Читать книгу A Book of Middle English - J. A. Burrow - Страница 105

Pearl, with its intricate metrical structure of linked twelve‐line rhyming stanzas with heavy alliteration, and its extraordinarily rich vocabulary, sets the greatest challenge to the translator, yet many have taken up that challenge with the aim of making the poem accessible to a modern audience. Some have tried to reproduce the metrical structure of the original; others have departed from it in various ways, but yet have attempted to transmit the movement and changing moods of the poem. The result is sometimes an effective and moving poem, but it is a new creation. And yet a literal translation, while transmitting the surface meaning of the text, lacks the formal structures that control the movement of the verse and the narrative. In these circumstances a commentary is particularly appropriate in order to draw attention to what is lost. Here is an example of a flat prose translation of Pearl 265–76 (text 10), followed by a commentary pointing to features not adequately conveyed by the translation:

‘Bot, jueler gente, if þou schal lose

Þy joy for a gemme þat þe watz lef,

Me þynk þe put in a mad porpose,

And busyez þe aboute a raysoun bref. 268

For þat þou lestez watz bot a rose

Þat flowred and fayled as kynde hyt gef;

Now þurʒ kynde of þe kyste þat hyt con close

To a perle of prys hit is put in pref. 272

And þou hatz called þy wyrde a þef,

Þat oʒt of noʒt hatz mad þe cler!

Þou blamez þe bote of þy meschef.

Þou art no kynde jueler!’ 276

‘But, worthy jeweller, if you’re going to lose your happiness for a gem that was precious to you, it seems to me that you are set on an irrational course, and concern yourself about a short‐lived matter; for what you lost was merely a rose that flowered and faded in accordance with nature. Now through the nature of the casket that encloses it, it has proved to be a pearl of great price. And you have called your fate a thief, which has plainly made for you something out of nothing! You are blaming what is the remedy for your misfortune. You are no right‐minded jeweller!’