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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 16 2015, 2:28am
Post #1 of 22
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An Unexpected Journey . . . (Part 1)
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In the Shire, at Hobbiton upon the Hill, it is a tranquil Middle-earth morning — September the 22nd in the early autumn of the year 3001 of the Third Age, to be precise . . .
Old Bilbo, as Narrator — sitting on a bench outside his hobbit-hole at Bag-End, smoking pipeweed on this, his 111th Birthday, and thinking back on his early adventures beyond the Misty Mountains, roughly 60 years earlier … His mind having wandered to memories of Gandalf the Wandering Wizard, he recalls . . .
'. . . He doesn't approve of being late — not that I ever was ... In those days, I was always on time; I was entirely respectable ... and nothing unexpected ... ever happened . . .'
~ from Peter Jackson's Prologue of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Mr. Baggins of Bag-End
Bilbo Baggins* is a well-to-do bachelor from a family of conservative hobbits* — which in Tolkien's mind is a fictional branch of humanity (not a mythical species). Bilbo was born on September 22, 2890, Third Age, at The Hill, Hobbiton, the Shire. Bilbo takes pride in his family heritage — particularly in the Old Took's great-granduncle Bullroarer, who was so large (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse', and so brave that, in the Battle of Greenfields, he single-handedly took off the Goblin-king's head while simultaneously inventing the game of golf (it was a bit of the rash-bold Tookish streak in him, compliments of Bilbo's mother*). Bilbo's naturally small stature, sharp senses, quiet strength and conservatism, 'grounded' point of view (a commonsensical Bagginsish streak, compliments of Bilbo's father†) and vulnerability among 'big people' echo universal facts of childhood and speak to adults who feel small in an increasingly complex and burgeoning world. Bilbo rises to heroism and generosity beyond his size and himself. And, as he repeatedly models his action on stories, he ends up writing the story of his own adventures, titled 'There and Back Again, A Hobbit's Holiday'.
Bilbo 'is a Baggins, a member of a wealthy family that is respected 'because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected'. Bilbo behaves 'like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father'. He has not found himself, and very soon '...we understand that Bilbo is a late bloomer, a middle-aged child whose identity is submerged in generic hobbitness and shaped by his dead father's heritage ... Bilbo is suffering an unrecognized crisis because he has lost the Tookish half of his character ... Ironically, Bilbo has ... reenacted the choice of his mother, who lost her Took name to become a Baggins. Perhaps for her this was a rash decision, an adventure, but for Bilbo it is a passive birthright. He is his father and his mother but not himself. The elder Baggins at least married an exotic woman, had a son, and built a home; but Bilbo has only slept, eaten, kept house, and taken walks. In fifty years he has accomplished nothing worth mention. When a wizard appears at his doorstep to give him what he 'asked for', the hobbit is arguably at a crossroads, destined either to wither and die or to break into new life...' (William H. Green, The Hobbit: A Journey Into Maturity [1995], pp. 37-40).
Hobbits . . .
In 1976, one of Tolkien's own definitions of the name hobbit* appeared posthumously as an entry in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) — it was, in fact, his response (11 Sept 1970) to the official request for such of December 1969: 'In the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973): one of an imaginary people, a small variety of the human race, that gave themselves this name (meaning 'hole-dweller') but were called by others halflings, since they were half the height of normal men.' Tolkien had come to conceive of the word hobbit as an Anglicization of kuduk, the name that the hobbits called themselves, related to their own translated word from the Rohirric, holbytla (pl. holbytlan), which in genuine Rohirric was kúddúkan 'hole-dweller'; in Elvish Sindarin they were called the Periain or Periannath 'Halflings' (the translated equivalent of the Westron, the 'Common Speech' of Middle-earth's mannish races) and banakil (sing.) in genuine Westron. Hobbits of the Third Age spoke Hobbitish, a provincial dialect of Westron (its rustic form); they wrote mostly with a mode of cirth (runes similar to those of Anglo-Saxon inscriptions, comprised of an alphabet of 32 letters: 'There is doubtless an historical connection between the two [alphabets]', Tolkien wrote in 1938), although some of the better-educated hobbits knew the Elvish Tengwar (with its Fëanorian alphabet of 38 letters). Tolkien, as he himself explained, derived hobbit's 'hole-dweller' meaning in his creation of a hypothetical Old English (Anglo-Saxon) word: hol-bytla. ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 857-59, 863n; The Complete Guide to Middle-earth [1971, rev. 1978, 2001], pp. 253-54; Annotated HOBBIT, p. 9
* Hobbits (who Tolkien described in a 1938 letter to his American publisher Houghton Mifflin as 'fattish in the stomach ... [with] round, jovial face(s); ears only slightly pointed and 'elvish'...' ) were fond of 'six meals a day (when they could get them)', as the Prologue to LOTR tells us, and so it should come as no surprise that Bilbo's surname Baggins probably comes from bagging, a term that the Oxford English Dictionary says is 'used in the northern counties of England [e.g., the isolated Huddersfield District in southern Yorkshire] for food eaten between regular meals; now, especially in Lancashire, an afternoon meal, 'afternoon tea' in substantial form' — probably called a bagging because workers generally carried their meals to work in a bag of some kind; its less-polite and therefore more common form is baggin [< bćggin] (for Tolkien knew, according to Tom Shippey, that people who used words like this 'were almost certain to drop the terminal -g'). It is therefore an appropriate name to be found among hobbits, who we are told in THE HOBBIT have dinner twice a day, and for Bilbo, who in Chapter II sits down to his second breakfast. 'The language of the hobbits was remarkably like English,' wrote Tolkien to The Observer in 1938, 'as one would expect: they only lived on the borders of the Wild, and were mostly unaware of it. Their family names remain for the most part well known and justly respected in this island as they were in Hobbiton and Bywater...' (Tolkien's letter to The Observer, January 1938; see T.A. Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth [1982 rev. 2005], p. 82; Douglas A. Anderson, The Annotated HOBBIT [rev., 2002], pp. 30-31; for the origin of the word hobbit**, see John D. Rateliff's excellent discussion in History of THE HOBBIT, Appendix I: The Denham Tracts, pp. 841-44, 846-49, 850n-853n; see also Appendix II: Tolkien's Letter to The Observer (The Hobyahs), pp. 855-863, 863n-65n.
** hobbit as rabbit — for conflicting views about the hobbit origin in rabbit, see Annotated HOBBIT, p. 146; The Road to Middle-earth [1982 rev. 2005], pp. 67-70; and History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 245n, 673n. Notwithstanding the controversy, the frank admission by Tolkien himself in drafting Appendix F of LOTR cannot be discounted, for he wrote of the word: 'I must admit that its faint suggestion of rabbit appealed to me. Not that hobbits at all resemble rabbits, unless it be in burrowing.' This note was struck out in the draft, but is published in History of Middle-earth XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 49.
* That Bilbo Baggins (b. TA 2890, in his fifty-first year when the tale begins in April 2941 of the Third Age) and his creator (b. AD 1892, and also middle aged when he begins his 'hobbit' adventure) shared many commonalities or similarities is borne out by Tolkien's biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, who noted: 'In the story, Bilbo Baggins, son of the lively Belladonna Took [Latin: 'beautiful lady' = bella 'beauty' + domina 'lady', she is the only female character named in THE HOBBIT], herself one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took [Gerontius, who died at age 130 in TA 2920, about 21 years before the story begins], descended also from the respectable and solid Bagginses†, is middle aged and unadventurous, dresses in sensible clothes but likes bright colours, and has a taste for plain food ... John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, son of the enterprising Mabel Suffield, herself one of the three remarkable daughters of John Suffield (who lived to be nearly a hundred), descended also from the respectable and solid Tolkiens, was middle aged and inclined to pessimism, dressed in sensible clothes but liked coloured waistcoats when he could afford them, and had a taste for plain food...'
The Tooks were known for a certain flamboyance and dashing spirit: 'the Tooks were not as respectable as the Baggins, though they were undoubtedly richer'. This tinge of raffishness added to independent wealth creates a certain propensity for adventures; it was perhaps this potential that Gandalf the wizard spotted; he therefore treated Bilbo to the string of remarkable incidents that began with An Unexpected Party in the spring of TA 2941. Belladonna is also a poisonous plant named for Italian ladies who formerly used a cosmetic made from its juice; Tolkien continued using plant and flower names for female hobbits in his later works. From the Hobbit family trees in Appendix C of LOTR, we learn that Belladonna's two sisters were named Donnamira 'wonderful lady' and Mirabella 'wonderful beauty' (from Latin mirus 'wonderful').
Mirabella's grandson was Frodo Baggins, the central character of THE HOBBIT's sequel. Frodo was also related to Bilbo on the Baggins side, with Bilbo's grandfather and Frodo's great-grandfather being brothers; they are cousins, as Gaffer Gamgee explains, yet given their age and circumstances the terms uncle and nephew seem more truly descriptive. Bilbo had adopted a 12-year-old Frodo in TA 2980, upon the death of the young hobbit's parents Drogo and Primula Baggins (in a boating accident on the Brandywine River; he was their only child), and made him his heir. The orphaned child, who happened to share Bilbo's birthday of 22 September (b. TA 2968), was thus adopted by Bilbo and went to live with him in Bag-End. In TA 3001, when Bilbo leaves the Shire, Frodo inherits all his goods, including Bag-End and the One Ring [Peter Jackson, in his filmic retelling of both Bilbo and Frodo's stories, utilizes this very year — Tolkien's canonical year of Bilbo's departure from the Shire — as the starting-point of both of his Middle-earth trilogies]. Bilbo and Frodo are both bachelors who (like Thorin Oakenshield) never marry (see J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography [1977], p. 175; Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 34-35; 'Bilbo Baggins', J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia [2007], pp. 64-65; The Complete Guide to Middle-earth [1971, rev. 1978, 2001], pp. 58, 119, 193-94).
† Bungo Baggins — a well-to-do hobbit of the Shire who, being conventional in appearance and conduct, strictly respectable and who never had any adventures, was always marked as a rather 'prosy' sort of chap. Of course, Belladonna made him build her 'the most luxurious [> commodious: 1960] hobbit-hole for her (and partly with her money) that was to be found [in that part of the Shire: 1960] either under The Hill or over The Hill or across The Water' ('always excepting the vast and many-tunneled dwelling of the Tooks': 1960), which was inherited (they having remained there 'to the end of their days'; 'they both died young — for hobbits — being still in their eighties': 1960) by their only son, Bilbo, who 'looked and behaved exactly like a second edition of his [1960: solid and comfortable] father' (even though he inherited through his mother 'something a bit queer [> a little peculiar in his make-up: 1960] from the Tooks [> Took side, hidden: 1960], something that only waited for a chance to come out'; that something of course didn't get 'its chance [> never arrived: 1960] until Bilbo ... was grown up [1960: indeed about fifty years old] and living in the beautiful hole [built 'to house a large family': 1960] and in fact [> apparently: 1960] had settled down [1960: immovably]').
But indeed not much more than this is said in the legendarium of the elusive Bungo Baggins. However, from his sayings, or proverbs (which Bilbo is fond of quoting), we can conclude a few things about Bilbo's father. First, he shared either his son's fondness for apt quotation or knack of coining proverbial sayings (e.g., Bilbo's 'escaping goblins to be caught by wolves', which Tolkien equates to the later 'out of the frying pan into the fire', for which see Annotated HOBBIT, p. 145, and 'don't laugh at live dragons', which in the typescript became 'never laugh at live dragons'). Furthermore, those sayings of his which Bilbo remembers reveal a sunny disposition; they are words of encouragement. Secondly, he had the daring to court and marry Belladonna Took, who is not only 'famous' in her own right but 'one of the three remarkable daughters' of the Old Took (Gerontius), who himself seems merely a notable personality in THE HOBBIT but who we learn in LOTR was in fact the ruler of his country at the time (i.e., the Took and Thain of Tookland across The Water, a position held successively by Bilbo's grandfather, uncle, and, at the time of the Unexpected Party, his first cousin, according to the genealogical tables in Appendix C of LOTR) — an example of solid upper middle-class stock marrying old nobility.
Finally, Bungo had a gift for satisfying creature comforts (Bag-End, which he planned and built, is an exceptional hobbit-hole, enviously desired by Bilbo's and Frodo's relations) and the foresight to plan for future comforts, having laid down wine of such excellence (Old Winyards) that was fully mature seventy-five years after his death (LOTR). Beyond all of this, amidst the Siege of the Mountain, we have a little Bilbo (in the original manuscript version of Tolkien's hobbit-tale) singing 'in his small voice an absurd little song' to Bombur, who sits alone at the watchman's post, cold and weary, in need of some cheer — 'one that used to be sung to him long ago in the green of the world when he was a small hobbit in a little bed in his father's hole...' — a cheerful father's diddy, apparently a 'bird' lullaby of sorts, by one Bungo Baggins to amuse and comfort his hobbit-son, Bilbo, who he knew to have within a bit of a lively streak that fortunately on most occasions kept itself where it lay, just below the surface (rather adventurous in nature, it came — obviously — from his Took-family side). ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 29, 46-47, 516-17, 584-85, 659, 769-770
Peter Jackson, of course, famous for his personal film cameos, makes himself and partner Fran Walsh the objects of 'likeness' for the artist-rendered portraits of Bungo and Belladonna Took Baggins that (in both of Jackson's Middle-earth trilogies) appear above the fireplace mantle in Bilbo's Bag-End parlour. The portraits were painted by fellow Wellingtonian Kiwi and Three Foot Six Limited-commissioned artist Ken Hunt, who in a September 2014 issue of Kapiti News (Sept 17: 'Art captures attention', p. 5) reports that he was 'only just' given 'permission' from studio publicists to at last disclose his involvement with the fifteen-year-old epic film production — that it was in fact he who had been tasked in 1999 (provided by Art Department director Alan Lee with reference photographs) to paint from his home studio a total of 'four portraits' for Jackson's films (two 'scaled' pairs for each of the scaled Bag-End film-sets) of the ‘solid’ Bungo (Pete) and ‘lively’ Belladonna (Fran), founder-residents of Bag-End of the Hill, Hobbiton, the Shire, Middle-earth (NZ).
from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey . . .
Old Bilbo, as Narrator: Far away ... in another corner of the world ... dragons were only make-believe — a party trick conjured by wizards on Midsummer's Eve — no more frightening than ... fairy dust ... And that, my dear Frodo, is where I come in (... for quite by chance, and the will of a wizard, Fate decided I would become part of this tale) ... It was the beginning of an unlikely friendship that has lasted all my life ... But it is not the start of my story. For me, it began ... well, it began as you might expect ... 'In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole' ... full of worms and oozy smells. This was 'a hobbit-hole, and that means' ... good food, a warm hearth, and all the comforts of home . . .
An Unexpected Journey . . .
25 April, 2941 — Tuesday: Gandalf the Grey by 'curious chance' visits Bilbo Baggins of the Shire, meeting him on the doorstep of Bag-End in Hobbiton, where the hobbit happens to be relaxing, enjoying the early spring morning after breakfast, smoking his pipe. The words 'curious chance' at the beginning of THE HOBBIT gain new resonance with its sequel's later account (tucked into Appendix A of LOTR, pp. 1077-80) of Thorin's chance meeting with Gandalf a month earlier [Peter Jackson, in his filmic retelling, however, extends the intervening time to a 'year' — perhaps to make more plausible the time required to adequately prepare for such a bold expedition].
'It was on the morning of Tuesday, [25 April TA] 2941, that I called to see Bilbo; and though I knew more or less what to expect, I must say that my confidence was shaken. I saw that things would be far more difficult than I had thought. But I persevered . . .' (Annotated HOBBIT, Appendix A: 'The Quest of Erebor', pp. 374-75).
[The 'Good Morning' Bag-End scene begins roughly 60 years before the events of THE LORD OF THE RINGS; a middle-aged hobbit-bachelor Bilbo Baggins in the quiet hours of the world sits contented on his Old Toby smoking bench just outside his comfortable hobbit-hole, peacefully puffing on his pipe, when he is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a wizard in a grey cloak with a long, pointy hat, leaning upon a tall wooden staff — Gandalf the Grey]
Bilbo [startled by the stranger's sudden, unannounced, most unexpected intrusion]: ... Good morning.
Gandalf: — What do you mean? ... Do you mean to wish me a good morning, or do you mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not? — Or perhaps you mean to say that you ... feel good on this particular morning? — Or are you simply stating that this is a morning ... to be good on? — Hm? ...
Bilbo: ... All of them ... at once, I suppose ...
Gandalf [feigning assessment, or a 'sizing up', of Bilbo's suitability for the imminent task reserved for him]: ... Hmm ...
Bilbo [feeling uncomfortable]: ... Can I help you?
Gandalf: That remains to be seen: ... I'm looking for someone to share ... in an adventure.
Bilbo: — An adventure?... Now, I don't imagine ... anyone west of Bree ... would have much interest ... in adventures [rising to collect his mail from his box a few steps away, to thereby 'gracefully' retire, or excuse himself, from this strange and unexpected happenstance] — nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things — make you late for dinner! Heh, heh. [feigning preoccupied interest in his mail contents: ... Hmm! ... Mmm! ... Well, ahem] — Good morning! [thus excusing himself, puffing madly now on his pipe, he turns and starts walking up the front steps to his round green door]
Gandalf [lifting his staff to walk a few paces along Bagshot Row, to keep cadence with Bilbo's retreat]: — To think that I should have lived to be 'good morning'd' by Belladonna Took's son — as if I were selling buttons at the door!
Bilbo [turning, surprised to hear the stranger mention his mother's name]: — Beg your pardon?
Gandalf: You've changed — and not entirely for the better, Bilbo Baggins.
Bilbo [now even more uncomfortable with the tall stranger's seeming over-familiarity with his past]: ... I'm sorry, do I know you?
Gandalf: Well, you know my name, although you don't remember I belong to it — I'm Gandalf, and Gandalf means ... me!
Bilbo [his 'Tookish' side suddenly recalling scenes from his childhood]: ... Gandalf? — not Gandalf 'the wandering wizard' who made such excellent fireworks? — Old Took used to have them on Midsummer's Eve! ... Ha-ho!! [his 'Bagginsish' side suddenly remembering to collect his more reserved self] ... Ahem! — I'd no idea you were still in business.
Gandalf [offended at the insinuating reference to his apparently 'advanced' age]: — And where else should I be?
Bilbo [clearly suggesting his answer to be 'in the grave' by clearing his throat and, in the resultant awkward moment, taking a puff on his pipe]: ... Where else—? Ahem ...
Gandalf [somewhat disappointed at his lack of memorable impression upon the hobbit's mind]: ... Well ... I'm pleased to find you remember something about me — even if it's only my fireworks [nodding to himself, satisfied with Bilbo's having 'passed' this final assessment for the task at hand] — Yes. Well, that's decided: It'll be very good for you ... and most amusing for me — I shall inform the others.
Bilbo: — Inform the who...? — What ...?! — No - no - no! — wait ... [quickly retreating up the final steps to his door, turning back again to the wizard, emphatically:] — We do not want ... any adventures here, thank you — not today, not — I suggest you try ... Over the Hill, or ... Across the Water [running out of alternatives and desperate, gesturing with his pipe to 'greener pastures' in the Hobbiton valley below, turning abruptly to his door] — Good morning!
[we see an unnerved Bilbo closing and locking the door behind him; pausing there for a moment, satisfied that the tall stranger has finally gone, he hears a scraping noise on the outer surface of his newly painted green door; outside, we see ithildin (a silver-colored substance that reflects only starlight and moonlight) issuing from the end of Gandalf's staff as it etches a Dwarvish Angerthas Moria certh ithil (moon-rune) symbol, signifying 'G' for Gandalf in that Second- and Third-Age runic alphabet (a bluish-silver marking that will later cleverly disappear as the Dwarf-warrior Dwalin's dark lengthening shadow overtakes and obscures it in his nighttime approach to the hobbit-hole); curious as to the sound's origin, Bilbo moves quickly to observe the scene from a round 'portal' side-window, only to behold the spectre of Gandalf's inquisitive (magnified) eye staring right back at him; gripped with unsettling fright, Bilbo darts backwards, hugging the wall, but he returns to the window a moment later to at last see Gandalf walking down Bagshot Row, away from his hobbit-hole]
~ from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Gandalf the Grey† had last visited the Shire some twenty years before the tale begins (and only briefly, at the time 'his friend the Old Took died'), but before that he had visited 'often' indeed, for 'he seemed fond of hobbits'. It had, however, been so long for some, even among 'the older folk in Hobbiton', that they'd 'almost forgotten what he looked like. He had been far away ... on business of his own, since they were young. To little hobbits he was just a character in fireside tales...' But one of these hobbit-youngsters who was just old enough to remember, by the name of Bilbo Baggins, had impressed Gandalf with his 'eagerness and his bright eyes, and his love of tales, and his questions about the wide world...' ~ Unfinished Tales, p. 323; History of Middle-earth I: The Book of Lost Tales, p. 264; History of THE HOBBIT, pp. ix, 7-16, 20, 48-53, 770; Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 77, 287.
A Philologist's Delight – Part I . . .
Tolkien the philologist (Greek philo-logos 'lover of words') 'revels in his words as much as any dragon in his hoard . . .' ~ Ivor & Deborah Rogers, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Critical Biography, pp. 37, 77
Tolkien was of course superbly skilled at nomenclature. Appearing for the first time in the earliest known version of Tolkien's HOBBIT-tale are familiar HOBBIT characters, events, places and creatures that, while possessing their recognizable identities, were initially given wholly different names (the story's earliest — though incomplete — draft, of which only 6 pages survive, is known as the Pryftan, or 'Dragon' Fragment, for 'Pryftan' was the name Tolkien first gave to the creature-character we know today as Smaug).
The first name to consider in this context, found within this early fragment, is that of our beloved wizard . . .
†The wandering wizard Gandalf the Grey ['Wand- or Staff- or Sorcerer-elf' — hence, 'wizard'] was first called by Tolkien [S:] Bladorthin 'Grey Plains Wanderer', from S: -thin 'grey' and blador- 'wide plain', as in Bladorwen 'the wide earth, Mother Earth' = Q: Palúrien, the early honorific for Yavanna, the Vala-goddess of the Earth; but also as in Bladorion, an early name for 'the great grassy northern plain' of Ard-galen (separating Thangorodrim from the heights of Dorthonion and the Elven realms to the south) before its desolation by Melkor-Morgoth in the Battle of Sudden Flame which reduced it to the wasteland of Dor-nu-Fauglith, or Anfauglith (and reduced also the beautiful mountain pine-forest of Dorthonion to Taur-nu-Fuin 'Forest of Night'); blador- may also be an agent noun 'wanderer, ranger, pilgrim', for in LOTR Gandalf (< Bladorthin) is called by the Elves Mithrandir, which is Sindarin for 'grey pilgrim': Bladorthin may have been an earlier form with the same meaning]. In the end, Bladorthin became the name of a long-dead king who is mentioned once in the published HOBBIT but nowhere else.
Origin of Gandalf the Wandering Wizard — Young Tolkien 'won a scholarship to Oxford in 1910 and left King Edward's School in Birmingham in 1911. That summer he and his younger brother Hilary and ten others (including his aunt, Jane Neave) vacationed in Switzerland where they enjoyed an Alpine walking tour. Before coming home, he bought some 'touristy' postcards, and on one of them was a reproduction of a painting by the German artist Josef Madlener (1881-1967) called 'The Mountain-spirit' (Der Berggeist), and it showed an old man with a long white beard and wearing a wide-brimmed round hat and a red cloak sitting on a rock by a pine tree and talking to and nuzzling a white faun with a glimpse of rocky mountains in the distance. Ronald kept the postcard, carefully preserving it, and years later he wrote on it, 'Origin of Gandalf'...' (Perry C. Bramlett, I Am in Fact a Hobbit: An Introduction to the Life and Work of J. R. R. Tolkien [2003], p. 6; see also Biography, p. 59; Douglas Anderson, however, believes Carpenter in his Biography to be mistaken about the origin of the postcard, although its inscription is true, as Anderson provides compelling evidence that its reproduced painting dates from the period around 1925-30, and therefore must have been secured in another setting and time ~ Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 36-39).
Next, we look at the name Tolkien initially gave to the Chief-dwarf character who led the Blue Mountains company on their 'Quest of Erebor.' For quite surprisingly, Tolkien named him Gandalf(!) . . .
Thorin 'Bold One' or 'Darer' Oakenshield [first named Gandalf(!)] son of Thrain 'Yearner,' son of Thror 'Thriver' — Old tales and songs of the people of Lake-town foretold the return of both ancient Dwarvenkings: 'Some sang that Thror and Thrain would come back one day...' Each of these Dwarvenkings' names comes from the list of dwarf-names in the Norse Elder (or Poetic) Edda (and found also in Snorri Sturlusons' Prose Edda) known as the Dvergatal ('Dwarf-tally'), that provided the names of all the other dwarves who accompany Bilbo (with the sole exception of Balin). Thorin's cognomen, or epithet, Oakenshield, is a translation of the dwarf-name Eikinskjaldi, as found also in the 'The Tally of Dwarfs', but it also appears in the Prose Edda's 'The Deluding of Gylfi' (Gylfaginning) as Eikinskjaldi (where it is simply another dwarf name without any link to 'Thorin' ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. x, 7-15, 293, 436, 455-59, 464-67n; Annotated HOBBIT, p. 77.
At the very beginning of his preliminary HOBBIT-tale outlines, known as Plot Notes A [1931], Tolkien confidently jots his intention to change the names of his head-dwarf, wizard, and were-bear (the last of which is initially called Medwed!) to 'Thorin Oakenshield' (with his cognomen or epithet already present), 'Gandalf,' and 'Beorn,' respectively; he then only very tentatively makes these changes. It isn't, however, until the end of Phase II [1932] of his composition that Tolkien finally begins to make permanent the name-changes — first to 'Thorin' (as the Chief dwarf tumbles from his barrel at Lake Town, no doubt because retaining 'Gandalf' offended Tolkien's sense of decorum to have a dwarf named 'elf' — Gandalf = 'wand-elf'); then to 'Gandalf' (at the Secret Door on Durin's Day as the dwarves clamor for a key and Thorin references the wizard who gave him his father's map); and finally to 'Beorn', which change, however, doesn't occur definitively (permanently) until Phase III of the writing [late 1932], where the name first occurs in the actual body of the text (in the 'flashback' passage retelling of Beorn's sudden appearance at the Battle of Five Armies); for the evolution of these name changes, see John Rateliff's History of THE HOBBIT.
And finally, we come to a name that originally — and this may come as a big surprise to many — was known only as 'the County Round', and later, 'the Country Round': 'the country where Bilbo was born and bred'. For 'the Shire', in the most ironic fashion, is never mentioned in THE HOBBIT — at all — for it is a name that was first created for the tale's sequel, THE LORD OF THE RINGS . . .
The Shire (in THE LORD OF THE RINGS) [< 'the Country Round' (in THE HOBBIT) < 'the County Round' (in the Pryftan Fragment)]. Tolkien notes in his guide for translators ('Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings') that Shire is from Old English (Anglo-Saxon) scír, which 'seems very early to have replaced the ancient Germanic word for a 'district'...' It is a common element in many county names in England. Just like Sauron, Erebor, and Thranduil, the Shire is a later name created for the tale's sequel ~ Annotated HOBBIT, p. 359; History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 10, 70, 74; Corey Olsen, Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 14-15
Perhaps, in light of what has gone before (as well as of what follows) in these HOBBIT discussion 'installments' that touch upon its book-to-film translation, something should here be said about the Erebor 'Quest' aspect of the adventure, which arose during one of Tolkien's final stages of composition: a period of writing known as 'the Fifth Phase' . . .
In PHASE V [1953-60] of the WRITING of THE HOBBIT — returning as he did to concerns for 'The Quest of Erebor' prologue* that he had written in 1953-54 to better inform his Middle-earth story of the Third Age (as presented in THE HOBBIT and LOTR), Tolkien set out to re-write in the style of THE LORD OF THE RINGS — though he did not finish — the entire THE HOBBIT, wisely abandoning this new draft, however, at the start of Chapter III. Even so, this previously unpublished material gives a fascinating glimpse into a radically different approach to the story that helps its readers appreciate it as it stands all the more, while also providing some interesting and hitherto unknown details about Bilbo's day-by-day itinerary in his journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell: see History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxv-xxvi, 731, 763-67, 791, 803, 809-812, 813, 820, 825, 827, 830, 832, 835, 837
The 1960 Hobbit (internally imposed by personal compulsion, but abandoned)
The attempt, ultimately aborted, in what has been called the Fifth Phase of Tolkien's composition, to bring the earlier book into precise harmony with its sequel by a complete re-envisioning and recasting of the old story of Bilbo's adventure (authentic but serially inaccurate) to agree in minute detail with the new one of Frodo's quest (both authentic and narratively accurate) — that material (because of the revision's abortion) remaining unpublished until 2007 (see History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 765-838n). It consists of but the first two chapters (and only the beginning of a third) with additional time-lines and itinerary, of the planned retelling.
* The Quest of Erebor serves as a fascinating 'prologue' to THE HOBBIT (originally written as part of Appendix A of LOTR in the early 1950s — completed in 1954 — but in the event omitted from Tolkien's greater for reasons of space) and has the fictional frame of a conversation between Gandalf and the remaining companions of the Fellowship at Minas Tirith after the War of the Ring [TA 3018-19 > Jackson: TA 3001-02]. Ultimately, only a few paragraphs of The Quest of Erebor made their way into the published Lord of the Rings (pp. 1077-80), but clearly Tolkien did not so much reject this material as merely find himself forced to cut it for reasons of space (see Corey Olsen, Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 12-13). The Quest of Erebor presents Bilbo's story, particularly as it emerges in the opening chapter of THE HOBBIT, from Gandalf's point of view (starting before his initial meeting with Thorin and describing what led up to the Unexpected Party at Bag-End) and sets it firmly within the larger — what we may call 'strategic' — context of a new war against Sauron the Necromancer; it is in effect a complement to (and commentary on) THE HOBBIT's first chapter, retelling the story from Gandalf's and the dwarves' point of view, as Gandalf considers how to counter the threat of Smaug (whom he fears Sauron will initially manipulate to destroy Rivendell or Lórien, or ravage Eriador, including the Shire) in a developing war against the Dark Lord, which he already foresees as impending some eighty (Jackson: sixty) years before the event. Reference The Quest of Erebor in Unfinished Tales, pp. 321-336; Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 367-377; The History of Middle-earth VIII: The War of the Ring, pp. 357-58; The History of Middle-earth XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp. 280-84, 286-89, and in the 'Quest' excerpts from it in this commentary-discussion (posts II & III): specifically, see the earlier 'A Chance Evening Meeting at Bree and The Quest of Erebor' post (II) and also below, that is, in part one of this 'Unexpected Journey' post (III), but also in part three of this post, under 'THE HOBBIT Timeline' entries for 15 March, 25 & 26 April, 2941.
When, around 1960, Tolkien decided to undertake a highly detailed revision of THE HOBBIT, to thereby fully reconcile it to the later story in chronology, geography, and style (Phase V: 'The 1960 Hobbit'), he drew upon this unpublished 'Quest' material when recasting THE HOBBIT into THE LORD OF THE RINGS' image, or the original story into the mold of its sequel [that is, he approached Bilbo's story from the point of view of the rejected Appendix material, retaining much of the wording of the original book while greatly altering the tone (muting the voice of the Narrator, omitting editorial asides,† greatly reducing word-play; that is, the playfulness of the original gives way to a more stately style; characterization is also changed: Gandalf speaks with more authority, but it is an enhanced dignity that also makes him less sympathetic, more remote; Thorin, as the dwarf-leader, in keeping with his portrayal in The Quest of Erebor, becomes much more abrupt and brusque, showing an obsession with property and a grievance over his rights that anticipates his later fall in the Lonely Mountain chapters) — unfortunately, however, this is much to Bilbo's disadvantage, for it diminishes the hobbit in the reader's eyes, casting him as overly naďve and very much a silly fellow puffing and bobbing on the mat; we may therefore be very grateful that this highly ambitious effort by the author, while certainly noble in purpose and intent, never came to a full fruition, for Tolkien's mythology remains all the more rich, un-impoverished, and indubitably better for it††].
Composed, as it seems, on the typewriter (existing for the most part only in a single-spaced typescript) and consisting of only the 1960 book's first two chapters ('A Well-Planned Party' and 'The Broken Bridge'), and the start of a third ('Arrival in Rivendell', plus time-lines and itinerary with extensive plot-notes that, in dealing with problems of the tale's chronology, focus particularly on the phases of the moon), the revision material (which, like 'The 1947 Hobbit', greatly expands in some places upon the original) remained wholly unknown — aside from one brief, passing mention in Humphrey Carpenter's 1977 Tolkien: A Biography (pp. 227-28) — until Christopher Tolkien read a substantial section from it in his 'Guest of Honor' presentation at the 1987 Marquette Tolkien Conference, Mythcon XVIII. In 2007 'The 1960 Hobbit' was published in its entirety for the first time in John D. Rateliff's The History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxv-xxvi, 765-838n.
† In the 1960 Hobbit, all first-person references by the Narrator are 'excised from the text, along with all direct (second person) addresses by the Narrator to the reader; Tolkien had come to feel that these were a stylistic flaw and removed them throughout.' Ultimately, however, according to Christopher Tolkien, when his father had reached this point in the 1960 'recasting' he loaned the material to a friend to get an outside opinion on it. This person's identity remains unknown, but 'apparently her response was something along the lines of 'this is wonderful, but it's not THE HOBBIT'. She must have been someone whose judgment Tolkien respected, for he abandoned the work and decided to let THE HOBBIT retain its own autonomy and voice rather than completely incorporate it into [LOTR] as a lesser 'prelude' to the greater work. When he briefly returned to it in 1965 for the Third Edition [Phase VI: 'The 1966 Hobbit'] revisions, he restricted himself in the main to the correction of errors and egregious departures from Middle-earth as it had developed' (e.g., the anachronistic policemen of Chapter II) 'and left matters of style and tone alone. Thus the work begun in a flash of inspiration thirty-five years before — 'in a hole in the ground lived a hobbit' — saw periodic revisioning through several distinct phases over a period of thirty years (1930 to 1960), until in the last decade of its author's life [1960 to 1966] it reached the final form we know and love today...' ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 811-812; emphasis mine.
†† 'If THE LORD OF THE RINGS is, as some have claimed, the 'Book of the Century', then THE HOBBIT is more than the book that made it all possible. A major contribution to the Golden Age of children's literature, it is a rare example of a work that transcends age boundaries in its readership, like Grahame's The Golden Age, Carroll's two Alice books, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and very few others. It is, like Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in relation to his Ulysses, or Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark in relation to Alice in Wonderland, a case of a masterpiece overshadowed by another masterpiece on a grander scale from the same author. Had Tolkien never completed THE LORD OF THE RINGS, he would still be remembered as one of the great fantasy authors. The achievement of the sequel has eclipsed the accomplishment of writing THE HOBBIT itself, but we should not deny the distinct appeal and charm of the original book. In the end, [it ostensibly] was more than just the intractable nature of the problems facing him in recasting the book that caused Tolkien to abandon [the 1960 Hobbit]. Rather, he decided to trust his friend's judgment that what he was doing was 'wonderful, but not THE HOBBIT' [see the above note†]. That is, he came to recognize that THE HOBBIT was more than [LOTR] writ small, more than a 'charming prelude': indeed, a work deserving to stand on its own merits ... And with that realization, aside from [Phase VI] of 1965/66 ... Tolkien's decades-long work on THE HOBBIT finally came to an end...' ~ John D. Rateliff, History of THE HOBBIT, p. 837; emphasis mine.
26 April, 2941 — Wednesday: An Unexpected Party at Bag-End.
‘Next day, Wednesday, April 26 [the dwarves arrived at] Bag-End [Peter Jackson, to compress the timeline per filmic-medium requirements, has Gandalf, in the film, meet Bilbo and introduce him to the dwarves all in a single day, with the dwarves arriving at Bag-End in the evening for 'An Unexpected Party'] ... Thorin [came] last. And of course Bilbo was completely bewildered and behaved ridiculously. Everything in fact went [rather] badly ... from the beginning; and that unfortunate business about the 'professional thief', which the dwarves had got firmly into their heads, only made matters worse…’ ('The Quest of Erebor', Annotated HOBBIT, Appendix A: 'The Quest of Erebor', p. 375).
from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit : An Unexpected Journey . . .
Bifur [speaking, as he does at all times, in his native Khuzdűl, the self-proclaimed khuzd belkur 'mighty dwarf' (so named for his war-prowess and axe-injury to the head) informs Gandalf]: Ům payâna aimâl ut kari ba! ['Our great leader is not here!']
Gandalf: Yes, you are quite right, Bifur — we appear to be one dwarf short.
Dwalin [speaking of their leader, the storied Thorin Oakenshield]: He is late, is all — he traveled north to a meeting of our kin. He will come . . .
[Immediately following the dish-tossing antics and singing of the dwarves, a loud knock is heard at Bilbo's door... ]
Gandalf [soberly, as if to tell the dwarves that they too must all restrain themselves, become sober now]: ... He is here.
[we next behold, as the wizard turns the latch to Bilbo's front door and opens it wide, a stately, even imperious Thorin Oakenshield standing on the front step of Bag-End]
Thorin [in a spirit of greeting, but also blunt reprimand]: Gandalf ... I thought you said this place would be easy to find — I lost my way ... twice [crossing over the threshold into Bilbo's entrance hall, or foyer:] — I wouldn't have found it at all, had it not been for that mark on the door.
Bilbo [alarmed]: — Mark? ... There's no mark ... on that door — it was painted a week ago!
Gandalf: — There is ... a mark: I put it there myself ... [pausing only briefly, to suppress a mounting tension in the air]: Bilbo Baggins, allow me to introduce ... the leader of our company, Thorin Oakenshield.
Thorin ['sizing up' their hobbit-host]: — So ... this is 'the hobbit' — Tell me, Mr. Baggins ... have you done much fighting?
Bilbo [entirely unsure of ... why the question ... or to where its answer might lead]: ... Pardon me?
Thorin: — Axe or sword, what's your weapon of choice?
Bilbo [his Tookish bravado piqued, but still quite unsure of himself amidst a hole-full of obvious warriors]: Well, I do have some skill at conkers, if you must know [noticing now, more than he had before, Thorin's formidable presence and figure, attempting also to compensate for his own obvious limitations with an aire of impertinence] ... But I ... fail to see ... why that's ... relevant.
[Conkers 'hitters' or 'biffers' (also called Kingers) — which, for 'weapons', players employ horse chestnuts attached to (threaded on) the ends of string — is an old English 'striking' game traditionally played by young boys and girls in autumn]
Thorin [answering such impertinence with derisive humor]: — I thought as much [to Bilbo, but clearly meant for all other ears in the room:] ... He looks more like a grocer than a burglar.
[as the other dwarves laugh and begin to retire to the dining area for solemn deliberations regarding their quest, Bilbo's Tookish and Bagginsish halves are left in conflict with one another, not entirely sure of what to make of, not to mention how they feel about, the Chief dwarf's comment; Gandalf, meanwhile, leans his forearm upon the entrance lintel to give a sigh of relief — or rather, of released anxiety — looking down at the hobbit as if to say, 'Well, that ... might have gone a bit better...']
The Quest of Erebor (excerpt ...)
I was thankful that I had told Thorin we should all stay the night at Bag-End, since we should need time to discuss ways and means. It gave me a last chance [to ensure] my plan [was not] ruined [and to persuade Thorin] to take Bilbo into his company...
[In Peter Jackson's film, the following scene (unfilmed) might have taken place (had it been, in fact, committed to film) right before the after-dinner Erebor discussion as seen on screen:]
'Thief! ... He is as honest as he is silly' [Thorin said.] 'His mother died too soon. And anyway many of the spoons were tin. You are playing some strange game of your own, Master Gandalf. I am sure you have other purposes than helping me'.
'You are quite right', I said. 'If I had not other purposes, I should not be helping you at all. Great as your affairs may seem to you, they are only a small strand in the great web. I am concerned with many strands. But that should make my advice more weighty, not less.'
'I know your fame', said Thorin, 'and I must hope that it is merited. Even so this foolish business of the hobbit might make me wonder whether so many cares had not disordered your wits'.
'They are certainly enough to do so', I answered; 'and among them I find most exasperating a proud Dwarf who seeks advice from me (without claim on me that I know of), and then speaks to me with insolence. Go your own way, Thorin Oakenshield, if you will. But ... you will do so on your peril. You will walk to disaster. Beware! You and your quest are caught up in a much greater matter. If you succeed, it will be so that other larger causes may be furthered. Curb your pride, and your greed, or you may fall at the end, though your hands be full of gold!'
He blenched a little at that; but his eyes smouldered. 'Do not threaten me!' he said. 'I will use my own judgement in this matter, as in others'.
'Do so then', I said. 'I will not argue it further. I have said all that is needed. Except perhaps this. I do not give my love or my trust lightly, Thorin; but I am fond of this hobbit, and I wish him well. Treat him well, and you will have my friendship to the end of your days!' I said that without hope of persuading him; but it was a good thing to say. Dwarves understand and approve devotion to friends, and gratitude to those that help them. 'Very well', Thorin said at last. 'Have your way! He shall set out with my company — if he dares (which I doubt). But if you insist on burdening me with him, you must come too and look after your darling'.
I saw that I had driven him as far as he would go. 'Very good', I said. 'I will come, and stay with you as long as I can: at least until you have discovered his worth'. It proved well in the end, but at the time, I was troubled, for I had the urgent matter of the White Council on my hands ... [But] that is how the Quest of Erebor began; and from that day on the Dwarves and the Hobbits have been wonderfully entangled together on all the chief events of our time'.
So Gandalf ended his long account. I [Frodo] remember that Gimli laughed. 'It still sounds absurd', he said, 'even now that all has turned out more than well. I knew Thorin, of course; and I wish I had been there, but I was away at the time of your first visit to us. And I was not allowed to go on the quest: too young, they said, though at sixty-two [this being in appearance, per the average 250-year Dwarvish lifespan, but a young dwarf] I thought myself fit for anything. Well, I am glad to have heard the full tale. If it is full. I do not really suppose that even now you are telling us all you know'.
'Of course not', said Gandalf ... 'It was ten years after Thráin had left his people that I found him, and he had then been in the pits for five years at least. I do not know how he endured for so long, nor how he had kept those things [the Map and Key] hidden through all his torments [In Jackson's retelling, Gandalf had obtained the Map and Key from Thráin at some earlier (unfilmed) meeting, clearly some time (c. TA 2795 ?) before the Battle of Moria (TA 2799)]. I think the Dark Power had desired nothing from him except the Ring [of Power of the Dwarves] only, and when he had taken that [at the Battle of Azanulbizar, through a brutal act of Azog, in Jackson's retelling], he troubled no further, but just flung the broken prisoner into the pits to rave until he died. A small oversight. But it proved fatal. Small oversights often do.
[But with the Map and Key] I saw that I had at any rate one good argument for my plan; and if I may say so, I brought it out at the right moment ... [For from that moment on] Thorin really made up his mind to follow my plan, as far as a secret expedition went at any rate ... The Map and the Key brought all the past vividly back to him. He was young for a dwarf at the sack of Erebor [TA 2770] ... but he had often wondered, as he told me, how Thrór and Thráin escaped from their halls. The existence of a secret door, only discoverable by Dwarves, made it seem at least possible to find out something of the dragon's doings, perhaps even to recover some gold, or some heirloom to ease his heart's longings [the Arkenstone] . . . (Annotated HOBBIT, Appendix A: 'The Quest of Erebor', pp. 375-76).
A Philologist's Delight – Part II . . .
We pause briefly now to look at the name changes Tolkien made that connect Bilbo's heritage with — of all things — that of the Goblins of the Misty Mountains! … Gram Hill, which Tolkien transformed, it is thought, into Mount Gundabad; the Green Fields of Merria, which Tolkien later simply named the Green Fields; and the Goblin-king Fingolfin(!), who eventually became that character of Middle-earth 'golf' fame to have his head 'knocked … clean off' in Peter Jackson's first HOBBIT film . . .
Mount Gram [<the Gram Hill] ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 8, 675-76n, 712n, 785n (which, according to John D. Rateliff, no doubt is a reference to Mt. Gondobad > Gundobad > Gundabad, a Dwarvish [Khuzdűl] name, meaning originally perhaps 'stone-ways or -crossroads' (originally a revered Dwarven stronghold, where Durin the Deathless had woken from sleep; reference Thorin's remark that his ancestors first came to the Lonely Mountain when they were 'driven out of the far north', meaning perhaps both from the Grey Mountains and Gundabad, wherein the Orcs defiled the Dwarves' most holy inheritance: the sacred site of their racial natality) — it is now, however, the great Goblin / Orc stronghold and capital city in the northern Misty Mountains at the juncture of the east-west Grey Mountains. That Gram most likely means Gundabad is due to the fact that 'Gram' is a Norse name (famous as the name of Sigurd's sword forged or reforged by Regin) and thus would seem to belong to the area north and east of Bilbo's home, and also because the Goblin-infested Misty Mountains are the mountains closest to the hobbit-hole residence of Bilbo, who had never before his great adventure seen a mountain).
The Battle of Green Fields [< the Green Fields of Merria, from Q: merka 'wild' (< MERÉK) < Fao < Fellin, from N: fela 'cave', as in Finrod Felagund 'Finrod, lord of caves' < PHÉLEG] ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 8, 12
King Golfimbul [<Fingolfin(!)] ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 8, 12, 15, 24-25, 43, 776, 785n [name change to Golfimbul (then temporarily > Gulfimbul), the Goblin-king of Mount Gram, i.e., Mt. Gundabad, killed with a 'great wooden club' by Bandobras 'Bullroarer' Took, the grandson of Isengrim II and the Old Took's great-granduncle (and Bilbo's great-great-granduncle), in the Battle of Green Fields when an Orc-band attacked the Northfarthing of the Shire in TA 2747 ~ see Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 48-51]
Tolkien the Oxford philologist, came to the firm conviction in his lifetime that fairy tales are not just for children — arguing, moreover, that there exists a deep human need for this kind of story. In a 1955 letter Tolkien expressed his deeply held sentiment: 'It remains an unfailing delight to me to find my own belief justified: that the 'fairy story' is really an adult genre, and one for which a starving audience exists' (Letters, p. 209).
THE HOBBIT is, of course, one of Tolkien's most famous 'fairy tales'. Of its relation to both children and adults, William H. Green writes:
'This juvenile masterpiece ... hides, like a Trojan horse, an adult story ... [as it] reinvents traditional heroism for Tolkien's century ... Skillfully [weaving] motifs from medieval myth into [his story, Tolkien explores] how a hero who is timid, bourgeois, and ethically Christian might achieve at his own level feats comparable to Beowulf's. The book is a narrative position paper in the debate between nihilistic relativism and traditional values. Monsters still exist: fighter bombers, if not dragons; bigots, if not goblins. Moral good and evil exist, and heroism is still needed. However inexperienced and small we are, like Bilbo we can show courage and make a difference...' (William H. Green, The Hobbit: A Journey Into Maturity [1995], p. 9).
As a creature of his times, Tolkien was well aware in the 1930s of the formidable artistic challenges he faced in daring to publish such a work of fantasy — and a children's fantasy, at that — so far had the fantasy genre wandered from the literary mainstream as it then existed in the early 20th century: with 'modern realist' writers, in their gritty, sultry stories of decadence, morbidity, and murky† moral realism, espousing worldviews saturated in such depressive sentiments of humanity's dire state that Tolkien and C. S. Lewis both feared for 'the abolition of man'. Tolkien saw the fairy story as 'the century's stepchild and savior'. With that keenly felt recognition, then, Tolkien strove in his new story for troubled times to gently assist 'modern' readers in what surely was the rather dramatic transition from their mundane, predictable, safe, comfortable modern lives of the real world to a wondrous world of wizards and dwarves and dragons. That is, Tolkien provided a model for this transitional, transformative process — by which mortals, in their own journeys of maturation, are transported from disenchanted worlds to enchanted ones and 'back again' — in Bilbo's own story as a humble adventurer journeying to maturity. Today, amidst times and technologies and philosophies even more 'modern', and in some ways more 'depressive', it is within such a sympathetically crafted transformative transport as is THE HOBBIT that
…we find ourselves coming alongside a protagonist who is struggling through exactly the same process, a character who himself internalizes the conflict between the mundane and the marvelous. Our first introduction to this magical, grim, and dangerous world of adventure is also his introduction, and his reluctance and difficulty in adjusting to it give us time to ease past our own discomfort and reservations. Bilbo Baggins serves as the perfect touchstone for readers, both exploring and embodying the tricky frontier between the predictable and the unexpected. [After all — as Tolkien admonishes in his classic essay 'On Fairy-Stories' — fantasy literature] should never be simply rose-tinted, cleared of all that is dark or frightening [even for children, as there is] educational value of good stories dealing with serious issues, with good and evil ... ['Adults' do not make up the only audience that must recognize] that there are horrible and frightening things in the world. 'Children are meant to grow up', [Tolkien] explains, 'and not to become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder, but to proceed on the appointed journey'...' (Corey Olsen, Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 35, 38; see also Devin Brown, The Christian World of THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 165-173; emphasis mine).
† murky — a term that well defines the literary world of 'modern realism' where good and evil, to reflect the blurred values of 'real' human experience, must never be clear, or polarized); it was the literary world of Tolkien’s day in which all stories had literally to be seen to be believed.
Indeed, retaining those parts of THE HOBBIT that were terrifying, was both necessary and unavoidable in Tolkien's mind, because Middle-earth was intended to mirror our own world: 'The presence (even if only on the borders) of the terrible is, I believe, what gives this imagined world its verisimilitude,' Tolkien explained. 'A safe fairy-land is untrue in all worlds' (Letters, p. 24). That is, the presence of the terrible makes Middle-earth seem real and true. A safe or sorrowless fairyland would for Tolkien seem untrue. And it is the very presence of all of its danger, terror, and sadness that makes Tolkien's imagined world 'ring true' for us, that gives it its verisimilitude.
Aragorn's parting words to Arwen in THE LORD OF THE RINGS, for example, speak to Tolkien's conception of grief as it exists for him 'in all worlds': 'In sorrow we must go...' The difference, however, between Tolkien and other early 20th century authors is that he does not end with the sadness, as they undoubtedly would have. Other writers of his time 'would not have suggested that there is something beyond sorrow, because they did not believe there was. Tolkien did. 'In sorrow we must go, but not in despair', Aragorn (whose Sindarin name Estel means 'hope') tells Arwen, bequeathing to her true hope as he faces now even death. 'Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory...' Similarly, a brightness of hope marks Théoden's dying words as he goes to be with his 'fathers' — 'I shall not now be ashamed' — for though his body is battered and broken, the King of Rohan will not end his life in darkness or despair (LOTR, pp. 842, 1063; see Devin Brown, The Christian World of THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 165-172; emphasis mine).
Tolkien expounded further that it was 'on callow, lumpish, and selfish youth, peril, sorrow, and the shadow of death can bestow dignity, and even sometimes wisdom...' ('On Fairy-Stories'). So that, even as Bilbo himself pursues his quest and gains wisdom and experience, 'the story itself will,' as Corey Olsen maintains, also 'mature... Tolkien gently prepares his ... audience for their journey, and if they remain Tookishly determined to see it through, like Bilbo, they will find that they too have gradually changed and grown during the course of the adventure...' (Olsen, p. 38; emphasis mine). Katharyn Crabbe's excellent analysis of Bilbo's transformational journey — one meant for adults as well as children — accords with Olsen's:
'Though … treated in such a way as to be accessible to children, [the themes of THE HOBBIT] have enough significance and enough subtlety of development to reward the attentive adult [— for] like other fairy tales, THE HOBBIT is thematically concerned with the human situation, not simply childish ones ... Thematically, THE HOBBIT is primarily concerned with increasing maturity. As Bilbo travels with the dwarves through adventures with Trolls, Goblins, and giant Spiders, he changes from a frightened, passive, ineffectual lover of domestic comfort to a brave, realistic, active planner of events who is willing to take responsibility for himself and others . . . Structurally, THE HOBBIT is neat and tidy, almost elegant [— its structure, circular; Bilbo's development, linear]. As its subtitle 'There and Back Again' suggests, the underlying metaphor is the journey, and although the trip out occupies most of the space of the book, the trip back is equally important. Bilbo's journey from the Shire, where he is staid, passive, and bland, to the Lonely Mountain, where he is resourceful, active, and assertive, marks a shift in his character as much as his geographical location. As is always the case with literary journeys, Bilbo can not exactly go home again. Though the physical journey may end where it began, the psychological journey does not simply retrace its steps. What Bilbo gains in maturity and in understanding of his world will, the book promises, last far beyond the end of his journey...' (Katharyn W. Crabbe, J. R. R. Tolkien [1981, rev. 1988], pp. 31-32, 34).
Commentators such as Green, Crabbe, and Olsen (all quoted above) have noted cumulatively over the years that THE HOBBIT is all about discovering one's own 'buried treasure' — one's special vocation, potential, or purpose. The tale's message of learnable lessons revolves around the wise old sages in our lives (who like Gandalf unfailingly mark us fas 'chosen' and 'selected'), who patiently encourage us (we, who perhaps feel inadequate, uncertain, or insecure) to high adventure* (which they claim will do us 'good'), teasing out the 'heroic inner child' that may, in the end, reveal 'one's true self'.
Bilbo's story thus becomes our story — one firmly grounded in the prospect of leaving behind creature comforts multitudinous and mundane, possessions overly precious, pampering predictabilities and untested securities, by taking that first precarious step ‘out your door’ into the dark and perilous unknown. Once there, however, one may hope to experience, as did Bilbo, great learning and growth through fellowship as well as hardship, by finding the strength and will to confront and to conquer (with the help of one's own wits and a generous measure of 'good luck') the monsters of the Wild (or the inner demons of the soul) ... as one journeys to maturity. Tolkien's famous road that 'goes ever ever on' (through a world that seems charged with a providential presence) culminates in a rich, full-seasoned life crowned by genuine self-knowledge: when happily we find out 'there is a lot more' to us than we'd 'guess[ed], and a deal more' than perhaps we had 'any idea'.
* ADVENTURE — the antithesis, really, of Bilbo's love of the predictable, peaceful joys and comforts of hearth and home. It is the recurring motif of the perils and discomforts of the journey that the respectable protagonist of Tolkien's tale is forced to endure (and which simultaneously gives the tale its 'often deliberately humorous perspective') that provides constant fodder for the hobbit's continual daydreaming of his former life at Bag-End — daydreams that contrast sharply with the story's other recurring motif, the adventure, in which events good and bad 'come to' him: this is the etymology of 'ad-vent' in the originally medieval expression adventure or aventure, which Tolkien in his Middle English Vocabulary [1922] explained as 'chance, (notable) occurrence, feat...' (Mark Atherton, There and Back Again: J R R Tolkien and the Origins of THE HOBBIT [2012], p. 25).
'At the onset of their adventure, Bilbo, like a typical young adolescent, is uncertain of his role, or 'persona', to use a Jungian term. The dwarves quickly reinforce his insecurity; Gandalf asked him to join the group to be a burglar, but the dwarves carp that he acts more like a grocer than a burglar...'
~ Dorothy Matthews, 'The Psychological Journey of Bilbo Baggins', in A Tolkien Compass, ed., Jared Lobdell [1975, rev. 2003], p. 31
As Corey Olsen observes, 'Part of what offends Bilbo in [the dwarvish remark] are the class implications of being compared with a grocer, when Bilbo is obviously not in the working class [but is rather an upper-middle-class bachelor-gentlehobbit — which, of course, is entirely at variance with Thorin's biased preconception (what an annoyed Gandalf calls his 'haughty disregard') of the Hobbits in 'The Quest of Erebor' as 'food-growers' working the fields 'on either side of the Dwarves' ancestral road to the mountains...']. The Narrator never mentions anything related to this social insult explicitly, but it doubtless adds to the sting ... At first, Bilbo's hiring [as a professional thief, or 'Expert Treasure-hunter' — a kind of independent contractor] seems like a rather absurd human resources failure, but his burglarious career [as Gandalf's 'chosen and selected burglar' — 'a resonant and rather ominous phrase that seems to speak of more than just Gandalf's choice'] ends up going in some quite surprising directions ... Unlikely though it may seem to absolutely everyone, Bilbo is in some sense the burglar of destiny ... [And despite what may have been Bilbo's initially taking offense at the dwarves’ assessment of him as both burglar and adventurer material, the hobbit is genuinely concerned about that assessment and] immediately wants to prove himself fierce, and to live up to the name of Burglar. What is at stake here is not merely Bilbo's own desire for adventure, but his identity...' (Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 6-7, 27-29; emphasis mine).
Peter Jackson, in his film, paints Bilbo, initially, as very much a mild-mannered 'mama's boy' — only, in his case, really a 'papa's boy', as what typically would reflect a gentlehobbit’s ‘feminine side’, a mother-inspired 'matronly softness' or gentility, ironically resides in him as part of his Bagginsish (paternal) heritage. Beyond therefore what Dorothy Matthews describes as an 'inherited ... spirited side' that has been 'repressed' by Bilbo's 'rather fuddy-duddy' Baggins nature which, she says, is 'more than a little feminine', Jackson introduces the hobbit in the nighttime Bag-End scene as one, rather, who is over-sensitive to his temporal, or physical, family possessions — exactly the kind of petty concerns that are the hobbit's biggest worries at this point:
'That's my mother's glory box, can you please not do that?' ... 'Ah, no, that— that's Grandpa Mungo's chair, no! ... uh, so is that: take it back, please — take it back! It's antique — not for sitting on, thank you!' ... 'That is a book, not a coaster ... And— put ... that map ... down' ... 'Ex— excuse me, that is a doily, not ... a dish cloth!' ... 'Bebother and confusticate these dwarves! ... Look at the state of my kitchen! There's mud trod into the carpet, they— they've pillaged the pantry! I'm not even going tell you what they've done in the bathroom — they've all but destroyed the plumbing! — I don't understand what they're doing in my house!'. . .
Such preoccupying concerns for food, tidyness, and in-hole decor, which plague Bilbo at the story's start, become, as he leaves them behind, further indicators of his growth and of the Gandalf-promised 'good' this strange adventure does him. As if instinctively aware of where the hobbit currently stands on his path to growth, however, the dwarves spontaneously create a song that clearly mocks the hobbit's inordinate preoccupation with his possessions: 'Chip the glasses and crack the plates!' they sing. 'That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!' And, in fact, chipped glasses and cracked plates are exactly the kind of annoyances — like being without a pocket handkerchief — that presently over-bother and overwhelm the hobbit at this point. One clear purpose the adventure has for Bilbo (one way it proves 'good' for him) is to free him from the trifling concerns that now threaten to dominate and define him . . . (see Devin Brown, The Christian World of THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 90-91; Dorothy Matthews, 'The Psychological Journey of Bilbo Baggins', in A Tolkien Compass, ed., Jared Lobdell [1975, rev. 2003], pp. 30-31).
[after supper, the dwarves, in a spirit of fun (as they've quite easily detected that their brand of tomfoolery severely agitates the hobbit) begin to toss Bilbo's plates to one another in a kind of pre-washing 'game', and then start using his cutlery to play music and mark its timing with their beating of it — which naturally segues into their playful dwarf-song, Blunt the Knives...]
Bilbo: Excuse— me! That's my mother's Westfarthing pottery — it's over a hundred years old! ... And, and— can— can you ... not do that — you'll blunt them!
Bofur: Oooh, d'you hear that, lads? — He says we'll blunt the knives! . . .
Kili: Blunt the knives, bend the forks!
Fili: Smash the bottles and burn the corks!
All: Chip the glasses and crack the plates!
That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!
Cut the cloth, tread on the fat!
Leave the bones on the bedroom-mat!
Pour the milk on the pantry-floor!
Splash the wine on every door!
Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl;
Pound them up with a thumping pole;
When you're finished, if they are whole,
Send them down the hall to roll!
[Gandalf laughs merrily as he watches their tuneful dwarvish antics eventually produce glistening stacks of washed plates, drinking-glasses, and cutlery]
All the dwarves: — That's what Bilbo Baggins hates! [they join in the wizard's laughter, especially when Bilbo walks into the kitchen right at song's end to see all of his hobbit-dishes cleaned and stacked, as though nothing had ever happened] . . .~ from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Tolkien's transporting-transforming hobbit-tale seeks to initiate the inexperienced, perhaps the spiritually stagnant, into an enchanted world of self-discovery, to entice them from their womblike homes into a 'magical otherness'; it seeks to transform hausfraus (housekeepers) into heroes, selfish little selves into brave and selfless nobles who are 'more worthy to wear the armour of ... princes than many that have looked more comely in it.' Above all, Bilbo's story of middle-aged trepidation turned finally to intrepid, quixotic errantry celebrates the idea that it is never too late to stumble upon one's own heroic possibilities that only await, maybe, the 'chance to come out', to perchance transform one into that resourceful 'lucky number' — even, perhaps, to change the world. THE HOBBIT thus becomes for its fantastically fortunate readers across the globe an 'archetypal quest' that is, for those who 'remain Tookishly determined to see it through', charged with profound meaning and purpose. To embrace just such 'an unexpected journey' and 'uncomfortable' adventure as once upon a time faced Bungo and Belladonna's bourgeois son (while it may prove to be its own reward) is to find that such audacious daring proves also highly 'profitable' indeed, as it was for Bilbo.
For in the end, Tolkien seems to say, all may become 'Expert Treasure-hunters' like Mr. Baggins, acquiring by such an adventuring spirit treasures that are generally, however, of a very different kind from the 'jealous' and 'fierce' variety of 'Durin's sons'. Certainly not therefore the 'treasures' Bilbo thought initially to have set out with thirteen dwarves to reclaim from a terrible dragon, these may however, and after all, turn out to be (what are for some) the even higher and more exquisite treasures of 'courage and wisdom ... blended in measure,' as a dying Thorin Oakenshield concedes. One may find, in fact, that they are the very treasures of the 'good' that an adventure taken into the wide (and sometimes Wild) world might give, as Gandalf indeed promised, to one who dares to so adventure (and so succeed 'beyond all sane expectations'), but also of the 'good' that may thereafter be given by the adventurer himself to the wider world henceforth, as by that happy, 'unlooked for' revelation he may truly come to 'find' his life as he 'loses' it in heroic love, sacrifice, and service to his fellow creatures.
But as things stand just now, at the outset, for Mr. Bilbo Baggins, all such promise of adventure and 'good' reward is not altogether clear or apparent — especially in such garish light of his initial 'confusticating' encounter with this odd wizard and thirteen dwarves in tow from the Blue Mountains who, having descended en masse on Bilbo's hobbit-hole, have just fallen short of ransacking it in their appetite-fueled rampage of his cellars and pantries. Bilbo's priorities just now, in middle-aged life, are moreover, as Dorothy Matthews notes, of an entirely different 'colour' from those of the adventure-seeking dwarves. For far from indulging in any of the aggressively shaded traits or tendencies bequeathed by his Tookish forebears, the owner and proprietor of Bag-End, in his somewhat 'withdrawn, self-centered life' (brandishing a personality that is far from 'balanced' or integrated), is 'much more interested, for instance, in keeping a tidy house, cooking a tempting meal, and keeping himself in pocket handkerchiefs than he is in [‘bolting into the blue’ — that is, in] venturing boldly into the world to find what life may have in store for him...' (Dorothy Matthews, 'The Psychological Journey of Bilbo Baggins', in A Tolkien Compass, ed., Jared Lobdell [1975, rev. 2003], p. 31).
Bilbo [shortly after passing out cold on the (atrium) hallway-mat at Bag-End upon learning, in their after-dinner Erebor discussion, of the perilous details involved in the dwarves' dragon-quest, but sitting now comfortably beside a parlour fire, sipping a hot drink.... To Gandalf]: ... I'll be alright — just let me ... sit quietly for a moment.
Gandalf: — You've been sitting quietly for far too long! [with Bilbo rather taken aback at the seemingly callous, insensitive comment] — Tell me — when did doilies and your mother's dishes become so important to you? ... I remember a young hobbit who was always running off in search of Elves in the woods! — who would stay out late, come home, after dark, trailing mud and twigs and fireflies — a young hobbit who would have liked nothing better than to find out what was beyond the borders of the Shire! ... The world ... is not in your books and maps [gesturing to the large, round parlour window] — it's out there!
Bilbo [his Bagginsish side desperate to make its case]: — I can't just go running off ... into the blue! — I am a Baggins, hmm? [holding up his right index-finger, as if to emphasize, or punctuate the point] — of Bag-End!
Gandalf: — You are also a Took! [at which comment Bilbo's head collapses back onto his soft armchair in defeat, as if by its utterance the wizard had pulled from his hat his best trick to vanquish the hobbit, as he gestures to a portrait of the 'Old Took' on Bilbo's wall, to evoke thoughts of Bilbo's more distant ancestry] ... Did you know that your great, great, great, great uncle Bullroarer Took, was so large he could ride a real horse? [Bilbo nods his head, 'Yes', closing his eyes, as if he's heard the tale a thousand times before] Yes, well he could! — In the Battle of Green Fields, he charged the Goblin ranks! ... He swung his club so hard, it knocked the Goblin-king's head clean off, and it sailed a hundred yards through the air, and went down a rabbit hole ... And thus, the battle was won! (... and the game of golf invented at the same time).
Bilbo [smiling, in spite of himself, while remembering 'the wandering wizard' all over again, with great fondness]: I do believe ... you made that up.
Gandalf [smiling now too, as he sits his old bones down upon a chair in a spirit of contented — albeit presumed — triumph]: Well ... all good stories deserve embellishment ... You'll have a tale or two to tell of your own ... when you come back.
Bilbo [his Tookish side smiling in amazed satisfaction at the resolve, his Bagginsish side looking for some shred of assurance]: ... Can you promise that I will come back?
Gandalf [thoughtful, then poignantly]: ... No ... And if you do — you'll not be the same ...
Bilbo [his Bagginsish sense finally taking hold of the better, more practical part of him]: ... That's what I thought ... [setting down the hot drink, rising to his feet:] Sorry, Gandalf: I can't sign this ... [clenching his hands in sad resignation:] You've got ... the wrong hobbit [thus stiffened by an odd mixture of excitement and anxiety from two hereditary sources, Bilbo Baggins turns and walks from the room, the apparent victor, after all] . . . ~ from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
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(This post was edited by entmaiden on Mar 23 2015, 12:27am)
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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 16 2015, 3:21am
Post #2 of 22
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An Unexpected Journey . . . (Part 1)
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This begins the third of a 12-part discussion focusing on various aspects of Tolkien's writing and Jackson's filming of THE HOBBIT (wherein we might also identify or discover together points of 'harmony' in book and film):
I. THE KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN and THE SEVEN HOUSES OF THE DWARVES
II. A Chance Evening Meeting at Bree and THE QUEST of EREBOR
III. An Unexpected Journey . . .
IV. Azanulbizar, Azog, and the Necromancer . . .
V. Galadriel's Telepathy with Gandalf: Ósanwe 'thought-speech' and Free-will . . .
VI. Bilbo, Sméagol-Gollum, Smaug, and the One Ring of Power . . .
VII. The White Council drives The Necromancer from Dol Guldur . . .
VIII. BALIN AND MORIA
IX. Girion's Heir: Bard's Heritage & Dynasty . . .
X. What's in a Date? Tolkien and Christian Symbolism . . .
XI. What's in a Number? Tolkien's Three and Seven . . .
XII. The Gift of Death and The Great End . . .
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(This post was edited by entmaiden on Mar 23 2015, 12:57am)
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Pandallo
Rivendell
Mar 16 2015, 3:52am
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"All good stories deserve embellishment"
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And I personally feel that's what Peter Jackson has done with The Hobbit, it is a wonderful book as many of the analysis of the era and the storied personalities who have commented on it throughout time would attest to, but I do find it a little sad that Tolkien never did finish setting The Hobbit more inline with Lord of the Rings.
Now I love the book and find it to be a charming, if not brief masterpiece, but it feels too much of a skeleton, especially considering the wealth and breadth of information in Lord of the Rings, so I will say that Peter Jackson has done a fine job aligning The Hobbit with the Lord of the Rings for his movies and as he points out "All good stories deserve embellishment" which should be the tag-line for the entire trilogy.
Again, thank you for your due diligence and amazing in-depth description of each piece of the narrative and contrasting both movie and book.
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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 16 2015, 6:01pm
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Actualizing Tolkien's 'Embellishment' vision . . .
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Yes, that's what's so hard, as you read about Tolkien's lifelong development of his original hobbit-tale, contemplating as he did the various changes needed to 'harmonize' it with his greater legendarium (as that, too, was never static but always changing).
I, for one, wish (perhaps as you do) that he might have been blessed by the Valar-gods with the life expectancy of a Dúnadan ... or of a Dwarf ... or, for that matter, simply of a long-lived Hobbit (...at any rate, let our beloved fantasy Master, at minimum, surpass the age of the Old Took and Bilbo ... please!). But, alas. Such would have done nicely, to give Tolkien enough time, perhaps, to 're-think' and maybe accomplish it all.
What's wonderful about Jackson, is that he actually did filmically, or cinematically, what Tolkien certainly dreamt about, and at least, with a good 'college try', attempted, literarily.
And Jackson's 'embellishment' has been fantastic. For, with the many industry strains (restraints / constraints) and pulls he surely felt, as part and parcel of his artistic medium — with his responsibility to 'deliver' for a worldwide audience (not all segments of which know, not by a long shot, Tolkien, the writer — and you know what I mean by 'know'), and not just to appease them, but also (most critically for the film-makers) the 'powers that be' which literally hold the key for Jackson & Co. to continue their craft — his final artistic result is astonishing to my mind. Indeed, I marvel that he and his team were able to include as much of canonical, 'genuine Tolkien' as they did, or were able to.
And so, what goes beyond thrilling, for me, is that they are amongst the foremost of those whom Tolkien dreamt about, who would finally come along to 'embellish' his stories and sub-creatively help to 'finish' his vision of creating 'a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic [SILMARILLION] to the level of the romantic fairy-story [LOTR / THE HOBBIT] ... redolent of our 'air' ... the clime and soil of the North West [.. with its] cycles ... linked to a majestic whole, and [with] scope [yet left] for other minds and hands, wielding paint [such as from the pens and brushes of Alan Lee and John Howe] and music [such inspired compositions as from Howard Shore] and drama [such ingenious translations to the stage or motion-picture screen, as from Peter Jackson & Co.]...'
And that Jackson and his team actually have done albeit in a different medium what Tolkien, in the end, only dreamt about — merging (at long last!) in courses of similar narrative tone the 'low-' and 'high-mimetic' heroisms of his two great 'romantic' fairy-tales, and have done this so brilliantly and breathtakingly — is, for me, thrilling beyond belief.
What a marvelous recognition, then: — that "All good stories deserve embellishment" be taken to stand as 'the tag-line for the entire [There and Back Again] trilogy'! I couldn't agree with you more :) — thank you for that!
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(This post was edited by entmaiden on Mar 23 2015, 12:55am)
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Lio
Lorien
Mar 16 2015, 10:33pm
Post #5 of 22
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I've seen it speculated about here and there, but was the location/identity of Mount Gram ever confirmed? I can't seem to find anything official establishing a link to Gudabad.
Oh and thanks for the interesting read, keep 'em coming! 
Dwalin Balin Kili Fili Dori Nori Ori Oin Gloin Bifur Bofur Bombur Thorin
Orcs are mammals!
"Don't laugh at the Dwarves because they will mess you up." — Dean O'Gorman (Fili)
Want to chat? AIM me at Yami Liokaiser! (Does anyone still use AIM?)
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Mar 16 2015, 11:45pm
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I'm not sure what you are confused about. Mount Gram is not hard to locate on any map of Eriador. It is near the Ettenmoors, around 150 miles almost directly north of the Last Bridge crossing the Hoarwell on the Great East Road.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Mar 16 2015, 11:48pm)
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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 17 2015, 12:39am
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Nothing definitive from the author about Gundabad being Mt. Gram, as Tolkien never explicitly clarified it, as much else that he left purposefully 'in the mythic mists and shadows' of history and legend.
Rateliff simply makes a strong philological case for it, based on Tolkien's own knowledge and love of Norse / Germanic languages and myth, his ever-evolving histories of the Orcs and Goblins which seem to accord, and the fact that a Goblin-king makes it his reigning seat of power in the north of Middle-earth.
Fonstad in her Atlas (on which, sadly, many subsequent maps have been based) even takes a wild guess, placing Gram within the boundaries of Eriador itself, though still at the northern tip of the Ettenmoors branch of the Hithaeglir (Misty Mountains) in the North, situating the at least one-time Goblin capital northwest of the Coldfells of Rhűdaur, above Imladris (Rivendell) and northeast of Amon Sűl (Weathertop) and the Weather Hills.
I subscribe to Rateliff's view, which I feel holds more weight and, by its argument (which Fonstad doesn't even attempt), persuades in both its logic and from what we know about Tolkien's literary-linguistic methods as masterfully revealed in The History of Middle-earth.
Though, really, in the end, it's 'up for grabs'... 
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(This post was edited by entmaiden on Mar 23 2015, 12:56am)
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Mar 17 2015, 4:02am
Post #9 of 22
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I never realized that Tolkien never gave the exact location of Mount Gram; nor that it was not identified on any of the maps drawn by Tolkien or his son Christopher. Gundabad is positively identifed, though, on Tolkien's map of Wilderland, so I am reasonably confident that the two were not the same.
I do see that Fonstad's given location for Mount Gram seems to be widely accepted; it even turns up on the maps for The One Ring Roleplaying Game.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Mar 17 2015, 4:14am)
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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 17 2015, 5:27am
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Mount Gundabad does indeed show up on Tolkien's Wilderland map, as that is the site's location, as intended by Tolkien, the author. That location is beyond dispute.
It is Fonstad (and let it be known that otherwise hers is a superb and admirable reference work, which indeed perhaps offers the very reason why her cartographic pronouncements are almost unequivocally, even universally accepted) who guesses at where Tolkien might have envisioned the Orc-infested 'Mount Gram' to be situated in his seemingly exhaustively realized secondary world — that is, if it is not one and the same with Mount Gundabad, as Rateliff postulates that it is.
If alternatively, then, the substance of Rateliff's argument had been, in fact, Tolkien's 'veiled' intent — a technique of historical or legendary obscurity that he often employed (as it accords with the way that real history comes down to us: sometimes murky or confused, or at least lacking a full clarity of resolution or definition) — such would make Fonstad's verifiable guess at 'Gram' irrelevant.
At the same time, it must be said, that Rateliff's, although perhaps more scholarly in its grounding and approach, must also be seen as a guess, but demonstrably a very good one (as some see Fonstad's also to be). Bottom line: No one really knows — its location cannot, pending some unforeseen documentary revelation, be proved.
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(This post was edited by chauvelin2000 on Mar 17 2015, 5:32am)
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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 17 2015, 6:13am
Post #11 of 22
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The above statement about Gundabad and the Dwarven 'awakening' connection should read: '... one of the sacred sites ...' as that mountain-stronghold stands as the locus for the arising of the Folk of Durin, whose people comprise just one of the Seven Houses of the Dwarves.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Mar 17 2015, 1:12pm
Post #12 of 22
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Yes, I know (now) that Fonstad's placement was a guess.
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I acknowledged that Fonstad's placement of Mount Gram was based on speculation in a previous post. Rateliff's equation of Mount Gram with Gundabad is also a guess, albeit an informed one.
I imagine that every, large Orc community has its own king or chief, though, so the Goblin-king of Mount Gram need not be connnected to either the Great Golblin of Goblin-town or the Orcs of Mount Gundabad.
While the possibility certain exists that Tolkien intended Gram and Gundabad to be the same, I will continue to consider them to be separate sites if only because--from the perspective of a gamer--keeping them separate provides more options for a gamemaster and more opportunities for adventures and encounters.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
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Michelle Johnston
Rohan
Mar 17 2015, 1:57pm
Post #13 of 22
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This section is particularly interesting to me because I have a view about the first 110 minutes of An Unexpected Journey not from my life long interest in Tolkien but as a lover of film.
Reading your materials I am looking for the story as opposed to the set up and what one is reminded of is there is a great deal of set up material and even back ground on the set up material but not very much story. We come to know but not to experience. But then we hit my other key interest the icons of the story
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[But with the Map and Key] I saw that I had at any rate one good argument for my plan; and if I may say so, I brought it out at the right moment ... [For from that moment on] Thorin really made up his mind to follow my plan, as far as a secret expedition went at any rate
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In story telling terms here we have momentum. One character is deciding to bait another or increase his curiosity to a point when he (Thorin) Acts. So there are two interesting elements to the map and the key as regards the film adaption :-
1) The film makers do not place any great significance with where the map and the key came from or why. (Its hidden away in the EE of DOS).
2) They do not use them as bait by which Thorin would have been prepared to make a journey.
Imagine at the Prancing Pony "First I will find you a burglar then I will find away for your burglar to enter the mountain by stealth unseen and unknown should the Dragon be alive. Now Thorin Oakenshield will you hearken to this advice!."
I like that as a Tolkien fan but i also like it as a lover of film which communicates effectively, quickly and with economy.
My Dear Bilbo something is the matter with you! you are not the same hobbit that you were.
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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 18 2015, 4:22am
Post #14 of 22
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Motivating Uses of Map & Key . . .
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Yes, I can see for role-playing purposes and gaming terrain that Fonstad's placement of Gram definitely opens up new vistas and possibilities for game-play. And her guess still remains an excellent one: the two locales as she envisions them in relation to one another (Gram and Gundabad) are, after all, in the same general mountainous region and relatively close to one another. And so either Rateliff's or Fonstad's interpretation certainly 'works' and, in any case, harmonizes with Tolkien, no matter which approach one subscribes to.
As for screenplay 'momentum', Michelle does bring up some interesting considerations as per the film-writers 'take' on the Map & Key motifs, which they seem, indeed, to have mysteriously down-played for their filmic retellings — not simply the history of Thrór's Map & Key but also in how these 'key' objects were utilized (or under-utilized, depending on how you look at it) as plot devices to pique interest, kindle intrigue and motivation in the story's main characters as well as in the audience. All of which may have served, certainly, to 'quicken the pace' of the first trilogy installment, and therefore drive the story forward with a heightened level of excitement or anticipation, 'baiting' us as much as Thorin.
Excellent thoughts.
(This post was edited by chauvelin2000 on Mar 18 2015, 4:23am)
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Lio
Lorien
Mar 18 2015, 11:07pm
Post #15 of 22
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Thanks for the clarifications you two
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I guessed the location of Mount Gram would be based on speculation, but if it had ever been confirmed and I missed it somehow, I would have like to have known the source.
In a way, maybe it's better not to know its exact position? Actually for me the bigger question is, what were goblins doing all the way in the Shire anyway, and how did they get there?! Actually leaving the location of Mount Gram sketchy makes the situation a bit easier to imagine for me, because the question becomes less important in my mind if I don't know where Mount Gram is. (Sorry if that made no sense. I'm not so good at explaining what I mean.  )
Dwalin Balin Kili Fili Dori Nori Ori Oin Gloin Bifur Bofur Bombur Thorin
Orcs are mammals!
"Don't laugh at the Dwarves because they will mess you up." — Dean O'Gorman (Fili)
Want to chat? AIM me at Yami Liokaiser! (Does anyone still use AIM?)
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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 19 2015, 3:41am
Post #16 of 22
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Yes, I agree, Lio. I actually warm as well to Tolkien's way of leaving many things obscure – purposefully leaving certain bits of legend and 'lore', certain mythical concepts, as 'mysteries'. For as one of the world’s great language-origin scholars, it was a kind of literary-historical game for him. 'Asterisk' research (as Tom Shippey famously coined Tolkien's philological 'hobby') — that is, running after obscure philological clues or historical allusions to ‘crack’ their mystery, but which ultimately and inevitably, without conclusive evidence, must therefore remain unanswered, with their answers tantalizingly left in the mists of history for further scholarly errantry — was a professional pastime Tolkien absolutely adored. Such was Tolkien’s eccentric bent and affinity for the history and meaning of words.
Tolkien fell absolutely silent sometimes on certain 'cloudy' allusions, leaving many points of his grand mythos unanswered, for he wanted his readers to do the very thing he had conditioned himself to do — to ask questions about matters obscure, shrouded in the mists of Time. These were, after all, the types of questions Tolkien himself loved to ask: he relished a full-on charge into those mists, a deep delving for the 'answers' (no matter that such satisfying finalities may not actually be obtainable). And indeed, as would occur quite regularly for even a world-class philologist, no clear answers were to be found, and it was to his readers that he wished to present those same growth-promoting dilemmas (he was after all, first and foremost, a teacher).
'Was Gram, in fact, Gundabad?' ... 'Was the Arkenstone a Silmaril of Fëanor?' ... are exactly the sorts of mysterious 'grail' questions that Tolkien would have decided simply to leave 'unanswered' (just as he'd opted, even after having re-written the first few chapters, to fully abandon his 1960 revision of THE HOBBIT; and this, despite his long-held hope to align its juvenile-directed language with the high-styled language of its sequel). Ultimately, however, for Tolkien, some things were just better off left alone, undone, or 'unsaid' . . .
It is well known, for example, through his Letters and other writings, that Tolkien relished the 'untold story'. While he recognized that a story must certainly be told 'or there is no story,’ he also knew that the best tales, or ‘the most moving’ ones, are those that remain ‘untold’, unspoken, even shrouded in mystery. Such a holding-back of information inevitably adds to the tale-telling a mounting fascination and intrigue for the reader, but also an even greater sense of 'historical' reality. Why? Because that’s exactly what happens with real history and the nature of the sometimes cloudy, even contradictory ways, that stories and tales and legends about what 'occurred' in the past actually make their way to the present day.
Tolkien had not even consciously realized with his original 1931-37 writing of THE HOBBIT that Bilbo & Company had in fact stumbled into the world of his earlier (and long-extant) mythology. It was only after the fact that he realized, or in Tolkien's words, 'discovered what was already there' that this is exactly what had happened to his hobbit — that Bilbo, quite by chance (subconsciously for Tolkien), had stumbled into the author's already long-established mythic (SILMARILLION) world, albeit that world as it later became known to Middle-earth’s Third-Age inhabitants. And so it is that some things, for Tolkien, were left unsaid because Tolkien himself simply hadn't 'discovered' them yet, or perhaps he 'thought better of it' and decided simply not to go 'searching' after them.
And so, your comment, then, made perfect sense, Lio, and your explanation was ideal, for it may have been precisely the reason that Tolkien opted to leave Gram's exact cartographic positioning obscure — to draw focus to the heroic 'golf' story itself (Bullroarer's clash with the Goblin King), and not to the whys and wherefores of its origins, which he probably desired, after all, to remain in the mists, beyond the distant borders . . . it thus was a tale, perhaps, made all the better for it . . .
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(This post was edited by Ataahua on Mar 21 2015, 8:20pm)
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dormouse
Half-elven
Mar 19 2015, 9:27am
Post #17 of 22
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It is well known, for example, through his Letters and other writings, that Tolkien relished the 'untold story'. While he recognized that a story must certainly be told 'or there is no story,’ he also knew that the best tales, or ‘the most moving’ ones, are those that remain ‘untold’, unspoken, even shrouded in mystery. Such a holding-back of information inevitably adds to the tale-telling a mounting fascination and intrigue for the reader, but also an even greater sense of 'historical' reality. Why? Because that’s exactly what happens with real history and the nature of the sometimes cloudy, even contradictory ways, that stories and tales and legends about what 'occurred' in the past actually make their way to the present day.
It is one of the things I love about Tolkien's writing - and, as a historian, understand. The untied threads, the mysteries, the things that wait to be 'discovered'. Like real history, Tolkien leaves you wondering and wanting more.
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Michelle Johnston
Rohan
Mar 19 2015, 7:02pm
Post #18 of 22
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What fascinates me is the way that sense of depth of the untold stories of centuries of history took on an even stronger hold as he grew older paralleling his own life but I also think it developed for another reason.
By the time he was well into writing the LOTR and then on into his Silmarillion revisions his ability to mediate for his reader grew stronger. When I look at the later Tuor, Hurins family and the Arthrabeth the characters in the foreground have become more real more relatable so the foreground speaks more directly to me and the untold stories and distant vistas come alive even more. I am looking back towards a distance past with a greater sense of perspective of the now.
You know my view of the Arkenstone and your remark chimes with that perfectly. It is the tantalising possibility that is far more interesting than the forensic proof.
I also love the enigmatic nature of some of his sub creation who is Tom Bombadil who conferred Beorn with the capacity for skin changing and where does he sit in the music was he part of that plan that produced the Ents and The Eagles. All benefit from us walking toward the question rather than knowing the answer.
Great Thread.
My Dear Bilbo something is the matter with you! you are not the same hobbit that you were.
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Lio
Lorien
Mar 20 2015, 12:51am
Post #19 of 22
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That's a much better way to put it!
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At the same time, there are sooo many things I wish Tolkien had elaborated more. But of course the mystery is part of the appeal of his works. And for every question answered a dozen more pop up -- the more you know, the more you realize how much more there is to know!
Dwalin Balin Kili Fili Dori Nori Ori Oin Gloin Bifur Bofur Bombur Thorin
Orcs are mammals!
"Don't laugh at the Dwarves because they will mess you up." — Dean O'Gorman (Fili)
Want to chat? AIM me at Yami Liokaiser! (Does anyone still use AIM?)
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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 21 2015, 11:41am
Post #20 of 22
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Tolkien: Immersing Us in Mysteries . . .
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Yes, you're quite right, Michelle — that, as Tolkien matured in years, his capacity to 'mediate' for his readers, as you say, did increase as he became more and more preoccupied with life's profounder questions — with life's 'heavies' as these informed his mythology — trying to synthesize the work of a lifetime to bring it into harmony with itself, both storially and philosophically.
Some of Tolkien's deepest meditations came in these later years with, for example, and as you mentioned, Michelle, Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, or The Converse (Debate) of Finrod and Andreth: Of Death and the Children of Eru, and the Marring [or Fall] of Men,' as found in The History of Middle-earth X: Morgoth's Ring (pp. 301-366), in which he endeavors to arrive at a synthesis for the meaning of death and mortality (certainly part of the 'more real, more relatable' you referenced), and even immortality, as over the millennia humankind has striven to understand these complex ideas, their relationships, as also their profound, associated mysteries . . . in which Tolkien ends up proclaiming, through a vision had by none other than Finrod Felagund (founding King of Nargothrond), that in some fashion Man himself is destined to become the savior of the world in the 'unmarring' of Arda — 'not merely undoing the marring or evil wrought by Melkor-Morgoth, but by producing a third thing, 'Arda-Remade' [earth renewed to its paradisaical glory] for Eru Ilúvatar never merely undoes the past, but brings into being something new, richer than the 'first design'…'
'In Arda-Remade Elves and Men will each separately find joy and content, and an interplay of friendship, a bond of which will be the Past ...' 'Even as did your heart when I spoke of your unrest, so now mine leaps up at the hearing of good news [gospel — Evangelium!] This then, I propound, was the errand of Men, not the followers, but [something greater, richer —] the heirs and fulfillers of all: to heal the Marring of Arda, already foreshadowed [foretold and foreordained within the First Music of the Ainur] before their devising to put it beyond any marring of Melkor [spiritual or temporal corruption] or any other spirit of malice for ever]; and to do more, as agents of the magnificence of Eru: to enlarge the Music and surpass the vision of the World! For that Arda Healed shall not be Arda Unmarred, but a third thing and greater, and yet the same [Arda Remade]. I have conversed with the Valar who were present at the making of the Music ere the being of the World began. And now I wonder: Did they hear the end of the Music? Was there not something in or beyond the final chords of Eru which, being overwhelmed thereby, they did not perceive?'...
'Then, lord,' said Andreth* ... 'you believe in this Hope?'
'Ask me not yet,' [Finrod] answered. 'For it is still to me but strange news that comes from afar [gospel 'good news']. No such hope was ever spoken to the Quendi. To you [Men] only it was sent. And yet through you we may hear it and lift up our hearts.' He paused a while, and then looking gravely at Andreth he said: 'Yes, Wise-woman, maybe it was ordained that we Quendi, and ye Atani, ere the world grows old, should meet and bring news one to another, and so we should learn of the Hope from you: ordained, indeed, that thou and I, Andreth, should sit here and speak together, across the gulf that divides our kindreds, so that while the Shadow still broods in the North we should not be wholly afraid.' — from the Converse of Finrod Felagund and Andreth the Wise-woman
* Andreth the Wise-woman — descendant of Bëor the Old, daughter of Boromir, sister of Bregor, and whose nephew therefore was the great Barahir, and grand-nephew, Beren One-hand (for whom Finrod would sacrifice his own life); she, adaneth 'woman of Men' (short-lived, mortal), loved (as would Beren) an Elda (long-lived, immortal): Aegnor, warrior-son of Finarfin, and thus brother of Finrod himself and of Galadriel; Aegnor was fated to perish in Morgoth's 'Sudden Flame', in which Andreth possibly also perished. Of course, she would then have been a very old woman [about 94 in FA 455], but Finrod did prophesy that Andreth would outlive Aegnor (although, because of her mortality, this could not have been by more than a few years).
These late-life meditations [post-1968] and linguistic writings of Tolkien's represent some of our Grand Master's most profound philosophies and ideas ... of which even at this late date in his own life he leaves much to question ... much unanswered ... much in the mysterious, mythical mists! 'The prophecy of Andreth' (referenced above, alluding to the world-saving role of Men) even speaks to 'the Second Prophecy of Mandos' and foretells that 'the Great Dragon, Ancalagon the Black' (whose mythological significance within the legendarium becomes significantly enhanced) is to return to fight in the Last Battle (Dagor Dagorath) when Morgoth returns from Outside to destroy the world at the end of time [the Great End], wherein he is fated to be slain by Túrin Turambar, who will return from the dead for that final deed. These mighty events are to precede '... the 'Vision of Eru' of which the Valar speak ... a vision of what was designed to be when Arda was complete — of living things and even of the very lands and seas of Arda made eternal and indestructible, for ever beautiful and new'†), and the Second Music of the Ainur shall sound.
Until that time, that ancient hero of the War of Wrath, Eärendil, still, by the grace of the Valar and with Fate in harmonious trajectory, sails the heavens in his starcraft Vingilot wearing upon his brow one of the thrice-renowned Silmarils, keeping careful watch upon the ramparts of the sky, over the Doors of Night, ever vigilant against the return of Melkor from the Timeless Void (until that mighty Morgoth is allowed one last time to engage in final Battle upon the plains of Valinor against the forces of Light (the Dagor Dagorath 'Battle of Battles'), in which he is vanquished forever and holy Men and Elves — the Children of Ilúvatar — become the eternal victors, inheriting Earth Renewed† ... and Infinitely more, when both Men and Elves are 'summoned' to the Lands of the Gods); The History of Middle-earth X: Morgoth's Ring, pp. 317-18
† 'And then suddenly I beheld as a vision Arda Remade; and there the Eldar completed but not ended could abide in the present for ever, and then walk, maybe, with the Children of Men, their deliverers, and sing to them such songs as, even in the Bliss beyond bliss, should make the green valleys ring and the everlasting mountain-tops to throb like harps...''
These words were spoken at the time of the Siege of Angband (during the days of the Long Peace, 46 years before Morgoth broke the siege in the Battle of Sudden Flame) by the High-Elda Finrod Felagund ('Caves-hewer', founding King of Nargothrond) in his philosophical Converse with Andreth the Wise-woman*, who in response to Finrod's prophetic words affirms, 'by our aid [that is, by the Great Deliverer, the Hope of all who would be made holy] your everlasting mansions were to be prepared ... Eru [prepared] a way of healing that will heal both our fathers and ourselves and those that shall follow us ... those of the 'Old Hope', the 'Great Hope of Men' (as they call themselves) ... believe that His secret has been handed down from the days before our Wounding [Fall] ... and they see that the Nameless [the Black God Terrible] can (as they think ) be defied ... They say ... that the One will himself enter into Arda [(Godwill be made flesh and) enter into the thing that He has made, and than which He is beyond measure greater], and heal Men and all the Marring [that is, fully ransom spiritual and physical death for all earth's creatures: consequences of the spiritual and temporal corruptions of the Fall of Man] from the beginning to the end. This they say ... is a rumour [prophecy] that has come down through years uncounted, even from the days of our Undoing [Fall]...' Finrod: 'Eru will surely not suffer Melkor to turn the world to his own will and to triumph in the End ... Therefore [the Measureless], if He will not relinquish His work to Melkor ... must come in to conquer him* ... [Yea,] ere all is ended, [this] new Light to oppose the Shadow, [this] Medicine for the Wounds [of spiritual and temporal corruption] ... must ... come from Without [from Eternity, where exists the Measureless, or the Eternal].' Tolkien: 'Eru ... appears in the Elvish tradition to demand two things from His Children (of either Kindred): belief in Him, and proceeding from that, hope or trust in Him (called by the Eldar estel)...' Finrod: 'If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own ... This is the last foundation of Estel, which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all His designs the issue must be for His Children's joy...' (The History of Middle-earth X: Morgoth's Ring, pp. 306, 319-322, 338, 351-52)
* 'To subdue Melkor ... and the Evil that he ... dissipated and sent out from himself into the very structure of the world ... Only Eru himself [through His Redeemer Son] could do this. Therefore, since it is unthinkable that Eru would abandon the world to the ultimate triumph and domination of Melkor (which could mean its ruin and reduction to chaos), Eru Himself must at some time come to oppose Melkor ... Since Finrod had already guessed that the redemptive function was originally specially assigned to Men, he probably proceeded to the expectation that ‘the coming of Eru’, if it took place, would be specially and primarily concerned with Men: that is, to an imaginative guess or vision that Eru [that is, God, but as God the Son] would come incarnated in human form [to purge Evil from the world]...' The History of Middle-earth X: Morgoth's Ring, pp. 334-35
And so, it becomes rather clear, even from 'exploring' just one alluring 'cavern' or 'cliffside' or 'barrow' or 'mount' of Tolkien's world, or from venturing down just one intriguingly mysterious 'path' into his deeper legendarium, that we arrive at one big yes to all that's been commented on — Michelle and dormouse and Lio are all 'spot on'. For indeed: Tolkien's 'mystery' and the 'enigmatic nature' of his 'sub-creation' wherein lies the Professor's tremendous 'appeal' — the 'tantalising possibilities' (such as may afford Otaku-sempai expansive vistas and 'opportunities' for game-play) that leave us all 'wondering and wanting more' — are 'far more interesting than the forensic proof'. All of these are thrilling aspects of Tolkien's universe to contemplate (which Peter Jackson and his screenwriters certainly pondered and touched upon as well!), and from each of them we stand only to benefit by 'walking toward the questions rather than knowing the answers...'
Thank you all for your inspiring thoughts!
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(This post was edited by entmaiden on Mar 23 2015, 12:56am)
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Lio
Lorien
Mar 22 2015, 12:37am
Post #21 of 22
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Hmm, for some reason this got me thinking about the possible connection between Hope and the Gift of Men.
That is, what if the Gift of Men is linked to, perhaps even necessary for, the Hope that proceeds through Men? This is perhaps implied by the rejection of the first being caused by, or resulting in, the absence of the second (Downfall of Númenor); while where Hope is present the Gift is upheld (Aragorn).
Not sure why this thought occurred to me exactly, or the how's and why's. Just throwing it out there.
Dwalin Balin Kili Fili Dori Nori Ori Oin Gloin Bifur Bofur Bombur Thorin
Orcs are mammals!
"Don't laugh at the Dwarves because they will mess you up." — Dean O'Gorman (Fili)
Want to chat? AIM me at Yami Liokaiser! (Does anyone still use AIM?)
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chauvelin2000
Bree
Mar 27 2015, 6:13am
Post #22 of 22
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Creation's Music and the All-father's Gifts to Men . . .
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As we'll see in this discussion-series' final post, Lio (following these that focus mainly on THE HOBBIT and Peter Jackson's films), the Gift of Men is (although perhaps surprising to some) Tolkien's reference to Death: he has Aragorn boldly state in his parting words to Arwen, as he helps her to understand, or at least to glimpse, the profound meaning of the great exit from mortal existence: 'In sorrow we must go, but not in despair'! And so, as King Elessar prepares to part through life's last portal leading to 'final death', he bequeaths to his beloved a true, abiding hope: 'Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory...'
This hopeful departure from mortality, then, represents Ilúvatar's special 'Gift of Men'. In that sense, it is indeed 'linked to' and 'necessary for' the Great Hope (who is the Great God Incarnate, referenced in the above 'Mysteries' post) that 'proceeds through Men', as you say. And while Death came into the world by Man's Fall and the beguilings of a black Serpent terrible,† who Men of ancient days called the Nameless — making it necessary for the One (the Measureless, who is the Great Hope of Men) to 'come from Without' or, as Tolkien also says, 'come in to conquer him' and to obliterate Death's seeming 'utterly final' effects — the hidden promise of Death (and an evil One's delight in it, who failed to comprehend the mind of God) — was, before Time itself or the creation of the World, primordially 'seeded' by those brashest, most discordant of Melkorian 'strains' that rose in clamourous contention with (to thereby violate) the heavenly themes of the First Music of the Ainur.
That Mighty Music was, in essence, creation's foreordained 'Story', in both its plan and execution, which Ilúvatar the All-father, in His wisdom and power, was able ultimately to turn to 'harmonious' symphony in the sounding of his overall Grand Theme — 'a symphony for his pleasure' and glory.†
For, as the story goes, the Ainur, the All-father's 'holy ones', are in the beginning called upon to blend their talents as 'sub-creators' — asked to participate and contextually collaborate by creating their own themes to harmonically merge with Ilúvatar's overall Grand Theme of the Great Music. And at last, they are invited to witness the mighty works of their thoughtful labours … The Ainur then gaze in wonder at the glories of their spiritual 'sub-creation'; and they behold in great vision, as it were, what Ilúvatar calls their 'minstrelsy': for they beheld
'...how beauty was whelmed in uproar and tumult and again new beauty arose therefrom, how the World changed and stars went out and stars were kindled [in the primeval heavens], and the air swept about the firmament, and the [heavenly orbs] were loosed on their courses and had life...'
Thus were the Ainur, by witnessing Ilúvatar's profound Vision of the spiritual creation of Eä, or the Universe, able to see what the transliteration of their collaborative Great Music into a material Reality would be like. They were, in essence, given a 'sneak preview' of the Birth, Life and Death of the Universe — a highly detailed template commensurate with the entire history — beginning to end — of a material, physical Universe that could exist inside ‘Time’ (It is, however, not a full preview, as Ilúvatar so intends, for in His omniscient wisdom He snatches it from the view of the Ainur before the showing of its Story is fully ended; for indeed, there was yet a guarded, secret something that He had left in store†) . . .
But when first this mighty enterprise began, Melkor† sought, in the Great Song's composition, to impose his own themes, 'loud and vain and arrogant', onto the All-father's Music, disrupting the great harmony of Ilúvatar's design. But more than this, he desired with a 'hot desire' that the Creation be all his own, born of his own will and might, and he thus essays with his theme 'to drown the other music by the violence of its voice...' And, as all melodies begin to founder 'in a sea of turbulent sound' it seems to Ilúvatar, who sits hearkening, that 'about his throne there was a raging storm, as of dark waters that made war one upon another in an endless wrath that would not be assuaged...'
Selfish and solitary, Melkor's turbulent theme, by which the divine 'harmonies [are] broken and destroyed,' is of singular, rather than contextual, origin: his discord thus produces 'war in heaven' before ever the World is created, his disharmonious influence persuading others of Ilúvatar's offspring to follow suit, twisting their music to Melkor's theme. The strains thus reach 'a depth of gloom and ugliness unimaginable' — 'two musics progressing at one time ... utterly at variance. One ... deep and wide and beautiful ... mingled with an unquenchable sorrow ... The other ... clamorous ... braying triumphantly against [its adversary, meaning] to drown it ... and many that sang nigh [Melkor] grew despondent and their thought was disturbed and their music faltered; but some* began to attune their music to his rather [than to the Great Theme wherein they began] ...Then Ilúvatar was grieved ... [and] wept ... And the discord of Melkor spread ever wider and the music darkened...'
* These followers of Melkor into the Outer Void, or Primeval Dark (when they were cast by Ilúvatar from the heavens) and, thereafter, to the newly formed Earth, were 'fallen' spirits in his service called the Shadow Folk, who, in Earth's unfolding Story would have 'dealings' with Elves and Men in their early histories. ~ History of Middle-earth I: The Book of Lost Tales, pp. 237, 239
'Amid the confusion' and 'amid the storm', Ilúvatar introduced a second,** and then a third*** theme (wholly unlike the first), to effectively contend with Melkor's musical violence, which now surges unabated, and holds 'the mastery'. But with each effort to foil these masterstrokes, Melkor is himself frustrated, for the One manages to incorporate, or to 'weave', many of Melkor's thematic elements — even his 'most triumphant notes' — into the Grand Theme, thereby heightening and glorifying the overall Music . . .
** The Second Theme, it has been said, held within its 'adornments' and 'embellishments' the Story of the Elves.
*** The Third Theme, is rumored to have contained 'the rest of the story', the same that ultimately was snatched from the Ainur's sight before its revelation was complete; for it is said to hold within it the 'Gifted' Story of Mankind, the final ending of which is known only to the All-father: '...the history was incomplete and the circles of time not full-wrought when the vision was taken away. And some have said that the vision ceased ere the fulfilment of the Dominion of Men and the fading of the Firstborn; wherefore, though the Music is over all, the Valar have not seen as with sight the Later Ages or the ending of the World:
† '...for to none but himself has Ilúvatar revealed all that he has in store, and in every age there come forth things that are new and have no foretelling, for they do not proceed from the past. And so it was that as this vision of the World was played before them, the Ainur saw that it contained things which they had not thought. And they saw with amazement the coming of the [sons of Men], and the habitation that was prepared for them; and they perceived that they themselves in the labour of their music had been busy with the [spiritual] preparation of this dwelling, and yet knew not that it had any purpose beyond its own beauty. For [whereas they had beheld with great joy the coming of the Quendi [Elves] and had in the Second Theme a part in the making of the Firstborn children of Ilúvatar [who were to the Ainur most like in nature though less in might and stature], the Atani [Men, or the Followers,] were conceived by Him alone; and they came with the Third [and final] Theme [of the Great Music], and were not in the theme which Ilúvatar propounded at the beginning [the First Theme], and none of the Ainur had part in their making [nor ... did [they] dare in their music to add anything to their fashion]. Therefore when they beheld them, the more did they love them, being [much more so than the Elves] things other than themselves, strange and free [and endowed with strange gifts — of which the Gift of Death is not the least], wherein they saw the mind of Ilúvatar reflected anew, and learned yet a little more of his wisdom, which otherwise had been hidden even from the Ainur ... [For the Ainur would be to the Children of Ilúvatar] rather their elders and their chieftains than their masters [the future Valar-gods]; and if ever in their dealings with Elves and Men the Ainur [thereafter] endeavoured to force them when they would not be guided, seldom [did] this [turn] to good, however good the intent...
'[Behold, therefore,] the Children of Ilúvatar [Q: Eruhíni Ilúvataro 'Children of the One God' (S: Erusen 'Children of Eru'), for whom the realm of Arda was created within the Halls of Anar 'the solar system'], Elves and Men, the Firstborn and the Followers. And amid all the splendours of the World, its vast halls and spaces, and its wheeling fires, Ilúvatar chose a place for their habitation ['the little realm'] in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the innumerable Stars. And ... thou must understand, Ćlfwine†, that when the Ainur had beheld this habitation [Arda, the Earth] in a vision and had seen the Children of Ilúvatar arise therein, then many of the most mighty among them bent all their thought and their desire towards that place. And of these Melkor† was the chief, even as he was in the beginning the greatest of the Ainur who took part in the Music. And he feigned, even to himself at first [for none are fully evil from their beginning], that he desired to go thither and order all things for the good of the Children of Ilúvatar, controlling the turmoils of the heat and the cold that had come to pass through him. But [of a truth] he desired [deep in his heart] rather to subdue to his will both Elves and Men, envying the gifts with which Ilúvatar promised to endow them; and he wished himself to have subjects and servants, and to be called Lord, and to be a master over other wills...' ~ The Music of the Ainur / The Ainulindalë
Even so — and notwithstanding such a marvelous phenomenon (of Ilúvatar's Music overtaking, enveloping, and subsuming Melkor's) appearing as it were unlooked for — the great heavenly conflict ('a war of sound') causes the very halls of Ilúvatar to shake, and the One resolves to put an end to the clamourous strife. Raising up his hands, he therefore conducts '…one chord, deeper than the Abyss, higher than the Firmament, piercing as the light of the eye of Ilúvatar...' And the Great Music ceases, and Ilúvatar speaks . . .
For 'the rest of the story', and what Ilúvatar says to the great assembly, go read again Tolkien's 'The Ainulindalë, or The Music of the Ainur' in THE SILMARILLION and THE BOOK OF LOST TALES!
But in brief, despite Melkor's attempted usurpation of Eru's holy Theme, wherein he sought to 'interweave matters of his own imagining [by cohersion; or to be as God by naked force of will] that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar [of free will]', seeking therein 'to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself', the All-father '...[so] that [Melkor] may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar', showed unto all the heavenly concourses assembled 'that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined [and which redound only to my great glory]'. . . And Melkor was filled with shame, and shame's anger.
All of which is to say that, in Ilúvatar's plan for the Story of the World, his Great Music, the All-father was able to interweave themes of salvation that would ultimately thwart Melkor's deadly designs as these were attempted both in the primordial Music and in the actual physical creation of the World and the unfolding of Arda's mythos (story), wherein he ever sought for the subservience, death and destruction of Ilúvatar's children. That is, the One, as it was matchlessly foretold and orchestrated in the First Music of the Ainur, put into motion that great stream of events in the Story of the World (beginning with: Eä! Let these things Be!††), that would eventually overcome Melkor's discord, and vanquish Death itself. It would thus make of Melkor's first primeval usurpation of the Great Music simply 'a part of the whole and tributary to its glory...' That is, Ilúvatar would eventually be able to transform even that First Music which was marked by conflict and spiritual death into glorious Eternal strains that would go on forever . . .
The Secondborn Children and Ilúvatar's Gifts of Hope,
Free Will and Death (the Ultimate Gift of Release) . . .
This vanquishing of Death thus becomes Ilúvatar's special Gift to Men, for it is the door of release, whereby Man, who, having been endowed with the foundational gifts of hope and free will, rises above and beyond 'the circles of the World' to unknown heights of glory and everlasting existence, wherein even the Elves (and apparently also the Dwarves) will have a part, although perhaps unbeknownst to either race (for we know that the Elves, at least, hold fast to other traditions, such as their ever lamenting 'Long Defeat') . . .
'[For Ilúvatar, at the time of their creation had] said: 'Behold I love the World, and ... Eldar and Men who are my beloved. [And] when the Eldar come [physically awaken, or are 'born into the world'] they will be the fairest ... and deeper in the knowledge of beauty, and happier than Men. But to Men I will give a new gift, and a greater.' Therefore he devised that Men should have a free virtue [free will] whereby within the limits of the powers and substances and chances of the world they might fashion and design their life beyond even the original Music of the Ainur [beyond Earth's creation and Life; beyond even their own earthly existence] that is as fate [fixed bounds, measures, destinies] to all things else [including Earth's 'immortal' Elves who are strictly bound (or such is their own belief) to its fate] ... Now Ilúvatar knew that Men set amid the turmoils [mortal trials, tests, vicissitudes] ... would not be ever of a mind to use that gift [agency] in harmony with his intent ... that the thought of Men [would be] at times a grief [to Him]; wherefore if the giving of that gift of freedom was [the] envy and amazement [of the Ainur], the patience of Ilúvatar at its misuse is a matter of the greatest marvelling to both Gods and [angelic Powers — for what its correct use might otherwise bring]. ~ The Book of Lost Tales
'Lo! Even we Eldar have found to our sorrow that Men have a strange power for good or ill and for turning things despite Gods and [Guardians] to their mood [or will] in the world; so that we say: 'Fate may not conquer the Children of Men, but yet are they strangely blind [not comprehending, to their own great sorrow, mortality or Death, as being the great 'Gift of Ilúvatar'], whereas their joy should be great' ... Yet while the sons of Men will after the passing of things [after the Great End of things temporal and of Mankind's existence within 'the circles of the world'] of a certainty join in the Second Music of the Ainur [the Great Beginning of things Eternal, Man's existence beyond 'the circles of the world'], what Ilúvatar has devised for the Eldar beyond the world's end he has not revealed even to the Valar, and Melkor has not discovered it ...' (see The History of Middle-earth I: The Book of Lost Tales, pp. 45-63; and X: Morgoth's Ring, p. 350).
Thus it is, that beyond the First Great Music, a 'greater music still' is prophesied yet to be heard' after the end of days', or 'the Great End', when the voices of Men, Elves, and the Ainur (the angelic 'Holy Ones') will swell the chorus of Eternity, when will come at last a full understanding or 'comprehension' of Eru Ilúvatar's Vision: a knowledge of how each of His offspring fits (and relates to their fellow beings) in the greater scheme of existence; only then will the Music — 'Ilúvatar's mightiest themes' — 'be played aright' [in the 'Second Music of the Ainur'] and the efforts and work of all, and to what end, be made clearly manifest: 'all shall then understand His intent in their part, and shall know the comprehension each of each...'
The Music of Echoing Waters: Longing for we know not what . . .
'And it is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen...' ~ The Silmarillion
Alternatively:
'There liveth ... in water a deeper echo of the Music of the Ainur than in any substance else that is in the world, and ... the Sons of Men will hearken unsatedly to the voice of the Sea and long for they know not what [… but which some of later days perceive to have been hope in deep memory for their pre-existent life with Ilúvatar, their true home and 'memory' which lies 'beyond the circles of the World']...' ~ The Book of Lost Tales
And this is why Tolkien always turns a tuned ear (as well as a yearning heart and remembering mind) to the Sea — the storied Path of mariners, minstrels, and wandering dreamers seeking the Undying Lands of the Gods of the West . . .
Of Celestial Harmonies and Discordant Strifes . . .
†The Music of the Ainur — the Creation Myth, as told by Rúmil, Elf-sage of Valinor (Noldorin sage — and the original inventor of writing — of Tirion, Elven city upon the hill Túna, in Eldamar, Aman), to mariner-minstrel Ćlfwine [OE (Old English): 'Elf-friend'] Wídlást 'the Far-travelled' of England [first named Ottor Wćfre OE: 'Restless wanderer', by which name he called himself], who the Elves named Eldairon [S: 'Elf-friend'] and Eriollo [Q: 'Iron-cliffs'; and S: Angol, a name that Ottor adopted in both of its elvish forms; but Eriol (S: 'Solitary-dreamer', or 'one who dreams alone' — from the elvish roots ERE 'to remain alone' and LORO 'to slumber') was a self-adopted Sindarin pun-name on the spelling of its Quendian original, Eriollo], sojourning in the fair city of Cortirion Q/S: 'Mighty Watchtower-city of the Sacred Hill' in Alalminórë 'Land of Elms' [S: Gar Lossion central region (the 'Green heart', or inmost province 'girt with trees') of the Lonely Isle, Tol Eressëa [S: Dor Faidwen 'Land of Release' i.e., 'freedom, liberty' OE: seo Unwemmede Íeg 'the Unstained Isle'], at the sea-fringes of the Elven region Eldaros [OE: Ćlfhâm, or 'Elvenhome' — 'home of the Elves', by which name Eldamar, Aman's eastern coastland within Eldaros, is also known; History of Middle-earth I: The Book of Lost Tales, pp. 25-26; 32-43.
'These are the words that Rúmil spake to [Eriol-Ćlfwine] concerning the beginning of the World . . .'
'Hear now things that have not been heard among Men, and the Elves speak seldom of them; yet did Manwë Súlimo, Lord of Elves and Men, whisper them to the fathers of my father in the deeps of time. Behold, Ilúvatar [Eru, the One God] before all things he sang into being the Ainur [the Holy Ones — His spiritual offspring] first, and greatest is their power and glory of all his creatures within the world and without. Thereafter he fashioned them dwellings in the Void, and dwelt among them, teaching them all manner of things, and the greatest of these was music. He would speak propounding to them themes of song and joyous hymn, revealing many of the great and wonderful things that he devised ever in his mind and heart, and they would make music unto him, and the voices of their instruments rose in splendour about his throne...
'[And it came to pass, upon a time, that] Ilúvatar propounded a mighty design of his heart to the Ainur [his plan of salvation — the genesis of the whole heilsgeschichte 'salvation history' of Arda — which later finds fruition in the ultimate sacrifices of Beren, Eärendil, and the One Incarnate], unfolding a history [Earth's future] whose vastness and majesty had never been equalled ... and the glory of its beginning [its spiritual, physical creations] and the splendour of its end [its death, glorious renewal] amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Ilúvatar and were speechless ... Though it is said that a mighter [Music] far shall be woven [the salvation, immortality, and eternal life of Earth's 'children'] before the seat of Ilúvatar by the choirs of both Ainur [holy angels] and the sons of Men after the Great End [apocalypse, resurrection, a season of temporal renewal, final reward]. Then shall Ilúvatar's mightiest themes be played aright; for then Ainur and Men will know his mind and heart as well as may be, and all his intent . . .
Alternatively, Tolkien's The Ainulindalë (Q: 'Music of the Ainur', or literally, 'Music of the Holy Ones') of his legendarium lays forth an evolved, later version of Middle-earth's cosmogony, or 'creation myth'. Similar to the early version, first named in the mythical narrative is Ilúvatar (God), the 'Father of All' (called also Eru 'the One', or Eru Ilúvatar), who is the primary Creator residing in the Timeless Halls of Eternity. Next appear the pre-existent Powers, the Ainur, or 'Holy Ones', who are the secondary or 'sub-creators' (the spirit-race of which the later Valar-gods of the physical world stand preeminent). These are the mighty among the offspring of Ilúvatar's thought, which 'offspring' include all of the divine races of intelligent beings that existed before the creation of the world, in the vast expanses of 'the time before Time'. Among these are the Maiar and, according to the early legendarium, the Vanimor 'the Beautiful' or 'Fair-folk', which include 'lesser' spirits (minor members of the 'greater' Ainur races) and also, apparently (as vouchsafed to the Second and Third Themes of the Great Music and Eru's holy Vision), the pre-existent 'Children of God': the Eldar, or Elves, and the Atani, or Men. 'Numbered with' the Vanimor, too, in Tolkien's earlier writings, were the pre-existent 'Children of the Valar', the Valarindi, who were later 'begotten in the world'.
Five stages complete Tolkien's Creation-myth: 1) The creation of the Ainur 'Holy Ones', 2) The communication by Eru of his Grand Design (or Plan) to the Ainur, 3) The Great Music, 'which was as it were a rehearsal [that] remained in the stage of thought or imagination', 4) The Vision of Eru (or Spiritual Creation, including of that which Ilúvatar held in reserve throughout the Music), 'a foreshowing of possibility ... incomplete', and 5) The Achievement (or Physical Creation, including of that which Ilúvatar held in reserve throughout the Music), 'which is still going on...' (History of Middle-earth X: Morgoth's Ring, p. 336).
'This [the Ainulindalë, the Story of Creation] was made by Rúmil ... in the Elder Days. It is here written as it was spoken in Eressëa to Ćlfwine by Pengolođ the Sage. To it are added the further words that Pengolođ spoke at that time concerning the Valar, the Eldar and the Atani; of which more is said hereafter . . . First he [Pengolođ] recited to him [Ćlfwine] the Ainulindalë as Rúmil made it...'
Taking place, thus, in a pre-existent world (that is, in an abstract 'heaven' before Time), the events of the Ainulindalë announce Ilúvatar's 'mighty theme' — his grand Design and plan of life and salvation for the World and His children. Ilúvatar then propounds three musical sub-themes to the Ainur — demiurges, 'mighty but limited beings' subordinate to the One God. As Eru Ilúvatar's 'angelic agents or vice-gerents,' and under His omniscient direction, they are 'for nameless ages engaged' in the 'demiurgic labours' from which arises all of Creation. Therafter the Ainu Melkor and other 'mighty ones' from among the Ainur pass into Arda to become the Valar, the Powers, or Guardians of the World. The Ainulindalë describes the initial rebellion of Melkor and tells of the strife between Melkor and the other Valar as they seek to complete 'to the design of Eru the structure of the Universe' (the World), that is, to make real the Vision of Eru (the spiritual construction or blueprint) that Ilúvatar shows them of what they have created from their Music. And finally (in Eru's unfolding 'Achievement', the World's physical creation), the Ainulindalë introduces 'the principal Drama of Creation: the war of the Eruhín (the Children of God), Elves and Men, against [Melkor† ... a rebel against his brethren and against Eru, and ... the prime Spirit of Evil [who 'was grown dark as the Night of the Void']...' (Morgoth's Ring, pp. 330, 357-360) . . .
Tolkien: Creating the Universe with Secret Fire . . .
†† The Physical Creation of the World, of course, was a paramount object to which the Great Music and the Vision pointed: '… And I will send forth into the Void [that which giveth Life and Reality — the Secret Fire of my Holy Spirit*] the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World [the Universe], and the World shall Be; and [speaking to the Ainur:] those of you that will may go down into it.' And suddenly the Ainur saw afar off a light, as it were a cloud with a living heart of flame; and they knew that this was no vision only, but that Ilúvatar had made a new thing: Eä the World that Is [the physical Universe, the realm of reality, of physical creation] . . .
*'The 'Secret Fire sent to burn at the heart of the World' in the beginning was the Holy Spirit...' — so Tolkien 'very specifically' told Clyde S. Kilby in one of Professor Kilby's lengthy summertime visits with him in 1964 (Tolkien & The Silmarillion, p. 59). The inspiration for Kilby's inquiry was Gandalf's bold pronouncement on the Bridge of Khazad-dűm (at the end of the Fellowship's flight through Moria) as he faced in terrible close combat that ancient Mair-spirit of the Underworld, a Balrog of Morgoth: 'You cannot pass ... I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor [the Sun / the Son of God]. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udűn [Hell]. Go back to the Shadow [to the service of Melkor-Morgoth, his Underworld]! You cannot pass!'
The antithesis of Tolkien's original 'White Light' or 'White Flame' [> the Secret Flame], was 'the Red Fire' — which became 'the Flame of Udűn [Hell]', which blackest of powers is wielded by that Black Master† Melkor-Morgoth and his evil-Maiar servants — including 'the Necromancer', or Dark Lord Sauron, and other vile creatures, such as the Balrog of Khazad-dűm, which set their wills to accord with their black masters', to oppose the Secret Fire or Flame Imperishable of Anor, or the Holy Spirit of the Son of God, the divine Life-force of the world and of Eä, the Universe — the same fire, or power, that Eru Ilúvatar 'kindled' within each of his 'Holy Ones' (having taught the Ainur his musical arts of creation) to empower them in all their sub-creative endeavors. All other bearers or possessors of the Flame Imperishable in Middle-earth wielded thereafter mighty power against their foes in the realms of the Seen and the Unseen — a mighty power to rival that dark power among the Maiar who fell to the service of Melkor-Morgoth, submitting and surrendering themselves to the force of the Dark Flame of Udűn, or Hell.
That Mighty Fallen Angel: the Black God Terrible . . .
†MELKOR Q: 'Might-arising' or 'Arising Might' ('He of Uprising Power, or He who Arises in Might'), from ancient Quenya: Melkórë 'Power-uprising' — 'eldest [of the Ainur] in the thought of Ilúvatar' before the world was; for antecedent to the great Ainu's fall, when he dwelt among Eru and his mighty brethren in the Timeless Halls of Eternity, he was known also as MELKO [Q: 'the Mighty One' (Adűnaic: Alkar 'the Radiant') — the stem melk- means 'power' as strength of force]. Thus was Melkor the firstborn of the Ainur and the mightiest of their divine race before he turned to lust and pride and violence and evil, craving absolute power — he thereafter (as the evil Vala MELKO — Melkor-Morgoth 'the Mighty and Accursed') was known upon Arda (the Earth) among Men as the Nameless One, for among Elves also his name 'was never uttered [OE: his nama is awergod and unasprecenlic 'his name is accursed and unspeakable'] — for 'the Noldor, who most have suffered from his evil, will not speak his name in their own tongue’s form [S: MOELEG 'the Mighty and Accursed', from ancient Quenya: Mailiko from the root MIL-IK: milme 'desire, greed', maile 'lust', mailea 'lustful', milka 'greedy' <Mailika: melch 'greedy', moel, mael 'lust', moelui, maelui 'lustful'; and S: Moeleg, Maeleg <Melegor; OE: Melcor or Mánfréa 'Evil-god', from mán 'evil, wickedness' and Orgel 'Pride', Malscor 'Bewitcher, Bewilderer' and Bolgen 'Wrathful'] and his name is accursed...' [Melko 'the Accursed One', the meaning that that name was accorded after his fall] — Instead, therefore, the Elves called him Morgoth Bauglir 'the Black God Terrible', or the 'Black Enemy, Foe':
- MORGOTH 'Dark Lord, Black Master', an Orkish name for Middle-earth's original, most powerful Dark Lord (the Orkish prefix Mor 'Dark or Black' + Goth 'Lord or Master'), but Morgoth is also, for the Quendi, his preferred Elvish name, as it, too, rises from the elvish root MOR 'black' Q: morë <mori 'black' S: moru <môr 'black, night', maur 'gloom' (as also Q: mórë 'blackness, dark, night', mordo 'shadow, obscurity, stain', morna 'gloomy, sombre'); but also from KOTH / GOTH 'to strive with dread' (KOTH 'strive', quarrel Q: kosta S: cost, Q: ohta <okta 'war, battle, strife' S: auth <oth, Q: kotumo 'enemy, enmity' S: coth, Q: kotya 'hostile'; and GOTH 'dread' S: gost 'dread, terror'; gosta 'fear exceedingly').
- BAUGLIR 'the Constrainer, Terrible' — 'the Power of Terror and Hate': S: bauglir 'tyrant, oppressor' — the name derives from several elvish roots, including MBAW 'to compel, force, subject, oppress' (Q: mauya 'compel', mausta 'compulsion' S: baug 'tyrannous, cruel, oppressive', bauglo 'to oppress') and BAL 'Power, God'; but also BEL 'strength' (<Belegor 'great' <Belcha 'excess'; S: belt or belda 'strong' <béleka 'mighty, huge, great (physically)', beleg 'great', bel or belle 'strength' <bele, bellas 'bodily strength', belka 'excessive') and ŃGWAL 'torment' (Q: nwalka 'cruel', nwalya 'to torment'; S: balch 'cruel', baul 'torment'. In Old English, Melkor-Morgoth renders Morgoţ Sweart-ós 'Black God' and Bróga 'the Terror', and in Adűnaic, Meleko 'Evil Incarnate: the Seducer, the Tyrant'.
Tolkien's mythology also refers to the Black God, Melkor-Morgoth, as the Vala of Iron, the Lord of Iron, the Calumniator, the Diabolus, the Marrer, the Evil One, the Evil Prince, the Prince of the Evil Heart, and the Dark Enemy of the World (History of Middle-earth II: The Book of Lost Tales, pp. 67, 216; III: The Lays of Beleriand, pp. 21-23, 52; IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 164, 167, 283; V: The Lost Road, pp. 206, 208, 332, 359, 373, 377; IX: Sauron Defeated, pp. 405, 411; and X: Morgoth's Ring, pp. 249, 350, 401-2, 412).
… And [Melkor] fared often [alone] into the dark places and the voids [eternity's expanse, to perchance discover the hidden mysteries] seeking the Secret Fire [Holy Spirit: Light, Spiritual Power and Authority] that giveth Life and Reality [through spiritual and physical creation, but also the power to create] ... yet he found it not, for it dwelleth with Ilúvatar [and he knew it not ... and it seemed to him that Ilúvatar took no thought for the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness ... But being alone he had begun to conceive thoughts of his own unlike those of his brethren] ... And Melkor was filled with shame and the anger of shame ... and purposed deep in his heart to usurp the power of the other Ainur and make war upon Eldar and Men [the Children of God on Earth] ~ The Book of Lost Tales
…Very mighty was he made by Ilúvatar, and some of the powers of all the Valar [Melkor] possessed, but to evil uses did he turn them. He coveted the world and the lordship of Manwë, and the realms of all the Gods; and pride and jealousy and lust grew ever in his heart, till he became unlike his wise and mighty brethren. Violence he loved and wrath and destruction, and all excess of cold and flame. But darkness most he used for his works and turned it to evil and a name of horror among Elves and Men. ~ Quenta Silmarillion, History of Middle-earth IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 78-79, 285
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(This post was edited by entmaiden on Mar 27 2015, 6:46pm)
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