Men and Women

“Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli”:  Rudel symbolizes his love as the aspiration of the sunflower that longs only to become like the sun, so losing a flower’s true grace, while the sun does not even perceive the flower.  He imagines himself as a pilgrim revealing to the Lady of Tripoli by means of this symbol the entire sinking of self in his love for her.  Even men’s praise of his songs is no more to him than the bees which bask on a sunflower are to it.

Rudel was a Provencal troubadour, and lived in the twelfth century.  The Crusaders, returning from the East, spread abroad wonderful reports of the beauty, learning, and wit of the Countess of Tripoli, a small duchy on the Mediterranean, north of Palestine.  Rudel, although never having seen her, fell in love with her and composed songs in honor of her beauty, and finally set out to the East in pilgrim’s garb.  On his way he was taken ill, but lived to reach the port of Tripoli.  The countess, being told of his arrival, went on board the vessel.  When Rudel heard she was coming, he revived, said she had restored him to life by her coming, and that he was willing to die, having seen her.  He died in her arms; she gave him a rich and honorable burial in a sepulchre of porphyry on which were engraved verses in Arabic.