Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

We begin this posting with the Persians

and a post office.

This might seem a very odd pairing, but the inscription over the front of the 8^th Avenue post office building in New York City (opened 1914) offers a connection.

This is only a part of the inscription, which reads, in full:

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Persian?  This doesn’t look like Persian.  Now this looks like Persian—

This is one of a pair of inscriptions, called the “Ganjnameh Inscriptions”, “Ganjnameh” in Farsi meaning “Treasure Book”, the locals believing that, if you could read what was written on this pair,

you would be given the instructions to find ancient buried treasure.  Instead, they are about two Persian kings, Darius I (550-486BC—he’s the one sitting down) and his son, Xerxes I (c.518-465BC)

and, as good Zoroastrians, their patron god, Ahura Mazda.

Darius, often called “Darius the Great”, was an early and very ambitious Persian monarch, who extended his empire beyond its previous boundaries

and is known in Western history for being the king whose expeditionary force was defeated by the Athenians and their allies, the Plataeans, at the battle of Marathon, in 490BC.

The story of this monarch and that of his son, Xerxes, who led a second expedition against Greece 10 years later, are told in the Greek Heroodotus’ (c.484-c.425) Histories, a 9-book account of Greek relations with Asia Minor and particularly with Persia, seeking to explain, in part, why the two were at odds through several centuries.

As empire-builders, the Persians were easy rulers.  They never had the troops to occupy their huge territories, once they had conquered them, but, instead, appointed a governor (satrap) and demanded two major items:  troops, when required,

and taxes (always required).

To keep control of such a huge stretch of land, Darius and his successors maintained a direct route of communication from the western edge of Asia Minor to one of their capitals, at Susa.  This route was called the “Royal Road” and stretched for nearly 1700 miles.

If it took months to walk the distance one way, but, with a long series of stations, each with fresh horses, a relay of messengers might travel the same distance in a week—and this is where that inscription on the post office comes in.  Herodotus describes this road and its government service here:

“Now there is nothing mortal that accomplishes a course more swiftly than do these messengers, by the Persians’ skillful contrivance. It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey. These are stopped neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed. [2] The first rider delivers his charge to the second, the second to the third, and thence it passes on from hand to hand, even as in the Greek torch-bearers’ race in honor of Hephaestus. This riding-post is called in Persia, angareion.” (Herodotus, Histories, Book VIII, 98, from the 1920 Godley translation)

And here’s an illustration of what Herodotus suggests is a Greek parallel—

(If the message was by word of mouth, there could be a real danger of miscommunication—follow this LINK to such a danger by the wonderful Horrible Histories folk:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKqkq4hGpgo )

You can see, then, that the builders of that New York post office, borrowing from (and adapting) Herodotus, wanted to suggest that the US Postal Service was as imposing (and as unbeatable?) as the Persian Imperial Post.

Long before the US Postal Service, however, the idea of something as speedy for government use as this was not lost upon the Romans.

The emperor Augustus, about the year 20BC, founded a Roman version of this service, called the cursus publicus, using the increasingly-elaborate Roman road network (ultimately 50,000 miles—80,000km–of paved roads).

We have a good description of this official service from a much later source, the Historia Arcana (“Secret History”) of Procopius (c.500-after c.565AD), a Byzantine court official at the time of the emperor Justinian (482-565AD):

“For the Roman Emperors of earlier times, by way of making provision that everything should be reported to them speedily and be subject to no delay, — such as the damage inflicted by the enemy upon each several country, whatever befell the cities in the course of civil conflict or of some unforeseen calamity, the acts of the magistrates and of all others in every part of the Roman Empire — and also, to the end that those who conveyed the annual taxes might reach the capital safely and without either delay or risk, had created a swift public post extending everywhere, in the following manner.  3 Within the distance included in each day’s journey for an unencumbered traveller2 they established stations, sometimes eight, sometimes less, but as a general thing not less than five. 4 And horses to the number of forty stood ready at each station. And grooms in proportion to the number of horses were detailed to all stations. 5 And always travelling with frequent changes of the horses, which were of the most approved breeds, those to whom this duty was assigned covered, on occasion, a ten-days’ journey in a single day…”  (Procopius, Historia Arcana, xxx—translator, HB Dewing, 1935)

Remarkably, we can even trace the routes taken by couriers by using an extremely interesting piece of geographical charting, the so-called Tabula Peutingeriana, the”Peutinger Map”.

Named for Konrad Peutinger (1465-1547),

a scholar in whose hands it lay in the 16^th century, it is 13^th century copy of a map which may date all the way back to the time of Augustus himself.  (If you’d like to read more about the map and theories of origin, here’s a LINK:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana )

The original was a 22-foot long scroll which, leaving out Britannia and Hispania, charts the thousands of miles of Roman roads.  (See the LINK above for a roll-out of the whole map.)

The use of such a speedy service was not lost upon someone else, in a much later time.  In the 3^rd section of the “Prologue” to The Lord of the Rings, we see:

“The only real official in the Shire at this date was the Mayor of Michel Delving (or of the Shire)…the offices of Postmaster and First Shirriff were attached to the mayoralty, so that he managed both the Messenger Service and the Watch.  These were the only Shire-services, and the Messengers were the most [sic] numerous, and much the busier of the two.  By no means all Hobbits were lettered, but those who were wrote constantly to all their friends (and a selection of their relations) who lived further off than an afternoon’s walk.”  (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, Section 3—the word “sic” is inserted in brackets above because there’s a grammatical error in the text here.  JRRT names only two groups, the Messenger Service and the Watch, which means that one should use the comparative form of “much/many”, which is “more”, here, instead of the superlative “most”, which would be used for more than two groups.)

This establishes a postal service in the Shire—but what about the speedy part?  We turn to the next-to-the-last chapter of The Return of the King, “The Scouring of the Shire”, and listen to Robin Smallburrow speaking with Sam:

“We aren’t allowed to send by it now, but they use the old Quick Post service, and keep special runners at different points.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

And, as this posting was entitled “A Quick Post”, we’ll end here, saying, as always, thanks for reading and MTCIDC,

CD

ps

That post office motto turns up in a comic form (with missing letters), more or less, in Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal (2004),

where, on the central post office in Ankh-Morpork, may be read the inscription:  “Neither rain nor snow nor glo m of ni  t can stay these mes sengers abo t their duty”.

We recommend not only this (one of our favorite Pratchett novels), but also recommend the film adaptation, which really captures much of the feel of the book.

 

As always, welcome, dear readers.

It’s clear that, before the advent of Sharkey and his “big men”, the Shire had little need of law enforcement:

“The Shirriffs was the name that the Hobbits gave to their police, or the nearest equivalent that they possessed.  They had, of course, no uniforms (such things being quite unknown), only a feather in their caps; and they were in practice haywards than policemen, more concerned with the strayings of beasts than of people.  There were in the Shire only twelve of them, three in each Farthing, for Inside Work.  A rather large body, varying at need, was employed to ‘beat the bounds’, and to see that Outsiders of any kind, great or small, did not make themselves a nuisance.” (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue 3)

That Sharkey and his thugs were able not only to take over the Shire, but reorganize and expand these Shirriffs into their own hobbit enforcers, suggests how nearly useless they could be—unlike the body which we suspect they may have been modeled upon, Hitler’s notorious private police force, the SA (SturmAbteilung—“Storm(trooper)Detachment”).

The consequence occurs when Merry, Pippin, Frodo, and Sam return to the Shire (a wonderfully atmospheric depiction by Allen Lee)

and their fearlessness so shakes this ersatz-SA that they quickly collapse, leaving only those “big men” to deal with an improvised army of angry hobbits.

(by Ted Nasmith—always one of our favorite illustrators)

If the subsequent violence weren’t there to darken the picture (along with the deaths of Sharkey/Saruman and Grima), the plight of the Shirriffs would be almost silly, as the hobbits they attempt to take prisoner turn the tables, almost making the Shirriffs into prisoners:

“It was rather a comic cavalcade that left the village, though the few folk that came out to stare at the ‘get-up’ of the travelers did not seem quite sure whether laughing was allowed.  A dozen Shirriffs march in front, while Frodo and his friends rode behind.  Merry, Pippin, and Sam sat at their ease laughing and talking and singing, while the Shirriffs stumped along trying to look stern and important.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

These Shirriffs in their haplessness (you can see “Shire”—from Old English scir—said “sheer”—here, combined with gerefa—something like “yeh-REH-fuh”—“official”) reminded us of the Ank-Morpork City Watch in the novels of Terry Pratchett (1948-2015),

and, if you’re a fan, as we are, you’ll immediately recognize our subtitle as a borrowing from his 1989 novel.

The City Watch are the police

of the city of Ankh-Morpork, on Discworld, Pratchett’s personal planet.

As the City Watch, they are not actually guards, but, rather, what, in our world, would be early policemen.

In their general look and behavior, however, they’re not like the City Watch of King’s Landing,

but a bit more simple-minded, like the Keystone Cops (1912-1917) of silent film.

Comedy and the constabulary go back a very long time.  Ancient Athens employed mercenaries from north of the Black Sea, the Scythians, as the muscle in their police force.

The Athenian comic dramatist, Aristophanes (c446-c386), saw the comedy in such foreigners who seemed not too bright—mostly because they spoke Greek badly—and yet represented the state.

There was a kind of combined watch and fire department, called the Cohorts of the Watch (Cohortes Vigilum), in Rome, but we don’t know of anything in surviving Roman literature which portrays them as figures of fun.  Shakespeare, however, has given us a constable, Dogberry, whose name alone is ridiculous.  He is head of the Watch in the town of Messina in Much Ado About Nothing (1598-9?)

and his instructions to his men will give you an idea of how Shakespeare wants us to view this officer of the law:

DOGBERRY

You shall also make no noise in
the streets; for, for the watch to babble and to
talk is most tolerable and not to be endured.

Watchman

We will rather sleep than talk: we know what
belongs to a watch. 

DOGBERRY

Why, you speak like an ancient and most quiet
watchman; for I cannot see how sleeping should
offend: only, have a care that your bills be not
stolen. Well, you are to call at all the
ale-houses, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed.

Watchman

How if they will not?

DOGBERRY

Why, then, let them alone till they are sober: if
they make you not then the better answer, you may
say they are not the men you took them for.

Watchman

Well, sir.

DOGBERRY

If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue
of your office, to be no true man; and, for such
kind of men, the less you meddle or make with them,
why the more is for your honesty.

Watchman

If we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay
hands on him?

DOGBERRY

Truly, by your office, you may; but I think they
that touch pitch will be defiled: the most peaceable
way for you, if you do take a thief, is to let him
show himself what he is and steal out of your company.

(Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene 3)

Here we see a combination of kinds of comedy:

1. misuse of words (these are called “malapropisms” from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in WB Sheridan’s The Rivals, 1775, who constantly garbles meanings—“malaprop” is from French mal a propos, “inappropriate”)—as when Dogberry says “to talk is most tolerable and not to be endured”, where Dogberry means intolerable
2. opposite meaning—when the unnamed watchman says “We will rather sleep than talk: we know what belongs to a watch.”—one of the meanings of “to watch” is “to stay awake”! And Dogberry agrees with him:  “for I cannot see how sleeping could offend.”
3. giving oneself away—the tasks of the Watch are clearly to include enforcing curfew hours for taverns and catching thieves and Dogberry’s response to questions about drunks (“let them along till they are sober”) and thieves (“the less you meddle or make with them, why the more is for your honesty”), where “meddle or make” means “have to do with them” give us the picture of an officer who will sleep on duty and avoid his duties when awake. (We would also point out that line about sleeping on duty: “only, have a care that your bills be not stolen”.  “Bills”, here, doesn’t mean records of debt, but a medieval weapon, a billhook,

suggesting that these constables are so inept that, not only will they be sleeping on duty, but also they will be in danger of losing their weapons while doing so.)

Constables, competent or note, were the norm in the Renaissance and beyond, policemen in the modern sense being an early modern invention.  For us, with our interest in the Victorian world, this means the London Metropolitan Police, founded by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 (and hence, in slang, called “bobbies” or “peelers”).

With their distinctive uniforms and, in time, helmets, as well as their truncheons (clubs), rather than firearms, they quickly became familiar figures in 19^th-century Britain, so much so that it was easy for WS Gilbert to introduce them as comic opponents for his pirates in his and Arthur Sullivan’s 1879/80 operetta, The Pirates of Penzance.

Like Dogberry and his watchmen, they are depicted as timid, but Gilbert does something more:  he makes them sentimental, as the sergeant

tells us:

WHEN a felon’s not engaged in his employment,
Or maturing his felonious little plans,
His capacity for innocent enjoyment
Is just as great as any honest man’s.
Our feelings we with difficulty smother	5
When constabulary duty’s to be done:
Ah, take one consideration with another,
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one!
When the enterprising burglar’s not a-burgling,
When the cut-throat isn’t occupied in crime,	10
He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling,
And listen to the merry village chime.
When the coster’s finished jumping on his mother,
He loves to lie a-basking in the sun:
Ah, take one consideration with another,	15
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one!

(We have no idea why there is this bracketing around our quotation, but, when we tried to get rid of it, it stubbornly remained.  Rather than struggle with it, since it has given us the quotation, we decided to leave it, with apologies for our rather primitive computer skills!  A “coster”, by the way, is, basically, a city pushcart salesman.  The word is short for “costermonger” = “apple seller”.)

You can see what will happen when such constables attempt to subdue anyone, let alone pirates.

This brings us back to those Shirriffs, and we leave you with the idea that, although the sergeant in The Pirates of Penzance sings that a policeman’s lot is not a happy one, in literature, from Aristophanes to Tolkien, it is sometimes a comic one.

As ever, thanks for reading, with

MTCIDC,

of course,

and stay well!

CD

“In the beginning was the Word…”

John, I, 1.

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Although we begin with what is the opening of the Christian New Testament’s Book of John, the word here stands not for anything religious, although it might be spiritual.  Rather, it is the approach we want to take for something we’ve been thinking about for some time and which we’ve chosen as the theme for this, our 300^th posting.

In May, 2019, Fox Searchlight released Tolkien, a film about the early life of JRRT.  Reviews were very mixed.  Some people saw it as a rather over-fanciful depiction, and criticized it as such.  A few were very negative.  And some praised certain aspects of it.  We are in the latter category, in that we saw it as an honest attempt to do something very difficult:  to tell the external story of a complex, highly-creative man while, at the same time, suggesting something of his internal story.

We are always interested in movie posters and here are three which suggest to us different approaches with which the writers and director tried to present to us thematic material which would both hold the story together and hold our attention, as well.

The first

shows us Nicholas Hoult, who played Tolkien, as a rather serious young man in his 20s.  The likeness between him and JRRT is not particularly strong,

but that, to us, was of no matter:  what we wanted to see was how he acted, not who the actor was.  What really caught our eye was the scene just below his image.  It’s small, but it appears to be of two medievalish mounted figures who look like they’re about to engage in combat.  All right, we thought—a suggestion of the medieval world of Middle-earth, but, at the moment, more medieval than Middle-earth, which could suggest the world in which Tolkien would spend his academic life, once he realized that Classics was not for him.  Telling, however, is the background to this small scene:  blasted trees.  And we know where we’ve seen this—

So—in this approach, we see a young Tolkien set above a world which combines knights and the No Man’s Land of his experience in the Great War.

Our second poster

retains the image of Tolkien, and of those medievalish figures, but includes two more elements.  Within a picture frame are, first, four schoolboys, and we know, from the film, that they represent JRRT’s best friends at King Edward’s School in Manchester, which he attended from 1900-1902 and 1903-1911.

Their position in Tolkien’s early life is underlined by the slogan above the frame:  “A Life of Love, Courage & Fellowship”.  Love certainly existed among Tolkien and his friends, but the other figure within the frame signifies another kind of love, the romantic variety, in the form of Lily Collins, who plays Edith Bratt, Tolkien’s one-time sweetheart and eventual wife.

Here, we think that the director came closer to a resemblance, if we put the two together.

 

So, in this approach, we retain the suggestion of the medieval and the Great War, but add to it Tolkien’s early friendship (with the suggestion, at least in the poster, of “fellowship”), and his romantic life.

The third poster tries to bring this all together,

suggesting, perhaps, that all these parts:  friendship, love, medievalism, and the Great War, swirl around inside JRRT’s head.  Although Tolkien himself fought shy on a regular basis of the idea that works like The Lord of the Rings were somehow cloaked versions of actual events in some way, all writers carry their experiences with them and those experiences may inspire creative work, even if somewhat indirectly.  Thinking of Tolkien’s long separation from Edith, for example, might we see a suggestion of the many years in which Arwen and Aragorn waited for each other?

So far, then, we see the film using the actual events of JRRT’s life, more or less in their historical order, with a certain amount of embellishment, presumably to give that life a bit more “drama”.  But this isn’t all which the film attempts and, for us, this extra—but crucial–level is the most interesting—and the most daring.  Tolkien is known for having written that:  “The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse.  To me a name comes first and the story follows.”  (Letters, 219)

There are two moments when the director and writers try to include this idea that language is key and, for us, they are our favorite moments in the film.  The first involves a statement taken from a 1955 lecture, “English and Welsh”, in which Tolken writes:  “Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is ‘beautiful’, especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). “ (JRR Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics, Hammersmith:  HarperCollins, 2006, 190)

Its sense, for JRRT, would probably have been something like this—

By “its spelling”, we wonder if what he actually means is its pronunciation.  In certain areas of England, the Rs at the end of both words would be pronounced as the alphabetic sound R, a bit of a growl in the back of the throat, but in what is called RS—“received standard” (British) English, those Rs almost disappear, making the words sound more like “selladaw” (this is a bit crude as a key to pronunciation—but we have a better way of demonstrating it which will appear in just a moment).

In the film, this remark is brought to life in an interesting way.  Tolkien and Edith are at tea in a rather swanky place and she challenges him to tell her a story, using “selladaw”.  He takes up the challenge, groping for meaning, and quickly changes her suggestion—that it’s a person—to it being a place name.  Here’s the LINK to a clip:   https://annasmol.net/2019/04/13/tolkiens-cellar-door/

which we found on a website we encourage you to visit at:  https://annasmol.net/

In the clip, you’ll hear the RS pronunciation, as well as see something the director and writers also wanted to bring out:  that Edith sparked something poetic in Tolkien, truly being Luthien to his Beren.  (If this story is unfamiliar to you, it’s in the Silmarillion, and also might have been suggested, in part, by Tolkien’s long waiting for Edith.  Here’s a LINK to the Wiki article on the subject, which is very useful:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beren_and_L%C3%BAthien   )

The second moment is not so dramatic (or romantic), but it tries to provide some sense of that pure love of language, its history and creation, which was so vital to what stood behind Tolkien’s massive world of Middle-earth, but it’s not something which Tolkien says.  Rather, it’s spoken by one of Tolkien’s professors, Joseph Wright (1855-1930), at Oxford.

Wright was a remarkable man in himself, having risen from poverty in Yorkshire, where he began by leading donkey carts at mines,

then worked changing the bobbins of thread in a factory,

all the while teaching himself to become a scholar, which, eventually he did, his specialty being Germanic languages—as in this volume on one of the ancestors of such languages, Gothic.

(If you’d like your own copy of this work, here’s a LINK:  https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.272068 )

In the film, he’s played by the wonderful English actor, Derrick Jacobi,

and, at one point, he is walking with Tolkien and they pass a tree.  Wright/Jacobi then speaks:

“A child points,

and is taught a word.

Tree.

Later, he learns

to distinguish this tree

from all the others.

He learns its particular name.

He plays under the tree.

He dances around it.

Stands beneath its branches,

for shade or shelter.

He kisses under it,

he sleeps under it,
he weds under it.

He marches past it

on his way to war,and

limps back past it

on his journey home.

A king is said to have

hidden in this tree.

A spirit may dwell

within its bark.

Its distinctive leaves

are carved onto the tombs and

monuments of his landlords.

Its wood might have built

the galleons

that saved his ancestors

from invasion.

And all this,

the general and the specific,

the national and the personal,

all this,

he knows,

and feels,

and summons, somehow,

however faintly,

with the utterance

of a single sound.

Oak.”

(Here’s a LINK to the text, if you’d like to read more:
https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=tolkien )

So what would we say, ultimately, about this film?  Being people who teach and write about Tolkien, we were predisposed to like it, if nothing else because it was, as we said, an honest attempt to show us something of the life of a person we much admire.  If it takes liberties here and there as to how to tell that story, we never feel that it falsifies Tolkien’s life as old-fashioned so-called “biopics” usually did.  As well, it gave us moments—like the two we’ve discussed above—where we saw a bit more and thought a bit more about JRRT, his life, and his work and that is certainly a gift for which director and writers should be thanked.

And thank you, for reading, as always.  With our next posting, number 301, we’ll be close to finishing our 6^th year of publishing, which will be #312.  So, as we always write,

MTCIDC

CD

ps

There is another famous Joseph Wright, an amazing 18^th-century English painter (usually called “Joseph Wright of Derby”, 1734-1797).  Here are two of his works—he paints a wide variety of subjects, including early scientific and industrial themes.  Google Images will give you more—and we recommend that you have a look.

Here’s a LINK to a museum specializing in his work:  https://www.derbymuseums.org/joseph-wright-derby

“Your father’s lightsaber.  This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight.  Not as clumsy or random as a blaster.  An elegant weapon…for a more civilized age.”

Welcome, dear readers, as always.  We’ve had a few rather grim postings recently, so we thought that we would lighten up a bit with a positive one…

If you’re a Star Wars fan, you know what we’ve just quoted above and where it comes from:  Obi-Wan has just handed Luke something about whose owner he will tell less than the truth.

On one level, it is what he says it is—it’s a lightsaber, of which we see many, handled not only by the Jedi, but also by their opponents, the Sith.

By his emphasis upon “the weapon of a Jedi Knight”, and contrasting it with a blaster, however, Obi-wan is offering it as more than a weapon, but as a symbol:  making us wonder, without one, is a Jedi really a Jedi?

A few months ago, we posted a piece about “Sting”, the weapon which Bilbo acquired from the lair of the trolls in The Hobbit:  “…Bilbo took a knife in a leather sheath.  It would have made only a tiny pocket-knife for a troll, but it was as good as a short sword for the hobbit.”  (The Hobbit, Chapter 2, “Roast Mutton”)

It stood Bilbo in good stead several times, both in keeping Gollum at a respectful distance

and also in dealing with the Mirkwood spiders.

(A very interesting illustration by Toby Carr–we’d like to see more of his work.)

Bilbo passes it on to Frodo, but, beyond stabbing a goblin in the foot with it and threatening Gollum, Frodo never really employs it—although Sam does good service with it when he stabs Shelob.

It’s clear, however, that Frodo has no real interest in using it and, by the end of The Lord of the Rings, has become very wary of violence in general:

“Frodo had been in the battle, but he had not drawn sword, and his chief part had been to prevent the hobbits in their wrath at their losses, from slaying those of their enemies who threw down their weapons.”  (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

For Bilbo, Sting had been a useful tool (even though made in Gondolin, like Orcrist and Glamdring, probably for a higher purpose).  For Frodo, it ultimately appears to be something to discard.  For neither is it a symbol of something greater, as Narsil/Anduril is, for Aragorn.

Here, we see a very ancient sword, made in the First Age, but which passes in time to Elendil, who uses and loses it in the battle on the slopes of Orodruin, in the Second Age, when it breaks under him during his final struggle with Sauron.  His son, Isildur, uses the sherd of the sword to cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand.  Though broken, the sword remains in Isildur’s family, until finally inherited by Aragorn, in the Third Age.  Through age and use, then, this has become a symbol of the original Numenorean kingship which will eventually be restored, at the final defeat of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, as the prophecy quoted by Gandalf in his letter to Frodo predicts:

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.”

 (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 10, “Strider”)

The fact that the sword is mentioned—and that it will be reforged, meaning that it, too, will be restored–shows its importance to that restoration, to which we would add:  and also to the ultimate overthrow of Sauron, this time perhaps not as a sword which will harm him physically, but as a reminder of his previous defeat, as well as a threat of what is to come.  Aragorn has used the palantir which Saruman lost and which Gandalf has put into Aragorn’s care, as he reports:

“The eyes of Orthanc did not see through the armour of Theoden; but Sauron has not forgotten Isildur and the sword of Elendil.  Now in the very hour of his great designs the heir of Isildur and Sword are revealed; for I showed the blade re-forged to him.  He is not so mighty yet that he is above fear; nay, doubt ever gnaws him.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company”)

Thus, with the reforged sword, Aragorn shows both himself and a prophesied symbol of kingship and of Aragorn’s right to that kingship, as he asserts when he receives that same palantir from Gandalf:

“There is one who may claim it by right.  For this assuredly is the palantir of Orthanc from the treasury of Elendil, set here by the Kings of Gondor.  Now my hour draws near.  I will take it.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 11, “The Palantir”)

This idea of symbol brings us back to the question of Luke and his father’s lightsaber.

[And a footnote here—

Actually, a saber, perhaps originally a Turkic weapon, but which comes into the West from Hungary,

looks like this:

It belongs to a variety of weapon called a “backsword” meaning a kind of sword which is sharpened along only one side.  It may have a sharpened point for stabbing—as this 1907 saber exercise shows—

but its main job is for slashing—

Originally, we are told, the lightsaber was called a “laser sword”, which is more accurate, in terms of how it looks and how it’s used—more like a rapier, which has both sharpened blade and point—

but, somehow, “laser sword” sounds just, well, clunky.]

The importance of the lightsaber for Luke is underlined by the fact that, after he’s lost his father’s (as well as his hand) in his first duel with…his father,

he makes another, which is, in fact, one stage from padawan to Jedi Knight in the Jedi tradition.

When Luke surrenders to Darth Vader in The Return of the Jedi,

Vader comments upon this:

“Vader looks down from Luke to the lightsaber in his own black-gloved hand. He seems to ponder Luke’s words.

VADER (indicating lightsaber)

I see you have constructed a new lightsaber.

Vader ignites the lightsaber and holds it to examine its humming, brilliant blade.

VADER

Your skills are complete.  Indeed, you are powerful, as the Emperor has foreseen.”

 What the Emperor has not foreseen, however, is what use Luke makes of this weapon.  Although he fights a second duel with his father and actually defeats him, cutting off his right hand in a mirror of what had happened to him in his first duel,

when told by the Emperor to kill his father,

Luke refuses, throwing his lightsaber aside.

And what he says then suggests that perhaps the lightsaber may be a symbol of being a Jedi, but, unlike Anduril, its symbolic power may not be so great:

“EMPEROR

Good!  Your hate has made you powerful.  Now fulfill your destiny and take your father’s place at my side!

Luke looks at his father’s mechanical hand, then to his own mechanical, black-gloved hand, and realizes how much he is becoming like his father.  He makes a decision for which he has spent a lifetime in preparation.  Luke steps back and hurls his lightsaber away.

LUKE

Never!  I’ll never turn to the dark side.  You’ve failed, Your Highness.  I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”

And this, in turn, answers our earlier question:  is a Jedi a Jedi without a lightsaber?   As Obi-wan has said, when he symbolically offers a Jedi’s life to Luke, it is the weapon of a Jedi Knight.  When Luke casts his aside, defying the Emperor and inviting his own death, we see that, although a lightsaber is part of what makes a Jedi, what really makes him one is more complex, something which the Emperor, who killed his own master, Darth Plagueis, in his sleep, could never understand and this lack of understanding leads to his own destruction (well, temporary destruction, as he’ll reappear in Star Wars IX).

Thanks, as always, for reading and, as ever,

MTCIDC,

CD

ps

In fact, even Obi-wan himself finds a blaster more useful, at least once.  When confronting General Grievous, who has four lightsabers,

on Utapau, he loses his own, finds a handgun and

But Obi-wan has a final comment–

“The JEDI fires several blasts in the stomach area of the alien Droid, and he EXPLODES from the inside out.  The smoldering Droid falls to the ground.  OBI-WAN has killed GENERAL GRIEVOUS.  He pulls himself up onto the platform and walks by the destroyed carcass.

OBI-WAN:  So uncivilized . . .”

pps

We apologize for the use of italic throughout–something happened in the copying of quotations process and we don’t seem to be able to fix it.  It’s an elegant typeface, however, and perhaps it fits the lightsaber idea?