Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Jordi Sánchez-Martí Simon Armitage , trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. London: Faber and Faber, 2009. Pp. ix, 114. ISBN: 978-0-571-22328-2. £9.99. The late James S. Holmes, a scholar who devoted great attention to the practice of verse translation, proposed the term metapoem to refer to any verse composition intended as a translation of a poem (see Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies, Approaches to Translation Studies 7 [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988], 10). In Holmes's view the qualifications of a good metapoet include 'acumen as a critic, craftsmanship as a poet, and skill in the analysing and resolving of a confrontation of norms and conventions across linguistic and cultural barriers in the making of appropriate decisions' (p. 11). As a matter of fact, Arthurian scholars are in luck, since the verse translation under review has been undertaken by a gifted metapoet, namely, Simon Armitage, an acclaimed poet born in Huddersfield, England, in 1963 (see his personal website, http://www.simonarmitage.com), whose translation of Gawain shows thorough familiarity with the main critical discussions about his source text. Moreover, Armitage has a special, personal connection with Gawain that would appear to cross the traditional gap between a translator and the original text, since he confesses to have formed a 'conviction that I was put on the planet for no other reason than to translate this poem' (Simon Armitage, 'The Knight's Tale,' The Guardian, December 16, 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/dec/16/poetry.simonarmitage [accessed October 1, 2009]). Armitage's deep attachment to the Middle English poem has prompted an ambitious, creative process founded on sound decisions on the form, style, and meaning of the metapoem. In a brief introduction preceding the poem (pp. v-ix), Armitage explains some of the priorities and strategies that have informed his approach to the text. First, he acknowledges the linguistic opacity, except for the trained medievalist, of the original and hence justifies his intention to render the text comprehensible to the general reader and create a 'readable piece of work in its own right' (p. viii). This translation, however, does not simply provide a poetic interpretation of the source text but also attempts to replicate the sound effects of the Middle English poem by imitating the original's alliteration. Only by doing so can the reading experience of this translation's audience somehow recreate that of the Gawain-poet's contemporary public. As if it were a medieval text, Armitage's version aspires to be 'a translation not only for the eye, but for the ear and the voice as well' (p. ix), and it does succeed on all fronts. It is written in a fresh and lively style, if occasionally too informal (e.g. croaked in the sense of died), making lexical selections that can be easily understood by modern readers and avoiding the archaizing semantic solutions favored by previous translators, such as Marie Borroff. Here is an example illustrative of this translation's nature: the Middle English 'ÞaƷ Arþer þe hende kyng at hert hade wonder, / He let no semblaunt be sene, bot sayde ful hyƷe' (lines 467-68; ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, 2nd ed. rev. Norman Davis [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967]) is rendered in Armitage's version as 'And although King Arthur was awe-struck at heart / no sign of it showed. Instead he spoke'; thus the translation avoids both lexical and syntactical literality while preserving the alliterative meter. On some occasions Armitage uses poetic license as when the sentence 'much dut [i.e. joy] watz þer dryuen' (1020) [End Page 119] is creatively transformed into 'they drank and danced' (for other examples of free translation, see 121-24, 814, 1025, 1083). Overall Armitage's version effectively captures the meaning and intent of the original while successfully recreating the ambience of the medieval text and respecting its cultural codes. One, however, cannot expect a translation to carry all the semantic nuances of the original, thus the need to check whether or not the final product in any way misrepresents the Middle English text...