Tolkien: The Monsters and the Fascists

 

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise.

(TT v.672)

With the rise of fascism from its too shallow grave, the liking so many of its adherents have for The Lord of the Rings as well as for other books they don't understand, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, has received a lot of attention. Tolkien himself didn't have much time for fascists, composing a famously salty 1938 letter to Rütten & Loenig, a German publisher who wished to publish a translation of The Hobbit but had the effrontery to ask Tolkien whether he was Aryan (Letters #29 & 30 pp. 47-48). Tolkien recognized, however, that his own publisher, Allen & Unwin, had a substantial financial interest in this matter, and that he could not assume that he could speak for them. So, he composed another letter, less scathing, and told Allen & Unwin to send the one they deemed more appropriate. Unfortunately, the letter that was actually sent has not yet been discovered. Yet the surviving letter makes clear the anger and contempt Tolkien feels towards the Nazi regime that required publishers to ask such questions is manifest. In any event, whatever precisely Tolkien said in the letter that Allen & Unwin sent to the German publisher, nothing further seems to have happened.

In a 1941 letter he called Hitler "that ruddy little ignoramus" and said that the "burning private grudge" he bore the Nazis for their perversion of pagan Germanic mythology and literature to serve their racist nationalism "would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22" during the Great War (Letters # 45 p. 77). In this same letter he said that Germany in the Nazi era was "under the curse of God." As Tolkien well knew, saying this consigned the Nazis to the same hellish status as the Beowulf-poet banished Cain and his descendants, most prominently Grendel and his mother.

He was also aware that fascism could grow in other lands, including his own, provided there was malice enough to nurture it. He wrote to his son, Christopher, in 1944 in a letter of particular relevance to more recent times: 

"We knew Hitler was a vulgar and ignorant little cad, in addition to any other defects (or the source of them); but there seem to be many v. and i. l. cads who don’t speak German, and who given the same chance would show most of the other Hitlerian characteristics" exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don’t know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done. Of course there is still a difference here. The article was answered, and the answer printed. The Vulgar and Ignorant Cad is not yet a boss with power; but he is a very great deal nearer to becoming one in this green and pleasant isle than he was.

                (Letters # 81 pp. 133-34). 

Earlier that same year Christopher, had written to him complaining about some of his comrades in the RAF at the post where he was stationed, apparently comparing them to orcs. Tolkien replied "I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in ‘realistic’ fiction... only in real life they are on both sides, of course.... In real (exterior) life men are on both sides" (Letters # 71 p. 118).  

And so here we are, a hundred years and a few weeks after the German publication of Hitler's Mein Kampf, a work so stuffed with hatred of the Jews, daft misunderstandings of the world, and conspiracy theories that we could rename it "Project 1925." Are we really so surprised that Grishnákh can read? Yet those who consider empathy a weakness or a sin and the lethality of our weapons a virtue can never fully understand what they read, especially if it's fiction, which depends so much on a shared humanity. They look at Homer or Tolkien and see only the sharpness of the sword, the swiftness of the arrow, and the glory of the warrior (TT 4.v.672). They never see how extremely important a moment it is when Sam looks upon the enemy soldier dead before him in Ithilien:

It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace – all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind. (TT 4.iv.661)

Sam's "flash of thought" echoes other such moments in Tolkien, as when in The Hobbit Bilbo stands armed and invisible behind Gollum and his immediate desire is to kill him, but "a sudden understanding" came upon him in a "flash," in which he grasped the horror of Gollum's life and pitied him; and then a second "flash" gave him the "strength and resolve" to turn his back on murder (The Annotated Hobbit 133). Frodo has a similar moment when he and Sam catch Gollum near the Dead Marshes (TT 4.i.614-15). Another occurs on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, though there it is the readers who, guided by the narrator, look upon Gollum with pity and wish that Sam had seen all that they had (TT 4.viii.713-14). And again on the slopes of Mount Doom Sam, sword in hand, looks down at Gollum, meaning to kill him, but instead pities and spares him (RK 6.iii.943-44).

Without all these moments in which Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam choose pity and show mercy, Gollum is not there on Mount Doom to make sure, however inadvertently, that the Ring goes into the fire. He regains his Precious, but he is also set free from the misery he brought upon himself when he murdered Déagol instead of sparing him. As Gandalf replies when Strider explains why he, Legolas and Gimli, pursued the orcs who had captured Merry and Pippin rather than going after Frodo and Sam, "the choice was just, and it has been rewarded" (TT 3.v.500). Sméagol's choice 500 years earlier in the Gladden Fields was unjust and its own punishment. The pity of Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam finally allowed him to be released from that sentence.

So much depends upon what governs our actions. Are pity and mercy, born of empathy for another, our guide? Or is it the self-centeredness that has lost sight of everything but its own immediate desire? The Lord of the Rings shows how very large the implications of pity can be for the world. I analyzed it at great length in my book. But such moments are crucial as far back as the Iliad, too, and the fates of individuals and cities depend on them. When Achilles kills Hector near the end of Book Twenty-two, he knows full well that he is quite literally determining his own fate.

In the Iliad Hector's death is the last and loudest note in a long crescendo of death, which many readers never fully experience because of the way we often read Homer nowadays. In the classroom, where the dearth of time conspires with the limits of interest, we often jump over Books Ten through Fifteen, which provide a grim, bloody account of the steadily worsening fortunes of the Greeks in the absence of Achilles. Over and over in these books Homer catalogs the men killed, telling their names and speaking of their homes and of their families who will never see them again. The dead have "lost the day of their homecoming," a phrase Homer employs more than once in the Odyssey, which is of course all about coming home from war. This heartbreak is true for both Greeks and Trojans, and by being told their names -- 95 out of 108 of the dead are named -- and about their families it is as if we meet them before they die. In Book Sixteen, with the Greeks on the brink of annihilation, Achilles' closest friend, Patroclus, prevails upon him to allow him to take their troops back into the battle, since Achilles still refuses to return himself. Patroclus drives back the Trojans, killing Sarpedon, a powerful Trojan ally and a son of Zeus so beloved by his father that he is tempted to set his fate aside, save him, and send him home. But Zeus decides that he must not save him. His part is to ensure that what should be shall be.

Patroclus then goes too far and tries to storm Troy, but Apollo drives him back and helps Hector kill him. Neither Sarpedon nor Patroclus will see the day of their homecoming. Their climactic deaths, one on each side, touch and involve the very gods. The killing continues through Book Seventeen, which ends with the day begun at the start of Book Eleven. The events of these books take place on a single day, a day so heavy with the mounting burden of both sides' losses -- 141 named victims out of 154 -- that far more than one day seems to pass. Yet this pain is only a prelude to the next day's far more heartbreaking slaughters and lost homecomings as Achilles returns to the battlefield to avenge Patroclus and kill Hector, thus assuring that his own death and Troy's fall will soon follow (Books Nineteen to Twenty-two). Loss on loss, grief on grief. Small wonder, then, that the phrase κακῶν Ἰλιὰς, "an Iliad of woes," became proverbial among the Greeks and Romans for an "endless series of woes."

All those families, those fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, children and siblings who shall never meet again, all those women of Troy and their children who will be carried off into slavery when their husbands and fathers have been killed, all those lives they might have lived -- they are what the bright sword, the swift arrow, and the glorious warrior defend. These are what war strips from everyone, on every side. Even for those who make it home in the end, like Odysseus, it is a long, long road. There is a passage early in Book Sixteen, which describes the incessant blows of the assault Ajax must endure as he tries to hold the line against the Trojans trying to storm the Greek camp (16.102-111). It may also be seen as an apt metaphor for the avalanche of deaths overwhelming the readers in the sorrows of war.

Αἴας δ᾽ οὐκ ἔτ᾽ ἔμιμνε: βιάζετο γὰρ βελέεσσι:

δάμνα μιν Ζηνός τε νόος καὶ Τρῶες ἀγαυοὶ

βάλλοντες: δεινὴν δὲ περὶ κροτάφοισι φαεινὴ

πήληξ βαλλομένη καναχὴν ἔχε, βάλλετο δ᾽ αἰεὶ                105

κὰπ φάλαρ᾽ εὐποίηθ᾽: ὃ δ᾽ ἀριστερὸν ὦμον ἔκαμνεν

ἔμπεδον αἰὲν ἔχων σάκος αἰόλον: οὐδὲ δύναντο

ἀμφ᾽ αὐτῷ πελεμίξαι ἐρείδοντες βελέεσσιν.

αἰεὶ δ᾽ ἀργαλέῳ ἔχετ᾽ ἄσθματι, κὰδ δέ οἱ ἱδρὼς

πάντοθεν ἐκ μελέων πολὺς ἔρρεεν, οὐδέ πῃ εἶχεν             110

ἀμπνεῦσαι: πάντῃ δὲ κακὸν κακῷ ἐστήρικτο.

Ajax could hold out no longer; he was being forced back by their spears.

Zeus's will and the noble Trojans kept striking him, overpowering him.

His shining helm rang dreadfully in his ears as it was struck, 

And he was being struck ceaselessly on his well-made helmet.

His left arm was exhausted from constantly holding up his flashing shield. 

Though the Trojans struck it hard with their spears, they could not knock it away. 

But Ajax gasped in pain all the time now. Sweat streamed down his every limb.

No way could he even catch his breath. Woe piled every which way upon woe.

Just as the will of Zeus and the ceaseless blows from the Trojan spears beat down even Ajax, the best Greek warrior after Achilles -- both "will" and "Trojans" are subjects of the verb "kept striking," which thus combines divine and human agency -- so the relentless cataloging of the dead over the course of Books Ten through Fifteen wears down the readers with its pity and horror. When Book Sixteen begins away from the battlefield in the camp of Achilles and Patroclus, it is almost a relief. Yet Patroclus and Achilles see disaster coming. Their discussion of what is to be done covers the first 101 lines of Book Sixteen, which then pivots swiftly back to the worsening fortunes of Ajax we just read about (16.102-111). I have highlighted certain words in the text and translation to show how the emphasis in this passage shifts from the relentlessness of the use of force against Ajax to the completeness and seeming endlessness of his woe. Homer then briefly pivots away again, and reinvokes the Muses, as if he needs fresh inspiration to tell the even darker tale of woe to come: "Tell me now, Muses who dwell in Olympian homes, how fire first fell upon the ships of the Achaeans" (16.112-13). Homer frames this moment of woe piled upon woe between the discussions of Patroclus and Achilles and the new invocation of the Muses, after which the story turns back again to Ajax, and then to Achilles and Patroclus once more.

Imagine, if you will, that the Iliad ended with Book Twenty-two. We would have a very different poem: Hector killed brutally outside the gates of Troy, his home; his corpse stripped, abused, and mutilated; his father and mother watching it all from the walls; lamenting the loss of their son and their city's champion, amid the wailing of the Trojans and jubilant singing of the Greeks; his wife at home, eager for his return, preparing for his return, then hearing his mother's shattering cry; overwhelmed, rushing to the wall, grief-stricken by his loss and mourning all the sorrows it entails for Troy, for herself, and for their little boy. The last line of Book Twenty-two is, and in our imagining here the last line of the Iliad would be, ὣς ἔφατο κλαίουσ᾽, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες: "So she spoke, crying out in pain, and the women wailed in answer" (22.515). This would be a brutal ending of unimaginable sorrow, unnumbered tears, and wholly without consolation. Only a barbarian, Conan the barbarian in fact, could look upon such an ending without horror. Crush your enemies? Check. See them driven before you? Check. Hear the lamentations of their women? Check. In this the barbarian is more honest than the fascist. He does not romanticize his own brutality, or wrap it in flags and glory, exceptionalism and toxic delusions about masculinity.

But though Homer acknowledges the barbarous darkness, he does not embrace it. He mourns it. He does not end there any more than he began there. The last thing that Hector says to Achilles before he dies is that he, too, will soon die before the gates of Troy. Achilles knows this. The choice before Achilles has been evident since the beginning, between war, glory, and an early death on the one hand, and home, obscurity and a long life on the other. Between the glory of the warrior and that which they defend. In Book Twenty-four, when Priam risks everything to beg Achilles for the return of his Hector's body, the son who will never see his father again meets the father who will never see his son again. Both weep, not for each other but because they see the reflection of their own loss in each other. They do not become friends. How could they be anything but enemies after so much blood? But they recognize each other's humanity. For his son, Priam humbles himself before his son's murderer; and Achilles feels pity for his own father and shows mercy to Priam. At least for now, Achilles and Priam free themselves for now from the power the force of violence wields over everyone in war, stripping them of their humanity and reducing them to objects even while they still live. Through pity and mercy they create what Simone Weil called "that small space between impulse and action where thought lives," without which "there is no place for justice or prudence."† In that space, Achilles returns Hector's body and arranges a truce so the Trojans may bury Hector. And that is where the Iliad ends. In loss and sorrow, with almost total loss soon yet to come, its final quietly dignified words directed not to the sword and the warrior, but to that which they defend: "ὣς οἵ γ᾽ ἀμφίεπον τάφον Ἕκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο" (24.804) / "And so they buried Hector the tamer of horses." It brings a melancholy closure not entirely unlike Sam's "Well, I'm back"  (RK 6.ix.1031). Buried just below the surface of these words are others left unsaid: "Well, I'm back. (But Mister Frodo's not.)" Whatever a war's goal may be, whatever its result, such loss and sorrow are its cost, even for those who come home alive. 

In the Odyssey when a bard sings of the war at Troy, Odysseus does not strut and preen. He weeps. Helen in the Iliad and Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians, in the Odyssey both say that the gods bring sorrows to humans so that there will be songs for later generations (Iliad 6.357-58; Odyssey 8.579-80).†† Homer begins the Iliad by asking the goddess to sing about the countless sorrows and deaths caused by the wrath of Achilles, which sent their ghosts down to Hades and left their bodies unburied to be eaten by the dogs and birds. So it was going to be for Hector. And while it was true that Zeus commanded Achilles to return the body, in the actual scene between Achilles and Priam in Book Twenty-four, empathy, pity, and mercy eclipse that command. It's not Zeus's command that moves our hearts, but the unfolding of the tragic drama between Achilles and Priam, the both of them weeping together.

Are we to imagine that the Greeks, who were not entirely dim, listened to bards sing Homer's Iliad and Odyssey for centuries, memorized these poems in whole or in part, and held competitions at the Olympic Games in reciting them, but heard none of this? That they heeded the ring of steel and the thrum of bowstring, but not the wailing cries of those the warriors slew or failed to save? They, too, had fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands who lost the day of their homecoming at war. In Athens, for one, a public funeral was held every year for those who had died at war in the previous twelve months. In Athens, the texts of the Iliad and Odyssey achieved their final form. In Athens, the first day of the Panathenaic Games was all about poetry and music, including contests in the performance of Homer as at the Olympic Games. In Athens, Tragic Poets like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, received the legacy of Homer, and they streamlined it to focus on the woes of Homeric epics, not the battles, even though we seem to think that battles are more dramatic, given the endless series of car-chases, fight scenes, and explosions so common in popular entertainment in recent decades.

The Greeks knew the value of courage and skill in battle, and that sometimes, as they saw it, war was necessary. They knew the value of life and love and home. And they knew the bitter cost we have to pay to hold onto or win these things. Tolkien knew it, too. His very first tale of Middle-earth, The Fall of Gondolin, written directly after his own experiences on the Somme, draws on the story of the fall of Troy. Despite much hard fighting and truly glorious feats of prowess by the Elves, the city falls with terrible loss of life. Fifty years after Tolkien wrote this, he made clear in the "Foreword to the Second Edition" of The Lord of the Rings that he still felt sorrow for what was lost in the Great War: 

One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.

(xiv) 

So is there the thrill of glory in the sound of "the horns of the Mark at the coming of the morning" (RK 5.iv.829; 6.vi.978)? Of course there is. Or in the hobbits rising up against their oppressors in "The Scouring of the Shire" (RK 6.viii)? Again, of course. But there is also the weeping of the army of the West at the Field of Cormallen as a minstrel sings of the war, and the tears shed in the Grey Havens as Frodo is about to go into the West (RK 6.iv.954; ix.1030). There is the litany of the named dead, ending "red fell the dew in Rammas Echor," as grim, still, and final a line as the last line of the Iliad (RK 5.vi.849). There is Merry weeping at Théoden's burial and calling him father as the Riders of the King's House sing of the history of the Mark and of how Théoden's death brought hope out of loss, and therein lay its glory (RK 6.vi.976): 

Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day’s rising 

he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. 

Hope he rekindled, and in hope ended;

over death, over dread, over doom lifted

out of loss, out of life, unto long glory.

And so they buried Théoden King of the Horse-lords.

 

____________________________________

† Simone Weil, Simone Weil's The Iliad or the Poem of Force. James P. Holoka ed. & trans.. 2003. Peter Lang Publishing.  (L'Iliade ou la poème de la force. Les Cahiers du Sud.1940). The translations offered in the text and below are my own.

Celui qui possède la force marche dans un milieu non résistant, sans que rien, dans la matière* humaine autour de lui, soit de nature à susciter entre l'élan et l'acte ce bref intervalle où se loge la pensée. Où la pensée n'a pas de place, la justice ni la prudence n'en ont.

One who has the power moves through a medium that offers no resistance, without which there is nothing in the human material* around him of such a nature as to create that small space between impulse and act where thought lives. Where there is no room for thought, there is room for neither justice nor prudence.

*Weil's thesis is that the use of force in war reduces humans to objects without souls. This is as true of the conqueror as of the conquered. So the "medium that offers no resistance" and "the human material around him" refer to all that is left of us once force has stripped away our soul. Impulse leads to action without pause or reflection.

†† Speaking of herself and Paris, Helen says:

  

οἷσιν ἐπὶ Ζεὺς θῆκε κακὸν μόρον, ὡς καὶ ὀπίσσω
ἀνθρώποισι πελώμεθ᾽ ἀοίδιμοι ἐσσομένοισι.

Iliad 6.357-58

[upon us] Zeus laid a destiny of woe, so that even

for men in days to come we shall be famous in song.

In Phaeacia the king Alcinous, sees Odysseus weeping to hear a bard singing of the Trojan War, and he says to him:

τὸν δὲ θεοὶ μὲν τεῦξαν, ἐπεκλώσαντο δ᾽ ὄλεθρον
ἀνθρώποις, ἵνα ᾖσι καὶ ἐσσομένοισιν ἀοιδή.

Odyssey 8.579-80

C. S. Lewis's Tortured Planet.

I discovered just the other day that C. S. Lewis abridged That Hideous Strength for publication as a mass market paperback in the United States in 1957. The new version was called The Tortured Planet and cost thirty-five cents. Having recently reread the first two books of Lewis's Space Trilogy -- Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra -- I had been planning to reread That Hideous Strength for the first time in many, many years. Two friends whose opinions I respect had diametrically opposed opinions on the book. One said that it was not the sort of book she reread for pleasure, and the other disagreed entirely. It had been so long since I last read it that all I could remember was the general impression that it was interesting, but not a lot of fun. But the idea of the glimpse into Lewis's mind I could get from comparing the original to the abridgement seemed very interesting and even fun. What would he cut? What would he leave in?

So here is the first page or so. The words in bold indicate the text after abridgement, as published in "The Tortured Planet."

“Matrimony was ordained, thirdly,” said Jane Studdock to herself, “for the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other.” She had not been to church since her schooldays until she went there six months ago to be married, and the words of the service had stuck in her mind.

Through the open door she could see the tiny kitchen of the flat and hear the loud, ungentle tick tick of the clock. She had just left the kitchen and knew how tidy it was. The breakfast things were washed up, the tea towels were hanging above the stove, and the floor was mopped. The beds were made and the rooms “done.” She had just returned from the only shopping she need do that day, and it was still a minute before eleven. Except for getting her own lunch and tea[. T]here was nothing that had to be done till six o’clock, even supposing that Mark was really coming home for dinner. But there was a College Meeting today. Almost certainly Mark would ring up about teatime to say that the meeting was taking longer than he had expected and that he would have to dine in College. The hours before her were as empty as the flat. The sun shone and the clock ticked. 

“Mutual society, help, and comfort,” said Jane bitterly. In reality marriage had proved to be the door out of a world of work and comradeship and laughter and innumerable things to do, into something like solitary confinement. For some years before their marriage she had never seen so little of Mark as she had done in the last six months. Even when he was at home he hardly ever talked. He was always either sleepy or intellectually preoccupied. While they had been friends, and later when they were lovers, life itself had seemed too short for all they had to say to each other. But now . . . why had he married her? Was he still in love? If so, “being in love” must mean totally different things to men and women. Was it the crude truth that all the endless talks which had seemed to her, before they were married, the very medium of love itself, had never been to him more than a preliminary? 

“Here I am, starting to waste another morning, mooning,” said Jane to herself sharply. “I must do some work.” By work she meant her doctorate thesis on Donne. She had always intended to continue her own career as a scholar after she was married: that was one of the reasons why they were to have no children, at any rate for a long time yet. Jane was not perhaps a very original thinker and her plan had been to lay great stress on Donne’s “triumphant vindication of the body.” She still believed that if she got out all her notebooks and editions and really sat down to the job, she could force herself back into her lost enthusiasm for the subject. But before she did so— perhaps in order to put off the moment of beginning— she turned over a newspaper which was lying on the table and glanced at a picture on the back page. 

The moment she saw the picture, she remembered her dream[;] She remembered not only the dream but the measureless time after she had crept out of bed and sat waiting for the first hint of morning, afraid to put on the light for fear Mark should wake up and fuss, yet feeling offended by the sound of his regular breathing. He was an excellent sleeper. Only one thing ever seemed able to keep him awake after he had gone to bed, and even that did not keep him awake for long.

"The Art of Mercy in Middle-earth: Paintings Inspired by Tolkien's Legen...

The Sad Tale Behind Tolkien's Famous 1938 Letter to a German Publisher

It is well known that in 1938 a German Publisher, Rütten & Loening, contacted Tolkien about publishing a German translation of The Hobbit. Under the laws in Nazi Germany it was illegal to publish works by Jewish authors. So, they asked Tolkien if he was "arisch," that is, "Aryan." Tolkien, being Tolkien, responded with all the fury of a philologist who detested the Nazis. As described in Letter 29 of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, he wrote two letters and sent them to Allen & Unwin, his own publisher, telling Stanley Unwin to forward whichever one he deemed it best to send. Letter 30 in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, the only one of the two that survives, is caustic, learned, sarcastic, and dripping with contempt for the antisemitism of the question. Letter 30 is not the one sent to Germany, but Stanley Unwin let Tolkien know how much his staff enjoyed it.

The sad tale here is that until July 1936 Rütten & Loening had been owned and operated by Jews, who were forced to sell the company precisely because they were Jewish. I wonder if Unwin and Tolkien knew this. Here is a link to the German Wikipedia page on this publisher. Below you will find a translation (by Google Translate) of the most relevant sections of that page.

In 1936, publishers Wilhelm Ernst Oswalt and Adolf Neumann received an order from the Reich Chamber of Literature, based on the Nuremberg Laws, ordering them to sell the publishing house to an "Aryan" publisher or close down. In July 1936, Rütten & Loening was sold to the Potsdam publisher Albert Hachfeld (Athenaion Verlag), and the business was immediately relocated to Potsdam, taking with it all of its assets, archives, and some employees. All "Jewish" and "international" authors (including Romain Rolland) were abandoned. During the war, the publishing house produced primarily classical literature, but also "edifying literature" for the Wehrmacht.

Forced to sell his publishing house, the principal owner and publisher of Rütten & Loening, Wilhelm Ernst Oswalt, was a broken man after the sale. In 1942, he was denounced and arrested for refusing to publicly wear the Star of David. Two weeks later, he was murdered in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Oranienburg. The elder son, Heinrich Oswalt, fled to Switzerland and survived the Nazi era there. The younger son, Ernst Ludwig Oswalt, was deported "to the East" and murdered.

The publishing director and 25% co-owner of Rütten & Loening, Adolf Neumann, once one of the most respected publishing figures in the German Reich, fled to Norway, and after its occupation by the Nazis, to Sweden. He survived the war. He then granted licenses to the Potsdam publishing house for several titles that had not been sold in 1936 for political reasons. Neumann died in Stockholm in 1953.

In 1942, as was customary after the murder of Jews, Wilhelm Ernst Oswalt's private assets were publicly auctioned on behalf of the Gestapo, and the proceeds were confiscated for the benefit of the Reich. The extremely valuable and extensive private library, comprising over 10,000 volumes, compiled over a nearly century-old family tradition, was acquired by the renowned antiquarian bookshop "Frankfurter Bücherstube Schumann & Cobet" (known before 1937 as the Frankfurter Jugendbücherstube Walter Schatzki), which operated until the 1990s, for the ridiculous price of 8,500 Reichsmarks.

________________________________

"Nazis, I hate these guys" -- J.R.R. Tolkien (no, not really a Tolkien quote. Marcel 

‪@thetolkienist.com‬ will confirm this.)

Dreamflowers and Lotus-eaters.

Upon meeting Merry and Pippin, Treebeard exchanges names with them. As he does so, he teaches them about the connection between the name of a thing and its history. Since in his language "real names tell you the story of the things they belong to," names grow longer the longer the story goes on (TT 3.iv.465). Thus, Treebeard's real "name is growing all the time." 

When he later learns that Merry and Pippin got both into and out of Lothlórien, he is surprised. The reflections on Lothlórien he offers speak very much to his idea of how names work. 

"...Laurelindórenan! That is what the Elves used to call it, but now they make the name shorter: Lothlórien 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. Ah well! But it is a queer place...." (3.iv.467, emphasis mine)

From Laurelindórenan to Lothlórien, from the Land of the Valley of Singing Gold to the Dreamflower, the name is becoming shorter when it should be growing longer. To him that makes it a "queer place," which may be fading rather than growing. Treebeard does not see this as a good sign. Yet he doesn't know the half of it. He does not know, apparently, that the name is now cut even shorter, to just Lórien, which he would know could be translated as "Dreamland" (“Lórien.” Parf Edhellen, https://www.elfdict.com/wt/502964). The Golden Wood is called Lórien twice as often by the characters and narrator as it is called Lothlórien.*

The first element in Lothlórien is loth-, which is Sindarin for flower or blossom (Quenya lóte). It may be that Tolkien is remembering something from his school days and working in an obscure philological allusion to a type of dreamland he encountered in Homer's Odyssey. In the Odyssey ix.80-104 Odysseus arrives in the land of the Lotus-Eaters (λωτοφάγοι/lotophagoi), where eating the fruit of the lotus/λωτός leaves his crew in a dreamlike, happy state. As Alfred Heubeck has observed, “the λωτός- plant, with its magical properties of suppressing the desire to return home, is symbolic of the insecurity of human existence poised precariously between the spheres of empirical reality and mythical unreality” (Heubeck et al. 18, emphasis mine).** 

Heubeck's assessment of the λωτός-plant's significance resonates rather eerily with Galadriel's words to the Company when they arrive in Lórien: "your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true" (FR 2.vii.357). That Odysseus has to drag his companions back to the ship by force echoes Treebeard's surprise that Merry and Pippin "ever got out"  of Laurelindórenan (TT 3.iv.465). Faramir, who is the only other character in The Lord of the Rings to call the Golden Wood by the name Laurelindórenan, will later express his own surprise that Frodo and Sam had been there, citing ancient wisdom: "For it is perilous for mortal man to walk out of the world of this Sun, and few of old came thence unchanged, ’tis said" (TT 4.v.667).

So, did Tolkien derive the loth of Lothlórien from Greek? Perhaps, perhaps not. Yet it remains an intriguing convergence of sound, meaning, and context. 

___________

*Not counting the Prologue, Appendices, and Index, Lórien occurs 74 times and Lothlórien 37 times. Treebeard of course mostly calls it Laurelindórenan, and a couple of times Lothlórien, but never Lórien.

** Alfred Heubeck, et al. A Commentary On Homer's Odyssey. Vol. II: Books IX-XVI. Oxford University Press. 1990.

Elrond's long westward road

Before I retired I listened to several podcasts while driving back and forth to work. For me, driving seemed the best time. Now I don't listen very often, since when I'm sitting at home I am usually trying to write or research something. Lately I've been doing a lot of walking and often use that time to listen to a podcast. One of the advantages of listening to others speak about things I am interested in is that I get ideas arising from observations made by others, whether I am agreeing or disagreeing. 

Today I was listening to The Prancing Pony Podcast with the inimitable Alan Sisto and the redoubtable Sara Brown. They were discussing the "Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings. So as I was walking through Prospect Park I heard them talk about Celebrían, wife of Elrond and mother of Arwen. According to Appendix B orcs captured and tortured her in 2509 of the Third Age. Although she was soon rescued by her husband and sons, she had suffered so much that in 2510 she set sail across the sea for Valinor, the only place where she might be healed.

Now here's where the idea comes in.

Five hundred years later in 3018 at the Council of Elrond, Elrond says  "The world has changed much since I last was on the westward roads." 

So, was the last time Elrond traveled on these roads when he took Celebrían to the Grey Havens?

Since he had gone with his sons to rescue her, imagining that he also escorted her to the Grey Havens is hardly far-fetched. Now from what I can tell Celebrían was not invented until long after that sentence appeared in "The Council of Elrond." So there's no evidence that Tolkien wrote this sentence with an allusion to her departure built into it (for those with eyes to see), but it can certainly be read as one after she has been invented. As he often did, Tolkien invested the old words with new meaning through a change of context. I can't say whether he realized how the creation of Celebrían would recontextualize this sentence. Maybe, maybe not. Still Celebrían's subsequently invented story allows us to discover Elrond's reminiscence of his faraway wife in his words. 

My thanks to Alan and Sara for prompting this thought. I like it.

Tolkien Reading Day 2025

 

Pearls before swine, Aelfric of Eynsham, and the catherdral at Chartres

Aelfric, pulling no punches and insulting his congregation, while delivering a sermon on Job:

"Wē sǣdon ēow and ġȳt secgað þæt wē ne magon ealle ðās race ēow be endebyrdnysse secgan, for ðan ðe sēo bōc is swīðe miċel, and hire dīgele andġyt is ofer ūre mǣðe tō smēaġenne."


"We told you before and we'll tell you again that we cannot tell you this whole story from beginning to end. For this book is very large, and its hidden meaning is beyond your ability to ponder."

When I was in high school they decided to show us some film about the cathedral at Chartres. Being 14-18 years old most of us had not yet developed that finally honed aesthetic sense which some of us later could call our own. I know I hadn't. When the priest showing us the film told us what the film was about, there was a rather loud collective groan. The priest -- let's just call him Father Aelfric -- regarded us in silence for a moment. At length he said, not quite sotto voce:

"Pearls before swine."

I can't speak for anyone else, but I knew I had just been insulted. 

"a path of ascent however hard" -- Tolkien to Lewis on the mysteries and opportunities of pain (Letters² #113)

In January 1948 Tolkien said something to C. S. Lewis that hurt him. In Letter #113 Tolkien continues what appears to be a longer conversation about the incident. This is the only letter we have from the correspondence and we don't know what Tolkien said or about what he said it. I encourage the reader to go look at this letter because it makes clear that Tolkien is truly unhappy that he has wounded his friend, who is also truly unhappy, and because the words from the letter I quote below, when read out of context, don't seem particularly contrite or apologetic. 

In an article I am working on right now I quote this letter in order to show that Tolkien did not believe that the mere fact of suffering sanctified or ennobled us. I think these few sentences make that point clearly, but that's not what I am here to write about. As I was looking at this passage again yesterday I caught an allusion to Vergil's Aeneid that I probably should have caught before. I have no doubt that Tolkien intended this allusion and that Lewis would have noticed it, probably right off.

Lewis's engagement with the Aeneid was deep and lifelong, from his school days onward, so much so that he labored on and off for decades on his own translation, and Tolkien had heard him read parts of it aloud at meetings of the Inklings. A. T. Reyes provides a good discussion of this in the introduction to his book, C. S. Lewis's Lost Aeneid. Tolkien, too, was steeped in Vergil from his own school days, as was entirely normal at that time. We even have a page from the 1920s on which Tolkien transliterated phrases from the Aeneid into one of his early Elvish alphabets (Parma Eldalamberon 16, 38-39).

What am I talking about already? Here's the quote:

I daresay under grace that [pain which you are feeling] will do good rather than harm, but that is between you and God. It is one of the mysteries of pain that it is, for the sufferer, an opportunity for good, a path of ascent however hard. But it remains an ‘evil’, and it must dismay any conscience to have caused it carelessly, or in excess, let alone wilfully.

Letters² #113 p. 180

The words I've emphasized recall some of the most famous lines in Vergil's Aeneid. In Book 6 of this work, Aeneas must journey to the underworld, but first he receives instructions about the way and its perils:

Tros Anchisiade, facilis descensus Averno:
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
hoc opus, hic labor est.

Trojan son of Anchises, easy is the descent to hell:
Night and day the doors of dark Dis lie open;

But to retrace your steps, and escape to the upper world,

this is the task, this the labor.

            (Aen. 6.127-130)

Notice that Tolkien isn't trying to cheer Lewis up here, or to comfort him with platitudes about how they'll get through this. Had Tolkien been trying to do that, and had he been clumsier and more obvious (like me), he would have alluded to another famous passage of Vergil, where Aeneas is trying to encourage his followers after yet another disaster has befallen them. 

“O socii—neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum—
O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem.
Vos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantis
accestis scopulos, vos et Cyclopea saxa
experti: revocate animos, maestumque timorem
mittite: forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit."

"O my Comrades -- by now we know all about evils
-- You've seen worse! God will let these end, too.
You, you've come near rabid Scylla's baying cliffs;
You've seen the giant stonework of the Cyclops's home.
Take up your courage again, let go dejection and fear:
Perhaps one day it will please us to recall these evils, too."

(Aen. 1.198-203)

Rather than pat Lewis on the back, Tolkien allows that Lewis is in pain, that he (Tolkien) has done him wrong, however unintentionally, and that the way back from this will involve hard work. He knows that when we are hurt even forgiving the offender often doesn't make the pain go away. There are times when we are downhearted because the world is just giving us a hard time; there are times when someone in particular whom we care about hurts us; and there are times when we feel the pain of hurting someone we love and losing them. Encouragement like that given by Aeneas to his followers can help in the first of these scenarios. At least it can encourage us to pull ourselves together and go on. The second and third scenarios are much harder, darker and more hellish. "This is the task, this the labor."

A Point about Elf Ears

This is a lighthearted not terribly serious post. It's a joke really. So nobody stones anybody, okay?

The other night I came across a passage in Morgoth's Ring (209-10), which made me think about the ears of Elves more than I usually do, which is almost not at all. Most people think they have pointed ears, and there is some evidence that this is so. Growing up reading Tolkien I never pictured them as having anything but ears like ours. But let's go with pointed ears since the passage I read the other night sparks an interesting question to which I offer a tongue-in-cheek solution.

The text is Ælfwine’s Preamble to "Laws and Customs among the Eldar." Ælfwine is of course a Man, writing about Elves for other Men who know nothing about them. Naturally you would expect him to point out the differences and similarities.

The Eldar grew in bodily form slower than Men, but in mind more swiftly. They learned to speak before they were one year old; and in the same time they learned to walk and to dance, for their wills came soon to the mastery of their bodies. Nonetheless there was less difference between the two Kindreds, Elves and Men, in early youth; and a man who watched elf-children at play might well have believed that they were the children of Men, of some fair and happy people. For in their early days elf-children delighted still in the world about them, and the fire of their spirit had not consumed them, and the burden of memory was still light upon them.

Ælfwine says that as little children, Men and Elves are easily mistaken for each other. That sounds like Elves, or at least Elf-children, don't have pointy ears. That should make identification easy, especially of children running around and playing. So, does this mean that for Elves pointed ears are a secondary sex characteristic?