Orcked

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by lebedusya1 in Economics in Middle-earth, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Arthur Rackham, Bosch, Brueghel, counterfeit, creation, Elves, Ents, Fangorn, Goblins, John Bauer, mockery, Orcs, Saruman, Sauron, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Treebeard, trolls, US Treasury Department, Weimar Republic

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In our last, we discussed less familiar characters in The Lord of the Rings, the Corsairs of Umbar, and what we imagine they could look like.

In this posting, we want to look at much more familiar characters, Orcs—but from the viewpoint of Fangorn.

He says of them:

“Maybe you have heard of Trolls? They are mighty strong. But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

We’ve always been a bit puzzled by this. “Counterfeit” makes us think, immediately, of counterfeit money. Here are a pair of US 10-dollar bills: can you tell the counterfeit (from Old French via a Latin compound, contra, “against” + facere, “make/do”—in Medieval Latin a contrafactio is a thing put against another, something in contrast, thus “imitation”)?

To be a successful counterfeit, normally, it’s necessary that the imitation be as close to the original as possible, as in the case of these two tens. The US Treasury Department goes to a lot of time and expense to make counterfeiting as difficult as possible

image3anticounterfeit

but, if a counterfeiter is successful, he stands to make (in two senses) a lot of money. He can also cause a great deal of financial damage, breeding distrust in a government’s ability to coin money and to stand behind it. The more counterfeit money in the system, the more money the government has to back, which, in time, could lead to what is called hyperinflation and can bring a currency to collapse. When a government does this itself it can cause havoc with a country’s economy, as happened in the Weimar Republic in 1921-1924. At that time, for complex reasons having to do with paying off the German Empire’s war debts, the government began producing too much paper money and too rapidly. This caused the money to lose value very quickly, rendering it almost worthless.

image4weimarmoney

It’s no wonder that the penalty for counterfeiting was usually the most severe possible.

image5tyburn

Treebeard’s use of the word “counterfeit”, then, would suggest that what Sauron was doing was trying to make nearly-exact copies of something, either Ents or Elves, in his creation of Trolls and Orcs. So what do we find when we first see a description of Orcs?

“There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands.”

(The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”)

That’s not much to go on:

“greater stature” would suggest that most Orcs were short
“swart” means “dark-complexioned” (a term Sam uses to describe men from Harad, whom he calls “Swertings”—The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 3, “The Black Gate is Closed”)
“slant-eyed”—for contemporary people this is a tricky term, even a racial slur, but JRRT probably meant no more than that these Orcs had epicanthic folds to their eyelids, which is not uncommon among many of the world’s peoples.

image6epicanth

“with thick legs and large hands” suggests very stocky builds—like the “Trolls turned to stone” in JRRT’s illustration of the scene in The Hobbit.

image7stonetrolls

This is a start, but will our next view help? Pippin and Merry are the prisoners of the Orcs and Pippin is listening to a quarrel between those of Saruman and those of Sauron:

“In the twilight he saw a large black Orc, probably Ugluk, standing facing Grishnakh, a short crook-legged creature, very broad and with long arms that hung almost to the ground.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3. “The Uruk-hai”)

Counterfeit Elves? Of course we know—also from Fangorn—that perhaps Saruman was up to something more, as Fangorn says of him:

“He has taken up with foul folk, with the Orcs. Brm, hoom! Worse than that: he has been doing something to them; something dangerous. For these Isengarders are more like wicked Men. It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman’s Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men? That would be a black evil!” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)

This might account for the size of the Uruk-hai, as well as for their ability to endure daylight, but what about the crook-leggedness and “long arms that hung almost to the ground”?

Perhaps here we should remember the end of Fangorn’s description: “…in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.”

Hmm. Trolls certainly don’t look much like Ents—

Is this the “mockery”? It’s certainly not counterfeiting in the usual sense!

Should we understand the same for Orcs vs Elves? Here are illustrations of Galadriel and Legolas (both by the Hildebrandts):

Set those against any modern artist’s view of Orcs and, again, it’s not counterfeiting, in the strictest sense, so we suppose that we have to assume “mockery”—but with the added assumption that Sauron had a very twisted sense of humor. (There’s also that nasty half-suggestion of Fangorn’s that, since Saruman’s Orcs are behaving more like men, Saruman has been performing genetic experiments, something even Fangorn doesn’t want to think about.)

Looking at all of these illustrations, by the way, we were struck by where we’d seen creatures like this before. Could it be in the works of those strange Flemish/Dutch painters like Brueghel and Bosch?

Or Arthur Rackham?

Or the early 20^th-century Swedish painter, John Bauer, who, in his depiction of forests was an influence upon JRRT?

And, more recently, considering P. Jackson’s Orcs,

their skin color and general look: is there a suggestion here of the so-called “Bog People” (about whom we wrote a posting some time ago)—a whole series of bodies, at least one dating from the 4^th century bc

who have been discovered buried in peat bogs (a great preservative) in northern Europe?

And, in their color and oozy look–not to mention that they seem to move in scuttly groups–is there something cockroachy about them?

But, just as there is a place Fangorn doesn’t want to go, it’s true for us as well!

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

You probably spotted this (we have very intelligent readers), but it’s the top 10-dollar bill which is the counterfeit.

PPS

It has also occurred to us that JRRT more than once discussed the fact that Sauron, as a lesser deity-figure, could never originate, only copy and “subcreate”—perhaps suggesting another reason for making “mockeries”: his anger at his inability to do original work?

Re: Tree

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by lebedusya1 in Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods, Poetry

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Alfred Tennyson, Dreamflower, Fangorn Forest, Galadriel, Gondor, Helm's Deep, Isengard, Laurelindorenan, Lothlorien, Lotus-eaters, mallorn, Minas Tirith, Mirkwood, Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Palantir, Rath Dinen, Samwise Gamgee, Saruman, The Lord of the Rings, The Odyssey, Tolkien, Treebeard, trees, White Tree of Gondor

Welcome, as always, dear readers.
image1ajrrttree
The inspirations for our postings come from many places: from something we’re reading or have just watched/seen, from a connection between two texts, or between Tolkien’s world—the real or Middle-earth—and something from the history of this world. Sometimes ideas come from the Sortes Tolkienses—our take on an ancient fortune-telling method, in which one posed a question, then opened a copy of an important text like The Bible or Vergil’s Aeneid, closed one’s eyes, and pointed and the text where the finger landed was believed, through interpretation, to contain an answer to that question. In our case, should we require inspiration, we sometimes use our 50th Anniversary hardbound of The Lord of the Rings to do this and, surprisingly often, what we find gives us an idea about what to write.
In the case of this posting, however, it was more of a “we were working on something else entirely and then there it was.” The “it” here is the White Tree of Gondor.
image1treeofgondor
(We confess, by the way, that we have iphone cases with the image—and we are often complimented on them.)
image2phonecase
We had, in fact, been thinking about another post, this one about corruption through technology, as represented by the palantiri, and had been reading references to Denethor. This had led us to his fiery death in Rath Dinen, “Silent Street”, which led to the tombs of the kings and stewards of Gondor. Besides the rulers of Gondor, however, the street had another occupant, the old White Tree, long dead,

but which, when a new sapling

was found in the mountains by Gandalf and Aragorn, was still treated with ceremony:
“Then the withered tree was uprooted, but with reverence; and they did not burn it, but laid it to rest in the silence of Rath Dinen.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 5, “The Steward and the King”)
This seemed a rather odd thing to do to a tree and this led us, finally, to consider one function of trees in The Lord of the Rings: just as the White Tree is buried, as human rulers were, could trees act as a mirror for the condition of the human world at what would be the end of the Third Age? And can they also act as a mirror of change for the better?
Consider, for example, the dead White Tree as a symbol for the withering of Gondor itself, as Minas Tirith is described:
Pippin gazed in growing wonder “at the great stone city, vaster and more splendid than anything that he had dreamed of; greater and stronger than Isengard, and far more beautiful. Yet it was in truth falling year by year into decay; and already it lacked half the men that could have dwelt at ease there…(The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)
And this decay of city and tree appears to be echoed in the natural world of Middle-earth in general, as Treebeard says of Lothlorien:

“Do not risk getting entangled in the woods of Laurelindorenan! That is what the Elves used to call it, but now they make the name shorter: Lothlorien they call it. Perhaps they are right: maybe it is fading, not growing. Land of the Valley of Singing Gold, that was it, once upon a time. Now it is the Dreamflower.”
[Just a quick footnote here. “Dreamflower” immediately takes us to Odyssey, Book 9, 82-105, where a small party of Odysseus’ men, set ashore to explore, meet up with the Lotus-eaters, who give them the mysterious lotus to eat and that “whoever might eat of the sweet fruit of the lotus, no longer wished to bring word back or to return home/but wanted, feeding on lotus, to remain in the very same place with the lotus-eating men and to forget about home-going.” (94-97, our translation). This certainly could describe at least some of the Fellowship’s reaction to Lothlorien. Here’s an illustration from a cartoon-version:

Alfred Tennyson wrote a poem on the same subject—here’s a LINK, in case you would like to read his 1832 (revised 1842) interpretation.]
Beyond Lothlorien, other parts of the tree-covered natural world seem more menacing–there’s the Old Forest,

and Mirkwood,

described by Haldir:
“ ‘There lies the fastness of Southern Mirkwood…It is clad in a forest of dark fir, where the trees strive against one another and their branches rot and wither.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 6, “Lothlorien”)
It wouldn’t take much imagination to replace “where the trees strive” with “where the humans strive against one another and their kind rots and withers”!
There is the sentient, malevolent Old Man Willow,

and even Treebeard and his forest do not at first offer the kind of invitation one hears in the first verse of this song, from Shakespeare’s As You Like It:
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note,
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
Than winter and rough weather.

Instead, when Treebeard

overhears Pippin say:
“This shaggy old forest looked so different in the sunlight. I almost felt I liked the place.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”)
he says, “ ‘Almost felt you liked the Forest!’ That’s good! That’s uncommonly kind of you…Turn round and let me have a look at your faces. I almost feel that I dislike you both…”
Treebeard’s hostility towards Pippin and Merry actually springs from another source—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 leave to rot—orc-mischief that; but most are hewn up and carried off to feed the fires of Orthanc.”
Treebeard’s growing anger, however, then marks a turn in the behavior of the natural world: somehow the appearance of Pippin and Merry acts as a catalyst:
“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. I have been idle. I have let things slip. It must stop!”
And it’s not simply the Revenge of the Ents. Treebeard has a larger strategy, saying to the two hobbits:
“You may be able to help me. You will be helping your own friends that way, too; for if Saruman is not checked Rohan and Gondor will have an enemy behind as well as in front.”
As we know, Treebeard convinces the other Ents to help and, in a short time, they not only destroy Isengard

but also the orcs at Helm’s Deep,

effectively removing Saruman from the story except as an empty threat—and a final, petty Sauron, ruining the Shire, which included cutting down numbers of trees—among them the famous Party Tree. And here we see one more symbol, perhaps. Long before, Galadriel had given Sam a gift which, in her wisdom (and perhaps in her foresight?) seemed almost perfect for a gardener:
“She put into his hand a little box of plain grey wood, unadorned save for a single silver rune on the lid….’In this box there is earth from my orchard, and such blessing as Galadriel has still to bestow is upon it…Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there.’ “ (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)
Once the Shire has been scoured of Saruman’s final evil, Sam remembers this present and uses it, spreading the earth across the Shire:
“So Sam planted saplings in all the places where specially beautiful or beloved trees had been destroyed, and he put a grain of the precious dust in the soil at the root of each.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”)
And his plan succeeds:
“His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty.”
In midst of such fertility, there is an extra favor. Sam had found within Galadriel’s box “a seed, like a small nut with a silver shale [shell or husk].”
Sam planted this in the Party Field, where the tree had once stood, and, in the spring:
“In the Party Field a beautiful young sapling leaped up: it had silver bark and long leaves and burst into golden flowers in April. It was indeed a mallorn [the golden tree specific only to Lothlorien], and it was the wonder of the neighborhood.”
Just as the human world of Middle-earth, stunted by Sauron and his minions, is now free, so is the natural world free once more—no more orcs to abuse its forests, no malevolent will to taint its woods, and the reflowering of the Shire and, at its center, the mallorn, may stand as a symbol for that rebirth—and even be twinned with the new White Tree of Gondor, far to the south.

[With thanks to Britta Siemen’s blog, where we found this image—LINK here]
Thanks, as ever, for reading!
MTCIDC
CD

Into Those Woods

17 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by lebedusya1 in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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A Midsummer Night's Dream, Athens, Burnham Wood, Caspar David Friedrich, Circe, Der Blonde Eckbert, Edmund Burke, Fangorn, forest, Gespensterwald, Grimm Brothers, Haensel and Gretel, Horace Walpole, Into the Woods, Ithilien, Jacob Grimm, John Bauer, John Walter Bratton, Lorien, Ludwig Tieck, Macbeth, Mirkwood, Misty Mountains, N.C. Wyeth, Nienhagen, Odysseus, Old Forest, Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas, Robert Frost, Robin Hood, Romanticism, Sir Walter Scott, Snow White, Steven Sondheim, Straparola, Teddy Bears' Picnic, The Castle of Otranto, The Fire Swamp, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, Tolkien, Treebeard, Waldeinsamkeit, Waverly, Wilhelm Grimm, Woses

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

There is an early-twentieth-century American popular song called “Teddy Bears’ Picnic”, by John Walter Bratton. This was first published, in 1907, as “The Teddy Bears Picnic: A Characteristic Two-Step”,

but in 1932, it acquired both its current title and lyrics, beginning,

“If you go down to the woods today,

You’re sure of a big surprise…”

Here’s a link, if you’d like to read more. And here’s a link to the first recording of the version with its lyrics, from 1932. WARNING: it has a catchy little tune!

This song came to us because we’ve been thinking about forests and their frequency and importance in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Woods have always been spooky places in folktales. Think of Haensel and Gretel, for example,

or Snow White,

or even the story of Odysseus and Circe, as Circe’s house is set deep in a forest.

Among our interests is Romanticism–both in itself because it’s in Romanticism that modern adventure stories really take off (for the supernatural, think Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, 1764; for historical, Sir Walter Scott, Waverly, 1814). The early Romantics were fascinated by the forest, both as a place of beauty and of fear. This is not surprising, for several reasons. First, they were influenced by the writings of Edmund Burke (1729-1797),

who published a famous essay, “Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” in 1757 (this is a 1770s reprint).

Burke was interested in human reactions to things which, basically, are either awe-inspiring (how about this?)

or beautiful

Awe-inspiring (to which may even be added a little terror– you, sharp-eyed readers have probably already noticed that there are the remains of a crushed ship in the ice in the first picture) is a sort of opposite of the beautiful– we say “sort of” because they can be related, which is why we chose two pictures by the same artist– our favorite early Romantic artist, in fact, Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

This brings us to this Friedrich painting:

There are lots of his paintings in which we are standing behind someone who is looking off into the distance– as in the one we chose for “the beautiful”. As you can see in the above, here we have a man contemplating a path into a snowy wood. (Which reminds us of a poem by the American poet Robert Frost, 1874-1963, and we can’t resist adding it here, just for the pleasure of it:)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

There is menace here (note the crow on the stump in the foreground…), and yet it’s beautiful. And tempting– and that’s part of the sublime, as well.

Besides their interest in Burke, the early Romantics were also deeply interested in folktales. People had been collecting and publishing such things in early modern Europe since at least Straparola in the 16th century, but, from the Romantics, we have the work of these two men, highly-intelligent brother-scholars, the Grimms, Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859), whose work, either in itself on in adaptation, is known throughout the whole western world.

The story of Haensel and Gretel comes from them, in fact (as does Snow White). Because of a famous short story by Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853),

“Der Blonde Eckbert” (maybe “Fair-haired Eckbert” in English?), there is a word in German for this fascination for the woods, Waldeinsamkeit, meaning something like “The Sense of Being Alone in the Forest”. Like “sublime”, this word has a wide range of feeling to it, including that sense of aloneness/being alone/loneliness/ mixed with the pleasure of being alone in the forest. In the story, the word is contained in a little poem sung by a strange bird, which begins:

“Waldeinsamkeit

Die mich erfreut

So morgen wie heut

In ewger Zeit

O wie mich freut

Waldeinsamkeit.”

“Aloneness in the forest–

That delights me,

As today so tomorrow

In eternal time

Oh how it delights me

Aloneness in the forest!”

In the case of JRRT, however, although he was well known to be quite passionate in his love for trees, forests in his work do not always appear to be places for pleasure. (And how can we not be reminded of that moment in the film, The Princess Bride, when the hero and heroine are at the edge of the Fire Swamp, a kind of haunted wood,

and the hero, Westley, says, “It’s not that bad. I’m not saying that I’d like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely”– and only a moment later the heroine, Buttercup, is attacked by a spurt of flame from the ground itself?)

Out first wood in The Hobbit is the one into which several of the dwarves disappear, captured by three rather dimwitted trolls.

When we look at this and at other JRRT illustrations, we are reminded of the world of the Swedish illustrator, John Bauer (1882-1918), some of whose fairy tale forests bear a certain strong similarity in their regularity.

What’s surprising is that, in northern Europe, there actually appear to be stands of wood which actually look very like this. Here’s Nienhagen, in northern Germany.

It’s a beechwood (one of JRRT’s favorite trees and ours, too– remember this big beech from N.C. Wyeth’s Robin Hood illustrations?

Nienhagen has another name, however, Gespensterwald, “Ghostwood”, and, seeing this next picture and comparing it to Bauer’s paintings, we imagine that you’d agree with us that this is an appropriate nickname.

Across the Misty Mountains, we come to Mirkwood, with its disappearing Elves, sleepy stream, and giant spiders– hardly an inviting place.

The forests of The Lord of the Rings are a bit mixed. There is the Old Forest, which is so hostile that is has to be kept off with cutting, burning, and a hedge and, in its depths, there is Old Man Willow, who almost swallows several unwary hobbits.

Then there is Lorien, a place of safety and healing for the Fellowship.

And, last, there is Fangorn, with its Ents, especially the thoughtful and ultimately sympathetic Treebeard.

These are principal woods– there are also the woodlands of South Ithilien, there Faramir

and his rangers lurk, as well as the unnamed wood where the Woses live, but it’s the people there who are the focus of the story, not the forests.

This sense of a wood being dangerous goes far beyond fairy tales and even JRRT, of course. Shakespeare has several puzzling forests– as in the wood outside Athens in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

or the traveling Burnham Wood in Macbeth

And there is even the wonderful Steven Sondheim musical, Into the Woods (1986), in which going into the woods has a magical/metaphorical side.

But we’ll leave you where we started– with JRRT– and a single tree…

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC,

The Woods for the Trees…

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History

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A Wonder Book, Arthur Rackham, Enid Blyton, Ent, Fairy Tale, Fairytale Illustrators, Fangorn, Farmer Giles of Ham, Harmsen Van Der Beek, Hawthorne, John Bauer, Middle-earth, Mirkwood, Old Man Willow, Pauline Baynes, Rackham Tree, The Lord of the Rings, The Old Forest, The Wind in the Willows, Tolkien, Treebeard, trees

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.

From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book, 1922

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

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

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?

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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,

Powerplay

12 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by lebedusya1 in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Villains

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Barad-Dur, Beer Hall Putsch, Black Country, Charlie Chaplin, Christopher Lee, Edwin Butler Bayliss, Ents, Fangorn, Franco, Frodo, Gandalf, Grima, Hitler, Isengard, Maiar, Merry, Middle-earth, Mordor, Mosley, Mussolini, O'Duffy, Orcs, Orthanc, Pippin, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, Spode, The Great Dictator, The Lord of the Rings, The Shire, Theoden, Tolkien, Treebeard, Valar

Welcome, as always, dear readers!

We’ve discussed the nearly-invisible Sauron in an earlier posting, but now we’d like to think out loud about the all-too-visible Saruman. And, as we’ve just heard that we’ve lost our own Saruman, Christopher Lee, we would like to dedicate it to his memory.

Pippin and Merry have been filling Fangorn in about all of their adventures up to the moment when he found them in his forest.

Saruman, in particular, has caught his attention, being his neighbor and, it seems, an increasingly distant one—

“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; 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—became like windows in a stone wall: windows with shutters inside.” 473

At that moment, everything comes together for the Ent.

“I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power.” 473

And not a friendly power, as Gandalf, during his last visit to Isengard, has learned to his dismay, having heard Saruman alternately wheedle and threaten him. Saruman’s initial words, however, were not about himself, but about someone else, to the east:

“A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all. There is no hope left in Elves or dying Numenor. This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join with that Power.” 259

So far, this must sound like the Sauron party line—and Saruman is actually described “as if he were making a speech long rehearsed”, (259), the tone of which Gandalf recognized immediately, replying:

“I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Morder to deceive the ignorant.” 259

If we pause for a moment and consider the era in which this was written, we might catch a glimpse of something from the history of our world in this, something from the period beginning in 1922 and extending at least through 1945, when Tolkien was beginning to write The Lord of the Rings.

JRRT always denied that his work was allegorical, although, sophisticated man that he was, he was well aware that the world around him would impinge upon his consciousness. Thus, when we see numerous sinister figures rising in power in our world, it would be difficult to imagine that they might not, even if only very distantly, exert some small influence on his work.

The lesser figures include Franco, in Spain,

Eoin O’Duffy in Ireland,

Sir Oswald Mosley in England, (mocked as “the amateur dictator “ by P.G.Wodehouse in the persona of Sir Roderick Spode—brilliantly played by John Turner in the 1990s Wodehouse “Jeeves and Wooster” television series)

and the most menacing of all, Mussolini and Hitler.

Mussolini had begun his rise to power just after World War One, achieving his position of Il Duce in 1922,

while Hitler, after a false start in 1923, in emulation of Mussolini,

finally reached the ultimate position of authority in 1933.

Although Hitler was a relative late-comer in comparison with Mussolini, it seems that Mussolini looked up to Hitler, even taking German lessons (although there is no mention of Hitler reciprocating) so that they could talk more easily (and, doubtless, securely).

Thus, it might be possible to see Saruman, in his position as lesser of two evils, looking up to and wanting to imitate Sauron, the greater of two evils, as Mussolini attempting to emulate Hitler. (And this odd partnership is sharply satirized in Charley Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, 1940.)

So, as Sauron has the Barad-dur,

so Saruman has Orthanc.

As Sauron has Orcs

so Saruman has Orcs.

Worst of all, just as Sauron has the vast wasteland of Mordor

Saruman takes the once-green and beautiful Isengard

and turns it into a mini-Mordor.

All of this is swept away by Fangorn and his fellow Ents, of course,

and it appears that Saruman will remain within the tower, but we know that he slips away, taking the former counselor of Theoden, Grima, with him.

Or, at least, that’s what Tolkien intended. Unfortunately, the makers of The Lord of the Rings films simply dropped this theme here, with the deaths both of Saruman and Grima on Orthanc. We say unfortunately because, although we have portrayed Saruman as a wanna-be Sauron (even to the point of thinking that he might gain control of the Ring), which is certainly one of his roles, his is a greater role as he was once a greater figure. He is the eldest of the Maiar in Middle Earth, those spirits whom Tolkien once described as “near equivalent in the mode of these tales of Angels, guardian Angels”, LTR 159. That he can be corrupted by Sauron (as Sauron himself had been corrupted by Morgoth), shows just how great Sauron’s power (and the lure of the Ring) really is. As well, in his fall, we see that that corruption, like Sauron’s, is complete. Offered the chance to return to the good, he spurns it and slips away—but not out of the story, and it’s here that we feel that the writers of the films missed a great opportunity.

In what might, at first, seem like an act of petty revenge, Saruman goes to the Shire, that green and so-far-safe land far west of all of evil of Middle Earth,.

and industrializes it. After all, Fangorn has said of Saruman that “He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.” 473

So, just as at Isengard, trees must go, if only to feed his industrial plans. When we think of Saruman’s ultimate vision for the Shire, we imagine that it would look like the work of Edwin Butler Bayliss (1874-1950) who painted the industrial landscapes of England’s West Midlands, the “Black Country”, an area Tolkien himself thought of as his home region.

The end comes quickly, however, when the Hobbits return and we see, in “The Scouring of the Shire”, on the one hand, the new maturity of Merry and Pippin, and, on the other, the deep humanity of Frodo.

And Saruman would have been allowed to go free again—but there is an irony here in what happens. He had sought to overturn Theoden and Rohan through having subverted Grima and, instead, he himself is killed by that very agent—

and we have wondered about that. If Saruman is of the same substance as the Valar, merely inhabiting a human body, can he, in fact, be killed, any more than Sauron? We assume that Sauron, who had poured so much of his spiritual power into the Ring, would be seriously weakened by its loss, enough so that his empire collapses on him. In Saruman’s case, the end is less dramatic, but at the same time, poignant:

“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.” 1020

Although the withered remains are then described, they seem unnecessary. That was only the borrowed flesh. The tragedy lies in that wavering look, the bending away, the sigh. In the final chapter, “The Grey Havens”, we see Gandalf departing towards that very West which was denied to Saruman and here we see, as well, what it was that the spirit of Saruman had lost: the reward of being allowed, at last, to return home, to go back towards Valinor. Instead, the Valar have rejected one of their own and, though his spirit may not have been destroyed, something seems to have left him forever.

By leaving the final chapters out of the film, then, the script writers lost the chance not only to show us Merry and Pippin, at the end of their long adventure, grown into figures to rival the Old Took, both in deeds and in stature. As well, they denied us the potential contrast with the end of such figures as Hitler—a suicide—and Mussolini—executed by his own people, and that of Saruman the White, murdered by his own follower and, at the end, nothing but sadness and grey smoke.

Thanks, as always, for reading. And thank you, Christopher Lee, for acting.

MTCIDC

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