Down with ‘hohe Minne’!

by L. P. JOHNSON

L. Peter Johnson published extensively in the field of medieval German literature, where his main interest has been the work of Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Always lively and witty, always eager to initiate discussion and always well-informed, his introductory essays on Wolfram’s Parzival and Gottfried’s Tristan are of particular value for our Leeds medieval modules (published in the New Pelican Guide to English Literature ed.Boris Ford, vol.1 Medieval Literature. Part 2: The European Inheritance).
A Festschrift to mark his 70^th birthday was published in 2000, entitled Blütezeit (Tübingen, Niemeyer).

The essay which follows, 'Down with hohe Minne!', was originally published in Oxford German Studies, vol.13, 1982, pp.36-48. (The whole of this volume is devoted to a set of essays on Walther.)

In an introductory note to the essay, Johnson reminds his readers that his paper was intended as a provocation. The first half of the paper is fairly general. The second half is devoted to what is meant by the term werben, concentrating particularly on Walther’s poems ‘herzeliebes fröuwelîn’ and ‘aller werdekeit ein füegerinne’. In the course of his argument Johnson challenges a series of traditional views about the nature of Minnesang with eager conviction – observe how often he uses italics to indicate particular emphasis – but not necessarily convincingly. Amongst other ideas, he challenges the traditional view that the real purpose of wooing for a lady’s love – the purpose of hôhiu minne – is to purify the would-be lover morally (see e.g. the views expressed by de Boor reproduced on the Minnesang module handout <hMinnesa>). And where Johnson quotes Schweikle’s view about sublimation in love, his purpose is to disagree.
It is appropriate to start with his introductory note:

(1) This paper was intended as a provocation and as a paper. When the editors suggested publication, it was clear that it could not be given the scholarly footing that it needed in time. The editors suggested, therefore, that it should be made, if anything, more journalistic and less "scholarly", since it was intended to provoke disagreement. It should not be thought, however, that the author is using this evolutionary account as an excuse to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He has written nothing which he does not believe and nothing which he believes he could not defend giving chapter and verse. Such critical literature as is mentioned has served as an inspiration – to agree or disagree.

It would be as well to begin with some of the basic assumptions – critics might say ‘prejudices’ on which this paper is founded. The first is that that literature which we term ‘courtly’ was not and could not have been completely divorced from life. This is not to suggest that it should be termed ‘realistic’, but merely that however idealised a picture courtly literature may present, however much it may be part of a courtly game, and to whatever extent it may constitute a plethora of wishful thinking, to be able to appeal, courtly literature must have borne a recognisable similarity to life at the time. It has none of the hallmarks of genres which bear little relation to reality. Even the courtly romance, which often evinces elements of the fairy tale or myth, anchors these in a social framework, in a system of mores, which the courtly audience would have recognised as an idealisation of their society or aspirations. The fantastic, in so far as it occurs, is limited to content, to narrative elements, and does not extend to the characters’ or the narrator’s reactions to them. Here one thinks of Kafka, for instance. In the courtly love lyric there is not even the fantastic of content, unless it be the supernatural powers with which the lady is sometimes credited.

Another basic assumption must be interpolated here, though it does not perhaps fit into our immediate context: since the intention is to refer to Minnesang down to and including Walther I shall restrict myself to the evidence of Minnesang in German-speaking lands and in that period. Despite similarities between Provençal poetry and Minnesang there are enormous differences and I cannot feel comfortable with works which treat Northern France, Spain, Italy, Provence and ‘Germany’, as if they were the same place, and the twelfth century as if it were synonymous with the fourteenth or fifteenth.

Yet if the assumption that there is at least a recognisable similarity between courtly literature and courtly life is accepted, then the narrower concept of courtly love begins to present problems when it is discussed on the basis of the lyric. Very readily the assumption creeps in that in the lyric courtly love, hôhiu minne, represents a reverent, humble, patient, and unsuccessful service on the part of the man, for which there is either no reward, or only that of knowing how improved he is by such service. We hear of the knight’s confession of love becoming the be-all and end-all. But this ‘Verabsolutierung’ of the ‘Sehnsuchtsbekenntnis’ with ‘Läuterung der Persönlichkeit’ as sole reward brings us up against life. Of course, you can say merely, ‘Minnesang has nothing to do with real life’, and that is that, the problem vanishes; but for reasons mentioned already I am not inclined to accept this solution.

My first fear is for the procreation of the species. My next point allays this fear, but reintroduces our original difficulty: we know from all kinds of sources that people around 1200 did not behave along such lines as those imputed to Minnesang by the school of thought referred to above. So either this school of thought is wrong, perhaps merely distorted, or we are faced once more with the difficulty of explaining how an art form so divorced from real life could have any psychological appeal and hold the powerful sway which it undoubtedly did. Let us leave this question open for the moment and turn to another of my basic assumptions.

This is that hôhiu minne does not imply adulterous love. I must hasten to add that it does not necessarily preclude it either, since it is simply about love – though in a certain style. Nowhere in Minnesang have I found the slightest evidence that the (apparently) unobtainable lady is married, nor that the apparently obtainable one of the dawnsong is either.(2)

Now we meet a fresh kind of difficulty: it is clear that minne in the courtly romance can, and often does, lead to physical consummation, or marriage, or both. Ladies are won by a humble, courteous approach and by service. So if we assume that hôhiu minne precluded winning the lady, then we must assume a dichotomy between the courtly lyric and the courtly romance which would need explanation.

Even more worrying, however, is the dichotomy which opens up within the lyric between different types of song. We must assume one kind of ethos for the Minnelied as such, and a different morality for the dream-song, the dawnsong, and for a number of Frauenstrophen, as well as for occasional outbursts of frankness from the man. Probably the erotic elements of the dream-song are most easily ‘explained away’: they are simply dreamt and not real at all. The poet smuggles in erotic requests in the guise of the workings of his subconscious. The dawnsong faces us with greater problems and I can produce no explanation as to why a different kind of minne and a different ethos should appear to prevail in two types of songs about courtly love. Finally, why should there be a difference between the attitude evinced in certain Frauenstrophen and the hopeless unfulfilled love of hôhiu minne and why should a similar shift in attitude to the erotic be observable between early Minnesang and ‘hoher Minnesang’?

I know no answer to these questions, at least in the form in which I have put them. There is, however, a possible answer to all of them, an answer which to my mind does justice to the aesthetic and social position of Minnesang, as I see it, provided we are willing to remove one of the presuppositions which produced our various dilemmas. This is the supposition that ‘hoher Minnesang’ represents somehow or other the resigned acceptance of hopeless service with no hope of erotic fulfillment. I simply do not believe this to be the case. ‘Hoher Minnesang’ is as much concerned with, directed at (fictitious or factual) erotic fulfillment as any other kind of love-poetry. But what we need to realize is that the majority of songs which we have are songs of wooing, Werbelieder.(3) It is odd, the way in which for the most disparate reasons we single out certain types of song as sub-types, for instance dawnsong (on the basis of the situation), Wechsel (on the basis of structure); dream-song (on the basis of content), while leaving the mass of songs merely as Minnelieder, undifferentiated. The wooing-songs should be recognised as such, where appropriate, and this would embrace the bulk of what we find, for instance, in Des Minnesangs Frühling.

Little wonder if the poets do not portray or speak of erotic fulfillment, though they do allude to it in open or veiled form more frequently than one might think – such allusions are conveniently swept under the carpet or explained away – and even Reinmar sings ‘ich engelige herzeliebe bî, // sône hât an mîner vröude nieman niht’ (MF 165, 17f.). As was said, little wonder if the poets do not portray or mention physical fulfillment, since there are several good reasons which prevent it. The first is social propriety, something which will be returned to later. Secondly, things have not reached that stage yet. These are songs of wooing and the poet has as yet merely put in his application; if he has been lucky he has had as answer, ‘Received yours of the 14th. instant which will receive our early attention’; if he has been unlucky, not even that.

That the Minnesänger concentrate on this stage of the affair is not surprising, nor should it be taken as evidence of their not being interested in anything further. Love-songs nowadays, even of the pop variety, tend to focus on the wooing, pleading stage, or on the unhappy end of an affair, without this provoking us into awarding medals for high-mindedness or chastity in the face of great temptation. This ties up with what proponents of the theory of the ‘Play Phenomenon’ have to say about the origins and function of courtly love:

(To apply to Minnesang I feel that Boase’s last sentence requires modification so as to read ‘the choice of portraying suffering or difficulty in preference to portraying gratification’.)

The appeal of the wooing-song thus lies in the tension and delicate balance between the poet’s hopes and his lady’s response, or between the hopes and fears within the poet himself. Hence the very protracted early stage of courtship which so many poets present (and lament) and which is often their sole topic. If we assume in this way that many songs which have hitherto been interpreted as unconcerned with physical love are really wooing-songs, then the split between them and the portrayal of love in the courtly romance vanishes, as does the dichotomy between them and the dawnsong and dream-song.

On the other hand I did mention the question of propriety and I should like to dwell on this for a moment. It is my assumption that the medieval convention imagined the poet as singing his songs before the court with the lady to whom they were addressed present, though strictly incognito. We can see immediately that mention of erotic matters in the dream-song might be tolerable: first, it is imaginary and, therefore, does not compromise the lady; secondly, the poet is to some extent exonerated, for he cannot be held responsible for his dreams, particularly in the Middle Ages when there were greater possibilities of interpreting dreams as coming from outside and where erotic phantasies contained in them would be less likely to be interpreted as certain evidence of a turbulent libido. Even nowadays the subconscious element would be seen at least as extenuating circumstances.

That it would be hardly proper or nice to discuss one’s erotic hopes, or even more so to enlarge on favours enjoyed, in the (fictive) presence of the lady concerned, no matter how incognito she might be, is self-evident. To overcome this difficulty without banishing erotic portrayal from the courtly scene, a literary/linguistic device was adopted, namely the third person. It is precisely this which removes any danger of impropriety from the dawnsong. Here the poet sings not of himself and his lady, but tells the story of what happened to certain characters. And it is precisely this narration about characters which makes explicit erotic elements in the courtly romance inoffensive.

But am I now saying that there is no such thing as hohe Minne and that there is no difference between early Minnesang and ‘hoher Minnesang’? Yes and no.

The change from early Minnesang to ‘hoher Minnesang’ seems to me not a switch from erotic to non-erotic love but a growth in refinement, by which I mean cultural refinement but also artistic refinement and Raffinesse. As courtly culture grew (5) so buildings, clothing etc. became more elegant, luxurious, eye-catching and splendid, but they did not offer any worse shelter or warmth because of their elegance – on the contrary! Similarly, however slow the process and however superficial and ‘insincere’ they may have been, manners and ceremony did improve to match, and I would see the growth of hohe Minne in literature as a parallel refinement of attitude, even if it was only window-dressing. What led me to describe it as Raffinesse, too, was that the new kind of wooing, no matter how posh, allusive and elegant it was, was still wooing, and just as the elegant clothes and buildings were actually more effective – hence their imitation by ‘hard-headed’ merchants and peasants once the requisite level of economic production had been reached – so too was the new wooing more effective, including its precarious, tantalizing dwelling on the early stages of wooing. The aims were as of old, but the results may have been ‘better’. And this continued until it had served its purpose and its time and until spirits came on the scene who needed to shift the emphasis not the aim and this, probably, for reasons of artistic variety and to give them new scope for performance and creation. I am thinking largely of the different steps taken by Walther and Neidhart. The conservatism of the Middle Ages is real but must not be over-emphasised, otherwise Wolfram would be Pfaffe Konrad and Kürenberg would be Walther.

As suggested, many of the developments may have to be seen as artistic gimmicks and ploys, particularly necessary for poet-musicians who were also performers. But all Minnesang from Kürenberg to Walther and onwards is love poetry, no matter how much it falls within certain conventions, and it is quite wrong to think that conventions invalidate the reality of something simply because they are conventions. I do not believe, for instance, that recognition that there is a strong play or games element in the creation and performance and transmission of Minnesang and that the recognition of this by performer and audience mean that Minnesang has nothing, therefore, to say about life and has no influence on it. It would be difficult to account for the expenditure of effort, time and resources of all concerned, if this were so.

Günther Schweikle writes:

In all fairness I must say that I do not know how much emphasis Schweikle wishes to place on ‘unmittelbar’, nor am I certain of what he has in mind with ‘geschichtliche Realität’. If he means ‘political history’, then one must agree with him, but it needs to be added that one would hardly expect political history to play a great role in love poetry of any time or place. It is interesting that Schweikle should wish to illustrate the ‘Irrealität’ of Minnesang by comparing it with the Provençal lyric, while conceding some ‘reality’ in the case of Kreuzzugslyrik. In comparison with the Provençal crusading songs the German ones are remarkably general and abstract, lacking in concrete detail, or at least in the precision of personal and place names, so by the same token Schweikle ought perhaps to doubt the reality of the German crusading songs. One has to wait for Neidhart to find a German crusading song which can match the ‘realism’ of the Provençal.

But what of Schweikle’s ‘Idealisierung’ and ‘Abstrahierung’? As I have said I see the ‘Idealisierung’ (partly) as a ploy, a refinement in wooing technique. The languishing, subservient lover does not hope to win his lady any less than the man who can state confidently that women and birds of prey are easily tamed. He is merely employing a more subtle and refined approach. As for the ‘Abstrahierung’ of ‘hoher Minnesang’ in comparison with the earlier lyrics, Schweikle undoubtedly has a point here with regard to what one might term the ‘stage properties’ of the earlier songs, – falcons, battlements, etc., – but these are to some extent a necessary accompaniment of the greater narrative element in early Minnesang which tends to be present even where one does not have a third-person story or report in explicit form. Later Minnesang is much more concerned with here and now, constantly implying this and the presence of the audience who are, when not protagonists, at least one of the forces at work. Even when the poet refers to earlier occasions and encounters, it is their impact on the present which interests him and he is not concerned, as was for instance Kürenberg, with conjuring up that former occasion in graphic and suggestive, though terse and selective, detail.

The suspicion presents itself that the ‘Abstrahierung’ of Minnesang in comparison with its Provençal and French counterparts springs from the different social and cultural milieu, from the varied artistic, linguistic, and stylistic development, individual and collective, of France and Germany. Pursuing this line of thought further, I would interpret Minnesang as ‘biographical’ in the sense in which it is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary, namely, ‘that branch of literature dealing with persons’ lives; life-course of a living (usu. human) being.’(7) To describe Minnesang as ‘unreal’ or ‘untrue’ because it is generalised, is to fail to distinguish between vérité and vraisemblance, and I would accept the generalised emotions and experiences purveyed in Minnesang like the generalised figures, objects and scenery of the fine art of the time – as sufficiently ‘biographical’ to fulfill the demands of that vraisemblance without which its appeal must have been greatly diminished.(8)

One of the tenets of Minnesang dogma is that the poets state that they are willing to serve their lady even without reward, confident in the knowledge that their service will improve them. In fact examples of this are not easy to find. Reinmar comes nearest to it, but here, too, combined with or alternating with very contrasting statements and attitudes. It seems to have been Reinmar’s fate to come to be regarded as a kind of norm of hôhiu minne down to Walther, but if he is the norm, then he is the only representative of it. My own view is that long-suffering service and fortitude in the face of indifference are Reinmar’s trade-mark, his ploy in the twelfth-century song jungle of ‘doing your own thing’, and a persona that may well, once it had become popular, have been as inescapable as that of Neidhart von Reuental, of Charlie Chaplin, or of any other entertainer of renown. Nowadays there is a technical name for ‘sad songs’. No Middle High German equivalent is known to me to survive – there may never have been one – but be that as it may, Reinmar is basically a ‘blues-singer’, to judge by his texts. Of his melodies we cannot speak.

We become accustomed very easily to think in one breath (if the synaesthesia may be excused) of things which though often appearing together, do not need to, for instance in Minnesang the notion of the improving effect of love-service together with the absence of reward. Yet reward can be combined with the improving effect, for instance in Dietmar’s song ‘Nu ist ez an ein ende komen (MF 38,32)’.

It has become a commonplace that the ‘classic’ statement of the lack of amorous reward, for which, however, is substituted moral, ethical or spiritual improvement, is to be met in Johansdorf (MF 94,9ff.):

But this cannot stand as a canonical statement in the war of the sexes, for the simple reason that the poets are men, whereas this pronouncement is made by the lady and evidence is wanting that the poet subscribes to it. Such a line spoken by a man might carry more weight and indeed Walther of all people appears to be the man who does it (L 93,7-12):

So far so good, but as we might expect Walther goes and spoils it all by adding:

And in case we should see this happy by-product of another lady’s rewarding one as a rare chance occurrence, Walther goes on to recommend it as a course, a recourse and piece of general advice: ‘dar an gedenke ein sæelic man’.

To see the songs of hôhiu minne as wooing songs, becoming refined gradually in technique and approach, saves us the embarrassment of having to assume some vast shift in erotic interest between early Minnesang and what follows, for let us make no mistake, the fascinating thing is that from the moment our surviving German lyric poetry emerges it is about love, and this topic of burning interest unifies early Minnesang and what follows, however much may divide them. Schweikle describes attitudes to Minne in the early Minnesang and in the early narrative works as developing on parallel lines,(9) so why should they divide later? My assumption that ‘hoher Minnesang’ concentrates largely on the wooing stage means that we need assume no such divergence between the fully fledged lyric and the courtly romance, while Werbung as a theme which unites the earlier and the later narrative works needs no stressing here.

One of the changes which Walther makes in a number of his songs is a change in emphasis from the wooing stage to a later one, as well as possibly addressing women of different social status, but since for some time I have been bandying about the words ‘wooing’ and hôhiu minne, it is necessary now to take a look at them.

The term hôhiu minne appears to refer to the object of wooing, namely a lady of high status, and by extension to the manner of it, namely such a wooing as would befit a lady of that status and the skill, eloquence, elegance and style of the poet who possessed the discernment to single her out.

Neither in the poets represented in Des Minnesangs Frühling nor in Walther could werben by any means be considered a common word. In the former for instance it is used by only 7 of the 22 ‘love poets’ and in only 16 out of 287 songs. In Walther it occurs in only 8 of the 72 songs which Schaefer includes as authentic.(10) Thus very few of the songs declare themselves to be Werbelieder by use of the word werben. Only at the beginning and the end of Des Minnesangs Frühling does it occur ‘relatively’ frequently, i.e. twice in the 14 stanzas of Kürenberg; twice in the 11 songs of Meinloh; eight times in the (roughly) 60 songs of Reinmar.

A likely explanation of this picture is that the word occurs in the sense of ‘woo’ (senses such as ‘ins Werk setzen, tun, schaffen’ etc. are to be disregarded, though some marginal cases are problematic) only when the poet is discussing his wooing: ‘jô wurbe ichz gerne selbe’ (MF10,13),(11) or depicting that of someone else: ‘als warb ein schoene ritter umbe eine vrouwen guot’ (MF 10,21f.).(12) This state of affairs prevails in early Minnesang. Reinmar on the other hand uses the word ‘much’ more than any of the other ‘hohe Minnesänger’ (8 times as against Morungen’s 2, Hartmann 1, Fenis, Johansdorf, Veldeke, Hausen 0) except for Walther (8 times in 72 songs; Reinmar 8 in 60). In Reinmar’s case the explanation is that he, too, frequently discusses the principles and practice of wooing, with or without the word werben, and since his songs are rarely addressed to his lady personally, he can use the word werben which occurs more rarely in wooing-songs directed at her. (In Reinmar she figures almost always in the third person.)

The absence of the term werben is not evidence that something is not a wooing-song. Almost the contrary, since to use the word is to give the game away. Reinmar can use the word and still not give the game away thanks to his oblique and allusive technique. Reinmar’s ploy in wooing, his almost fateful trademark, since he says others mock him for it, is to portray his unsuccessful wooing, lament its ineffectiveness and bewail the misery it causes him. But this analysis of the process of unsuccessful wooing is, of course, itself an act of wooing, designed to move the lady without making any further direct application to her. This is why I described the technique as oblique.

There is a song by Walther which uses werben three times; it is, of course, ‘Aller werdekeit ein füegerinne’ (L 46,32). Since it is a song about werben and about hôhiu minne, I should like to examine it as a song which is thought to occupy a crucial position in Walther’s ‘temporary’ effort to bring down hôhiu minne. It is thought to occupy a crucial position because, in it, important terms in modern theories on minne occur with unusual density: mâze; hôhiu minne; nideriu minne; herzeliebe.

I must say at once that I do not believe that we can make a rigorous study of Walther’s terminology and expect a rigorous one-to-one correlation of signifiant to signifié such as we could legitimately demand – and not always obtain – of a philosopher. On the other hand Walther is such a contentious poet, fond of producing (apparently) cogent arguments, that it is worth taking his terms seriously. Thus the problems we have to face are, on the one hand, the relation of key terms to each other within this poem which thrives on and whose structure and meaning depend to an unusual degree on parallelism and antithesis, and on the other hand, that of the relation of key terms to occurrences outside the poem, either in Walther or elsewhere.

At first we will merely touch on some of the uncertainties simply in the order in which they occur:

(i) ze hove ... noch an der strâze; are these terms meant merely in a geographically embracing sense, to mean ‘anywhere’? Or are they intended in a geographically contrastive sense meaning ‘at home or on journeys’, ‘while sedentary or itinerant’? In fact this would not yield a sense very different from ‘anywhere’, though it would possibly reflect more closely Walther’s life as we think we know it. Or are the terms fraught (also) with social significance, suggesting ‘in high circles or in low circles’, thus foreshadowing and referring to nider and hôhe?

(ii) the critical collocation ebene werben will be returned to later.

(iii) wirbe ich nidere, wirbe ich hôhe; the meaning of the adverbs? Presumably they refer to the social status of the woman or at least to the mode and style of wooing, since we are told in the second stanza that Walther is falling once more victim to hôhiu minne and that this makes one strive for hôhiu wirde which may, or may not, be the same thing as alliu werdekeit.

(iv) ich was vil nâch ze nidere tôt, // nu bin ich aber ze hôhe siech; again the force of the terms and their relations to each other and to other terms present difficulties. That ze nidere tôt and ze hôhe siech can scarcely mean ‘too basely dead’ and ‘too loftily sick’ is fairly clear, as is the fact that a kind of semantic or syntactic hiatus is required between ze nidere and tôt, and between ze hôhe and siech.(13) In the second stanza of ‘Herzeliebez frowelîn’ (L 49,25), Walther says ‘Sie verwîzent mir daz ich // so nidere wende mînen sanc’ (L 49,31f.).(14) Here it seems that nider can be meant only socially, but does ich was vil nach ze nidere tôt, which contains apparently a hyperlative like L 49,32, have only social and no moral force?

(v) Nideriu minne heizet diu sô swachet // daz der lip [A muot] nach kranker liebe ringet; how does this nider compare with that in ‘Herzeliebez frowelîn’ and with the nider of the first stanza? The nider of ‘Herzeliebez frowelîn’ must refer only to social class, unless we assume that it should be put in quotation marks: ‘They reproach me with "How could you caste yourself away on such a low slut?"’ In stanza 1 of ‘Aller werdekeit’ I would again see nider as a social term, but now possibly combined with a moral judgment, something of ‘base’ about it, but this need not necessarily be so. In stanza II, however, there is no escaping that nider contains a deprecating moral note, which is emphasized, unduly I think, if with Carl von Kraus one favours the reading of B, C, E, F: daz der lîp nach kranker liebe ringet. Borck and Bachofer both make a convincing case for A. Here we must interpret: ‘Low(-class) love is that which causes the mind [body] to strive after base passion (fulfillment; love).’

Lest objection should be raised to my assumption of three (or possibly only two) degrees of nider, two probably occurring within the same poem, then I can say only that, given our own language, we are always prepared for this, guided by the context, and that before we find ourselves disturbed by the possibility of nider having two meanings, we should consider that the very füegerinne which produces alliu werdekeit also designates a ‘Kupplerin’ or ‘procuress’. Yet without too much difficulty we choose unerringly.

(vi) In this song which depends so much on expressed antitheses (hof/strâze; nider/hôhe; werdekeit(wirde)/ schamen(unlobelîche); mâze/unmâze) there would seem to be others inferred, e.g. ebene werben/unebene(?) werben, and does diu [i.e. nidere] minne tuot unlobeliche wê imply that hôhiu minne tuot lobelîche wê? Also are krankiu liebe and hôhiu wirde meant more or less as antonyms, clamped together by the parallelism and extended rhymes of nideriu minne heizet diu sô swachet and hôhiu minne reizet unde machet? The truism that structure is meaning could not find more emphatic confirmation than in this poem.

(vii) What is the force of herzeliebe and its relation to unmâze? Stamer and others see herzeliebe as meaning something like ‘Leidenschaft’ and this is the way I would be inclined to interpret it.(15) But the relation with unmâze I see rather differently. When the poet is assailed by herzeliebe, an emotion which is uncontrolled by mâze, a rational force which has perhaps something of an emotion about it, then the herzeliebe expresses itself, breaks out, as werben, ‘wooing’ (i.e. behaviour!) which is not ebene (i.e. excessive, uncontrolled).

Thus it seems that in this, for Minnesang, intensely biographical song [ich was: nu bin ich aber, note the tense change; diu winket mir nu; mîn ougen hânt ein wîp ersehen; mir mac doch schade von ir geschehen] in which isolated occasions are singled out and a time sequence of past/ present/future is indicated, we have – combined with the biographical – a statement of general principles in wooing.(16) Walther states that whether he indulges in nideriu minne (socially) or hôhiu minne (socially), he tends to be assailed by herzeliebe (passionate commitment), which is what his minne turns into. Because he does not (temperamentally) enjoy the teaching of frowe Mâze his herzeliebe leads to excessive behaviour expressed as unmâze. In the case of nideriu minne [socially] this leads to nideriu minne [morally] = krankiu liebe [as a goal] and this causes him to suffer unlobelîche wê, resulting in a sense of scham. In the case of hôhiu minne [socially], which ought to lead to hôhiu wirde, herzeliebe [which might perhaps from one point of view be seen as a form of unmâze] leads to his making socially impossible and excessive demands in minne, to unebene werben and thus he will be verleitet and schade will result. Both the wê of nideriu minne and the verleitet sîn and schade of hôhiu minne cause Walther to be versêret.

So what does Walther ask frowe Mâze to do? He asks her to teach him to woo ebene.(17) But what does this mean? It appears to me most unlikely that this collocation which appears only once in Walther, and which even there is in no way defined, could by any stretch of the imagination be seen as a technical term. Indeed I am not even sure that one can grace ebene werben with the term ‘collocation’; it is merely an adverb and a verb which occur next to each other. Nor can I believe that the use of ebene werben in any way marks a new turn in Walther’s wooing, e.g. neither nideriu nor hôhiu minne; ebene could be used to describe non-excessive behaviour in either sphere of minne,(18) and I would render it as ‘to woo in an even, level-headed, balanced fashion’, not as a term for something between nideriu and hôhiu minne, not as ‘middle-class love’. ebene is a fairly natural word for such behaviour regulated by frowe Mâze, but it is clear that its choice here has been inspired by and is sprung from the use of the terms hôhe and nidere as a kind of word-play. We are after all talking of the creation of a linguistic virtuoso who is alive to every (playful or otherwise) possibility and nuance of language.(19) This song is a review of Walther’s wooing – true or fictional is immaterial – which includes presumably his songs themselves and, as I have tried to show, wooing is what most Minnesang is about.

NOTES

1. This paper was intended as a provocation and as a paper. When the editors suggested publication, it was clear that it could not be given the scholarly footing that it needed in time. The editors suggested, therefore, that it should be made, if anything, more journalistic and less "scholarly", since it was intended to provoke disagreement. It should not be thought, however, that the author is using this evolutionary account as an excuse to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He has written nothing which he does not believe and nothing which he believes he could not defend giving chapter and verse. Such critical literature as is mentioned has served as an inspiration – to agree or disagree.

2. See L. P. J ohnson, ‘Sîne klawen. An Interpretation’, in D. H. Green and L. P. Johnson, Approaches to Wolfram von Eschenbach (Berne, 1978) pp. 295-334, esp. pp. 321-323.

3. I had wondered about ‘courting-songs’ as a possibly appropriate term. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘to court’ as ‘Pay court to; try to win favour or affection of, try to attract sexually, ... ; seek to win (applause etc.); unwisely invite ... "you are courting disaster"’, a collection of usages which gives a potted history of the career of the average poet/lover in Minnesang.

4. Roger Boase, The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love (Manchester, 1977), p. 128.

5. If asked to name the greatest single cause of the growth of courtly literature, courtly culture and courtly love, I should have to answer ‘Dung’, not as an expletive but as an explanation. Wealth and luxury meant primarily food, thc rest followed and was due to improved methods of food production. It is not easy in earlier times to separate culture and agriculture.

6. G. Schweikle, Die Mittelhochdeutsche Minnelyrik, I (Darmstadt, 1977), pp. 69f. It is unfair to single out Schweikle among so many possible advocates of traditional views, since he more than any other in recent years has challenged traditional views which, often on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence or even of sheer hypotheses, have become part of Minnesang dogma. Schweikle was chosen precisely because of the clarity, cogency and independence of his account and because our divergence on the point under discussion is highlighted for me by the degree to which I would subscribe to many of his other points.

7. By ‘biographical’ I do not mean (necessarily) ‘autobiographical’. Walther’s poetry has a strong biographical framework, for instance in the way in which he refers back to former occasions or earlier figures in his poetry, e.g. L 72,31 and L 91,15f., or L 10,32 and L 9,37ff.

8. See Schweikle’s very perceptive remarks about the general abstraction being counteracted by the individual performance (p. 71). When he goes on, however, to attribute the abstractness of Minnesang to a society in which the collective was morc umportant than the individual, I am not able to follow, being more inclined to see in it national linguistic development and the advance of style and taste.

9. Schweikle, p. 63.

10. Walther von der Vogelweide, Werke, ed. Joerg Schaefer (Darmstadt, 1972). Schaefer’s edition is referred to at this point because, apart from other conveniences, it numbers the songs. I would not claim absolute accuracy for my figures; they are rough, since it was important to establish only the order of magnitude.

11. This is one of our marginal cases, since here the sense is something like ‘to deliver a message’, but as the poet’s wooing itself is the message to be delivered, it is appropriate to include the example here.

12. The schoene ritter may be the poet himself, but this does not matter, since in that case he portrays himself as someone else.

13. See Carl von Kraus, WU, p.159f. and on this point esp. p.160 note 3. Other investigations of ‘Aller werdekeit’ to which this present discussion is indebted in various ways are: Siegfried Beyschlag, ‘Herzeliebe und mâze. Zu Walther 46,32’. PBB 67 (1944), 386-401, Günther Schweikle, ‘Minne und mâze. Zu "Aller werdekeit ein füegerinne", (Wa. 46,32)’, DVjs 37 (1963), 498-528; Karl Heinz Borck, ‘Walthers Lied Aller werdekeit ein füegerinne’ in Festschrift für Jost Trier (Köln, Graz, 1964), 313-334, Wolfgang Bachofer, ‘Wa.v.d.V.: Aller werdekeit ein füegerinne’ in Interpretationen mittelhochdeutscher Lyrik, ed. G. Jungbluth (Bad Homburg, Berlin, Zürich, 1969), pp.185-203.

14. Whereas reich, reicher, reichst and steinreich are termed as the positive, comparative, superlative and elative degrees of the adjective respectively, I have to confess to knowing no term for zu reich. Despite possible objections to the hybrid Greek/Latin nature of the word I have decided to call zu reich the hyperlative. In the line of ‘Herzeliebez frowelin’ under discussion MS O has Tzo nidere and E zuo nider. It is a curious fact that here the hyperlative is in many ways less derogatory than sô nidere, since the latter implies it really is nider, whereas the hyperlative says merely ‘lower than he ought’.

15. Uwe Stamer, Ebene Minne bei Walther von der Vogelweide. Studien zum gedanklichen Aufbau und zum Einfluß der Tradition, GAG, 194 (Göppingen, 1976), pp.25ff, esp. p.39.

16. Cf. note 7 above; also Borck, pp.320, 330 and 332.

17. I take ebene to be an adverb and werben to be an infinitive. Without much change in sense, though a little in force, one could take ebene as an uninflected adjective and werben as an infinitival noun. As far as the meaning of ebene is concerned, a brief search provides nine occurrences in Walther. Several may be dismissed as not very relevant for our passage, since they mean ‘smooth’, ‘well-fitting’ (of a crown) etc. Three other examples are provided by one Spruch (considered by many not to be by Walther), namely L 29,25, which are interesting, since they appear in close proximity with mâze and mezzen, notably in the lines, ‘diu mâze wart durch daz den liuten ûf geleit, // daz man si ebene maeze’ (L 29,32 f.).

18. I find myself in agreement with Carl von Kraus (WU, p.160, note 3, but situated on p.161) when, speaking of nideriu and hôhiu minne, he says ‘Bei beiden kann man ebene werben’, but unlike Kraus I do not see herzeliebe as leading to unmâze in the form of wooing ze nidere or ze hôhe, but rather in leading to too impetuous and violent behaviour in either sphere.

19. To take merely a random example of this: Walther, after demanding reciprocity in the love relationship in various poems, sums it up as ‘si [minne] sol sîn gemeine, // so gemeine daz si gê // dur zwei herze’ (L 51,10 ff.). Yet while using gemeine to mean ‘wechselseitig’, Walther appears to realize that this word also means ‘zur großen Masse gehörig, niedrig, gemein’, so he adds in apparent, blurted haste und dur dekeinez mê.