As always, dear readers, welcome.

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 3^rd-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.

(Would such mirrors actually work?  See:  https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2021/10/28/did_archimedes_death_ray_actually_work_799152.html#! And:  https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/archimedes-death-ray.htm For more on Archimedes’ efforts, see:  https://math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Siege/Livy.html  which is from part of Livy’s fragmentary history of Rome; see, as well, Plutarch’s biography of the conqueror of Syracuse, the Roman general, Marcellus (268-208BC), here:  https://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/marcellu.html ); the story of the mirrors appears for the first time in Dio Cassius’ histories here:  https://math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Siege/DioCassius.html  although, unfortunately, in later Byzantine summaries.) 

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.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Stay well,

Always have time—for adventure,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

For more on Archimedes, go to:  https://math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/contents.html  Archimedes was almost spookily modern and this site shows how.

As always, welcome, dear readers.

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 12^{th 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.

(The First Quarto, 1600—and here it is for you:  https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/MV_Q1/complete/index.html )

As with all of Shakespeare’s plays, there is a complicated plot, but there is one element, as old as the 13^th 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?

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

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—

(Joan Wyatt)

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Sic semper tyrannis,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

In my last, I began 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”)

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…”  but, in the first of this little series, I spent some time considering the first of his three words, “Knowledge”, which Saruman has claimed as one of “the things we have so far striven in vain to accomplish”. 

We know that 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”.  In last week’s posting, I suggested that what Saruman believed was that that abstract “Knowledge” had actually become Saruman’s knowledge—a knowledge he meant to employ not just to counter Sauron, but to become Sauron, wielding the rediscovered Ring as the new master of Middle-earth.  Ironically, however, through a combination of his own growing arrogance and by Sauron’s clever manipulation of it, by means of the palantir which had come into Saruman’s possession,

Saruman’s knowledge had become Sauron’s knowledge and Saruman only a deluded henchman of the creature he had been sent to oppose.

But what about “Rule”?

It’s important to remember that Tolkien was born into a world where almost all of the major—and most of the minor—European powers were controlled by monarchies.  In 1914, just before war broke out, not only was the British Empire in the hands of George V,

but his cousin, Wilhelm, ruled the German Empire,

and another cousin, Nicholas, ruled the Russian Empire.

And this is to name only what we might call “the big three”—to which we should add the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Franz Josef.

There were also monarchs from Norway

to Belgium

to Italy

to Spain,

with rulers in Greece

and many other smaller countries, like Serbia

and Bulgaria.

This is not all of such folk (the Netherlands had a queen, for example), but we might also include the Turkish sultan, Mehmed V.

Of all the European countries, only Switzerland and France were democracies, in fact.  That being the case, when JRRT used the word “Rule”, we can easily imagine what must have come to mind.  (And yet we should also keep in mind what he once wrote to his son, Christopher:  “My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy”—although he goes on to add “or to ‘unconstitutional Monarchy…Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses…”, all of which suggests that he had come, at least by the 1940s, to have serious doubts about royal rule.  See letter to Christopher Tolkien, 29 November, 1943, Letters, 63-64)

For Saruman, there were three models readily to hand:  Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor.  As for Rohan, he doesn’t appear to have much respect, saying,

“What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 10, “The Voice of Saruman”)

It would appear that he has no more respect for Gondor, as he refers to it, in his attempt to enlist Gandalf, as “dying Numenor”.

And this leaves us with Mordor and it’s clear that this has become Saruman’s model, albeit not quite the impressive alternate version he believes it to be.   As the narrator says of 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, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

As well, Saruman imitates Mordor’s economy, which is slave-based, as the narrator tells us of Sam and his master:

“Neither he nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beynd the fumes of the Mountain by the dark sad waters of Lake Nurnen; nor of the great roads that ran away east and south to tributary lands, from the which the soldiers of the Tower brought long wagon-trains of goods and booty and fresh slaves.”  (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 2, “The Land of Shadow”)

And the narrator says of Isengard:

“That was a sheltered valley, open only to the South.  Once it had been fair and green…It was not so now.  Beneath the walls of Isengard there still were acres tilled by the slaves of Saruman…”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”)

Kings in fairy tales sometimes have chancellors or viziers and perhaps faceless servants to fetch and carry, but real medieval kings could have full bureaucracies, with officials of all sorts and clerks and messengers to keep records and maintain contact with royal officials working away from the palace.

Unfortunately, we seem to lack much information about the court structure of Mordor.   At its center is Sauron, directing things from the Barad-dur, which he doesn’t appear to leave, employing the Nazgul as senior officers (who, after all, themselves had once been kings),

(Artist?)

as well as a Lieutenant of the Tower, who also acts as a kind of public interpreter or chancellor of some sort, “the Mouth of Sauron”,

(Douglas Beekman)

but, as for more structure, this looks like an interesting subject for further research and a future posting—or perhaps two.

Although Saruman has spies (Grima immediately springs to mind, although he has others),

(Alan Lee)

and a good-sized army of orcs and men (Merry thinks that “there must have been ten thousand at the very least”—The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 9, “Flotsam and Jetsam”), he doesn’t appear to have the equivalent of the Nazgul or the Mouth, directing everything himself (which, considering his arrogance, shouldn’t surprise us), being more like a fairy tale king than the head of 10,000 soldiers and what might be a fairly advanced technological infrastructure below the ground in Isengard (ten thousand soldiers need arms and armor, as well as durable rations, after all)—and all a pale copy of Sauron.

(the Hildebrandts)

So now we see just how unreal Saruman’s expectations have become:  his “Knowledge” is at the disposal of a being Saruman isn’t aware controls him, and his “Rule” is nothing more than a petty version of the world of that controller.  What will his “Order” be?

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Practice aggressive self-awareness (or don’t get involved with devious Maiar),

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

Years ago, CD (the forerunner to the present creator of this blog), uploaded a posting with the same title, (see “Knowledge, Rule, Order”, 6 January, 2016 at Doubtfulsea.com), but in the intervening seven years, I’ve continued to wonder about just what those three words might mean, both consciously and unconsciously, for the original speaker of them:  are they simply abstract?  Or might they possibly mean something different from what that speaker intended?

That original speaker was Saruman, who uses those three terms in his more than a little slippery attempt to persuade Gandalf into helping him to replace Sauron.

“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”)

Gandalf will have none of this:

“Saruman…I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant.” 

For me, this is one of the most revealing speeches in The Lord of the Rings, not only for how thoroughly it shows us the corrupted Saruman, but also for how it reflects the period when Tolkien began to write the novel, when such grand, but intentionally vague, themes or some very much like them, were in the air.

(“Work, Freedom, Bread”—for the National Socialist Party in 1928)

When Hitler became head of the German state in 1933,

he had learned from experience that open attempts to seize power were iffy at best, his first try, in 1923, ending in failure and an all-too-brief time in prison for him.

Subsequently, he turned to becoming a statesman, using such themes as “rebuilding Germany” to cover his real purposes. 

Violence was never ruled out, as we know too well, but politicking and political pressure appeared to gain him more, spawning followers and friends all over the world, as well as imitators, like the British Sir Oswald Mosley,

mocked by the comic novelist, P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) as Roderick Spode,

and once described by one of Wodehouse’s characters as “the amateur dictator”.  Such people had definitely heard “speeches…in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant” but, unlike Gandalf, had believed them and worked towards their fulfillment. 

I want to begin with that first “high and ultimate purpose”:  “Knowledge”.

As is well-known, Saruman’s name suggests that he was, in fact, formed to be knowing:  Old English searu, upon which the name is based, means “skill/craft/cleverness”  + mann, “man”, so “man of craft”.

But what is this “Knowledge” which Saruman claims has been a major goal of the Istari, the Maiar sent to Middle-earth? 

Saruman himself doesn’t clarify what he means by this, which is, in this context, not surprising, but Gandalf tells us something about his past:

“…Saruman has long studied the arts of the Enemy himself, and thus we have often been able to forestall him.  It was by the devices of Saruman that we drove him from Dol Guldur.” 

We might also understand that he has been collecting information about Middle-earth itself, knowledge which he gathers from folk like Treebeard:

“I used to talk to him.  There was a time when he was always walking about my woods.  He was polite in those days, always asking my leave (at least when he met me); and always eager to listen.  I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself…”

We can imagine, then, that all of Saruman’s knowledge once had been for the task for which he and the other Istari have been sent to Middle-earth:  to protect it and its peoples from Sauron.

Old English searu has another meaning, however:  “plot/trick/deceit”, so searumann potentially means not only “man of craft”, but also “man of deceit”.  And something which Treebeard adds suggests that Saruman’s knowledge-gathering had, at some point, taken a different turn:

“…but he never repaid me in like kind.  I cannot remember that he ever told me anything.  And he got more and more like that; his face, as I remember it—I have not seen it for many a day—became like windows in a stone wall:  windows with shutters inside.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

This simile of a stone wall might remind us of something which Treebeard said just prior to this:

“He gave up wandering about and minding the affairs of Men and Elves, some time ago—you would call it a very long time ago, and he settled down at Angrenost, or Isengard as the Men of Rohan call it.”

(the Hildebrandts)

Of the five Istari,

(? I haven’t found the artist for this useful illustration.)

two disappeared to the south, leaving us with almost no information about them.  The other three, Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast, must initially have been wanderers across the north of Middle-earth, perhaps acting like the Rangers, as patrolling protectors.

It’s revealing, then, that Treebeard expresses that occupation of Isengard as giving up “wandering about and minding the affairs of Men and Elves” as those appear to have been the very things the Valar had sent him to Middle-earth to do and which suggests that, by the time he took charge of Isengard, about 250 years before the present story, Saruman was already on his way to the corruption so evident in his appeal to Gandalf. 

We don’t really know when the moral rot first set in, but we can certainly understand what pushed it along:  the “Orthanc-stone”, one of the palantiri, the so-called “seeing-stones”, of which one was established at Isengard and came into the hands of Saruman, much to his ruin.

(a second Hildebrandts)

The stone provided a direct connection to Sauron, and so, if nothing else, this must have sped that corruption.  We have only to hear Sauron’s direction to Pippin, however:

“Tell Saruman that this dainty is not for him.  I will send for it at once.  Do you understand?  Say just that!” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 11, “The Palantir”)

to understand that, if Saruman believes, as he assures Gandalf, that they—really he—can control Sauron, he is completely deceived.  Sauron is so much the master that he doesn’t even bother dealing with Saruman directly, ordering someone he clearly believes to be a nonentity to pass a message on.

In this way we see that Saruman’s learning the ways of the Enemy has brought him too close to that very enemy, allowing the enemy to gain a knowledge of which Saruman appears to be completely unaware:  a knowledge of Saruman’s own weakness—vanity, which makes him believe that only he is a “man of craft”—or, as he puts it, “the Wise”—and powerful enough to deal with Sauron.  Even so, he needs help, and here we see where his quest for knowledge has ultimately taken him:

“Why not?  The Ruling Ring?  If we could command that, then the Power would pass to us.  That is why I brought you here.  For I have many eyes in my service, and I believe that you know where this precious thing now lies.  Or why do the Nine ask for the Shire, and what is your business there?”

From being, as Gandalf has said, “the greatest of my order”, who had gathered great learning for the goal of countering the evil which has come into Middle-earth, he is now one who, swollen with arrogance, believes that he can use his knowledge not for the good for which he had originally employed it, but as a tool to help him to replace one form of evil with another, all the while never realizing that he has become no more than a tool himself. 

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Don’t just do no evil, but, as Gandalf would encourage us, do positive good,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

“An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless…”

(W.B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”)

As ever, welcome, dear readers.

“I dislike Allegory—the conscious and intentional allegory…” Tolkien once wrote in a letter to Milton Waldman of the publisher Collins (see letter to Milton Waldman, “late in 1951” in Letters, 145) so, although he was flattered by being included in the company of Spenser (see letter to Rayner Unwin, 13 May, 1954, Letters, 181), I wonder what he might have said about how this posting originated.  (I also wonder how he felt about his friend, C.S. Lewis’

1936 volume, The Allegory of Love.)

I have been slowly making my way through Edmund Spenser’s (1552-1599)

The Faerie Queene.

(This is the original 3-book publication of 1590—he then published a second 6-book edition in 1596, but never succeeded in completing his original 12-book plan.)

To say that it’s allegorical is about as understated as saying that Hamlet is about indecision or that Macbeth is about ambition gone wrong.  Spenser himself cheerfully described his work as “cloudily enwrapped in Allegoricall devises”, the whole purpose being “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline” by embodying “the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised…” (This is all extracted from his dedicatory letter to Sir Walter Raleigh).  His heroes are faced by figures with names like “Disdayne”, in books with subtitles like “The Legend of Sir Guyon.  Or Of Temperance”, suggesting that, whereas the volume as a whole is “cloudily enwrapped”, the episodes themselves are clearly all about testing various virtues.

I’ve just finished Book Two (that’s about 340 pages in—this is not a short work, even if only half-finished) and have followed the adventures of Sir Guyon and his adviser, called “the Palmer”

—that is, the pilgrim, as medieval pilgrims sometimes brought back souvenir palms from their arduous trip to the Holy Land.

Pilgrims could pick up other such souvenirs at various shrines, such as this badge, depicting the shrine of St Thomas a Becket, from Canterbury. 

Also characteristic of palmers/pilgrims was the staff, which could be used for everything from aiding in long hikes to chasing off potential robbers,

and it was this object which caught my attention.  At the end of Book Two, Sir Guyon finally defeats Acrasia (something like “Moralweakness”), an enchantress who embodies seduction and sensual pleasure and whose power turns men into beasts.  When Guyon destroys her bower, the Palmer uses his staff to turn such men back into themselves:

“Streight way he with his vertuous staffe them stroke,

And straight of beasts they comely men became…”

(The Faerie Queene, Book Two, Canto XII, Stanza 86—earlier in the Canto, the Palmer calmed the sea and its monsters with his staff)

This immediately reminded me, as I’m sure Spenser wanted me to be, of Odyssey, Book 10, where Circe had used a magical potion and her rhabdos, which commonly means a staff in Greek, like the staff which rhapsodes used to beat time when they recited epic, like the Odyssey,

to enchant Odysseus’ men.

(This appears to be an illustration from a late-Renaissance French illustration of the Odyssey and I love the caption:  “Companions of Ulysses in Piggly Form”.)

Odysseus himself was saved from this enchantment in part by the counsel of Hermes (his Roman name Mercury),

who carries his own staff, the kerykion (called by the Romans caduceus), and it’s surely no coincidence that Spenser tells us:

“Of that same wood it fram’d was cunningly,

Of which Caduceus whilome was made,

Caduceus the rod of Mercury,

With which he wonts the Stygian realms inuade,

Through ghastly horrour, and eternall shade;

Th’infernall feends with it he can asswage,

And Orcus tame, whom nothing can perswade,

And rule the Furyes, when they most do rage:

Such virtue in his staffe had eke this Palmer sage.”

(The Faerie Queene, Book Two, Canto XII, Stanza 41)

And these staves (the plural of staff) of power reminded me of another staff, of which its owner once said:

“I am old.  If I may not lean on my stick as I go, then I will sit out here, until it pleases Theoden to hobble out himself to speak with me.”

(The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

This is Gandalf, of course, who has been associated with that “stick” since we first saw him in Chapter One of The Hobbit.

(the Hildebrandts)

Hama, the doorwarden, was, of course, correct in saying, “The staff in the hand of a wizard may be more than a prop for age…”  as Gandalf has previously broken the bridge of Khazan-dum in Moria with that very staff,

(the Hildebrandts)

and will knock Grima, Theoden’s treacherous counselor, flat with it.

(Alan Lee)

And, as Gandalf is aware of what lies in his staff, he knows the power and authority in Saruman’s staff, and so Gandalf will snap it, ruining Saruman’s ability to continue to work the evil he has planned.

(?  I don’t know the artist for this, alas!)

Seeing all of these staves, which are more than they appear at first, we might then complete Yeats’ lines like this:

“An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A ragged coat upon a stick, unless

That stick has something of a magic sting

Which only palmers—wizards, too—possess.”

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

If a palmer offers to guide you, stick with him,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

As always, dear readers, welcome.

We know that Tolkien had an interest in dragons from an early age.  In a letter to W.H. Auden of 7 June, 1955, he explains:

“I first tried to write a story when I was about seven.  It was about a dragon.  I remember nothing about it except a philological fact.  My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say ‘a green great dragon’, but had to say ‘a great green dragon’.  I wondered why, and still do.” (letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 214).

I suspect that this interest had been sparked by a book which we know was available to him in childhood:  Andrew Lang’s (1844-1912) The Red Fairy Book (1890),

the last tale being “The Story of Sigurd”, in which the title character lies in ambush and kills a dragon, Fafnir.

Fafnir has a trait which would be familiar to anyone who has read The Hobbit and remembers Smaug (could you forget him?):  he lies on a hoard.

This would also be familiar, of course, to anyone who knows Beowulf and, as JRRT tells us, that Old English poem was “among my most valued sources” for The Hobbit (see Letters,31).  It’s interesting to note, however, that Beowulf’s dragon, though fire-breathing  and covetous, like Smaug, is, in fact, mute, whereas Smaug is all-too-eloquent—as is, in fact, Fafnir, although his dialogue is limited to cursing his killer and putting a curse on his hoard, speech suggesting a further influence of The Red Fairy Book, perhaps.  (Here, by the way, is a copy of The Red Fairy Book for you:  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Red_Fairy_Book )

Unlike, JRRT, I’ve never had much interest in dragons and the reason may lie in my reaction to the statement I once read somewhere that “all kids love dinosaurs”.  I am constitutionally averse to any statement which says things like “all x loves—or hates—y” in general, but, in this case, it’s more personal:  I was one kid who never loved dinosaurs.

When small, I was taken to museums where very large and bony examples were on display

and yes, I would agree with whoever took me that they were very large.

(I love the original name of this one:  “Albertosaurus”, which makes me imagine an Irish member of the family—“Albert O’Saurus”)

At the same time, dinosaurs seemed to me to be pretty much just that:  large. 

(I’m aware that there were very small ones, too, but the ones I was being shown were pointed out for their size and potential fierceness—and just look at those teeth!)

In fact, when it came to past beasts, my childhood favorite was the wooly mammoth

and once I even entered one in my school science fair, “frozen in ice” (it was an elephant model that I’d covered in glued-on hair and encased in a cardboard box covered in plastic sheeting—it didn’t win).

And maybe that’s why I’ve never been taken with dragons.  (I’m probably one of the few readers/viewers of A Game of Thrones, for example, who found Daenerys’ beasts less interesting than the fencing master, Syrio Forel—who was killed much too soon.)

The first dragon I actually met was probably one which my childhood hero, Prince Valiant,

once fought

and, of course, this put him squarely into the St George and the dragon tradition,

(by Vittore Carpaccio, c.1465-1525)

but which is, in fact a tradition which goes all the way back to Perseus rescuing Andromeda from a sea monster

(by Piero di Cosimo, 1462-1521)

and Jason stealing the Golden Fleece from the Sleepless Dragon.

(from an Apulian krater—wine-mixing bowl—c.300BC)

All of which stories tended to make me think in terms of:

1. dragons hoard hoards and will fight to defend them

2. dragons may consume princesses or other unlucky damsels (a variant—or perhaps a commentary on a dragon’s regular diet?)

3. among their other jobs, heroes may be required to rescue princesses and exterminate said dragons, or at least steal something from them

And that was my view—or almost my view—with one exception, a short story by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932), from his collection Dream Days (1898).

This is entitled “The Reluctant Dragon” and it concerns a boy, St. George, and a creature far from Greek mythology or Beowulf.  If, like Smaug, he talks, he has no hoard, shows no desire for fire-breathing or edible royalty and is, in fact, a peaceable poet, and not in the least interested in heroes or heroics.

(If you’re a reader of The Wind in the Willows or Pooh, you’ll recognize at once that this is an illustration by E.H. Shepard.  And here’s a copy of the book for you, although this is an earlier edition, with pictures by another wonderful illustrator, Maxfield Parrish:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35187/35187-h/35187-h.htm )

This creature (nameless, in the story, which would make his publishing his poetry rather difficult, unless he was willing to be “Anon.”) has always suggested to me that there was the possibility that my limited view of dragons might be modified, given the right dragon.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was given this by one of my graduate student teaching assistants—

If you read this blog regularly, you’ve probably picked up that, among other kinds of adventure stories I read, I enjoy those set in the Napoleonic era, like the novels of Bernard Cornwell, which follow the career of an infantryman, Richard Sharpe,

or those of C.S. Forester, whose hero is Horatio Hornblower, a British naval officer.

Like Hornblower, the hero of this series, Will Laurence, is a naval officer, but his life takes a sudden shift when his ship attacks and captures a French ship carrying a very large egg:  a dragon’s egg, in fact.  And suddenly, we’re in an alternate Napoleonic world in which Britain, as in our history, is at war with Bonaparte, and much of the fighting takes place at sea, but there is another element:  both sides have not only armies and fleets, but squadrons of dragons, and the series (there are 9 novels so far, along with a volume of short stories) follows Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire (named after a famous warship, HMS Temeraire) through a wide variety of adventures.

(A marvelous painting by Geoff Hunt—here’s his gallery—https://www.scrimshawgallery.com/product-category/prints/geoff-hunt/  )

I’ve just finished the first volume, which is mostly introductory in nature, but provides the reader with a sense of military dragons—how they’re trained, equipped, and how they’re used in aerial combat.  That’s a lot to cover in one book, but the author has thought out and carefully described everything in such a way as to make this alternate almost believable—including, at the book’s conclusion, an excerpt from a late-18^th century naturalist’s treatise on dragons.

So here are different dragons:  non-hoarders, not hungry for the nobility, sentient and talkative, and involved in a global war between Napoleon and the nascent British Empire.  I may have to rethink my feelings about dragons—but not dinosaurs.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Keep away from tar pits,

And remember that there’s always

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, dear readers, to what I suspect is going to be a rather odd posting—being a sort of footnote to one I uploaded two weeks ago.

That posting was called “Phobe”, but I’ve consistently misread it myself as “Phoebe”.  Phoebe?

Phoebes can be birds.  Here in eastern North America we have the Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe)

and, in western North America, there’s the Western Phoebe (Sayornis nigricans).

(For more on phoebes, see:

https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/eastern-phoebe

https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/black-phoebe )

If you hear the distinctive call of the phoebe, you’ll understand where the name came from: 

As you can hear, it’s like a little quiet moan:   “Phoe-be, Phoe-be”.

My first acquaintance with the name, in the masculine form, however, was not from ornithology, but from Victor Hugo (1802-1885),

and his 1831 historical novel Notre Dame de Paris, 1482,

better known in English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, probably after the title of its first English translation, by Frederick Shoberl (1775-1853) in 1833.

(And here’s what I suspect is the first American edition, from 1834:  https://archive.org/details/hunchbacknotred00shobgoog/page/n6/mode/2up  For a free, more modern translation, see the 1888 version by the remarkable Isabel Hapgood:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2610/2610-h/2610-h.htm )

If you’re familiar with the 1996 Disney film,

you’ll have very little idea of the dark and tragic novel which is Hugo’s work, but you will recognize Captain Phoebus–

although this Phoebus is not Hugo’s, Hugo’s being arrogant and self-centered and a social-climber, as well.

This is the first Phoebus I knew, however, from a Classics Illustrated I had as a child.

As I grew up and studied Classical literature, I soon learned that Phoebus was one of the Greco-Roman god, Apollo’s,

titles, “bright/shining”, which he shares with his twin sister, Artemis, as Phoebe,

perhaps because of their relationship with sun and moon.

Other than the divinities, however, it seems that I have rather a sad collection of Phoebus/Phoebe.

The first is “Cousin Phoebe”, a young relative of the last descendants of the ancient Salem Pyncheon family, who comes to live with them in that haunted place, the House of the Seven Gables,

scene of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1804-1864) 1851 novel of the same name.

The house was built on ground stolen from its original owner, who, accused of witchcraft by the very judge (an early Pyncheon) who coveted the ground, was hanged—but just before he died, pointed to the judge and declared “God will give him blood to drink”, cursing the judge and his descendants and, in the process, the house itself, in which the judge soon dies mysteriously, just after it’s built.  It’s my favorite Hawthorne novel and you can read the original 1851 publication here:  https://archive.org/details/housesevengable02hawtgoog/page/n10/mode/2up

Phoebe herself is rather a sunray in such a gloomy place, but the story with its curse and its haunted descendants is still a dark story for a sunbeam.

My second is Phoebe Meryll

(the original actress, Jessie Bond)

to be found in Gilbert (1836-1911) and Sullivan’s (1842-1900) 1888 operetta The Yeomen of the Guard.

(a rather grim poster from the 1897 revival)

Gilbert and Sullivan operettas usually open with a jolly chorus of happy sailors

or even happier pirates (they’ve been passing around the sherry)

or even Japanese court gentlemen,

but the serious chord of Yeomen is struck in the very opening, where Phoebe appears by herself on stage, spinning like Gretchen, in Goethe’s Faust, and singing of the unhappiness of love.  (You can hear a beautifully-sung version of this by Abigail Coy of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE634hUVhwE&list=RDOE634hUVhwE&start_radio=1 )

This sets the scene where, eventually, to save the lives of her father and brother, and even her own life, she agrees to marry the loathsome Wilfred Shadbolt, the darkest character in the story.

But I have one more phoebe, which brings us back to the opening of this posting.  It’s a poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963), “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things”, the last poem in his 1923 collection, New Hampshire—

Image17:  frost

“The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.”

Well, I said that this was going to be a rather odd posting, didn’t I?

Thanks for reading, as ever.

Stay well,

Remember to put lightning rods on your barn roof,

And know that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

If you enjoyed the Frost poem, here’s the whole volume for you—in a first edition:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58611/58611-h/58611-h.htm

As ever, welcome, dear readers.

The Italian phrase which forms the title of this posting can have an ironic ring:  “Lucky old you!”  but beato in itself, can have a more positive meaning:  “extremely happy”—and it has another meaning yet, “blessed”.

As is the case with the majority of Italian words, this is based upon a Latin original, from the verb beo, which, like the modern Italian adjective derived from it, has several meanings:  “to make happy, to bless,” even “to enrich” (which means that the adjective can mean not only “blessed/happy”, but can also mean “well-off”).  The form from which the Italian adjective comes is the PPP—the perfect passive participle—meaning that the adjective really means something like “having been blessed/having been made happy/having been made rich”, suggesting an outside agent.

This idea of blessing/being blessed has been in my mind recently for two reasons.

First, we know that The Lord of the Rings appears empty of virtually all signs of religion:  no priests, worshippers, temples, shrines—all of the things which, for Tolkien the medievalist, would have been everywhere in the medieval English world upon which Middle-earth is loosely based.  Chaucer’s (c.1342-1400) Canterbury Tales

(from the beautiful early 15^th century Ellesmere Manuscript—you can page through it here:  https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/2838 )

alone has 10 figures connected with the Church (the Prioress, the Second Nun, the Nun’s Priest, the Monk, the Friar, the Parson, the Summoner, the Pardoner, and the Canon—along with the Canon’s Yeoman).

And yet, at least twice, we find this:

“But you shall go now with my blessing upon you, and upon all your people…He embraced the hobbits then, after the manner of his people, stooping, and placing his hands upon their shoulders, and kissing their foreheads.”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapters 6 and 7, “The Forbidden Pool”, “Journey to the Cross-roads”)

and:

“ ‘Gladly will I take it,’ said the king; and laying his long old hands upon the brown hair of the hobbit, he blessed him.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 2, “The Passing of the Grey Company”)

In the first of these, Faramir is speaking to Frodo and Sam before they set off on their journey into Mordor, and, in the second, Theoden is speaking to Merry, who has just offered him his service.

I imagine that JRRT got the idea of such behavior from his religious upbringing and adult faith, as well as from the medieval religious tradition he spent time in the midst of in his scholarly pursuits.

It’s interesting however, that, in a Middle-earth ostensibly without religion (except for the calling upon the Valar in The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 4, “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”, and the custom of looking to the west at mealtimes, which Faramir and his men practice—The Two Towers, Book 4, Chapter 5, “The Window on the West”, and that moment in dealing with Shelob, when Sam calls upon Elbereth, The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 10, “The Choices of Master Samwise” ), this act, which still appears in most contemporary world religions, has survived.  In general, the idea is that, if a believer uses a gesture or words to convey a blessing,

he/she is conveying a wish that the person blessed will actually receive the fruits of that blessing from a divine figure.  I don’t see any evidence in the text that this is true for Faramir or Theoden, but Tolkien says of the people of Middle-earth:

“For help they may call on a Vala (as Elbereth), as a Catholic might call upon a Saint…But this is a ‘primitive age’:  and these folk may be said to view the Valar as children view their parents or immediate adult superiors, and though they know they are subjects of the King he does not live in their country nor have there any dwelling.”(draft of a letter to Peter Hastings, September, 1954, Letters, 193)

Is it possible, then, that, although they don’t mention such a figure, by the very act of blessing, Faramir and Theoden are implying that such a figure stands behind the words and gesture?

Something similar seems to be going on in Section IV of W.B. Yeats’ (1865-1939)

complex late poem, “Vacillation”, first published in 1932–

“IV

My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop,

An open book and empty cup

On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessèd and could bless.”

Yeats mentions no divine figure behind his feelings, but we see him here in the roles both of Faramir and Theoden, those blessing, and of the various hobbits, those blessed.  

But I wrote that I had two reasons for thinking about blessing.  The one was my interest in The Lord of the Rings.  My second is more personal.  My beloved Bernese Mountain Dog, Bellerophon, died recently at 9 (old age for many Berners),

and, while I feel blessed at having had him as a companion for all of those years, I also feel that I should somehow bless him as a kind of thank-you for being the quiet and pleased with the world and everything in it friend he always was.  May the Valar be kind to him.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Love and bless whatever pet you may have, from goldfish to elephant,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

“It’s an ill wind that bears nobody any good” sounds like it belongs right up there with “A third time pays for all” and other proverbs Bilbo quotes his father as saying in The Hobbit and, in my case, this one was true.  Covid-19 finally did away with my trypanophobia (fear of needles, based upon two Greek words, the obvious phobia, “fear” and the very graphic verb, tripao/tripo, “to puncture”!).

(how my vivid and terrified childhood imagination saw such things)

I begin my class on monsters asking my students about their fears and I get the usual, everything from heights (acrophobia)

to fear of enclosed places (claustrophobia)

to a fear of clowns (coulrophobia—but a debated term—perhaps bozophobia would be better?)

and I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone suffered from this one, as I find clowns disturbing, too.  Perhaps it’s the often sad makeup but the attempt to be comic? Or the suggested distortion of facial features, like exaggerated mouths?

Also among the items on the list was arachnophobia:  the fear of spiders.

(by herrerabrandon60)

I never think of this particular phobia without remembering a song by Michael Flanders (1922-1975) and Donald Swann (1923-1994) on the subject:

“I have fought a Grizzly Bear,
Tracked a Cobra to its lair,
Killed a Crocodile who dared to cross my path,
But the thing I really dread
When I’ve just got out of bed
Is to find that there’s a Spider in the bath.

I’ve no fear of Wasps or Bees,
Mosquitoes only tease,
I rather like a Cricket on the hearth,
But my blood runs cold to meet
In pyjamas and bare feet,
With a great big hairy spider in the bath.

I have faced a charging Bull in Barcelona,
I have dragged a mountain Lioness from her cub,
I’ve restored a mad Gorilla to its owner,
But I don’t dare face that tub …

What a frightful looking beast –
Half an inch across at least –
It would frighten even Superman or Garth!
There’s contempt it can’t disguise,
In the little beady eyes,
Of the Spider sitting glowering in the bath.

It ignores my every lunge
With the backbrush and the sponge;
I have bombed it with ‘A present from Penarth’.
It just rolls into a ball,
Doesn’t seem to mind at all,
And simply goes on squatting in the bath.

For hours we have been locked in endless struggle,
I have lured it to the deep end by the drain.
At last I think I’ve washed it down the plughole,
But here it comes a-crawling up the chain!

Now it’s time for me to shave,
Though my nerves will not behave,
And there’s bound to be a fearful aftermath.
So before I cut my throat,
I shall leave this final note;
Driven to it – by the Spider in the bath!”

(Two glosses:

1. “Garth” a British superhero character, first appearing in The Daily Mirror in 1943—see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_(comic_strip)

2. “a present from Penarth” a Victorian seaside resort in southern Wales, so this would suggest a souvenir with an inscription—there is a very detailed account of the town here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penarth

You can hear Flanders and Swann singing it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z3D5Jutw1Q )

Arachnophobia gets its name from Arachne, a character from classical mythology, whose history is wonderfully described in Ovid’s (43BC-17/18AD) Metamorphoses, Book 6, Lines 1-145, where we see the human weaver who makes the huge mistake of claiming that her brilliant work is all her own and challenging the goddess Minerva, who clearly inspired her, being the patron of weaving, to do any better.  Minerva first appears as an elderly woman to warn her to remember who her patron is, but, upon receiving a boastful reply, appears as herself and the two settle down to a contest, Minerva depicting scenes of impious humans, Arachne scenes of male gods seducing human females.  At the end, Minerva can only admire the work(wo)manship, but is also so angry that she tears Arachne’s weaving apart and smacks her three times on the head with her shuttle.

Arachne is so humiliated that she attempts to hang herself, but Minerva saves her by turning her into a spider, with legs and abdomen

…de quo tamen illa remittit

Stamen et antiquas aranea telas.

“…from which that one, a spider, still sends out and back

Thread and [her] traditional weavings/webs.” (Book 6, Lines 144-145—if you’d like to read the whole story, or even the whole of the Metamorphoses, start here:  https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D6%3Acard%3D1 )

For all of Minerva’s anger and Arachne’s fate, this conclusion seems so gently domestic that it might be hard to see such as threatening—unless you have very large ones,

(By johntylerchristopher)

who wait in the trees to drop down and seize passing dwarves,

(a particularly disturbing illustration by Ted Nasmith)

or are even larger ones who attack hobbits.

(by the Hildebrandts)

So, with such creatures in two of his major works, did their creator suffer from arachnophobia?  Let him tell us:

“…and I knew that the way was guarded by a Spider.  And if that has anything to do with my being stung by a tarantula when a small child, people are welcome to the notion (supposing the improbable, that any one is interested).  I can only say that I remember nothing about it, should not know if I had not been told; and I do not dislike spiders particularly, and have no urge to kill them.  I usually rescue those whom I find in the bath!”  (to W.H. Auden, 7 June, 1955, Letters, 217)

But, as Dante (1265-1321)

mentions Arachne twice in the Commedia, once in L’Inferno XVII(16-18) and then in Purgatorio XII (43-45), I wonder how he felt about spiders?

As ever, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

Be kind to things which fall into your tub,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

It seems that the earliest recorded version of the proverb with which I began dates to John Heywood’s (1497—died post 1578) A Dialogue of the Effectual Proverbs in the English Tongue Concerning Marriage (1546)—you can find it on page 93 of this edition:  https://archive.org/details/dialogueofeffect00heywuoft  and this is a fun book just to browse through, with proverbs of all sorts done in a long coupleted form.  Bilbo’s father would have been pleased.