The Moderate Watchman ALEX ANDER SAGER Univ ersity of Georgia «How will I separate this knight and this beautiful woman, who have often spent the night together before? With true loyalty and in fear of my life I advise them both to part and that he go from here. Moderation is important in all things. Life and honor will not be well guarded if they continue to lie together any longer. I sing only one thing now: It is time, rise, sir knight! » «My friend, do you hear the watchman on the battlement and what his song proclaimed? We must part, my dear man, just like you did recently when day broke and the night fled away from us. The night gives pleasure, the day brings pain. Alas, dearest love, I cannot conceal you now. The grey light is stealing so many joys from us. Rise, sir knight! » «Your mouth, made for kissing, your lovely body, the way you cuddle up to me, your embrace - this makes me want to stay here! Ah, that I might one day spend the day with you without it costing us our happiness. If that were to happen, we would have no cause to lament. Your love is like a vise to me; it holds me fast, I must come to you whatever the cost.» «The dawn won’t let you! This I lament, I unhappy woman. Rise, sir knight! » 1 The tearful parting of lovers at dawn, familiar to the general reader from Romeo’s and Juliet’s bedroom debate over the kind of bird that has awakened them, is the subject of a genre of medieval courtly love poetry known as the dawn song or aubade, German Tagelied. The above poem, «Wie sol ich den ritter nû gescheiden» by German Minnesänger Otto von Botenlauben (c. 1175-c.1245), is a conventional example of the genre (hereafter referred to as Otto XIII). 2 In European literature the dawn song reached its classical form in the high Middle Ages, though its roots reach back much further and are not restricted to Europe; poems and songs of this type are found in such different cultures as the ancient Chinese and medieval Slavic 3 What seems specific to the Western European tradition, however, is the speaker in the first stanza of Otto’s poem, the watchman. This figure is found only in three literary traditions: Old Provençal, Old French, and Middle High German. 4 That is, only in these traditions is the relationship between the parting lovers represented as a triangular constellation which includes a watchman, who, as in the above poem, often plays a substantial role. Furthermore, this constellation forms the basis of the great majority of the dawnsongs in all three literatures. This is especially the case in Germany, where many more such poems survive than in the literatures of the Romance neighbors to the west, especially in the later The Moderate Watchman 313 Middle Ages. Of the eighty or so secular dawnsongs preserved from Germany between c. 1200-1500, the watchman, or some reference to him or to a watchman-like figure, fails to appear in only about half a dozen. 5 This remained the case even after the love relationship depicted in the poem was no longer one of forbidden love and the watchman lost his traditional function of warning the lovers. So while it is not absolutely constitutive of the genre, we can say that in France and Germany the triadic relationship between the two lovers and the watchman was felt to be very close to its literary center. 6 How did he get there and what exactly is he doing? Why, as Marianne Shapiro asked in her study of this figure in Old Provençal poetry, must a third figure monitor the proceedings between lovers? (Shapiro 616). 7 To answer these questions, I will first give a brief overview of the origins of the watchman in medieval European courtly love poetry, then outline his various roles in the German tradition, focusing in on one role in particular that tends to get neglected in the scholarship: the watchman as agent of moralizing exhortation. Finally, I will look at some of the less familiar poems in the German dawnsong tradition from the position of this moralizing watchman. 1. The question of the origins of the watchman as a substantial poetic figure is complicated and can never be settled with certainty, since the texts that perhaps could settle the puzzle were either lost or never written down in the first place. There are two main lines of descent. On the most basic level, the figure reflects the material and social reality of a military elite living or aspiring to live in castles and courts. Castles were guarded by watchmen. In the poetry, the role is part of a cultural poetics of space. 8 In most dawnsongs in world literature, the lovers, usually represented as literally embedded in or very close to the order of nature, are awakened by some natural sign like the light of dawn or the morning star, or by a natural agent, usually a bird, such as a the swallow, lark, or rooster. Lovers awakened by a watchman are, even when the text contains no other architectural references, to be thought of as inside a private chamber within a larger building at some remove from nature, its signs and messengers. It is the watchman’s job to bridge this remove and to communicate the signs of nature to the lovers. The dawnsong poetics of space are not to be thought of realistically, but as ideologically informed in various ways. For example, while morning birdsong still often features in watchman poems, the call of the rooster virtually never resounds. This absence surely does not reflect an absence of roosters from real-historical medieval castles and courts. Rather, it is beholden to a representation of the court as far from contact with the rustic and bestial peasantry, 9 and it is also probably governed by the desire to avoid explicit 314 Alexander Sager religious associations. In fact, as scholars have pointed out, the watchman’s typical role in the poetry - singing or shouting about a clandestine love affair from the castle battlements - is patently unreal. 10 Many other world dawnsong traditions arose in courtly and urban settings where watchmen stood guard and yet did not make it into the literature as figures of interest. 11 As Maria Dobozy has pointed out, the job of watchman is socially low on the totem pole in medieval Europe. 12 Thus socio-cultural factors are a necessary but by no means sufficient condition to help explain the prestige of this figure. Rather, an explanation for the watchman’s status is to be found in the sphere of religion. Although every particular is contested, scholars generally agree that the Christian discourse of spiritual awakening in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages played an important role in the genesis of the secular genre. 13 On this theory, the origins of the dawnsong watchman are linked to the admonitory guardians and wakers in Latin hymns of the morning that survive from late antiquity onward (Hatto 78-79). In the fourth-century «Hymn for the Cock-Crow» by Prudentius (Hatto 277-78), for example, the rooster that heralds the day is simultaneously the mouthpiece of Christ’s wake-up call to our minds to arise from our beds of sloth and sin. The spiritual significance of the rooster, as explained in the poem, goes back to the Gospel scene in which Peter denies Christ. The watcher on the walls can also be a human character. In a tenth-century song from the monastery at Fleury (Hatto 280-81), the herald who calls for the slothful to arise is a spiculator, a sentry or bodyguard. This poem takes up the language of the Biblical prophets, who often refer to themselves as speculatores appointed by God to watch over, awaken by song, or warn the city of Jerusalem. 14 The religious tradition supplies the watchmen with the necessary prestige, but we are still not close to a sufficient explanation for the origins of his role in the secular dawnsong. This remains a conundrum in the field. The main question is how we get from a poetry that glorifies the light of day and exhorts sleepers to awaken from the night of sin, to a poetry that spiritualizes the night of erotic sensuality and curses the dawning of day. This is wrapped up in the greater question concerning the origins of courtly love and its valorization of adulterous passion. For the watchman specifically, the question is how an exhorter leading away from sin becomes its enabler. 2. It appears that the literary importance of the watchman increases to the extent by which he transcends his «realistic» function, that of warning the lovers of the approach of dawn so that they can separate, thus avoiding detection and social censure (Cormeau 700). Otto von Botenlauben’s XIII ex- The Moderate Watchman 315 emplifies this liminal position in a number of ways typical of a large number of poems in the tradition. First and most notably, there is the intermediate quality of his speech act, that is, the disjunction noted above between the private contents of his words and the public manner of their delivery. Secondly, the actual wake-up call is only a part of what he says; most of the first stanza - and the watchman typically has at least a whole stanza, often more - is a reflection on the relationship he is guarding. Thirdly, he is both an insider and an outsider, bound to the lovers in friendship and personal loyalty, but also an agent of something external to that relationship. In Otto’s poem the watchman does not simply worry about saving his friends and himself, he also worries about values: «mâze ist zallen dingen guot.» Because of these characteristics, the watchman has often been described as a «third figure» in the scholarly literature. 15 However, what is generally meant by this is something like a «third party.» That is, there is a tendency to interpret the watchman’s mediatory function as essentially that of a personal agent, messenger, and enabler of the lovers, i.e., as a supplementary figure to an essentially dyadic relationship. 16 At its core, this understanding rests on the primacy of Wolfram von Eschenbach, who is generally thought to have introduced the figure of the watchman into German poetry and therewith to have established a theme upon which all subsequent poets have performed variations (cf. Greenfield 43). 17 Wolfram’s watchman is marked above all by his intense commitment to the lovers; he is triuwe, loyal, and staete, constant. In Wolfram’s most famous dawnsong, «sîne klâwen durch die wolken sind geslagen» (Hatto 451-52), the watchman describes the arrival of dawn as the claws of a great monster striking through the clouds. In the most recent study of the figure, John Greenfield observes that the watchman here plays the role of an accomplice: «[E]r sieht das Licht des Tages aus der Perspektive der Liebenden als einen gewaltsamen Eindringling, und er scheint das Bedürfnis des Paares nach der Aufrechterhaltung der Intimsphäre zu verstehen» (52). 18 To be sure, this complicity is not absolute and unmitigated. Greenfield argues that Wolfram’s watchman, in urging the lovers to arise and separate, does give voice to a principle of «reason» («Vernunft») and «non-emotionality» («Ent-Emotionalisierung») that contrasts with the highly erotic atmosphere of the dawnsong bedchamber and attempts to intervene in the latter. Nonetheless the effect of the intervention is highly counterproductive: Für die Liebenden […] hat das Eingreifen bzw. der Kommentar des Wächters oft nicht die von ihm gewünschte Wirkung, nämlich das die Liebesspiele aufhören. Im Gegenteil: Weil das Liebespaar durch den Wächter vom Tageslicht erfährt, intensiviert es häufig sogar noch seine erotischen Anstrengungen. (Greenfield 48) 316 Alexander Sager Thus, Wolfram’s watchmen operate as enablers, catalysts and intensifiers of dyadically-configured relationships - as a kind of glorified messenger, as Peter Göhler maintains: Worin ähneln sich Bote und Wächter? Da ist zunächst ihre Vetrautheit mit den Liebenden. Sie vermitteln zwischen beiden Partnern, indem sie Nachricht überbringen, indem sie Neigung offenbaren, indem sie Wünsche übermitteln und das Verhalten des anderen zu steuern suchen, indem sie Forderungen stellen, Hoffnungen laut werden lassen. Und sie schirmen die Partner vor einer Öffentlichkeit ab. […] Bote und Wächter öffnen einen fiktiven Raum für die Weiterführung, Ausgestaltung, für das Ausleben der Partnerbeziehung - jenseits der Normen der höfischen Welt. (84) It may or may not be the case that Wolfram stands at the beginning of the watchman tradition in Germany. As Alois Wolf emphasizes, it is impossible to establish the matter chronologically, and other scenarios are possible (Wolf 1979, 75, 80, 84, 125). While Wolfram’s particular conception - or conceptions - of the watchman figure were perhaps the most influential, they were not the only influential ones. I would argue with regard to the nature of the «thirdness» represented by the exhortatory watchman in Otto’s XIII, that he is a different kind of figure, one located in a genuinely triadic relationship, as opposed to a «third party» in a dyadic one. While Otto’s watchman, too, is bound to the lovers in personal loyalty and wants the relationship to be able to continue, it is not for these reasons alone that this watchman counsels moderation, but also because he sees it as the morally right thing to do in an abstract sense, as indicated by the proverbial statement: «Moderation is important in all things.» Wolf has pointed out that the watchman, when speaking of mâze, is acting as the spokesman for an essential value of courtly society (1979, 87). One can go further and make a case that by around 1200, mâze had come to be considered the quintessential virtue in the secular courtly-chivalric culture in Germany (cf. Bumke 303-04, Rücker 410). However, the most important difference between Otto XIII and Wolfram’s dawnsongs lies in the way in which the lovers respond to the third figure involved in their relationship. In Otto, they do not argue with the watchman or take his warning as a cue to turn up the erotic intensity. Rather, they are mindful of his exhortation and put into practice the value in question. Their willingness to obey the watchman’s call is manifest first and foremost in the woman: «Hœrstu, friunt, den wahter an der zinnen, wes sîn sanc verjach? wir müezen unsich scheiden, lieber man … . » Her final words in the second stanza move from the intimate level of terms of endearment (vriunt, lieber man) to the formal, quasi-professional address of the watchman: «stant ûf, ritter! » The knight himself can be seen to resist, to want to tarry The Moderate Watchman 317 in the moment of intimacy and return to lovemaking: «dîn minne ist gar ein zange mir, si klemmet mich, ich muoz ze dir, gult ez mir al den lîp.» But the woman doesn’t allow it, repeating the exhortation and thus, at third voicing, definitively turning it into refrain - a feature common in the alba but very rare in German dawnsongs. 19 By the time the voice of the watchman and that of the woman overlap, the latter has essentially internalized the voice of the former. In fact, we can interpret the refrain as the direct poetic expression of that internalization, and, conversely, consider this the very reason for the refrain’s highly conspicuous deployment in the poem in the first place. 20 Otto’s watchman in XIII does not enable the lovers to step outside courtly society and its norms, as Göhler argues for Wolfram’s watchman-as-messenger. Rather, he provides a way for them to be together within it on its own terms. In other words, Otto’s poem presents the watchman not merely as a figure who watches out for the lovers, but also as one through whom the intradiagetic society observes and monitors their behavior, subjecting them to a certain practical moral discipline. This kind of bi-directional gaze is not a pronounced feature of the watchman in Wolfram’s dawnsongs. 21 It is, however, a feature of Romance poetry, albeit with a somewhat different inflection. According to Shapiro, an important role for the watchman in Provençal poetry is to supervise the enactment of an amorous code of etiquette (622). In Cadenet’s poem «S’anc fui belha ni prezada,» for example, the watchman, who does not know the couple at the beginning, agrees to aid them because they conform to his notion of true, well-founded love: «If I were watching a castle where false love reigned, may I be accursed if I would not hide the coming of day as much as I could, for I should wish to separate false lovers. For true lovers I watch loyally» (Hatto 360-61). This watchman forms his loyalties in reference to an external code of conduct, of which he is literally the supervisor. As Shapiro writes: «The watchman’s right to act as functionary is interwoven with his defense of love. His qualifications of constancy, loyalty, and discernment parallel those of true lover, therefore validating his chosen role of moralist» (623). Otto’s watchman is an analogous kind of functionary - an excellent term for the figure of the third as opposed to the third party - albeit not in as pronounced a manner and in terms of a different, less avant-garde kind of ethos than courtly fin’amors. As Wolf has suggested, it is possible that this is a case of direct influence. 22 If Otto von Botenlauben was who scholars think he was, then he was a personage who can be identified at the court of Emperor Henry VI in 1197, was married to a French noblewoman and spent time on crusade in the kingdom of Jerusalem, at that time dominated by families of 318 Alexander Sager Provençal and French origin. This makes it highly likely he knew Romance courtly love poetry firsthand. 23 Furthermore, it is possible that Otto was the first to introduce the watchman into German poetry, or that he introduced him independently. As Wolf repeatedly emphasizes, we simply do not know about the relative chronology of most early German dawnsongs, including Otto’s and Wolfram’s lyric output (70-71, 80, 85). It is as plausible to argue that Otto influenced Wolfram as vice-versa (85). Consequently the didactic, morally exhortatory, «functionary» watchman of Otto XIII should perhaps be seen as closer to the center of the German dawnsong tradition and exercising a greater influence from the beginning as is typically seen to be the case when one considers Wolfram’s amatorily more radical dawnsongs to be the point of origin. Notably, Otto’s XIII is the first poem to deploy the discourse of mâze in the mouth of the watchman (Kraus 2: 379). This figure, which I would call the «moderate watchman,» would go on after Otto XIII to become a major topos in the genre, appearing explicitly in no fewer than eight German dawnsongs between 1200 and 1450. 24 3. As I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, the dawnsong watchman has been interpreted not only as an epic figure, but also as a poetological one. As Marianne Shapiro put it concerning the Provençal albas, in the watchman’s discourse and reflections he «parallels and duplicates [the figure] of the poet vis-à-vis his creation, thereby demonstrating the irruption of poetic self-consciousness into the demesne of narrative» (606). Though not to be simply identified with the author, he can be thought of as a «metonymy for the poet» (620) and furthermore as occupying a position analogous to that of a specifically medieval kind of commentator-author: «The watchman stands in the very position from which literature is produced: the marginal post of the glossator» (627). Christoph Kiening has recently emphasized the poetological dimension of the figure in Wolfram’s dawnsongs in similar terms: 25 the watchman himself is connected «mit der Produktion des Sanges, eines Sanges, der zwar nicht explizit als Minnesang oder überhaupt als ‹Literatur› hingestellt wird, aber doch in deren Nähe rückt» (169). As a «Figur des Dritten» he is simultanously a figure «in der sich die Genese eines literarischen Sprechens über Liebe selbst reflektieren kann» (170). The watchman in Otto’s XIII also illustrates this poetological dimension, but, again, in a way quite different from Wolfram’s poetry. The main difference lies in the degree of the watchman’s abstraction, by which I mean two things: the abstract nature of his reflective discourse, i.e., its philosophicalproverbial character and his literal abstraction as figure within the narrative scenario, i.e., his withdrawn and isolated position. With the exception The Moderate Watchman 319 of the formalized refrain «stant ûf, ritter! ,» the watchman does not speak to either of the lovers personally or directly. He only speaks about them, and they in turn only about him. This contrasts not only with both of Wolfram’s poems in which the watchman engages in reflections (in «von der zinnen» he addresses both lovers personally, and in «sîne klâwen» he holds a conversation with the lady), but also with the three other poems in this genre by Botenlauben himself, all of which contain substantial cross-communication between the watchman and his two charges. 26 In XIII, the watchman is physically-logistically displaced (though not completely removed) from the narrative scenario of the lovers’ bedchamber. Highlighting the reduction in temporal signaling vis-à-vis other dawnsongs of Otto’s, Wolf argues that the main thrust of this watchman stanza is to represent the love relationship in terms of a condition rather than an event. The atemporality of the scenario that Wolf’s reading implies is underscored by the complete lack of any reference to the dawning of day on the part of the watchman. The twofold tendency to abstraction is taken up in subsequent poems featuring the moderate watchman. In an early-mid-13th century poem by Ulrich von Singenberg, the watchman stanza, in its standard first position in the poem, is essentially one extended proverb on moderation: Whoever has sweet love with sweet delight, he ought not to hesitate, when the day dawns, to force his mind away from his heartfelt delight so that he might keep enjoying it in the future. In this way, friendship may be preserved. For certainly: Whatever is done to excess, will very easily turn into something painful in the end. 27 In terms of philosophical abstraction, this stanza goes a step further than Otto’s XIII, as here there is no mention of particular lovers at all. Rather, the discourse on moderation is completely generalized, introduced with the proverbial markers swer («whoever») and so («whenever»). The narrative abstraction is also significantly greater. Although this watchman does refer to the dawning of day, there are no concrete temporal signals and - crucially - he utters no actual wake-up call. There is a further major shift in the reaction of the lovers. In Otto’s poem the woman, though she does not speak with the watchman, nonetheless refers to him as a human agent in his physical location and in his concrete speech act («Hœrstu, friunt, den wahter an der zinnen, wes sîn sanc verjach? »). In the Singenberg poem, the connection between the first and the second stanzas - between the voice of the watchman and the woman’s reaction to it - is logistically as indeterminate as it is concrete in terms of philosophical content: «Now listen, sweet companion! » said the lovely woman, 320 Alexander Sager how this being awakened cuts me to the heart! Whether I wish it or not, I fear that your love, in its immoderation, will completely ruin my joys. It seems that my moderation is becoming most immoderate! If you are going to leave me in such longing, I don’t know how long I am going to be able to survive. 28 Here the watchman virtually disappears from the scene as a human agent. All we are left with is the effect of his presence, das wecken. I accept the awkwardness of the English translation «this being awakened» because it is important to note that we’re dealing with the unambiguously transitive verbal act «to awaken somebody,» as opposed to the potentially intransitive semantics of all English cognates («to wake,» «to awaken,» «to wake up»). In other words, albeit indirectly, the woman is still referring to an external agent waking her up, an agent her lover can also hear («nû hoerent, trûtgeselle! »). She is not referring to awakening of her own accord, which would be wachen. Still, that external agent has vanished as a concrete human individual. At the same time, the lovers’ engagement with the philosophical content of the watchman stanza is ratcheted up a notch. The woman not only wakes up at the watchman’s - textually unrepresented - call, she also manifestly listens to his warning against excess and interprets her and her lover’s relationship according to it: «sô vürchte ich, daz dîn minne mich an vröiden gar verderbe, diu niht mâze hât. ich waene an mir diu mâze welle unmâzen.» The standard dawnsong idiom of longing and erotic lamentation is now admixed with a language of moralizing reproach, including self-reproach. This poem turns the watchman into a figure of explicit moral instruction. Indeed, the conspicuous eliding of the standard wake-up call comes very close to insinuating that the awareness of problematic excess is the thing that wakes, not the fact that it is dawn. 29 Another poem from the mid-thirteenth century, «Swer tougenlîcher minne pflege» by Bruno von Hornburg, takes yet a further step along the trajectory of abstraction. «Whoever is pursuing secret love should now awaken, for surely day is dawning. Let him shake off repose in good time! He ought not to act such that he give cause for lamentation. A separation will please me well. Very often a man begins to suffer great sorrow on account of sweet affairs.» At these words a lovely woman started up. Then she embraced her companion. She said: «Alas, I believe the day is approaching us soon. I am very unhappy about it, poor longing me.» The pure sweet lady woke him up. They both looked at the grey light. They feared Rumor, and also Danger. Their shared joy turned to sorrow when they had to part and the day dawned. The pure woman of good breeding gave herself to him with solemn oaths. The knight promised her then: «Nobody can make me want to give you up. May the blessing of heaven be your roof.» 30 The Moderate Watchman 321 Here the watchman stanza is very similar to the Ulrich poem: moralizing discourse in a proverbial register without any reference to particular lovers, nor any wake-up call. There is, to be sure, no explicit reference to mâze in this text, and I have not counted it among the eight poems to employ that topos (cf. note 24). Nonetheless it seems clear that the problematic behavior circumscribed in the phrase er sol niht machen, daz man von im beginnet klagen has to do with immoderation. The general thrust of the stanza, however, is even more moralizing. Whereas in Otto and Singenberg the watchman’s exhortation is still tied to his traditional concern for the health and future of the clandestine love affair he supervises, this concern is not present here. In fact, the last two sentences seem to suggest that the scheiden the watchman has in mind is of the permanent kind. The greater level of abstraction in Hornburg results from the incomplete representation of the logistical relationship between the watchman’s voice and the act of waking. The connection is even less clear than in the Singenberg poem. The phrase I have translated as «these words» in the second stanza, diu rede, is a very neutral term for a speech act in MHG and seems incommensurate with both the traditional medium of the watchman (that is, song) as well as the expected volume of the delivery (i.e., loud). 31 Indeed, very often in MHG diu rede simply means «the matter» or «the issue» at hand, in a way only vaguely related or even unconnected to an antecedent speech act. 32 Consequently, an alternative translation of the woman’s reaction to the first stanza could be simply: «The woman started up on account of this.» Moreover, what the woman tells her companion is not only completely without reference to an external agent of waking (notice that there is no call for him to listen, as there is in the previous two examples), it also makes one redundant in a way that comes close to falsifying the physical presence of a watchman. For the woman to say that she believes the day is approaching - «ich waene, der tac uns aber wil nâhen» - is to claim for herself the watchman’s role as interpreter and announcer of the signs of dawn. In other words, one of the ways of interpreting this poem is that there is no longer any human watchman on the battlements at all. If, to paraphrase Kiening’s reading of Wolfram’s dawnsongs (168), the watchman fails as a narrative figure only to become more powerful as a poetological one, the Hornburg poem, following a trajectory first established in Otto XIII and continued in - or paralleled by - Singenberg, strips the watchman stanza of all narrative functions and presents the figure as solely signifying a poetological space. The warning to specified lovers in the context of a particular affair has now turned into moralizing gloss on courtly love relationships in general. And if the sanc of Wolfram’s watchman approaches that of Minne- 322 Alexander Sager sang (Kiening 169), it seems to me that diu rede of Hornburg’s watchman signals another kind of literary discourse gaining popularity and salience from the early thirteenth century: the gnomic poetry known in German as Spruchdichtung. Beginning with Otto, the moderate watchman in dawnsong poetry begins to sound a lot like courtly didacts such as Thomasin von Zirclaria and the anonymous author of the treatise Die Maße, both of whom attempt to accommodate socially problematic courtly love relationships by prescribing practical moral rules for their participants. In the latter text, in fact, the main benefit of practicing moderation (repeated at four points in the short text) seems to be that it enables «knights and ladies» to successfully practice clandestine love affairs! 33 At the same time, even though the watchman stanza is divested of its narrative content, it is obviously still operating within a narrative poem. In Otto we saw how, through the formal logic of the refrain, the voice of the woman can be seen to internalize the voice of the watchman and carry out the content of the exhortation. In Singenberg, too, the woman’s interpretation of her relationship takes up the watchman’s warning against excess in a way that also looks like a kind of internalization. By the Hornburg poem, it seems to me that the connection between the first and the second stanza has become so tenuous and abstract as to suggest that the voice the woman wakes to is actually some kind of internal voice. How might we theorize this kind of internalization in early 13th century Germany? One way, trodden by Hartmut Kokott, is to psychologize the whole dawnsong constellation according to the Freudian triad of the ego (knight), id (lady), and superego (watchman). 34 However, this kind of approach has not held up very well in critical scholarship. 35 One very glaring problem for straight-up Freudian analysis is that, at least in the poems discussed here, the lady cannot be seen in the position of the id, since she is the one who is actually listening to the watchman and seeking to carry out his exhortation in the face of a male desire coded as immoderate. So if anything, the woman would represent the ego and the knight the id. In my view, the love relationship between the knight and the lady in mid-13th century dawnsongs cannot be understood in any kind of generalized psycho-metaphorical terms. I do think there is some scope for pondering Kokott’s identification of the watchman with the Freudian superego, however, and for two reasons. First, models of the human psyche featuring a metaphorical watchman who supervises an inner moral economy and exhorts self-discipline are widespread in the west long before Freud - and the historical patrimony of his models and complexes was of course of greatest importance to Freud himself. The Moderate Watchman 323 Selective examples would include the «inner judge» in Kant’s Metaphysik der Sitten who «observes» the subject and «speaks with a fearsome voice» at the moment of waking (438). 36 This inner judge represents the conscience and the voice of reason. A century before Kant, Grimmelshausen described a character’s moral crisis in Simplicissimus in the following terms: «jedoch unterliesse der jnnerliche Waechter, das Liecht der Vernunfft, der Zeug, der nimmer gar stillschweigt, nemblich das Gewissen, indessen nicht, einem jeden seine Fehler zeitlich genug vorzuhalten und ihm eines andern zuerinnern» (590). 37 A century and a half before Grimmelshausen, Hans Sachs wrote a religious dawnsong identifying the watcher on the battlements with the voice of reason: «Der wachter an der zinnen / ist die vernunfft mit sinnen: / -‹wach auf! › so rufft er drat / ‹wach auf von sunden, es ist spat! › (Hatto 470). 38 And fifteen centuries before Sachs, the stoic philosopher Seneca talks about the benefits of holding self-scrutinizing converse with what he calls one’s inner speculator and censor concerning one’s moral state (340-41). 39 The importance for courtly literature of stoic moral philosophy in general and Seneca in particular has been well documented in recent years, 40 so it is by no means a stretch to regard the moderate watchman as a mouthpiece for such a philosophy. The second reason I think the Freudian superego is important here has to do with the ultimate metaphysical or ontological status ascribed to the watchman and his voice on the part of the author. In Seneca and in all the post-medieval examples cited above, including Hans Sachs, the internal watchman represents the voice of reason, and reason is ultimately Reason, i.e., it is grounded either in nature itself or in some sort of transcendental order. The Freudian superego, in contrast, is non-transcendental, denoting the internalization of socio-cultural rules. It is in this non-transcendental sense that I would interpret all of the poems in the «moderate watchman» group, beginning with Otto’s XIII. The difference can best be illustrated with Sachs’s «es ruft ein wachter faste.» Here Sachs is appealing to his audience as an author and asking them to listen to the voice of their internal watchmen as the voice of reason speaking within themselves. He really means it. The poem ends with a personal prayer on the part of Sachs himself. 41 Otto’s XIII, in contrast, has a very different objective: it artistically registers the state of courtly-cultural affairs in early 13th century Germany, in which a new generation of literary moral didacts is setting itself up as the conscience - or the superego - of society in matters of love. In this way, the poems of the «moderate watchman» group can be seen to encapsulate little scenarios of literary performance-cumreception in which the characters of the ladies are listening, responding to, 324 Alexander Sager and internalizing in a way that seems quasi-psychological, the watchman as Spruchdichter. Unlike Sachs, the poet himself is not necessarily identifying with or identifying himself as the watchman. Whether Otto von Botenlauben himself preached or practiced moderation, or even thought it was ze allen dingen guot, is irrelevant. 42 I do think, however, it possible that the forms of internalization we have seen in the poems discussed above might represent some lived socio-psychological experience, including on the part of the authors of dawnsongs. Hitherto we have been dealing with watchmen who increasingly disappear as a concretely-situated speaker behind an ever more generalized discourse. At the end of the 14th century, Hugo von Montfort composed a dawnsong entitled «weka wekch de zarten lieben» that presents the opposite case: here the watchman is present as a character, but he no longer actually does or says anything at all! The narrator merely addresses him out of the blue on two occasions. 43 The common scholarly wisdom on this poem is that the watchman has lost his «function» because the scenario being invoked is not one of clandestine love, but marriage. John Greenfield writes: «[D]er Wächter hört offenbar nur zu. Es handelt sich bei diesem Wächter also um ein funktionslos gewordenes Element einer um 1400 grundlegend veränderten Tradition» (59). As to the question of why the watchman is even mentioned in such a poem, Greenfield’s answer is that he «scheint ein so zentraler Bestandteil dieser Tradition zu sein, daß seine Präsenz in einem Tagelied fast unabdingbar erscheint […] selbst wo er funktionslos zum Schweigen verurteilt ist.» (60) This is a circular argument: in effect, that the watchman appears in this poem because the watchman always appears in these kinds of poems. But this is neither strictly true of the tradition in general, as I noted at the beginning, nor even of Hugo’s oeuvre in particular, which is characterized by a great deal of autonomy vis-à-vis literary conventions (cf. Schnyder 453). He leaves the watchman out of one of his other dawnsongs, 44 and he imports the figure into no less than four further poems, 45 two of which, in terms of their content, bear virtually no relationship to the dawnsong at all. 46 This strongly suggests that the watchman - usually a morally exhortatory figure 47 - is an important figure for Hugo outside of generic conventions, which means that we need to find a more positive account for his presence and his function, or at least explain the function for his functionlessness. I, for one, would venture the possibility that Hugo himself, as author, having heard and/ or read a lot of German dawnsongs, has internalized the watchman and, Seneca-like, really does hold converse with him, among other places, in the bedroom while his wife sleeps. The Moderate Watchman 325 Much of the cultural backstory to this internalization doubtless lies in developments within the sphere of religious discourse, specifically in the reemergence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of the spiritual dawnsong, which in Germany features the watchman and his wake-up call in a prominent position (Schnyder 635). However, it has recently been proposed that this second wave of spiritual dawnsongs first developed under the influence of the secular Spruchdichtung tradition (Schyder 631). If so, it seems very likely that the exhortatory watchman of secular Minnesang, who incorporates Spruchdichtung as a «third position» from which courtly love relationships are monitored and subjected to forms of internalization, also played a significant part in this development. Notes 1 Otto von Botenlauben, ‹Wie sol ich den ritter nû gescheiden.› 1. ‹Wie sol ich den ritter nû gescheiden / und daz schœne wîp / die dicke bî ein ander lâgen ê? / dâ rât ich in rehten triuwen beiden / und ûf mîn selbes lîp / daz sie sich scheiden und er dannen gê. / mâze ist zallen dingen guot. / lîp und êre ist unbehuot, / ob man iht langer lît. / ichn singe eht anders niht wan: ez ist zît. / stant ûf, ritter! › 2. «Hœrstu, friunt, den wahter an der zinnen / wes sîn sanc verjach? / wir müezen unsich scheiden, lieber man. / alsô schiet dîn lîp ze jungest hinnen, / dô der tac ûf brach / und uns diu naht sô vlühteclîche entran. / naht gît senfte, wê tuot tac. / owê, herzeliep, in mac dîn nû verbergen nieht: / uns nimt der fröiden vil daz grâwe lieht. / stant ûf, ritter! » 3. ‹Dîn kuslîch munt, dîn lîp klâr unde süeze, / dîn drucken an die brust, / dîn umbevâhen lât mich hie betagen. / daz ich noch bî dir betagen müeze / ân aller fröiden vlust! / sô daz geschiht, son dürfen wir niht klagen. / dîn minne ist gar ein zange mir, / si klemmet mich, ich muoz ze dir, / gult ez mir al den lîp.› / «dichn lât der tac, daz klage ich, sende wîp. / stant ûf, ritter! » Quoted from Kraus 1: 314-15. All translations from MHG are my own. 2 Following the standard critical edition in Kraus (cited above). 3 See the collection by Hatto, Eos. 4 Hatto (37-40, 81) discusses several examples of the watchman figure in Slavic poetry, but regards these as highly derivative from the German tradition; he speaks in this context of the «German watchman» (40). Furthermore, he notes two passing references to watchman figures in Chinese poetry (109, 112). 5 The most complete and thematically best structured of the several collections available is that of Hausner. I arrive at the figure of eighty by combining her first three categories of traditional lyric (Tagelieder, 71 poems; Serena + Tagelied, eight poems; Serena + Tagelied + Kreuzlied, one poem). Other authors arrive at different total counts according to different criteria (Bumke 2004, 37: about 70 from the 12th-14th centuries; Cormeau 695: about 50 from the early 14th century Minnesang manuscripts). 6 Cf. Greenfield 62: «Die Tradition wird zwar modifiziert, aber der Wächter scheint ein so zentraler Bestandteil dieser Tradition zu sein, daß seine Präsenz in einem Taglied fast unabdingbar ist»; also Kiening 159. 326 Alexander Sager 7 «It would seem […] that the unrequited or nostalgic lover of the canso has simply become, for a time, someone else - a requited lover. Must a third voice monitor the proceedings? » (Shapiro 61). 8 One of Hatto’s contributors notes that the study of dawnsongs from all over the world would be incomplete without a comparative analysis of domestic space (64). 9 Hatto 431; also 31, 75, 80. 10 Cf. Cormeau 702 and the sources cited there. 11 Note the Chinese examples cited in note 4 above. Hatto also discusses (31) the figure of the caller on the mosque in the Arabic and other Islamic traditions, but as in the Chinese examples, these figures are not developed as in Romance and German poetry. 12 See Dobozy 29, 175-76, 228. 13 See Wolf 1992, 19-25. 14 See Isaiah 52: 8-10 and the discussion at Hatto 91. 15 Cf. Hatto 31 («third character»), Cormeau 700 («dritte Personalrolle»), Schweikle 137 («dritte Person»). 16 Some of the more recent literature has come to emphasize the «thirdness» of the figure more (cf. Holznagel 93). This is especially the case in Christian Kiening’s discussion of Wolfram’s watchmen in terms of a sophisticated «Poetik des Dritten» (157-175). This stimulating analysis overlaps with my argumentation to no small degree. But in two ways Kiening’s interpretation accords with the traditional view of the watchman: first, that Wolfram first introduced the figure (159, 165, 174), and secondly, that Wolfram’s watchman catalyzes the (dyadic) relationship and is thereby taken out of the equation (depotenziert). Thus far this is similar to Greenfield’s view. But Kiening then goes a key step further: the watchman is only seemingly reduced: «Der Wächter, dieser Katalysator der Liebesvereinigung, wird scheinbar depotenziert, genau dadurch aber auch profiliert. Als personale Figur steht er nun neben der personifizierten des Tages, und das macht sichtbar, worum es im ganzen geht: eine ‹gläserne Differenz,› die trent und zugleich verbindet, ein Drittes, das zwischen innen und außen vermittelt und doch weder dem einen noch dem anderen ganz angehört» (168). 17 For the most recent literature on the debate over the question of Wolfam’s influence, see Holznagel 95. 18 See also Wolf 74. 19 Kraus (2: 379) notes that refrains occur only in Heinrich von Morungen, Ulrich von Singenberg, and Günter von dem Vorste. 20 In contrast to Kraus (1: 314), Helmut Brackert (182) interprets the refrain as always in the voice of the watchman, in my view a far less interesting possibility. 21 Though see Kiening 168 and Holznagel 93. 22 While Wolf does not actually claim Otto’s poem (XIII) was directly inspired by that of Cadenet, he strongly implies as much (85-86). 23 See Wolf 80 and Huschenbett 205. 24 The poems in which the watchman uses the word mâze are Ulrich von Singenberg, «Swer minnecliche minne» (Hausner 13); Der Marner, «Guot wahter wis» (Hausner 19); Heinrich Teschler, «Ein wahter sanc ‹diu naht wil hin›» (Hausner 20); Konrad von Würzburg, «Ich sihe den morgensternen glesten» (Hausner 22); Hadlaub, «Ich wil ein warnen singen» (Hausner 40); Hadlaub, «Nu merkt mich, swer noch tougen lige» (Hausner 41); Peter von Arberg (? ), «ich singe, ich sage» (Hausner 46); Anonymous (Liederbuch der Clara Hätzerlin), «Woluff, woluff, es ist an der zeitt» (Hausner 13). This last text, which is in a popular vein, qualifies the scholarly claim cited The Moderate Watchman 327 by Kraus that the watchman’s counsel to moderation was unknown in the Volkslied (379). 25 In light of Shapiro’s essay, Kiening’s claim that the poetological aspect of the watchman has thus far been omitted (168) seems somewhat too sweeping. 26 In III, the watchman addresses the woman (Kraus 307-08), the woman the watchman in XIV (Kraus 316), and in IX/ IV the watchman and the knight converse (Kraus 309-10). 27 Ulrich von Singenberg, «Swer minneclîche minne» (1. ‹Swer minneclîche minne / mit minneclîchem liebe habe, / der sol sich des niht sûmen, / sô der tac ûf gê, / ern twinge sîne sinne / sîns herzeclîches liebes abe, / dur daz sîn künfteclîchiu vreude werde als ê: / sô mac diu vriuntschaft wernde wol belîben. / ouch sint gewis, swaz man wil übertrîben, / daz dâ daz wol vil lîhte am ende wirt ein wê»). Quoted from Hausner 13. 28 Ulrich von Singenberg, «Swer minneclîche minne.» 2. «nû hoerent, trûtgeselle! » / sô sprach daz wünneclîche wîp: / «wie nâhe mir daz wecken an mîn herze gât! » / ich welle sône welle, / sô vürchte ich, daz dîn minne mich / an vröiden gar verderbe, diu niht mâze hât. / ich waene an mir diu mâze welle unmâzen: / wiltû mich alsô dicke senede lâzen, / daz ist ein dinc, daz mir den lîp niht lange lât.» Quoted from Hausner 13. 29 It is possible that this particular poem concludes more in a Wolframian than in an Ottonian way. The poet tells us that they exchange a kiss, «and thereafter I don’t know what happened; it’s the kind of thing we should think about but not see» (da sol man nach gedenken und nicht gesehen). Consequently, the jury is out on whether this couple obeys or resists the watchman’s exhortation to moderation. 30 Bruno von Hornburg, «Swer tougenlîcher minne pflege.» 1. ‹Swer tougenlîcher minne pflege, / der sol nu wachen, / wan ez wil ân zwîvel tagen. / der ruowe er sich enzît bewege. / er sol niht machen, / daz man von im beginnet klagen; / ein scheiden wil mir wol behagen: / vil dicke ein man von lieben sachen / vil grôziu leit beginnet tragen.› 2. Der rede ein schœne wîp erschrac./ ein umbevâhen tet sî ir gesellen dô. / si sprach: «Owê, ich wæn der tac / uns aber wil nâhen; / des bin ich sendez wîp unfrô.» / diu reine süeze wahte in sô. / daz grâwe lieht si beide an sâhen: / so forchten melde und ouch den drô. 3. Ir beider fröide ein trûren wart, / dô sî sich scheiden muosten, und der tac ûf brach. / ein reine wîp in rehter art / mit hôhen eiden ir lîbes im für eigen jach. / der ritter dô mit triuwen sprach: / «nieman kan dich mir geleiden. / der himel segen sî dîn dach.» Quoted from Kraus 1: 24. 31 The watchman’s speech is referred to as diu rede in other mid-thirteenth century dawnsongs, e.g., Marner’s «ich künde in dem dône» (Hausner 17-18, stanza 2) and Ulrich von Winterstetten’s «verholniu minne sanfte tuot» » (Hausner 27, stanza 3; here it is the speech of the handmaiden). However, it does not seem to occur any earlier, and so possibly its use is a figment of the increasing abstraction in the tradition. 32 Cf. for example Hartmann von Aue, Erec, lines 971 (diu rede [sich] verkêret hât) and 452. 33 Cf. Thomasin von Zirclaria, lines 275-96 (This section is about how a married woman can maintain a relationship with a suitor without alienating her husband). The passages in Die Maße (cf. Rosenhagen 103-07) linking moderation to secret love are lines 40-45: swer die mazze rechte hat, / des wirt vil dicke gedaht / von rittern und von vrouwen; / der mag auch taugen / haben der vrowen minne / mit aller slahte dinge; lines 120-27: Ez zimet wol den vrowen, / des en ist dehein lougen, daz si die mazze chunnen han: / so mag ir ere wol gestan. / ir minne sint vil gut / die si danne getut / mit taugenlichen dingen; / so sint gut die minne; lines 169-75: so sint die minne vil guot / 328 Alexander Sager umbe die tauglichen site; unde ist die mazze da mite, / so ist ez allez vil guot, swaz si danne getut / taugenlicher dinge; lines 196-99: wil si aber minnen / mit taugenlichen dingen / ob si der mazze wil pflegen, / so mac si vrolichen leben. 34 Cf. Hartmut Kokott 34. 35 On Kokott cf. Kiening 166. See also Wolf 1979, 154-55 and Cormeau 701 for critiques of other Freudian approaches to the watchman-lady-knight constellation. 36 «Jeder Mensch hat Gewissen, und findet sich durch einen inneren Richter beobachtet, bedroht und überhaupt im Respekt (mit Furcht verbundener Achtung) gehalten, und diese über die Gesetze in ihm wachende Gewalt ist nicht etwas, was er sich selbst (willkürlich) macht, sondern es ist seinem Wesen einverleibt. Es folgt ihm wie sein Schatten, wenn er zu entfliehen gedenkt. Er kann sich zwar durch Lüste und Zerstreuungen betäuben, oder in Schlaf bringen, aber nicht vermeiden, dann und wann zu sich selbst zu kommen, oder zu erwachen, wo er alsbald die furchtbare Stimme desselben vernimmt.» 37 I have modified the punctuation in the edition in order make the passage easier to read. 38 Orthography modified for the reason noted above. 39 «This [i.e., the spirit] should be summoned to give an account of itself every day. Sextius had this habit, and when the day was over, and he had retired to his nightly rest, he would put these questions to his soul: ‹What bad habit have you cured to-day? What fault have you resisted? In what respect are you better? › Anger will cease and become more controllable if it finds that it must appear before a judge every day. Can anything be more be more excellent than this practice of thoroughly sifting the whole day? And how delightful the sleep that follows this self-examination - how tranquil it is, how deep and untroubled, when the soul has either praised or admonished itself, and when this secret examiner and critic of the self [speculator […] censorque] has given report of its own character! I avail myself of this privilege, and every day I plead my cause before the bar of self. When the light has been removed from sight, and my wife, long aware of my habit, has become silent, I scan the whole of my day and retrace all my deeds and words: I conceal nothing from myself, I omit nothing» (De Ira III, ch. 36). 40 Cf. Stephen Jaeger esp. 79-81, 168-69; Scaglione 108-09. The main source for the medieval learned discourse on moderation is Cicero’s De officiis, I.40. 41 Maria, junkfrau milde, / du senftmütiges bilde, / so ich in sünd entschlif, / mit der genaden stim mir rif, / das ich wir aufgewecket. 42 In any case he wrote several other dawnsongs in which the watchman has various quite different roles. 43 Hugo von Montfort 173-75, lines 17 and 35; also Hausner 207-09. 44 Hugo von Montfort 37 («Ich fröw mich gen des abentz kunft»). 45 Hugo von Montfort 40 («Ich fragt ain wachter ob es were tag»), 42-43 («Mich straft ain wachter des morgens fru»), 44 («Sag an wachter, wie was es tag»), 82-86 («Wachter, mir hat getromt ain troum»). 46 I mean here the latter two examples in the note above. Schnyder (652) lists «Sag an wachter» in his appendix of religious songs featuring «isolated elements» of the dawnsong tradition, but this is not the case with «Wachter, mir hat getromt ain troum,» which is secular in character. 47 Schyder speaks of the «Moralisierung der Gattung» (453). The Moderate Watchman 329 Works Cited Brackert, Helmut, ed. Minnesang. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1989. Cormeau, Christoph. «Zur Stellung des Tagelieds im Minnesang» Festschrift für Walter Haug und Burghart Wachinger. Ed. Johannes Janota et. al.. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992. 695-709. Dobozy, Maria. Re-membering the Present: The Medieval German Poet-Minstrel in Cultural Context. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Göhler, Peter. «Zum Boten in der Liebeslyrik um 1200» Gespräche - Boten - Briefe. Körpergedächtnis und Schriftgedächtnis im Mittelalter. Ed. Horst Wenzel. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1997. 77-85. 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Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 923-1210. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1985. Kant, Immanuel. Gesammelte Werke. Prussian Academy of Sciences. Vol. 6. Berlin: Reimer, 1914. 203-495. Kiening, Christian. Zwischen Körper und Schrift. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2003. Kokott, Hartmut. «Zu den Wächter-Tageliedern Wolframs von Eschenbach. Acta Germanica 16 (1983): 25-41. Kraus, Carl von, ed. Deutsche Liederdichter des 13. Jahrhunderts. 2 vols. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1952/ 1958. Rosenhagen, Gustav, ed. Die Maße. Kleine mittelhochdeutsche Erzählungen, Fabeln und Lehrgedichte. Vol. 3. Die Heidelberger Handschrift cod. Pal. germ 341. 103-07. Scaglione, Aldo. Knights at Court. Courtliness, Chivalry and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance. Berkeley: California UP, 1991. Schnyder, André. Das geistliche Taglied des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit. Textsammlung, Kommentar und Umrisse einer Gattungsgeschichte. Tübingen: A. Francke, 2004. 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