‘tougen minne’ / ‘verholne minne’ / ‘Secret Love’ / ‘Hidden Love’
( from Teaching Framework, p.2.)

Love poetry takes many forms. One of the most popular in the medieval period is the Dawnsong (German tageliet, Provençal alba: see P.Dronke The Medieval Lyric, chapter 5). — Two lovers have spent the night together (typically: her marriage is unhappy and she is grateful for the comfort and consolation of a congenial lover) but, as the first birdsong heralds the approach of dawn, the watchman calls his warning and, with huge reluctance, the lovers part. They dare not be caught. If found out, their ‘hidden love’ threatens dishonour at the least, possibly death. She weeps: "Alas, you ride away now. When will you come back to me?" — Anguish, exultation, anxious fears and hopes, cautious warnings: the Dawnsong expresses all such emotions with movingly memorable vividness and quite unexpected variety (1). Even so, for all its poignancy, the moralist within us has to acknowledge that such poetry can only be understood as ‘the poetry of adultery’.

Against this background the poem ‘tougen minne’ – ‘secret love’ – comes as a great surprise.

  literally: or:
tougen minne, diu ist guot
– si kan geben hôhen muot
– der sol man sih vlîzen!
swer mit triuwen der niht pfliget,
dem sol man daz verwîzen.		 secret love – that is good;
that can give nobility of mind;
that’s what a man should cultivate.
if any man does not pursue it loyally,
he should be reprimanded for it.		 secret love – that’s true art !
that’s what makes a noble heart –
that’s the love a man should follow!
If a man will not love truly,
he should be chided for his folly.

NB especially the phrases: tougen minne, hôhen muot, mit triuwen, dem sol man daz verwîzen.

The idea of hôher muot is crucial. Literally ‘high spirit’ (NOT modern German Hochmut = pride), it has to be understood in Minnesang contexts as meaning ‘nobility of mind’ or ‘generosity of spirit’. This little poem, then, declares that any man who strives after great-heartedness must loyally cultivate ‘tougen minne’ – ‘secret love’ – but that is clearly not the ‘hidden love’ of the Dawnsong variety ! The word tougen here means ‘secret – even from the person you love’, i.e. ‘worshipping from afar’, or perhaps ‘platonic love’, but certainly also ‘in secret, as happens with intercessory prayer’. — If you long for the best for somebody, you raise that person in prayer before Our Father in Heaven. That person may never know about it, but the good that is achieved by such secret, loving prayer is beyond calculation.

‘tougen minne’ is thus certainly not the same as ‘verholne minne’ – ‘hidden love’.

‘Hidden love’, is the butt of a charmingly ironic anti-dawnsong by Wolfram von Eschenbach (der helden minne). Composer of several wonderful ‘conventional’ dawnsongs, but aware equally of the discomforts of chilly dew falling at dawn, of creepy-crawlies in the grass, of the pangs of parting but above all of the anxiety of being caught, Wolfram makes clear that all of that is worth nothing compared to the love given by your own sweet honestly married wife.

verse 2:
Swer pfligt odr ie gepflac
daz er bî liebe lac
den merkern unverborgen,
der darf niht durch den morgen
dannen streben, er mac des tages erbeiten:
man darf in niht ûz leiten ûf sîn leben.
ein offen süeze wirtes wîp kan solhe minne geben.
Anyone who is, or ever was, in the habit
of lying with his lover
unhidden from private eyes –
that man won’t have to flee away
when morning comes, he can look day in the face;
nobody has to show him out at risk to his life.
Your own sweet honest wife gives love like that.

NOTE:
(1) There is one breath-taking poem by Heinrich von Morungen (owê, sol aber mir iemer mê) whose refrain, ‘dô tagte es’, implies that it is a tageliet, but whose form, a Wechsel, indicates that the lovers are not in fact together but apart, and whose line, ‘in deme slâfe’, even suggests that the whole experience may just be a dream. — see the essay: 'Morungens Tagelied', in Peter Wapneski,'Waz ist minne, (München, 1979), pp.65-73.

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