I just read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to my son, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien. A bizarre tale of magic, chivalry and moral purity, it also wallows in elitism, misogyny, and brutality towards nature. Christianity in the 12th century: go figure.

King Arthur and his crew are partying at Christmastime, imbibing wine nonstop, yet expressing only that which is mannerly and virtuous and elegant, when this huge green knight rides into the great hall on a huge green horse. Basically he challenges everyone to a fight, and Sir Gawain steps forth in place of the king, because that’s what knights do. Green Knight dismounts, says, “OK, hit me with your best shot,” so Gawain chops off his head with an axe. Green Dude picks up his head, climbs back on the green horse and tells Gawain to show up at his “Green Chapel” next New Year’s Day, and he’ll return the favor. I guess back in the day it was easy being green.

“Where’s this Green Chapel?” Gawain asks.

“Hit the road,” says the head, hanging from the left hand of the torso, “you’ll find it.”

So Gawain is in trouble. Oh, the moaning and wailing. But the next few chapters are all about fashion: how Gawain is clad, adorned, armored in gold and jewels and the finest of everything before he takes off. He spends the next year wandering around England fighting bad guys and dragons, the usual stuff, then as Christmas approaches, he prays to Mary for shelter in a snowstorm so he can observe the birth of the blessed Christ. A castle appears out of nowhere, and he’s welcomed and treated like the renowned knight that he is. The lord of the castle, learning Gawain is looking for the Green Chapel, makes his day by informing him, “It’s only a mile or two from here.” Hmmm, thinks the reader. “You have some free time until New Years, so kick back while I go hunting,” he says. “What I get I give to you. What you get, you give to me.”

“Huh?” thinks Gawain.

Off goes the lord next day, killing several truckloads of female deer. Next day, it’s a wild boar that savages his crew, but they get him in the end. Day three, it’s Reynard the fox, who leads them a merry chase until he’s finally mauled and disabused of his fur coat. Meanwhile, the Lady of the Castle, described as hotter than Guinevere herself, is sneaking into Gawain’s bedchamber to check out his mannerly virtue, bestowing a kiss on him, but he’s a no-go. He may be a hunk, but he’s not stupid. But oh, the gay repartee, the flirting, the elegant badinage. So: Day One Gawain kisses the lord on the neck on his return. Day Two, the Lady gave him a couple, so he lays two on the lord. Day Three, the Lady was on fire: he must kiss the lord thrice, but wait: Gawain also caved and accepted, as a token of her love, a green garter that would, she said, protect him against the Green Knight. (Oh, the garter is green? Hmmm, thinks the reader.)

But Gawain reporteth this not to the lord!

Cut to the cut. When his encounter with Sir Green goes down, he bows and bares his neck. On the first swing of his giant axe, Green only fakes it. Gawain flinches though. “Not cool,” says Mr. Green. Second swing, same fake, but Gawain doesn’t flinch. “You bad!” says Green. Third swing, no flinch, but Green just slightly bloodies him on his neck –a nick on his neck. Gawain jumps up, grabs his sword and gets ready to throw down.

“Cool it,” says Sir Green. “I’m the lord of the castle! Merlin enchanted me or something, OK? Anyway, I sent my wife in to test you, and you were almost perfect, but you caved and took the garter, so I had to slice you a bit. You didn’t take the garter on romantic grounds, you took it to survive, so you get points on that. Bottom line, you passed the test! So let’s go back to the castle and party down some more!”

But they didn’t admit Gawain to the Round Table for nothing. He is devastated by his imperfection. “Man, I took the garter to try to save my life, instead of trusting in Christ! My bad. My really, really bad!” Party over. He heads back to the Round Table. But the rest of the crew is so happy to see him, they make green garters for everyone, to remind them how everyone falls short of the glory of Christ. They all live happily ever after until, instead of them slaughtering their enemies, I assume they get skewered and go straight to heaven. You know, like the dudes who did the World Trade Center.

A few things sink in after you finish reading. The compounding of knightly elegance and bloody violence is reminiscent of samurai. Of course, the samurai’s context is loyalty and personal honor. No green samurai can forgive him for a dishonorable choice. There is also no Jesus’. There wasn’t even cheeses. I think the cheeses came in with the Portugueses. And it’s still too expensive here.

Then there’s that strange chivalric obsession with male chastity – in the literature if not in fact. More than this, the duality of the romantically idolized female and her opposite, the manipulative slut: the book speaks of Eve in the garden, Delilah, Bathsheba. Aside from a knight’s idealized Lady, women, not men, are the immoral seducers, men are simply victims. There is no such ideology in Japan, yet surely in both cultures (and uncounted others) warriors and men took what they wished, to the extent of the social power they wielded.

This speaks to the issue of class. It struck me recently that for the elite classes, unreserved contempt for perhaps 90% of humanity has prevailed for 98% of recorded history. The notion that a given human life has intrinsic value is about as new as your iPhone. Wealth inequality? But of course! What could be more natural for the animal we call Homo sapiens. The brains of Republicans are not reptilian, they are just very Homo sapient. Well, for the last 7,000 years, anyway. Hunter-gatherers treated each other much better. Tribal is no problem if there’s just one tribe. But right outside Arthur’s castle walls the poor scuffled about, praying to Christ not for Guinevere’s love, but that they could pay the taxes that purchased her silken robes and her jewels. I don’t think she paid taxes, but then neither does Jeff Bezos, I hear. So, democracy? 1776? All men are created equal? Good luck with that. The noble Gawain heareth you not. Neither does Donald Junior.

But back to Gawain and…oh, the wanton slaughter of the does, all the pretty deer. They didn’t confine them into cramped stalls like we do to our chickens and pigs, but one sees in the rapacious bloodletting, the lord’s clearing of the forest of deer, a foretelling of our clearing of the planet.

But let us not give in to depression. They say it makes you stupid. After all, women are on the rise. Take Angela Merkel – what would Hitler say? Most of us used to die at 35, now 70 is a slam dunk. And in another 30 years, maybe less, we’ll have stem-cell meat and the pigs and chickens and cattle can all go to Disney World. Just that pesky global warming thing…well, the Avatar Meher Baba said humanity learns through suffering, although he didn’t say anything about the poor squirrels and polar bears and nightingales. But I actually believe some of us will make it to the other side and by then have learned how not to fuck everything up. Hope, and new species, springs eternal. And remember, if the earth were the Green Knight and we cut off her head, she’d just pick it up and move on. If some fragments of humanity can manage to hold on to her torso while she recovers, that’s up to us. But in a limitless universe and unfathomable microcosm – in the grand scheme of things that is – we may ultimately be just the personification of nothingness.

(By the way, no wonder Gawain didn’t get it on with the Lady. He would have had to get down with the Lord too! Medieval swingers, I guess. Weird.)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - this is an good translation but I prefer the Bernard O'Donoghue version (3 stars)

Pearl - an elegy on the death of a young child, the father is visited in the dream by the grown up daughter (3 stars)

Sir Orfeo - remix the Greek myth of Orpheus with Celtic mythology and folklore (3 stars)

***Don't skip the introduction essays; they provide a lot of context!

rich with symbolism and a historical heroic as good as any. sir gawain is the ultimate friend-zoner tho ✋

Tolkien translated three poems from (I'm guessing) Old English, keeping their original meters and rhyming schemes. I'm impressed! The introduction gives some examples from the original text, which was basically Greek to me, and I'm always amazed when someone is able to translate poetry and still make it sound good.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the story of one of King Arthur's knights who has to go on a quest because of an idiotic decision he made at a feast at Camelot. I realize these are different times and the point of the poem is the epic quest, not the premise behind it, but it still had me rolling my eyes. Basically the Green Knight shows up at a New Year's day feast with a giant axe. He tells King Arthur he's heard of his awesome knights and wants to make a deal: One of them can swing this axe at him (killing him!) but then he can take a swing at them within one year and a day
Obviously this is a trap, but Arthur agrees to it, because none of the knights volunteer ( which is smart. Even if it wasn't a trap, why would you agree to kill some random dude to prove you're a valiant Knight?). Anyways, before Arthur swings, Gawain feels ashamed for not volunteering to kill someone in cold blood, and he offers to do it instead. He swings the axe, decapitates the Green Knight, and goes back to the feast. But wait! The Green Knight stands up, grabs his head, says "Now I get to swing at you! But I'll give you a year, so find me next New Year's." Then Gawain is distraught because he doesn't have any magic to survive a beheading, yet he must fulfill his end of the deal and find the Green Knight and be killed. Cue epic quest!

There's no reason why the Green Knight does what he does, there's no reason why Gawain agreed to it, and I guess that's just the way it is. Anyways, that's just the beginning. It's the longest of the three poems. It has an easy rhythm to read and good alliteration, but clearly medieval epic poetry is not my thing.

I liked Pearl and Sir Orfeo better. Pearl is told from the point of view of a father (or husband, not sure) who loses his daughter (or wife?) and has a dream about seeing her again, but a river separates them. She's in heaven, and he wants to cross the river and join her but he can't, because he's not dead yet. He thinks it's cruel to see her again only to be separated yet again,and then they have a long conversation about the mercy and justice of God. It reminds me a bit of the book of Job. He starts off mad at God for taking his daughter and not letting him die to join her, but as the conversation progresses, he ends up more at peace. It's a good conversation with some Gospel sprinkled in. I can see why Tolkien liked it!

Orfeo was the shortest and easiest to read, as this one actually had rhyming lines. It's a cute adventure story about a king whose wife is taken by fairies, and he has to go to the fairy realm to rescue her.

Despite my aversion to poetry, I actually enjoyed the title poem more than expected. The story is a bit odd to my sensibilities, based on the premise of Gawain agreeing to submit to a killing blow from the green knight after he gets a first shot, but then I guess modern dumb-shits have played at equally stupid macho games to prove prowess. One of the things I hate about poetry is how fucking long-winded it frequently is, and all three poems in this book exhibit that feature to differing degrees. I much prefer economy and clarity of language. Pearl is the worst offender, and I had to fight my way through it, hating it the entire way. Sir Orfeo was light in comparison.

A fun read especially now that I am taking a English philosophy course that actually describes why it is written a certain way and so much more. The stories themselves aren't always as easy to understand but that does not matter. This is a book that is meant to be reread so you can pick up things that weren't clear from the start.

Tolkien has become synonymous with fantasy literature in the last twenty years. His fame and reputation in that regard are well deserved. His fantasy work has been badly copied and misinterpreted by authors and artists and game designers nearly since its inception.

For many years before he wrote The Hobbit and the subsequent works of fantasy Tolkien was one of the foremost scholars on medieval literature and philology. Philology is the study of the structure, historical development and relationships of languages and Tolkien was the best English language philologist.

Much of his work can be seen in the Oxford English Dictionary, which is so extensive it takes up multiple volumes.

Slightly more accessible to the average reader is his work of translation. He didn’t translate foreign languages into English he translated medieval English into modern English.

Translating poetry is a monumental undertaking that requires vast skill and understanding of words. Not only must the original intent of the poetry be maintained but the rhyming scheme and alliterative style of the verses and lines also must be consistent with the original.

When people read, even silently they affect a certain rhythm. The mind takes a breath pause after a certain number of syllables and certain sounds connect together better than others. All of these things are part of writing poetry so that the person reading it will read it the way the poet intended. That is to say, the poet can control the pace and feeling of the story with the words and syllables and sounds that he/she chooses to use.

Tolkien’s translation is excellent. I don’t know enough about poetry to say much more than that.

What I can say is that the stories told in each of these poems is spectacular. Gawain heads out on an epic quest expecting to find the test of his bravery and characters and finds instead that it is his morals being challenged.

Pearl is either about a man who has lost a young daughter and grieves for her, a man who has lost his new wife, or a man who is writing metaphorically about his religious feelings. I feel certain that the only people who don’t see the first interpretation as obvious are the people who do not have children of their own.

Sir Orfeo is a fourteenth century retelling of the King Orpheus myth and told brilliantly.

If you’ve ever wondered where Tolkien got some of his inspirations then look no further. Sir Gawain refers to England as Middle Earth several times throughout the poem and there is much of this tragic hero in Aragorn.

Read it.

Tolkien's translation of these three poems are handily the most enjoyable that I've read. Tolkien's ability to construct truly beautiful and musical alliterative verses is hard to match.

I would also highly recommend the Terry Jones recording of Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain!

The tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is primarily one of honour, and of facing one's own doom (often born of our individual decisions), with valour should it come to lay its claim.
But also of the intoxicating, if not irresistable nature of the feminine, and such wiles by which a man may be ensnared should he forget his honour.

Pearl is a deep philosophical poem of loss, those who must bear it and the burdenous questions which remain after a dear love has departed, made all the more striking by the subtle religious themes entwined within its narrative.

Sir Orfeo is a wonderful story of lovers who are separated by no will of their own, of the sadness and madness which ensues, and of the roads taken to rejoin one's heart with another.

Tolkien not only skillfully, but beautifully translates these poems to a degree that new life is breathed into them, making them more relatable and relevant than ever.

Read for my library's Blind Date With a Book event.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight — I've read the sanitized version of this several times, so it was cool to read something closer to the original. The included essays are helpful for picking up some of the symbolism I would've otherwise missed, but I could've enjoyed it without them as well. I was reading very casually, so I'm sure I could've gotten more out of it, but I got enough as it was.

Pearl — It exists? Didn't love it, didn't hate it, wasn't what I came here for, but it wasn't unpleasant.

Sir Orfeo — This is the medieval take on Orpheus and Eurydice. It was interesting to see how the medieval author changed the original story, notably making Orfeo (Orpheus) a king and giving the couple a happy ending. I read somewhere that this reflects the change in belief between the two cultures; in medieval Europe, they believed that death had been conquered, and therefore Orfeo's quest could end in success rather than tragedy. And that's kinda beautiful.

Otherworldly. A different read for me, and I quite enjoyed it. Tolkien's translations were beautiful - great alliteration and rhyme.

Certainly will revisit. So many ideas and such beautiful stories.