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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jan 6 2024, 6:26pm
Post #26 of 43
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That although I found "long stretches of Sil. a boring slog" I also found the perfect way to read it -- as a Reading Room readthrough (gosh in 2013, I think!) , of which I still have very fond memories.
A wonderful thing about the Reading Room is how other people's different interests, knowledge and enthusiasms can complement things I lack (complement with an e: complete, makes up a whole, or bring to perfection. Not with an i: like giving compliments to  ) .
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jan 6 2024, 6:59pm
Post #27 of 43
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Linear chronological choice, and champagne (or is it?)
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As I've grown older and developed more narrative sense, I've started to realize that Christopher's insistence on a linear chronological order was a big mistake that stops the plot in its tracks multiple times for the sake of inserting tangents of background material that aren't necessary to understand the plot. Melkor and Fëanor are written as the real main characters in the early part of the story, but that gets muddied by all the additions. I think the Valar should have been portrayed as these mysterious entities who act upon the story but whose true natures are obscured by narrative distance and the inability of the later beings to have certain knowledge of what truly had happened in the primordial times.
I do agree that this arrangement means the narrative has to swing between episodes that happen on great detail in near real time, and a lot of 'time passes' passages that set up the next set piece.
(As before let's note that I find this problematic: others may not mind it, or think it a good feature)
I think I saw the consequences of that in our current character discussion of Thingol -- there is only so much you can make of him from the text, though we have managed a good discussion nonethless.
I think it would be even more difficult ponder, say, what Melian thought about it all. As far as I know (which may not be very far) Tolkien wrote little or nothing centred on Melian.
Feanor would be different though. I feel I 'see' Feanor a lot more clearly.
But maybe I wouldn't go so far as calling the authorial/editorial decision to put things in a single chronological sweep as a mistake.
That's because, for this to be a mistake by Christopher, we'd have to think he had the realistic option of arranging something more like you are suggesting, Silvered-glass.
[I think you are suggesting something like a Children of Hurin treatment for the main tales (Feanor, Beren & Luthien, Hurin of course and maybe some others). A short passage of introductiory editorial comments (by Bilbo, this being his Tales from the Elvish?) to summarise 'time passes with some developments'. Everything else as Appendices. ]
I (personally) don't know whether the material existed for that approach (or something similar) without a lot of new writing: possibly more than Christopher may have felt comfortable doing if he wanted to represent his father's ideas as purley as possible, rather than his own ideas of what his father's ideas might have become. I think I see his dilemma as editor and litereary executor.
Anyway, Christopher has generously published a huge amount of JRR's primary material and so anyone who fancies it could have a private go at 're-mixing' the Sil. according to their own ideas of organisation, including whatever primary writing or re-telling they desire. And then copyright will eventually expire...
But any future re-mix will be a bit like the Wayne's World joke about American "Champagne" - even if some folks think it is better, it will never be as recognised as the original
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Jan 6 2024, 7:00pm)
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Silvered-glass
Rohan
Jan 6 2024, 9:54pm
Post #28 of 43
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Liberties with Arranging the Silmarillion
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But maybe I wouldn't go so far as calling the authorial/editorial decision to put things in a single chronological sweep as a mistake.
That's because, for this to be a mistake by Christopher, we'd have to think he had the realistic option of arranging something more like you are suggesting, Silvered-glass.
[I think you are suggesting something like a Children of Hurin treatment for the main tales (Feanor, Beren & Luthien, Hurin of course and maybe some others). A short passage of introductiory editorial comments (by Bilbo, this being his Tales from the Elvish?) to summarise 'time passes with some developments'. Everything else as Appendices.
Christopher took a number of liberties with arranging the text. I would have wanted the Sil to be more along the lines of Tolkien's original intention. The result would be a more plot-oriented Quenta Silmarillion that flows better as a story from the creation of the world to the aftermath of the War of Wrath without needless interruptions to dump worldbuilding details. Readers who are interested in background facts can then go on and read the appendices if they wish. Maybe Akallabêth could be in its own section before the Appendices, but Valaquenta definitely belongs in an appendix.
Going by memory, "Of Aulë and Yavanna" for example is a chapter made of two separate texts, one about the origin of the Dwarves called "Of Dwarves" and the other about the origin of the Ents, and neither was originally part of the Quenta Silmarillion proper as Tolkien intended, which explains how the chapter feels so out of place and breaks the flow of the story. The chapter also isn't required for following the story, as Dwarves won't appear until several chapters later and get sufficient, if sparse, introduction at that point. The Ents in turn are barely in the story at all, so that their lavish introduction is a major misstep. Liking things arranged in temporal order and wanting to avoid lengthy appendices are the only reasons Christopher could have had for that chapter.
"Of Beleriand and Its Realms" is just a map in the form of prose and IIRC also wasn't meant to be in the place it ended up being. A literary map sounds like it would be useful for following the story, but it's really not and is also very tedious to read.
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Silvered-glass
Rohan
Jan 6 2024, 9:56pm
Post #29 of 43
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1) Eru as a consequence of Tolkien being a Christian. I have a couple of quotes for you, both from Letter #131, to Milton Waldman, written 1951 (I am working from Letters 1e here). a) Tolkien comments on how the Arthurian myths didn't satisfy him as the sort of distinctly English type of fairy-story he wanted to write. “Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its ‘faerie’ is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‘real’ world. (I am speaking, of course, of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days.
[my bolds]
As a child I read some non-Disneyfied Arthurian stuff and I remember being weirded out. The worldview in these stories was profoundly Christian in a way that in alien to the modern world. It was the sort of world where it was sufficiently plausible to the audience that the Holy Grail had profound mystic powers and that it might be found somewhere in England. A particular segment that stuck with me was about a legend about the wood of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden changing colors in response to Adam's fall and then again in response to Cain's murder of Abel. Like how would the Arthurian characters even know that?
The Arthurian stories are an authentic example of the medieval Catholic worldview. Next to them, the worldview in LotR is outright modernism.
b) Then, turning to a synoopsis of and commentary on what will eventually become the first chapter of the Sil., Tolkien comments on his scheme of a pantheon of Valar, subordinate to a single god (or God): On the side of mere narrative device, this is, of course, meant to provide beings of the same order of beauty, power, and majesty as the ‘gods’ of higher mythology, which can yet be accepted–well, shall we say baldly, by a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity. I suggest that this means that on the one hand we should not think of Eru as a manifestation in the story-world of Tolken's God in any straightforward way (c.f. Aslan in Narnia). I also don't, myself, think Tolkien intends to push a Christian message through the medium of fairy-story (c.f. CS Lewis, again writing Narnia, or his science-fiction works). The Arthurian quote above is just one of many quotes I can think of that suggest Tolkien was deliberately avoiding Christian allegory or apologetics. However, I conclude that having Eru rather than just the Valar seemed better, more correct, more conforting or whatever to Tolkien. Maybe some of Tolkien's monotheistic readers like having Eru there for the same reason.
If I interpret the Tolkien quote correctly, he wanted to have pagan gods in his story because he liked their "beauty, power, and majesty", and Eru is there to explain how the Valar came to be in a semi-Christian fashion. So since Eru is at heart a plot device rather than a character, it makes sense that he stays firmly in the background the vast majority of the time.
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Silvered-glass
Rohan
Jan 7 2024, 11:53am
Post #30 of 43
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Now of course in the end it is just a matter of opinion and taste. Does this or that reader prefer the story like this (there are gods, but for many intents and purposes there might as well not be). Or does it diaspoint because there should be lots of chapters of the Valar wading into Middle-earth with vast armies? But whether or not we like what Tolkien wrote, we can hardly go and complain to Tolkien that he must do it all again, with more activist gods ---* An overpowered character tends to have a black hole-like effect on every other plot and character. This is perhaps best shown as parody. For example, Paula Smith's "A Trekie's Tale" (1974) is a parody of Star Trek fan-fiction which skewers this hilariously (and is the source of the term 'Mary-Sue').
I think the root of the problem is that Tolkien wanted to have powerful pagan gods in his story but also wanted to depict them as sanitized and morally good. The way he reconciled this with the needs of drama was to have the Valar make an error of judgement after another and be passive somewhere away from the plot a lot. LotR benefits from the Valar's absence from the page, because the Valar are just not good or interesting as characters. (Melkor has the most psychological depth, but even in his case it requires a lot of reading between the lines.) Modern fantasy literature often has more explicit religion than Tolkien in LotR and sometimes includes pagan-inspired pantheons among the cast, but I've never seen that done well.
It is possible to have an overpowered character in the story and do it well, but it's tricky. (Kamen Rider Geats is an example where I think that succeeded with the titular character who first comes off as overpowered, then turns out to be even more overpowered than that, and even more overpowered than that to the attentive viewer, but it helps that Geats is not presented as a perfect hero and I think he's actually the true main villain of the story... This is however getting both far off topic and to a territory where my example is doubtless much too obscure to be particularly useful.)
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jan 7 2024, 6:05pm
Post #31 of 43
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I've remembered that Letter 153 (in draft form To Peter Hastings, 1954) is relvant too
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The Letters 1e introduction to this letter reads, in part:
Peter Hastings, manager of the Newman Bookshop (a Catholic bookshop in Oxford), wrote expressing enthusiasm for The Lord of the Rings, but asked if Tolkien had not ‘over-stepped the mark in metaphysical matters’. He gave several examples... Hastings was most of all concerned with the reincarnation of the Elves, which Tolkien had mentioned to him in a conversation. He wrote of this: ‘God has not used that device in any of the creations of which we have knowledge, and it seems to me to be stepping beyond the position of a sub-creator to produce it as an actual working thing, because a sub-creator, when dealing with the relations between creator and created, should use those channels which he knows the creator to have used already. . . . . “The Ring” is so good that it is a pity to deprive it of its reality by over-stepping the bounds of a writer’s job.’ Tolkien's reply begins:
Dear Mr Hastings,
Thank you very much for your long letter. I am sorry that I have not the time to answer it, as fully as it deserves. You have at any rate paid me the compliment of taking me seriously; though I cannot avoid wondering whether it is not ‘too seriously’, or in the wrong directions. The tale is after all in the ultimate analysis a tale, a piece of literature, intended to have literary effect, and not real history. That the device adopted, that of giving its setting an historical air or feeling, and (an illusion of ?) three dimensions, is successful, seems shown by the fact that several correspondents have treated it in the same way–according to their different points of interest or knowledge: i.e. as if it were a report of ‘real’ times and places, which my ignorance or carelessness had misrepresented in places or failed to describe properly in others. Its economics, science, artefacts, religion, and philosophy are defective, or at least sketchy.
...Since the whole matter from beginning to end is mainly concerned with the relation of Creation to making and sub-creation (and subsidiarily with the related matter of ‘mortality’), it must be clear that references to these things are not casual, but fundamental: they may well be fundamentally ‘wrong’ from the point of view of Reality (external reality). But they cannot be wrong inside this imaginary world, since that is how it is made. We differ entirely about the nature of the relation of sub-creation to Creation. I should have said that liberation ‘from the channels the creator is known to have used already’ is the fundamental function of ‘sub-creation’, a tribute to the infinity of His potential variety, one of the ways in which indeed it is exhibited, as indeed I said in the Essay.”
[Later Tolkien touches on biological criticisms he's also recieved: Elves are immortal, Men are mortal, yet the two are similar enough to be able to have children together, and how can this be, according to real-world biology and medicine?]
... I should actually answer: I do not care. This is a biological dictum in my imaginary world. It is only (as yet) an incompletely imagined world, a rudimentary ‘secondary’; but if it pleased the Creator to give it (in a corrected form) Reality on any plane, then you would just have to enter it and begin studying its different biology, that is all.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Jan 7 2024, 6:08pm)
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Jan 7 2024, 6:29pm
Post #32 of 43
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I like to think that if Tolkien were alive today and active on TORN
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that we would see two sides to him:
"Oh, you want to know more about iambic pentameter in Entish love poetry?" he said with childish glee, eagerly rubbing his hands.
"OMG, what the heck is wrong with you people?!? Miruvor was a drink from Rivendell like Redbull. That's all you need to know!"
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jan 8 2024, 9:19am
Post #33 of 43
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Some authors seem to get on just fine on forums with their fans. I think Sir Terry Pratchett was an example, and the problems are largely for Discworld scholars or cataloguers: for those who care about such things, is some improvised flight of fancy Sir Terry got into to amuse an online conversation now canon? (One example, IIRC is The Eater of Socks, which explains why so many socks go into the washing machine in pairs and emerge single) Others authors have ended up in bitter or protracted rows with fans.
(italicised passages in what follows are quotes from the letter I already posted).
I think Tolkien is quite right - for very obvious practical reasons, it's unreasonable to expect his sub-creation to have fully working economics, science, artefacts, religion, and philosophy (and whatever else a reflects a particular reader's 'points of interest or knowledge': Christian metaphysics, in this case).
Now of course it is also true - and Tolkien knows this, because he discusses it in On Fairy Stories - that readers cannot necessarily help what 'points of interest or knowledge' trip the narrative up, crashes their suspension of disbelief and stops them from enjoying the show.
And of course readers have to 'participate' in the story (in oliphaunt's excellent phrase) and are free to react as they wish.
Possibly Mr Hastings' choice of language is a bit unfortunate. It reminded me of a writers' group I used to be in - the sort of thing where everyone in turn provides a draft story and everyone reads it and critiques it. The organiser of that used to say that so many problems were caused not by criticism so much, as by the language in which the criticism was couched. Usually things went better if critique was couched so that it was clear this was one reader's personal reaction, rather than some objective truth about anything.
So in this case Mr Hastings is expressing a preference for fantasy worlds to have orthodox (Christian) metaphysics. But rather than saying he would have preferred it that way, or it makes him nervous to think about things teh Church does not sanction, he says Tolkien is "stepping beyond the position of a sub-creator to produce it as an actual working thing, because [of a personal preference or opinion of Mr Hastings, that is being couched as if it is some sort of General Rule of Fantasy]. "
The idea that it is an actual working thing is silly hyperbole anyway, unless Mr Hasting's bookshop had actually been visited by elves which Tolkien had sinfully re-incarnated.
And, I think, Mr Hastings has poked at a tender spot. Tolkien might be happy to say (in effect) "I don't care about genetics - it's quite irrelevant to what the tale is about and so I did what I did to make the story work, without taking any effort at all to make it biologically plausible. You will just have to give up on trying to make sense of it." But he can't take that line so easily with the metaphysics, since the whole matter from beginning to end is mainly concerned with the relation of Creation to making and sub-creation. And also because Sub-creators overstepping beyond the position of sub-creation is a recurring theme (and cause of trouble).
Lastly, Christian metaphysics is a serious matter for both participants in this exchange. Is there just a whiff of accusations of heresy here?
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jan 8 2024, 2:25pm
Post #34 of 43
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The Valar were awful. Posts around the web use far stronger terms that I can't quote here. A Reddit question asks "When it all comes down to it, are the Valar basically responsible for every terrible thing that happened in Middle Earth?" I think you all know their history - too much to enumerate here. Plus needlessly hobbling the Wizards in their mission; barriers to success.
Grubbing around in Letters for something else, I found Letter #156 To Robert Murray, S.J. (draft) [An answer to further comments on The Lord of the Rings.] 4 November 1954. It explains some limitiaitons (and is the source of all quotes below):
In any case none of my ‘angelic’ persons are represented as knowing the future completely, or indeed at all where other wills are concerned. Hence their constant temptation to do, or try to do, what is for them wrong (and disastrous): to force lesser wills by power: by awe if not by actual fear, or physical constraint. But the nature of the gods’ knowledge of the history of the World, and their part in making it (before it was embodied or made ‘real’)–whence they drew their knowledge of the future, such as they had, is part of the major mythology. It is at least there represented that the intrusion of Elves and Men into that story was not any part of theirs at all, but reserved: hence Elves and Men were called the Children of God; and hence the gods either loved (or hated) them specially: as having a relation to the Creator equal to their own, if of different stature.
So there are intended to be serious limitations on what the Valar may do to people. Which led to some trouble when the Numenoreans decide to invade:
He [Sauron] finally induces Arpharazôn, frightened by the approach of old age, to make the greatest of all armadas, and go up with war against the Blessed Realm itself, and wrest it and its ‘immortality’ into his own hands. The Valar had no real answer to this monstrous rebellion–for the Children of God were not under their ultimate jurisdiction: they were not allowed to destroy them, or coerce them with any ‘divine’ display of the powers they held over the physical world. They appealed to God; and a catastrophic ‘change of plan’ occurred. At the moment that Arpharazon set foot on the forbidden shore, a rift appeared: Númenor foundered and was utterly overwhelmed; the armada was swallowed up; and the Blessed Realm removed for ever from the circles of the physical world. Thereafter one could sail right round the world and never find it.”
Now of course one cn argue about whether destroying an entire nation is reasonable as a response to misbehaviour by its rulers (what about all the little babies in their cradles that had done nothing wrong? - and so on: add further bathos if you wish!). But the decision to do that is Eru's and perhaps brings us back to the problem of having God as a character.
The duty not to interfere with free will also explains why the wizards are sent to Middle-earth as deliberately attenuated beings, Tolkien says:
Why they should take such a form is bound up with the ‘mythology’ of the ‘angelic’ Powers of the world of this fable. At this point in the fabulous history the purpose was precisely to limit and hinder their exhibition of ‘power’ on the physical plane, and so that they should do what they were primarily sent for: train, advise, instruct, arouse the hearts and minds of those threatened by Sauron to a resistance with their own strengths; and not just to do the job for them. They thus appeared as ‘old’ sage figures. But in this ‘mythology’ all the ‘angelic’ powers concerned with this world were capable of many degrees of error and failing between the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron, and the fainéance of some of the other higher powers or ‘gods’. The ‘wizards’ were not exempt, indeed being incarnate were more likely to stray, or err. Gandalf alone fully passes the tests, on a moral plane anyway (he makes mistakes of judgement).
(I note that "the fainéance of some of the other higher powers or ‘gods’ " - so to an extent Tolkien seems to agree that some of them could have shown more application or made other errors. )
Tolkien goes on to explain that this scheme about sending wizards to Middle-earth was originally a project of the Valar. But, the Valar's wizard wheeze fails : except for Gandalf the wizards are missing, inactive or are traitors, and then Gandalf realises that the only way of saving the Ringbearer from the balrog is to sacrifice himself. At this poin, Tolkien says, he imagines that Eru is behind Gandalf's re-incarnation as 'the White' who has some limited special powers of command, though persuasion is still the preferred tool.
I know this doesn't really add much to what we've assumed already. But always good to see Tolkien's own account of what he'd imagined and was intending to communicate to readers.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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DGHCaretaker
Rohan
Jan 8 2024, 8:02pm
Post #35 of 43
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So...
The omnipotent, or close to it, Powers That Be sent a powerless emissary to advise the primitives on how to protect themselves against the rogue gods, saying "Hey, you're on your own. We're busy." Maybe it's a parable about more contemporary issues of lack of responsibility and accountability.
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jan 8 2024, 9:45pm
Post #36 of 43
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"On its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue . . . "
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Exodus 28:33 "On its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet yarns, around its hem, with bells of gold between them . . ."
I ran across a talk show decades ago, whereon some author I'd never heard of said that Christians should never create something in their works that God had not created, and therefore Tolkien and Lewis were basically doing bad things in their writings as Christians. He was very specific, even as to colors. I can't remember, but he may have mentioned Tolkien's "green sun." After my mind had finished being blown (and my temper had cooled), I either remembered or found the above. Apparently God hadn't gotten that particular memo either (unless there are blue pomegranates somewhere?).
Anyway, I think Tolkien is right. (Plus--although I may certainly have missed something, or many things--having read the whole Bible more than once and studied it quite a bit, I can't think of even one prohibition concerning making things that haven't already been made in the natural world.)
Rant over. 
(This post was edited by Ethel Duath on Jan 8 2024, 9:46pm)
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jan 9 2024, 9:58am
Post #37 of 43
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I think it's more like "A job nobody can be trusted to do"
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I think that (within Tolkien's fictional world) it is more "a job nobody can be trusted to do individually".
The First Age ends with the Valar invading Middle-earth (at last!, some might say) with vast military force; defeating Morgoth, sinking Beleriand as collateral damage, and then leaving again. Sauron is left behind, and can be read to be sincerely contrite and reformed at that point, and truly wishing to help with a recovery plan. He percieves a vacuum - that it is seemingly 'nobody's job' to fix Middle-earth. And into that vacuum he steps. And so back along the route to Darklordism: getting one's own way faster and faster, with more and more trampling on any disagreement. In the end-point of Middle-earth Darklordism, doing the trampling seems to become a goal of its own, divorced from any real excuse that it is the only way to advance some worthy agenda.
By the time of Lord of the Rings, Sauron has created an artifact, the One Ring. It's a 'machine' (in Tolkien's terminologhey -- any artificial device to advance the will: it does not have to contain cogs or levers or circuits) Something to dominate others and get what you want. Sauron has lost teh Ring, and so that power of domination is potentially available to others.
The reasoning for not using the One Ring against Sauron in LOTR is something that Gandalf and Elrond set out very clearly in Council of Elrond. Boromir disagrees, and becomes an object lesson on why Gandalf and Elrond were right.
Intermittently in Book I, Frodo tries to give the Ring away to someone of higher power and authority- Gandalf in Shadow of the Past, Aragorn in Council of Elrond, Galadriel in Mirror of Galadriel.
Gandalf and Galadriel couldn't be clearer about why they say no:
Frodo to Gandalf (LOTR Book I ch2):
“You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?’
‘No!’ cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. ‘With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.’ His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. ‘Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.’”
Then, if Galadriel's "instead of a Dark Lord yo would have a Queen" speech is not clear enough, Sam still suggests Galadriel would stop all they mayehm in the Shire that he saw in the Mirror (Sam speaking to Galadriel, Book I, Mirror of Galadriel):
But if you’ll pardon my speaking out, I think my master was right. I wish you’d take his Ring. You’d put things to rights. You’d stop them digging up the Gaffer and turning him adrift. You’d make some folk pay for their dirty work.’
‘I would,’ she said. ‘That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas! We will not speak more of it. Let us go!’
Meanwhile, of course, a pressing danger is wizard-gone-wrong, Saruman. When we did our character study of Saruman, it covered that he already had some worrying character flaws before his powers were reduced by the process of becoming a wizard. So my question to folks who think it would have been better to send in more powerful wizards is to ask how that would have worked any better, given that one of them would have been a more powerful traitor? I think Saruman would simply have rebelled more quickly and effectively
When I wonder why Tolkien seems to have a great distrust of giving somebody all the power, I notice that he was writing at a time when exactly that had happened in many parts of the world: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, the Japanese Generals with Emperor Hirohito as figurehead (and that is probably not a complete list). Millions died. I think that fatally tarnished the reputation of totalitarian political solutions, for a time.
Of course it is possible that Tolkien was not thinking about these real-world examples at all. But they seem 'applicable' to me, whether or not they are an allegory intended (or added unconciously) by the author. I can think of other writers, contemporary to Tolkien, also writing about the risks of total power leading to tyrrany and slaughter (off the top of my head: George Orwell's Animal Farm; William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Robert Bolt; A Man for All Seasons. The quote I'm thinking about in particular from Bolt's play is given here, in part of a discussion of The Black Gate Is Closed).
And I don't think the theme has become any less applicable to modern affairs.
But what about Eru? OK, someone might say, it seems clear enough that nobody junior to Eru can be trusted with driving the direction of Arda or Middle-earth forward by the application of raw power. (This point stands, I think, as how Tolkien has written the place, whether or not a reader likes it that way. And, whether or not readers crave or fear Strongman figures in real-word politics) But what about Eru? Might Eru not both be omnipotent and incorruptible? Why doesn't Eru take charge more directly and sort the mess out, rather than leaving to to the Children? That is: Does it have to be this way?
I don't know what answer Tolkien might give to that. Perhaps he did address that point directly in writing and someone knows what he said?
I think we've already used the comparison of Narnia to discuss some of the writerly problems Tolkien would have faced had he decided to have a Godlike character wandering around Middle-earth fixing things (or not fixing things). Those problems seem clear to me.
I also think that, as soon as Tolkien invented Eru as part of his sub-creation he brought into Middle-earth what is known in philosophy as The Problem Of Evil. What's that? - I think Wikipedia's definition will do for a quick introduction:
Or:
Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.
(CS Lewis, in a loose translation of Lucretius (De rerum natura, 5.198–9) )
That real-world phiosophical problem is one I think we're unlikely to solve here, even though - or perhaps especially because - forum members may have Very Strong Opinions about it!
But I don't think we need to discuss it in detail. As I say, I don't know how much it was on Tolkien's mind (either as part of writing his sub-creation, or more generally). I wanted to raise it just to say that I think the more Tolkien brings Eru into the story, then either the more everything has to be magically fixed so that everyone can have a nice time, or the more limited or callous Eru has to seem. And the more elements of Tolkien's sub-creation start to resemble theology, the more Mr. Hastings and the like are going to write letters informing Tolkien that his story is really about Christian theology and metaphysics and he's doing it all wrong.
When I wrote at the beginning "a job nobody can be trusted to do individually", I included the word 'individually' quite deliberately. What seems to happen in Middle-earth is that the job is done collectively. Sometimes deliberately, somtimes accidentely. The result is slow, messy and uncertain. But maybe, to quote a contemporary and countryman of Tolkien's:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters. Winston S Churchill, speech to the U.K. House of Commons, November 1947[Some think that Churchill coined the words I've put in bold, but apparently not]
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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Silvered-glass
Rohan
Jan 9 2024, 6:09pm
Post #38 of 43
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I get the feeling that maybe the Wizards weren't really honored emissaries but rather the job was given to them because they were unfavored or criminals and so were tasked with what no one in Valinor wanted to do. Once in Middle-earth the Wizards were of course able to make up claims about how they had been given this important mission because they were so good and special etc., and none of their audience would have been able to present an argument to the contrary. I can see that Saruman in particular would have wanted to make himself look better in the eyes of the locals.
If the Valar had been serious about saving Middle-earth from Sauron, there was a lot they could have done, and they could have accomplished much even without wrecking everything with their full power, but that would have required patience and determination and cunning, and I get the impression that the Valar maybe didn't have what it would have taken and in any case preferred to chill at home and leave the hard work to others.
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jan 9 2024, 7:41pm
Post #39 of 43
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Well, that's a fabulous synopsis. Hits all
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sorts of things, both pivotal and bedrock.
The Problem of Evil always ends up hitting anyone in the face who tries to deal with a good God in regard to a world like ours, including fictionalized versions. In my opinion, Tolkien wrestled with it both in the real world and in his fictional one. I don't gather (or imagine) he had it all worked out in his mind about the real world, but I think part of that effort is reflected in his writings about Middle Earth, especially in terms of the Music of Creation, and the co-opting of Morgoth's nefarious efforts.
I think it likely Tolkien didn't expect a definitive R. W. answer this side of eternity, but in dealing with it in his writings it's understandable, I think, that it would result in all sorts of foreseen and unforeseen difficulties, inconsistencies, and complications (kinda like such efforts have in the real world when theologians and philosophers--or anyone at all--tackle it). And then he had to make sure, as you said, that it didn't disrupt his story. If he'd left his faith out of it all entirely, it might have been easier; but it wouldn't have been The Lord of the Rings. In a way, it's as if the flaws and difficulties with Eru, the Valar, free will, etc. in the Sil and LOTR were (like Eru and Morgoth) necessary to the "music" Tolkien created, because without any background radiation of his Catholic faith, and without any undergirding of some kind of God concept and cosmology, we wouldn't have all the good stuff either.
I imagine most of us are here because we think it's worth it, difficulties and all.
(This post was edited by Ethel Duath on Jan 9 2024, 7:41pm)
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uncle Iorlas
Rohan
Jan 13 2024, 1:35am
Post #40 of 43
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fantastical, incoherent and repetitive
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Lovely thread, by the way. And there is much in it so far that tempts me to respond (yes future scholars will readily see that Tolkien was Christian, if not Catholic! Yes his created world inherits the problem of evil! Is God a character in scripture? Is God a character in Jurassic Park?) but most immediately my attention is caught by that quote about Arthurian legend. It just so happen that I’d only begun to muse, relatively recently, about the professor’s declared intent to give England its own Legendarium—as if the vast and ancient edifice of Arthurian mythos were not already standing there. Are there more quotes extant wherein he discusses this?
I honestly rather love Tolkien for his jaw-dropping insouciance at times like this; the fact that he is perfectly prepared to disapprove of Shakespeare in public, for example. Of course he would dare to critique Arthurian myth as presenting Faerie wrong (and how funny to me that he should say so, when my strongest and most lasting impression of that land was his own presentation of it, in Smith of Wootton Major). It’s somehow just like him to approach this very real ancientry with his meticulously counterfeited ancientry and no sign of reverence. He, the man who more or less invented reverence for Beowulf in modern literary studies!
Now, I’ve read his Gawain and his essay about interpreting it, I don’t think he is actually without respect for Arthurian material. I do think his Christianity is making itself felt, here, with a dictum no less impertinent than poor Mr. Hastings’, presented as natural law with no better justification: that fairy story ought to avoid treating outright with the depiction of Christian practice or with the tenets of Christian cosmology, which are stoutly viewed by him as uncontroversial facts of reality. He says he will not explain his reasons, which suggests he knows pretty well what his reasons are, and selfishly I do wish he had just stated them.
And then there’s that shot about Faerie being portrayed incorrectly. I always had the sense that Faerie is supposed to be beyond comprehension by mere mortals, anyway, and partly I suspect that this urge to make things “coherent” may be that same regularizing, explaining impulse that moves him to rather diminish his own colorful creations in a number of cases.
I should have known, at any rate, that he couldn’t have failed to apprehend Arthur as a candidate, at least, for preexisting “legendarium.”
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jan 14 2024, 12:08pm
Post #41 of 43
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most immediately my attention is caught by that quote about Arthurian legend. It just so happen that I’d only begun to muse, relatively recently, about the professor’s declared intent to give England its own Legendarium—as if the vast and ancient edifice of Arthurian mythos were not already standing there. Are there more quotes extant wherein he discusses this?
I don't know of much else covering Tolkien's thoughts about this. But I haven't done anything like a comprehensive study. It may be that other forum members know about some material of interest that is more helpful than what's below.
Firstly, I find it a little amusing that something that because Tolkien's legendrium might have started out because of what sounds like a fit of cultural jealousy - the Welsh, Irish and Scots all have this nice literature, but not the English. I wonder when this thought process happened. Does it seem very adolescent to you too? I'm finding it easy to imagine Tolkien the older schoolboy with his cleverest-kids-in-the-school friends sitting in the tea house they liked and discussing all this. I wonder whether it fits with their ambitions to become a major literary school. Maybe it also fits with the limited experience of life teenagers inevitably have. This all the more so if taken off to a public (i.e. fee-charging) single-sex boarding school from a young age and therefore restricted to meeting other boys pretty much like you. And triply so when public shcools tended to be enthusiastic about their own ethos, including an obsession with playing team sports very competitively, with the idea that "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton"* I'm seeing something very "Win The House Cup" about Tolkien's idea - the thought that the Wales, Ireland and Scotland Houses have all this cultural silverware in the trophy cabinet: let's make something that is worth One Hundred Points to Gryffindor! --I mean England.
I think also that Tolkien had artistic (at least) problems with "Celtic" things (in which he might include the Arthurian legends, as I think have strong Welsh and French roots:
“I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact ‘mad’ as your reader says–but I don’t believe I am.
Letter 19, 1937, to Stanley Unwin, referencing how one of the firm's outside readers had reviewed a draft prose formulation of "Quenta Silmarillion" and some of a version of the Beren and Luthien story in verse form).
Tolkien preferred works from Norse and Germanic cultures, so perhaps -- for any one of several possible reasons -- what he felt was lacking from English mythopia was something in that style.
Which brings us to Letter 45, to his son Michael, in 1941:
“I have spent most of my life, since I was your age, studying Germanic matters (in the general sense that includes England and Scandinavia). There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the ‘Germanic’ ideal. I was much attracted by it as an undergraduate (when Hitler was, I suppose, dabbling in paint, and had not heard of it), in reaction against the ‘Classics’. You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil. But no one ever calls on me to ‘broadcast’, or do a postscript! Yet I suppose I know better than most what is the truth about this ‘Nordic’ nonsense. Anyway, I have in this War a burning private grudge–which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.”
So: some ideas and letter quotes -- hardly a thesis! But it might offer one hypothesis for Tolkien's rejection of The Matter of Arthur, and why he didn't feel it was ridiculous setting out de novo to make something else.
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* A quote attributed to the Duke of Wellington, winner of that battle, but the attribution is " but probably apocryphal"
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Jan 17 2024, 10:30pm
Post #42 of 43
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Surprisingly, I was a teenager once
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So thanks for this reminder.
I wonder when this thought process happened. Does it seem very adolescent to you too? I'm finding it easy to imagine Tolkien the older schoolboy with his cleverest-kids-in-the-school friends sitting in the tea house they liked and discussing all this. I had friends in high school where we would sit down and embark on "the greatest projects ever known," such as summarizing all the important points of philosophy in one page, or writing the definitive History of the World which, at last, would focus on the really good stuff, and it wouldn't be bogged down by petty American bias. And being teenagers, we'd tackle these epic masterpieces of wisdom for a good, solid, sweaty-browed 15 minutes or so, then we'd abandon them and go watch TV or play basketball. So put in that context, it makes Tolkien's "new agenda for England" sound a bit similar as you suggested above, and it could explain why he abandoned it to.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jan 18 2024, 12:01pm
Post #43 of 43
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I really botched the first part of my post
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I really botched the first part of my post, and as a result I fear I come across as very mean-spirited. May I try again?
You were once a teenager too? What a co-incidence, so was I! I feel sure I too perplexed the adults around me with projects that were comprehensible only to my peer group, and priorities adults could not understand. And I was lucky to receive a fair amount of patience when I articulated my (understandably) simplistic worldview at length and with force. I can look back on that era with some amusement (and some wincing). The teenagers I know today I roll my eyes at sometimes, but it's easy to see that the are admirable people, just inexperienced: I hope I was too.
With Tolkien we have the luxury that we can decide whether we want to care about understanding his motives for getting started on his legendarium. It seems to me that it would also be perfectly reaasonable to ignore that and go by whether we like the results. But if we do want to consider any juvenile beginnings, we really outhg to be generous. My apologies.
Bubbling up in my post was also a thought about Tolkien's particular cadre of schoolboys. Their school system was educating them for a middle-class existence in a stable-seeming Edwardian world. Previous alumni would have mostly been making their way in the Imperial civil service (like Tolkien's dad), in the commercial opportunities offered by Empire; in politics and public life, the church, and in a military used to highly asymmetric colonial wars, far away from Britain.
But that world went down in flames: Tolkien's lot were part of the 'doomed youth' (in Wilfred Owen's words), thrown into the World War I trenches.
Wilfred Owen (who has come up in the context of possible real-life influences on the Nazgul) was one of the 'war poets' - a group of young British men, mostlly junior officers, who writing poetry that vividly described the reality of trench warfare, as opposed to the simpleminded patriotic jingoism with which public opinion started. This might sound like a weird young men's idea, and I don't know to what extent they achieved their immediate aim - to shorten the war. But their images of that War, and the idea that the army was 'lions led by donkeys' have had a huge and persistent effect on how the war is remembered in Britain. It's a different question whether that popular image of noble serving men and junior officers let down by incompetent and uncaring senior ranks is too simplistic.
But if you really want a poet getting stuck into the real (or imagined) 'donkeys' so that we can see the level of rage, the perhaps surprising cudgel-wielder is Rudyard Kipling:
COMMON FORM If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. A DEAD STATESMAN I could not dig: I dared not rob: Therefore I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue And I must face the men I slew. What tale shall serve me here among Mine angry and defrauded young? Rudyard Kipling, Parts of Epitaphs of the War
The context behind this rage is tragic: Kipling is seen by some as the poster-boy of Edwardian British Imperialism in writing (that may also be simplistic). He took up a job as a government propaganist in 1914, and he also used his personal contacts to get his son John into the Irish Guards (John had previously been rejected as unfit for service because of poor eyesight). Given a commission despite this (thanks to his father's influence) John Kipling was killed, aged 18, at the Battle of Loos, September 1915.
Back to Tolkien: Two out of four died in Tolkien's friendship group, which I was imagining safely discussing their great future feats over tea an buns.
I hope that isn't far too much of a history lesson - I'm aware that the boards are very international. These events and atitudes may not be remembered the same way in other countries, but it is presumably a British perspective that matters if we are pondering Tolkein's thoughts.
Lastly I'll say briefly: public school alumni dominated English (and therefore British) institutions in Tolkien's time and still do today. There's the obvious debate (then and now) as to whether that is how things should be. And when institutions have done badly, and those schools are believed to have turned out a leadership of 'donkeys', then the debate can intensify and emotions can get raised. You'll have to decide whether I (inappropriately) let any considerations about current affairs into my post, on a board where we avoid talking about that -- I'll say no more on that subject.
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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What an awful thought ;)
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