The Mays of Ventadorn by W.S. Merwin

Blogging Pound's The Cantos

• Ezra Poundings – The Reboot
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto I
• The Traneumentary, Shooting for Trane, and Pound/Trane in Comparison
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto II
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto III
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: The Ur-Cantos
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto IV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto V
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos VI and VII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos VIII-IX (The Malatesta Cantos, Part 1)
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos X-XI (The Malatesta Cantos, Part 2)
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XII-XIII (Baldy Bacon and Kung)
• “Ezra Poundings”
• Pound and the Occult: Leon Surette’s The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XIV-XV (“The Hell-Cantos”)
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XVI — Ending “A Draft of XVI Cantos”
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XVII — Toward “A Draft of Cantos 17-27”
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XVIII & XIX
• Poundmania: On Process and Plans
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XX – XXII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXIII – XXIV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXV-XXVI
• A Study From Ontario: Leon Surette’s A Light From Eleusis: A Study of Ezra Pound’s Cantos
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XXVII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XXVIII-XXX
• Ezra Pound Posts Delayed
• The Mays of Ventadorn by W.S. Merwin
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XXXI-XXXIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXXIV-XXXVI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XXXVII-XXXIX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XL-XLI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XLII-XLV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XLVI-XLVII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos XLVIII
• Reading the Cantos: A Study of Meaning in Ezra Pound by Noel Stock
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto XLIX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto L
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LIV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LV (Plus, What Do Ezra Pound, Robert Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, and Sun Ra Have In Common?)
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LVI & LVII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LIX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: More on Canto LVII, and Canto LVIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXIV
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXVI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXVII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXVIII
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos LXIX and LXX
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXXI
• Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Cantos LXXII and LXXIII (“The Fascist Cantos”)

While I must admit to having read none of Merwin’s poetry, I found myself quite curious about his book, The Mays of Ventadorn; since encountering the most famous of the songs of Bernart de Ventadorn, I have always considered him my favorite troubadour. (And while this is not unusual–Bernart was something of a rockstar in his day, and is well-remembered today–I was pleased to discover that my fascination was shared by Merwin.)

This book was published by National Geographic Directions, and is part of a series titled The Literary Travel Series, a job for which Merwin is well-suited, having spent many years in Southern France and specifically in the land of Occitania, where the troubadours flourished a little less than a millennium ago. As a “literary travel” book, it combines some discussion of the literature for which the region is famous, namely the songs of the troubadours, with some historical research and Merwin’s personal anecdotes about the region.

This could, very easily, have made for an uneasy mixture, or a garish one, but I found Merwin’s book a wonderful read: thoughtful and detailed, sensitive to the language of the work he studied and to the landscape he describes, conscious and interested in the blank spaces which constitute much of what we still don’t know about the lives of the troubadours. There is a love of Occitania evident in the text, without indulging in nostalgia or too much romanticization… there is some, but it is appropriate and lovely, as the tales spun by Merwin are increasingly bound to the ruins of Château Ventadour.

What I liked the most, though, was all of the historical narrative bound up in the geographic travels–the tales of the troubadours of the area, with all their (admitted) fancies and half-truths and secrets still secret; this, in a book that began by telling of a young man who met old Ezra Pound while he was still at St. Elizabeth’s, and who, in traveling to Southern France, ended up becoming a poet and man of letters himself.

Recommended, to those few out there to whom this sounds intriguing interesting.

(And yeah, I picked up the book because of my Pound reading project… but an interest in Pound is quite unnecessary to enjoy the book.)