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. 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

"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

 

"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?

Fahrenheit 2451 Conference -- A Call for Papers

Register for the conference and submit your abstract at IdeasWorthSaving.org 

Lúthien Unbound?

In his introduction to the Lay of Leithian in The Lays of Beleriand, Christopher Tolkien writes: 

My father never explained the name Leithian 'Release from Bondage', and we are left to choose, if we will, among various applications that can be seen in the poem. Nor did he leave any comment on the significance - if there is a significance - of the likeness of Leithian to Leithien 'England'. In the tale of Ælfwine of England the Elvish name of England is Lúthien (which was earlier the name of Ælfwine himself, England being Luthany), but at the first occurrence (only) of this name the word Leithian was pencilled above it (II. 330, note 20). In the 'Sketch of the Mythology' England was still Lúthien (and at that time Thingol's daughter was also Lúthien), but this was emended to Leithien, and this is the form in the 1930 version of 'The Silmarillion'. I cannot say (i) what connection if any there was between the two significances of Lúthien, nor (ii) whether Leithien (once Leithian) 'England' is or was related to Leithian 'Release from Bondage'. The only evidence of an etymological nature that I have found is a hasty note, impossible to date, which refers to the stem leth- 'set free', with leithia 'release', and compares Lay of Leithian.

(Lays 188-89)

In September of 1978 I was a freshman at NYU taking my first class in Ancient Greek. One of the first verbs a student becomes acquainted with is the verb λύω/lúo. It's a common verb, meaning "set free, release, undo, let loose," and it is very regular in the way it's conjugated. There's nothing exceptional or odd about it. So it's a good verb to practice with. Now in English verbs have three principal parts, that is, forms which allow you to make all the other forms. So "sing, sang, sung" or "walk, walked, walked" supply the building blocks. In Greek regular verbs commonly have six principal parts, and there's a discernible pattern to them which makes learning them easier. The principal parts of λύω are λύω, λύσω, ἔλυσα, λέλυκα, λέλυμαι, ἐλύθην/lúo, lúso, élusa, léluka, lélumai, elúthēn. 

Did that last principal part--ἐλύθην/elúthēn--catch your eye? Or maybe your ear? Because it sure caught mine 46 years ago. The Silmarillion had come out a year before and I was reading The Lord of the Rings two or three times a year at that point. So the combination of form and meaning-- a standard translation of ἐλύθην/elúthēn would be "I was set free" or "I was released"--fairly leaped off the page at me. All I could think of was Lúthien and the long poem about her and Beren called The Lay of Leithian and that leithian means "release from bondage."* λύω is the verb you use if you are talking about freeing slaves or prisoners.

I asked my Greek teacher about ἐλύθην/elúthēn after class. Her name was Stephanie and she was probably the best teacher I ever had. She was so good at making things clear, at correcting you without making you feel like an idiot, and she so obviously loved teaching Ancient Greek. I know how she felt. It was later my favorite course to teach as well, but I didn't do it anywhere near as well as she did. In any event in 1978 Tolkien was still largely looked down on in academic circles. As I recall, she said she supposed a connection between this verb and the words Lúthien and leithian was possible, but I could also tell she wasn't really keen on having a prolonged discussion about it.  

As we worked our way through the truly immense verbal system of Ancient Greek, we learned more and more forms of this and other verbs. When we came to the form λυθεῖεν, once again my eye was caught because this form can be transliterated in several ways, that is, we can change the word letter by letter from the Greek alphabet into our own. The Greek letter upsilon, |υ|, is commonly represented in English with |y|, as in analysis for the Greek ἀνάλυσις -- and yes, that derives ultimately from the same root. But as the English spelling upsilon attests, |υ| is not always represented by |y|. The diphthong |ει| -- pronounced like |ay| in day in Attic Greek (think Plato) or |ee| in Koine Greek (think the Gospels) -- can be transliterated as |ei| or |i|. So λυθεῖεν could be transliterated lytheien, lythien, lutheien, or luthien. As we can see, Lúthien sounds like it could have its origin here. 

How should λυθεῖεν be translated? By form it is the third person plural aorist optative passive. The aorist tense often refers to past time, like a simple past, but not necessarily. It can also refer to something that happens suddenly. So, for example, the form ἐδάκρυσε/edakruse can mean "he wept" but is often better taken as "he burst into tears." And what's the optative? It's like the subjunctive, only more so. It doesn't refer to facts but to possibilities, intentions, hopes, and fears, to things that have not yet become real and may never become real. So λυθεῖεν by itself could be translated as a wish: "May they be set free" or "I wish that they be set free." Which of course would be a very significant name for a character like Lúthien, who comes by this name as Tolkien makes her more powerful and able to release or set free from bondage more things and people. As Clare Moore has shown in her article on Lúthien in Mallorn 62 (2021), with each successive version of her tale, Lúthien's power and importance grow.

Tolkien was keen on the sound of words. He specifically cited Ancient Greek as a tongue that gave him "'phonaesthetic' pleasure" (Letters #144 p. 265).** It may have been hard to resist the combination of sound and meaning to be found in Lúthien.

__________________________________

I hope that the list I've created below helps to clarify the name changes Christopher Tolkien refers to in the quoted passage to start this post. I use > to indicate "becomes" or "changes into"

1. The Tale of Tinúviel in The Book of Lost Tales, vol. II (1917-18)

• The daughter of Thingol and Melian is named Tinúviel, and never called Lúthien. 

2. Ælfwine of England in The Book of Lost Tales, vol. II (1917-1918)

• Lúthien = Ælfwine > Ælfwine = Ælfwine 
• Luthany*** = England > Lúthien = England ("Leithian" pencilled above 1st use of Lúthien for England)

3. The Lay of the Children of Húrin in The Lays of Beleriand (1918-1925)

• The daughter of Thingol and Melian is named Lúthien. Beren, not knowing her name, calls her  Tinúviel.

4. The Lay of Leithian in The Lays of Beleriand (1925-1931)

• The daughter of Thingol and Melian is named Lúthien. Beren, not knowing her name, calls her  Tinúviel.

4. The Sketch of the Mythology (1926) in The Shaping of Middle-earth.

• Lúthien = Lúthien, daughter of Thingol and Melian
• Lúthien = England > Leithien = England

5. Quenta Noldorinwa (the 1930 Silmarillion) in The Shaping of Middle-earth.

• Lúthien = Lúthien, daughter of Thingol and Melian
• Leithien (Leithian 1x) = England

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*Yes, I know that we only had very small snippets of the Lay at that time, but we knew that within Middle-earth at least such a poem existed and what it was called.

** John R. Holmes has suggested that Tolkien coined the word "phonaesthetic," either in the cited letter or at around the same time ("'Inside a Song': Tolkien's Phonaesthetics," in B. L. Eden, Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien 2010 p. 30). While Tolkien clearly could have coined such a word, the word already existed thanks to the linguist J. R. Firth, who appears to have coined it in his 1930 book Speech (Oxford University Press, p. 52). The word also appears in a 1950 article in the journal Essays and Studies. Tolkien knew the journal if not the article. His Homercoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son first appeared there in 1953, plus he owned a couple of issues of the journal from previous years (See Oronzo Cilli, Tolkien's Library, 103, 367). A google ngram search shows that the word suddenly came into much wider use (among linguists, that is) in the late 1940s and peaked in the 1970s.

*** 'Luthany' seems to come from a poem called "The Mistress of Vision," written by Francis Thompson, a poet of whom Tolkien was quite fond:

The Lady of fair weeping,
      At the garden’s core,
      Sang a song of sweet and sore
      And the after-sleeping;
In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore.

It's interesting to learn -- thanks to Andrew Higgins's paper, 'O World Invisible We View Thee' The Syncretic Nature of Francis Thompson's Visionary Poems,' which is available here -- that in 1968 George Carter suggested in an unpublished PhD dissertation that Carter suggested that "Thompson constructed 'Luthany' by anglicizing the Ancient Greek aorist passive infinitive of 'luo' – 'luthenai', which means 'to be broken' (Carter 1968, p. 62)."

In translating λυθῆναι/luthēnai as 'to be broken' Carter is thinking of another line in Thompson's poem -- "Pass the gates of Luthany" -- and arguing that this means "Pass the gates when they are broken." In the absence of other evidence, this translation and interpretation seem quite forced. "Unlocked" or "open" seem more plausible translations. λύω can be used of opening doors or gates, but, as far as I can tell, not of breaking them. I can see the resemblance between the English and the Greek here, but not more than that. 

The Repentance of Angels: a Curious Departure in Tolkien

In the Ainulindalë Melkor chooses to follow his own will rather than the design of Ilúvatar and to usurp the act of creation (S 16-17). It's noteworthy here that in response Ilúvatar does not cast Melkor out, but tries to explain to him why he is unable to create independently and the harm that his attempt to do so has caused for the created world. Ilúvatar even allows Melkor to go down into the world on the pretext (advanced by Melkor) that he will work to repair the harm he has done. It seems entirely clear that Melkor could have repented in truth as he pretended to do. This is true from the very beginning, appearing in The Book of Lost Tales (LT I 53-55, 57). We later see Aulë make a similar mistake in fashioning the Dwarves, but he is humble and repents when Ilúvatar speaks to him about it (S 43-44). Later still, even after all the evils he had committed in the First Age, repentance and a return to the fold was open even to Sauron (S 285).

Now Tolkien often compared the Valar and Maiar to the angels which are a part of the Christian religion. In the early days of the legendarium he even described them as gods. In The Book of Lost Tales I & II, for example, he refers to them in this way 319 times--yes, I counted*--which leads to a revealing contrast with his practice in his letters, where he almost always puts the word in quotations marks, 'gods,' or qualifies it with another word, 'roughly,' or phrase 'if you will.' Calling them 'gods' and likening them to angels often occur in the same letters and about the same number of times ('gods' 19; 'angels/angelic' etc. 20). When doing so Tolkien is being careful to make clear to readers not named Tolkien or Lewis that they are not really gods, but only gods so to speak. They occupy the mythological, not theological, place of gods (cf. Letters² #212 p. 405). So calling them 'gods' is also implicitly a comparison.

Just how much of a comparison it is we can see from how great a departure Tolkien is making from Christian doctrine with the Valar and Maiar. For it has long been doctrine that the fallen angels cannot repent, as Melkor pretends to do, Sauron almost does, and as Aulë succeeds in doing. The seeming glance to the West that the spirit of Saruman takes immediately after death shows that he believed repentance for him might be possible (RK 6.viii.1020). Being both fallen and dead, Saruman's answer is blowing in the wind.

In discussing fallen angels Saint Thomas Aquinas quotes Saint John Damascene to help make his point. Aquinas's quotation in the Summa Theologiae includes only the first of the two sentences below (ST 1 64.2). A fuller quotation of Saint John Damascene's De Fide Orthodoxa is illustrative (II.4):

“…hoc est hominibus mors, quod angelis casus. Post casum enim non est eis paenitentia, quemadmodum neque hominibus post mortem.”

Or, if your Latin's rusty: 

“…death is to men what the fall is to angels. For after their fall there is no repentance for them, just as there is none for men after death.” 

Aquinas says further that the fall of the angels happened not because they desired evil per se, but because they desired a good inordinately, thus placing their own will before God's (ST 1 63.1 ad 4): "et hoc modo angelus peccavit, convertendo se per liberum arbitrium ad proprium bonum, absque ordine ad regulam divinae voluntatis." "And in this manner the angel fell, by turning himself to a good of his own [which was determined] by his own free will, and out of order with the rule established by God's will."

Lucifer is presumably "the angel" Aquinas refers to here. So, too, Melkor desired to create things of his own according to his own design (S 16).

While Tolkien is clearly, obviously, and by his own admission, a very religious man whose faith and worldview play a great part in the way he shaped his legendarium, here is an instance where we can see that his mythology is not simply a reproduction of his theology. Just as making the Elves immortal and able to reincarnate allows him to examine human concerns about life and death in ways not possible otherwise, allowing for repentance among the "angels"  affords still other possibilities that deserve to be noted and explored.

________________

*I count only instances in the text of The Book of Lost Tales I & II, or times when Christopher Tolkien quotes a different draft of his father's work. I do not count Christopher's own use of 'gods' in the notes and commentary; 'gods' in the notes and commentary that reproduces what has already been counted in the text; 'gods' when quoted from later works; or any of the front or back matter of The Book of Lost Tales 

Prophecy, Hope, Despair, and Sorrow in "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen."

Recently I have been reading Johm F. Whitmire Jr.'s interesting article, "An Archaeology of Hope and Despair in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen," in the 2023 issue of Tolkien Studies (vol. XX pp. 59-76). I recommend its thoughtful analysis of the evolution of the Tale over several versions, which are published in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoMe XII pp. 262-270). The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen is a favorite of mine in any case, and so I enjoyed the opportunity to read it again.

This time through I caught something I had not noticed before. Only six characters play a direct part in the action--others are mentioned--and only these six charactersspeak: Dírhael and Ivorwen, the parents of Gilraen, Aragorn's mother, Elrond, Arwen Undómiel, and Aragorn himself. What I find remarkable is that every one of these six speaking characters displays some degree of accurate prophetic foresight into the fates of the Dúnedain and the heirs of Isildur. 

1. Dírhael correctly foresees that Arathorn, Aragorn's father, will soon succeed his father, Arador, and perish himself not long after. For these reasons in particular, he opposed the betrothal of Gilraen to Arathorn.
2. Ivorwen correctly foresees that Arathorn and Gilraen must marry soon then. "If these two wed now, hope may be born for our people; but if they delay, it will not come while this age lasts.”
3. Gilraen gives Aragorn the name Estel (Hope) when his father is killed. Years later she will say that she had given Hope to her people, but kept none for herself.
4. Elrond foretells to Aragorn, when he reveals his true name to him, "that the span of your life shall be greater than the measure of Men, unless evil befalls you or you fail at the test. But the test will be hard and long. The Sceptre of Annúminas I withhold, for you have yet to earn it.”
5. When Aragorn first meets Arwen and calls her Tinúviel, she says "maybe my doom will be not unlike hers."
6. When Gilraen learns that Aragorn has fallen in love with Arwen, she tells him that Elrond will oppose marriage between them. Aragorn replies: "Then bitter will be my days, and I will walk in the wild alone." 
7. ‘“That will indeed be your fate,” said Gilraen; but though she had in a measure the foresight of her people, she said no more to him of her foreboding, nor did she speak to anyone of what her son had told her.
8. Elrond responds as Gilraen predicted and prophesies in turn: “Aragorn, Arathorn’s son, Lord of the Dúnedain, listen to me! A great doom awaits you, either to rise above the height of all your fathers since the days of Elendil, or to fall into darkness with all that is left of your kin. Many years of trial lie before you. You shall neither have wife, nor bind any woman to you in troth, until your time comes and you are found worthy of it.”
9. ‘“I see,” said Aragorn, “that I have turned my eyes to a treasure no less dear than the treasure of Thingol that Beren once desired. Such is my fate.” Then suddenly the foresight of his kindred came to him, and he said: “But lo! Master Elrond, the years of your abiding run short at last, and the choice must soon be laid on your children, to part either with you or with Middle-earth.”
10. The next time Aragorn sees Arwen many years later: "And thus it was that Arwen first beheld him again after their long parting; and as he came walking towards her under the trees of Caras Galadhon laden with flowers of gold, her choice was made and her doom appointed."
11. ‘And Arwen said: “Dark is the Shadow, and yet my heart rejoices; for you, Estel, shall be among the great whose valour will destroy it.”  ‘But Aragorn answered: “Alas! I cannot foresee it, and how it may come to pass is hidden from me. Yet with your hope I will hope."
12. ‘When Elrond learned the choice of his daughter, he was silent, though his heart was grieved and found the doom long feared none the easier to endure.' 
13. ‘“My son, years come when hope will fade, and beyond them little is clear to me. And now a shadow lies between us. Maybe, it has been appointed so, that by my loss the kingship of Men may be restored. Therefore, though I love you, I say to you: Arwen Undómiel shall not diminish her life’s grace for less cause. She shall not be the bride of any Man less than the King of both Gondor and Arnor. To me then even our victory can bring only sorrow and parting -but to you hope of joy for a while. Alas, my son! I fear that to Arwen the Doom of Men may seem hard at the ending.”

Each of these foretellings prove true, and they shape the Tale as much as the choices the characters make in response to them. But there is one final foretelling. It comes at the end of Aragorn's life when, as Elrond foresaw, the approaching end of their story seems hard. Aragorn's last words to Arwen foretell in no uncertain terms that there is hope beyond the sorrow of death:

    14. "In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!”

This last prophecy of course is the only one we do not see come true. How could we? Yet such is the weight of all the accurate foretellings that come before it by all the characters that this one is credible on its own. Tolkien has so composed The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen as presented in Appendix A, which importantly is explicitly called only a part of that Tale, that it focusses throughout on prophetic truth culminating in the hope with which Estel faces death, followed in time by Arwen's similar quiet acceptance of it despite her sorrow. The Dooms of Men and Elves, the coming together of mortal and immortal, the interplay of Fate and Free Will, and the Choice of Lúthien all come together here. 

The "Real Reason"® Hobbits Don't Like Boats

According to the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, the sea is a symbol of death to hobbits (FR Pr. 07). We tend to imagine mythical explanations for this perspective. From the Odyssey to Beowulf, the sea has often had associations with death. It's understandable. The sea is vast. It never rests. And it is not your friend. Water always wins. Even in Tolkien's legendarium, west across the sea is the direction the Elves sail off in never to return, and west across the sea lay the great island of Númenor that disappeared beneath the waves long ago. Hearing such stories even remotely, those who knew nothing of the sea, like the hobbits who came to Eriador from beyond the Misty Mountains, couldn't be blamed for thinking the sea was a place to avoid. It might even explain why some of the Stoors turned around and went back over the mountains.

I am here to set the record straight, because the real reason is much simpler than that. The evidence speaks plainly. 

• "Indeed, few Hobbits had ever seen or sailed upon the Sea, and fewer still had ever returned to report on it."
• Frodo's parents both fell into the Brandywine River and drowned.
• Even the rumor of this struck terror into the evening crowd at The Ivy Bush.
• After Bilbo's disappearance from the Shire, some insisted that he must have "run off.... and undoubtedly fallen into a pool or a river, and come to a tragic, but hardly an untimely, end."
• Pippin's great great uncle Hildefons "went off on a journey and never returned,"
• Sam leaps into the Anduin to try to catch Frodo before he can paddle away. and he sinks immediately. Frodo has to save him from drowning.

Clearly, Hobbits are negatively buoyant. 

They sink like a stone. 

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Dear internet: this is a joke, ok?

Joe Hoffman, this one's for you.

"Unfey, fearless, and his fate kept him" -- Túrin and Beowulf

The Lay of the Children of Húrin exists in two versions, neither of which tells the whole story its title promises. The second version is much more detailed than the first as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. Both versions, however, describe Túrin's earliest days in battle defending the realm of Doriath. The first version offers the following account:

Ere manhood’s measure   he met and slew
the Orcs of Angband   and evil things
that roamed and ravened   on the realm’s borders.
There hard his life,     and hurts he got him,              385
the wounds of shaft     and warfain sword,
and his prowess was proven     and his praise renowned, 

and beyond his years     he was yielded honour;

(Lays p. 16, lines 382-88)

The second version is very much the same as the first for the first four and a half lines, but then it rapidly diverges, inserting four and a half entirely new lines before returning to the same conclusion the first version offers: 

Ere manhood’s measure    he met and he slew

Orcs of Angband    and evil things                              745
that roamed and ravened    on the realm’s borders.
There hard his life,    and hurts he lacked not,
the wounds of shaft   and the wavering sheen
of the sickle scimitars,   the swords of Hell,
the bloodfain blades   on black anvils                      750
in Angband smithied,   yet ever he smote
unfey, fearless,    and his fate kept him.
Thus his prowess was proven    and his praise was noised
and beyond his years     he was yielded honour... 

            (Lays p. 116-17, lines 744-54) 

When studying Túrin, it's always a good idea to pay attention to any references to fate. So line 752-- "unfey, fearless, and his fate kept him"-- stuck out, with its two references to fate. "Fey," meaning "doomed to die," is not a word you see every day. "Unfey," meaning "not doomed to die," you see even less. The word has no entry in the OED, and though Google Ngram says it has been used it links to no books in which it is used. According to Google Ngram the word's usage peaked in 1896 -- peaked I say -- at a frequency of 0.0000000216% of all the words in all the books scanned by Google. That's 2.16 times out of every 10,000,000,000 words. For most purposes not requiring a supercollider, this is vanishingly small, quite literally. You need the Webb Telescope to find this thing.

Unless you're reading Tolkien, and you just happen to have been thinking about a line in Beowulf, where Beowulf talks about fighting sea monsters when he was young.

Ac on mergenne, mecum |wunde,                              565
be yðlafe uppe lægon,
sweordum aswefede, þæt syðþan na
ymb brontne ford brimliðende
lade ne letton. Leoht eastan com,
beorht beacen Godes, brimu swaþredon,                   570
þæt ic sænæssas geseon mihte
windige weallas. Wyrd oft nereð
unfægne eorl, þonne his ellen deah.

But in the morning [the sea monsters] lay dead
on the beach, wounded by my blade, 
slain by my sword,  so never again
did they hinder the voyages
of seamen on the deep sea.
Light had come in the east, God's bright beacon,
The sea had grown still, so I could see
the headlands and their windy walls. 
Fate often keeps an unfey man safe
when his courage avails.

The word unfægne is the masculine accusative singular of unfæge ("unfey"), an adjective which is modifying eorl ("man"), the direct object of the verb nereð ("keeps...safe"). Obviously unfæge derives from fæge ("fey"). Another, related word from elsewhere in Beowulf that should ring a bell is deaðfæge, "doomed to die/death," as in "Nine for mortal men doomed to die." It's important to recognize when reading this line from the Ring-verse that all mortal men are fated to die. That's the whole point, redundant though it may be, of the word "mortal." It is part of their nature. This is true whether we are thinking of fæge, unfæge, or deaðfæge; and this is what makes the escape from death those nine rings seem to promise "the chief bait of Sauron. It leads the small to a Gollum, and the great to a Ringwraith" (Letters #212).

So how can Beowulf speak of a man as unfæge when all men are fæge? As Beowulf himself says when explaining how he survived his fight with Grendel's mother: "Næs ic fæge ða gyt" -- "I was not doomed to die just yet" (line 2146). So fate (wyrd) and courage (ellen) can keep a man safe from dying at the wrong time. On the one hand this tells us that fate is not immutable, and on the other it does not necessarily mean that every man has a specific time to die. A man could be fated to do something he has not done just yet. It's also true that fate and courage do not save always, but merely often.

I find Tolkien's adaptation of Beowulf's words to describe Túrin here particularly interesting because I have been studying the workings of fate in the different versions of The Tale of the Children of Húrin. As I usually do, I am trying to understand this from the ground up, so to speak, looking at how it works in the story and what is said about it, rather than starting with a theory of how fate (doom, destiny, weird, etc) works and applying it to the text. 

In Tolkien's prose translation of Beowulf  he renders the phrase "Fate oft saveth a man not doomed to die, when his valour fails not" (Beowulf T&C 29). In his commentary on the lines he remarks (Beowulf T&C 256):

To go to the kernel of the matter at once: emotionally and in thought (so far as that was ever clear) this is basically an assertion not only of the worth in itself of the human will (and courage), but also of its practical effect as a possibility, that is, actually a denial of absolute Fate.

Tolkien also composed a translation in alliterative verse of the first 594 lines of Beowulf, which obviously would include lines 572-73. I would be very interested to see how closely it resembles "Unfey, fearless,   and his fate kept him" in The Lay of the Children of Húrin.

Which hand did Frodo put the Ring on?

A question posted online in a private group set me thinking about which hand Frodo wears the One Ring on. During The Lord of the Rings Frodo puts on the Ring six times: once in the house of Tom Bombadil; once at the Prancing Pony; once at Weathertop; twice on Amon Hen; and once in the Chambers of Fire within Mount Doom. The text mentions which hand he put it on only twice, but it's a different hand each time. That's the curious part.

The first time is on Weathertop:

Not with the hope of escape, or of doing anything, either good or bad: [Frodo] simply felt that he must take the Ring and put it on his finger. He could not speak. He felt Sam looking at him, as if he knew that his master was in some great trouble, but he could not turn towards him. He shut his eyes and struggled for a while; but resistance became unbearable, and at last he slowly drew out the chain, and slipped the Ring on the forefinger of his left hand. 

(FR 1.xi.195, emphasis added)

As we know, putting on the Ring reveals him to the Ringwraiths, who attack at once, and the Witch-king wounds Frodo in his left shoulder with a Morgul-knife. 

A shrill cry rang out in the night; and he felt a pain like a dart of poisoned ice pierce his left shoulder. Even as he swooned he caught, as through a swirling mist, a glimpse of Strider leaping out of the darkness with a flaming brand of wood in either hand. With a last effort Frodo, dropping his sword, slipped the Ring from his finger and closed his right hand tight upon it.

(1.xi.196, emphasis added).

In Rivendell Frodo is healed of the sorcerous wound to the extent that he can be, but Gandalf, and as we later learn (TT 4.iv.652), Sam, can see the effects.

Gandalf moved his chair to the bedside and took a good look at Frodo. The colour had come back to his face, and his eyes were clear, and fully awake and aware. He was smiling, and there seemed to be little wrong with him. But to the wizard’s eye there was a faint change, just a hint as it were of transparency, about him, and especially about the left hand that lay outside upon the coverlet.

        (FR 2.i.223, emphasis added) 

Even before Gandalf looks at him, Frodo has checked his left hand to see how it feels (2.i.221). Sam also takes Frodo's hand for the same reason when he enters subsequently (2.i.223). In both of these passages the text again specifies the left hand. The next time we can tell which hand he uses is in the Sammath Naur, but we don't learn it until Sam wakes up in "The Field of Cormallen." Now it is on his right hand (a different finger, too).

He sat up and then he saw that Frodo was lying beside him, and slept peacefully, one hand behind his head, and the other resting upon the coverlet. It was the right hand, and the third finger was missing. 

(RK 6.iv.951, emphasis added)

A few other passages are also noteworthy. When Sam puts on the Ring while Frodo is a prisoner, he puts it on his left hand (TT 4.x.734). When Frodo and Sam use the phial of Galadriel against Shelob, each of them holds that in his left hand (4.ix.721, 729). In the case of the phial each already has a sword in his other hand. Consider also this passage from "Mount Doom," ten pages before Frodo claims the Ring and (as we can deduce from which hand is later missing a finger, Watson) puts it on his right hand:

Anxiously Sam had noted how his master’s left hand would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn.

(RK 6.iii.935-36, emphasis added)

That Frodo uses his left hand here as if to hide or defend himself, while it's the right hand that's reaching for the Ring, seems quite suggestive. So, although I am not going to speculate about which hand Frodo used the other four times he wore the Ring, or whether his putting it on different fingers on different hands means anything. I will suggest that on balance we may well ask if there's a connection between claiming the Ring and wearing it on the dominant hand, the hand that almost exclusively wields a weapon. For the Ring is a weapon.

--------------------

It may also be worth noting that when Tom Bombadil banishes the wight, he holds up his right hand. Also in Chapter Five of second edition of The Hobbit Bilbo reaches into his pocket and slips the Ring on his left hand (Annotated Hobbit 129, 130, 135). In the first edition Bilbo uses his left hand once (Annotated Hobbit 134). Neither edition mentions his right hand.  

 

Mani Aroman, Tolkien's Beardless Men

 

Some months back John Garth and I were discussing the phrase "Mani Aroman," which is found in The Return of the Shadow as a possible name for the people Tolkien eventually called the Rohirrim (Return 434). Tolkien indicates that "Mani Aroman" means the "Beardless Men." Tolkien being Tolkien, of course we have to wonder where these two words come from and how it is that they mean "Beardless Men."

Before we get to the speculation on these words, we should note a couple of points. First, Tolkien came up with this phrase long before he ever came near Rohan, and, as John Garth has shown, it took some time before this particular group of horsemen became the pseudo-Anglo-Saxon/Gothic horsemen we know from The Lord of the Rings. So it's no surprise if the beardless state of these riders clashes with Tolkien's later descriptions of the appearance of the Rohirrim, with our own notions of what the Germanic inhabitants of north-western Europe or early medieval England looked like, or with current notions that the beard makes the man.*

Second, elsewhere but still before the Rohirrim we know appear, Tolkien calls them "Anaxippians" and "Hippanaletians." The first of these clearly derives from Ancient Greek, and means "Horse-Lords" -- anax (ἄναξ) is a good Homeric word for king or lord, and (h)ippos (ἵππος), which we see in both words, means "horse." (Even a decade later he will refer to the Rohirrim as "heroic 'Homeric' horsemen" in Letter 131 (Letters p. 221). "Hippanaletians," aside from its first syllable, is not as easily analyzed, but my best guess so far is that it might mean "wanderers on horseback" -- coined from a combination of ἵππ(ος), ἀν(ά)/on, ἀλήτης/wanderer, hipp-an-aletes. A man who invents entire languages is not going to be shy about coining new words from old languages. "Eucatastrophe" is surely the prime example of this in Tolkien (Letters # 89 p. 142).

"Mani Aroman," however, defied our scrutiny. The words did not seem to be derived from Greek or any other likely language we could think of. Now John Garth had drawn attention to "Mani" and suggested that it might be connected to the names of various ancient Germanic tribes as handed down to us through Latin. For example, the Marcomanni, in which -manni is akin to the English "man," and -marco to "mark." This of course makes the Marcomanni the Men of the Mark, which for obvious reasons is attractive. The "Aroman" didn't fit with this, however. 

But the "Mani" stuck with me, and eventually I asked myself whether it could be Sanskrit. So I tried some googling and discovered that the Sanskrit word for "man" is "manu:"

I then searched for "Aroman" as a Sanskrit word, and found:

And this is derived from:

From this it seems to me that Tolkien might derive Mani Aroman, the Beardless Men, who later become the Rohirrim, from the Sanskrit words for "man" and "hairless." It would take real determination to view "hairless" and "beardless" as merely coincidental. But I don't know Sanskrit, and I haven't yet been able to find someone who does to consult about this. So, while this suggestion makes sense to me, that doesn't make me correct. 

_________________________________

* The present insistence in some quarters that the "manliness" of a man is predicated on his possession of a beard straight out of a Matthew Brady Civil War photograph makes me think that a parody of "The Rape of the Lock" is in order. 

Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize

Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!"