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dernwyn
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Feb 18 2013, 2:25am
Views: 276
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This article appeared in a June, 1977 issue of The National Observer, in its "Point of Departure" section. Considering the year, the errors, I think, are forgivable!  It is accompanied by a photo of Tolkien in cap and gown, titled "Tolkien at Oxford, 1972: He gave his life to an epic."
Tolkien and the Heroism of the Small
by L. J. Davis
Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend ranging from the large and cosmogonic to the level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths - which I would dedicate simply: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, to be redolent of our "air"...and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (although it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be "high", purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.
It is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, speaking from the pages of Humphrey Carpenter's superb new biography.
The pieces finally fell into place late in 1916 as Tolkien lay at the village of Great Haywood, recovering from the black horror of the Batle of the Somme. "To make a body of...legend", to unite the two ruling passions of his life, the magic of language and the magic of Faery; it would be a feat unprecedented in the modern times. More: to create something amounting to a national myth like the Icelandic Eddas and the Finnish Kalevala he loved so well, a chronicle of great deeds that defined a whole people, where the reader could touch the minds of heroes and thus learn not only who he was, but who he ought to be. Yes, absurd. Impossible and absurd. But Tolkien was young, and he had been to a place that few men, far too few, beheld and lived to speak of afterward, and as soon as he was able, he set to work.
~ ~ ~
It had always been there, of course, in the recesses of his heart. As a child he had loved The Red Fairy Book and the strange, melodious Welsh names on the sides of railway coal cars. As an adolescent he discovered the Eddas and showed that he had the makings of the great philologist he would one day be; he not ony knew Latin, Greek, and German, but Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Middle English. And he had begun to make up languages of his own - flowing, intricate vocabularies based first on Spanish, then Gothic, and finally Finnish and Celtic.
This was more than a pedant's hobby, more even than a fondness for the sound of words. It was at one with the poetry he began to write, with the great epic to which he would devote his life - a striving for structure, for meaning, for talismanic strength to endure the terrible odds of this terrible century. It was not enough for Tolkien to invent words and grammar. He was compelled to imagine a whole history to go with them, a culture from which they sprang, a context in which they functioned.
At first he called it The Book of Lost Tales. Later he changed the title to The Silmarillion. It is a chronicle of enormous striving, a great love, and the cosmic war of the elves against Morgoth, evil's greatest servant. It is important to say to those unfamiliar with the Tolkien mythos that his elves are neither cute nor silly; they are man perfected, harmonious, immortal unless killed, their lives their ultimate work of art. Their battles are infused with a heroic coherence utterly alien to Tolkien's experienes at the Somme.
Tolkien worked on The Silmarillion for the rest of his life, creating, polishing, revising, borrowing the forest of Mirkwood from Wiliam Morris and the setting of Middle Earth from the Norse, never quite able to let it go. He was still setting it in order when he died in 1973 at the age of 81. We will finally see it this September when the finished manuscript, edited by Tolkien's son Christopher, will appear at last.
Meanwhile, Tolkien had done something even more peculiar. Telling bedtime stories to his children in the 1930s, he invented hobbits. Hobbits are small, furry, narrow-minded creatures interested primarily in plain food and drink, birthday parties, gifts, and genealogy. For all that, they are a sturdy folk, inhabiting a green and pleasant corner of Middle Earth called The Shire. They are modelled on the British common soldier, and their name derives from Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt. Tolkien wrote about one of them, Bilbo Baggins, who ran out of his front door one day without so much as a pocket handkerchief and followed a wizard named Gandalf and a troop of dwarves; their doings resulted in the finding of a ring that made the wearer invisible, the slaying of a dragon, the recovery of a fortune, and the slightest of brushes against the giant events transpiring in Middle Earth. Almost by accident, the book came to the attention of Stanley Unwin, the publisher. Success was immediate, and Tolkien found himself stuck with the job of composing a sequel.
~ ~ ~
The result, after a decade, was The Lord of the Rings, a huge three-part novel that was hardly what the somewhat bewildered Sir Stanley expected. In it the hobbits find themselves smack in the middle of Tolkien's continuing epic, carrying the Ring of Power to destruction in the Cracks of Doom before Morgoth's lieutenant, Sauron, can seize it and end the world. By inadvertence, Tolkien had tumbled upon one of the most potent elements of myth: that the heroism of the small is a double heroism, because it is the heroism of ourselves.
It is a theme that is at least as old as the Theseus legend, that is absolutely central to the Christian gospels, and that keeps us rooting for certain baseball teams. When Hercules or Sinbad appears, Daddy has arived on the scene: Fixing things and being heroes is their job. By contrast, the 1956 Dodgers actually winning the damn pennant or the hobbits struggling painfully over the ashen plains of the Land of Shadow, on a hopeless quest and scared out of their minds, are powerful figures of empathy. If we ever got stuck with the job of winning a pennant or destroying a demon ring, that's probably the way we'd do it, falling all over ourselves and stepping on our neckties - but doing it, by God, doing it. It is myth made human, and therefore myth made alive.
But did he succeed? Did Tolkien make "a body of...legend"? We still won't know when The Silmarillion apears. We won't even know in our lifetimes; legends don't work like that. Meanwhile, as we await the verdict of the jury, I recommend Humphrey Carpenter's invaluable literary biography. It is not only a splendid supplement to the epic, but it is just about the best book of its kind I have ever read.
[Tolkien. By Humphrey Carpenter. Houghton Mifflin. 287 pages. $10.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
(This post was edited by entmaiden on Feb 18 2013, 2:06pm)
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Subject
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User
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Time
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How many young people/teenagers on TORN?
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 15 2013, 8:32pm
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Fear not, you are not alone
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Radagast-Aiwendil
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Feb 15 2013, 9:32pm
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That's odd.
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 16 2013, 11:43am
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I dunno, Radagast, perhaps you have just been unlucky? Many of the people I know at my age have read Tolkien, and are pretty enthusiastic //
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Xanaseb
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Feb 16 2013, 7:30pm
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Unlucky?....yep that sounds about right, hehe!//
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Radagast-Aiwendil
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Feb 16 2013, 9:31pm
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I'm with you.
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The White Wizard
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Feb 16 2013, 1:35am
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Yay for young Tolkien fans!
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 16 2013, 11:56am
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Well I'm not your age now...
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Ardamírë
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Feb 16 2013, 1:49am
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My boys aren't on the site
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Kelvarhin
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Feb 16 2013, 2:07am
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I can see you're a brilliant parent!
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 16 2013, 4:47pm
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You're actually pretty lucky, you know.
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Roheryn
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Feb 16 2013, 7:26am
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I know.
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 16 2013, 11:53am
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Amen to that
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CuriousG
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Feb 16 2013, 2:43pm
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Most definitely.
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Ataahua
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Feb 16 2013, 8:49pm
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Tolkien wasn't popular when I was young, either.
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Kimtc
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Feb 16 2013, 9:52pm
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LOL Curious!
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Ardamírë
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Feb 17 2013, 4:31am
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So true.
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dernwyn
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Feb 16 2013, 3:05pm
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Well, there is college...
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arithmancer
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Feb 16 2013, 7:16pm
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Cool!
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dernwyn
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Feb 17 2013, 2:18am
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My oh my!!
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Ardamírë
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Feb 17 2013, 4:28am
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It's from The National Observer
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dernwyn
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Feb 17 2013, 1:34pm
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TORN had a wonderful article
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Ataahua
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Feb 17 2013, 6:31pm
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That is fantastic!
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Ardamírë
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Feb 17 2013, 7:05pm
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Here it is, in full!
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dernwyn
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Feb 18 2013, 2:25am
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Incredible!
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Ardamírë
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Feb 18 2013, 3:47am
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It gave Hope...
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dernwyn
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Feb 18 2013, 5:32am
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yes internet fandoms are great now
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Ham_Sammy
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Feb 16 2013, 8:40pm
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Can I join?
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macfalk
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Feb 16 2013, 10:23am
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My kids are about you age,
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Eowyn3
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Feb 16 2013, 3:35pm
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And also people of all ages.
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Ataahua
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Feb 16 2013, 8:52pm
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I was 16 when I first read LOTR
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Annael
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Feb 16 2013, 4:40pm
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Me too.//
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sherlock
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Feb 16 2013, 9:00pm
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I was young when I became a fan too
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Kirly
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Feb 16 2013, 6:44pm
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I was around 16 when I first read LOTR
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Magpie
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Feb 16 2013, 7:04pm
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I remember that skirt length rule!
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Starling
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Feb 16 2013, 10:41pm
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We still have the same skirt and pants rules.
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 17 2013, 7:03am
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*cough* I'm 19, that's slightly too old isn't it -__- .... well I think I'm a young person :D //
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Xanaseb
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Feb 16 2013, 7:28pm
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Well, I'm 46 and prone to bouts of *immaturity*
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Starling
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Feb 16 2013, 10:37pm
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*tag!* You're IT!
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Kelvarhin
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Feb 17 2013, 2:46am
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<Pins on young-person-Tolkien-fan-badge>
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 17 2013, 6:57am
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I was 19 the first time I read LotR
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grammaboodawg
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Feb 17 2013, 1:16am
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*High fives back*
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 17 2013, 7:00am
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Hi Boromir.
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Kelly of Water's Edge
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Feb 17 2013, 9:27pm
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Hi Kelly
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 18 2013, 12:38pm
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I'm 21, but...
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Laerasëa
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Feb 18 2013, 4:02am
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Hehe
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 18 2013, 12:39pm
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Not a teen but started reading Tolkien as a child
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imin
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Feb 18 2013, 1:10pm
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I've played that quiz before!
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 20 2013, 12:08pm
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Aiya dear nibbling
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Frodo_of_the_Wall
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Feb 19 2013, 11:56am
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Ayup.
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 19 2013, 12:32pm
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"Nibbling"?
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dernwyn
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Feb 19 2013, 6:15pm
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Nibbling
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Frodo_of_the_Wall
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Feb 20 2013, 5:32am
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Oh yes, we must keep the tradition going!
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dernwyn
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Feb 20 2013, 4:50pm
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Beamer's still a bit young to have her own account
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Arandiel
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Feb 20 2013, 7:12pm
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Your kids sound great!
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 20 2013, 7:27pm
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Excellent!
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Brethil
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Feb 20 2013, 8:51pm
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I'm so happy
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 21 2013, 8:01pm
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Young Ringers are out there!
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RangerLady23
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Feb 20 2013, 8:10pm
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Well, it's almost time to celebrate the *ahem* seventh anniversary of my thirty-ninth birthday,
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Alassëa Eruvande
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Feb 20 2013, 8:22pm
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There is nothing like converting
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BoromirOfWinterfell
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Feb 21 2013, 8:04pm
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Not strictly Tolkien but...
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Sunflower
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Feb 22 2013, 7:39am
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