What is Stephen Harper Reading?

Inscription:

To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes for 2011,
Yann Martel

Letter:

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON K1A0A2

Dear Mr. Harper,

Why not start the new year, which we hope will be good, with something old and most certainly good? A few weeks ago I happened to bump into Doug Thorpe, the genial chair of the English Department at the University of Saskatchewan. He’s very knowledgeable about Sir Walter Scott, so I asked him if he didn’t have a short Scott to propose for our reading purposes. He shook his head. “There are no short works by Sir Walter Scott. He was terribly long-winded. Every tome he wrote has at least six hundred pages.” So much for Sir Walter Scott and our busy-busy-busy-short-book-club. Did he have anything else to propose, off the top of his head, I asked. He thought for a second. “Have you sent him Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?” I hadn’t. Doug invited me into his office and fished around his bookshelves for a few moments. “Here you go,” he said, handing me a copy of the book in question.

Indeed, here you go. I was doubly touched by the gift in that a name on the front cover jumped out at me: James Winny, the editor and translator. James Winny taught at Trent University, in Peterborough, Ontario, where I did an undergraduate degree in philosophy. He was my tutorial leader in a first year introductory English course I took. I’m sure Professor Winny entirely forgot me the moment our course ended, but I still remember him clearly. Once a week, eight or so of us students would troop into his office, where he would lead us into discussion on a work of literature. He was a patrician figure in his sixties, with a resonant voice and an elegant English accent, and he was friendly in a phlegmatic way. Times have changed. Now, in a university system in Canada more geared to producing economically useful workers than critically thinking citizens, it’s unimaginable that eight first-year students would have hour-long weekly meetings with a full professor, but so it was at the time, in the early 1980s at Trent University. Those tutorials marked me. Once Professor Winny read aloud T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. He mastered a range of English accents and he brought the poem to life for us, did he ever. I remember another discussion we had about Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, which he deemed—with an authority that nonetheless felt like a suggestion—a perfect novel. With each meeting, he made us see more in a work than our immature minds had first seized. It was a thrill to be led on such an intellectual ride.

I remember James Winny clearly, but I hadn’t thought of him in ages, and here, twenty-five years later, his name and his work were suddenly before me. It’s been a pleasure to be in the orbit of his mind again. I wish I had been in a class in which he discussed Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Sir Gawain was composed by an anonymous poet in the late 14th century “in a regional dialect characteristic of north-western England,” as Winny’s introduction informs us. The advantage of the Broadview edition I’m sending you is that it’s a bilingual one, with the original text printed on the even pages, on the left, and the translated text on odd pages, on the right. To me, the Middle English dialect is nearly opaque, and I have no patience for this kind of linguistic game. To every language I don’t speak I’m ready to grant all the beauty and subtlety the human mind can come up with, and a cultural content greater than any museum could fit in its galleries, but the first thing I notice is the barrier of incomprehension. I might as well be talking to a clarinet—except a clarinet is meant to be beautiful, while a language is meant to communicate, with beauty a bonus. I find that my eyes, looking at the text on the left, jump about, seeking words or phrases it can understand, and they quickly grow weary of the exercise, whereas the pages on the right shatter and grip with their clarity. On the right, I don’t so much see words as images. But see for yourself. Perhaps you’ll find enjoyment in deciphering the Middle English.

What surprised me in Winny’s translation into modern English of Sir Gawain was how close the story was brought to me. Over and over as I read the poem, one thing came through: personality, be it that of Sir Gawain, or the Green Knight, or Lord and Lady Bertilak. Compare that to another work of old European literature I sent you recently, the German Nibelungenlied. I never imagined Sivrit or Kriemhilt, Prunhilt or Hagen as real people. They were rather literary symbols embedded in a vivid story. Sir Gawain is also such a symbol—for the codes of chivalry and courtly love, which can be seen as medieval ideals that tried to reconcile the loving kindness of Christ with the brutal social realities of the time—but he’s a symbol whose human form seems palpably real. Take these lines:

And when the knight saw his blood spatter the snow
He leapt forward with both feet more than a spear’s length,
Snatched up his helmet and crammed it on his head,
Jerked his shoulders to bring his splendid shield down,
Drew out a gleaming sword and fiercely he speaks—
Never since that man was born of his mother
Had he ever in the world felt half so relieved—
“Hold your attack, sir, don’t try it again!”

It’s the leaping forward, the rush to get his equipment in place, the plain statement of his relief and then the fearful warning—I can’t imagine Sivrit of the Nibelungenlied displaying such all-too-human emotions.

Or take the stanzas in Part Three in which Sir Gawain, lying in his bed resting, is repeatedly tempted by Lady Bertilak. The eroticism of those pages reached up and tempted me. I don’t know how Sir Gawain resisted those very human feelings.

What’s fascinating to read is the conscious working-out in Gawain’s mind of what his code requires of him. We see a man trying to uphold his ideals, and lamenting his failure when he doesn’t manage it. It’s not only interesting; it’s moving. Each one of us, you and me, must struggle every day to live up to our ideals.

Sir Gawain is a work of remarkable intimacy. That is achieved not only by the small number of characters, but also by the interiority of the drama. Despite being spread over much of the British isle, a wide geographic scale for the time, the story essentially unfolds in the close company of Sir Gawain. The reader is Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote.

The descriptions of the seasons, winter in particular, are lovely. The hunting scenes are breathtaking. And all is carried to the reader by a poetic language that is clear, vigorous and true, that truth whereby language sorts and makes sense of reality. Such language comes only from great writers, and our anonymous poet from north-western England was surely that, a great writer.

I’ve told you nothing of the plot. Sir Gawain is at Camelot with Arthur and the other Knights of the Round Table. It is Christmas, many games are being played, and a good time is being had by all (in this story, there is much having of a good time, the comfort of it, the fun of it). Then, into the hall, strides a knight who is a stranger to everyone. He is a giant, but he makes a striking impression for another reason: both he and his horse are entirely green, bright emerald green. He strides in, gets off his horse and tells them he wants to play a Christmas game: he will receive a blow unprotected from anyone in exchange for returning a blow a year and a day later. He taunts the court until Gawain steps forward. Gawain takes hold of an axe. The Green Knight stands unflinching. Gawain slices his head off. Far from falling over, the Green Knight reaches for his head and lifts it in the air. The head speaks: See you in a year and a day, Sir Gawain. The Green Knight then climbs onto his horse, head still in hand, and rides off.

A year goes by quickly when its end is dreaded. In the fall, Sir Gawain sets out to find the Green Knight and fulfil his part of the terrible bargain…

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight can be read as a Christian allegory—though one that treads lightly, aware of the weakness of the flesh—or it can be read simply as a good story. Either way, I hope it helps you prepare for the challenges, temptations and rewards of 2011.

Happy New Year.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

incl: one inscribed trade paperback

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