Apr

5

Green With Pride.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

April 5, 2007 |

Ironically we know more about Sin-leqi Uninni, the author of a version of Gilgamesh, which is significantly older, than we do about the author of Sir Gawain And The Green Kight and the allegorical poems Patience, Purity, and The Pearl. Simply called the Pearl Poet, we know he was a contemporary of Chaucer, but, living in either Lancashire or Cheshire in the Northwest of Britain, near Wales, he spoke a very different English. From there on the biographical information is murky. What we do know is that Sir Gawain And The Green Knight is an extraordinary story, and that it’s well served by a new translation by Pulitzer-price winning poet W.S. Merwin (Knopf, 2005). gawain.jpg

Merwin is no stranger to bringing a work to English, having translated works as diverse as Dante’s Purgatorio (Knopf, 2001) and Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam (New York Review Books Classics, 2004). His translation of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight is contemporary and clear, a good version for contemporary readers, especially if you don’t know the poem. Also, unlike most editions of the poem, the text in the original language is on the facing page, like the edition of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, another anonymous medieval poem.

Close to the beginning the poet says,

I schal telle hit as-tit, as I in toun herde,

with tonge,

As hit is stad and stoken

In stori stif and stronge,

With lel lettres loken,

In londe so hatz ben longe.

It’s not quite as clear as Chaucer (who has his own blog, by the way) but Merwin turns the language, including the rhyming quartet that falls every twenty lines, into clear English:

I shall tell it as I heard it in the hall,

aloud,

As it is set down

In a strong story,

With true letters written

In the old way.

If you’re not familiar with the story I don’t want to give too much away, other than a few details that will hopefully pique your interest. It opens in the Court of King Arthur on New Year’s Day, with a great celebration taking place. King Arthur declares that the feast will not begin until he’s seen a marvellous spectacle. As if on cue a giant man, with green skin and clothing, rides in holding a huge axe and dares any knight present to take a swing at him with it. Since no one comes forward Arthur himself steps up, but his nephew Gawain quickly takes his place and beheads the green giant. The head rolls around, and gets kicked around by the lords and ladies of the court, before being picked up by the giant. Imagine this scene: a head being held by its former body speaks. It tells Gawain that in a year’s time he must come to the Green Chapel and subject himself to a similar blow. The still headless Green Knight the gets back on his horse and rides out. Fortunately this is spectacle enough for King Arthur and the feast begins; the poet doesn’t say whether anybody lost their appetites seeing a giant green head roll around the floor. Summer turns to Fall and Gawain sets out, determined to keep his word. As though he knew he were writing for history the poet cuts through the more sensational parts of the story, summing up the difficulties Gawain faces in only a few lines:

So many marvels the man met in those mountains

That it would be hard to tell the tenth part of it.

Sometimes he fights with dragons, and with wolves at other times.

Gawain never complains in spite of unbelievable hardships. He sleeps in his armor on bare rocks in winter, in rain and sleet, and, even more extraordinary, he’s marching on to certain death, too full of pride to break his promise. The poet was writing about a world of chivalry that was already disappearing: a world of courteous conversation and tradition, of purity of heart and courage. Later on in the poem he goes into great detail about three consecutive days of hunting: first for a deer, symbolic of caution, then for a boar, symbolic of strength and boldness, and finally for a fox, a cowardly creature full of cunning and deceitfulness. These hunts mirror Gawain’s dalliance with a married woman that is platonic, but just barely. Gawain is tempted, not by lust, but by self-preservation. In his poem Patience the Pearl Poet explains that patience is the greatest virtue, and humility, also a great virtue, comes from it. Sir Gawain And The Green Knight is much less didactic, but, throughout the poem, Gawain is full of pride, and it goeth before the fall. There is no sin in being human, and in wanting to live, and in the end Gawain must accept that he is no better than anyone else.


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  1. Thank You For Not Smoking. :: Just Write on August 24, 2007 12:05 am

    […] a student the great story of English literature began with Beowulf. And one of my favorite works, Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, as well as Mallory’s Morte d’Arthur, the centerpiece of Arthurian literature, predates […]

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