Pearl

Pearl Poet Pentangle

An Endless Knotty Problem

(Image from Wikipedia)

A couple of years ago, in preparing to teach Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I bought Casey Finch's The Complete Works of the Pearl Poet, which contains all four works generally agreed to stem from the hand of the same unknown poet, plus another poem that has sometimes been attributed to him.

I read all five of these poems in translation, checking the Middle English on the opposing page when something intrigued me.

What I didn't notice at the time -- perhaps because I was more interested in gearing up to teach Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- was the complexity of The Pearl. It tells the experience of a dream vision in which the author encounters his daughter, who died young and is now in heaven, which can be read biographically or allegorically, or both. The poem has 101 stanzas, each one of 12 lines with the following rhyme scheme: ababababbcbc. The stanzas are arranged in groups of five linked by the identical final word in each stanza. For instance, the final word in each of the five stanzas comprising the first group is "spot."

But there is one exception, group 15, which has 6 stanzas. Each of the first five stanzas of group 15 ends with the word "less," which is somewhat ironic since this this group has one extra stanza. Moreover, the extra stanza, while not ending in "less," does have its initial line end with that word.

Apparently, the Pearl poet has set out a complex puzzle here for us to notice and solve. Why the shift from 5 to 6 stanzas? Why the emphasis upon "less"? Why group 15?

These lead to other questions. Why 20 groups? Why 12-line stanzas? Why 101 stanzas in all? Why 1212 lines?

I have no earthly idea, which is appropriate, given the unearthly quality of this poem.

Yet, it's perhaps worth noting that the poet emphasizes the number 144,000 (borrowed from St. John's Revelation), so the 1212 lines could be code for "1000 x 12 x 12."

But I'm just guessing.