeleteThe Song of Roland presents us with the strange binary pair of violence and grief. When the vicious battle is waged between the forces of King Marsile and Count Roland accompanied by the rearguard, there is as much grief as there is blood. In moments of tremendous grief, men succumb to fainting. In particular, Roland suffers from spells of fainting a few times before he meets his demise. They are spurred by witnessing his dear friend Oliver die, again when he embraces Oliver’s lifeless body, and as he lay on the hilltop slowly dying.
In passage 151 Oliver dies from his wounds and it reads, “Now Roland sees that his friend is dead, / Lying face down, his head on the ground. / He began to mourn him in tender fashion: / ‘Lord companion, how sad that you were so bold; We have been together for days and years… / Now that you are dead, it grieves me to remains alive.’ / With these words the marquis faints” (2024-2031). There is such love Roland has for Oliver and pain he suffers from losing him that he faints whilst still atop his horse. He endures a similar faint when attempting to gather the bodies of his fallen brethren and place them aside the archbishop. So acknowledgment of death and fainting go hand-in-hand; fainting mirrors death. When he comes across Oliver’s body, he praises what acts of valor Oliver committed in many battles and claims “In no land is there a finer knight” (2214). So we find the intense homo-social bond between Roland and Oliver grounded in violence, in war; it was in battle that they lived as knights (Christian knights). Upon Oliver’s death, this bond is broken and grief is all that remains inducing spells of fainting. It would appear as though it is Grief (fainting) brings a man closer to death, but it is within Violence where a man truly lives alongside his fellow man.
In addition, the homo-social bond which Violence establishes is the pillar around which Roland validates his own life. He does not mourn so much his own passing but is wrought when his comrades die – overwhelming him with grief, causing faints, and bringing him closer to death.
What a strange approach for defining life as it was Roland himself who aggravates Ganelon to the point of betrayal subsequently resulting in the deaths of all his compatriots. The violence of bloodshed in which Roland thrived is exactly that which took everything from him. But his own physical death does not bear the same weight as his mental and spiritual anguish over the death of others. So one’s life is valued in the lives of others. And this life is lived in within the context of Violence and war in the name of God. But violence destroys life.
When the war is won, Saint Gabriel comes to King Charles and commands him to attack other lands. At the behest of God, King Charles acknowledges this self-defeating, self-destructive manner of living saying “‘God… how wearisome my life is!’” (4000). How pitiful to know your demise is of your own doing, and yet you do nothing to change it.