Jaufre Rudel and love before first sight
Testosterone, oestrogen, dopamine, oxytocin and vasopressin are considered the primary neurochemical influences on love. Some have offered the dousing of the brain with these intoxicating draughts as explanations for the enigma known as “love at first sight”, but what can explain love before first sight?
Sometime in the twelfth century, Jaufre Rudel, the Occitan poet-prince of Blaye, allegedly fell in love with Hodierna, Countess of Tripoli, without ever having seen her. Her beguiling reputation for virtuous endeavours and physical beauty appealed to more than his zealous sense of Christian morality. His imagination and intuition were suddenly and inexplicably inspired.
After composing several poems to express the sorrow of his mysterious yearning, he reportedly took the cross and began the arduous journey from France to the Holy Land, all in the hope that God would grant his ultimate wish – to see the Countess incarnate. Sadly, aboard a ship to Tripoli, Jaufre fell seriously ill. The dazed and dying troubadour was carried through the gates of the city, blind, shoeless, unable to smell or hear and was quickly taken to a nearby inn where attempts were made to revive him.
The next morning, the Countess was casually told by a courtier that a European poet was on the verge of death who had endured a perilous passage to simply be in her presence. She rushed to the inn where the besotted Jaufre lay supine in a feverish stupor, pushing past the innkeepers and clerical medics to take their patient by the hand. The moment she touched him, Jaufre instantly emerged from his calenture and recovered his senses. He is said to have smiled an angelically endearing smile before praising God for sustaining his life long enough to meet the one woman in the world who ruled his affections. He then died in her arms. Grieving like a widow, she wept over his body and had him buried with great ceremony in a local house of the Knights Templar. That very same day she renounced her rank, took the veil, and remained a nun for the rest of her life.
It is certainly a sob-inducing story, but one which probably did not happen. This veritable vida of perfect romance was likely extrapolated by scholars from the verses Jaufre composed in France about a “distant love” or “love afar”. Jaufre’s lyrical elucidations of pining for a consummate anima certainly transformed this medieval pair into an artistic myth. The telling of their tale inspired poets from Petrarch to Swinburne and invigorated the literary tradition of gloomy odes to long distance.
However, in his poem The Nightingale, Jaufre appears to substitute his romantic ambitions for a religious quest, leading some commentators of troubadour poetry to speculate that Jaufre’s faraway love was in fact a symbol for the shrine-destination at the end of a pilgrimage. It makes biographical sense. The poet Marcabru is known to have sent poems to “Jaufre Rudel, over the seas” and several of Jaufre’s poems allude to crusading in the Holy Lands. Moreover, Hodierna is never mentioned by name in any of Jaufre’s seven surviving poems.
Perhaps the legend is true and Jaufre heard of the Countess from returning pilgrims and set out to see her. It is more likely that he simply left Europe to fight and conduct a sacred service as he saw it. The last line of The Nightingale is a further inconvenience to the expectations of a romantic reader. It translates to “the highest joy is to be found in the service of God” and completes the poem’s evolution from love song to war cry. But these attempts to adumbrate Jaufre’s biography and reconcile it to a popular fable are ultimately otiose and unimportant. The events of Jaufre’s real life may be lost for all time, but the legend that preserves his legacy has moved many great artists to recreate his tragic expedition to the east.
It is impossible to stamp out that instinct for self-expression adoration often inspires. Love links people in the most mysterious way and creates loyalties higher than those lavished on any doctrine or dogma. It refreshes our fundamental belief in life; opens and elevates our minds; and can even compel and perfect our eagerness for peace. It is the religion we all worship whether we wish to or not. They may have never met, but Jaufre and Hodierna have become high saints of that fine faith.