SIR GAWAIN
SIR,—I suppose it is my bad luck that my translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight had to be re- viewed (Spectator, September 11) by a critic with whose famous 'interpretation' of the poem I disagree in the introduction to the work! But for Mr. John Speirs to pass off as criticism some quotations from . my version followed by the remark 'Could anything be worse?' is inexcusable. Oddly enough, among the lines he quotes are some which were thought by readers to be particularly felicitous. The first 'lapse' of mine that he mentions is
. . . the brave knight, embarrassed, Lay flat with fine adroitness. . . .
Here we have the highly incongruous moment when Sir Gawain, hardly awake, sees his hostess enter his bedroom and secure the door : one of those comic incidents which can crystallise whole situations' of tragic possibility. Yes, one is meant to laugh at the incongruity of 'Lay flat with fine adroitness,' but it is a laugh with a difference. Mr. Speirs seems to have missed something in the original.
However, specialists in a language rarely approve translations. 'The question is not,' wrote Newman, 'What translator is perfect? but, Who is least imper- fect?' But Mr. Speirs writes as if the original words are holy, and not to be desecrated by utterance of the nearest equivalent in English. Perhaps he could say how lines 1,842-1,845, which he quotes, represent a lapse. Let the reader judge : I am derely to y ow biholde
Bi-cause of your sembelaunt, & ever in hot & colde To be your trwe seruaunt.
My version : 1 am deep in debt to you, dame, Because of your mannento me, And ever through ice and flame I shall stay your devotee.
The language of courtly love has gone for ever.
But Must medieval romance therefore remain inacees- sible?—Yours faithfully,
BRIAN STONE
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