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a.s.
Valinor
Dec 5 2007, 12:38am
Post #1 of 4
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Chapter 7: In the House of Tom B--Words, Verse, Song
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Everyone who has ever read LOTR has an opinion about Tom B's poetry, and from my point of view most people don't care much for it. Either they don't like the poems themselves as poetry, or they don't feel any need to read them because they find them superfluous to the story. (Or they hold both opinions!). For instance, even a well-known writer who is also a well-known fan of Tolkien has this to say (in a review of the audiobook version of LOTR):
"Normally, I skip over these, especially the Tom Bombadil poems, since they truly have nothing whatever to do with the story". (Orson Scott Card)
1) What about you? What's your opinion of the Tom B poems in LOTR? Do you skip them?
There are a few poems recited by Tom in this chapter. However, probably everyone who has read LOTR at least twice recognizes that even when Tom isn't quoted as spouting poetry, his speech reads very much like verse. Shippey, in Road to Middle-Earth (Chapter 4, "Getting Started" section), explains it this way:
"Much of what he says is printed by Tolkien as verse, but almost all of what he says can be read as verse, falling into strongly-marked two-stress phrases, with or without rhyme and alliteration, usually with feminine or unstressed endings...The scansion-system...is a little like that of the Old English verse Tolkien was later to reproduce in the songs of Rohan, but more like that of much Old English 'prose'...The point is though that while we appreciate it as rhythmical (unlike prose), we also do not mark it as premeditated or artificial (unlike verse). The hobbits fall into song themselves, 'as if it was easier and more natural than talking'".
2) What else is remarkable about the kinds of short sentences Tom talks with?
Words, regardless of rhythm or rhyme, seem to have some particular power in the House of Tom Bombadil. Goldberry speaks words of safety and peace that somehow seem to guarantee that the house is a safe haven for the hobbits. Frodo himself breaks into poetry honoring Goldberry almost as soon as he steps over the threshold. The hobbits begin to sing at supper rather than talk, "as if it were easier and more natural than talking". Tom's stories cause the hobbits to sit "enchanted; and it seemed as if, under the spell of his words, the wind had gone, and the clouds had dried up, and the day had been withdrawn, and darkness had come from East and West, and all the sky was filled with the light of white stars."
Those must be some powerful words in those stories.
Another feature that Shippey discusses in Road to Middle Earth is the naturalness or unpremeditated nature of Tom's language:
"Tom's other major quality is naturalness. Even his language has something unpremeditated about it. A lot of what he says is nonsense, the first thing indeed that the hobbits notice, even before they see him....From time to time it breaks through to being 'perhaps a strange language unknown to the hobbits, an ancient language whose words were mainly those of wonder and delight'. But though they may not know the language, the hobbits understand it, as they understand Goldberry's rain-song without recognising the words; and when Tom names something (as he does with the hobbits' ponies) the name sticks--the animals respond to nothing else the rest of their lives. There is an ancient myth in this feature, that of the 'true language', the tongue in which there is a thing for each word and a word for each thing, and in which signfier then naturally has power over signified--language 'isomorphic' with reality. It is this which seems to give Tom his power".
3) Does Tom's power come from his words? Are his words equivalent to his power?
4) More than once Tom (and Goldberry) use words to counteract the "scary noises" of the night. Is this a demonstration of some kind of primordial power? Do the words to the hobbits ("Heed no nightly noises", etc) act on the sounds themselves, or just on the hobbits minds? Comments?
Next: Dreams and Visions
a.s.
"an seileachan"
Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.
~~~Landrum Bolling
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entmaiden
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Dec 6 2007, 2:54am
Post #2 of 4
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I love Tom Bombadil. I love the enigma of him, and his silliness. I don't care that he fits in the story - I think he's great.
I read his poems, and they remind me of the silly songs of the elves in The Hobbit. Tolkien is still in his travelogue mode at this point in the story, and he's not sure what to do with the hobbits. Hence the similarities to Beorn at night, in addition to the verbal resemblance to the elves.
Tom's a still-waters-runs-deep kind of guy, and I always had the impression that his speech had a lot more meaning than the words, even though he was the only person able to discern his meaning. I felt that Tom was holding something back, but the hobbits weren't worldly enough to recognize it, and never asked for more.
Each cloak was fastened about the neck with a brooch like a green leaf veined with silver.
`Are these magic cloaks?' asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder.
`I do not know what you mean by that,' answered the leader of the Elves.
NARF since 1974.
Balin Bows
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Curious
Half-elven
Dec 6 2007, 11:45am
Post #3 of 4
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1) What about you? What's your opinion of the Tom B poems in LOTR? Do you skip them?
I do not skip them. I love his songs, and I love his prose even more. I find it endearing that Tolkien enjoyed such silliness, and I also find that there is something profound hidden among the nonsense. In fact, Tom reminds me very much of the hobbits themselves, if a hobbit were given immortality, or numbered among the angels or gods. If it weren't for the beard, I would call him a hobbit.
2) What else is remarkable about the kinds of short sentences Tom talks with?
I think Shippey pretty much covers it. And I'm embarassed to admit that the first twenty times I read LotR, i.e. before I came to the Reading Room, I had no idea that Tom spoke in verse as well as singing in verse. I suppose that's a tribute to how natural it sounds.
3) Does Tom's power come from his words? Are his words equivalent to his power?
Well, he does say he knows the right song for Old Man Willow, and seems to know the right song for the Barrow-wight as well. And he teaches the hobbits a song to call him. So his singing does seem to have something to do with his power.
But I think his power also comes from his Buddha-like detachment from desire. That's why Goldberry says Tom doesn't own the Old Forest, and Gandalf say Tom doesn't really have power over the Ring. It's just that no one has power over Tom. And in particular, the Ring has no power over Tom because Tom has no desire for power.
This is an important distinction between Gandalf and Tom, because Gandalf very much wants to defeat Sauron, and therefore is vulnerable to the Ring. Gandalf cannot teach Frodo how to resist the Ring, but Tom can. I'm convinced that is why Tom is a pacifist, and Frodo ends up as a pacifist. And note that at the end of the book Gandalf, his task now done, also goes to Tom for lessons on how to "gather moss."
4) More than once Tom (and Goldberry) use words to counteract the "scary noises" of the night. Is this a demonstration of some kind of primordial power? Do the words to the hobbits ("Heed no nightly noises", etc) act on the sounds themselves, or just on the hobbits minds? Comments?
Those are good questions for which Tolkien provides no answers, and for which I have no answers.
(This post was edited by Curious on Dec 6 2007, 11:47am)
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dernwyn
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Dec 7 2007, 4:41am
Post #4 of 4
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And his words are he. They are a part of his very being, his "He is". They are an expression of himself - or, more appropriately, of the form he takes.
Yes, I do read Tom's poems; but they're much better when spoken than when read, that is, they are designed for reading aloud, for feeling the rhythm in them!
Tom's house, and the area surrounding it, is under his protection; his and Goldberry's words to the Hobbits before sleep were intended to further put them at ease, and - well, I do think Tom knew what dreams they would be having that night, dreams to help them "sort out" any remaining trauma from their experiences so far, and these phrases were spoken for them to remember, and so to help calm any fears from those dreams.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
"It struck me last night that you might write a fearfully good romantic drama, with as much of the 'supernatural' as you cared to introduce. Have you ever thought of it?"
-Geoffrey B. Smith, letter to JRR Tolkien, 1915
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