Perhaps its childish but I am constantly aware that besides everything else that I read - best sellers, current biographies and what not, there is a whole other world of literature out there, called "classic literature" that had somehow escaped me earlier and that it is a question of my own self-education to approach them (no matter how un-academic and un-sophisticated I might be, which is probably just fine as I have no prejudice or misconceptions about them). "Penguin books" usually takes care of them and I have the whole list of "books to read" for the sake of my own clumsy introduction to literature classics - the whole fact that I am aware of these titles and still have curiosity to check them out is already good news, since most my friends and acquaintances would not bother with anything that is not on a current best seller list. Occasionally I clench my teeth and dive into some ancient classic but rarely find them exciting or inspiring (see "Phantom of the Opera" or May Sinclair) and this usually cools me off from classics until few months later the guilt sets in again and I start thinking that instead of reading some trashy celebrity biography of Madonna & Cher I should visit something that's serious and lofty, something that would enrich me (same for classical music).
With this in mind, after gorging on celebrity biographies, I decided to go straight for something completely different and turned my attention to a saga/ballad/heroic epic from 14 century England - I have bought this in Amsterdam's second-hand exchange book shop which must be one of my favourite places in the world, so it was well planned, just needed the right moment.
This amazing piece of art - probably forced at throats of school kids in UK - was forgotten for centuries until unearthed again in 1839 and has been published in various translations ever since. As translator Brian Stone notes it is a language which is remote from Chaucer as Chaucer is from ours - so we are basically talking about dead language. Contrary to zillions of interpretations that dwell on possible symbolical meanings, religion, magic and even erotic angles, I approached it as medieval adventure romance, which works just fine by me. It turned out amazingly easy, absorbing read and best of all is the sense of listening an ancient voice telling a story so removed from our times and perspective - where today we have books and movies packed with non-stop action and cliffhangers, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" has very little of action and a tons of wonderful, flowery, poetic descriptions that create pure magic if reader is in the right frame of mind - it probably works very well as reading out loud in the winter's night around Christmas I would guess. It is a slim volume of a great beauty and worth re-visiting. The more I think about it, the more I like it.
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