Gandalf inspired by Merlin, a question for our scholars

Lily Fairbairn

Lily Fairbairn

Half-elven
I was reading Nikolai Tolstoy's The Quest for Merlin, published in 1985, and stumbled over this passage:

But the Merlin most familiar to millions of people all over the world today is one known by another
name. Professor J. R. R. Tolkien knew Celtic and Teutonic myth as have few other people, and
there can be no doubt that the wizard Gandalf of The Hobbit (1937) and the trilogy which follows,
is drawn from the Merlin of early legend.

Like Merlin, Gandalf is a magician of infinite wisdom and power; like Merlin, he has a sense of
humour by turns impish and sarcastic; and, like Merlin, he reappears at intervals, seemingly from
nowhere, intervening to rescue an imperilled cosmos. Even minor aptitudes are openly
appropriated, such as Merlin's propensity for appearing in the incongruous guise of a beggar, and
his capacity for launching splendid displays of pyrotechnics.

Devotees of Tolkien will remember how Gandalf saved the Hobbits from wolves by the Misty
Mountains with a discharge of magical multicoloured fireballs. In the thirteenth-century English
poem, Of Arthour and of Merlin,when a group of truculent barons challenged Arthur's right to the
throne:

'Merlin made enchantment
And cast great damage
Into the pavilions, wild fire
That burned bright as a candle clear...'

The wizard's enchantments have secured him a permanent place, it seems, in the consciousness
of mankind. The centuries come and go, literary fashions pass, but the magician reappears before
us: shifting his shape and changing his name, now mocking, now awe-inspiring, but essentially
the same character whose fame flew over all Europe eight centuries ago. Trickster, illusionist,
philosopher and sorcerer, he represents and archetype to which the race turns for guidance and
protection.

****

I wonder what Tolstoy (who is related to Leo of War and Peace) would say about Rowling's Dumbledore, a character too recent to be mentioned in his book.

Tolstoy's "there can be no doubt" is a phrase which always raises my brows skeptically. So I have to ask: Is there any specific evidence in Tolkien's writing that he did have Merlin in mind as an antecedent to Gandalf?

My brows also went up at Tolstoy saying Gandalf rescues the hobbits, plural (never mind the dwarves), and at his equating multicolo(u)red fireballs with fire that burns bright as a clear candle. [unimpressed]
 
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I have no doubt that he was a major one. Now, proof, I don't have; however, I'm sure there is something about this in The History of The Hobbit and/or The Annotated Hobbit. Certainly Gandalf is a wizard very much in the same mode as Merlin.
 
or if he read a poor translation?

From The Ring Goes South:

"Stooping like a cloud, he lifted a burning branch and strode to meet the wolves...High in the air he tossed the blazing brand. It flared with a sudden white radiance like lightening; and his voice rolled like thunder.
'Naur an edraith ammen! naur dan i ngaurhoth!' he cried.
There was a roar and a crackle, and the tree above him burst into a leaf and bloom of blinding flame. The fire leapt from tree-top to tree-top. The whole hill shone with dazzling light..."

There's a "magical" incantation, but no "multicolored fireballs".

Now on to Out of the Frying-pan into the Fire:

"He gathered the huge pine-cones from the branches of the tree. Then he set one alight with bright blue fire, and threw it whizzing down among the circle of the wolves...Then another came and another, one in blue flames, one in red, another in green. They burst on the ground in the middle of the circle and went off in coloured sparks and smoke."

Maybe he considers Gandalf's ability to set the pinecones alight as "magical"; they are indeed multicolored, and when tossed would be a type of "fireball".

But it's hardly a "discharge", and there is only one Hobbit.

His inattentiveness to detail in this alone makes me tend to discount the rest of his claims.

And you a quite right, anytime that term "there can be no doubt" is used, it actually means: I am going from Point A to Point B with no proof of my path. [:P]

Besides, nowhere does he mention the Berggeist! [shocked]
 
So yes, Gandalf does use fire-magic to save hobbits, plural, just not in The Hobbit, which, since that's the only title Tolstoy mentions (how about that rather dismissive "the trilogy"?) I thought was the scene he had in mind. Perhaps he inadvertently conflated the two scenes as he wrote, hence the mistaken details. As all writers know, it's not what you don't know---you'll look that up. It's what you think you know, but don't, that will get you in trouble! [;)]

I agree with Otaku that, with Tolkien's knowledge of myth and history, Merlin was sure to have been an influence on Gandalf. And yet, there's so much more than that, as you point out yourself.

Yep, rvery time I hear "there can be no doubt" I start to twitch, and not in a positive gramma-like way, either.
 
Tom Shippey (who seems likely to know) theorizes that the name 'Gandalf' in the Elder Edda suggested to Tolkien "wand elf." What could a "wand elf" be? And Tolkien decided, a wizard.

While the Celtic Merlin is one staff-wielding old wanderer, the Germanic (and so somewhat closer to what Tolkien generally reached for) Odin would wander in disguise as an old man with a staff. In the Odyssey, Circe uses a wand to turn the Greeks into animals. Merlin and Odin (at least) inspired Shakespeare and William Morris (two name just two) -- I think all of these influences were known to the Professor.

Singling out Merlin seems a little weak to me.
 
Great stuff. However, I feel that in the vast Merlin literature, one can find parallels to almost any magical being. The differences regarding attitude to prophecy and to women seem more significant than the similarities.

When the author states, "by examining the [Merlin] tradition in relation to Tolkien's portrait of Gandalf, it becomes clear that Tolkien has used the portraits that came before as a point of departure and a foil," I'm not entirely convinced -- at least not that there was any conscious design on Tolkien's part to do so. I still think Odin and Prospero and other models were also involved.
 
And I don't fully agree with all the points made by Mr. Riga. But I had recalled seeing the paper and thought it was worth linking it to it (though it surprised me to be reminded that it was back in 2008, in the same issue that Mythlore printed an excerpt from my book before it was published; I had thought it was in the last year or so; where does the time go?).

I think I also recall reading a paper tracing the similarities and connections between Gandalf and Odin not long ago, but I don't recall where it was.
 
Yes, once you stop to measure it, it stretches in unpredictable ways in both directions. BTW as soon as I have 'disposable' income again, I am eager to buy your book, which I only learned about here in the last week(!). I've been struggling with the volumes of HoME I might buy to do essentially for myself what you've already done for everyone.

Thanks in advance.
 
Miriam Youngerman Miller's "J. R. R. Tolkien's Merlin: An Old Man with a Staff: Gandalf and the Magus Tradition," in Jeanie Watson and Maureen Fries, eds., The Figure of Merlin in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), pp. 121-42. It's not bad, but I don't think Gandalf is all that much like a magus, either. I prefer Riga's piece, which is the best of the essays I've read concerning Gandalf's putative relationship to Merlin. I don't fully agree with either of them. Which is fine with me, because my book is going to contain a section where I argue that people have failed to analyze Gandalf's complex character precisely because they tend to assume he's a fairly conventional wizard. In my opinion, he's not at all a conventional wizard. (In the book; the film made him into a very conventional wizard.) Almost the only thing he's got in common with Merlin is that they're both wizards.
 
I haven't read this essay yet - but I've had no idea that so much of Mythlore was online! This will provide me with enough to read through several lunch-breaks and coffee-breaks. [:)]
 
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Reconstructing+Arda%3a+of+Feanor+and+the+Unchaining+of+Melkor.-a0188065410

- a Mythlore article by Voronwe himself.
 
So obviously it wasn't what I was thinking of. [;)]

I am looking forward to your book! In my opinion, it depends on which Gandalf you are talking about. Gandalf in The Hobbit was much more like conventional wizard. The character in The Lord of the Rings is essentially a completely different character. John Rateliff talks about this quite a bit in The History of the Hobbit. I suspect that you will be talking about it quite a bit more!
 
Gandalf is a more conventional wizard in The Hobbit than in The Lord of the Rings. That said, I don't think he's completely different in LOTR. The first trait set up for him in The Hobbit, his extreme precision with language, is done for comedy in that opening scene. In LOTR he retains that precision, and he uses it to carefully word what he says to people. In particular, when people ask him questions he doesn't want to answer, he manages to respond without lying and yet without telling the person anything significant. Also the "cold chicken and pickles" and smoke-rings part of him stays, I think. This gusto for plain living and visiting simple hobbits and so on are a large part of what allows Tolkien to avoid making him a lofty, unapproachable figure, even when he returns as the White. (The hobbits are probably somewhat in awe of him, but apart from Sam, they aren't afraid to tease him now and then.) Plus there's the fact that he doesn't resort to magic very often, and when he does it tends to be fire-related. But there's certainly far less of the crotchety comic wizard about him.

Definitely I'll be talking more about the subject! For a start, Gandalf is my favorite character. I think his complexity has been overlooked precisely because a lot of people lump him into the traditional wizard-helper-figure literary category. I argue that, as Frodo is the protagonist of the Ring-destruction plotline, Gandalf is the protagonist of the War of the Ring plotline. I've got a chapter drafted on the "growth" of the sequel and how Gandalf and other characters changed in the course of the drafting of LOTR (a fact that bothered Tolkien a great deal, since he thought Unwin wouldn't want to publish something so long and grim).

By the way, I have a great admiration for John Rateliff and The History of the Hobbit. Years ago John lived here in Madison, Wisconsin (conveniently close to the Marquette University collection over in Milwaukee) and attended meetings of the local Tolkien Society (still going strong) at a time when I had recently joined.
 
...purely because it's so easy to draw superficial parallels - Merlin was a wizard, Gandalf was a wizard, they must be related, mustn't they, and as Merlin came first.....

But beyond the archetype there are so many significant differences. There's a dark side to the Merlin stories; Gandalf is only light. Merlin's origins are unashamedly terrestrial; Gandalf isn't human at all. Merlin's legends include an earthly boyhood and, having established Arthur on his throne, he is brought down by a woman - don't remember Gandalf doing that. Also, at the core of Merlin's magic is prophecy - he knows what's going to happen. Seems to me that's diametrically opposed to Gandalf who has no certainties, only the trust that you must perform the task appointed to you without a promise of success. I'd say it's that differences that matter - that make Gandalf Gandalf and Merlin Merlin.
 
. . . for raising the question. Wizards are strange beings. Strange in literature, strange in actuality. From Circe in the Odessey to Albus Dumbledore, they are fascinating creatures. Apparently JRRT and most of us here today think so, too. I personally feel that Gandalf partakes of some completely original idea formed by Tolkien's Catholic faith crossed with his respect for the Northern tradition of Odin (in particular) and Merlin (in genral).

But who can get to the bottom of it? Christopher? Maybe. Or maybe a bunch of internet otaku . . .
 
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