The song exploits themes favoured by Thibaut de Champagne and in many cases developed on the basis of texts by his illustrious predecessor Gace Brulé (on his relations with Gace see for example Grossel 1987): the necessity for amorous suffering, the power of Love which brings at the same time joy and suffering, the lover’s timidity, and the value of memory and recollection which ennoble the heart. The allusions to parting and separation, however, give a new and more ‘historical’ tone to these themes. The author deliberately moves between topoi typical of the courtly love song, in particular those focussing on the lover’s timidity, and themes characteristic of songs of separation, more grounded in reality, thus creating a hymn to true love, the memory of which overcomes distance and allows the experience of joy even in sorrow. The (chivalric?) virtues are also obtained thanks to amorous suffering. The timid lover lacks the courage to declare himself, but nonetheless the full pain of love remains and cannot even be alleviated by the contemplation of the beloved (who is far away). So the covient of v. 25 may refer to the imminence of farewell or, more probably, take on the sense of a past tense (as it already did in RS 273, 37) and the allusion to the eyes which do not in themselves enable the lover to see can refer back to the power of thought and recollection evoked at the end of the first stanza. The final stanza also seems to play on the interrelation between reality and memory, but the envoi brings the song back to the sphere of distance.

The first stanza in particular is dedicated to the lexical field of memory, typical of Thibaut de Champagne (see for example Dolly-Cormier 1978, Zaganelli 1982; the introduction of Brahney 1989, especially pp. xviii-xix; Grossel 1994).

9-10sens et honor. Virtues acquired through self-mastery «dans une résolution de toutes les antithèses existentielles, afin d’atteindre ainsi le raffinement» (Grossel 1994, p. 436). But in the context of this song they might also designate chivalric virtues which, as in Chrétien de Troyes’ romances, are won and increased through loyalty in love’s service and also through the suffering that flows from it.

20Bédier and Wallensköld accept the reading araignier only found in R³ because of the difficulty of explaining the sense of aviser; but this verb is also attested in the sense of ‘to look, contemplate, turn one’s gaze towards’; moreover the scribe of R tends to intervene to smoothe out linguistic and syntactic difficulties. The graphy avisier of T, the only one to respect the rhyme, has a few late attestations among Guillaume de Machaut, Christine de Pizan and Eustache Deschamps, but is also found in the Prose Tristan (ed. Curtis, I, i, 92 and I, i, 118), apparently with the same sense of ‘to look, observe, scrutinise’ that it appears to have in the present passage.

29-32The conjunction que must have causal force (Ménard § 232) and il does not designate God, but repeats generically the preceding nuns (Wallensköld 1925, p. 64).

39The expression par estovoir indicates constriction, coercion (‘per forza’), but could also have the more precise sense of deprivation and lack.

42This line contains the only reference to crusading, as Wallensköld emphasises; he does not even consider this text to be a true crusading song.