CANTO IV

Provence was less disturbed than the rest of Europe by invasion from the North in the darker ages; if paganism survived anywhere it would have been, unofficially, in the Langue d’Oc. That the spirit was, in Provence, Hellenic is seen readily enough by anyone who will compare the Greek Anthology with the work of the troubadours. They have, in some way, lost the names of the gods and remembered the names of lovers. Ovid and the Eclogues of Virgil would seem to have been their chief documents.

Ezra Pound. Psychology and the Troubadours, Spirit of Romance 90.

RELATED CANTOS

CANTO XXIII [survival of the Greek cultural heritage in France; divine marriage: Aphrodite and Anchises]

CANTO XXIX [sex and divine marriage]

CANTO XLIX [continuing Wang Wei, Song of the Peach Blossom Fountain: the aesthetic of a human paradise hidden from the historical world]