Adolygiadau
A new volume in the Legends and Landscapes of Wales series, this is a refreshing and very accessible new translation of the three Arthurian tales that feature in the Mabinogi – the strikingly different stories of Peredur, Owain and Geraint. Arthur himself is a shadowy presence throughout, featuring only as a distant, faintly-perceived icon of the perfect ruler and completely-evolved warrior; but his court plays a crucial role in each story, and in the mind and actions of each protagonist.
John Bollard's translations, while scholarly, are enterprising and exciting. Very aware of the gulfs between oral and written story-telling, between the linguistic patterns of Welsh and English, and between the perceptions and thought-processes of twelfth-century audiences and twenty-first century readers, he recognises elements in the stories that have become untranslatable – the ornamented repetition and compound descriptive adjectives that abound in scene-settings and description – and replaces them with devices we can absorb and relate to. On the other hand, he follows sensitively the pattern in the early texts of maximising intensity at moments of crisis and high adventure by switching into the present tense.
As he comments, although the physical landscape of much of these tales is 'often indeterminate', an idealised realm of hilltop castles, convenient clearings and midnight-dark woods, the centuries-long association between the stories and the people of Wales ensures that they have landmarks in every corner of our country. Anthony Griffiths's photographs are vivid and sensitive, and at their most effective by far when used as full-page or larger spreads, and bled to the edges of the page. At other times, imprisoned within heavy black borders and trapped below or beside the text, they are diminished by unfortunate associations with the nineteen-seventies textbook.
The translations of the three tales are the body of this book, and they are immensely readable and exciting, quietly contemporary in tone while exact in content and respectful to their sources. As Bollard comments, while never offering complex passages of psychological insight in the manner of the modern novel, they offer us much more than the excitement of combat or romance, or an escape into fantasy; they invite the reader to consider what the characters are learning, how and when they fail, what resources they are able to draw on and to what extent they achieve their hopes and aspirations.
A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.
- Meic Llewellyn, Gwales
