Olivia Howard Dunbar

“ I am of those who do not build fancies nor speak too much of themselves, yet this is true: that I love women and fell knights to earth. Many a fine tournament have I broken up, for I deal such deadly blows that all exclaim, 'That is Sir Peire Vidal, the master of chivalry and the pursuit of love, who performs noble deeds for the sake of his friends, who loves battles and tournaments more than a monk loves bread.'"
Azalais, however, proved no more approachable than before ”

“ N the method that he chose of impressing the heart of the fair Loba de Peinautier, of Carcassonne, who next captured his fugitive affections, Peire carried into execution a fancy that a less literal poet would have turned into a neat stanza;—but it was ever his way to amaze mankind by living his metaphors. Poets are by profession the apologists of unreason; yet few, like Peire, have ever been at the pains to exemplify in their precious persons the extravagance that their rhymes so confidently extol. ”

“ The two, viscount and troubadour, laughed, drank, rode, and hunted together, wore the same style of dress, and called each other by the same name. Now, as the crown of his treasures, this gracious viscount possessed a wife, the lady Azalais, who was doubtless supremely lovely. At all events, her rank made her a fit subject for rhymed adulation, and she was celebrated in many a verse by the famous poet Folquet of Marseilles, who was also Bishop of Toulouse. ”

“ So when Peire Vidal likewise began to write canzos—and extremely good they were—in praise of Azalais, under the name of "Vierna," their perfection was good-humoredly applauded by the lord Barral, who declined to take seriously either Peire's extravagant devotion or the lady's objection to it. Meanwhile, Azalais's indifference was naturally a stimulus, and Peire expressed his ostentatious despair at her cruelty, in poems each more exquisite and affecting than the last.
"I am like a bird," he lamented, "which follows the hunter's pipe, although it be to its certain death. ”

“ The first sirvente, or political poem, that Peire is known to have written is in praise of King Alfonso and of the war which he then happened, somewhat awkwardly for the poet, to be making upon Count Raymond of Toulouse.
Years after, when Alfonso died, Peire dutifully lamented him. "In great affliction," he wrote, "must live he who loses his good master, as I have lost the best to whom death ever came. Certainly," he adds, with a comfortable reliance upon ethical principle, "I should not live if suicide were not a sin." ”

“ Incontestably the most original, perhaps the most gifted, of the group of poets to which he belongs, it is the only too obvious contrast between his wisdom and his folly that still chiefly arouses interest; for human curiosity loves to exercise itself upon such a riddle as the career of this "Don Quixote of troubadours," this earlier prototype, as it has been said of him, of Goldsmith, who "wrote like an angel" but could not live like one. ”

“ In Italy, some time after this unromantic incident, the inconstant Peire recalled his abeyant sufferings on the score of the lady Azalais, and set himself to composing an additional series of poems on the always graceful theme of his disappointed love. Although nothing is more untranslatable than Provençal poetry, one example may be given of an attempt at the impossible, in connection with this stage of the poet's career. ”