When I saw the new Indiana Jones film the first time,
I was a bit concerned that the actor’s actual age—80—might be an impediment to the action and certain remarks, mainly made early in the film–the character called “Teddy” initially addresses him as “old timer” and his co-star, “Helena”, remarks to him, “I like the hat, by the way. Makes you look at least two years younger.” as well as later calling him “an aging grave robber”—made me wary, but, once the action set in, age was mostly ignored, even though Jones’ character in the film was supposedly 70.
At the same time, I was disappointed that, when his old friend, Sallah, appeared,
after a brief scene, he was told, “This is not an adventure, Sallah. Those days have come and gone.” and he was dismissed from the film, only to reappear briefly as a grandfatherly figure at the end.
To me, this seemed like the waste of an interesting character, who had twice helped Jones against Nazis, and, as Jones was on his way to Tangier, it would seem that Sallah, a native Arabic-speaker, might have been of real use there, as well. Was the actor (John Rhys Davies’) actual age (79) against him, especially if Jones is supposed to be older, as well?
This set me thinking about the ages of heroes in adventure. Are there more like Indiana Jones? And would that mean a second chance for Sallah?
Adventure is obviously a giant subject, and growing larger all the time, so I’ll restrict my questions for the moment to what I’m teaching this fall: the Odyssey, Beowulf, and TheHobbit.
Beginning with the hero of the first of these, how old is Odysseus, for instance? Athena, to protect him from being initially overwhelmed by the 100+ suitors and their minions,
turns him into an old beggar
(This may be an Alan Lee?)
when he arrives on Ithaka, which presumably suggests he will be at least somewhat different from his actual age. (Odyssey, Book 13.397-403) Although the text never provides a definite answer, we might do a little creative arithmetic, using the few facts we have about Odysseus’ early life.
1. His first adventure appears to be recorded in the Odyssey. His grandfather had instructed his parents to send the boy to him when he first entered adulthood, so might we guess 18 to 20? While staying with his grandfather, Odysseus was wounded during a boar hunt
and carried the scar with him into his later adult life, as its recognition, many years later, by his old nurse, Eurykleia,
almost gives away his disguise. (Odyssey, Book 19, 386-490)
Of other early events, we learn of Odysseus winning Penelope in a footrace (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 3.12.2, 3.12.4—which you can read at: https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias3A.html ), although we have no idea of how old either Odysseus or Penelope was at that time. There has been, as you can imagine, lots of scholarly discourse on when people in ancient Greece married, but there may be some consensus that girls would marry after about the age of 14 or 15—although the age of men is much less firm. One ancient source suggests that girls should be about 19 and men about 30 (Hesiod, Works and Days, 695-699—for one view of the question, see: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2023/02/28/at-what-age-did-ancient-greek-women-typically-marry/ )
Beyond this event, we see Odysseus acquiring a bow from Iphitos, which he receives on a trip upon which his father, Laertes, and the elders of Ithaka had sent him (Odyssey, Book 21, 1-41), suggesting that he is still young enough to be under his father’s authority. (This is the bow with which he later deals with the suitors.)
Odysseus goes off to the War for ten years and spends a further 9 years coming home, adding 20 years to whatever total we can imagine. He might have been about 40, then, or, considering the passage from Hesiod above, maybe fifty—although this would go against the idea that Athena has turned him into an old beggar. Even if we settle upon 40, Odysseus, in a world where life expectancy may have been relatively short (lots of scholarly argument on this—just read through the Wiki article on “Life Expectancy” here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy ), was rather far along in his life and, though vigorous (with Athena’s help), perhaps about the equivalent of Indiana Jones in Dial. (For a long, detailed look at Odysseus, see: https://mythopedia.com/topics/odysseus )
We don’t know very accurately the ages of the title character in Beowulf when he’s involved in his major conflicts, but we do know that, when he finally faces the dragon, near the poem’s end,
he’s been king of his people for “fifty winters” (fiftig wintra, Beowulf, 2208—for a very useful translation, with the original Old English text placed parallel and lots of notes, see: https://heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html ). Presuming that he was a young man when he fought Grendel and his mother earlier in the poem, I think that it’s safe to assume that he’s at least in his very late 60s or early 70s.
In the case of Bilbo, in The Hobbit, we are on firmer ground. When Gandalf in April, TA2941, arrives to recruit Bilbo for the adventure Bilbo initially says he wants no part of,
(the Hildebrandts—and one of my all-time favorite illustrations by them)
Bilbo was 50, having been born in TA2890 (Bilbo’s birthday, as we know, is in September—for the date of Gandalf’s arrival, see “The Quest for Erebor”in Douglas Anderson’s The Annotated Hobbit, 375).
Hobbits, however, seem to have a longer life expectancy than humans, so that Bilbo’s 50 is probably not our 50—after all, hobbits only came of age at 33—although Bilbo’s state of preservation at 99 did cause remark in the Shire (see The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-expected Party”).
Odysseus, in his 40s or even 50s, is able, with the aid of his son, Telemachus, and two slaves and a little help from Athena, to slaughter over a hundred suitors. Beowulf, perhaps in his 70s, with the assistance of a single young warrior, Wiglaf, kills a fearsome dragon. Even if Bilbo is a young fifty, he still manages to survive trolls, goblins, spiders, hostile elves, and a dragon and live another 80 years (we don’t know how much the Ring may have had to do with that longevity—after all, the Old Took manages 130 without it). That being the case, perhaps the writers of The Dial of Destiny were a little premature in relegating Sallah to the sidelines?
The title of this posting is actually only part of a quotation—here’s the full line—
It’s Indiana Jones, of course, in The Last Crusade (1989),
who has just come upon a German operations center in an Austrian castle.
In my two-part review of the final Indiana Jones movie, The Dial of Destiny,
(“Jonesing for Indiana”, 24 July, 2023, 3 August, 2023)
I summed up the series’ villains, in which, out of five films in all, one (The Temple of Doom) has an evil prime minister,
one (Crystal Skull), has a Soviet agent,
(with that very odd sword—although she actually uses it at one point, it has always struck me as more of an obvious plot device than something natural to the character and particularly to the story)
one (The Dial of Destiny) has an ex-Nazi (really, a kind of Nazi in semi-retirement, with plans),
and two (Raiders of the Lost Ark)
and (The Last Crusade)
with active Nazis in uniform.
And yet, the more I’ve thought about it, the more it seemed that the Nazis weren’t really the villains at all, only the muscle for the real antagonists.
The basic premise for all three Nazi films was that Hitler was a collector of what he believed to be sources of power from the ancient world, including
the Ark of the Covenant from the Judeo-Christian tradition (Raiders),
the Holy Grail, from the Christian tradition (Crusade),
and the Lance of Longinus, also from the Christian tradition.
(If we can believe Mein Kampf, where Hitler refers to the Lance—and a nail attached to it—as “magical relics”, perhaps this is the basis for the idea in the films as to why he’s a collector? I’m sorry that I’m relying upon an early translation here, rather than, as I normally do, making my own translation of the German text, but, so far, I haven’t been able to locate the original German passage—perhaps “magische Relikte ”? It’s interesting, by the way, that both the villain of Dial and Indiana determine that the Lance which is being carried off in a train full of loot is a fake. The history of various objects claimed to be the actual “Lance of Longinus” is long and complicated, but at least one of the leading candidates has been determined, by the latest scientific tests, to be inauthentic, something the two film characters seem to be able to do by eyesight alone. For more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Lance )
It’s never said what Hitler intends to do with these objects, but here’s where, I suggest, these real villains appear.
The first is Rene Belloque, a rather dodgy French archaeologist, who appears in the initial episode of Raiders, where, backed by “Hovitos” Native Americans, he takes the golden idol from Jones which Jones, in a memorable scene, has managed to extract from its deposit site.
He then reappears later in the film as director of a German (it’s 1936, which means Nazi) archaeological project in Egypt, employed to oversee the excavation of the “lost city of Tanis”—and to discover the whereabouts of the Ark. (For more on the real city of Tanis, which was actually rediscovered in the 1860s, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanis )
When the Ark is in his hands, however, his behavior is hardly that of an archaeologist. Instead of making drawings and taking photographs at each stage (unfortunately, archaeology, even as it discovers, is forced to destroy, so careful records are crucial to the understanding of a site or an object), he dresses up as a high priest
and looks to be attempting to tap into what he believes to be the power of the Ark, or its contents, for himself, and, as we know, this leads to an unexpected consequence—
This, in turn, foreshadows the behavior—and fate–of Walter Donovan
in The Last Crusade.
He, too, although appearing to work for the Nazis, has his own agenda: immortal life from drinking from the Holy Grail,
which goes awry, just as Rene’s attempt to use the Ark has been less than successful.
This leaves us with our retired Nazi in Dial of Destiny, “Juergen Voller”.
As I discussed in my two-part review, although Voller was once a Nazi,
or at least was surrounded by them, his ultimate goal is somewhat murky: it appears that he’s going to use the “Dial” to cross time, arrive in Berlin just in time to assassinate Hitler and take his place, winning a war which, through his mistakes, Hitler lost. He assumes—we’re never told why—that the “Dial” (aka “the antikythera”)
is a time-traveling device (and how it works is also never clearly explained, but it seems to have something to do with the weather) and it will transport him and his entourage to his chosen site at the moment of his choosing (and how this is supposed to happen is also not clear—and, at this point, I think that Indiana Jones’ remark in the first film—
is true for the writers of what I’m afraid is a pretty shaky script).
If you haven’t read my review, and are interested, turn back to “Jonesing for Indiana”, 24 July, 2023, 3 August, 2023, for more, but here, I would say that, as in the case of Belloque and Donovan, his villainy is more about him than about the cause of his employers. It’s never mentioned directly, but, once he’s dealt with Hitler, doesn’t this assume that Voller will then be the new Fuehrer? After all, he could use his time traveling, if it were real, to tweak history here and there wherever he wished, taking a backseat, but, controlling, role. Instead, he will be front and center, suggesting less a German patriot than a would-be megalomaniac, rather like the man he intends to replace and this certainly fits in with the idea that these films aren’t about confronting the Nazis, but rather about foiling the massive egos of three men for whom the Nazis are nothing more than employers and enforcers.
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
Stay well,
As I’ve cautioned before, always choose wisely,
And know that, as always, there’s
MTCIDC
O
PS
While I always try to be as fair as I can be in reviews—after all, the majority of those creating films really do believe in their projects and aren’t simply trying to cheat the viewers—this last Indiana Jones film seems, for all the time and money spent, compromised by what is really very sloppy writing. I’ve mentioned some things, both here and in my review, but, as I was writing this, another example occurred to me. Unlike Belloque and Donovan’s ends, Voller’s death is treated almost as an afterthought, as if the villain was nothing more than a plot device picked up, used, then discarded, as we simply see his body sprawled next to the ruined aircraft. Archimedes goes over to the body and removes Voller’s wristwatch, putting it on his own wrist. Possibly he thinks that this is just a nice addition to his jewelry collection, but, beyond that:
1. after such a crash, it would probably have been broken and therefore would no longer register time (although it seems to be in perfect condition—not even rusted—when it’s discovered by Jones in Archimedes’ tomb over 2000 years later) and how would Archimedes even understand that that was its function as
2. Archimedes, like other Greeks, used the letters of his alphabet for numbers—if the dial had Roman numerals, they would probably have meant nothing to him and, if it had Arabic numerals, not only would they have meant nothing, but they would also have been an anachronism, as Arabic numerals—which were, in fact, invented in India—only appeared in western Europe in the 10th century AD—see this useful article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals
All of which makes me sad: I’ve always looked forward to the next Indiana Jones film, ever since the first one and, although I’ve been disappointed by 2 and 4, I had real hopes for 5 and, given better writers, who knows what we might have seen at the end of his long, adventurous career?
Although Tolkien often protested that The Lord of the Rings was never meant to be allegorical (allegory being something he didn’t care for), yet:
“That there is no allegory does not, of course, say there is no applicability. There always is. And since I have not made the struggle unequivocal…there is I suppose applicability in my story to present times.” (from a letter to Herbert Schiro, 17 November, 1957, Letters, 262)
As a case in point, let me cite for you Lotho Sackville-Baggins.
The title of this posting, although it may appear to be the acronym for some large, anonymous corporation, is actually a piece of shorthand adapted from one of Tolkien’s letters:
“We knew Hitler was a vulgar and ignorant little cad, in addition to any other defects (or the source of them)…” (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 23-25 September, 1944, Letters, 93)
That Tolkien had no love for Hitler, his view of him he makes very clear in an earlier letter written to his second son, Michael:
“Anyway, I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler…” (letter to Michael Tolkien, 9 June, 1941, Letters, 55)
Tolkien goes on in that later letter, however:
… but there seem to be many v. and i.l. cads who don’t speak German…”
and this leads us in a very interesting direction:
“…and who given the same chance would show most of the other Hitlerian characteristics.”
This, in turn, is what leads me to think immediately of Lotho, the son of Otho and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, whom we first see in the last chapter of The Hobbit, where, having believed that Bilbo was dead, they seem to have hoped to inherit Bag End, appearing at the auction of its contents and, to Bilbo’s mind, intent upon acquiring more than the real estate:
“Many of his silver spoons mysteriously disappeared and were never accounted for. Personally he suspected the Sackville-Bagginses.”
They were clearly personally affronted that Bilbo survived his adventure:
“On their side they never admitted that the returned Baggins was genuine, and they were not on friendly terms with Bilbo ever after. They really had wanted to live in his nice hobbit-hole so very much.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 19, “The Last Stage”)
Although not on friendly terms, perhaps, they were invited to Bilbo’s birthday party, but they presumed upon this, when Bilbo had disappeared, to confront Frodo:
“The Sackville-Bagginses were rather offensive. They began by offering him bad bargain-bargain prices (as between friends) for various valuable and unlabelled things. When Frodo replied that the only things specially directed by Bilbo were being given away, they said the whole affair was very fishy.
‘Only one thing is clear to me,’ said Otho, ‘and that is that you are doing exceedingly well out of it. I insist on seeing the will.”
And now we see what has been festering since that moment, sixty years before, when Bilbo had reappeared to stop the auction:
“Otho would have been Bilbo’s heir, but for the adoption of Frodo.”
He reads the will, finds it ironclad, and is more than disappointed:
“ ‘Foiled again!’ he said to his wife. ‘And after waiting sixty years. Spoons? Fiddlesticks!’ He snapped his fingers under Frodo’s nose and stumped off. But Lobelia was not so easily got rid of. A little later Frodo came out of the study to see how things were getting on, and found her still about the place, investigating nooks and corners, and tapping the floors. He escorted her firmly off the premises, after he relieved her of several small (but rather valuable) articles that had somehow fallen inside her umbrella.”
(Otho might have been waiting for sixty years to gain Bag End, but Bilbo had not forgotten his suspicion of the Sackville-Bagginses’ earlier behavior, leaving a gift for her:
“For LOBELIA SACKVILLE-BAGGINS, as a PRESENT on a case of silver spoons.”The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-expected Party”)
Although Otho had died in the interim, Lobelia survived to buy—not inherit—Bag End, and it was still in her—, or rather, her son, Lotho’s—hands when Saruman, aka “Sharkey”, arrived to continue his plan either to convert the Shire into an early industrial center or to ruin it (Tolkien might have said, “Both”, considering his aversion to what the Industrial Revolution had done to his beloved countryside).
In the meantime, Lotho—the son of rather less than decent folk, his own popularity in the Shire gauged by his nickname, “Pimple”—has somehow done very well for himself:
“ ‘It all began with Pimple, as we call him,’ said Farmer Cotton; ‘and it began as soon as you’d gone off, Mr. Frodo. He’d funny ideas, had Pimple. Seems he wanted to own everything himself, and then order other folk about. It soon came out that he already did own a sight more than was good for him; and he was always grabbing more, though where he got the money was a mystery: mills and malt-houses and inns, and farms, and leaf-plantations. He’d already bought Sandyman’s mill before he came to Bag End, seemingly.’ “
Things quickly went from bad to worse, as:
“ ‘A lot of Men, ruffians mostly, came with great wagons, some to carry off the goods south-away, and others to stay. And more came. And before we knew where we were they were planted here and there all over the Shire, and were felling trees and digging and building themselves sheds and houses just as they liked. At first goods and damage was paid for by Pimple; but soon they began lording it around and taking what they wanted.
Then there was a bit of trouble, but not enough. Old Will the Mayor set off for Bag End to protest, but he never got there. Ruffians laid hands on him and took and locked him up in a hole in Michel Delving, and there he is now. And after that, it would be after New Year, there wasn’t no more Mayor, and Pimple called himself Chief Shirriff, or just Chief, and did as he liked…’ “ (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)
So, from being simply the son of greedy, self-important hobbits, Lotho (and, yes, that has to be a joke on “Loathe-0”) has become, at least until Saruman appears, the dictator of the Shire:
“ ‘…and if anyone got “uppish” as they called it, they followed Will.’ “
Earlier in this same letter to Christopher, Tolkien had written:
“There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don’t know the difference between good and evil!”
Tolkien, who was a decent and extremely fair-minded man, refuted that, saying:
“The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.”
At the same time, he was well aware that those who may appear ordinary, but who harbor such terrible ideas, may, in time come into positions of control, like Lotho:
“The Vulgar and Ignorant Cad is not yet a boss with power; but he is a very great deal nearer to becoming one in this green and pleasant isle than he was.”
And, if such thinking weren’t wicked enough in itself, there is the added danger:
“You can’t fight the Enemy with his own Ring without turning into an Enemy; but unfortunately Gandalf’s wisdom seems long ago to have passed with him into the True West…”
This seems too much, even for Tolkien, horrified that letters which sound like Nazi propaganda translated into English should appear in the public press and has already written to Christopher that:
“Still you’re not the only one who want to let off steam or bust, sometimes; and I could make steam, if I opened the throttle, compared with which (as the Queen said to Alice) this would be only a scent-spray.”
(a half-quotation from Through the Looking Glass, 1871, where, in Chapter 2, Alice has a conversation with the Red Queen in which the Queen several times uses the expression, “I’ve seen/heard…compared with which…”)
But perhaps there is some consolation in the ultimate fate of Lotho and of his master, Saruman? “Where is that miserable Lotho hiding?” Merry had asked and Saruman later answered:
“ ‘But did I hear someone ask where poor Lotho is hiding? You know, don’t you, Worm? Will you tell them?’
Wormtongue cowered down and whimpered: ‘No, no!’
‘Then I will,’ said Saruman. ‘Worm killed your Chief, poor little fellow, you nice little Boss. Didn’t you, Worm? Stabbed him in his sleep, I believe. Buried him, I hope; though Worm has been very hungry lately…”
This is too much, even for Grima/Wormtongue:
“…suddenly Wormtongue rose up, drawing a hidden knife, and with a snarl like a dog he sprang on Saruman’s back, jerked his head back, cut his throat, and with a yell ran off down the lane.”
In 1944, Tolkien had no idea what would happen to Hitler and his allies by 1945, but one wonders what he might have said about applicability then?
In his own field, Tolkien was, not surprisingly, a very well-read scholar, and, in certain areas beyond his field, like Celtic Studies, he was informed, if not expert.
Oronzo Cilli’s wonderfully detailed work, Tolkien’s Library, An Annotated Checklist,
using a variety of sources, from correspondence, to the comments of his friends, to books surviving in university collections, to sale catalogues, to library books recorded to have been checked out by him, supplies us with hundreds of titles owned or consulted by Tolkien.
For a person who often wrote that he was overwhelmed with academic work year-round, however, Tolkien appears to have enough leisure to accumulate and read quite a number of non-scholarly works, as well, and leafing through the pages of Cilli’s book, one finds everything from Owen Barfield’s The Silver Trumpet
to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
(although Cilli misspells it with an apostrophe, which Joyce intentionally didn’t employ)
to E.A. Wyke-Smith’s The Marvellous Land of Snergs.
(missing its definite article in Cilli)
Among his listings are these:
Busman’s Honeymoon,
Clouds of Witness,
The Five Red Herrings,
(also missing its definite article in Cilli)
Gaudy Night,
Have His Carcase,
Murder Must Advertise,
Strong Poison,
The Nine Tailors,
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club,
and Whose Body?,
all detective novels by Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957).
In these novels, the detective is a wealthy, titled man, Lord Peter Wimsey,
who has a kind of Watson in his personal valet, Bunter (a sergeant in his regiment in the Great War, who rescued him on the battlefield), and who eventually marries—of all people—a young mystery writer, Harriet Vane, after he rescues her from the gallows in Strong Poison (1930)–although not immediately. In a very believable rejection, Harriet refuses him at first because she doesn’t believe that gratitude is enough of a basis for a lasting relationship. It takes two more adventures—Have His Carcase, 1932, and Gaudy Night, 1935, before she finally agrees. And, in Sayers’ last Wimsey novel, Busman’s Honeymoon, 1937, we see them just after their marriage.
Besides being a successful mystery writer, Sayers was also a dramatist, essayist, and translator, her major work being her highly-annotated translation of the first two parts of Dante’s Commedia (the third part, unfinished at her death, was completed by Barbara Reynolds).
Both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis knew and liked her, as Humphrey Carpenter tells us (see The Inklings, 189), and, among her works, her series of Christian radio plays, The Man Born to Be King (1941-42), impressed them, but Lewis tried Gaudy Night and didn’t enjoy it, and Tolkien, who appears to have owned and read almost all of her novels (only missing from the list is Unnatural Death, 1927) ultimately wrote this:
“I could not stand Gaudy Night, I followed P. Wimsey from his attractive beginnings so far, by which time I conceived a loathing for him (and his creatix) not surpassed by any other character in literature known to me, unless by his Harriet. The honeymoon one (Busman’s H.?) was worse. I was sick.” (airgraph to Christopher Tolkien, 25 May 1944, Letters, 82)
What had gone wrong? Gaudy Night (1935) is set at a reunion of Harriet Vane’s imaginary Oxford college, “Shrewsbury College”, based upon Sayers’ actual college, Somerville, and concerns mysterious acts of anti-feminist vandalism which come to border on open violence. The college head invites Harriet, as a former member of the college, to investigate, which she does against rather significant opposition from some of the faculty. The plot also concerns Peter Wimsey, who, although off on a diplomatic mission for the British government at the beginning of the story, returns in time to participate in the detecting of the guilty party and her motive later in the novel. We don’t know why this turned Tolkien off—perhaps Lewis’ reaction? Perhaps the love story and Harriet’s ultimate agreement to marry Peter? (He did say that he’d come to loathe her, but doesn’t mention her appearance in two earlier novels.) And what had happened to his liking for Sayers herself? Such extreme reactions seem as mysterious as Sayers’ novels and perhaps it would take a literary detective of the quality of Peter Wimsey himself to unravel it.
Thanks for reading, as always.
Stay well,
The science of deduction or induction—which does Holmes practice really?
And know that, as always, there’s
MTCIDC,
O
PS
Unlike Tolkien, I’ve always enjoyed Sayers’ novels, Harriet Vane being a particular favorite character—I wish that Sayers had written at least one book in which she solves a mystery on her own—and, if you’d like to know more about her and her work, try: https://www.sayers.org.uk/ If Peter Wimsey interests you, besides the books, there are two very good and very different television series available:
1. Ian Carmichael played the character in a series created in the 1970s
2. Edward Petherbridge was Wimsey in a briefer series in the late 1980s
There are partisans for each. I enjoy both, Carmichael having the kind of bounce and flair with quotation which makes Wimsey appealing, and Petherbridge displays the inherent melancholy which is Wimsey’s other side (he still has nightmares about the Great War).
Although Tolkien never wanted readers to see The Lord of the Rings as allegory about his own time—writing to Joanna de Bortadano that “my story is not an allegory of Atomic power” (letter to Joanna de Bortadano, April, 1956, Letters, 246), he also wrote to Rhona Beare that, “I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place” (letter to Rhona Beare, 14 October, 1958, Letters, 283) and, in the years in which he was writing the novel, it would have been difficult not to have felt some influence from what was going on around him in that place.
This certainly applies, I would suggest, when it comes to the words of the Mouth of Sauron,
(Douglas Beekman)
dictating terms to Gandalf:
“The rabble of Gondor and its deluded allies shall withdraw at once beyond the Anduin, first taking oaths never again to assail Sauron the Great in arms, open or secret. All lands east of the Anduin shall be Sauron’s for ever, solely. West of the Anduin as far as the Misty Mountains and the Gap of Rohan shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs. But they shall help to rebuild Isengard which they have wantonly destroyed, and that shall be Sauron’s, and there his lieutenant shall dwell: not Saruman, but one more worthy of trust.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)
Although it would lead to a permanent cessation of combat, the armistice of 11 November, 1918, agreed upon in a railway car in Compiegne in northern France,
was not a surrender on the part of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey), but only an agreement to cease active engagement with the Allies. As fighting stopped, more or less, at that time, at least on the Western Front, people in the West, especially soldiers, certainly rejoiced as if the Great War/World War I had actually ended.
The real surrender occurred the next June, however, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, outside Paris.
As might be expected from a large gathering of disparate powers, there was a great deal of wrangling, of pushing various agendas, and argument over how Germany, which was almost universally blamed for the outbreak of war in 1914, was to be dealt with. The final form of the treaty was complex, but here are some of the main points:
Reading through these points, and many more, it’s hard not to think that Lieutenant Tolkien
would not have also read through them with interest—note things like:
1. disarmament
2. loss of territory
3. to which we might add outside control of territory, in that the Allies gave themselves the right to occupy the heavy industrial areas called the Rhineland and the Ruhr valley until 1934 (the occupation, in fact, was ended in 1930),
as well as returning to France territory which she had lost to German troops in the War of 1870-1, Alsace and Lorraine.
The severe terms of this treaty, it has often been written, were a major reason for the rise of Hitler and the rearmament of Germany in the 1930s
and even a reason for a new war, even longer than the first, from 1939 to 1945, as Hitler worked his way west, in what was called a Blitzkrieg, or “lightning war”, which, in late spring, 1940, rolled over Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and moved into France, where it rapidly defeated both a British expeditionary force and the French army.
The majority of the British, along with a number of Belgian and French soldiers, were rescued at Dunkirk,
but the majority of the French were forced south and then became part of a general armistice, the terms of which would seem familiar to those who remembered the Treaty of Versailles:
“The 1940 Armistice agreement comprised 24 articles, notably: :
n°1 : The French army must immediately lay down its arms
n°2 : The German occupation of a large portion of France.
n°4 : The demobilization of the French army.
n°6 : The heavy armaments of the free French zone are to be delivered in good condition to the Germans.
n°8 : The French navy is to be demobilized and disarmed.
n°11: Commercial boats must remain in port.
n°12: All planes are grounded.
n°19: Designated German nationals must be handed over to Germany.
n°20: French prisoners of war are to remain in Germany.
n°24: The armistice agreement remains valid until the signing of a peace treaty”
The terms of the Versailles Treaty were harsh, but their ultimate goal was—or at least some of those involved hoped so—to prevent such horrendous wars in the future (see this detailed article for more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles ). The Nazi terms for an armistice were, on the one hand, Hitler’s sneering response to the Treaty of Versailles (he even had it arranged that the terms would be presented and agreed to in the same location—see more at: https://armistice-museum.com/ ), but, on the other, simply a method to gain control of all of France, its industries, and even its labor force, in time—the condition that the armistice terms would hold until a peace treaty was signed proved totally false, as there was never a treaty. That artificially-determined border was erased and the Nazis occupied all of France, as this map sequence shows.
And this is in line with something which the narrator tells us of the reaction of Gandalf and his companions to the words of the Mouth of Sauron:
“Looking in the Messenger’s eyes, they read his thought. He was to be that lieutenant, and gather all that remained of the West under his sway; he would be their tyrant and they his slaves.”
Tolkien, a reluctant civilian during that second war (see his letter to Michael Tolkien of 9 June, 1941, Letters, 55), was always clearly well aware of current events, especially to do with that war (there are over 100 citations to war-related items in Letters alone) and, although he might model Sauron’s terms on what he might have read in 1919 or 1940, I can imagine that it was the terms of the 1940 armistice and their ultimate veracity which was in his mind when he wrote Gandalf’s words in response to the demands of Sauron and his Mouth:
“But as for your terms, we reject them utterly. Get you gone, for your embassy is over and death is near to you. We did not come here to waste words in treating with Sauron, faithless and accursed; still less with one of his slaves. Begone!”
This is the 469th posting of Doubtfulsea.com and, with it, this blog enters its tenth year.
This calls for a little rejoicing,
(no peacock, however)
but there’s another reason for rejoicing, as will present itself—or, rather, himself–later.
As I’ve discussed in earlier postings, lthough, in later life, Tolkien enjoyed at least one Shakespeare performance (see a letter to Christopher Tolkien, 28 July, 1944, Letters, 88), as a schoolboy,
(in 1905, with his younger brother, Hilary)
he disliked Shakespeare “cordially” (see letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 213). His ire was directed towards two plays in particular:
1. Macbeth, because, as he tells us, he was disappointed that Birnam Wood wasn’t an actual wood which marched on Macbeth’s stronghold, but merely camouflage for Macduff’s soldiers (see JRRT’s own footnote to his letter to W.H. Auden of 7 June, 1955, Letters, 212)
(modern camouflage, but you get the idea)
2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream because of the miniaturization of the fairies (see his footnote to a letter to Milton Waldman, “late 1951”, Letters, 143, where he remarks: “…a murrain [plague] on Will Shakespeare and his damned cobwebs” )
I don’t mind Tolkien’s disappointment about Birnam Wood because it gave us Treebeard and the Ents, to me one of his most marvelous creations,
(Alan Lee)
but, although the “cutsie” aspect of Victorian depictions of fairies, which clearly Tolkien had seen and disliked, as the descendants of Shakespeare’s fairies, I find more than a little disturbing—like this depiction, by Richard “Dicky” Doyle (1824-1883), famous for his fairy illustrations–
it has never stopped me from loving the play and, if you, like me, have Shakespeare in your head (it can get a little crowded in there, I admit, so I exclude dubious things like Henry VIII), you’ll recognize the title of this posting as based upon the opening line of the meeting of the Fairy King and Queen
in Act II of A Midsommer nights dreame, as the First Quarto (1600) spells it.
“Ob. Ill met by moonelight, proud Tytania.
Qu. What, Iealous Oberon? Fairy skippe hence.
I haue forsworne his bedde, and company.
Ob. Tarry, rash wanton. Am not I thy Lord?”
(I really prefer Elizabethan/Jacobean spelling, myself, so, if you’d like to read the play in that edition: https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/MND_Q1/scene/2.1/index.html A very mild caution: if you’re used to modern editions and haven’t used the earliest publications, this Quarto may surprise you, as it has no line numbers, scene or act markers, but just rolls along with no breaks. It’s actually perfectly easy to read, however, as you’ll see.)
The King of the Fairies is Oberon, a name which is believed to be derived from a Germanic form “alf-rih”, “elf-king/ruler” (you can see the same construction in the name of the Ostrogothic king, Theodoric, which is actually “theuda-reiks”, “people ruler”), but which first appears in the early 13th century chanson de geste (a kind of heroic poem) of Les Prouesses et faitz du noble Huon de Bourdeaux as Auberon. (For more on this see : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huon_of_Bordeaux )Shakespeare may have picked up the name from the early 16th-century translation by John Bouchier, Lord Berners, The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux (printed about 1534—you can read the Early English Text Society edition of 1882 here : https://ia600502.us.archive.org/35/items/TheBokeOfDukeHuonOfBurdeux1/The_Boke_of_Duke_Huon_of_Burdeux_1.pdf or an 1895 retelling, in the style of William Morris here : https://archive.org/details/huonofbordeauxdo00bernuoft/page/n9/mode/2up ) It’s interesting that Auberon is diminutive, but handsome, in the Huon story, so perhaps Shakespeare scaled down the rest of the fairies to fit him ? (Other Elizabethan/Jacobean authors also depict the fairies as tiny—see, for example, Michael Drayton’s Nymphidia, 1627, which Tolkien hated—On Fairy Stories–and which you can read here : https://archive.org/details/selectionfrompoe00dani/page/124/mode/2up )
If you know the play, you probably also know the incidental music which Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) composed for a performance in of it in Berlin in 1842, having written an overture years before, in 1826, when he was 17 (I almost put an exclamation point there). So you can hear something of what audiences in 1826 would have heard, here’s a really beautiful performance of that overture on instruments of the period, conducted by Franz Brueggen : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxC17tNhN7c
At about the same time, another Romantic composer, Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826),
(This is sometimes cited as the first illustration of a conductor using the equivalent of a baton to conduct.)
was in London, creating an opera based upon a libretto loosely founded upon that 13th century French poem of Huon. That libretto was written by a man often thought of as the forerunner to W.S. Gilbert in English comic operetta, James Robinson Planche (1796-1880),
but who was actually a dynamo of the Georgian and early Victorian theatre in general, being involved in everything from authentic historical costuming to introducing vampires to the English stage in 1820.
The libretto combines spoken dialogue with music, the kind of opera which the French call an opera comique, like Bizet’s (1838-1875) Carmen, 1875, as opposed to an opera completely sung, opera lyrique, or grand opera, and the plot probably would seem pretty weak to us (you can read a summary here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(Weber) ), but it was an immediate success in 1826,
although von Weber died in London shortly afterwards. Here’s the overture to it, again with period instruments, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner : //www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHI7Yc66SFk
so that you can hear a little of what excited London theatre-goers.
Now, you are probably wondering, how does all of this, as interesting as I hope you find it, tie in with that idea of festivity?
Back in May, I posted a piece which ended on the sad note that my 9-year-old Bernese Mountain Dog, Bellerophon, had left us (see Beato Te, 31 May, 2023).
A month or so ago, a new Berner appeared, a 2-month-old puppy, named—I’ll bet you’ll guess this already–Oberon.
At 3 months, he’s curious, lively, and promises, if not to be a powerful fairy king, like his namesake, certainly to provide as much delight as the Shakespeare play from which his name comes.
In my last, I was beginning a review of the new Indiana Jones film.
In that last, I began with background on just what that film was based upon and now I want to discuss the film itself. (And, considering how much of it is revealed here, I suppose that I should shout SPOILER ALERT!!! in case you haven’t seen it. If you haven’t, go, and I hope that, afterwards, you’ll find my two postings useful in your own thoughts about the film.)
It had been long known that this would be the final Indiana Jones film. The lead, after all, is now 80 (though, in the Indiana Jones chronology, he was born 1 July, 1899, meaning that, at the time of this film, he’s actually supposed to be 70) and, though clearly a tough old bird, as he adlibbed in Raiders, “It’s not the years: it’s the mileage”.
The questions facing the creators then, must have been things like:
1. how can we end the series in a memorable way?
2. what will be the goal?
3. who will be the villains?
4. when will it take place?
We’ll begin in reverse order.
There was already a certain time-frame established within the series, the first three films taking place in the 1930s (The Temple of Doom in 1935, Raiders in 1936, and The Last Crusade in 1938).
The next film, Crystal Skull, takes place in 1957—so it would be natural, then, that the action of this final film might happen beyond that time. And, in fact, it is set in 1969, the year of the first moon landing.
(After 1969, although there won’t be any further adventures, Dr. Jones survives perhaps another 25 years, as the made-for-television “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”, shows him alive in the early 1990s. See this article for a useful chronology: https://www.looper.com/763148/the-entire-indiana-jones-timeline-explained/ )
Once we’ve established the time, then choosing the villains may be a little easier: in the 1930s, the Nazis were a ready possibility—although Temple chose, instead, a sinister prime minister of a small Indian hill state. In 1957, we’re in the middle of the Cold War, so Soviet agents make sense in Skull. In 1969, it could still have been the Soviets, but the writers, in a sense, returned to the time of the first films, and so the villain is, in fact, a one-time Nazi scientist—and a particular kind of scientist, of a sort which both the East and the West were grabbing up at the end of the war: those with a specialty in rocketry, like Wernher von Braun (1912-1977).
It’s not surprising, then, that this one-time Nazi scientist is involved in the “space race” of the period, in the pay of the US Government (which is about to award him a medal). Past villains in the series appear to have had state funding for their evil projects–the Nazis for Raiders and Crusade, the Soviets for Skull, and even that sinister prime minister in Temple would presumably have had the wealth of his rajah to back him: are we to believe that this evil-doer will be backed in his wickedness by the US? Although he has CIA minders in the film’s beginning, he “goes rogue” later in the film and even hints to Jones that he has become independent—but clearly has the resources to build (or at least rent) his own air base and uniform its personnel in German WW2 uniforms. And this, to me, hints at where I believe the plot begins to show cracks, but let’s continue.
In a number of past films, Jones has been on a quest: to find the Ark of the Covenant,
to find the Holy Grail,
and, less clearly, in terms of the plot, to locate the Shankara Stone
and a crystal skull.
As I said in the last posting, each of these may be fictional or not, depending upon what one chooses to believe, but Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is based upon an actual device dredged up from the floor of the Mediterranean, the so-called Antikythera Mechanism.
For more on this, please see the last posting. For now, we’ll go with the film’s premise, that this was:
1. invented by Archimedes, the 3rd century BC Greek (Syracusan) mathematician, inventor, scientist
2. originally built to investigate/predict “weather anomalies” (? even after seeing the film twice, I’m not absolutely clear about this), Archimedes discovers that it can also do something similar with time—even allowing someone to pass through it
We now step back to 1944, where, somehow, this former Nazi scientist has become aware of what Archimedes had ascertained and briefly has his hands on the mechanism—or, actually, only half of it—before losing it to Indiana Jones on a speeding train filled with looted antiquities. These include the so-called “spear of Longinus” (which has its own complicated history—see this article for more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Lance ) which Jones and his colleague, Basil Shaw, are shown to be after—only to discover that it’s a modern fake, which the Nazi scientist had already realized. Whole earlier films had been dedicated to finding early religious symbols for Hitler, but here, what might have been the basis of the plot, is rapidly discarded in favor of something else, about which Jones and Shaw clearly have no real knowledge—and which Shaw, so the subsequent film informs us, studies obsessively for years until Jones, concerned for Shaw’s apparent declining mental health because of his studies, arrives at his Oxford residence to carry off—and then, although promising to destroy it, simply caches in the archives of his college, where it sits for some years.
But the ex-Nazi has the CIA to help him locate it—through Shaw’s daughter, Helena, who is, without any explanation, called “Wombat” by Jones, and who, with a degree in archaeology and a DPhil (the equivalent of a PhD in the US) project about the mechanism (or so she says, she turning out to be much shiftier than she first appears), has come to Jones for help.
And, so far, we have three unexplained items:
1. how the ex-Nazi funds his plan
2. how he is already aware, in 1944, of what the mechanism can do (something which takes Basil Shaw years of research and perhaps his sanity to understand)
3. why “Wombat” (a minor detail, but, still, why? Here’s a picture of an actual wombat—and of Helena—is there a resemblance I don’t see?)
And then we have an inconsistency: although we’re told that Helena has watched her father work on the mechanism for years, she’s memorized her father’s notes, and, at twelve has seen Jones remove it from her father’s house, she comes to him with the story that it still remains in the river where her father and Jones jumped to escape the antiquities train. The DPhil project appears to be a lie—we subsequently find out that she’s an underground antiquities dealer and wants the mechanism to auction off—but this river story appears to be her actual belief, all the evidence I’ve cited above to the contrary.
At this stage, the indomitable villain, using the CIA, appears to seize the half-mechanism, only to be thwarted by Helena who snatches it and makes off across the rooftops of New York City, leaving Jones to the ex-Nazi and his CIA allies–but, of course, Jones escapes on a stolen police horse and, with the help of his old friend, Sallah, now a New York taxi driver, sets off to Tangiers, where Helena is set to auction off the stolen gadget. And so the plot is now not about finding a lost and precious object, but recovering it (as becomes the goal in Raiders).
There is another complication—in fact, two—here:
1. as I mentioned above, this is really only half of the mechanism. We are, at one point, told that Archimedes, fearing that the Romans might steal and employ it, has broken it into two parts, concealing one half (somehow—we’re not told how—the Romans seem to have obtained the other half)
2. the clue to finding that other half lies with something called “the graphikos”, which Basil Shaw’s notes reveal is on the very ship on which the one half the Romans had acquired was discovered—only farther down the underwater slope than the half which held the mechanism, indicating that the Romans had already gotten their hands on the clue
And here we have more unexplained items:
1. how the Romans obtained the gadget
2. how they acquired the “graphikos”
3. and, more important, how the Romans, whose technological expertise stretched only as far as the multiple watermill,
might understand and employ the device even if they had solved the clue and located the other half of it.
Needless to say, the ex-Nazi appears in Tangiers and makes off with the half-mechanism, but Jones and Helena pursue—she knows the location of the “graphikos” (Jones providing a ship and divers), the “graphikos” changes hands, Jones and Helena obtain it once more and it leads them to Syracuse, the home of Archimedes and his tomb, which is, for the sake of the plot, lost completely. (In fact, the real Archimedes was buried in Syracuse and the last-century BC orator and author, Cicero, records that, not only had he located the site, but restored it. See: https://math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Tomb/Cicero.html This is part of a much larger website which I recommend, if the real Archimedes interests you.)
The villain arrives, picks up the other half of the mechanism, adds a kind of key found in the tomb, but not mentioned anywhere before (another unexplained item), and sets off with it—and with Jones. (Unexplained why he’s taken, except that this is an Indiana Jones film. In a more realistic film, Jones would have been done away with here, probably with a line like, “Archimedes’ tomb, Jones, a good last resting place for a relic like you”.)
And now we finally find out the ex-Nazi’s plan:
1. he asserts that Hitler, not Germany, lost the war
2. that he intends to go back to 1939 to do away with Hitler and, presumably, run the war more effectively himself (although, considering the ambitious monsters around Hitler, one wonders why he wouldn’t have been immediately arrested and executed, while Hitler’s ministers struggled to succeed der Fuehrer)
3. for reasons never explained, the way to do this is to use the mechanism while flying into the midst of a wild thunderstorm (a weather anomaly of the sort the device was originally intended to investigate?), somehow using map coordinates to guide the airplane to Berlin at the right time—through time
Logically, this makes one wonder: even if Archimedes had discovered that his gadget could do something about time, without 20th century technology, how was he to be able to fly up into such a storm, as the villain intended? (One might also wonder about the Romans, less scientifically advanced than Archimedes.)
This doesn’t work—supposedly because of something which Jones shouts out to the villain about “continental drift” which would mean that the map coordinates would be off—because Archimedes, not being aware of continental drift, would have employed incorrect figures. And here, adapting something which a former student of mine used to say when he no longer understood something, the film “fell off the sled”.
1. in Archimedes’ time, the concepts of latitude and longitude were thought about, but were very hazy and were certainly not charted (for the complicated history of longitude alone see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude )
2. continental drift is exceedingly slow and, over the period from the 3rd century BC Archimedes to 1969AD would have been so minimal as not to make a difference (see this clever video map of shifts over long periods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdPqpzYD4o )
But, in the film, the villain—and Jones—find themselves flying into a war zone: Syracuse, 214-12BC, when the Romans were besieging it and Archimedes (see the previous posting) was a major part of the defense. The plane crashes, killing the ex-Nazi (a rather tame ending for such an evil sort) and allowing Jones—and Helena, who had stolen aboard—to meet Archimedes himself and to speak to him in rather strange Greek (as a Corinthian, Archimedes spoke Doric, a very different dialect from their combination of pseudo-Attic and modern Greek which, even so, Archimedes seems to understand) and it transpires that—and, again, after seeing the film twice, I’m not really clear about this—Archimedes has invented the device to bring help from the future to his besieged home city. How he would have known where to look and how the device would have done this are also left unexplained. (In fact, the city was captured in 212BC and Archimedes was murdered by a Roman soldier in the aftermath.)
It’s assumed that Jones and Helena return through time as the final scene in the film shows Jones’ shabby apartment with him in bed, bandaged from an earlier wound and, next to the bed, the complete mechanism, which brings us back to my #1 above: how can we end the series in a memorable way? Jones lying in bed in his shirt and underwear, even with the device (and Helena) nearby seems even lower key that the joke of the Ark of the Covenant being rolled into a vast government warehouse, or Jones father and son riding into the sunset, but, just as 5 follows 4 chronologically, so it follows it sentimentally: 4 ends with the wedding of Jones and Marion, the estranged Marion appears at the end of 5 and they reenact the (almost) romantic scene in 1, where they come very close to a passionate moment and, for me, this works better than many earlier moments in the film, as hectic as they can be.
As for the rest of the film, as you can see from my comments above, I find that much of the plot is based upon elements which must be taken for granted, which, to me, is a very sloppy or lazy way to create a film, not one in which the plot is carefully built up (as, for instance, in Raiders), especially one which has a rather convoluted plot, which, done well as in Crusade, can take us from Jones’ childhood through Venice to Nazi Germany to the Near East without a lot of nagging why’s. So, to the question: have the creators succeeded in making a memorable last film for a very memorable series? I would say, reluctantly, that, for all of the action scenes along the way, the film seems to me to suffer so much from insufficiently-based plotting (see everything from the villain’s early knowledge of the power of the mechanism through that continental drift idea) that it doesn’t, to my mind, rate as highly as my favorites, Raiders and Crusade and, remembering the conclusion of Crusade, we might turn back that “dial of destiny” and conclude the series with that final scene—
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
Stay well,
Think how satisfying it was to see Jones and Marion finally kissing,
I’ve just been to see the new Indiana Jones film for the second time in about a week.
I wanted to see it at least twice before I wrote about it as, if you regularly read this blog, you know that, when I review something, I try to begin with what I understand the creators of the film were trying to do, then, going from there, attempt to see how well they succeeded, at least in my own mind. This film was complex enough that I’m going to break my review into two parts, the first being mostly background, the second being my reaction.
I begin by saying that I have been a fan of the series since Raiders and have looked forward to this film since it was originally announced, some time ago.
Of the (now) 5 Indiana Jones films, my favorites have always been the first
and the third.
For me, the first is a combination of likeable characters and a plot which, although, in fact, carefully worked out,
seems, somehow, improvised, following Jones’ own remark, just before he mounts a white horse to chase the Nazis who have the Ark,
“I’m making this up as I go along”.
The third, for me, has the most comedy
(here’s Henry Jones, Senior, having just accidentally shot off the tail of their plane, straight-facedly saying to Henry Jones, Junior, “Son, they got us.”)
as well as the byplay between demanding father and son who feels that he can never meet his father’s standard, but eventually does.
In contrast, two, for me, has a splendid opening,
(and the quiet joke that this is the “Club Obi Wan”)
but the film itself is then compromised by a heroine who spends most of the film screaming and running—a strong contrast to the feisty Marion Ravenwood of the first film.
(This is not to attack the actress, by the way, as she was only following what the script asked of her.)
As for the fourth one, I must say that, as in number two, there was a wild opening scene,
but, also, as in the case of two, for me, it didn’t fulfill the promise of that first scene. It may be that the extraterrestrial angle simply didn’t appeal. I also wasn’t convinced by Henry Jones the third (aka “Mutt”), who was being considered, I’ve read, as the lead character in further adventures, but simply lacked the rugged charm of Harrison Ford, who is clearly a more versatile actor, being able to do both action and comedy.
This brings us to five, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Earlier films have had their goals: one had the Ark of the Covenant,
two had a sacred stone (although it disappeared for most of the film, making it hard to remember that goal),
the third had the Holy Grail,
the fourth (I’d guess) a crystal skull, although it seemed that the skull was really only a key to a location—a giant space ship.
As these are adventure films, they don’t have to answer to hard reality, so any goals are really only there to move the plot along, and we can choose to believe that the actual objects are grounded in history or not.
That “Dial of Destiny” is based upon an actual object, however, the so-called “Antikythera mechanism”.
This gadget was found by Greek sponge divers in a shipwreck off the coast of the small Greek island of Antikythera, to the southeast of the island of Kythera, in 1901 (the film mistakenly says 1902—for more on the wreck, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_wreck ).
As you can see, it is hardly a working model, having been underwater from the last century, BC, dating coming from coins discovered at the site, and parts appear to be missing.
There is also much discussion about dating the thing itself, anything from c.200BC to not long before the shipwreck (one of the most respected theorists, Derek de Solla Price, maintains, based upon a number of factors, including inscriptions found on it, that it was built about 87BC—if you have access to JSTOR, his extremely detailed and informative article can be found there under “Gears from the Greeks”.)
Taking any suggested model, however–and some seem more fantastic than others–the craftsmanship appears almost supernatural for any mechanical device that complex from the last century—or centuries—BC. (And you know that, just as in the case of things like the pyramids, there are always those who choose to offer and believe extraterrestrial origins, rather than accept the fact that people from this planet can sometimes make or do extraordinary things. The evidence that Egyptians built the pyramids is everywhere to be found around them.)
Its actual function/s has/have been the subject of a number of reconstructions, as well as a number of theories, but, currently, the consensus seems to be that it’s a kind of orrery—and type of planetarium– which can be used to do things like predict solar eclipses (for more on this, see the very well informed article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism ) As to its maker, this is a complete question mark.
But not in this film. Here, it is the work of the 3rd-century BC mathematician/inventor, Archimedes (c.287-c.212BC). Although the historical dating for the device would probably not match the actual dates of Archimedes, the idea that such a brilliant man might come up with such a thing strikes me as not beyond the realm of belief. Jones himself mentions Archimedes in discussing the Roman siege of Syracuse in 214-212BC.
In the film, he mentions Archimedes’ invention of huge “grabbers” to snatch up Roman galleys and drop them, upturned, into the sea,
as well as huge mirrors, which would focus the rays of the sun on the Roman ships and set fire to them.
From history, however, the film then spills over into the realm of fantasy, as this mechanism, if I understand the plot correctly, can not only chart what are called “weather anomalies”, but also “time anomalies”, which means that, with the right calculations, one might discover the equivalent of cracks in time into which one might slip. And here I begin to have questions—but we’ll talk about that in Part II.
I wonder if you, like me, have seen something like this on a bumper in a parking lot?
Or possibly stuck on the inside of a car’s back window?
If so, and you are a Tolkien reader, you know right away that it’s one line from a poem by Bilbo, first read in a letter Gandalf has left at The Prancing Pony (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 10, “Strider”) and repeated by Bilbo himself who, at the council of Elrond, “Standing up suddenly…burst[s] out”:
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 Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)
He’s referring to Aragorn, of course, responding both to a dream Boromir has just repeated, as well as to what seems like the beginning of a tussle between Boromir and Aragorn. In his dream, Boromir “heard a voice, remote but clear, crying:
Seek for the Sword that was broken:
In Imladris it dwells;
There shall be counsels taken
Stronger than Morgul-spells.
There shall be shown a token
That Doom is near at hand,
For Isildur’s Bane shall waken,
And the Halfling forth shall stand.”
The broken blade is Narsil, Elendil’s sword, which broke when, killed by Sauron, he fell on it. Isildur then used the shard to cut the Ring (which became “Isildur’s Bane”, or curse) from Sauron’s hand and so the Ring and the shattered sword are forever linked.
Bilbo’s poem then acts as a kind of second stanza to Boromir’s dream verses, suggesting that the shattering of the sword is not the end of the story and that its remaking will be involved in the Doom of Boromir’s poem.
For all the weight in these words, the line which caught my attention this time was: “All that is gold does not glitter”.
This is, of course, based upon “all that glitters isn’t gold”, from the proverbial expression, believed to originate in the Parabolae, “Proverbs”, of the 12th century French cleric Alain de Lille, who wrote:
Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum nec pulchrum pomum quodlibet esse bonum;
“Do not take for gold all which shines like gold
Nor a good-looking apple, if you will, to be a good one.” (Liber Parabolarum, 3.1, my translation)
And yet there is something odd here—instead of saying what the proverb warns: “don’t trust surfaces”, Bilbo is suggesting that “Some things which don’t glitter are gold”, implying that an unlikely surface may hide something worthy and there is more to the rough-looking Aragorn than Boromir—or anyone else in the room who doesn’t know his history—may understand.
It might be thought that Tolkien didn’t like Shakespeare, and this idea comes, I would guess, from this quotation in particular:
“I went to King Edward’s School and spent most of my time learning Latin and Greek; but I also learned English. Not English Literature! Except Shakespeare (which I disliked cordially)…” (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 213)
And yet he later records enjoying a performance of Hamlet—and here, I think, we can see that what he might dislike isn’t Shakespeare per se, but reading him as one might read a novel:
“…but the only event worth of talk was the performance of Hamlet which I had been to just before I wrote last. I was full of it at the time…But it emphasized more strongly than anything I have ever seen the folly of reading Shakespeare (and annotating him in the study), except as a concomitant of seeing his plays acted.” (letter to Christopher Tolkien, 28 July, 1944, Letters, 88)
And I wonder, then, if Bilbo’s line, and his point, weren’t, in fact, influenced by another Shakespeare play.
As with all of Shakespeare’s plays, there is a complicated plot, but there is one element, as old as the 13th century Gesta Romanorum, “The Deeds of the Romans” (which Shakespeare probably read in the 1577 Certain Selected Histories for Christian Recreations. You can read the story, Number XLVIII, here: https://ia600902.us.archive.org/15/items/gestaromanorum02hoopgoog/gestaromanorum02hoopgoog.pdf pages XLIV-XLVII ) which involves a kind of contest for the daughter/heiress of a wealthy man. Her father has arranged three caskets, one of gold, one of silver, and one of lead, with a riddling, ironic label on each and the suitor who picks the correct one (which has the daughter, Portia’s, portrait inside) gains her hand. We in the present cynical world would roll our eyes and say, “It’s the lead one, of course!” but Shakespeare’s audience would be as well aware of this as we are. The point is really about the revelation of character, the choice each of the suitors makes reveals his quality as we overhear each talking to himself before making his decision (and this is one reason why this play was called “The comical Historie of the Merchant of Venice” on the first page of the text, for all that it has its moments of passion and even danger).
The first, Morochus (as he’s called in the First Quarto), chooses the casket of gold because:
“One of these three containes her heauenly picture.
Ist like that leade containes her, twere damnation
to thinke so base a thought, it were too grosse
to ribb her serecloth in the obscure graue,
Or shall I thinke in siluer shees immurd
beeing tenne times vndervalewed to tride gold,
O sinful thought, neuer so rich a Iem
was set in worse then gold.” (Act II, Scene 7—this is a later division of the text, the First Quarto runs straight through)
He’s wrong, of course, but what’s telling is that he can only see the outside of the casket, as he really only sees—and values– the outside of Portia, thus revealing his shallowness. He opens the casket and finds only this mocking message:
“All that glisters is not gold,
Often haue you heard that told,
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold,
Guilded timber doe wormes infold:
Had you beene as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in iudgement old,
Your aunswere had not beene inscrold,
Fareyouwell, your sute is cold.”
The second suitor, the Prince of Arragon, chooses the silver casket, and he, too, fails. It’s only the third, Bassanio, whom Portia really likes, who makes the correct choice, finding her portrait in the casket of lead and, in his reasoning and choice, we see that he is a far different character from the two previous suitors, as his enclosed poem says:
“You that choose not by the view
Chaunce as faire, and choose as true:
Since this fortune falls to you,
Be content, and seeke no new.
If you be well pleasd with this,
and hold your fortune for your blisse,
Turne you where your Lady is,
And claime her with a louing kis.”
The key here is that first line: “You that choose not by the view”—and this brings us back to something which Frodo had said of Strider/Aragorn long before:
“ ‘You have frightened me several times tonight, but never in the way that servants of the Enemy would, or so I imagine. I think one of his spies would—well, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand.’
‘I see,’ laughed Strider. ‘I look foul and feel fair. Is that it? All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.’” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 10, “Strider”)
For all that JRRT might write, “a murrain on Will Shakespeare and his damned cobwebs”, perhaps, somewhere in those cobwebs, was caught a moment of inspiration?
As ever, thanks for reading,
Stay well,
Choose wisely,
And remember that there’s always
MTCIDC
O
PS
Here’s another bumper sticker which I sometimes feel is true for me—and perhaps for you, as well?
In my last, I continued a brief series based upon my second thoughts (the first appeared as “Knowledge, Rule, Order”, 6 January, 2016 at Doubtfulsea.com) about the words in the title.
The original speaker was Saruman, who uses those three words in his proposal of alliance with Gandalf.
“A new Power is rising…We may join with that Power. It would be wise, Gandalf. There is hope that way…As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time…deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order. All the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish…There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.” (The Fellowship of the Rings, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)
Although Gandalf immediately dismisses Saruman’s attempt, saying “I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant…” , in the previous two postings of this little series, I’ve spent some time considering the first two of his three words, “Knowledge” and “Rule”, which Saruman has claimed as one of “the things we have so far striven in vain to accomplish”.
It’s easy to see why Gandalf would have been so quick to reply in the negative: the five Istari, the five “wizards”, were originally sent to Middle-earth by the Valar as a kind of counterbalance to Sauron. As far as I understand their mission, that was their goal, with no mention of “the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order”, so Saruman’s words would have immediately sounded false—and not even his own, which Gandalf recognizes, saying of Saruman:
“He drew himself up then and began to declaim, as if he were making a speech long rehearsed.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)
In the last two postings, then, I suggested that
1. what Saruman believed was his abstract “Knowledge” had actually become Sauron’s knowledge—as, when Saruman came into possession of Isengard and its palantir,
(the Hildebrandts)
he had come under the spell of Sauron, and thus had become nothing more than Sauron’s servant.
2. under Sauron’s control, Saruman had changed Isengard:
“A strong place and wonderful was Isengard…But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived—for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which he fondly imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child’s model or a slave’s flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dur, the Dark Tower…” (The Two Towers, Book Three,
And thus, the “rule” Saruman believed was his was only in actuality nothing more than an imitation of his master’s kingdom and his master’s control—deceived, Saruman was not the ruler, but the ruled.
And now we come to “Order”.
And here I must differ a little from something which both Frodo and Saruman have to say.
In the next-to-last chapter of The Return of the King, ”The Scouring of the Shire”, Sam says of the Shire to which he and the other hobbits have returned, “This is worse than Mordor!” To which Frodo replies:
“Yes, this is Mordor…Just one of its works. Saruman was doing its work all the time, even when he thought that he was working for himself. And the same with those that Saruman tricked, like Lotho.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)
As I’ve mentioned above, Saruman was certainly not his own man—or wizard—although he clearly believed that he was, but I think that there’s something more going on here—and it’s not just what Saruman says subsequently to Frodo:
“ ‘…if they’re [meaning the hobbits] such fools, I will get ahead of them and teach them a lesson. One ill turn deserves another…’ It would have been a sharper lesson, if only you had given me a little more time and more Men. Still I have already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives. And it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries.”
This would suggest that what’s happened to the Shire has been a kind of spur of the moment vengeance, but I think that, contrary to what Saruman says, there has been more going on here—and for longer and, in fact, the mention of Lotho gives us a clue.
In a much earlier chapter of The Lord of the Rings, Merry and Pippin have been explaining events at Isengard to Aragorn and their friends
(Michael Herring)
and have mentioned Pipe-weed, to which Aragorn has replied:
“ ‘…leaf from the Southfarthing in Isengard. The more I consider it, the more curious I find it. I have never been in Isengard, but I have journeyed in this land, and I know well the empty countries that lie between Rohan and the Shire. Neither goods nor folk have passed this way for many a long year, not openly. Saruman had secret dealings with someone in the Shire, I guess. Wormtongues may be found in other houses than King Theoden’s. Was there a date on the barrel?’
‘Yes,’ said Pippin. ‘It was the 1417 crop, that is last year’s; no, the year before, of course, now: a good year.’ “ (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 9, “Flotsam and Jetsam”)
It we combine this with Farmer Cotton’s explanation of the change in the Shire, we see just who that “Wormtongue” must have been:
“It all began with Pimple, as we call him…He’d funny ideas, had Pimple. Seems he wanted to own everything himself, and then order other folk about. It soon came out that he already did own a sight more than was good for him; and he was always grabbing more, though where he got the money was a mystery: mills and malt-houses and inns, and farms, and leaf-plantations…
Of course he started with a lot of property in the Southfarthing which he had from his dad; and it seems he’d been selling a lot of the best leaf, and sending it away quietly for a year or two. But at the end o’ last year he began sending away loads of stuff, not only leaf. Things began to get short, and winter coming on, too. Folk got angry, but he had his answer. A lot of Men, ruffians mostly, came with great waggons, some to carry off the goods south-away, and others to stay. And more came. And before we knew where we were they were planted here and there all over the Shire, and were felling trees and digging and building themselves sheds and houses just as they liked…”
Those shipments had clearly been going to Isengard and had been doing so for at least the last two years, as we can see from the combination of the date on the pipe-weed barrel and from Farmer Cotton’s words. Thus, we can see that there’s a chain here:
1. Saruman has picked the weak, but arrogant Lotho Sackville-Baggins to be his agent
2. he has then used him first to siphon goods out of the Shire (and now we might see, along with his slave farms, how Saruman’s army could have been supplied) and, then, by providing Lotho with “muscle”, he has overturned the Shire’s simple government (including putting the Mayor, Will Whitfoot, in the Lockholes) and installing Lotho in his place as “the Chief”
All of this would have been happening before Saruman’s fall, suggesting that, in fact, what he was doing to the Shire was not just spiteful revenge after the fact, as he says, but another plan altogether, and here’s where, I think, “Order” comes in.
Sauron’s Mordor was, basically, a military state based upon slavery with Sauron as lord, emperor, master, whatever title he chose to assume. Saruman, in imitating Sauron, would have thought of himself in similar terms and his Isengard, then, would have been the same sort of state. What happens in the Shire strikes me as something somewhat different, however.
Certain aspects are similar: as Saruman has industrialized Isengard, he was in the process of industrializing the Shire, as the hobbits soon see:
“And looking with dismay up the road towards Bag End they saw a tall chimney of brick in the distance. It was pouring out black smoke into the evening air.”
(Alan Lee)
And hear about from Farmer Cotton:
“Take Sandyman’s mill now. Pimple knocked it down almost as soon as he came to Bag End. Then he brought in a lot o’ dirty-looking Men to build a bigger one and fill it full o’ wheels and outlandish contraptions.”
But this is only the beginning:
“The pleasant row of old hobbit-holes in the bank on the north side of the Pool were deserted, and their little gardens that used to run down bright to the water’s edge were rank with weeds. Worse, there was a whole line of ugly new houses all along Pool Side, where the Hobbiton Road ran close to the bank.”
On the one hand, what Tolkien is recreating is the poorer areas of industrial Birmingham, where he grew up in the late-Victorian/Edwardian world,
but, on the other, he’s showing us what Saruman has been up to: turning the Shire into a kind of communist state with:
1. an unelected leader, Lotho/Pimple (“And after that, it would be soon after New Year, there wasn’t no more Mayor, and Pimple called himself Chief Shirriff, or just chief, and did as he liked…” )
2. the equivalent of the NKVD (“A lot of Men, ruffians mostly, came with great waggons…and others to stay…”
3. local collaborators (Robin Smallburrow tells Sam: “There’s hundreds of Shirriffs all told, and they want more, with all these new rules. Most of them are in it against their will, but not all. Even in the Shire there are some as like minding other folk’s business and talking big.”)
4. a spy service (Robin continues: “And there’s worse than that: there’s a few as do spy-work for the Chief and his Men.”)
5. the equivalent of concentration camps/gulags (Farmer Cotton describes them: “And then there’s the Lockholes, as they call ‘em: the old storage-tunnels at Michel Delving that they’ve made into prisons for those as stand up to them.”)
6. a long set of often seemingly arbitrary rules, mostly designed to keep hobbits from assembling, as in
a. the closing of all the pubs
b. the requirement of an internal travel document (Robin again: “And he [Lotho] doesn’t hold with folk moving about; so if they will or they must, then they has to go to the Shirriff-house and explain their business.”)
7. the aggressive seizing of all supplies in the manner of communist states (Farmer Cotton says: “…and everything except Rules got shorter and shorter, unless one could hide a bit of one’s own when the ruffians went round gathering stuff up ‘for fair distribution’…”
8. the reducing of the population to conformist workers—hence destroying the old dwellings and putting up rows of new houses—which would also make it easier to keep an eye on the population, forcing them into government accommodations
So far, then, this would appear to be a long-term, thought-out plan by Saruman to create not another Mordor, but a modern industrial state along Russian lines—but then something goes wrong—and we know what it is: the failure of Saruman’s schemes, both in the defeat of his army at Helm’s Deep and the destruction of his little model state at Isengard by the Ents,
(Ted Nasmith)
forcing him to take to the road with his only remaining slave, Grima.
(another Nasmith—and you can see why I so value his work—he can choose scenes that no other artist seems even to have considered)
Denied Knowledge, unable to maintain Rule, Saruman, arriving in the Shire, abandons Order, turning his thugs loose to do exactly what he says to Frodo about a “sharper lesson”, as Farmer Cotton describes it:
“The biggest ruffian o’ the lot, seemingly…It was about last harvest, end o’ September maybe, that we first heard of him. We’ve never seen him, but he’s up at Bag End, and he’s the real Chief now, I guess. All the ruffians do what he says, and what he says is mostly: hack, burn, and ruin; and now it’s come to killing. There’s no longer even any bad sense in it. They cut down trees and let ‘em lie, they burn houses and build no more…It they want to make the Shire into a desert, they’re going the right way about it.”
As a spoiler, Saruman is temporarily successful, but loses first his “high and ultimate purpose” and then his life, when one of those he has corrupted in his quest for it, is kicked once too often and—
doubtfulsea 