Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: intimacy, stillness, I'll tell you the rules of the game and you say them back

The Green Knight challenges the court, Arthur behaves like a storm and Gawain stands up to meet him

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I am positively green with happiness that so many people liked and left kind comments on the first part of my Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translation and commentary two weeks ago. I’m so glad because I love positive validation, but mainly because this is going to take a really long time to translate all of. There was a real possibility there that it would just be my friend Charlotte reading along and sending me corrections via whatsapp. So anyone who chooses to come along on this project with me is very much appreciated.

You can see the first part of my Gawain translation and commentary here (read it, it’s good). I didn’t originally intend for this project to be so strongly just me arguing why we should read the poem the way I read it, but perhaps I should have expected that. Isn’t every translation someone trying to talk you into agreeing the poem is about what the translator thinks it’s about?

We all see green in this poem. It might be the most famously green poem in English, and it’s the starting point for a lot of the ecological and environmental criticism that gets into the Middle Ages. The greenness of the Middle Ages in England is a fascinating topic that goes to deeply uncanny places and has some incredible things to say to modern environmental conversations.

My belief, and the belief that my PhD will be putting forward, is that we can’t just say ‘nature’, ‘greenery’, or ‘the environment’ when we talk about this poem. We need to talk about soil. There’s a deep, dark, earthy sensibility here. When you start looking for soil in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight you find it everywhere. This is an underground poem and a soily one.

In the first part of the poem, we saw the Green Knight arrive at Arthur’s court. We talked about his strange, intense, sexual attractiveness, and simultaneously how he seems less like a man than a landscape form. His large, solid, imposing form is covered in greenery and jewels, similar to a hillside on which things grow.

As we head into our second section, we’re going to hear the Green Knight speak for the first time. This is one of the most exciting parts of the poem for me to translate and I’m delighted that we got to it after spending so many stanzas last time describing the hall in more detail than anyone needs. When the Green Knight opens his mouth and speaks, my belief is that we’re hearing the earth’s words, and being invited into a game the earth wants us to pay.

This passage is about negotiation, politeness and offence, and painstaking effort to understand the rules of the game that will dominate the entire poem. The Green Knight introduces his game with its full rule-set, makes sure to correct the court when they imagine he might mean a real, violent fight. He points out how he is dressed for gaming. When he and Gawain stand toe to toe with a great green axe between them, he says, ‘let’s go over the rules one more time’. Over and over again, he reminds us we are only playing. At the same time, his uncanniness and his power is emphasised over and over again. We are always frightened of him, but we are insistently told that he is only playing.

A quick disclaimer on my translation, which I’ll repeat in each part of this project and you can ignore if you’ve already read. I’m working from the edited text by Casey Finch in the University of California Press 1993 edition. I’ve got Finch’s and J.R.R. Tolkien’s translations open as I work. Because I’m working quickly, with a full time job and abject lack of funding, I’m translating into free verse. This is, objectively and definitely, worse than if I preserved the alliterative structure of the original verse. You can get a sense of how cool and ritualistic the alliterative verse sounds if you take a look at Tolkien’s translation, which is available for free online. His is better but mine is more drenched in soil, so feel free to decide which you prefer (mine please). This is a liberal translation and will be varied levels of completely faithful to the original text in different lines and sections. So, like, don’t quote me.

Let’s start digging.

But he had no helmet, no hawberk,
not a bit of the plate armour you’d expect,
no shield, no spear, nothing to kill with.
in one hand, though, he held a bundle of holly
(the kind that grows greenest in winter groves)
and an axe in the other hand, large and strange.
Any poet would have to call it monstrous.
The head was arm-length or longer,
green steel set in beaten gold,
burnished bright and broad-edged,
formed like the sharpest razors.
The axe sat grimly in his grip,
well-woven with iron bands,
and engraved with subtle green things.
A lanyard was laced around the head,
looping the length of the shaft,
and tassles tied into it in their hundreds,
bright green, braided full and rich.
So the horseman entered the hall,
fearing nothing, slowly approaching the high table.
He did not speak but his gaze found everything.
The first word he said was, “Where?”
He said, “Where is the person who governs this party?”
“I will speak to the king of this place, I’ll speak
reasonably.”
His eyes found the knights,
digging up and down,
he paused and studied
the most renowned ones there.

The thing that fascinates me here is the holly. It is interpreted in different ways by different translators and it appears differently in different film versions. The 2021 A24 version makes it a great, craggy, branching section, probably more than half a tree. The odd shape in that film reminds us that holly, while not technically a parasite, often grows up and round other trees, and there’s something menacing about it. Tolkien calls it a holly bundle and Finch calls it a ‘holly bob’. The bob is interesting here, a bob like the ‘bob and wheel’ structure of the verse, making the holly a part of the architecture of the poem. Is the holly wielded like a weapon, held up in a gesture of friendship, held out like a lantern, is it part of his body? Does it grow out of or through him? Is he the earth that nourishes it?

The soiliness is emphasised to me here by him specifying that this is a winter plant, one that grows best and greenest out of green earth.

It’s fascinating, too, that the first word the Green Knight speaks is ‘where’. It’s not just that this is the first thing he says, but the poet also points out that the first word, specifically, is where. Even though he is asking about Arthur, he says where rather than who. This is a geographical question asked in a geographically-minded poem.

For a long while every man gazed on him,
and each man wondered what the strangeness meant,
that a horse and his master could be such a colour.
They were as green as grass, even greener
than green enamel that glitters on gold.
The knights studied him, crept nearer,
wondering what in the world would happen.
They had seen many wonders, but nothing like this.
They thought of phantoms and fairy-folk.
So no knight was able to answer him.
They were as quiet as stones, his voice
had stunned them and the silence was still,
still as if they had fallen into a dream
in the night.
It was not only dread,
but a kind of politeness,
so that their lord
Arthur could speak.

My favourite thing here is the reference to the knights being as still/quiet (depending on how you translate it) as stones. Something transformative seems to be starting. The knights who have been loud, bold and brightly coloured for the first two hundred lines of this poem, are now as still and silent as parts of the earth. The Green Knight’s presence is transforming them into something else, something less human and more ecological. The idea of the fairy world is invoked here in a halfway way - we are not told that the Green Knight is a fairy but we watch people wonder about it.

The reference to passing into dream, too, is fascinating to me. I had a tutor at undergrad whose beliefs and ideas have been hugely influential to me, and she would argue over and over again that more poems can be read as dream visions than you think. People in my masters classes got sick of me saying, ‘it could be a dream though’. But, like, it could be a dream though. The fact they invoke the idea of slipping into a dream at the same time as their bodies and the space around them seem to become just subtly creepily different is interesting to me. We enter a kind of dreamtime where surrealism bleeds through (or bleeds up) into the world that used to be predictable.

Arthur, sat on the high throne, saw this wonder.
Fittingly, he was unafraid, and he spoke.
“Welcome to this place, good sir.
I am Arthur, head of this house.
Come down, if you please, and linger here.
Tell us your will and we will honour it.”
But the stranger said, “No, I will not stay long.
I am not here to linger in pleasure,
but because of your high fame, in your high throne,
because your castle and knights are called the best,
the swiftest who cross the land on horseback,
greatest of all kinds of things we find upon the world,
proud to play with in battle,
and welcoming here, so the story comes to me.
That is what has called me here at this time.
Look at the branch I am holding here.
It tells you I come in peace and mean no harm.
If I had meant to come with violence,
I would have brought my hauberk, my helm,
my shield and glimmering spear, many weapons,
but they are at my home. But as I do not dream
of combat, I wear softer things.
If you are as bold as I have heard you are,
you will agree to play the game I ask
by right.”
Arthur answered,
“My good knight.
If you want to play at battle,
we will not deny you that.”

If we entered a dream space in the last stanza, we are entering a playing space here. The Green Knight is painstakingly clear that he wants to play a game, that the violence he is asking for will definitely, definitely not be real. It is hard to know how to take this at this point in the story. The references to his clothes and his body make it clear to us that, apparently, he is physically optimised for play and not for battle.

I’m interested, as well, in the references to height that crop up here and in the next few stanzas. Even though the Green Knight is, specifically, tall, and sitting on horseback while everyone else sits or stands at banquet tables, he talks about Arthur and the knights of the round table as if he is below them multiple times. Their fame is high, their reputations are high, and stories about them are told upon and over the land. If we are reading him as an earthy being, as I am, then this is evidence that he is looking up at the human world, or that he has risen up to meet them.

“I do not want to fight you here, in good faith.
Everyone I see here is a beardless child.
If I were armed, if I were on my warhorse,
there’s no one who could match me, though they might try.
All I want now is a Christmas game.
It is Yule, the New Year, and there are many here to play with.
If anyone in this house who is proud enough,
bold-blooded enough, wild-brained enough,
that he will swap one blade stroke with me,
I will make him a gift of my rich weapon.
The axe will be his to do with as he likes.
I’ll take the first blow, sitting quietly.
If anyone is brave enough to take me at my word,
take my weapon willingly and play,
let him come lightly to me and take it.
I’ll give it up completely, so it can be his own.
I’ll endure one stroke of the blade, standing still on the floor.
And in return, it will be my right to strike him
the same blow.
So he’ll be struck,
in a year and a day.
These are the rules of my game.
Who will answer me?”

It is hard to imagine him being clearer or more specific about the fact this is a game, and what kind of game it is, and who should play it, and exactly what the rules are. We enter the space of play deliberately and demarcate it from the natural world using ritual. There is some critical theory on gameplay that I was told about at a recent lecture and have been desperate to read, though I never seem to have enough time.

I know that Brian Sutton-Smith’s ‘History of Children’s Play’ and ‘The Ambiguity of Play’ speak in detail about defining space for play, how rules build play, and the relationship between violence and mock-violence, fear and mock-fear. I’d love to tell you in detail what he says about them but I don’t know yet. I’m permanently slightly less expert than I hope.

If they had been quiet before, they were silent now,
everyone in the hall, the high and the low.
The horseman moved in his saddle,
and let his red eyes move over the men.
He arched his green eyebrows and turned his head
from side to side, watching who would rise.
When no one stood to answer him, he laughed,
stretched up with pride, and spoke,
“What? Is this Arthur’s house?” he said,
“Is this the court of which songs are sung in many lands?”
Where is your haughtiness and your conquests?
Your grandness, your boasting, your proud words?
Now the play and fame of the Round Table
is overwhelmed by words spoken by a stranger.
Everyone in this crowd is afraid and no one will speak.
He laughed loudly enough to anger the king.
The blood rose in Arthur’s cheeks
with shame.
He and all his knights
were storm-angry.
So the king stood
proud in the hall.

This stanza blurs the line between what is physically real and what is conceptual. Fame and speech become real things with consequences in the physical world. Fame and words are the concepts that define the rules of our game-playing. The Green Knight refers to how the round table knights have played in the past (I have translated it as ‘play’ here, but the original word ‘revel’ works just as well) and his speech transforms old play into new play with new rules.

Arthur said, “You have spoken wrongly.
You looked for foolishness and found it.
No one here is afraid of your great words.
By God, give that axe to me now
and I will play the game as you bid it,
and play cheerfully!” He stepped quick to the stranger
and seized the axe. The horseman dismounted.
So Arthur had the axe, holding it tight,
and brandished it sternly, ready to strike.
The stranger stood still before him,
taller by a head than anyone in the hall.
He stood so still and stroked his beard.
With a fixed expression, he took off his coat.
He was no more shaken by the king’s words
than if someone had served him a drink
of wine.
Gawain, sat by the queen,
raised his voice to the king.
“I beg you, sir,
to let me take the game.”

The stillness of the Green Knight is the most notable thing to me in this stanza. We talked earlier about the stillness of the knights in the court, as still as ‘stones’ when they were struck dumb by the stranger’s challenge. Now the Green Knight stands still, as still as the landscape feature he seemed to be in the last section we translated, while Arthur rages around him. This is more of an aesthetic interpretive comment from me than a real bit of academic commentary, but I view the Green Knight as an emanation of soil and bedrock and Arthur as the weather that blows around him but can’t change him. In the previous stanza, the king was ‘storm-angry’. That’s an adjective I invented a bit, but the original text used the word ‘wind’ and I like to imagine Arthur as a storm blowing over the land.

“Worthy lord,” said Gawain to the king,
“Allow me to leave my seat and stand by you,
give me permission to leave the table.
My queen, too, please allow me.
I will come to your counsel before the court.
Surely it is not fitting, or so it seems to me,
for a stranger’s challenge to be answered by the king,
though you are brave enough to accept it,
there are brave men still seated on the benches
supposed to be the bravest under Heaven.
There should be no bodies better for battle than these,
though I am the weakest, I know, the most foolish.
So if I lost my life, it would matter the least, for sure.
I only have any renown because I am your nephew,
and your blood in my body is my only cause for fame.
Since it is not seemly for the king to play at games,
I ask you to pass the challenge to me.
I ask for my request to be judged
by the court.”
So the knights gathered
to discuss his request.
In the end they agreed
to give Gawain the game.

Gawain invoking the blood in his body is interesting to me here. In his deferential argument for why he should play the dangerous game rather than Arthur, he makes a feature of the composition of his body, the materials that are in him. We start the game acutely aware of Gawain’s blood and brain matter, his genetics and the relative fame, apparently, of his different bodily fluids. In describing himself as an outsider, a small weak thing, low to the ground and talking up to a high king, he makes himself a sort of equivalent to the Green Knight. He is opposite to him in some ways and equal in some ways. The Green Knight is an outsider because he is a stranger and Gawain is an outsider because of being a nepo baby rather than a real knight.

The king commanded his young knight to rise
and he stood directly, approached him straight.
He knelt before his king and put his hand on the weapon.
So Arthur gave up the axe, letting it go from his hand.
He gave Gawain his blessing and wished
for his hand and heart to be strong when he played.
“Take good care, cousin,” said the king,
“And give one good cut, then I believe
you will learn your lesson well, and endure
next year’s blow when you receive it.”
So Gawain began the game, axe in his hand,
approached boldly, did not flinch.
The green man said these words to Sir Gawain,
“Let us discuss the agreement one more time.
First, my good knight, I ask you
to tell me truly what I can call you?”
”In good faith,” he said, “I am Gawain,
Gawain who will give you this blow.
And this time in one year you will have another
with whatever weapon you choose, and the one you strike
will be me.”
The stranger answered again,
“Sir Gawain, I am glad,
that this Christmastime,
it is you that will strike me.”

In repeating the rules, Gawain makes himself a part of the definition of the dream-space game-space. Repeating the Green Knight’s rules, he takes part in the ritual acts of speaking that demarcate the game.

We end this section of the poem with a strong sense of intimacy created. Gawain has given the Green Knight his name and they stand facing each other, not sat behind a table or up on a horse. The Green Knight recites the game rules then Gawain recites the game rules. It feels to me like the completion of a ritual that allows a game to begin properly, after a long introductory section that has balanced comforting ritual with strange new ritual, fear and strangeness. We’ve built the game and now we can start to play it. In the next section, we’ll see the first part of the game be played in front of us and I’ll discuss in more details all the ways I think this violent, surreal Christmas game is deeply and intimately concerned with the earth.