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?