they have their parallels in the decorative art of the time – the elaborate carving in wood and stone; the rich colouring of tapestries, of illuminated books and painted glass; the designs of the jewellers, goldsmiths, and silversmiths, which even the notaries who made the old inventories cannot pass without a word of admiration. The Pearl reminds us of the tribute due to the artists and craftsmen of the fourteenth century. [p. 57]
Tolkien first encountered the work while still at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, as part of his private study of early English literature. A few years later, it was part of his required reading as a student in the English School at *Oxford. At Easter 1913 Tolkien inscribed his name in a 1910 printing of Charles Grosvenor Osgood’s edition of Pearl (first published 1906). He attended lectures on Pearl by *A.S. Napier, and very probably a class on the work taught by Sisam. The West Midlands dialect of Middle English in which Pearl was written was a subject of special interest to Tolkien; see *English language and *A Fourteenth-Century Romance.
Pearl was also part of the curriculum at *Leeds when Tolkien was on the staff of the University’s English School, and also at Oxford. In May 1924 Tolkien wrote a poem, *The Nameless Land, inspired by reading Pearl for examination papers (see *Examinations).
MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
After the publication of their Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in 1925, Tolkien and his colleague *E.V. Gordon began work on an edition of Pearl in Middle English. But Tolkien made little or no contribution to it for many years; instead he prepared, in spare moments during ?1925–6, a Modern English translation of the poem. On ?26 April 1926 he sent a copy of this to Kenneth Sisam, for whose Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose he had prepared a glossary (*A Middle English Vocabulary). At some time by summer 1936 Tolkien offered the translation to the publisher J.M. Dent: it was rejected, but was seen by Guy Pocock, who having joined the staff of BBC Radio arranged for part of the translation to be read, with Tolkien’s permission, in August 1936 on London regional radio. In October 1936 *Stanley Unwin, of the firm George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers), expressed an interest in publishing the translation; but with the success of *The Hobbit the following year, his main desire was soon for a sequel to that work.
By August 1942 the translation apparently had been lent to the Oxford bookseller and publisher *Basil Blackwell. He wrote to Tolkien, expressed delight in the work, and asked if Tolkien would write, for publication with the poem, an introduction to Pearl aimed at the lay reader rather than the student. He offered to purchase the copyright to the translation, with the sum placed against Tolkien’s outstanding account at Blackwell’s Bookshop. Tolkien agreed, and proofs of the poem were ready in late March 1943. The introduction, however, was not forthcoming at once; and in September 1944 Blackwell, wondering if Tolkien’s delay was caused by objection to giving up copyright, now suggested that publication proceed instead on the basis of a royalty. Tolkien certainly wished to proceed: in a letter of 23–5 September 1944 he wrote to his son *Christopher: ‘I must try and get on with the Pearl and stop the eager maw of Basil Blackwell’ (Letters, p. 94). Six months later, c. 18 March 1945, he was still ‘in trouble with Blackwell who has set up my translation of Pearl, and needs corrections and an introduction’, as he wrote to Stanley Unwin (Letters, p. 114).
In the event, Tolkien never finished this work for Blackwell. In late 1950 Stanley Unwin again enquired about Pearl, in conjunction with Tolkien’s Modern English translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but it was not until August 1959, after the completion and successful publication of *The Lord of the Rings, that plans for Allen & Unwin to publish both Pearl and Sir Gawain were actively discussed. On 24 August Tolkien met with Basil Blackwell, who magnanimously relinquished any rights in the translation of Pearl and refused any compensation for the cost of the abortive typesetting. On finding the Blackwell galley proofs for Pearl in his son Christopher’s library, Tolkien felt less guilty about Blackwell’s sacrifice, as ‘inspection showed them to have been of an astonishing badness; so that the cost of correction of about a thousand fatuous mistakes (from reasonable copy), which would have arisen if I had proceeded with the publication, was at any rate spared’ (letter to *Rayner Unwin, 25 August 1959, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). On 27 August Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin of his desire
to get Gawain and Pearl into your hands as soon as possible. The spirit is indeed willing; but the flesh is weak and rebellious. It has contracted lumbago, from amongst its weapons of delay – with the colourable excuse that an old man, robbed of helpers by mischance, should not shift bookcases and books unaided. Every book and paper I possess is now on the floor, at home and in college, and I have only a table to type on. When the turmoil will subside, I do not know for certain; nor in what state of weariness I shall then be. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]
Although he now felt that the translations did not need very much work to finish, again Tolkien was delayed in attending to them, partly because he could not decide on the form of the general introduction and commentary that were needed to accompany the poems. ‘On the one hand’, Christopher Tolkien has said,
he undoubtedly sought an audience without any knowledge of the original poems; he wrote of his translation of Pearl: ‘The Pearl certainly deserves to be heard by lovers of English poetry who have not the opportunity or the desire to master its difficult idiom. To such readers I offer this translation.’ But he also wrote: ‘A translation may be a useful form of commentary; and this version may possibly be acceptable even to those who already know the original, and possess editions with all their apparatus.’ He wished therefore to explain the basis of his version in debatable passages; and indeed a very great deal of unshown editorial labour lies behind his translations, which not only reflect his long study of the language and metre of the originals, but were also in some degree the inspiration of it. As he wrote: ‘These translations were first made long ago for my own instruction, since a translator must first try to discover as precisely as he can what his original means, and may be led by ever closer attention to understand it better for its own sake. Since I first began I have given to the idiom of these texts very close study, and I have certainly learned more about them than I knew when I first presumed to translate them.’
But the commentary was never written, and the introduction did not get beyond the point of tentative beginnings. [*Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo (1975), p. 7]
Tolkien mentioned in a letter to his Aunt *Jane Neave that a translation of Pearl attracted him because of the poem’s ‘apparently insoluble metrical problems’ (18 July 1962, Letters, p. 317). Later, in a letter to his grandson Michael George (see *Michael Tolkien) he wrote that ‘Pearl is, of course, about as difficult a task as any translator could be set. It is impossible to make a version in the same metre close enough to serve as a “crib”. But I think anyone who reads my version, however learned a Middle English scholar, will get a more direct impression of the poem’s impact (on one who knew the language)’ (6 January 1965, Letters, p. 352).
Tolkien’s translation of Pearl was published at last in 1975, posthumously in *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo, edited by Christopher Tolkien.
A three-part version of the translation was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 from 19 May 1978, adapted by Kevin Crossley-Holland and read by Hugh Dickson. A commercial recording of Tolkien’s Pearl read (with *Sir Orfeo) by Terry Jones was first issued in 1997.
EDITION IN MIDDLE ENGLISH
By summer 1937 E.V. Gordon completed work on the edition of Pearl in Middle English begun in 1925. He had given up hope of any contribution by Tolkien, though he told Kenneth Sisam at Oxford University Press (*Publishers) that he would still welcome Tolkien’s participation, for the good of the book; but he did not want long delays, as he had other commitments
