On knights errant and courtly love...

Lady Bertilak at Gawain's Bed

"tempting someone else's fate"

(Image from Wikipedia)

In Part 1, Chapter 13 of Don Quixote, Cervantes has the great Knight of the Woeful Countenance describe to a fellow traveller the ennobling sufferings of a knight errant, comparing them to the rigors of a monk's life and suggesting that it is a divine calling because:

[C]hurchmen in peace and quiet pray to Heaven for the welfare of the world, but we soldiers and knights carry into effect what they pray for, defending it with the might of our arms and the edge of our swords, not under shelter but in the open air, a target for the intolerable rays of the sun in summer and the piercing frosts of winter. Thus are we God's ministers on earth and the arms by which his justice is done therein. (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 13 (1605), translated by John Ormsby (London, 1885))

The traveller listens carefully to the great Don's words and courteously agrees, but with a significant caveat:

"That is my own opinion," replied the traveller; "but one thing among many others seems to me very wrong in knights-errant, and that is that when they find themselves about to engage in some mighty and perilous adventure in which there is manifest danger of losing their lives, they never at the moment of engaging in it think of commending themselves to God, as is the duty of every good Christian in like peril; instead of which they commend themselves to their ladies with as much devotion as if these were their gods, a thing which seems to me to savour somewhat of heathenism." (Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 13)

In effect, the traveller is politely calling into question the very thing that he had courteously agreed to. Knights errant may believe that they are carrying out God's work in this world, but in fact, they fall into something like the pagan practice of worshipping goddesses.

Don Quixote responds by appeal to the custom among knights errant:

"Sir," answered Don Quixote, "that cannot be on any account omitted, and the knight-errant would be disgraced who acted otherwise: for it is usual and customary in knight-errantry that the knight-errant, who on engaging in any great feat of arms has his lady before him, should turn his eyes towards her softly and lovingly, as though with them entreating her to favour and protect him in the hazardous venture he is about to undertake, and even though no one hear him, he is bound to say certain words between his teeth, commending himself to her with all his heart, and of this we have innumerable instances in the histories. Nor is it to be supposed from this that they are to omit commending themselves to God, for there will be time and opportunity for doing so while they are engaged in their task." (Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 13)

The great Don has not, of course, truly responded to the traveller's criticism of the knight errant's heathen devotion to his lady, for by re-emphasizing the knight errant's practice of "entreating her to favour and protect him in the hazardous venture he is about to undertake, and ... commending himself to her with all his heart," Quixote merely restates what the traveller finds troubling.

So, naturally, the traveller politely maintains his difference of opinion:

"For all that," answered the traveller, "I feel some doubt still, because often I have read how words will arise between two knights-errant, and from one thing to another it comes about that their anger kindles and they wheel their horses round and take a good stretch of field, and then without any more ado at the top of their speed they come to the charge, and in mid-career they are wont to commend themselves to their ladies; and what commonly comes of the encounter is that one falls over the haunches of his horse pierced through and through by his antagonist's lance, and as for the other, it is only by holding on to the mane of his horse that he can help falling to the ground; but I know not how the dead man had time to commend himself to God in the course of such rapid work as this; it would have been better if those words which he spent in commending himself to his lady in the midst of his career had been devoted to his duty and obligation as a Christian." (Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 13)

Cervantes, perhaps writing these words around 1600, was not the first to note the problem posed to the Christian knight by the practice of courtly love. In the latter 14th century, the Pearl Poet implicitly sets up the problem in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by first presenting Gawain as a good Christian knight:

And all his fealty was fixed upon the five wounds
That Christ got on the cross, as the creed tells;
And wherever this man in melee took part,
His one thought was of this, past all things else,
That all his force was founded on the five joys
That the high Queen of heaven had in her child.
And therefore, as I find, he fittingly had
On the inner part of his shield her image portrayed,
That when his look on it lighted, he never lost heart.
(Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Marie Borroff (1967), Part 2, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1, Seventh Edition, page 172, lines 642-650)

Gawain, a good Christian knight, maintains devotion to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, which therefore makes him Mary's knight (cf. line 1769) and thus protected against falling into the heathen practice of courtly devotion to a mere woman.

Yet Gawain's courtesy and concern for his own life move him to accept from the beautiful Lady Bertilak the gift of a purportedly magical green belt interlaced with threads of gold that will supposedly protect him from an otherwise certain death:

She released a knot lightly, and loosened a belt
That was caught about her kirtle, the bright cloak beneath,
Of a gay green silk, with gold overwrought,
And the borders all bound with embroidery fine,
And this she presses upon him, and pleads with a smile,
Unworthy though it were, that it would not be scorned.
But the man still maintains that he means to accept
Neither gold nor any gift, till by God's grace
The fate that lay before him was fully achieved.
"And be not offended, fair lady, I beg,
And give over your offer, for ever I must

decline.

I am grateful for favor shown
Past all deserts of mine,
And ever shall be your own
True servant, rain or shine."

"Now does my present displease you," she promptly inquired,
"Because it seems in your sight so simple a thing?
And belike, as it is little, it is less to praise,
But if the virtue that invests it were verily known,
It would be held, I hope, in higher esteem.
For the man that possesses this piece of silk,
If he bore it on his body, belted about,
There is no hand under heaven that could hew him down,
For he could not be killed by any craft on earth."
Then the man began to muse, and mainly he thought
It was a pearl for his plight, the peril to come
When he gains the Green Chapel to get his reward:
Could he escape unscathed, the scheme were noble!
The he bore with her words and withstood them no more.
And she repeated her petition and pleaded anew,
And he granted it, and gladly she gave him the belt,
And besought him for her sake to conceal it well,
Lest the noble lord should know -- and the knight agrees
That not a soul save themselves shall see it thenceforth

with sight.

He thanked her with fervent heart,
As often as ever he might;
Three times, before they part,
She has kissed the stalwart knight.

(Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Marie Borroff, Part 2, Norton Anthology, Volume 1, page 196, lines 1830-1869)

Up until this moment, Gawain has courteously refused to accept any gift from the lady, for in the act of accepting a parting gift from a lady, a knight setting off on a quest is implictly accepting the lady herself as his lady. By accepting the magical belt, Gawain has exchanged the higher Queen of Heaven for the lower Lady Bertilak and thus relinquished the Virgin's protection from harm in return for Lady Bertilak's protection.

In this manner does Gawain lose his status as Mary's knight and adopt the practice of other knights errant, who "commend themselves to their ladies with as much devotion as if these were their gods, a thing which seems ... to savour somewhat of heathenism," and by accepting Lady Bertilak, he does, as do other knights with their ladies, "turn his eyes towards her softly and lovingly, as though ... entreating her to favour and protect him in the hazardous venture he is about to undertake," as both the traveller and Don Quixote, respectively, have already noted.

In doing so, ironically, Gawain falls into a well-constructed trap and puts his life at risk ... but that is a longer story.

The Pearl Poet: Sarah Stanbury on 'numerological structure'

Medieval Institute Publications

(Image borrowed from TEAMS, University of Rochester)

Various editions of Pearl are available for those interested in reading it. William F. Klein suggests in his review that we read "Condren's book with a copy of a good scholarly edition at hand ... for example, Andrew Malcolm and Ronald Waldron, The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, Exeter, 1987." I may need to obtain a copy of that.

Meanwhile, I've been searching the internet for online materials and turned up a piece that my sidebar indirectly links to but which I'll directly link to here. TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) has published online the introduction to Sarah Stanbury's 2001 edition of Pearl (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications).

Stanbury notes the poem's attention to number:

Integral to the poem's play with language are formal patternings that build repetition and change into the structure of the poem. In its principles of rhyme, versification, and numbering, Pearl is unmatched for complexity in Middle English poetry and perhaps rivaled only by Dante's Divine Comedy. Attention to number is a vital part of the poem's design. The use of a twelve-line stanza seems to be carefully chosen as part of a numerological structure: the New Jerusalem has twelve tiers in its foundation and is also twelve furlongs long; the poem itself, 1212 lines long, is a composite of twelves. Concepts of perfection and blemish parlayed through the image of the pearl are also graphed through number. Comprising twenty sets of five, the stanzas are grouped to add up to 100, a number of perfection. This symmetry is offset, however, by the curious addition of an extra stanza in the fifteenth set - with the result that the stanzas total 101. One hundred and one, a strong number that suggests new beginning after return, is doubtless no accident. This number appears as a stanza or chapter total in several other medieval texts; and most strikingly, 101 is also the sum of the stanzas of the Cotton Nero A.x. manuscript's most famous poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

I cite this passage here merely to note that various scholars have encountered the fact of the poem's "numerical design" -- though Stanbury calls this its "numerological structure" -- and that there exists a tradition already at work interpreting Pearl and other poems according to number. In a footnote to the passage quoted above (footnote 5 in the online text), Stanbury cites several studies of poetry designed by number:

For Franciscan texts based on 101, see John Fleming, "The Centuple Structure of the Pearl," The Alliterative Tradition in the Fourteenth Century, edited by Bernard S. Levy and Paul E. Szarmach (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981), 81-98, which argues that "101," the number of stanzas in the poem Pearl, is the number of spiritual consolation.

For discussion of the uses of number in Pearl, see Ian Bishop, Pearl in Its Setting: A Critical Study of the Structure and Meaning of the Middle English Poem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 27-32, on number symbolism.

For more discussion of the uses of number in Pearl, see Russell A. Peck, "Number as Cosmic Language," Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, edited by Carolyn D. Eckhardt (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1980), 15-64, on Boethian and Augustinian number symbolism with application to Pearl on 44-51,
58-64.

For still more discussion of the uses of number in Pearl, see Maren-Sofie Rostvig, "Numerical Composition in Pearl: A Theory," English Studies 48 (1967), 326-32, a study of number and number symbolism.

This blog is beginning to look like a bibliographical essay, but as my motto states, I'm riding a "wagon hitched to a star," going wherever it takes me, and if this momentous expedition requires attention to some cartographic details concerning the cosmography of my mental universe, just remember that the ride is costing you nothing.

The Pearl Poet: Professor Condren Responds

Symbol by Early 17th-Century Mystic Jakob Böhme

Names of Jesus

including

Derivation of Pentagrammaton from Tetragrammaton

(Borrowed from Wikipedia)

In my quest to find out more about Professor Condren's theory without incurring pecuniary debt, I sent him an email to inquire and have received a reply, thereby incurring an intellectual debt.

Here's what I wrote to Condren:

Greetings from Horace Jeffery Hodges. I am a professor of Medieval English at Korea University, in Seoul. I am writing because I have recently become aware of your theory concerning the Pearl Poet.

You can see the 'history' of my awakening interest in the numerological symbolism in these posts to my blog (which I paste here only as evidence, not as an invitation to read what is not intrinsically interesting).

Regular readers will note that I exaggerated my expertise. I should have written that I'm an 'accidental' professor of Medieval English ... but that's another story. Anyway, Condren looked at the blog entries and found my two questions:

1. What was the Medieval approximation for the Golden Ratio?
2. Why does Condren drop the "signature twelves" and the "signature 31s"?

Perhaps I should refresh our memories as to why I posed these two questions. In an online query that was posted on Drexel University's Math Forum in June 1999, Condren explained:

The line counts of the four poems [in the Pearl Poet manuscript] are, respectively, 1212, 1812, 531, and 2531. This highly artful arrangement, minus the signature twelves in the first half and signature 31s (the tenth prime as the Middle Ages reckoned primes) in the second half, gives us two halves of 3000 lines each. More intriguing still, the two outer poems divided by the two medial poems give the Golden Section.

I had earlier noted in my blog entry that the Golden Section, aka the Golden Ratio, is an irrational number that can be given a decimal expansion for as far as one wishes: 1.61803398874989484820....

With that in mind, I followed Condren's method and divided "the two outer poems ... by the two medial poems"...

...without the "signature twelves" and "signature 31s" -- a move that already raises some danger signals for me, but okay. If we add 1200 and 2500, we get 3700, and if we add 1800 and 500, we get 2300. If we then divide 3700 by 2300, we obtain 1.60869565217....

That's closer but still no cigar. We can round off Condren's mean and the actual Golden Mean to 1.609 and 1.618, respectively. That's pretty close, but not the same. If we round off a bit more, we get 1.61 and 1.62. Closer yet, but still not the same. If we round off one more time, we get 1.6 and 1.6. The same ... finally.

At this point, I raised my two questions, to which Condren has graciously responded as follows:

The interesting questions you ask could engage me for several pages, much more, in fact, than I included in my book of a few years ago. But I think it would be best to confine myself to a couple of fundamental points as a way of leading you to a less adverse disposition to numerical design than you express in your blog. Indeed, let me begin with that phrase, "numerical design." You call it numerology in one of your blog entries. Believe me, numerical design differs from numerology as much as astronomy differs from astrology in the modern world. To quote from my book, "While numerology assumes that numbers have inherent symbolic meanings related to the divine supervision of the universe, a numerical analysis focuses almost entirely on formal units of text -- lines, stanzas, sections, fitts, books, and the like -- to discover whether the sizes and shapes of these parts, and their interrelationships, do not perhaps communicate the same meaning that the verbal texture of the manuscript conveys" (p. 3).

I'm glad that Condren corrected my terminology, for I sensed that my reference to the "numerological symbolism" didn't quite capture what Condren is describing. So, "numerical design" it is. Condren continues:

Let me jump to another widely accepted truth the Middle Ages held, that the divine creator used number as the "tool" that enabled the first transition from the mind of God to the physical presence of matter, or as the medieval philosophers themselves put it, "from vitrue to essence." Well then, if God created the universe out of number, then the pale parallel of a poet creating his literary world should also call for number as its efficient cause, especially if he believed his highest ambition was immitatio Christi. So the doubt you have that any modern would design a poem on the basis of number cannot accord with either the philosophy of the Middle Ages nor the poems produced then. You might look at a brief, but immensely persuasive, article by Charles Singleton, "The Poet's Number at the Center," MLN 80:1-10, to see only one instance of Dante's devotion to number in his Commedia.

Oh no! More articles to purchase! I suppose that these are the interest payments on my intellectual debt. By the way -- and just for the record -- I believe that not I but one of the commentors referred to the unlikelihood of a Modern poet structuring a poem according to numerical design. Anyway, Condren now broaches the first of my two questions:

You sound a little triumphant in noting that the Pearl poet never quite got it right when he was trying to reach the magic number of the Golden Section, a failure that makes you even more skeptical that you formerly were. Well, first, no one ever gets it right. Only geometry can reach a perfect golden cut. But the measurement of this geometry in whatever numerical system one chooses to use, fails to capture this precision. The closest our measurement can come is with an irrational number. But while the concept of "incomensurability" nearly broke up the neo-Pythagorean circle, efforts to demonstrate this concept would elude mathematics until long after the fourteenth century. The breakthrough came when the West discovered Indian decimals. Thus the Pearl poet did not have the luxury of the precise numbers you were looking for in the calculations I presented. Just think of the challenge such mathematicians faced: the formula you show on your web site uses the sq.rt. of 5, and leaves it at that. But a medieval mathematician only had at his disposal a rational convergent, namely 20/9, to work out the equation you cite. These days one can hit a key for 5, press the sq.rt. key and in a nanosecond learn that the sq.rt. of 5 is 2.236067977.... The medieval mathematician, on the other hand had only 20/9, or 2.222222... in modern terms, an unavoidable error of 0.01384... To my mind it is astonishing that the Pearl poet achieved such precision despite beginning with a huge inaccuracy. Yet you find fault with him for missing his mark by only 0.02051.

I apologize for sounding triumphant. I intended only to sound amusing as I presented my otherwise rather tedious calculations. Ordinarily, I have better control over my literary style. At any rate, what I wanted to understand -- though perhaps lost in my calculations -- was how the Medieval world approximated the Golden Section and what their approximation was. I'm still not quite clear on these two interrelated points, but let me see if I understand. For the sq. rt. of 5, the Medievals used 20/9, or 2.222222.... If I plug this into the Modern formula, i.e., 1/2(1 + 20/9), then I obtain 1.6111111.... I take it that this was the Medieval approximation of the Golden Section? If so, then dividing 3700 by 2300 -- to obtain 1.60869565217... as the Pearl Poet's approximation of the Golden Section -- does come a lot closer than I could previously see. But this again raises my question as to why one should use 3700 and 2300 rather than 3743 and 2343 for the line numbers, to which Condren responds:

You wonder as well why I discounted the "signature twelves" and the "signature 31s." [Editorial note: 12 + 31 = 43, as reflected in 3743 and 2343.] I argue at some length that these units and tens columns show how the manuscript is to be read, as in music the bass and treble "signatures" are not themselves played, but only indicate the time and key with which the notes are to be played. To my mind the fascinating thing about these particular signatures is the tension they show between the duodecimal system and the decimal system, the implications of which would take too long to illustrate. I'll give just one tease: the expansion of the tetragrammaton (the four-letter name for God) into the pentagrammaton (the five-letter name for God, or Jesus) parallels the expansion of the two Hebrew-era poems (Purity and Patience) at the center of the manuscript into the two Christian-era poems (Pearl and Sir Gawain) at the manuscript's extremes, for which the geometric demonstration of the divine proportion--"division into mean and extreme ratio"--with its compelled expansion, is a perfect analogue.

Not knowing much about music theory, I'm now far beyond my ken. (If only my family could have afforded those piano lessons that I wanted to have as an adolescent...) I guess that I'll have to buy Condren's book to even broach an understanding of this.

I want to thank Professor Condren for his gracious reply to my query. Naturally, his explanation has led to still more questions, as always happens, but I think that I should now probably shell out the money for the book and satisfy my expensive curiosity in the proper fashion rather than incur further intellectual debt at the expense of Professor Condren's time.

Pearl Poet: William F. Klein's Review of Condren

Logo Borrowed from:

The Medieval Institute College of Arts and Sciences

Western Michigan University

Product of the Scholarly Publishing Office

University of Michigan Library

and

Digital Library eXtension Service

Thanks to Ian Myles Slater for pointing the way to The Medieval Review, which offers a free online review of Condren's book by William F. Klein, of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. For the ignorant among us (and that includes me), Ian helpfully adds:

For those not familiar with it, TMR, formerly Bryn Mawr Medieval Review, is "a moderated distribution list," run by and for medievalists. It offers a searchable collection of reviews going back to 1993.

I didn't know all that, but as my older brother, Pat, once remarked to me in a well-honed putdown, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio." This applies in spades to my knowledge of Medieval numerology.

Klein's review is useful not because he shows that Condren is right or wrong, for he admits: "That his analysis is sound I cannot claim or argue. His book will have to make its own way in the world." But he is impressed enough to add: "At this point we must give Condren the benefit of our doubt." Why is Klein willing to do this? Because he believes "that Condren's study of the manuscript does in fact display a structural design that cannot be other than utterly intentional and that everyone who would like to claim knowledge of the manuscript and the poems should read his book."

I'll leave Klein's review to my readers to read, but I would like to quote here Klein's quote of Condren's own "Afterword":

The implications of the highly wrought strategy we have been discussing, in which mathematics serves as a revealing analogue to metaphysical matters, might be stated in various ways depending on the context one wishes to emphasize. To a mathematician the conversion of a measuring system based on fours into a system based on fives requires the magic of an irrational number that leads to infinity if applied repeatedly. To a medieval theologian the New Law expands and enriches the Old Law through the advent of Christ, whose teaching, if continuously applied, in turn translates the New into eternal salvation. To a poet there is little difference, for his epiphany comes in recognizing the parallel between mathematics and theology and in realizing poetry's power to make palpable what otherwise would be ineffable. Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight have a foot in both the four cornered world and the world that supersedes it. The duodecimal basis of the former, the four fitts of the latter, and the worldly concerns of both suggest the sphere of Purity and Patience. The 5 square prime number of stanzas in both Pearl and Gawain, the fifth Platonic solid suggested by the former, and the latter's pentangular emblem, five-line bob-and-wheel, and power of regeneration imply the abode of the Pearl maiden. Above it all lies the manuscript's astonishing representation of elegant coherence. The profound congruence of the universe with man's theological and moral concerns, and with all that lies on his too-much-loved earth, unfolds before us with subtle simplicity. The disciplines of the quadrivium--arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy--have been drawing their lines unwaveringly toward the judgment on which will depend the eternity, not only of the characters described in its lines, but also on every reader humbled by this manuscripts exquisite beauty. ( Edward I. Condren, The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet: Beyond Phi, page 147)

This certainly demonstrates that Condren has thought long and hard about the potential implications of the numerical relationships that he believes himself to have found. If he's right, then his book is brilliant -- and the Pearl Poet even more so.

This is the sort of book that my old history of science professor John L. Heilbron would find fascinating, given his interest in the confluence of mathematical astronomy and Christian theology in the The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories.

Professor Edward Condren: On the Pearl Poet

Professor Edward Condren

English at UCLA

(Borrowed from UCLA, June 14, 2006)

By Googling, I located online an enquiry posed by Professor Condren on Drexel University's Math Forum back in June 1999 when he was researching the material that became his book. Here are some details that he provided on his interpretation of the entire manuscript of the Pearl Poet's four poems:

A unique fourteenth century manuscript, British Library Cotton Nero A.x., has four poems, two of which are the brilliant Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It has always been thought to be a mere anthology, probably by the same author. My book argues that it is in fact a single artifact unified by the same mathematics that, from the Neo-Pythagoreans onward, have been held to demonstrate the unity of all creation. The line counts of the four poems are, respectively, 1212, 1812, 531, and 2531. This highly artful arrangement, minus the signature twelves in the first half and signature 31s (the tenth prime as the Middle Ages reckoned primes) in the second half, gives us two halves of 3000 lines each. More intriguing still, the two outer poems divided by the two medial poems give the Golden Section. The first poem, Pearl, has 20 sections of 5 stanzas each, with each stanza containing 12 rhyming lines. Moreover, the first line of each stanza replicates the last line of the preceding stanza, with the first line of the poem echoing the last line of the poem. It seems clear to me that this poem's 1212 lines create a verbal dodecahedron: 20 vertices; 12 faces; each face a five-sided pentagon. The pentagon, of course, is highly dependent on the phi ratio. The three remaining poems seem 2-D, rather than 3-D. In other words, the poet may have conceived them as the three inscribed planes. The first of these remaining three, Purity, is constructed almost entirely of phi-related sections which encode a five-pointed star -- another phi-dependent figure -- which happens to be the main symbol on Sir Gawain's shield. The next poem I haven't entirely cracked yet (hence my query about the size of the inscribed rectangles). It's a retelling of the story of Jonah. But its 5 sections have intriguing sizes: 60, 184, 60, 104, 123. When we remove the overages, which total 31 (4 + 4 + 23), we are left with two 60s, two 100s, and 180. This last is the radius of the circumscribed circle surrounding the five-pointed star laid out in Purity.

Obviously, this is technical stuff, and I haven't had time to delve into it beyond checking just enough to learn that the "Golden Section" and the "phi ratio" are two names for the same thing, the "Golden Ratio," which was known as the "Divine Proportion" in the Middle Ages. Assuming that the Pearl Poet really was encoding this into his poem, the question then becomes: What does it all mean?

.

I presume that Condren tells us in his book. From the book description at Amazon, I infer that the Pearl Poet's manuscript of four poems is intended to reflect the cosmos, though what this means in its particulars would require my reading Condren's book, which I may well do

"To pay the Prince or set Him saught..."

The Angel Shows St. John the Heavenly Jerusalem

(English Gulbenkian Apocalypse, c. 1250)

(Borrowed from Moleiro: The Art of Perfection)

In his comments to yesterday's post, Eshuneutics mentioned that Enitharmon Press has a new edition of Pearl.

With that information, I found a webpage at Medieval Forum advertising this new translation by Victor Watts (edited by David Fuller and Corinne Saunders). A sample of the traslation is provided, and it just happens to be the passage that I was attempting to make sense of and translate yesterday.

I'll post the online translation here, and since I think that I ought always to contribute something when I borrow, then I'll provide the Watts translation interlinear to the original for ease of comparison:

To pay the Prince other sete saghte
To pay the Prince or set Him saught // propitiate Him

Hit is ful ethe to the god Krystyin;
it is full eath to the good Christine; // easy/Christian

For I haf founden Hym bothe day and naghte
for I have found Him both day and naught // night

A God, a Lorde, a frende ful fyin.
a God, a Lord, a friend full fine. // most true

Over this hyul this lote I laghte,
Over this hile this lote I laught, // upon/mound/fortune/received

For pyty of my Perle enclyin,
for pity of my Pearl incline, // lying prostrate

And sythen to God I hit bytaghte
and sithen to God I it betaught // then/committed

In Krystez dere blessyng and myn,
in Christ's dear blessing and mine,

That in the forme of bred and wyn
that in the form of bread and wine

The preste uus schewez uch a daye.
the priest us shows every day.

He gef uus to be His homly hyne
He gave us to be His homely hine // members of His household

Ande precious perlez unto His pay.
and precious pearls unto His pay. // to His pleasure

Amen. Amen. (1201-13)
Amen. Amen.

Readers will have noted that this doesn't look quite like a translation into Modern English, and they'd be right. Watts has not so much translated as modernized, as the editors explain:

Victor Watts's version preserves as far as possible the original wording and word order but modernises the spelling. This is a limited form of modernization, but the only way in which all the features of the original text's elaborate formal structure, which are so important to its feeling as a poem, can be retained -- the alliteration, patterns of rhyme, and patterns of linked opening and closing lines by which stanzas are grouped. Some archaic spellings remain or have been slightly modified.

The edition, therefore, would be very useful for undergraduate students interested in studying the poem but deterred by its difficulty ... and also for would-be scholars like me whose Middle English skills leave something (call it 'expertise') to be desired.

Interestingly, given his fascination with the poem, Watts asks himself if "the poem is not really a misguided and overwrought failure." As he explains in the introduction:

Depth of feeling, semantic subtlety, didactic force, humanity, humour even, there certainly is. But although he poet subtly varies his style between the didactic and the narrative passages, nevertheless the preciousness and awkwardness of his style has impressed itself upon me more forcibly than hitherto in making this experiment of modernisation.

The editors, however, prefer to understand Watts as attributing the fault not to the poet but to the modern readers:

Although Watts clearly views Pearl as "a jewel of exquisite form and sensitivity," he specifically acknowledges the difficulties presented to a modern audience by the "preciousness and awkwardness" of the Pearl-poet's style and language. If anything, this might be an understatement. Even for readers of Middle English, the dialect used by the Pearl-poet, one usually associated with the North West Midlands around the Cheshire-Derbyshire-Staffordshire border area, presents a challenge.

My Middle English skills would need to be a lot better before I could judge on this issue, but the question is certainly one to note and consider.

"To pay the Prince other sete saghte..."

Vision of John the Evangelist
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
(Borrowed via Wikipedia)

I'm about to prove my incompetence with Middle English, but I wanted to understand the poem's ending, and I find that translating a passage myself often leads to deeper insight.

In this instance, my efforts haven't led me to any significantly greater understanding, for I'm still struggling with the translation. I didn't find the word "enclyin" in A Concise Dictionary of Middle English, by A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat, but the word looks like "incline," so I've provisionally chosen that even though I can quite make out the grammar.

Perhaps the experts who sometimes glance at my blog can help me out.

Just so no one is dependent upon my translation alone, I've included two online translations after my own. Mine is in parentheses, followed by Bill Stanton's translation, and then by Vernard Eller 's translation:

1201:

To pay the Prince other sete saghte
(To please the Prince or suitably reconcile)
To please the Prince and him requite
To please the Prince or with him get right

1202:

Hit is ful ethe to the god Krystyin;
(It is fully easy for the good Christian;)
Is easy for the Christian man
Easily comes to the good Christian;

1203:

Foe I haf founden hym, bothe daye and naghte,
(For I have found him, both day and night,)
For I have found him day and night
For I've found him, both day and night,

1204:

A Gode, a Lorde, a frende ful fyin.
(A God, a Lord, a friend fully fine.)
A God, a Lord, who ever can
A God, a Lord, a Friend full fine.

1205:

Over this hyul this lote I laghte.
(Upon this hill this plight I accepted.)
Upon this hill me guide aright
Upon the hillock I accepted my plight

1206:

For pyty of my perle enclyin,
(For pity of my pearl incline,)
In pity for that pearl which ran
For pity of the pearl I pine.

1207:

And sythen to God I hit bytaghte
(And since to God I it entrusted)
To God, who gives his gifts of right
Then gave I that pearl to God outright

1208:

In Krystes dere blessyng and myn,
(In Christ's dear blessing and memory,)
And to Christ's blessing which began
In blessed memory of the Christ divine

1209:

That in the forme of bred and wyn
(That in the form of bread and wine)
With bread and wine his mighty plan
Who, in the form of bread and wine,

1210:

The preste uus schewes uch a daye.
(The priest us shows each day)
The priest each day our souls inspires
The priests do daily show by measure.

1211:

He gefs uus to be his homly hyne
(He gives us to be his humble servant)
To make us each God's artisan,
To be humble hirelings he doth us assign

1212:

Ande precious perles unto his pay.
(And precious pearls unto his pleasure.)
Those precious pearls my Prince desires.
And precious pearls unto his pleasure.

The poet then adds "Amen. Amen." I presume that the double amen is significant, but I know not how.

Does it count as line 1213? That would mar the numerological structuring of 1212, wouldn't it? What think ye, schoolmen?

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.