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Do What I Say, Not What I Speak

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Captain Nemo, Door, Doors of Durin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Great War, Horse Feathers, Jules Verne, L. Frank Baum, Marx Brothers, Moria, Nautilus, passwords, Prohibition, Speak Friend and Enter, speakeasy, Swordfish, The Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz, Tolkien, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Ever since we heard the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” in childhood, we’ve been interested in doors and passwords.

Near the story’s beginning, Ali Baba, a poor woodcutter, happens to observe a group of bandits returning to their cave from a raid.  As he watches, the head of the bandits uses a secret phrase, “Open, sesame!” which opens the cave’s secret door.

[We include a LINK here to the whole story, if you don’t know it.]

Since then, we believe that we’ve had three major examples of the pattern:  door as barrier passed with difficulty.

The first was on a very different level altogether from “Ali Baba”.

After the US passed a law against alcohol just after the Great War, the tumultuous era called Prohibition began.

(The date is 1919 on the newspaper, but the law came into force in 1920.)

For all that the legislatures of various states approved it (“ratified” is the formal word), there were many who did not approve of it.

Because it was national law, however, police everywhere were required to enforce it.

To get around the law, secret bars began to appear.  These received the nickname “speakeasy” because it was a place to relax and drink in (what was hoped would be) safety and privacy.

Such places were made anonymous as possible:  a blank door—with a peephole.

To get in, a potential drinker had to be known—or know the secret password.

This went on until 1933, when the new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, worked to have the law repealed.

In 1932, the comedy team of the Marx Brothers

included a speakeasy scene in their latest film, Horse Feathers.

This is an almost indescribable scene in which one of the Marx Brothers (Chico—said “CHIK-o”) is on the inside and another (Groucho) is on the outside and then the fun begins—here’s a LINK so you can watch it for yourself.

The upshot (sorry for the spoiler!)—as you’ll see—is that both end up on the outside.  (We told you that this was on a different level!)

Our next example had no secret password, but, instead, it had a door guard and a very silly one, too!

In 1939, MGM released The Wizard of Oz,

based upon L. Frank Baum’s 1900 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

We doubt that we have to explain the plot to anyone who would read our blog, so we’ll just remind you of the moment when Dorothy and her friends—Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, Lion—and Toto, too—have reached the Emerald City and have come to the door of the Wizard.

The guard (who bears a suspicious resemblance to certain other characters in the film) at first refuses them entry, saying the now-famous line that the Wizard won’t see:  “Not nobody!  Not nohow!” but eventually crumbles when Dorothy explains her quest and he begins to sympathize with her, finally allowing her and her friends to enter—although what they learn there is not the best news.

Finally, there is this door.

And, with this door, we are back to “Ali Baba”, it seems (if not to Horse Feathers).  When Gandalf and the Fellowship arrive, however, there appears to be no door there at all, just a pair of immense holly trees (probably English holly, ilex aquifolium), overshadowing a blank wall.

As the narrator describes them:

“But close under the cliff there stood, still strong and living, two tall trees, larger than any trees of hilly that Frodo had ever seen or imagined.  Their great roots spread from the wall to the water.  Under the looming cliffs they had looked like mere bushes, when seen far off from the top of the Stair; but now they towered overhead, stiff, dark, and silent, throwing deep night-shadows about their feet, standing like sentinel pillars at the end of the road.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 4, “A Journey in the Dark”)

It is only when Gandalf puts his hands on the rock face and murmurs what appears to be some sort of summoning spell that the doors appear:

“The Moon now shone upon the grey face of the rock; but they could see nothing else for a while.  Then slowly on the surface, where the wizard’s hands had passed, faint lines appeared, like slender veins of silver running in the stone.  At first, they were no more than pale gossamer-threads, so fine that they only twinkled fitfully where the Moon caught them, but steadily they grew broader and clearer, until their design could be guessed.”

As the pattern becomes more visible, so, too, becomes an inscription which reads, in part:

“The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria.  Speak, friend, and enter.”

And trying to make sense of what it means now turns into a very awkward scene in which Gandalf struggles to find the password he believes is requested in that inscription, while the rest of the company gradually becomes more and more impatient (and it doesn’t help that wolves begin to howl in the distance and that there is something about a pool standing opposite the gate which makes them increasingly uneasy).

Finally, Gandalf realizes that what has stopped him depends upon his understanding of a single word in Elvish, a word which clearly has two meanings—and a little more punctuation might have helped!

As it’s inscribed, the vital part of the wording is:

Pedo Mellon a Minno.

As Gandalf originally translated this, it was “Speak, friend, and enter.”  After a good deal of frustration, Gandalf realizes that he has not only mistranslated—slightly—but mispunctuated—or, rather, overpunctuated– as well.  “Speak” and “say” in English are closely related, but there is a difference—for instance, one can “speak English”, but, idiomatically, one would never “say English”.  Thus, no one would ever give the command to someone else, “Say English”, but, rather would say to someone “Speak English”.  The same must be true in Elvish, where, in fact, it appears that “speak/say” is potentially one verb, whose singular imperative (command) is pedo. At first, Gandalf thought that he was being directed to “speak”—but what he was being told to speak he thought was somehow lost or forgotten.  This caused him to overpunctuate:  “Speak, friend, and enter”, where what he was actually being told was “Say [the word] ‘friend’ and enter”.  He finally does so, and the gates open.

In the case of Ali Baba, inside the thieves’ cave are riches, with some of which he quietly makes off.  Groucho and Chico eventually get into the speakeasy and Dorothy and her friends see the Wizard, all of them leaving the problematic entryway behind.  In the case of the doors to Moria, however, what is left behind refuses to stay that way:

“Frodo felt something seize him by the ankle, and he fell with a cry…Out from the water a long, sinuous tentacle had crawled; it was pale-green and luminous and wet…Twenty other arms came rippling out.  The dark water boiled, and there was a hideous stench.”

And this reminded us of something and made us wonder if JRRT had once read the same book we had (there’s nothing in the Letters, unfortunately).  In 1873, the first English translation of a novel by the French science fiction author, Jules Verne (1828-1905),

appeared, slightly mistitled Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Like the title, the rest of the book was filled with mistranslations (it should be Seas) and big cuts.  We hope, in fact, that, if Tolkien read the book (and we would be surprised if he hadn’t, it being the typical Victorian “boys’ adventure tale” of the period), we hope that he read the 1892 version, which cleaned up the errors.

If you haven’t read it, it’s the story of a French scientist who is invited by the US government to investigate a sea monster who is attacking world shipping in the later 1860s.  As the professor discovers, this isn’t a monster at all, but an early submarine, the Nautilus, invented and piloted by a man who calls himself “Captain Nemo” (nemo being Latin for “no one”) and who has a grudge against the imperialist nations of the world, against which he uses his submarine.  The professor, his assistant, and a third man, a harpooner, Ned Land, are taken aboard the Nautilus and, at one point, are involved in a combat against a pack of giant squid—each with 8 arms and two longer tentacles, one of which almost drags Nemo to his death until he’s saved by Ned.  Sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it?

Our favorite version of the story is that done by Disney in 1954.

There is only one squid here, but, as the poster shows, that seems plenty!  It’s a well-told version (simplified, but not too much so) and has a really splendid Nautilus in a high-Victorian design (steampunk long before steampunk?).

As we began this post with an opening, it seems appropriate to end with a closing:

“Gandalf turned and paused.  If he was considering what word would close the gate again from within, there was no need.  Many coiling arms seized the doors on either side, and with horrible strength, swung them round.  With a shattering echo they slammed, and all light was lost.  A noise of rending and crashing came dully through the ponderous stone.”

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

Can you, our readers, think of other doors and passwords?  We’ve intentionally left one out here, although, when the thrush knocks…

When One Door Closes (I)

09 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Tags

And Unexpected Party, Baggins, Beorn, Bilbo, Bilbo and Gollum, Chico Marx, doors, Dwarves, Gandalf, Goblins, Groucho Marx, hidden door, Hobbit door, Horse Feathers, Into the Fire, Lake Town, Lonely Mountain, Mirkwood, Out of the Frying-Pan, password, Smaug, speakeasy, Swordfish, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Marx Brothers, Thranduil, Tolkien, Took, wargs

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Recently, we’ve been thinking about Bilbo’s remark to Frodo:

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 3, “Three is Company”)

What makes this true in Tolkien, we wondered? As an experiment, we began to list all of the significant doors in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and what happened at each of them and we believed that we could see that they fell, roughly, into two categories: doors (and we include gates here) which are the approach to danger, as Bilbo says, and doors which at least seem to offer safety. There are so many, in fact, that we have decided to break them down (no pun intended) and, in this posting, we’ll examine those we found in The Hobbit.

Our first door is Bilbo’s own, in front of which he is sitting when Gandalf first appears

bilbogandalf.jpg

and which he dodges behind, to escape Gandalf—or so he thinks:

“With that the hobbit turned and scuttled inside his round green door, and shut it as quickly as he dared, not to seem rude.” (The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”)

This door, of course, is hardly a barrier to Gandalf, who scratches a rune on it, turning it from what Bilbo hopes is a “no trespassing” sign to a “welcome” mat.

bilbosdoor.jpg

We then get a scene which reminds us of one in the Marx Brothers’ movie, Horsefeathers (1932)

horsefeatherposter.jpg

—or maybe it’s just an excuse on our part to bring up the Marx Brothers, who, in our opinion, are never brought up often enough. It’s a scene from the days of Prohibition, when hard liquor had been outlawed in the U.S. by an amendment to the Constitution (1920-1933). It was clearly a batty idea and, very soon, many people (some of whom must even have voted for the amendment), were looking for ways to skirt the federal law. One way to do so was to visit an illegal bar, called a “Speakeasy”, presumably because you could say what you wanted there, including criticizing a stupid law. These were secret places, with guards at the door and a need for passwords, so that people on the inside could detect attempts by the police to raid them. In the movie, Chico (pronounced “chick-o’’—as he was said to be an avid pursuer of girls)

chico.jpg

is the guard on the inside and Groucho

groucho_marx_in_duck_soup.jpg

is a potential customer.

speakeasy.jpg

As is typical with the Marx Brothers, the scheme collapses and they both end up on the outside of the door, but, before that happens, there is a lot of knocking and attempts (full of bad puns) to guess the proper password.

horsefeathersbothshutout.jpg

The door, then, is really only a prop, a site where Chico and Groucho can practice one-liners on each other and not much else (as if that matters with the Marx Brothers!). In the next door scene from The Hobbit, however, JRRT uses Bilbo’s door for larger purposes: to show Gandalf’s subtle understanding of Bilbo’s psychological make-up, as well as the beginning of his plan to turn Bilbo from a staid Baggins to a much freer Took, as Bilbo is forced to confront a gang of dwarves and their mission.

unexpected.jpg

Gandalf’s method, as readers will remember, was to send the dwarves to Bilbo’s door one or two at a time. Gandalf repeats this trick when he and the dwarves (and Bilbo, of course) take refuge at Beorn’s,

beorn.jpg

after their escape from the pursuing wargs and goblins.

warg_rest.jpg

Whereas we might say that the second door scene at Bilbo’s led to danger, this scene leads to safety, although only temporary security, as Bilbo and the dwarves must set out again, even if refreshed and refitted.

(Readers note: this second time has been replaced in the second Hobbit film with a scene which misses both the quiet comedy of the original and its use in the story as a way to provide us with a more rounded picture of Beorn, as well as JRRT’s use of a repeated folk motif perhaps to reinforce the fairy tale-like structure of what was originally an oral tale turned children’s book.)

The dwarves had encountered the goblins through a hidden door (clearly a “danger door”), outside of which they had taken shelter. They are made prisoner

goblinking.jpg

but Bilbo, being lost, finds the Ring, meets Gollum,

Bilbo and Gollum.JPG

and escapes by a door which certainly offers safety. (Although, as the title of the next chapter puts it, not for long, being “Out of the Frying-Pan, Into the Fire”.)

goblinsbackdoor.jpg

This, of course, not only leads us back to Beorn, but also on to Mirkwood and our next door, that of the Mirkwood Elves and their king, Thranduil (who does not ride an elk, as the movies would have it—and really silly-looking that is, in our opinion). This is one of a number of versions by JRRT himself.

palazzo di thranduil 2.jpg

Although this door leads to the dwarves’ imprisonment, the danger appears to be minimal. Thranduil threatens them, but, except for locking them up and putting them on short rations, he does them no harm. (And there is another backdoor escape—this time in barrels—one of JRRT’s own favorite illustrations—and ours, too).

barrel-riding.jpg

The barrels led us to the lake and to Lake Town (a colored version of another JRRT illustration),

Laketown4.jpg

through the gate of which the dwarves had to pass. A strong theme in so many of these entryways is that they are a form of challenge: those who would get in (or out) must deal with a guardian—Bilbo, goblins, elves–and Lake Town is no different. Here, there is a squad of lax gate guards, who are rather easily impressed when Thorin announces who he is and that he wants to see the Master. As the dwarves persuade the Lake Town people to supply their expedition, we would label this one of the doors to safety—the last thing we would say for the final two: the back door and the front gate of the Lonely Mountain.

136TheLonelyMountain.jpg

So far, we have had two front doors (Bilbo’s and Beorn’s), one hidden door (goblins), two sets of gates (elves, Lake Town), and two back doors (goblins and elves). Now we have a door with a spell cast upon it and the riddle of the spell acts as the guardian. It is, of course, the door most desired by the dwarves, but it’s hardly a door to safety as, at its bottom lies the reason they abandoned the mountain to begin with: Smaug.

bilbowithsmaug.jpg

The front gate is hardly better, as it soon becomes a defensive work for the dwarves as they prepare to fend off those who either try to seek recompense or are simply goblin attackers.

the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies3.jpg

But wait—we’ve left out a final door, haven’t we? “the door where it began”—and, in front of it, Bilbo experiences one more trial:   finding that he’s been declared dead and his property is up for auction—and just when he believes he is “back again”. But there is a happy ending and The Hobbit itself ends with Bilbo, some years later, answering that same door

tolkien_drawing1.jpg

and entertaining Gandalf and Balin. (Although in the drawing above, Bilbo bears a certain resemblance to someone else…)

j_r_r_tolkien_-_smoking_pipe-700x1049.jpg

In our next post, we’ll continue by looking at doors and gates in The Lord of the Rings.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

CD

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