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squire
Half-elven
Dec 18 2011, 5:13am
Post #1 of 3
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** App. F – Languages and People of the Third Age ** 5. – What does ‘thrawn’ mean anyway? Meet the Dwarves.
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DWARVES
Oddly, Professor Tolkien interrupted his catalogue of languages of the Free Peoples with a treatment of the orcs and trolls. Now he returns to the good guys. The Dwarves are his final entry before beginning his notes on the translation itself.
A. Why does he save the dwarves for last?
“The dwarves are a race apart.” This challenging statement begs the question of which of the other races are not apart. Then we are assured that Dwarves are “both like and unlike” Elves and Men, with no mention of Hobbits or Ents or orcs or trolls. Finally we are informed that the Silmarillion is the best source of information on the Dwarves’ nature, but are warned also that “lesser Elves” and “later Men” are essentially clueless.
B. Pending a peek at the Silmarillion, which Prof. Tolkien is apparently withholding from us at the time of writing, how should we interpret his emphasis on our need to understand the Dwarves without being given the means to do so?
C. What “other races” have later Men confused the Dwarves with?
Dwarves are “a tough, thrawn race for the most part, secretive, laborious, retentive of the memory of injuries (and of benefits), lovers of stone, of gems, of things that take shape under the hands of the craftsmen rather than things that live by their own life.”
D. How do they differ from the Elves that we hear of in the story, the Noldor led by Fëanor, whose craftsmen shaped such marvelous things as glowing swords, seeing stones, Silmarils, and Rings of Power – the Noldor who returned to Middle-earth because they were retentive of the memory of their injury, and who retain the memory of benefits received from those they deem as “Elf-friends”?
Dwarves “are not evil by nature” and “few ever served the Enemy of free will, whatever the tales of Men may have alleged.”
E. Are we aware of these tales from what we know of the Dwarves in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?
F. Why arouse our interest in the idea of Dwarvish evil only to deny it?
“There has been enmity between the races” of Dwarves and Men, we are told, to explain the comment about Dwarves being evil. Reading Prof. Tolkien’s translated narratives, I tend to remember all the talk about Dwarves and Elves having a history of enmity. I don’t remember anything about Men in this regard.
G. Do you?
Enmity disappears in the next scenario: Dwarves of the Third Age, “according to their nature” as itinerant artisans and traders after they lost their “ancient mansions”, use the languages of those among whom they dwell – that is, Men. Thus, the Dwarves also learned Westron.
Yet they maintained their own original language, a “strange tongue” that was “guarded as a treasure of the past” and learned from lore-masters rather than from parental example. Since they deliberately kept it secret from other races (unlike the Elves with Quenya), “few of other race have succeeded in learning it.”
H. Since Prof. Tolkien has equated Quenya with Latin, why does he not here equate the Dwarven language with what seems like an obvious analogue: Hebrew?
I. Of the few who ever learned Dwarvish, were they Men, Elves, Hobbits, or Ents?
J. Since the Elves seem to have “willingly unlocked” Quenya to anyone who took an interest, is it right for Prof. Tolkien to imply here that Quenya was also a “secret language”?
Finally, after a dramatic but irrelevant anecdote, Prof. Tolkien concludes by noting that the Dwarves’ given names in his stories are all of Northern Mannish origin – that is, not Westron although that is the spoken language they adopted after abandoning their own.
K. Why would the Dwarves take names in one foreign language but adopt another one for all other forms of discourse?
Their “secret and ‘inner’ names, their true names” are never revealed nor recorded on their tombs. This seems to be a clear reference to Lord of the Rings story, where the inscription in Moria reads: “Here lies Balin son of Fundin”.
L. What was the point of having a true name if the tribe refused to remember it when the time came to memorialize the dead in stone?
Lastly, I can’t help but notice that these accounts of the Peoples and Languages of Middle-earth seem chock full of entire speaking races that either never had a language or stopped speaking it in favor of “borrowing” another one. In more recent epochs, I would guess that each of the various Mannish tribes of Earth always had a language of their own, never kept it so secret that an observer could not learn it at need, and only adopted a new language as part of a larger assimilation process involving interbreeding and culturally blending with stronger or more dominant incomers.
M. Why would linguistic evolution be so much more schematic and simplified in the long past ages of Middle-earth, according to Prof. Tolkien’s best efforts to assemble its ethnography?
Next: Prof. Tolkien’s translation secrets!
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sador
Half-elven
Dec 19 2011, 9:42pm
Post #2 of 3
(599 views)
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A. Why does he save the dwarves for last?
Becuase they are a race apart.
B. Pending a peek at the Silmarillion, which Prof. Tolkien is apparently withholding from us at the time of writing, how should we interpret his emphasis on our need to understand the Dwarves without being given the means to do so?
That's pretty common in The Lord of the Rings. Sweet unheard melodies, and all the rest.
But IIRC (Voronwe will hopefully correct me if I'm wrong), there was no definitive text regarding Dwarves in either The Later Quenta or The Grey Annals, or anything else written at the time. Another promise Tolkien felt he had to make good one day - and perhaps the motivation for Christopher to construct the chapter Of Aule and Yavanna.
C. What “other races” have later Men confused the Dwarves with?
Orcs.
As Gwendelin (Melian) did in The Nauglafring (BoLT II, p. 233), when she called the leader of the Dwarves 'child of Melko'.
D. How do they differ from the Elves that we hear of in the story, the Noldor led by Fëanor, whose craftsmen shaped such marvelous things as glowing swords, seeing stones, Silmarils, and Rings of Power – the Noldor who returned to Middle-earth because they were retentive of the memory of their injury, and who retain the memory of benefits received from those they deem as “Elf-friends”?
Were the Noldor thrawn?
E. Are we aware of these tales from what we know of the Dwarves in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?
The Hobbit stated as much in Over Hill and Under Hill, when speaking of some bad dwarves being allies of the goblins.
F. Why arouse our interest in the idea of Dwarvish evil only to deny it?
Because it is in The Hobbit. And (although nobody knew it until the eighties) in The Silmarillion, as it existed.
It is also Tolkien rebuttal of antisemitism, and racist bvigotry in general, yadda yadda yadda.
G. Do you?
The tale of Fram and the hoard of Scatha.
H. Since Prof. Tolkien has equated Quenya with Latin, why does he not here equate the Dwarven language with what seems like an obvious analogue: Hebrew?
Hebrew does appear on tombstones!
I. Of the few who ever learned Dwarvish, were they Men, Elves, Hobbits, or Ents?
Eol did, and I would guess that Celebrimbor did as well.
In his Lament for Gandalf, Frodo claimed that the good wizard knew Khuzdul. Is this testimony reliable? Not quite, but I suspect that Tolkien did have Gandalf in mind when writing this.
J. Since the Elves seem to have “willingly unlocked” Quenya to anyone who took an interest, is it right for Prof. Tolkien to imply here that Quenya was also a “secret language”?
It's as secret as Edgar Allan Poe's letter.
K. Why would the Dwarves take names in one foreign language but adopt another one for all other forms of discourse?
Ha!
Now who's being thrawn, eh?
L. What was the point of having a true name if the tribe refused to remember it when the time came to memorialize the dead in stone?
Yes, this doesn't make much sense; and the notion of the name Durin (also Norse, by the way) reappearing every several generations also makes little sense - if anything, all those resembling Durin I should share his true name, not the Mannish version!
M. Why would linguistic evolution be so much more schematic and simplified in the long past ages of Middle-earth, according to Prof. Tolkien’s best efforts to assemble its ethnography?
The truth is that he never bothered to properly create Khuzdul. A pity, but a mortal man has only so long to write.
So we only have a schematic outline.
"The Appendices (and Prologue) gave Tolkien an outlet for explanations he couldn't fit into the text, and therefore made the text that much simpler and free of burdensome explanations. It's very hard for someone who creates a world from the ground up to refrain from overexplaining what he or she has created; the Appendices, and what is more the promise that someday The Silmarillion might be published, may have helped Tolkien exercise ruthless restraint."
- Curious
The weekly discussion of The Lord of the Rings is back. Join us in the Reading Room for the discussion of the appendices!
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sador
Half-elven
Dec 20 2011, 6:58am
Post #3 of 3
(787 views)
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L. What was the point of having a true name if the tribe refused to remember it when the time came to memorialize the dead in stone?
I have actually given a better answer, on the previous discussion of this chapter:
Not engraving one's true name on one's grave suggests a strong belief in an afterlife, where curses (for instance) speaken in this world might affect you. Very suggestive!
Of course, as the dwarves did have cunning ways with letters - they might have engraved Balin's true name in secret runes on the grave. We will never know - not unless you unlock the secret, and care to go to Moria, find the ruined chamber of Mazarbul, uncover the tomb and look for the letters (if they are still there). Good luck to you!
Reading back was quite a joy - if I may say so, I am quite proud of my comment that Tolkien underappreciated the aesthetics of creative cursing. 
"The Appendices (and Prologue) gave Tolkien an outlet for explanations he couldn't fit into the text, and therefore made the text that much simpler and free of burdensome explanations. It's very hard for someone who creates a world from the ground up to refrain from overexplaining what he or she has created; the Appendices, and what is more the promise that someday The Silmarillion might be published, may have helped Tolkien exercise ruthless restraint."
- Curious
The weekly discussion of The Lord of the Rings is back. Join us in the Reading Room for the discussion of the appendices!
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