Tag Archives: Tolkien

Further Thoughts

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Uncategorized

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Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

It is one of the pleasures—perhaps we should say even blessings—of JRRT that there is such a richness available within his work—and within him—that no subject can ever be discussed to a perfect conclusion. In an earlier posting, we talked about Sauron and his demands, but, as we watch our current world and certain powers who are maneuvering to gain increasing control over land and sea, we have come back once more to wondering about what it is that Sauron has planned to do and what he will have if he succeeds.

In an unpublished reply to a review by W.H. Auden, JRRT wrote:

“The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.” (Letters, 239)

Thus, we can feel justified, we think, in looking at a would-be world conqueror from an actual historical period to see if we can better understand the fictional Sauron.

If we consider Alexander of Macedon,

Alexander_the_Great_mosaic.jpg

we see someone who began with a project which, in part, went back for a century and more before his own time: to take back the western shore of northern Asia Minor from its Persian overlords. This had been begun by the Delian League,

The Delian League - map.jpg

a group of Greek city-states who had been participants in the ultimate battle defeat of the invading Persians, at Plataea, in 479bc.

47948_PlateaBattleL.jpg

After he had defeated the southern Greeks at Chaeronea in 338bc with the aid of his son, Alexander, it had been Philip II of Macedon’s plan to do what the League had planned and take back Asia Minor from the Persian empire. Philip was murdered (by a “lone spearman”) in 336, but Alexander, took over the plan and, in 334, invaded the Persian empire and, within three years or so, had conquered it—

macedonianempirelarge.jpg

but then had kept moving eastward, besieging cities, winning battles, all the way into western India, where his army finally revolted and refused to go farther.

Alexander_troops_beg_to_return_home_from_India.jpg

He returned to his new capital, Babylon, to die there in 323bc.

the_death_of_alexander_the_great_after_the_painting_by_karl_von_piloty_1886

Because Alexander had no grown male heirs, his new empire fell apart very quickly, his chief generals seizing big chunks and defending them against other generals. We can presume, we think, that he hadn’t been planning to die young (he was born in 356), so we assume that he was out to do something permanent. His generals—the successful ones—founded dynasties, the longest-lived of them being that of Ptolemy,

Coin (Ptolemy I) (Alexandria 305-285 BC).jpg

who grabbed Egypt, and whose last descendant to rule was Cleopatra VII (yes, that Cleopatra), who committed suicide in 30bc.

Kleopatra-VII.-Altes-Museum-Berlin1.jpg

If Alexander was planning to do something similar, only on a larger scale, how do we understand it? What was all of that conquest for and why was it never enough?

Part of the explanation may lie in the analogy of the folk-tradition about sharks: that they have to keep moving to breathe. This is apparently not true (google Discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week).

great-white-shark-swimming-blue.jpg.adapt.945.1.jpg

It’s a good image, however, of how an expanding kingdom has to work: the more land you have, the more people you have, the more people you have, the more food you need, therefore you need an increased food supply, which means either buying it or taking it from outside, or making the land itself produce more or simply acquiring more land—and the cycle begins again. This may have been what caused the rapid expansion of the Mongol empire in the 13th century ad, although, in their case, it may not have been expanding population so much as expanding flocks and herds which needed more pasture land.

TitleMongol2.jpg

We might see Sauron in the same light: he needed huge armies to conquer Middle-earth, his huge armies, both humans and orcs, would need feeding (even orcs ate, after all, although as to what they ate…) and therefore would have needed a huge amount of growing land to be fed from, and so on and so on. Certainly Mordor was not the place for gardens and grain fields.

gorgoroth.gif

JRRT says of Sauron:

“Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants; if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honour from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world.” (Letters 243-244)

And perhaps this offers another view of Alexander, in turn. As Sauron would have needed land to feed his armies, perhaps Alexander was intent upon collecting worshippers? Certainly he allowed rumors to circulate that he was at least semi-divine—as we see in this coin portrait, where he is portrayed with the horns of Zeus/Ammon, a combination Greek and Egyptian god.

alexaszeusammon.jpg

Alexander succeeded in gaining territory—although not so much as he wished—but died before founding the dynasty which might have given his kingdom stability. Sauron lost, not only his kingdom-in-the-making, but his corporeal form and the bulk of his power. JRRT has given us a hint as to one side of his plans—founding a religion with himself as the god, but perhaps Alexander has given us a clue as to another side, the need to support his means of conquest. In turn, Sauron may supply a clue to another side of Alexander’s plans: inserting himself into the religion of his Greek subjects, then expanding his cult throughout as much of the world as he could conquer.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Tobago to Lothlorien 2

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Uncategorized

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Welcome, dear readers, as always. As you can see from the title, this is a continuation of our previous post.

In that previous posting, we began with the novel, Robinson Crusoe (1719),

Robinson_Crusoe_1719_1st_edition.jpg

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then on to Swiss Family Robinson (1812),

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being especially interested in the stockade of the former

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and the tree house of the latter.

swiss-family-robinson

The connection here was the tree house and Lothlorien, where the elves lived high up in the trees.

lothlorien.jpg

At least, that’s where we began. As we looked more seriously at the architecture of Lothlorien, however, we began to wonder, in a world in which darkness had gradually spread, how it protected itself. After all, Robinson Crusoe, afraid of the cannibals he had seen, had walled himself in. Part of it was the power of Galadriel herself, as she implies to Frodo:

“But do not think that only by singing amid the trees, nor even by the slender arrows of elven-bows, is this land of Lothlorien maintained and defended against its Enemy.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

But was there anything more besides singing, arrows, and Nenya, the Ring of Adamant?

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Far to the south, Minas Tirith had seven concentric (more or less) walls,

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and its opponents across the Anduin had the Morannon

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and Cirith Ungol

cirithungolhildebrandt.jpg

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and even the Barad Dur.

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It is not so clear about Edoras. There is mention that “A dike [that is, a ditch/moat] and mighty wall and thorny fence encircle it”, along with the phrase “wide wind-swept walls and gates” (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”), but little else. And you can see that lack of information reflected in the rather scanty look in the Jackson films—

LOTR_twoTowers_edoras_03_940.jpg

Helm’s Deep, is, of course, a different matter—we show you versions by the Hildebrandts and by John Howe

helmsdeephildebrandt.jpg

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Lothlorien is, in fact, not a single site, like any of the above. This map

LothlorienMap.jpg

gives you an idea of its complexity. There is the outer forest, with its camouflaged guard flets in trees, seemingly along its borders, and then the actual center, the city of Caras Galadhon. Here’s JRRT’s description of that center:

“There was a wide treeless space before them, running in a great circle and bending away on either hand. Beyond it was a deep fosse lost in soft shadow, but the grass upon its brink was green, as if it glowed still in memory of the sun that had gone. Upon the further side there rose to a great height a green wall encircling a green hill thronged with mallorn-trees taller than any they had yet seen in all the land.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

We are then told that there is a bridge, on the southern side, which crosses to “the great gates of the city; they faced south-west, set between the ends of the encircling wall that here overlapped, and they were tall and strong, and hung with many lamps.”

A fosse (from the Latin verb, fodio, fodere, fodi, fossum, “to dig”) means that there was a moat—in this case, it would appear to be a dry moat, like this one at the city of Rhodes.

moatrhodes.jpg

(Those stone balls, by the way, are left over from the Turkish artillery and stone-throwers which pounded the walls of Rhodes in 1522–when we have another posting–soon–on the attack on Minas Tirith, we’ll say more about that.)

That “green wall”, however, is a bit of a puzzle. Is it a wall of green stone of some sort? Or is it a “thorny fence”, like that which surrounds Edoras? There are two similar defenses, or at least boundaries, in LOTR. First, there is the border between Buckland and the Old Forest:

“Their land was originally unprotected from the East; but on that side they had built a hedge: the High Hay. It had been planted many generations ago, and it was now thick and tall…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 5, “A Conspiracy Unmasked”)

The second such construction appears at Bree (which sounds much like Edoras):

“On that side, running in more than half a circle from the hill and back to it, there was a deep dike with a thick hedge on the inner side.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

So what is the green wall?  English hedges can be very dense things, often to mark off fields, as in this photo of Offa’s Dyke–and you can see the fosse/ditch/moat here, as well.

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In at least one previous entry, we discussed Offa’s Dike, a (possibly) 8th-century-AD ditch and earthen wall between England and Wales.

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Can we imagine the palisading of this reconstruction replaced with a thorny hedge? Here’s a long shot of Offa’s Dike with a bit of hedging visible.

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When we consider the general look of Caras Galadhon, it is of something organic: the elves loved the trees and, instead of cutting them down, as the hobbits had done outside the High Hay, they climbed up into them. Might we then see that their physical barrier against their enemies was of the same green and growing material as were their dwellings?

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks, as ever, for reading,

MTCIDC

CD

The Return of the King (Ludd)

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Economics in Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History

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Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

JRRT always actively denied that his work was allegorical, that somehow, for example, he meant Sauron to stand for Hitler (and why not Stalin?) and the Ring was the atomic bomb. In a draft of a letter from April, 1959, he wrote:

“I have no didactic purpose, and no allegorical intent. (I do not like allegory properly so called: most readers appear to confuse it with significance or applicability…” (Letters, 297-298)

And yet—

Well, someone born in 1892, who lived through everything from the Boer War (1899-1902) to the Great War (1914-1918) to the Second World War (1939-1945) and into the middle of the Cold War, with all of the proxy wars and wars for independence during the 1940s to 1970s, could not help being somehow at least affected by such large and dreadful events, particularly a man as sensitive and thoughtful as JRRT, and as historically-minded. Like it or not, Tolkien was entangled in contemporary history.

One way that this has struck us recently is rereading Letters and coming across this:

“There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.” (JRRT to Christopher, 29 Nov 1943, Letters, 64)

Looking at that date, it is clear that what he is referring to is, in fact, the Allied bombing campaigns against the Reich (and as his son was training in the RAF—Royal Air Force—at the time, perhaps some part of him was also dreading that Christopher might be part of future bombing runs. After all, a general consensus is that the RAF lost over 50,000 killed in its war against Germany. This is, of course, small in contrast to the 60,000 casualties incurred by the British Army on the first day of the Somme, 1 July, 1916, alone, but, with warfare having become much more mobile again in 1939-1945, these were significant losses.)

Here are, in fact, photos of the bombing of a German factory and a power station—the very sort of thing Tolkien is describing.

WAR & CONFLICT BOOK ERA: WORLD WAR II/WAR IN THE WEST/GERMANYCopy of RAF Blenheim V6391 After Bombing Goldenburg Power Station, Cologne

(Although, for the sake of our posting, we feel that it’s necessary to show illustrations like these, it’s hard for us to do so. In those smoke clouds are the lives of men, women, and children, with all of the loss and misery which war always brings. Yoda says, “Wars not make one great” and, when we think of the human cost, it’s hard for us to disagree. We only wish that all the violence in history was confined to adventure stories and that, in real life, people got along and there was no need ever for such awful behavior against fellow human beings.)

But why does Tolkien describe current events in such an odd way, in which the pilots of the British and US Air Forces are “disgruntled men” and their bombing raids are depicted as “the growing habit…of dynamiting factories and power-stations”? We would say that it’s because he is, in a way, turning current history around and looking at the past through it metaphorically.

The letter begins:

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs…” (Letters, 63)

Anarchy, being about resistance to organized state control, has a very long history, both east and west. What JRRT is alluding to here is, rather, the late-19th, early 20th-century cartoon version of it—

bomb-throwing-cartoon

The real anarchists were deadly (pun intended) serious people, whose goal it was to criticize what they saw as the increasingly-intrusive top-down rule of the state and to suggest (and sometimes fight for) alternatives based upon loose associations of equals. If you know Monty Python’s Holy Grail, you’ll remember the scene in which King Arthur confronts someone who sounds at least like a Marxist, if not a full-fledged anarchist. (King Arthur and the Annoying Peasant from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”) A central portion of the text includes this:

“WOMAN: I didn’t know we had a king. I thought that we were an autonomous collective.”

DENNIS: You’re fooling yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship…A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes…”

Tolkien goes on to complain of what he believed was the growth and increasing facelessness of government, what he called the “Theyocracy” (63), but it’s clear from the later remark quoted above that what particularly disturbed him was the way in which he believed the state was involved in the ongoing Industrial Revolution, hence the focus upon “dynamiting factories and power-stations”.

JRRT’s objections to the ruination, as he saw it, of the world of his childhood run through all of his writings, but what we always think of first is its proxy version in “The Scouring of the Shire”, with its Saruman/Sharkey boss and everything from the wanton destruction of trees and the collectivization of the population to the building of what appear to be proto-factories.

scouring_the_shire.ingeredelfeldt

And his reaction reminds us immediately of an earlier reaction to industrialization, not for aesthetic or political reasons, but for economic, that movement in early 19th-century England called “the Luddites”. The name comes from, well, there are a number of explanations, none of them being particularly believable. We know, however, that it was a secret movement of very loosely-organized groups of cloth workers, but not one large body with complex plans to overthrow the system. Perhaps as a mockery of the perception that they were such a large body, they, over time, created a mysterious “General Ludd” or even “King Ludd” to suggest that that body not only existed, but had a sinister leader.

Luddite

The Luddites were made up of various segments of the traditional cloth-making industries who saw their livelihoods—and even their relative freedom—being destroyed by the introduction of large, water-powered mills filled with machinery which could do their jobs not only faster, but, as machines have no need for rest, also at a production level no human could ever match. Even if the workers kept to their trades, then, the mills and their output would simply swamp them.

quarrybanktextile-mill-cotton-1834-granger

This was also the time of the beginning of the Labo(u)r Movement in Britain and the government (not surprisingly, considering where the economic influences upon it might come from) had already begun to try to block it with the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, which placed severe penalties on workers attempting to form unions, or “combinations”.

When people tried simply to hold peaceful public meetings, the local authorities felt so threatened that they turned soldiers on the demonstrators, as here in Manchester, in August, 1819. 11 demonstrators were killed and several hundred were injured.

peterloo1

So much for peaceful demonstrations. The Luddites, seeing the attitude of the government, began to attack the mills and warehouses, as these posters show—

Radcliffe Arson Reward Poster, 21st March 1812 copyOates Wood Smithson & Dickinson Carr reward poster, 25th March 1812Cttee to Supress Outrages reward poster copyawsomne

as well as the machines themselves.

luddites1

Faced with the government, its laws, and its enforcement—which could even mean executing people, as was done at York in 1813—

executionofludditesatyork1813

the Luddites were a short-lived movement and had disappeared by about 1816.

Their idea about turning back the effects of the Industrial Revolution by violent means—at least in fantasy—however, clearly was still available, at least to JRRT in 1943.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Bilbo’s Shopping List

12 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Economics in Middle-earth, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

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Dear Readers, welcome as always.

We were having tea the other day when an earlier—and much more elaborate—tea came to mind and we began to consider the economics (as you’ve seen us do in earlier postings on other elements of Middle-earth) of Bilbo’s larder, about which Bilbo remarks that Gandalf, “Seems to know as much about the inside…as I do myself!” (The Hobbit, Chapter 1, “An Unexpected Party”—and a footnote here. “Party”, in older British and American English, can also mean “person”, so JRRT is having fun with party = “event” and party = “person”—or, to Bilbo’s astonishment and dismay, “persons”–both meanings unexpected. We might add that that title may have yet another meaning for the future in that Bilbo, because of that party/event, becomes, in time, a party/person who he would never expect himself to be.)

Here’s the list of what Gandalf and the Dwarves demand of Bilbo:

Drinks:

tea,

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coffee,

coffee

ale,

english-style-dark-mildale

porter,

porter

and red wine

red wine

Food:

seed cake,

Caraway_seed_cake

scones,

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raspberry jam,

raspberryjam

apple-tart,

appletart

mince-pies,

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cheese, (Wallace and Gromit’s favorite, Wensleydale)

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pork-pie,

Pork-Pie

salad,

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eggs,

hardboiledegg

chicken,

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[tomatoes—more about these in a moment],

red-tomato-meteorite

pickles,

iStock_000013582794Large_cucumber_pickles

[biscuit—i.e., cookie, in the US—which Bilbo nibbles, while looking on]

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We know there are farms in the Shire—think of Farmer Cotton (who, in contrast to the completely anachronistic corn in P. Jackson’s film, actually grows turnips—see The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 4, “A Short Cut to Mushrooms”), but Bilbo certainly doesn’t farm, although he appears to have a vegetable garden (something “old Holman”, then Hamfast (“Gaffer”) Gamgee, looks after—see The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”). He might grow raspberry bushes, the makings of a salad (although, since it’s April, there won’t be such an extensive set of possibilities for the ingredients as later in the spring and early summer), and cucumber for pickles there, but there are a number of items which would require both wide fields and animal husbandry.

For example, the cake of seed cake, as well as scones, the tart, the pie of mince-pie and the pie of pork-pie (not to mention what mostly makes a biscuit/cookie) would all require flour—which would mean having wheat fields.

Wheat-field-at-the-sunset

There is a mill for grinding corn (UK for the US “wheat”)—Tolkien depicts it, as well as mentioning it. (If you look closely at the land in front of The Hill, you can also see what are clearly both plowed fields and, a little closer to the mill, haystacks.)

millfieldsbehind

The apple of apple-tart would, of course, require apples—which require apple trees, something Bilbo doesn’t seem to have. He also has no chickens for meat or eggs, goats/sheep/cows for cheese, or pigs for pork-pie. Add to this no hop garden

hop

or barley fields

barleyfield

to provide the materials for ale or porter, not to mention a vineyard for that red wine which Gandalf has asked for.

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That being the case, we are left to wonder where such things come from. Initially, they come from the storerooms (“larders”), of which Bilbo appears to have several. Certain things could be stored for lengths of time there: dry tea and coffee beans, ale, porter, and wine, in bottles or barrels (both exist in Middle-earth). Flour could be kept in containers and things like raspberry jam and pickles could be preserved in jars. Meats could be dried or salted, but Gandalf says, “Bring out the cold chicken and pickles,” meaning that the chicken has been freshly killed and cooked.

Beyond storage in Bag End, we must assume that anything more complex than raspberries or pickles (or taters, we’re reminded by Sam) has been bought and brought from somewhere else—the same places, we imagine, which supply The Ivy Bush and The Green Dragon, for example. Someone, for instance, makes, barrels, sells, and ships the beer Merry and Pippin consume in the ruins of Isengard and someone grows, dries, sells, and ships the Longbottom Leaf which they smoke.

merryandpippinisengard

All such commerce is complicated, requiring not only growers, but makers of containers, and shippers. Who are these hobbits? And add to this, are there markets? Shops of any sort? And where are they? Bilbo loses buttons escaping from the goblins under the Misty Mountains. Who made them? Where? How did Bilbo get them? (And, for an even bigger—and maybe really more obvious–question: who makes the parchment and ink for Bilbo to keep diaries? Who binds the eventual books?)

As we come to the end of this posting, we want to turn back to something we mentioned much earlier. In the 1937 The Hobbit, Gandalf asked for cold chicken—and tomatoes. In the 1966 Ballentine edition, these tomatoes have been replaced with pickles. We presume that Tolkien, keeping to his idea of The Shire—and Middle-earth in general—being medieval-ish, the New World tomato was out of place. It is interesting, however, to see that Bilbo serves the dwarves both tea and coffee. If by “tea”, Chinese tea is meant, we are left with another anachronism, as we are with coffee, tea have been introduced to Britain in the mid-17th century and coffee at more or less the same time.

And then there’s the problem of taters…

As always, thanks for reading!

MTCIDC

CD

The Woods for the Trees…

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History

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Dear Readers,

Welcome.

We’ve recently been admiring the illustrations of one of our favorite artists, Arthur Rackham (1867-1939). As a book illustrator, Rackham’s main focus was fairy tales, and for them, he developed a style which was described by E. V. Lucas in a letter to Rackham as his “grace and grotesque”. For us, what may be most striking about his work is the way he depicts landscapes and trees, with their distinctive “Rackhamesque” character.

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From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book, 1922

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“Come Now, a Roundel” from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1908

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From Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, 1940

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From William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1908

 

As a tree admirer,

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He was certainly not alone.

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Being Tolkien people, this reminded us, of course, of JRRT’s own admiration of trees, of which he wrote in a sort of letter of introduction to Houghton Mifflin Co.: “I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been…” (Letters, 220).

JRRT himself was an illustrator of his own stories, and although he never cited Rackham as a direct influence, we know from Tolkien’s letters that he had seen Rackham’s work. He advised his illustrator Pauline Baynes to “avoid the Scylla of Blyton and the Charybdis of Rackham” (L 312).

Here is Pauline Baynes frontispiece for the first book which she illustrated for JRRT in 1949.

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Enid Blyton was an author of popular children’s books, but she was not an illustrator. We don’t know to what illustrations Tolkien might have been referring, but here is a Blyton book published in the same year, illustrated by the Dutch artist, Harmsen Van Der Beek. (The cover illustration reminds us of various illustrations for early translations of The Hobbit, illustrations which Tolkien hated.)

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When we look at Tolkien’s forests

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we are often reminded of the work of the Swedish artist, John Bauer

John-Bauer-Elk-Cotton3

but for all of Tolkien’s warning to Baynes about Rackham’s style, there is a strong influence there, still.  After all, Tolkien did find Rackham’s illustrations “really astonishingly good pictures” (261). Sharing a passion for fairy tales with Rackham, which JRRT called “one of the highest forms of literature”, it’s no wonder to us that he would have found some inspiration in an artist who had similar tastes.

The influence seems strongest when it comes to animate trees.  As we were looking at the same Rackham illustrations which Tolkien would have seen, we found pictures which immediately reminded us, for example, of JRRT’s illustration of Old Man Willow.

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Just as Rackham’s work seems to have influenced JRRT as an illustrator, he seems to have inspired JRRT’s writing, as well. Being visual people, we can certainly say that, when writing Across the Doubtful Sea, we looked at several images which helped us to imagine the events, places, and characters in our south seas adventure. If you look at Rackham’s The Hawthorne Tree, dear readers, does it remind you of something—or someone?

b84eb67383d938d33e93ae7cfc9c82bd

It’s the wizened, knotted old face of Rackham’s Hawthorne Tree which made us think of this passage:

“They found that they were looking at a most extraordinary face. It belonged to a Man-like, almost troll-like, figure, at least fourteen foot high, very sturdy, with a tall head, and hardly any neck. Whether it was clad in stuff like green and grey bark, or whether that was its hide, was difficult to say. At any rate the arms, at a short distance from the trunk, were not wrinkled, but covered with a brown smooth skin… But at the moment, the Hobbits noted little but the eyes. These deep eyes were now surveying them, slow and solemn, but very penetrating.” (The Two Towers, “Treebeard”, 452)

treebeard

Treebeard is, in fact, not a tree, but an Ent. He is an ancient tree-like figure, however, and almost a description of Rackham’s illustration. Looking at Rackham’s paintings and drawings, it’s clear to us that they call out for story, and we wonder– is this how JRRT, with a passion for trees and an eye for illustration, felt about them, too?

Thank you, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC,

CD

 

Infrastructure and Architecture in Rivendell

28 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Artists and Illustrators, Films and Music, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Welcome, dear readers, as ever. In our last posting, we looked at the Greenway from a comparative perspective. In this one, we’ve got an idea or two from having looked as closely as we could at one of JRRT’s illustrations of Rivendell, comparing it with various modern conceptions, including that in the films of P. Jackson.

Rivendell, Sindarin, Imladris, “deep valley in a cleft”, is located on the eastern edge of Eriador, at the foot of the Misty Mountains. Set in that deep valley, which was formed by the action of the river Bruinen (“Loudwater”), it was besieged on several occasions throughout its lifetime, but had survived to be the last refuge of the Elves on that side of the mountains.

mapofmewithrivendellpointedout

It is understood that Tolkien based it upon a Swiss valley, Lauterbrunnental, which he had visited on a hiking trip in 1911.

1_lauterbrunnen_valley_2012

(And maybe there’s an echo in the name—which is sometimes translated “Louder Springs”—in Bruinen, “Loudwater”?)

Here is the Tolkien illustration

rivjrrt2

We want to look at two features here. First, in the middle ground, there is that bridge. Here is Alan Lee’s very beautiful version—although you will note that it’s been moved and shortened.The-Hobbit-and-dwarfts-on-the-bridge-alan-lee-18907573-1024-768

As we examined this bridge as closely as we could, we wondered, where had the idea come from for its shape? And two possibilities came to mind. First, because we’re very much World History people, we thought of those beautiful bridges from the Ottoman world. There are a number of surviving bridges which are more elaborate, but there are also single-arch bridges like these, which bear a strong resemblance to the bridge in Tolkien’s illustration.

otoman_era_bridge_gumushane_province_turkey_photo (1)

hemshin-bridge

1024px-ArchBridgeOverFirtinaDeresi@Rize-Turkey-1

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To us, one of the most beautiful is the Stari Most (Bosnian, “Old Bridge”), in Mostar (Bosnian, “Bridge Keeper”), which was built in the 16th century, destroyed in 1993, and rebuilt, and reopened in 2004.

Bosna-Mostar-Stari-Most-800

003

mostar_bg_1

Moving a little closer to home (England, that is, in the case of JRRT), another possibility for a model might be something mentioned in our last posting, when we talked about medieval English roads as mostly packhorse trails. Here’s a perfect example, from Wasdale in the Lake District of northern England, a packhorse bridge.

(n) The pack horse bridge behind the Wasdale Head Inn

Moving upstream from the bridge in Tolkien’s picture, we see a house depicted.

rivjrrt2

It’s hard to make it out, even under magnification, but, when we compare it with:

  1. the buildings in the Jackson films

12887381._SX540_.png

  1. Alan Lee’s Rivendell

leerivendell

  1. or even Ted Nasmith’s,

rivendellTN-Fair_Valley_of_Rivendell

we personally don’t think anyone quite captures what Tolkien drew. To us, there appears to be, as we said before, something closer to home–in the reconstructions of Roman villas and their outbuildings. And, as we said in our last, so much of Roman Britain was still available, either above or below ground, that we can imagine JRRT  being aware of it.  (In fact, in 1929, the archaeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler actually consulted him on an ancient curse and the inscription on a Roman-British ring.  See the Ring of Silvianus wiki page).  Possible examples, some from reconstructed sites:

villa_mehring_01villaarcheon_temple_cuijk2delaguiaGayton-Villa-Colour-web

Blow up the Tolkien illustration for yourself, dear readers, and what do you think?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

 

 

The Road (No Longer) Taken

21 Wednesday Sep 2016

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

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Dear Readers, welcome, as always. In this posting, we’ve been thinking about the subject of roads in Middle-earth and, in particular, the North Road, also called the Greenway.

middle-earth-map.jpg

This was the North-South Road, which ran, once upon a time, from Isengard to Fornost, described by Christopher Tolkien as “the great Numenorean road linking the Two Kingdoms, crossing the Isen at the Fords of Isen and the Greyflood at Tharbad and then on northwards to Fornost”. (Unfinished Tales, 314, n.32)

Mostly, the roads of Middle-earth seem to be what you’d expect in a text which is based upon the actual medieval world: dirt tracks.

medievalroad.jpg

In the real English medieval world, most of these were not really for carts or carriages,

medievalcart.jpg

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but rather for pack horses and their loads, which only required the narrowest of paths.

packhorsetrain1

The_Marsden_pack_horse_road,_Marsden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_826758

Bridge in Marsden, West Yorkshire

Bridge in Marsden, West Yorkshire

There had been simple pathways in Britain since earliest times, like the Ridgeway.

Ivinghoe Beacon seen looking north from The Ridgeway.

Ivinghoe Beacon seen looking north from The Ridgeway.

And yet there were still the remains of a different sort of road in Britain, those built under the Roman occupation of England, from 43 to 410AD.

Roman.Britain.roads

The Romans had begun their rise to power in Italy by controlling a road, the Via Salaria, which ran inland from the Mediterranean. A major purpose of this road (you can see it in its name, “The Salt Road”) was to further the salt trade.

The salt came from salt pans on the Mediterranean coast.

saltblocks

saltpans

The early Romans had been lucky (or wise) in founding their city at a major ford of the Tiber River, where the Via Salaria crossed it.

archaicrome

And out from Rome spread a network of roads.

roman-roads-italy-map

In time, the main roads were not simply dirt tracks, but very-carefully-constructed, well-laid-out stone-paved roadways.

Eli dis 2

These included sturdy bridges, as well, some of them still in place.

alcantara-bridge

Over these roads marched Roman armies

romantroopsonroad

and Roman commerce, as well.

plaustrum2

Eventually, there were over 50,000 miles (80,500 km) of paved roads, as well as many miles more yet of unpaved.roman_empire_117_ad

As far as our current research goes, we have no actual proof that the Greenway was paved like Roman roads. One road for which there is a hint of evidence is that which runs through the Stonewain Valley:

“Through the gap the forgotten wain-road long ago had run down, back into the main horse-way from the City through Anorien; but now for many lives of men trees had had their way with it, and it had vanished, broken and buried under the leaves of uncounted years.” (The Return of the King, Book 5,   Chapter 5, “The Ride of the Rohirrim”)

A comparable illustration—with grass instead of trees and leaves—is this of a Roman road in Lancashire, in northeastern England.

Roman Road walk Lancashire

The idea of a road nearly abandoned and covered with grass—therefore “the Greenway”—seems to fit both this modern photo and JRRT’s idea, though, doesn’t it?

One of the spooky, but wonderful things about the ancient Roman world is that, for all that it’s been gone for 1500 years or more, there is so much of it still there for us, above ground and below—as it was for Tolkien. Thus, when we think about what was once one of the major thoroughfares of Middle-earth, we imagine that he, like us, saw a Roman road, decaying, but still useful.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Song in Darkness

14 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Artists and Illustrators, Films and Music, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

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Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

For this posting, we consulted the Sortes Tolkienses, and landed upon a particular passage which had us thinking about song in Middle-earth:

“It was quiet, horribly quiet. The torch, that was already burning low when he arrived, sputtered and went out; and he felt the darkness cover him like a tide. And then softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing. “

At this moment, Frodo has been taken by the enemy after the two Hobbits had been led into and escaped Shelob’s lair, and Sam, though only a simple gardener from the Shire, has resolved to carry Frodo’s burden and rescue him from the tower.

cirithungol

Along with carrying the Ring, which would have otherwise been taken from Frodo in the tower, Sam has also brought with him Sting, Frodo’s sword, and Galadriel’s phial, which she gave to Frodo as a gift upon their leave-taking from Lothlorien.

shelob Sam

The phial is used when the two Hobbits are pursued by Shelob, as a means both of light and of defense. Faced with a darkness he has never encountered before, however, but set on finding and rescuing Frodo, even if he’s not sure how, Sam has the option of pulling out the phial straight away when the lights in the tower of Cirith Ungol go out.

Instead, Sam sings—although he’s not quite sure why—and, in the shadow of Mordor, recalls home in the Shire:

“His voice sounded thin and quavering in the cold dark tower: the voice of a forlorn and weary hobbit that no listening orc could mistake for the clear song of an Elven-lord.  He murmured old tunes out of the Shire, and snatches of Mr. Bilbo’s rhymes that came into his mind like fleeting glimpses of the country of his home. And then suddenly new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, while words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune.

            In western lands beneath the Sun

                        the flowers may rise in Spring,

            the trees may bud, the waters run,

                        the merry finches sing.

            Or there maybe ‘tis a cloudless night

                        and swaying beeches bear

            the Elven-stars as jewels white

                        amid their branching hair.

 

            Though here at journey’s end I lie

                        in darkness buried deep,

            beyond all towers strong and high,

                        beyond all mountains steep,

            above all shadows rides the Sun

                        and stars forever dwell:

            I will not say the Day is done,

                        nor bid the Stars farewell.”

(The talented Tolkien artist, Joe Gilronan, has illustrated what Sam would have imagined singing this song–  a clear contrast to the darkness surrounding him:)

b4d306be0fef7b0b9fdbc7daf47c4d35samwise-the-gardner-joe-gilronan

Why is this, which seems like a last, desperate gesture, successful?  After all, it not only revives Sam’s spirits, but it reaches Frodo who, badly injured as he has been, responds with the same song, enabling Sam to find him.

In Middle-earth, and in Arda more generally, song is both enjoyed and revered on a deeper level. The music of the creator Iluvatar is, as recounted in The Silmarillion, what brought the world into being, and it is such a strong force that Morgoth, the first dark lord, sought to challenge Iluvatar’s song and power with his own. Even here, however, music as a dark force failed.

“Then Iluvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shall see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite.’ ” (The Silmarillion)

180px-Ted_Nasmith_-_Melkor_Weaves_Opposing_Music

Thus in The Lord of the Rings, we never hear an orc song, nor do we see singing, marching uruk-hai. They are beings created by Sauron, who has not the spiritual authority of Iluvatar, and, as Iluvatar is the ultimate creator of all life, so is he the creator of all music in Arda.  In Middle-earth, besides the odd scene in The Hobbit in which the goblins sing in Goblin-town, we see only Elves singing (such as the Hymn to Elbereth), Hobbits (both snatches of Bilbo’s literary songs and drinking-songs), and Dwarves (it was their music which persuaded Bilbo to leave the Shire and join their journey).

Sam’s song, then, holds power in its own right—although it’s simply an old tune from home, its uttermost source is in Iluvatar and the first music, and it becomes clear why even a hobbit’s hum in the darkest of places can bring him comfort—it cannot be contested by darkness.

Thank you, as always, for  reading.

MTCIDC,

CD

Dr. Smeagol and Mr. Gollum?

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Uncategorized

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Dear readers, welcome, as ever.

In this posting, we are following a hint given us by JRRT. In a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin, 21 Sept, 1947, he says, “Hyde (or Jekyll) has had to have his way, and I have been obliged to devote myself mainly to philology…” (Letters, 124)

“Hyde (or Jekyll)” refers to the main character in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

rlsJekyll_and_Hyde_Title

This is often turned into The Strange Case… by editors, but, in fact, as can be seen from the title of the first edition, given above, there is no definite article. It seems clear to us that it has been omitted because Stevenson is imitating the shorthand methods of newspapers: the title is meant to sound like a headline, the sort of thing Sherlock Holmes’ observant eye would catch and he would then read to Watson.

The original story, if you’re not familiar with it, is about a doctor who leads two lives, one of service, the other of sensuality, and who wishes that he could separate them so that he could enjoy each without the influence of the other. He invents a drug, which, when consumed, turns the socially-responsible Dr. Jekyll (said “JEE-kull”, but often mispronounced)

John_Barrymore_as_Dr_Jekyll

into the loathsome Mr. Hyde.

hydejbarrymoor

The doctor runs into horrible difficulty when it gradually becomes clear that the Id-like Mr. Hyde is actually the dominant personality and the good Dr. Jekyll begins to turn into the fiendish Mr. Hyde even without the drug.

In JRRT’s case, it’s hardly sensuality—instead, it’s his academic life versus his creative one and the fact that he offers both as a possibility suggests that the difference between the two is hardly the glaring one we see in the Stevenson story.

The idea of the split personality in one person, however, leads us—well, if you’re a Tolkien fan, you know already, don’t you?

Gollum_Render

“Slinker and Stinker” Sam calls him, but it’s clear that, somewhere inside him, there are two much more distinctive personalities, just like Jekyll and Hyde.

269_gollum

The Dr. Jekyll is what must be almost a ghost of Smeagol, from his pre-Ring (and pre-murder of Deagol) days—ghost because near-constant exposure to the Ring has left him with only:

“…a little corner of his mind that was still his own…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

But what is the Mr. Hyde?

Instead of a potion to break them apart, it has been the Ring which has caused the split and, in the process, as in the case of Dr. Jekyll, it has been the dark personality which has come to dominate. Unlike Mr. Hyde, however, there seems to be no pleasure to be had from being it:

“But the thing was eating up his mind, of course; and the torment had become almost unendurable.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

JRRT isn’t any clearer about what was “eating up his mind”, but we imagine that, because Sauron has put so much of himself into the ring, just as Dr. Jekyll/Smeagol has that little corner of his own mind, Mr. Hyde/Gollum has a little corner of Sauron’s, which is a really terrible thought. One has only to remember Frodo’s reaction to Sauron when he looks into Galadriel’s mirror to understand:

“In the black abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

10b8f0b7ef05881c193c76dc38bac020the-eye-of-sauron_3133429b

Viewed this way, Mr. Hyde/Gollum is nothing more than a little Sauron.

There is another, more physical connection between Smeagol/Gollum and Jekyll/Hyde. Look at the narrator’s description of Hyde:

“Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish; he gave the impression of deformity without any namable malformation; he had a displeasing smile; he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering, and somewhat broken voice…”

(Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, “The Search for Mr. Hyde”)

Compare that with:

“Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature…” who often talks in hisses and whispers, like:

“Bless us and splash us, my precioussss!”

(The Hobbit, Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark”)

riddles

Is there a physical similarity here? Certainly there is the echo of split personalities, evil, and, maybe, someone caught between what he wants and what he does…

tolkientolkien-mortar-board-7-amazing-real-life-tolkien-facts-that-made-middle-earth-jpeg-77543

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

Our pictures of Jekyll and Hyde come from a famous 1920 film, in which John Barrymore transforms himself into Hyde on camera. Follow this link to the Internet Archive to see a full, free showing (80+ minutes) of that film.

pps

It just occurred to us to mention another story with a shrunken figure of the self– Mark Twain’s conscience in his “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” (1876).

 

Stepping Westward

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narnia, Narrative Methods

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Dear readers, welcome as always.

Although there are no temples or shrines to him (the closest thing is perhaps the Stone Table),

narnia stone table

Aslan

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is clearly someone with divine powers and his influence is felt directly and indirectly throughout all of the Narnia books.

JRRT once said that Middle-earth had a monotheistic religion, but the traces, as has been written about more than once, are almost invisible.

There are no ziggurats,

Ancient_ziggurat_at_Ali_Air_Base_Iraq_2005

no temples,

templeofheraselinus

no cult statues

Athena_Parthenos_LeQuire

no shrines

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no heroa (shrines for demi-gods or heroes).

heroon

The Valar are mentioned once (some of Faramir’s men call on them to protect them from a mumak), of course, and there is that ceremony of standing and looking west before a meal.

That idea of looking west has long interested us, mainly because, in much of western tradition before the Age of Exploration, the west was looked upon as a place of uncertainty, if not outright fear.

Although Odysseus, in Odyssey 9, is careful to point out that his home island, Ithaka, lies farthest towards dusk in its island group, in Odyssey 11, in the far west lies the Land of the Dead,

lykaon-painter-odysseus-and-elpenor

to which Odysseus sails

Odysseus_Sirens_BM_E440_n2

to consult the seer, Tireisias,

Teir.1993.01.0348

on the way to get home. This is, then, hardly a choice direction in which to sail, for all that Tireisias does provide some guidance.

The same is true for a series of stories about immrama, “voyages” (literally “rowings around”) in Old Irish, not only secular stories, like those of Mael Duin

mailduin

and Bran,

Broighter_Gold,_Dublin,_October_2010_(03)

but a famous religious one about Saint Brendan.

brendan

In each of these stories, sailing westward commonly means sailing rather haphazardly among sea monsters and islands with strange people or creatures. There is also the possibility of time distortion: the voyager believes himself gone in terms of a few years, at most, when, instead, he may have been gone for much longer (as in Washington Irving’s short story, “Rip Van Winkle”, in which Rip, falling asleep in the Catskill Mountains after drinking with the ghosts of the crew of the explorer Henrik Hudson’s ship The Half Moon, thinks that he has been gone only overnight when, instead, he’s been gone for twenty years.)

rip-van-winkle.wyeth

(by one of our all-time favorite illustrators, N.C. Wyeth, from his Rip Van Winkle, 1921—the whole work is available, with all of its wonderful illustrations, to download for free at the Internet Archive, may their beards grow long!)

“To go west”, probably based upon the idea of the sinking sun, as an older English expression has the meaning of “to die/to fail catastrophically” (now people in the US seem to be replacing it with “to go south”, which has none of the older resonance, unfortunately), but it ties in very nicely with these older beliefs about what lies west of Europe, so full of danger and mystery.

But then we come back to that looking west.

In the belief system of Middle-earth, westward across the sea lies the continent of Aman, and on that continent is Valinor, home of the Valar, those powerful and immortal beings who are perhaps to be likened to the archangels of Christian belief—with a bit of patron saint and even Norse and Greco-Roman pantheons thrown in. (We admit to having a very shallow knowledge of Arda theology, being less interested in the finer points of belief than in the adventures and the cultures and the languages of Middle-earth.)

The Istari, the five wizards are from there and it’s for us one of the most melancholy moments when, after his murder by Grima, it is clear that Saruman is denied a return.

jwyatt-sarumande

Gandalf, however, is permitted to return, as are Bilbo and Frodo (and, in time, Sam, apparently), all part of the defeat and disembodiment of Sauron.

greyhavens

The elves are also allowed to make the voyage to Aman, although they have their own separate place there, and, when Gandalf leaves, so do Galadriel, Celeborn, and Elrond, part of a slow general leave-taking of the Elves.

No human is admitted however, to the Undying Lands, as they are called, and it occurred to us that perhaps, in that fact, the mortals of Middle-earth are closer to Saruman than to Gandalf or the Elves:

“To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale, shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing.” (The Return of the King, Book 6, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)

Could that ceremony of looking westward also be done with a sigh, an acknowledgement that there are no undying lands for them?

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Ps

This, for us, is a rather historical posting, being our Number 100. By earlier September, we will have reached 104, making exactly two years since we began our blog. We thank you for reading, hope that you will continue to do so, that you will share our work among your friends and that, in the future, you will be willing to share your thoughts with us, as we always encourage you to do.