“Viva la Joia! Fidon la Tristessa!”

“Viva la Joia! Fidon la Tristessa!” is the refrain at the heart of a dance scene in Lunel: “Long live joy! Away with sadness!” Sung and danced by a gathering of performers, it briefly makes Tristram imagine a life of simple companionship with Nannette. Its brightness is both an emotional reprieve and a passing possibility, left behind as he travels onward and returns to the story of Uncle Toby’s courtship.

The Refrain in the Dance

A young musician strikes up a tune on the tabourin, followed by his pipe, and the company bounds into motion. His sister sings in alternation with him, and the nymphs join together while their swains answer an octave below. The refrain, “Viva la Joia! Fidon la Tristessa!”, belongs not to a solitary voice but to a whole social scene: music, paired singing, and dancing briefly bring the company into shared rhythm.

Nannette and a Vision of Contentment

The refrain changes meaning for Tristram when he sees Nannette respond to it. He notices that “Viva la joia!” is on her lips and in her eyes, and that a transient spark of amity passes between them. Her gladness makes her seem amiable to him and prompts a sudden wish that a man might stay there, content, dancing, singing, praying, and eventually going to heaven with her. The longing is concrete but fleeting: the scene offers the possibility of a life together without establishing a lasting attachment or a future for the pair.

Joy, Disruption, and Departure

The music’s carefree mood is set against Tristram’s attention to an inconvenient slit, which he wishes could be sewn up; Nannette, absorbed in the refrain, does not share his concern. Their difference does not prevent their moment of amity, but it underscores how short-lived and contingent that accord is. When Nannette bends her head and dances toward him in a way he calls insidious, Tristram decides it is time to dance away. He continues through Montpellier, Pezenas, Beziers, Narbonne, Carcassonne, and Castelnaudary, carrying the dance onward rather than remaining in Lunel.

A Turning Point in the Narrative

The refrain gives a brief emotional pause within a narrative organized around movement and digression. Tristram’s imagined contentment is immediately overtaken by the physical journey: he dances himself into Perdrillo’s pavilion, draws out a paper covered in lines, and announces his return to the account of Uncle Toby’s amours. Joy therefore does not resolve the narrator’s wandering or settle him into the life he momentarily imagines. The song’s buoyancy instead marks a passing alternative to travel and narrative diversion, vivid precisely because Tristram leaves it behind.