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I Think That I Shall Never See…

10 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Economics in Middle-earth, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods, Uncategorized

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Alan Lee, Alexander Volkov, Battle of the Somme, C.S. Lewis, Caspar David Friedrich, deforestation, Fangorn, Fangorn Forest, German Romantics, Grimm Brothers, Haensel and Gretel, Industrial Revolution, Isengard, Kansas, L. Frank Baum, Leonid Vladimirsky, Mordor, pre-industrial, Saruman, The Lord of the Rings, The Scouring of the Shire, The Wizard of Emerald City, The Wizard of Oz, Tin Woodman, Tolkien, trees

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In a letter to his aunt, Jane, dated 8-9 September, 1962, JRRT wrote:

“Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate.” (Letters, 321)

We know, from his letters and from interviews, just how passionate he was about trees,

image1jrrt.jpg

but we were immediately caught by just how very Treebeardish he sounded:

“I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me…” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

image2tbd.jpg

Trees almost seemed to be people to Tolkien—in fact, we know that Treebeard was based in part upon a person—his friend, CS Lewis—at least his voice and manner of speaking.

image3csl.jpg

As near-people, then, to Tolkien, their destruction would have been a kind of murder.  With that in mind, we thought of our last posting, in which we quoted Farmer Cotton talking about Sharkey’s regime in the Shire, including “They cut down trees and leave ‘em lie.”  (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”).  And we wondered whether, behind this, JRRT was talking not only about the orcs’ wanton devastation of trees,

image4treeruin.jpg

but also reliving the Battle of the Somme, in 1916, and seeing once more the acres of unburied dead (60,000 British casualties alone on the first day, 1 July, 1916).

image5dead.jpg

Certainly Treebeard saw this as murder, as he says to Merry and Pippin about Saruman

“He and his foul folk are making havoc now.  Down on the borders they are felling trees—good trees.  Some of the trees they just cut down and left to rot—orc-mischief that; but most are hewn up and carried off to feed the fires of Orthanc…Curse him root and branch!  Many of those trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn; many had voices of their own that are lost for ever now.  And there are wastes of stump and bramble where once there were singing groves.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

Saruman, a person with “a mind of metal and wheels”, who was “plotting to become a Power”,

image6saruman.jpg

has turned Isengard into a vast factory, where “there is always a smoke rising”.

image7isengard.jpg

Thus, just as JRRT may have been recalling the Battle of the Somme, so perhaps he was also suggesting  the industrialization which had been in full swing when he was born and which he disliked intensely and which was reducing much of the part of England in which he grew up to the smoking wasteland Sharkey tried to make the Shire

image8.jpg

as we see in this Alan Lee depiction.

image9.jpg

Of course the deforestation went back long before the Industrial Revolution began.  Once upon a time, great forests covered much of the northern European world and humans lived in the midst of miles and miles of trees in clearings which they cut for themselves.

image10schwarz.jpg

image11farm.jpg

And we still have a distant memory of these, we would suggest, in some of our fairy tales.  If you think about the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of “Haensel and Gretel”, for example,

image12grimms.jpg

image13kinderund.jpg

image14schatten.jpg

you’ll remember that, not only did the children live in the middle of such forest, as did the witch, but their father was a woodcutter, someone who would have been involved in that very deforestation, if in a very small way.

image15woodcutter.jpg

This memory, collected by the Grimms and others in folktale form in the early 19th century, also provided inspiration for the German Romantics—as you can see in this painting by one of their greatest painters, Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

image16chasseur.jpg

To those Romantics, the forest was scary—but fascinating, as well—and disappearing, as the industrialism which JRRT disliked swallowed it.

image17blackcountry.jpg

Wood was, however, the plastic of the world for many generations, with infinite uses, from home heating to ship-building, and, wherever humans settled, wood was eaten up.  Here is a telling chart for Britain of the contrast between 2000BC and 1990AD.

image18mapofgb.gif

It is no surprise, then, that, during the 17th century colonization of what is called New England in the US, a major attraction was the availability of wood and the colonists took full advantage of that availability, as this chart shows—

image19deforest.jpg

The forest which Treebeard shepherds is, in fact, rather like the forest depicted in that chart of Britain, as Aragorn says:

“Yes, it is old…as old as the forest by the Barrow-downs, and it is far greater.  Elrond says that the two are akin, the last strongholds of the mighty woods of the Elder Days, in which the Firstborn roamed while Men still slept.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 2, “The Riders of Rohan”)

But what would have happened to it had Saruman not lost Isengard to the very trees he was destroying?

image20destructionofisengard.jpg

In thinking about this, we were reminded of another woodcutter in a children’s story.

image21tinwoodsman.png

Or, if you prefer the film—

image22woodsman.jpg

He lives in the still-wooded land of Oz

image23oz.png

where there are even talking trees (although a lot less friendly than Treebeard).

image24talkingtree.jpg

Dorothy, however, lives in a Kansas seemingly blighted by the so-called “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s.

image25kansas.jpg

image26dustbowl.jpg

Would this have been Fangorn’s fate?  We have only to look at Mordor to believe it might have been, when all the trees fell silent.

image27mordor.jpg

As ever, thanks for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

PS

In 1939, a Russian children’s author, Alexander Volkov, published The Wizard of the Emerald City.  When one compares it with a certain American book of about 40 years before, striking similarities appear, starting with the title character.  And the illustrations, by Leonid Vladimirsky, also have something familiar about them…

image28vlad.jpg

There was one very practical change, however:  the Tin Woodman became the “Iron Lumberjack”, which rectifies a mistake in the original.  When Dorothy discovers the Woodman, he has rusted in place, but tin can’t rust!

Somewhere Over…Ephel Duath?

02 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

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Aragorn, Auntie Em, communication, crystal ball, Denethor, Dorothy, Emerald City, Galadriel, heroine, Kansas, Margaret Hamilton, Middle-earth, mirror, Oxford, Oz, Palantir, Pippin, Professor Marvel, Saruman, Sauron, seeing-stones, skype, The Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz, Tolkien, Villains, Wicked Witch

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always. This posting is now one of two, but it was originally a single posting in which we discussed both Palantiri and Galadriel’s mirror.

Our first thought had been, in fact, a vague one: what did one see in such things? As we reviewed the various possibilities, we realized that they were, in fact, very different in function (yes, we probably didn’t think long and hard enough—we should have pulled out our spares and dipped into that cask of Longbottom Leaf for a three-pipe problem). So we separated them and here’s the first, on the Palantiri.

We begin in 1939. It’s not a happy time: war in Europe has broken out again after only two decades of peace. The Depression is still lingering. But there is a new film which Priscilla (age 10) has heard about and would very much like to see and her loving and indulgent father has agreed to take her—after all, this is a children’s movie and he, since his first novel was published in 1937, has become a children’s author.

The film was the story of a quest: the heroine, torn from home, acquires a magical object (two, in fact), slowly gathers a disparate band of companions who help her on her way, visits a grand city, has dealings with a wizard, defeats a powerful enemy and returns home, at last, a wiser person.

posterforwoo

In the very year he became a children’s author, the father had begun a new work. Based in part upon earlier materials and interests, as well as upon elements from his 1937 novel, this was to become not, as he thought at first (and his publishers hoped) a sequel to his previous work, but a kind of extension of that work and, in the years in which he continued to work on it, much more.

In the meantime, he sat in the theatre in Oxford and watched a bleak prairie worldkansas

turn into something almost hallucinogenically-technicolored

munchkinland

and filled with small and very energetic people.

munchkins

But the heroine, as we said, has been torn from home and, worse, she arrives and is immediately in trouble with a powerful enemy,

wickedwitchofthewest

having accidentally killed that enemy’s sibling.houseinwwoe

And the story moves on from there—the gathering of the companions

Wizard-of-Oz-w13

the grand city

oz

and, all the while, that powerful enemy is watching.

ball4

This isn’t the first time such a scrying device has been seen in the story. Earlier, the heroine had consulted another magical figure—or so he claimed.

profmarvelswagon Wizard-3-Marvel

What’s particularly interesting about this device is that, unlike crystal balls one remembers from film and books and from general folklore,

crystalball

the one which is actually used sees not the future, but the present.

The Wicked Witch of the West sees Dorothy—as, of course, that’s who they are–

wwowwithball

and Dorothy sees Auntie Em.

crystalballdseesem

(And “Professor Marvel”, as he calls himself, at least pretends to see the present.)

This made us wonder about the Palantiri.

For a useful summary of information about these so-called “seeing-stones”, see the entry for Palantiri at Tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Palantiri, but, in short, they are an ancient communication device. That is, they are unlike the usual crystal ball, which looks into the future (or possibly the past), but are rather like the Middle Earth form of skype.

skype

These items don’t have the security offered by our earthly form, however. Within The Lord of the Rings, we see them used by Saruman

sarumanpalantir

Pippin

Pippinpalantir

and Aragorn

palantirandaragorn

and Denethor.

denethorandpalantir

Aragorn, however, is the only one able to escape the control of Sauron as exerted by the sphere.

the_palantir_of_barad_dur_by_stirzocular-d7xwbi9

Their function as a medium of communication, so different from their usual use, brings us back to Margaret Hamilton, staring into her crystal ball

ball4

and we wondered whether, in that dark late summer of 1939, Tolkien might have sat in a theatre in Oxford, watching the Wicked Witch of the West, and, as he did so brilliantly with so many other things, absorbing, then recreating what he saw for his own purposes. What do you think, dear readers?

As always, thanks for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

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