Poem Appreciation #6 - Pearl (The Pearl Poet)
 

The Pearl (circa 1380)
by The Pearl Poet

First Stanza

Perle, plesaunte to prynces paye
To clanly clos in golde so clere:
Oute of oryent I hardly saye
Ne proved I never her precios pere.
So round, so reken in uche arraye,
So smal, so smothe her sydes were,
Quere-so-ever I jugged gemmes gaye
I sette her sengelye in synglere.
Allas! I leste hyr in on erbere
Thurgh gresse to grounde hit fro me yot.
I dewyne, fordolked of luf-daungere
Of that pryvy perle wythouten spot.

[Pearl, pleasing to a prince to set plainly in clear gold: from all the
pearls of the orient I never saw one like this. So perfectly round, so
radiant in any setting, so petite, so smooth-sided. Wherever I was able to
compare her with other precious stones I set her uniquely apart. Alas, I
lost her in a meadow: she fell from me to the earth, through 'gresse'. I
pine, mortally wounded by my love for that priceless, spotless pearl].


Comments:

This is only the first verse of a poem which is 101 stanzas in all. But the Pearl might be the most undervalued poem in the English language, and most of what I have to say turns on one word: 'gresse' in line 10. So perhaps some allowance can be made.

The Pearl is roughly contemporary with Chaucer, and is written in a North Western Middle English which modern readers sometimes find troublesome. It occurs in a manuscript with four other poems in the same dialect, and this is all the evidence we have for this moment in the history of English – so even scholars can't trace every word.

But the sense of the poem is clear. A medieval dream allegory, the Pearl opens with its narrator falling asleep in a meadow near where he lost his precious Pearl. In a dream his dead two year old daughter appears to him - she being the pearl he lost - and explains that she is happy in Paradise, and tells her father it would be better if he turned his life to love of God, rather than wasting so much effort in futile sorrow.

The poem is in a complex ten line stanza with lines that both rime and alliterate throughout. The stanzas in turn are arranged into paragraphs which share a repeating final line. The Pearl may be the most structurally complex poem in English, but one hardly notices its lapidary brilliance. The poem has a sort of slowness, which fits with its meditative subject matter - otherwise the Pearl poem wears its finery as easily as if it were royalty.

The poem subverts traditional christian symbology amusingly and naturally. The baby daughter scolds her father for his selfish grief, and gives him a thorough grounding in the ways of the Holy City. Daughters don't often scold fathers in poems this early, and it is almost as unusual to have the woman with all the clever lines of theology.

This first verse drops straight into the jewellery imagery which will stay throughout the poem; but - as we will find throughout the verse - the Pearl poet finds subtle ways to remind us that we are also talking about a baby girl who died.

Praising a pearl for its 'round'ness (line 5) is natural, for example; but babies are also bonniest when they are plump. And 'so smal, so smothe her sydes were' is possible for a pearl, but far more natural for a baby girl (and notice how 'smooth' applied to a pearl makes us think of looking at it, but a baby girl is smooth to touch).

The poet 'lest hyr in on erbere':- dropped her in a meadow. Later we will find that the meadow where the pearl dropped is a graveyard. But for now, all we are told is that 'thurgh gresse to grounde hit fro me yot'.

A first reading suggests that 'gresse' might be 'grass' here. The dreamer has dropped his pearl, and he cannot find it because the grass is so long and dense. This is a natural image: a pearl would be easy to lose in long grass. A little girl is also easy to lose in long grass, particularly in a graveyard - though in a slightly different sense. Much of the art of this poem is in the way it finds so many images that go in contradictory directions, with incompatible resonances. This process has started already.

But 'gresse' may not be 'grass' after all. The Pearl - like all poems of its era – was composed to be listened to, not read. An early audience would not know if this 'gresse' was 'grass' or 'grease' (as in 'greasy hands'). In speech there is no way of distinguishing 'grass' from 'grease' (or at least, probably not in this dialect). Where does understanding this word as 'grease' take us?

Firstly: if you have greasy hands, you are more likely to drop your pearl. The pear is a gemstone, it does not sweat, it does not get greasy. But the dreamer is only a father. He gets greasy. This makes it easy for him to drop the pearl which has become slippery. It is in the nature of being mortal (greasy) that you lose things.

But then the little girl was also greasy. A pearl has no exudations, but babies certainly do. It is in the dreamer's nature as a greasy mortal to drop and lose things. It is in the daughter's nature as a greasy baby to be dropped and lost beyond retrieval.

'Gresse' as 'grass' had two senses: grass can hide a pearl, grass can eat a baby. 'Gresse' as 'grease' again points two ways: the father is fleshly, which leaves him open to losing his little girl. The little girl is fleshly, so she will one day be lost.

But 'gresse' might be 'grace' too. The little girl's death was a catastrophe for her dreaming father (he still grieves for it years later, when he writes this poem). But we know that death is both God's will and God's gift. The poem as a whole is a poem of reconciliation: a poem where the father discovers that his daughter's death was a divine grace.

And later in the poem we will find that the little girl is happy in heaven: for her leaving the valley of the shadow was a blissful release. She will also show her father the Heavenly City, and promise him that one day they will be reunited there. For the father 'grace' is a burden he must learn to bear, for his daughter it is achieved salvation.

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The Pearl is a frighteningly rich and difficult poem: the language is a strong disincentive for most readers. But there is a halfway decent modern version by Sophie Jewett, and even a free download audiofile for anyone who wants to listen to a poem intended to be listened to:

http://librivox.org/pearl-by-the-gawain-poet/

Comments by Distinguished Guest Amit Majmudar:

Wonderful selection--I have been consistently delighted when submitters have taken advantage of our any-time-period allowance.

Such a tragically high rate of infant and child mortality in the past--I have no idea why that wasn't more of a topic for writers throughout history. At the Met recently I saw a lot of Hellenistic funerary art for little children.

I suspect parents in the past looked at birth and the first years of a child's life differently than we do today. We just assume a child's going to live, unless there's a distinct, fatal diagnosis given. For people in medieval times, it must have been a toss-up whether any given kid was going to make it.

Interesting that Pearl falls from him. Not the first dad to worry about dropping the baby.

Interesting triple potential meaning of "gresse." Greasiness is the least appealing of the three readings; grace, the least likely psychologically, in my opinion. At that point in the poem, he is still grieving, first articulating his grief. The reconciliation happens at the end. Unless he is foreshadowing. If he is, it's an odd thing to foreshadow right then, at that moment.

I agree that Pearl is underrated. Medieval poems tend to get underrated these days, perhaps because of their overtly religious content. (Although religious discourse doesn't turn people off Dante, so maybe that's a bogus theory. Unless everyone is skipping the versified Aquinas, the way I do....)

Has anyone here read Wolfram von Eschenbach's PARZIVAL? Now there is a medieval poem that should get more press.

This is a fine, fine commentary, lucid and highly readable. The relatively short paragraphs are a help. It's inspired me to take another run at the Pearl, which I started reading at one point in the (I think) Perloff translation. I think I completely failed to grasp, in my brief foray into the first half dozen stanzas, how close the analogy was between the pearl and the man's daughter, and missed the point of what seemed a rather lengthy preamble on the roundness of spherical objects. (Possibly I misunderstood the child as being older than an infant). This is eye opening.

I'm very interested in all those readings of "gresse" and have done a little digging. E.V. Gordon, in his notes to the Oxford edition, (p. 46) appears to assume without comment that the correct reading is "grass." One online Middle English dictionary gives only "grass" as a definition for that spelling, and another one only lets me search a truncated form and gives yet a fourth definition. So I have yet to find any warrant for "grease," though it doesn't seem impossible. When all is revealed, let's talk!

But what's more important: yes, great commentary. And what a contrast between today's two poems--the very accessible and the almost inaccessible without special aids.

This fine commentary, with all its attention to the details of the imagery, lingering the way it does especially on "grease/grass," reads like a dream interpretation. The way to enter a dream in the waking state is to turn the image over and over, seeing it from ever new angles. It's worth noting that allegory--often maligned, even by Jung, as being merely a rationalistic use of images ("this image represents that and only that concept," which Jung contrasted with the polyvalent approach to imagery of symbolism)--can be so dreamlike.

On my dream reading list in the near future: The Pearl.

I taught this stanza of The Pearl to my high schoolers two weeks ago. I told them gresse was grass. Superb commentary.

Detailed, loving commentary of a marvellous poem. This one needs to be savored in the mouth and on the tongue, as I'm sure Tim tells his
high schoolers. The author is Chaucer's contemporary, but the differences, though small, affect the sense.

Superb commentary! I poked at the link and the poem a bit, and found I was happiest reading the original, even though I can't understand it completely, and just rolling around in it and pleasuring myself with the richness of the language, the rhyme and the alliteration. The modern translation is workmanlike - "decent", as the essayist says - but it's not particularly magical, it goes on forever, the archaisms bother me rather than entice me (possibly a less contemporary translation that retained more of the Chaucerian sense would have worked better), and there's no way that I am enticed to read it. The original, however, is a sonic joy infused with hints and mystery.

Many thanks for this! I wish the Pearl was assigned to students more often (teachers seem to favor "Sir Gawain & the Green Knight.") I remember loving this poem, especially the part where the narrator asks the Pearl if the people across the river are not jealous of each other (they all seem to be kings and queens). And she replies, just as Dante would, that no one envies another's rank because each person is as happy as he or she is capable of being.

Wish I had a copy with your commentary throughout!

Impressive commentary -- convincing but invitational rather than pushy. I agree with Michael about the text -- the original is more fun to say and more affecting to hear, I think. Sound carries much meaning, so I think it works that way. I am rarely grabbed by this early stuff, but the commentary won me over enough to be interested in pursuing this further.

David R.

This was completely new to me and I am glad to be introduced to it.

I notice that Michael has awarded this thread to Chris Childers. It's tempting to sit around while someone else clears up my mess, but I suppose that would be rather naughty.

I've been geeky about the Pearl since I first read it. I had the good fortune to originally meet all four of the Cotton Nero A.x poems under the wing of A C Spearing - still my favourite critic on the works. Recently the internet and MP3 players have re-introduced me to the pleasures of listening to classic poetry (as opposed to reading it), and I find Pearl comes up as fresh as ever.

Thanks to all who responded, but especially to Maryann and Andrew - who I think took me even deeper into the poem. So I shall answer your points first.

Andrew : I think your parallel between reading deep allegory (allegory where the narrative is not simply a signpost to the hidden homily) and dream interpretation has helped me formulate a strategy for approaching the Pearl (and a few other late medieval pieces) that I have been groping towards for several years, but without discovering the focus you offer. The multiple puns or enriched meanings that certain words get in the poem ('clan' / 'clanly' / 'clannesse' also seem a nexus of meaning in these poems) is part of the strategy of connotation in these poems; but in Pearl in particular I am also intrigued by how often the poem switches between daylight and nightime scenes. Light is foregrounded in this poem, the way it is in the Divine Comedy. I think your suggestion that one can look hard at the purely pictorial elements in the Pearl will keep me going back to the verses for some years yet.

Maryann : I love the E V Gordon edition, and if I were studying the poem I would probably use that. But for reading the poem I usually pick up the Andrew / Waldron 'Poems of the Pearl Manuscript' - simply because it gives me all four poems together, and I think they throw crosslights on each other. Gordon parses 'gresse' simply as 'grass'; so does Andrew / Waldron. But Andrew / Waldron also has a cf. to 'grece' at Gawain 2315.

2315 is a big line in Gawain: it is where Gawain gets his scar:

the scharpe shrancke to the flesche thurgh the schyre grece

I would guess that early hearers of the Pearl would also probably have heard Gawain, and might remember this vivid image as clearly as I do. If we suppose that all the poems of Cotton Nero A.x originally came from the same smallish household somewhere in the English northwest, it would be only natural that certain key symbols and ideas would cross-contaminate from one poem to the other.

'grece' and 'gresse' would sound the same (I think) and that might be enough to associate them in the hearers' minds.

It also interests me that 'gresse' comes round again in line 31 of the Pearl:

for uch gresse mot grow of greynez dede

that line is so close to the 'all flesh is grass' idea that I am nearly sure the Pearl poet wants us to think outside the lawn on this occasion.

Moving from 'gresse' to 'grace' (with a true vowel shift) is much more speculative; but this is something that I do when I listen to semi-familiar poems, so I am guessing that medieval hearers might be the same.

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Incidentally, and in passing: yes I've read Parzival. Schianatulander is one of those once-read-never-forgotten guys. But even so, my money is on Aucussin et Nicolette for the really weird stuff.

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Brian: It's a dense poem, and I think to say anything clearly about it, one has to speak in short sentences. I loved it in my late teens, but I understand it much better since I have daughters. I think the way the poem shifts between the hard jewel imagery and the squidgy daughter imagery is among its many delights.

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Tim: I am certain that 'gresse' means 'grass' first. I just think that this is a poem where words don't stop at the one meaning.

One use of strictform is to make the reader go slow and savour each word. In some respects the Pearl is the strictest form in English (for a longer poem), it is certainly one of the slowest-moving.

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Lance: I love Chaucer because he is so swift, the Pearl poet because he dawdles so. (I think even Gawain dawdles, compared to - say - Troylus and criseyde). I wouldn't be without either of them (but I think perhaps I am missing something with Langland).

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Michael: simply introducing you to one of my favourite poems (in any language) amply repays any effort I spent on this thread. I like the Jewett translation partly because it isn't all that good. It's modern English - so I can put it on my MP3 player; but it's sufficiently creaky that I know it will keep sending me back to the real words. Sometimes you need a translation, sometimes you just want a crib. The Jewett is a crib, which for this poem is all I need.

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Gail : I can certainly understand why a teacher might prefer to base a course around Gawain. Gawain is less strange, the language is significantly more accessible, there is no Thomas Aquinas, and it is even slightly the better poem. I've never taught the Pearl through, though I've stepped people through the first few passus. I don't think I would dare tackle XV - which I don't understand. (I sort of get what is being said, but I can't work out what that section is doing in the poem).

Thanks for referencing the parallels between the Pearl and Piccarda Donati in the Paradiso. I think the Pearl is more garrulous though, almost rowdy. The Pearl would be more fun at a party, I think.

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David: yes, you have to hear it. It doesn't deliver the full deal if it stays on the page. Reading it aloud is good; listening to someone else read it aloud is also good. I can read the Middle English aloud to myself OK, but if I want to focus on listening, I need a crib.

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Janice: thank you so much. I brought you a new poet. You sent me back to one I have a regrettable habit of forgetting. That is what is so magical about this forum.

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Thanks all. This is very nearly as much fun as it is possible to have doing something which is good for me.