She didn't

It was rainin’ hard in Frisco. I needed one more fare to make my night....

No, wait. That’s a different story. I’ll come in again.

Quite a long time ago I drove a cab in New York City for a few months. My favorite adventure among the many took place on a rainy Friday night in December about 2:30 AM. The dispatcher sent me to pick up a fare on a quiet residential street in a neighborhood in transition from one generation’s immigrants to the next. 

As I pulled up, an elderly man emerged from the front door flanked by his wife and his adult son. They were helping him to stand. This did not bode well. When they got in the cab, I asked where we were going.

Woman: To Union Hospital, please.

Man (grasping his chest): Oh, oh, my heart, my heart.

Me: You sure about that? It’s going to take me fifteen minutes to get there. We could get to Jacobi in half that time.

Woman: His doctor’s at Union. We go to Union.

Man (grasping his chest): Oh, oh, my heart, my heart.

Son, looking wretched:

Me, selfishly resolving that no way was this guy gonna die in my cab: Okay, fine. Hang on. 

I jumped on the highway, drove much too fast, jumped off the highway, and ran probably a dozen red lights on my way to the hospital. I did slow down and make sure it was safe, but if the cops wanted to stop me, they could arrest me at the hospital. 

Man, at least once a minute: Oh, oh, my heart, my heart.

Son, looking more wretched:

We pulled in at the Emergency Room at Union Hospital in ten minutes.

Man, as the Woman and the Son were dragging him from the back seat: Give him a good tip!

Penumbra: Your health has to come first

A friend of mine was recently telling me about a medical condition she had, which was not cancerous or life-threatening, but which her doctor still wanted to operate on. She had decided that she would let it be as long as it remained elective. I am sure that many would have told her that she should go ahead with the surgery just in case, that her health had to come first. But I couldn't have agreed with her more. 

I have had two surgeries in the last fifteen years. One of these was absolutely necessary if I wanted to avoid either bleeding to death or dying of gangrene. That one I have no regrets about, except in so far as it was my own carelessness that made it needful. The second is more complicated. I was injured at work because of the negligence of others. I suffered nerve damage, which caused persistent numbness in my left shoulder and parts of my left arm, sometimes all the way down to my hand. It also resulted in frequent low level pain in my neck. Movement and strength were not affected, however.

After ten months of tests and various attempts to fix the problem without surgery, it became clear that only surgery would keep the nerve damage from continuing to get worse. So I chose to have the surgery. It's now been seven months since the surgery. My shoulder is just as numb as it was before and I have much more frequent pain and cramping in my neck and shoulder. 

But it doesn't end there. Oh, far from it. I can't discuss the rest, however. And believe me I would love to rant about some of the things I have experienced as the result of choosing to put my health first. What I will say is that having this surgery, which wasn't necessary to keep me alive, was an enormous mistake. It has had consequences for my life and career that have left me angry and depressed much of the time, though I am taking steps to address these difficulties. There are moments I feel like it has ruined my life. But that is self-pity. 

Nothing that my injury could have done to me would have made me feel this way. Nothing. Claiming that the health of the body is the most important thing is a very limited point of view, a very unimaginative point of view. 

Guest Post: Laura Lee Smith -- The Green Knight and Mouth of Sauron

The Mouth of Sauron's encounter with the Captains of the West in The Lord of the Rings has been reminding me of the Green Knight's visit to King Arthur's court in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The initial set-up is quite different, naturally.  The Green Knight comes in uninvited without any introduction or explanation -- the reader is thus in the same boat as members of Arthur's court -- whereas Tolkien gives us some backstory on the Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dûr when he comes out in response to the heralds' challenge.  The Green Knight arrives alone on a color-coordinated steed that seems an ordinary animal except for its hue, but the poet hints the knight himself might possibly be supernatural ("Half etayn in erde I hope þat he were").  Intriguingly, the similarly color-coordinated fellow who approaches Aragorn & Co. is almost exactly the inverse, i.e., a living man on a possibly supernatural mount:

[O]ut of [the Black Gate] there came an embassy from the Dark Tower.  At its head there rode a tall and evil shape, mounted upon a black horse, if horse it was; for it was huge and hideous, and its face was [...] more like a skull than a living head, and in the sockets of its eyes and in its nostrils there burned a flame.  The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man.
(LotR 888, paragraph break omitted)

The core similarity, of course, is the disrespectful address.  In each version, the stranger boldly rides right up to the company and makes a big show of looking them up and down and asking who is in charge.  He is very specifically pretending not to be able to discern the leader -- a matter which would be self-evident both from the man's own physical location, bearing, and adornment and from his followers' reactions, since they would doubtless be turning to him or looking his way.  Here's Tolkien in LotR

Now halting a few paces before the Captains of the West he looked them up and down and laughed.  

'Is there anyone in this rout with authority to treat with me?' he asked. 'Or indeed with wit to understand me? Not thou at least!' he mocked, turning to Aragorn with scorn. 'It needs more to make a king than a piece of Elvish glass, or a rabble such as this. Why, any brigand of the hills can show as good a following!'
(LotR 889).

Clearly, the Mouth of Sauron knows who Aragorn is, since he specifically picks him and his Elvish glass out for the first round of mockery.  Here's the Middle English poet's verse (ll. 221-231):

Þis haþel [knight] heldez [proceeds, goes, comes] hym in and þe halle entres,
Driuande [lit: driving] to þe heȝe dece, dut [feared] he no woþe [danger],
Haylsed [greeted] he neuer one, bot heȝe he ouer loked.
Þe fyrst word þat he warp [uttered], 'Wher is', he sayd,
'Þe gouernour of þis gyng [company]? Gladly I wolde
Se þat segg [man, knight] in syȝt, and with hymself speke
raysoun.' 

     To knyȝtez he kest his yȝe,
     And reled [rolled] hym vp and doun;
     He stemmed [stopped, halted], and con [did] studie [look carefully, lit: study]
     Quo walt [possessed] þer most renoun.

The Green Knight's words are less overtly disrespectful here; he does not call into question Arthur's intellectual capabilities, compare him to a "brigand," or refer to his followers as "this rout" or "a rabble." Or does he?  The word "gyng" (l. 225) stands out initially due to its visual resemblance to "gang."  Tolkien's notes and glossary translate it as "company" (1st ed. p. 160) and his own translation uses "gathering" (p. 23).  Likewise, Borroff goes with "crowd" in her verse translation, both in the 1967 original and a revised version for the Norton Critical Edition (2010).


Still, Borroff's commentary on these lines in "The Challenge Episode: A Stylistic Interpretation" cites the OED to suggest the word conveys an ambiguously deprecatory sense.

Indeed, the first several definitions or subdefinitions in OED's entry for "ging, n. (1, 2a, 2b, 3a) are consistent with this neutral usage; it can mean (for example) a company of armed men, a great personage's retinue, household, followers, or retainers, or even more generally a gathering of people.  1, 2a, and 2b are attested at various times from 1043 (in Old English) through 1632, while 3a is attested ?c1200–1877. But then we reach definition 3b:

 b. depreciative. A crew, a rabble.
       c1250—1659

As we have seen, the Mouth of Sauron refers to the host as "this rabble."

Curiously, the Green Knight seems to have come indoors ("heldez hym þe halle entres  on horseback. He does not dismount on entering the feast-area, but instead drives or presses forward to the high dais ("Driuande to þe heȝe dece," rendered by Tolkien as "pressing forward to the dais").    In this regard, the Green Knight seems more overtly disrespectful than the Mouth of Sauron; an emissary summoned forth to answer a challenge might well ride up to the enemy awaiting him, but an unexpected visitor dropping in at Christmas revels "in halle" (l. 101) should surely, at the very least, approach the dais on foot.x;">The Green Knight's insolence devolves into increasingly open mockery (ll. 280-86, 309-15) and then to loud laughter (l. 316).  Arthur initially identifies himself and graciously invites him to join in the feast and let them know his business after, but the Green Knight declines.  He's not there for a fight, of course, because "Hit arn aboute on þis bench bot berdlez chylder" (l. 280).  Instead, he challenges them to a beheading game.  When his startling offer is met with stunned silence, the Green Knight throws off all restraint (ll. 309-22):

'What, is þis Arthures hous,' quoþ þe haþel þenne,
'Þat al þe rous [fame, talk] rennes of þurȝ ryalmes so mony?
Where is now your sourquydrye [pride] and your conquestes,
Your gryndellayk [fierceness] and your greme [wrath], and your grete wordes?
Now is þe reuel and þe renoun of þe Rounde Table
Ouerwalt wyth a worde of on wyȝes speche,
For al dares for drede withoute dynt schewed!'
Wyth þis he laȝes so loude þat þe lorde greued;
Þe blod schot for scham into his schyre face
and lere;

     He wex as wroth as wynde,
     So did alle þat þer were.
     Þe kyng as kene bi kynde
     Þen stod þat stif mon nere,

So Aragorn, unlike Arthur, passes the test insofar as keeping his cool under open mockery and laughter: "Aragorn said naught in answer, but he took the other's eye and held it, and for a moment they strove thus," until the challenger quails (LotR 889). The similarities in set-up perhaps reflect that, in each case, the emissary seeks to undermine, to provoke, to throw the good guys off their game, and ultimately to set a trap for them. ~~~~ Coda - Miscellaneous DetailsThe Green Knight issues his challenge on horseback, since immediately afterward "Þe renk on his rouncé hym ruched in his sadel" to look around at the company (l. 303).  Moreover, once the challenge has been accepted, "Lyȝtly lepez he hym to, and laȝt at his honde" (l. 328).  So he's kinda doubling down on the not-dismounting thing until he gets what he wants. The scene in LotR does not include a similar challenge/exchange.  The Mouth of Sauron is answering the heralds' challenge: "Come forth! [...] Let the Lord of the Black Land come forth! Justice shall be done upon him. For wrongfully he has made war upon Gondor and wrested its lands.  Therefore the King of Gondor demands that he should atone for his evils, and depart then for ever.  Come forth!" (LotR But this is a fundamentally different kind of challenge than the Green Knight's proffered exchange of one beheading for another. The Mouth of Sauron does offers the company an exchange, but it, too, is fundamentally different from that offered by the Green Knight, since the terms are wildly unequal on their face (rather than like for like): He invites total submission and capitulation in return for the non-torture of one hobbit.

~~~~ Note on Etymology: From the OED's etymological notes on "gang, n.

Sense 8 probably developed primarily from the conception of a group of people going about together, whereas senses 9 and 10 were probably additionally influenced by sense 7, as denoting a group or set (of people or animals) having characteristics in common. Compare earlier ging n.1 It is uncertain whether there was any influence from early Scandinavian uses in compounds, or whether these simply show a parallel development; compare Old Icelandic þjófa-gangr group of thieves, gaura-gangr group of ruffians, and also drauga-gangr group of ghosts, músa-gangr group of mice. (Dutch gang and German Gang denoting a group of criminals show borrowings < English.)

In turn, the outline for "† ging, n.1" provides:

Origin: Of uncertain origin. Either (i) a variant or alteration of another lexical item. Or (ii) a borrowing from early Scandinavian. Etymon: i-geng n.
Etymology: Either (i) aphetic < i-geng n., or (ii) < early Scandinavian (compare Old Icelandic ...
Obsolete.
 1. A company of armed men, a troop, army, host.
       OE—1632
 2.
 a. A retinue (of a great personage); a household, a body of retainers or followers.
       ?c1200—1601
 b. In plural. A person's followers or people. Also: people in general.
       c1330—c1626
 3.
 a. gen. A gathering of people, a company; a band, a gang; a set. Also figurative.
       ?c1200—1877
 b. depreciative. A crew, a rabble.
       c1250—1659
 c. spec. The crew of a ship or boat. Cf. gang n.
       1585—1670

 4. In Old Testament usage: the Gentile nations collectively; heathen peoples.

~~~~
NOTE: The citations are rather rough - I'll have to go back and clean them up at some point.

Works Consulted

Armitage, Simon. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation. W.W. Norton, 2008.

Borroff, Marie. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation. W.W. Norton, 1967.

---. “The Challenge Episode: A Stylistic Interpretation.” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: An Authoritative Translation, Contexts, Criticism, edited by Marie Borroff and Laura L. Howes, 1st ed, W.W. Norton, 2010, pp. 93–104.

---. “The Translated Text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: An Authoritative Translation, Contexts, Criticism, edited by Marie Borroff and Laura L. Howes, 1st ed, W.W. Norton, 2010, pp. 1–64.

“gang, n.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, Third Edition, Mar. 2013, http://www.oed.com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/view/Entry/76566.

“ging, n.1” Oxford English Dictionary Online, Third Edition, June 2017, http://www.oed.com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/78368.

"Sir Gawayn and Þe Grene Knyȝt."  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, Clarendon Press, 1949.  (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/Gawain/1:1?rgn=div1;view=fulltext)

---.  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon, edited by Norman Davis, Norman, editor, 2nd ed., Clarendon Press, 1968.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings. 50th Anniversary One-Volume Edition, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005.

Tolkien, J. R. R., translator.  “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo, edited by Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollinsPublishers, 1975, pp. 17–93.

Fragments of the Secret History of Khamul, Sorceror, Ringwraith, King

Provenance: Several scraps of tattered and burnt vellum, discovered on the northwestern slopes of Amon Amarth ('Mount Doom') among the bones of a fell beast in the fourteenth year of Eldarion  Telcontar, son of Elessar. Long held to be bits of the creature's skin, they were subsequently identified as orc-hide, probably from one of the smaller, older breeds commonly referred to in some texts as 'goblins'.

King's Writer, Finduilas, daughter of Findegil, devoted many years of study to the translation and ordering of the faded texts. The commentary below is also hers.

_________________________

Being uncertain that the old half-deaf halfling, who stank of cabbages and potatoes,* had even understood my questions, I returned the next morning. 'Knock thou gently, knock thou slowly,' W-K had said, 'We don't want to attract too much attention. Save your Black Breath, and no "Open in the Name of Mordor."** I don't care how much fun it is. There'll be time for that later.' 

No sooner had I touched the door of Baggins' home than it swung open. A female, so old and mean looking I almost offered her a job, stared up at me with the most delightful venom in her eye.  

'Who are you?' she spat out. 'What do you want here?' It's mine, I tell you, all mine, my precious -- Bag End is mine.'***

'Charmed to meet you, madam,' I hissed. (I really was quite taken with her. Perhaps halflings weren't half useless after all.). 'My name is Khamûl ...' 

'Are you deaf? Go on with you! Get away from my door! There's no admittance. Now Good morning to you!' she shrieked. 

The whole while she was hitting me with her umbrella.***

I must confess, it had been so long since I felt my heart beat that I almost didn't recognize it when it did.  

Then I smelled it, or rather, her. She smelled like she had bathed in some infusion of flowers that had been steeping since the deeps of time. I sneezed. I couldn't stop myself. I didn't know what to do. I hadn't sneezed in over 4,000 years. My nose began running like an arterial hemorrhage. I fell back to my horse at the end of the lane. I couldn't stop sniffling for days.****

*old ... cabbages and potatoes -- This is surely Hamfast 'the Gaffer' Gamgee, father of Master Samwise, and grandfather of Elanor, Handmaid to Queen Arwen. The Red Book twice notes his conversation with a Black Rider the night Frodo Baggins, Peregrin Took, and Samwise Gamgee departed for Buckland. It also records his fondness for cabbages as well as potatoes ('the Gaffer's delight').

**Open ... Mordor -- The presence of this phrase here strongly suggests that it was Khamûl --  the only Ringwraith whose name is known, except Gothmog, the lieutenant of Morgul (see below) --  who broke open the door at Crickhollow.

***Bag End is mine -- These words and the reference to her umbrella below together indicate that Khamûl has come face to face with Lobelia Sackville-Baggins (née Bracegirdle), who purchased Bag End from Frodo Baggins in T.A. 3018 and later became a formidable leader in the resistance against Saruman. If Lobelia's words to Khamûl sound familiar, it has been suggested in some quarters that the portrayal of Gollum's obsession with the Ring is modeled on Lobelia's with Bag End.

****sniffling -- thus calling into question the Red Book's interpretation of Khamûl's smelling and its  significance.

uh oh, smells like elves!

After much debate between Finduilas and the sisters of King Eldarion, Finduilas persuaded them that Khamûl here refers to the arrival of Gildor Inglorion and his troop. 

Let the little people blow!

Confirms the accuracy of the otherwise inexplicable inclusion of the words of a Black Rider to himself or his fellow wraiths. Previously it had been thought that one of the guards at the gate of Buckland heard this before he was ridden down. 

He said the word!

Probably 'Elbereth'.

Which I told him prophecies are tricky things, but did he listen? No, mate, he did not. He just went on about the Houses of Lamentation again, like always. Been there. Done That. Got the gold ring. Serves him right for appointing Gothmog his second in command. Gothmog! Almost fell off his horse when we chased that elvish nag to the ford, he did, and then had his fell beast shot out from under him! 

This clearly establishes once and for all that Gothmog was a man and a Ringwraith, never an orc, though some inferior bards have sought to depict him as such.

Frodo's terror and grief

Here's a small piece of a much larger project I've been working on over the last few months. I have no idea when the whole will see the light of day, so I may post small excerpts here from time to time in case folks are interested and since I miss posting regularly.

Yet Frodo does not witness Boromir’s moment of recognition and repentance. Shaken by ‘terror and grief’ Frodo has put on the Ring and fled (FR 2.x.400). It may not be the horror and pity that moved Bilbo, but it is closer to those feelings than he has come before. Seeing the effects of the Ring on a comrade and a friend (TT 4.v.664) – and as we know Frodo has long feared for those he calls his friends on this ‘adventure’ of his – he now grieves for one whom he believes 'has fallen into evil’ (FR 2.x.401). His terror is natural, just as it had been in the Barrow, but the grief he feels here is as important as the courage he found there, and is as important for Frodo as the pity Bilbo felt for Gollum was for Bilbo. For the pity and the grief transcend the horror and the terror. Frodo grieves for someone whom he has run away from in fear of his life. Here is a Frodo very different from the one who sat in Bag End the previous spring judging Gollum worthy of death, reproving Gandalf because he and the elves of Mirkwood had let him live, and yielding the point with only a poor grace. Now, in terror of a present and immediate threat, he shows how he has grown beyond the hobbit who pronounced summary judgements on a potential threat he had never seen.

Two Brief Observations on Galadriel

It is curious that Galadriel uses her mirror to test the only two members of the Company who will ever bear the Ring. Does this fall under her knowing ‘in part what also shall be’ (FR 2.vii.357)?

At the Ford of Bruinen Frodo defies the Ringwraiths' demand for the Ring, and attempts to command them to '[g]o back to the Land of Mordor, and follow me no more!' (FR 1.xii.215). In response they laugh at him and tell him that they will take him to Mordor. In The Mirror of Galadriel Frodo offers to give Galadriel the Ring. In response she, too, laughs, but clearly at herself and her situation, and tells him that it is time for him to leave Lothlórien (FR 1.vii.365-366).

Penumbra: "Dispute it like a man."

MALCOLM: Dispute it like a man.

MACDUFF: I shall do so;
But I must also feel it as a man:
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me. 

Macbeth Act 4 Scene 3

I love how people to tell you to let things go, as if there were something wrong with you for being unhappy that you have been wronged. Or as if there were a switch installed somewhere (they never told you about) that triggered some ejection seat of grief and pain.

We must let things go. Of course we must. But to pretend they are gone, that they have been let go, before they have been fully felt, fully grieved, is a dangerous road to walk. Worse than deceiving others, it is deceiving ourselves. Wound? What wound?

When my mother died I was married and living in California. My wife neither said nor did anything to indicate that she was coming with me. She didn't start packing a bag, didn't say "let's go." When I got on the phone with the airline I looked at her with a questioning look, she turned away. I was actually in the car backing out of the driveway when she asked if I wanted her to come. Too late.

Before I had even returned from New York, she called me to tell me that her uncle was coming to town and wanted to know whether he could stay with us for a few days right after I got back. I couldn't believe she was even asking me to entertain people the moment I got back from my mother's funeral. I was stunned. In the moment I could either explode or say 'yeah, sure.' So that's what I said.

When I returned she never once asked me how I was doing, until after a month or so I was so hurt and angry because of this that I pointed out, not gently, how much this wounded me. After that she asked me how I was, dutifully and expressionlessly, every night. I was less than convinced that she cared what the answer was.

Though I didn't leave for another year, that was probably the end. Relationships you've invested a lot of yourself in are hard to leave even when they are painful.

I was no saint. She was no devil. Who would believe that anyway? Though she badly wronged me here, I had wronged her too at times, and made our situation worse. There were enough mistakes to go around, and more than enough pain. When I finally did leave, I think I wept the entire first 1,000 miles of my drive. It sure seems that way.

It took me years to feel my way through all of it, but tears were the way to start. Fortunately there was no one in the car with me to try to shame me for feeling this pain, to tell me to let it go or to dispute it like a man.

Idiotic Book Blurbs

Writing blurbs for the covers of books reached Pythonesque heights of self-parody years ago, so to laugh at their idiocy is nothing new. Which doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

Here's one that merits ridicule as hyperbolic as itself:

----------- --------- writes with the unflinching, cumulatively devastating precision of Chekhov and Munro, peeling back layer after layer of illusion until we're left with the truth of ourselves. Practically every line is a revelation of language, of character, of experience; ------'s lyricism stalks our hearts like a gorgeous assassin.

In the first sentence we have the obligatory, tedious comparison to authors whom a duration of time longer than fifteen minutes has proved to be true masters of the short story. Then there's the cliche promise of illusions giving way to something as residually profound as 'the truth of ourselves.' More offensive, however, is the juxtaposition of the exponentially cliche 'peeling back layer after layer', suggesting subtraction, with 'cumulatively', suggesting addition. More is less, I can only conclude.

The first part of the second sentence would actually be quite fine, if the author had experienced a revelation about writing instead of using revelation in an attempt to bear witness to the perception of new truths. The final three clauses use both anaphora and asyndeton to good effect, with each noun one syllable longer than the one before it. Yet recovering this gem is rather like recovering illegal diamonds that a mule has swallowed. And the preposterous simile of the second part of the second sentence steals back with both hands the bounty the first half has given. 

It's even sadder of course that none of it's true. 

The Gaffer should give lessons (FR 1.iii.69)

Gandalf's 'good morning' exchange with Bilbo in the first chapter of The Hobbit is rightly famous as much for its humor as for Bilbo's failure to get the wizard to go away and leave him alone. There is another scene, however, in which a hobbit outside Bag End succeeds in baffling the inquiries of an unwelcome visitor, and sees him off. In Three's Company, as Frodo, Pippin, and Sam are about to leave Bag End, Frodo overhears Gaffer Gamgee speaking to a stranger who proves to be one of Ringwraiths hunting Frodo.

[Frodo] turned to go back, and then stopped, for he heard voices, just round the corner by the end of Bagshot Row. One voice was certainly the old Gaffer’s; the other was strange, and somehow unpleasant. He could not make out what it said, but he heard the Gaffer’s answers, which were rather shrill. The old man seemed put out. 

‘No, Mr. Baggins has gone away. Went this morning, and my Sam went with him: anyway all hisstuff went. Yes, sold out and gone, I tell’ee. Why? Why’s none of my business, or yours. Where to? That ain’t no secret. He’s moved to Bucklebury or some such place, away down yonder. Yes it is – a tidy way. I’ve never been so far myself; they’re queer folks in Buckland. No, I can’t give no message. Good night to you!’ 

Footsteps went away down the Hill.

(FR 1.iii.69)

Bilbo was clearly too polite.

Review: Beside the Ocean of Time

Beside the Ocean of Time by George Mackay Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I just read this book for the second time. The first time through I had enjoyed its air of another world, its characters, and its wry and lyrical prose. The memory of that stuck with me, and kept calling me back to read the book again, as if it were my childhood memory of a former life. It was even better than I remember it.

View all my reviews

'altogether precious' -- on the beauty of the One Ring

The gold looked very fair and pure, and Frodo thought how rich and beautiful was its colour, how perfect was its roundness. It was an admirable thing and altogether precious.  

(FR 1.ii.60)

A comment by a friend, Kate Neville, on my last post got me thinking. She noted that pure gold was too soft to hold a shape, and that other substances -- in other words, impurities -- must be introduced to make it durable. She also noted that Tolkien clearly knew something about the properties of gold, since he knew the fire of a simple hearth could not melt it. Then Kate asked a marvelous question about the One Ring: 'Was the essence of Sauron the impurity added? And what does that say about the apparently intrinsic beauty of the Ring... Its "precious"-ness?'

When Sauron's body was destroyed in the drowning of Númenor, 'he was robbed now of that shape in which he had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men' (S 280-81). We can see something similar in Morgoth after his duel with Fingolfin: 'Morgoth went ever halt of one foot after that day, and the pain of his wounds could not be healed; and in his face was the scar that Thorondor made' (S 154). What's intriguing here is that both Morgoth and Sauron have transferred much of their native power out of themselves as a means to exercise dominion, the one into the substance of the world itself, the other into the Ring (Morgoth 399-401). For Sauron at least this transfer seems permanent, since the 'strength and will' (S 287) he had put into the Ring did not return to him when the Ring was destroyed.

Now one might object that while Tolkien seems to have some knowledge of the properties of gold, his knowledge might not go very far. I have heard it said that throwing the Ring into a volcano wouldn't have melted the Ring any more than a hearth would. From what I can see, however, this is not so at all times. Lava can range from 700 to 1,200 ℃ (1,300 to 2,200 ℉), and the melting point of gold is 1,064 ℃ (1,948 ℉). Magma can be even hotter, up to 1,600 ℃ (2,912 ℉). Given that the Sammath Naur is inside Mt Doom, we might well surmise that we are talking about the upper end of the temperature range. 

Another objection would be that the Ring changes size and weight. Bilbo wrote to Frodo and told him as much (FR 1.ii.47): 'it did not seem always of the same size or weight; it shrank or expanded in an odd way, and might suddenly slip off a finger where it had been tight.’ Frodo's experience is somewhat different. When Bombadil returns the Ring to him (FR 1.vii.133), '[i]t was the same Ring, or looked the same and weighed the same: for that Ring had always seemed to Frodo to weigh strangely heavy in the hand.' In Moria, 'at whiles it seemed a heavy weight' (FR 2.iv.312).

Note here the uncertainty introduced by 'seem' in each case, and contrast it with the following statement in Book 4: 'In fact with every step towards the gates of Mordor Frodo felt the Ring on its chain about his neck grow more burdensome. He was now beginning to feel it as an actual weight dragging him earthwards' (TT 4.ii.630, italics mine). This suggests the subjectivity of the perception of the Ring's weight. We may also compare the experience of Sam. He feels the 'weight' of the Ring the instant he puts it on (TT 4.x.733; RK 6.i.898). But, when he picks up Frodo on Mt Doom, 'to his amazement he felt the burden light. He had feared that he would have barely strength to lift his master alone, and beyond that he had expected to share in the dreadful dragging weight of the accursed Ring. But it was not so' (RK 6.iii.941). At the very least examination of these passages calls into question the notion that the actual weight (or size for that matter) of the Ring changes. What seems far more likely is that the Ringbearer's perception changes.

Be that as it may, the One Ring is also a magic ring, imbued with vast power drawn from within himself by a being of angelic stature in his origins. Whatever the exact properties of the gold in the Ring, the infusion of Sauron's 'strength and will' changed it as much as it changed him. But is it not passing strange that this transfer seems to have left Sauron bereft of the ability to regenerate (to borrow a phrase) into a fair form while at the same time conferring a perfect beauty upon the Ring? If this is correct, if Tolkien actually meant this connection, we may see Sauron paying a terrible price for the power to dominate all others: all that remained in him that was fair and fine. The rest was darkness. 

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Works Consulted

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The Purposed Domination of the Author

Allegory, Tolkien said, 'resides ... in the purposed domination of the author' (FR xxiv). I don't know why I never saw until the other day that this description so closely matches what he says about the Ring, but lately I've been working on a book about the Ring inter alia. So perhaps that allowed me to see this phrase differently.  We need think only of the incantation contained in the Ring verse and inscribed on the Ring itself (FR 1.ii.50); of Elrond's words to Glóin that 'those who made [the Elven rings] did not desire strength or domination' (FR 2.ii.268); or of Galadriel's warning to Frodo that to use the One Ring '[he] would need ... to train [his] will to the domination of the wills of others' (FR 2.vii.366).

I could be mischievous and suggest that the Ring is an allegory of Allegory, but that would be too meta. It would also be wrong. But I guess he wasn't kidding when he said he expressed his dislike for allegory. So were all stories in Mordor allegories?

'I could not take it from him' -- The peril of seizing the Ring

'I could not take it from [Bilbo] without doing greater harm; and I had no right to do so anyway. ' 

(FR 1.ii.48)

'And I could not “make” you – except by force, which would break your mind.' 

(FR 1.ii.60)

So says Gandalf to Frodo in The Shadow of the Past about the consequences of taking the Ring by force. Presumably Gandalf reckons 'breaking the mind' of Bilbo to be the 'greater harm' he would have done, and we can certainly see how paranoid and close to violence Bilbo comes when Gandalf pushes him to leave the Ring to Frodo, as he wished and promised to do until the moment came in which he had to do so (FR 1.i.34). Bilbo laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. Taking hold of a weapon in the middle of a heated argument is not what you'd call a subtle hint. It's a threat. (Trust me.) How much farther would Bilbo have gone if Gandalf had actually tried to take the Ring? 

As for Frodo, who later does have the Ring taken from him by force, one may question whether his mind is broken by losing it in this way. Tom Shippey certainly does in J. R. R. Tolkien, Author of the Century (118), not without reason, but the Frodo who loses the Ring to Gollum is not the same Frodo as the one Gandalf is speaking to in The Shadow of the Past. He has changed in ways both good and bad in the meantime; and he is broken by losing the Ring, in spirit if not in mind, and even if this is not immediately clear: "'It is gone forever,' he said, 'and now all is dark and empty'" (RK 6.ix.1024).

But there is another aspect to seizing the Ring by force, whether that force is physical or not, which the story of Gollum and the words of Gandalf should make us consider. Gollum took the Ring by force from Déagol, claiming the Ring as his due because it was his birthday and committing murder to enforce his claim. His claim to the Ring wasn't even specious. He had 'no right to [take it] anyway'. The violence he does to his own mind and soul is perhaps greater than that which he does to poor Déagol's body. And when he seizes the Ring a second time, from Frodo in the Sammath Naur, he is twice described as 'like a mad thing' (RK 6.iii.946). This should give us pause. For not only would Bilbo have been harmed, had Gandalf taken the Ring taken from him by force, but committing such an act would have been harmful to Gandalf himself. If refraining from unnecessary violence was able to slow the effect of the Ring on Bilbo, not doing so, as the tale of Sméagol and Déagol indicates, only speeds that effect. So, whatever protection from the pull of the Ring Gandalf's motives might have afforded him would have been negated by the harm he would have done himself in harming Bilbo. 

This should come as no surprise. The Ring was made specifically to enable its bearer to dominate the wills of others. To begin one's possession of the Ring with an act of domination, whether physical or spiritual, with good intent or ill, was to court one's own domination by the Ring. We might also find a pattern for Gandalf's wisdom in that of Elrond who, failing to persuade Isildur to cast the Ring into the fire 3,000 years earlier, made no attempt to take the Ring from him by force. He knew better. He knew that to do so was to fall.

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Works Consulted

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Review: The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien

The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien by Paul E. Kerry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent collection of articles by scholars, who fairly and thoroughly assess the role played by Tolkien's Catholicism in his writings. The book begins with an excellent survey of the history of Christian approaches to The Lord of the Rings, which should be required reading for anyone interested in this question. After that the first section of the book addresses the pagan elements of Tolkien's legendarium and how they fit with the Christian elements. The second investigates how Tolkien's world is 'fundamentally Christian', as Tolkien himself put it, and specifically influenced by the Roman Catholicism which was so essential a part of his life.

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Review: Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory in the Lord of the Rings

Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory in the Lord of the Rings by Matthew Dickerson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dickerson explores the moral choices made by characters in The Lord of the Rings, and provides a far more nuanced and persuasive analysis of Christian elements in Tolkien's work than one usually finds. On the whole an excellent critical work, though at times I found myself disagreeing with him on matters of details.

Minus one star, however, for no index and repeatedly calling The Lord of the Rings a trilogy.

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The Dark Lord's Bread and Butter -- 'He'll eat us all'

'Don't take the Precious to Him! He'll eat us all, if He gets it, eat all the world.' 

(TT 4.iii.637)

Whether by chance or by design two prominent traits of Hobbits converge in Bilbo's likening of himself at the Ring-enhanced age of eleventy-one to 'butter that has been scraped over too much bread' (FR 1.i.32). The first is of course the Hobbits' well-known love of food. The other is their habit of jesting about serious matters. As Merry says to Aragorn in The Houses of Healing

'But it is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.' 

(RK 5.viii.870)

What makes this fascinating is that in The Shadow of the Past, the very chapter after Bilbo makes his comparison, we find Gandalf comparing the action of the Ring and of Sauron himself to eating and devouring no less than four times (FR 1.ii.47, twice on 55, 57). We find the same in Faramir's description of what had happened to the nine men given Rings of Power by Sauron: 'he had devoured them' (TT 4.vi.692); and elsewhere he calls Sauron 'a destroyer who would devour all' (TT 4.v.672). And as we saw in the quote with which I began, Gollum, too, saw things in similar terms. It's not often Gandalf, Faramir, and Gollum agree.

Given all this, Bilbo's choice to compare himself to food is even more psychologically revealing than at first it seems, which makes its presence here a matter of chance, if chance you call it.

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I would very much like to thank Joe Hoffman and Corey Olsen for the friendly banter which we engaged in on the subject of Hobbits and butter, and which in turn led me to this reflection.

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It Comes in Slabs? Hobbits and Butter

‘Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.’

(FR 1.i.32)

What reader of Tolkien doesn't know Bilbo's famous simile? And who doesn't recall it on that morning years later when Pippin is shocked (shocked!) at the short commons of besieged Minas Tirith?

Pippin looked ruefully at the small loaf and (he thought) very inadequate pat of butter which was set out for him, beside a cup of thin milk. 'Why did you bring me here?' he said.

(RK 5.iv.806)

But how many of us -- I'm looking at you, Joe Hoffman -- have ever wondered if we could quantify just how much butter a hobbit would deem adequate? 

They were washed and in the middle of good deep mugs of beer when Mr. Butterbur and Nob came in again. In a twinkling the table was laid. There was hot soup, cold meats, a blackberry tart, new loaves, slabs of butter, and half a ripe cheese: good plain food, as good as the Shire could show, and homelike enough to dispel the last of Sam's misgivings (already much relieved by the excellence of the beer).

(FR 1.ix.154, emphasis added)

It.Comes.In.Slabs.

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Houses of Mirth and Lamentation

Copyright Donato Giancola

A cold voice answered: 'Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.' 

A sword rang as it was drawn. 'Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.' 

'Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!' 

Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. 

 (RK 5.vi.841)

(Okay, this post is going to be nowhere near as charming as Jerry Burns' Mathom-House post from a couple of days ago.)

The houses of lamentation just sound so KJV, and Dernhelm's laughter is like something out of a Viking saga. (See Tom Shippey's marvelous new book, Laughing Shall I Die: The Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings.) But it's the juxtaposition of the two, and the Witch-king's calling her a fool that has long made me wonder if there was something else Tolkien was playing off in this scene besides Macbeth. 

The notion struck me when I first read one of my other favorite books, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, the title of which comes from Ecclesiastes 7.4. The KJV renders this verse:

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

If Tolkien is recalling the Bible here, he is using it expertly and ironically to undercut the Witch-king. For of course he is the fool here, not Éowyn who will have the last laugh when she finds happiness in the Houses of Healing.

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Works Consulted

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Waiting for Aeschere's Head -- Beowulf 1419b-1423

I've been re-reading Beowulf lately, my second time through the poem in Old English. It brings joy and laughter to my geeky soul, not least because somehow it got easier between the first and second readings. Of the many things that have delighted me, I wanted to mention lines 1419b-1423. Not only are they a great example of the things you can do with word order in an inflected language, but what they do here in particular is funny. 

Just a bit of background first. Beowulf has killed Grendel and Grendel's mother has come looking for revenge. She breaks into Heorot in the middle of the night and carries off Ӕschere, one of king Hrothgar's most trusted advisers. The next morning a posse of Danes (Hrothgar's folk) and Geats (Beowulf's) sets out for the lair of Grendel and his mother.

                                Denum eallum wæs,
winum Scyldinga,   weorce on mode
to geþolianne,   ðegne monegum,
oncyð eorla gehwæm,   syðþan Æscheres
on þam holmclife   hafelan metton.

                               For all the Danes it was,
for the friends of the Scyldings*, a pain in their hearts
to endure, for many a thane,
a grief for every warrior, once they
found Ӕschere's head on the sea-cliff. 

Richard Rohlin was just talking the other day over at Blog on the Barrow-Downs about ways in which the Beowulf poet builds tension in a story that most of his audience would have known. It's an excellent post which I encourage you to read for its discussion of shifting perspectives within the story. Here and now, we're on a much smaller scale, an elegant and balanced little sentence that withholds the crucial piece of information until the very end, poor Ӕschere's head, the twenty-first of twenty-two words.

Here's what you might call an exploded view, which aims to make clear how nice a sentence this is:

For all the Danes

it was

for the friends of the Scyldings

a pain in their hearts to endure

for many a thane

a grief

for every warrior

once they found Ӕschere's head on the sea-cliff.

All of the phrases beginning 'for' are interlaced with the verbal structure of the sentence, while 'grief' is in apposition with 'a pain...endure.' 

It's like a walk down a long dark hallway in a horror movie. You know something bad is coming, just around the next corner, and somehow it still takes you by surprise when you finally get there. Richard Rohlin and I also both got a laugh out of the fact that in the Old English Ӕschere is quite literally separated from his head. 

And if this kind of humor appeals to you, you should take a long look at Tom Shippey's Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings.

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*The Scyldings were the dynasty that ruled the Danes in Beowulf. 'Friends of the Scyldings' is synonymous with Danes.

The Annunciation and the Swan

A friend recently lent me a book of poems called 'Mary's Dust', by Melinda Mueller. Each of the poems treats the experience of a different character named Mary. Unsurprisingly, the first poem is about the Virgin Mary, and it's quite lovely:

Annunciation 

The air before her congealed
and became the angel, blazing. 

Its robes streamed and whirled
in a wind that filled her ears. 

Through its transparent form
she could see the brown hills 

And stunted trees beyond, magnified
and trembling like flames. 

She could not have told
what was said. That story was 

conceived years later, by men
who had not been there. 

Afterwards the stirred dust
settled around her feet with a faint 

ringing, as if it were the dust
of a thousand bells.

Mueller evokes so much here by allusion. In 1 Kings 19 Elijah in despair flees into the wilderness, where he witnesses a whirlwind, an earthquake, and a fire, but knows that God is not in them. Then after the fire he hears a 'still small voice' and knows that it is God. We never hear what that voice is saying in that moment. Perhaps, like Mary, Elijah 'could not have told / what was said.' Perhaps for him, too, it rang in the dust for him that settled about his feet. Perhaps it was a voice that did not speak in words, and so its words could not be told.

But it was to another poem that the ineffability of the angel's conversation turned my thoughts. As soon as I read those words I thought of the end of Yeats' Leda and the Swan. When the human and the divine meet in this way, or in any way that could be called a union, what can be told? What can be said? Could we ever hope to find the words to describe what we knew in that moment?

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? 

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
                   Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Review: Death and Immortality in Middle-Earth: Peter Roe Series XVII

Death and Immortality in Middle-Earth: Peter Roe Series XVII by Daniel Helen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are quite a few interesting thoughts and perspectives here, and several good articles. Unfortunately, there are also lots of typos, and sometimes a lack of perfect fluency in English idiom obscures an author's meaning. (No doubt I would do no better if I chose to write an article in a language other than English.)

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Review: Tom's Midnight Garden

Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A wonderful, charming book that, like the garden in the title, may hold just as much for the reader older in years as for the young.

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Review: Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth by Catherine McIlwaine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A marvelous overview of the man and the many facets of his work.

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And Death Shall Be No More -- The Dream of the Rood ll. 112-14

Lairich Rig / The Ruthwell Cross

Frineð he for þære mænige   hwær se man sie,
se ðe for dryhtnes naman    deaðes wolde
biteres onbyrigan,   swa he ær on ðam beame dyde.

He will ask before the multitude   where the man is,
Who for the Lord's name's sake  would taste
Of bitter death,   just he already did on the tree.

The Dream of the Rood  ll. 112-14 

The verb onbýrigan in line 114 means 'to taste of'. It is a compound of býrigan, 'to taste'. What I find cool here is the echo of a different, but very similar sounding verb, byrigan, which means 'to bury'. It  differs only in the length of the 'y'. But I like the distant suggestion that those who taste of death, as Christ has already done on the cross, also bury it. 

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Scholars have likely noted this ten thousand times already. Nevertheless....

Review: Beowulf and the Critics

Beowulf and the Critics by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not to be confused with The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, this book supplies Old English scholars and fans and scholars of Tolkien with two versions of the writings that lie behind that briefer and more focused work. It makes a wonderful companion to Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell.

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Revising The Hobbit in Life and Fiction

In the summer of 1950 Tolkien received from Allen & Unwin, his publishers, proofs of the forthcoming second edition of The Hobbit (Letters no. 128). To his surprise he found that without consulting him they had removed the original Chapter 5, Riddles in the Dark, and substituted a new version, which he had sent to them three years earlier as 'a specimen of rewriting' (Letters no. 111) and which he had not originally meant to have published as written (no. 128). This new version, as many know, presents a very different portrayal of Gollum, Bilbo, and the Ring, one far more in keeping with the dark power invested in the Ring in The Lord of the Rings.** In a brilliant stroke Tolkien recast the version given in the first edition of The Hobbit as a lie Bilbo told Gandalf and the dwarves. 

With mischief in his heart, however, Tolkien did not stop there. For in the Prologue we meet the following comment on The Red Book: 

This [first] account Bilbo set down in his memoirs, and he seems never to have altered it himself, not even after the Council of Elrond. Evidently it still appeared in the original Red Book, as it did in several of the copies and abstracts. But many copies contain the true account (as an alternative), derived no doubt from notes by Frodo or Samwise, both of whom learned the truth, though they seem to have been unwilling to delete anything actually written by the old hobbit himself.

(FR Pr. 13)

Publishers are much more pliant when they are your fictional characters. Take that, Rayner and Stanley Unwin!

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Works Consulted

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**  For a side by side presentation of Chapter 5 in the first (1937) and second (1951) editions, see here.

The Bard Reviews 'Avengers: Infinity War'

Here be spoilers withal:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!

Cymbeline IV.ii.329-52 (adapted).

Dwarf-ridden

'Dwarves!' said Bilbo in pretended surprise. 

'Don't talk to me!' said Smaug. 'I know the smell (and taste) of dwarf -- no one better. Don't tell me that I can eat a dwarf-ridden pony and not know it! You'll come to a bad end, if you go with such friends, Thief Barrel-rider.'

(Annotated Hobbit 281)

The most obvious interpretation of 'dwarf-ridden pony' in this, or perhaps even most contexts, is 'ridden by a dwarf'.

But that's not the only possibility, and in a conversation so full of riddling and wordplay as that of Bilbo and Smaug we might want to consider the following.

From Old English bӕddryda, or bedreda, comes the modern 'bedridden.' From 'bedridden' by analogy descend various words, e.g., 'bird-ridden' (1835), 'bug-ridden' (1848), 'bureaucracy-ridden' (1861), 'capitalist-ridden' (1844), 'caste-ridden' (1840), 'chair-ridden' (1885), 'chamber-ridden' (1856), 'child-ridden' (1843), 'class-ridden' (1842), 'conscience-ridden' (1617), 'crime-ridden' (1801), 'devil-ridden' (1707), and, not to belabor the point 'dragon-ridden' (1922) 'pixie-ridden' (1893), and even 'Nazi-ridden' (1942). A search in the OED for *ridden reveals these and over a hundred other such formations from the beginning of the alphabet to the end, only a few of which -- such as 'overridden' the past participle of 'override' -- have other than a decidedly negative connotation. The noun modified by the *ridden adjective is oppressed, beset, infested, or otherwise disabled by the first part of the compound.

From Smaug's perspective, then, ponies ridden by dwarves are also infested by dwarves, vermin-ridden, as it were. The dragon's wordplay in this sentence is followed up in the next, as he promises Bilbo, who came from 'the end of a bag', that with friends like dwarves he will come to a bad end. The tongue of the worm doesn't miss a turn, any more than the pen of Tolkien does. 

***

Note: I would like to thank my friends, Shawn Marchese and Alan Sisto, of The Prancing Pony Podcast, since it was while listening to their reading of this passage on my way to work this morning that the other interpretation of 'dwarf-ridden' occurred to me.

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Works Consulted

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