s_ (also known as
_car, ric, oscur, sotil, cobert_), the obscure, or close, subtle style
of composition, and the _trobar clar (leu, leugier, plan), the clear,
light, easy, straightforward style. Two or three causes may have [35]
combined to favour the development of obscure writing. The theme of love
with which the _chanso_ dealt is a subject by no means inexhaustible;
there was a continual struggle to revivify the well-worn tale by means
of strange turns of expression, by the use of unusual adjectives and
forced metaphor, by the discovery of difficult rimes (_rimes cars_) and
stanza schemes of extraordinary complexity. Marcabrun asserts, possibly
in jest, that he could not always understand his own poems. A further
and possibly an earlier cause of obscurity in expression was the fact
that the _chanso_ was a love song addressed to a married lady; and
though in many cases it was the fact that the poem embodied compliments
purely conventional, however exaggerated to our ideas, yet the further
fact remains that the sentiments expressed might as easily be those of
veritable passion, and, in view of a husband's existence, obscurity had
a utility of its own. This point Guiraut de Bornelh advances as an
objection to the use of the easy style: "I should like to send my song
to my lady, if I should find a messenger; but if I made another my
spokesman, I fear she would blame me. For there is no sense in making
another speak out what one wishes to conceal and keep to oneself." The [36]
habit of alluding to the lady addressed under a _senhal_, or pseudonym,
in the course of the poem, is evidence for a need of privacy, though
this custom was also conventionalised, and we find men as well as women
alluded to under a _senhal_. It was not always the fact that the
_senhal_ was an open secret, although in many cases, where a high-born
dame desired to boast of the accomplished troubadour in her service, his
poems would naturally secure the widest publication which she could
procure. A further reason for complexity of composition is given by the
troubadour Peire d'Auvergne: "He is pleasing and agreeable to me who
proceeds to sing with words shut up and obscure, to which a man is
afraid to do violence." The "violence" apprehended is that of the
_joglar_, who might garble a song in the performance of it, if he had
not the memory or industry to learn it perfectly, and Peire d'Alvernhe
(1158-80) commends compositions so constructed t