Chaucer Polished

TROILUS & CRESSIDA -- Geoffrey Chaucer; Englished anew by George Philip Krapp--Random House ($3.50). Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1340-1400), whom posterity has agreed to call a pretty poet, has had his ups & downs. Many a lesser man, making light of Chaucer's archaic English, has tried to re-drape his sturdy uncouthness in modern dress. 17th-century Poet John Dryden ("Chaucer, I confess, is a rough Diamond; and must first be polish'd e'er he shines") was one. Latest is Columbia Professor George Philip Krapp. Partly because new books are scarce around Christmastime, partly because Random House books look well on any shelves, partly because Editors Carl Van Doren and Joseph Wood Krutch were "terribly enthusiastic," the Literary Guild has chosen Troilus & Cressida as its December book. Keeping Chaucer's conversational seven-line stanza, adding and subtracting nothing, so that the poem is line for line, stanza for stanza, though not word for word as Chaucer wrote it, Professor Krapp is as poetic as professorially possible. Chaucer was not always perfectly smooth; neither is Professor Krapp. Although some will still rather read Chaucer than any "translation" of him, a great many present-day readers will prefer Krapp. By & large the "translation" faithfully preserves the tone of the original --slyly ingenuous, disarmingly matter-of-fact. The story of Troilus & Cressida, which Chaucer cribbed from Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, will never be old-fashioned or out-of-date. Troilus. a younger son of King Priam of Troy, falls head over heels in love with Cressida, a comely young woman whose father, soothsaying Calchas. has deserted to the Greeks. Troilus thinks his case is hopeless, prepares to take it lying down, till his good friend Pandar, who is also Cressida's uncle, discovers his secret and takes control of the affair. By judicious scheming, trickery, persuasion Pandar arranges a meeting, silences scruples, fans the flame, stages an assignation at his house on a stormy night. Troilus wins his love and is temporarily happy. Then Calchas in the Greek camp manages to get his daughter exchanged for a Trojan prisoner. Greek Warrior Diomede cocks his helmet at her, and soon to good purpose. Pining Troilus hears rumors of Cressida's faithlessness. When they are confirmed he is not sorry to meet death on Achilles' spear. Famed English Sculptor Eric Gill (who did inter alia the Leeds University War Memorial and London's Westminster Cathedral's Stations of the Cross) has enhanced the text with 50 woodcuts.

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