Marcabru, “Lo vers comens quan vei del fau” (BdT 293.33)

“Lo vers comens quan vei del fau” belongs to the poet’s earliest cycle of poetry (1130-1135), which Carl Appel has termed the “poitevinischen Zyklus”. The ‘vers’, conceived in the milieux surrounding William X of Poitiers, has recourse to themes characterizing Marcabru’s production: the polemic against his colleagues’ mystifications and, in particular, moral decadence, so far removed from the ideals of ‘Joi’ and ‘Proeza’ that should form the basis of courtly society. From the point of view of the form, the text offers metrical and lexical structures, as well as rhymes repeated elsewhere in his work. This paper will offer a new interpretation of the text, beginning with two key expressions, “entrebescar lo vers” and “trobar naturau”, the ideological crux of all his later production and a source of discussion between his ‘respondents’, in particular Raimbaut d’Aurenga and Bernart Marti. Marcabru should be credited with having made explicit, by bringing them together, the morality of love and its poetic realization, conceived as being dependent on each other. Thus, the poet has been set the moral task of writing a poem that does not confuse, but rather facilitates “secundum naturam vivere”.