Faramir, Smooth Operator, Shows His Quality

I just noticed this a little while ago. I was reading Faramir’s declaration of love to Éowyn in “The Steward and the King.” One word jumped out at me — sorrowless (RK 6.v.964). I recognized it from another context. Many of you will, too. Then I wondered how often it showed up. In The Lord of the Rings the word occurs only twice, once here and once in Strider’s song about Beren and Lúthien back in “A Knife in the Dark” (FR 1.xi.193). With sorrowless in mind, a couple of other phrases in Faramir’s declaration suddenly stood out.

Let’s start with his words. I’ll highlight the words and phrases I noticed:

… you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Éowyn, do you not love me?’ Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.

To the first highlighted passage compare two verses uttered by Beren, found in both The Lay of Leithian and the Silmarillion (Lays 277; S 178).

Lúthien Tinúviel

more fair than mortal tongue can tell.

To the second compare the words of Strider’s song:

And long ago they passed away

In the forest singing sorrowless.

And for the third there is again Strider’s song (FR 1.xi.192):

When winter passed, she came again,

And her song released the sudden spring,

Clearly, Faramir, the younger brother, put his time in the library at Minas Tirith to good use. He woos Éowyn by subtly, very subtly comparing her to Lúthien. How well versed in Elvish poetry she might have been is uncertain. To judge by her brother’s initial attitude towards Lothlórien, not much. But the most likely place in Rohan to find people knowledgeable about Elvish poetry would be in the ruling family.

If I see anymore connections, I’ll let you know. This one seems pretty cool, though.

Of course we can't understand Tom Bombadil

The difficulty many of us face in understanding Tom Bombadil arises from the fact that he is part of nature and we all too often think of ourselves as separate from nature. We cannot grasp mastery apart from domination. We cannot grasp a steward who does not rule. We are thus far more like Denethor and Saruman than any of us would care to admit. It’s also why neither of them understands Gandalf.

Everything but us is a part of Faerie of its very nature, as Tolkien says in On Fairy-stories.1 We are not naturally enchanted. Not now, and perhaps we never were. Yet, if we were, our disenchantment dates from the moment we began to regard ourselves as ruling stewards, as viceregents rather than vicegerents. We are like Sauron unable to imagine that “we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place,” let alone that “we should try to destroy the Ring itself….” (TT 3.v.497). So, of course we can’t understand Tom Bombadil.

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1

Given Tolkien’s description in On Fairy-stories (see below), I have no doubt that he would say that we are disenchanted, not the world. It would take long thought to work out the dynamics of this point of view in opposition to the standard view that the world is disenchanted.

“Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted."

Gandalf in Latin by Way of Pope Leo

As was widely noted back in May of this year Pope Leo XIV quoted Tolkien in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, specifically Gandalf's statement in chapter 9 of book 6 of The Lord of the Rings (RK 9.vi.879). I was talking to James Tauber, the Mad Max of Digital Humanities, the creator of the fabulously useful Digital Tolkien Project, and an all around nice guy. We were lamenting the absence of a Latin version of this encyclical, because we were wondering how the Tolkien quotation would be rendered in Latin. James suggested that while we wait for the official Latin version to appear I should try my hand at a translation of my own. 

I thought about it, toyed with it, and here it is. Not without blemishes, that's for sure. It is also not a literal translation. Why not? Well, Gandalf is in a council meeting here talking rather vaguely about evil people, not abstract forces. Nor is he in a library penning a scholarly treatise on the metaphysics of evil. Latin, moreover, is far more inclined to speak of "the Romans" than of "Rome" when addressing real world actions. In English we might say either "Rome waged three wars against Carthage" or "The Romans waged three wars against the Carthaginians" but in Latin it would be far more idiomatic to use the much more vivid phrasing of the latter. 

So let's start with the English, followed by the Latin:

‘Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.'

alii vel mali vel malefici sunt qui forsan venient. nam Sauron ipse est tantum unus ex servis aut legatis. at non est nobis regere tempestates omnes huius mundi, sed viribus quam maximis succurrere aetatibus nostris ut malis veteribus eradicatis posteri agros laetos arent. Quae tempestas illis erit eam non est nobis regere.

Here's some notes on some of the Latin phrasing I adopted.

alii vel mali vel malefici -- "others whether evil or evildoers" -- I didn't like the sound of just "alii mali" and it didn't seem to say quite enough on its own. So I added "malefici," which means "evildoer" in general, but often indicates "sorcerers" or "enchanters." 

qui forsan venient -- "that may come." venient is a future indicative, which technically means "will come." I could have also used veniant, a present subjunctive, "may come." I decided that Gandalf really had little or no doubt that other evils were going to come someday, and so an indicative verb (talks about facts) seemed better than a subjunctive verb (talks about possibilities). But I didn't want to eliminate all doubt. Forsan,"perhaps" diminishes the certainty of the future indicative venient.

regere -- "master," but it means "rule" as a king (rex) rules. This is more about control and domination than a form of government, just as we use "democracy" to refer to a principle of one-person-one-vote, not we-all-go-down-to-the-forum-and-vote-on-laws.

tempestates -- "tides." At first glance it's tempting to think Tolkien is talking about the tides in the ocean. But as a good student of early Medieval England he would have known that only a fool of a Took would try to govern those tides. Here the word primarily has its older, original meaning going all the way back to Old English: "A portion, extent, or space of time; an age, a season, a time, a while" (OED). Latin tempestas has a similar range, from period of time to tempest, from weather to misfortune. This works well with Gandalf's later use of "weather" in the last sentence, since I can use both regere and tempestas there, too. The weather imagery also suits the farming imagery, while using the word that actually means tides of the sea (aestus) would clash with that. 

succurrere -- is perfect for "succour," as well as being its semantic and etymological ancestor, literally run to the aid of or assist.

eradicatis -- "uprooting." The verb eradico, with the prefix -e- (out) attached to the stem -radic- (root), means root out, uproot, utterly destroy, eradicate. It leads nicely into the the agrarian metaphor.

So there it is. It's been a long, long time since I've composed anything in Latin, but I don't think I've made any horrendous gaffes. 

When the Vatican gets around to publishing the encyclical in Latin, I'll have a look their translation. And I'll probably be rather embarrassed. 

One thing I know. Tolkien would have been blown away to be cited by the Pope. 

Sometimes a Goad Is Just a Goad -- Adventures in an Ancient Greek Dictionary

The phrase "it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" has for centuries years been a common English translation of the phrase in Acts 26:14, "σκληρόν σοι πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζειν." Jesus says this to Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus. Jesus is comparing him to a draught animal kicking when his driver prods him with his goad (=prick) to get him moving.

Unsurprisingly, this translation has also been the cause of much snickering.

The Greek noun kentron (κέντρον) basically means "goad," and sometimes a goad is just a goad. Pretty sure that is the case here. I can't see the risen Jesus making bawdy puns as a way of persuading Saul that he is who he says he is. Jesus was not an internet troll. (Though Paul might have been.)

But it need not be, and thereon hangs a tale. Scanning through the various meanings of the word, one stood out immediately. Because it was defined only by another Greek noun, πόσθη, posthe. That's a dead giveaway that this sense of the word is obscene. It's a 19th Century thing, equal parts prudish and prurient. So I then looked up that word. It's defined only in Latin. So there's dead giveaway # 2. The definition? membrum virile. You got that? verbum sat sapienti. (That's Latin for "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.")

Next I looked up the verb related to kentron, which is kenteo (κεντέω), "to goad," and scanned through its definitions. I found another entry defined only by another Greek verb, βινέω, bineo. Dead Giveaway # 3. I looked that verb up. Again the definition is in Latin (DG #4) -- "inire, coïre" -- but with a brief explanation in English: "of illicit intercourse."

Tolkien's Imaginary Time and Our Real World

Tolkien, it seems quite clear from multiple statements he made in his letters, thought of his tales as taking place in our world, but in an imaginary, mythical, or mythological time period. These are the words he uses repeatedly across the decades. He first refers to "this imagined world" in a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin on 15 October 1937 (Letters no. 17 p. 30). He first mentions the idea of an imaginary time period in another letter to Sir Stanley Unwin from 24 February 1950, where he calls the Silmarillion "a long legendary* of imaginary times in a ‘high style’" (Letters no. 124 p. 193). The final reference comes in Letter no. 316 to R. W. Burchfield, then editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, on 11 September 1970. There he offers a definition of the word Hobbit for inclusion in the forthcoming supplement to the dictionary:

One of an imaginary people, a small variety of the human race, that gave themselves this name (meaning ‘hole-dweller’) but were called by others halflings, since they were half the height of normal Men. (p. 569)

The present entry in the OED reads: "a member of an imaginary race of small people." It would be quite reasonable at this point to object that "imaginary people" don't necessarily inhabit an imaginary place or time period. True enough. But the others mentioned, those who call Hobbits "halflings," are also imaginary. You could say it's imaginary people all the way down, but it's more pertinent and less impertinent to show further clear evidence that these imaginary people live in an imaginary time period.

In Letter 211 on p. 404 (14 October 1958) Tolkien wrote to Rhona Beare, mentioning among many other things how far in the past the Fall of Barad-dûr was supposed to be, and expanding on the subject in a note at the bottom of the page:

May I say that all this is ‘mythical’, and not any kind of new religion or vision. As far as I know it is merely an imaginative invention, to express, in the only way I can, some of my (dim) apprehensions of the world. All I can say is that, if it were ‘history’, it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or ‘cultures’) into such evidence as we possess, archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe.... I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap* in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for ‘literary credibility’, even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised of ‘pre-history’.

* --I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.

The bold italics are mine. Earlier in this same letter Tolkien had mentioned his "mythical pre-history," a phrase he uses again in the very next letter (no. 211 p. 398; no. 212 p. 406). Let's look at a few more passages, which I think can speak for themselves. At the bottom of the page, I shall attach a list of all the letters in which Tolkien refers to this world as imaginary, mythical, or mythological. 

There is of course a clash between ‘literary’ technique, and the fascination of elaborating in detail an imaginary mythical Age (mythical, not allegorical: my mind does not work allegorically). As a story, I think it is good that there should be a lot of things unexplained (especially if an explanation actually exists); and I have perhaps from this point of view erred in trying to explain too much, and give too much past history. Many readers have, for instance, rather stuck at the Council of Elrond. And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally). (Letters no. 144 p. 263)

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The particular ‘myth’ which lies behind this tale, and the mood both of Men and Elves at this time, is the Downfall of Númenor: a special variety of the Atlantis tradition. That seems to me so fundamental to ‘mythical history’ – whether it has any kind of basis in real history... is not relevant – that some version of it would have to come in. (Letters no. 154 p. 293)

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I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of midden-erd > middel-erd, an ancient name for the oikoumenē, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven or Hell). 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 no. 183 p. 345)

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Mine is not an ‘imaginary’ world, but an imaginary historical moment on ‘Middle-earth’ – which is our habitation. (Letters no. 183 p. 351)

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I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. (Letters no. 211 p. 404)

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In your paragraph there is a missing link, more important (I think) for the purpose than what I said, or should have said, about ‘invention’. Namely: how did linguistic invention lead to imaginary history? So that I think the passage would be more intelligible if it ran more or less so: ‘The imaginary histories grew out of Tolkien’s predilection for inventing languages. He discovered, as others have who carry out such inventions to any degree of completion, that a language requires a suitable habitation, and a history in which it can develop.’ (Letters no. 294 p. 527)

So what Tolkien presents to us is an imaginary time period in our world, a time period in which many aspects of our world were quite different. Without even getting into the metaphysical differences arising from the mythical aspects of this period, like the immortality and reincarnation of the Elves or the marring of Arda before its creation, the physical differences alone, like a flat earth that becomes a globe with a secret straight path only Elves can find that exists tangentially to the now round earth, complicate fitting this mythical time into the past of our world. Yet if Tolkien's imagination was of such power and generosity of soul that he could convincingly inspire a secondary belief his readers cherish, how can ours be so poor that many of us find the suggestion of a non-white Elf, Dwarf, or Hobbit intolerable?

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Letters no. 124, p. 193; no. 131, p. 202 (twice); no. 142, p. 257; no. 144, p. 263 (twice); no. 153, p. 282, 284; no 163, p. 311, 313; no. 183, p. 345 (three times), 351 (twice); no. 190, p. 359, 360 (twice), 361; no. 211, p. 404; no 247, p. 469; no. 294, p. 527 (twice); no. 297, p. 541; no. 316, p. 569.

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*The noun "legendary" refers here "a collection of stories or legends" (OED). Tolkien more commonly uses the Latin form of the word, legendarium: "A body or system of myths, legends, stories, etc., concerning or relating to a particular fictional world; a work containing this" (OED).