Hope and Courage in Memory -- Tolkien Reading Day 2021

After rescuing the hobbits from the Barrow-wight, Tom Bombadil, in a moment I have always found unforgettable, conjures an elegiac memory of a woman long dead:

He chose for himself from the pile a brooch set with blue stones, many-shaded like flax-flowers or the wings of blue butterflies. He looked long at it, as if stirred by some memory, shaking his head, and saying at last:

'Here is a pretty toy for Tom and for his lady! Fair was she who long ago wore this on her shoulder. Goldberry shall wear it now, and we will not forget her!'

For each of the hobbits he chose a dagger, long, leaf-shaped, and keen, of marvellous workmanship, damasked with serpent-forms in red and gold. They gleamed as he drew them from their black sheaths, wrought of some strange metal, light and strong, and set with many fiery stones. Whether by some virtue in these sheaths or because of the spell that lay on the mound, the blades seemed untouched by time, unrusted, sharp, glittering in the sun.

'Old knives are long enough as swords for hobbit-people,' he said. 'Sharp blades are good to have, if Shire-folk go walking, east, south, or far away into dark and danger.' Then he told them that these blades were forged many long years ago by Men of Westernesse: they were foes of the Dark Lord, but they were overcome by the evil king of Carn Dum in the Land of Angmar. 

          (FR 1.viii.145)

Old Tom's recollection of this otherwise vanished woman reveals the sorrow innate in memories as long as his, but his statement that he and Goldberry will continue to remember her verges on hope. For how fair she was is only the beginning of what he recalls about her and her people. And though by calling the daggers with which he arms the hobbits 'old knives' he seems to dismiss them, the description of them makes clear that they are not ordinary, but as remarkable and as full of memory as the brooch. Undulled, unstained by the centuries, the blades are as ready to serve the purpose for which they were made as they were when newly forged, as if the memory of that time and that purpose dwelt in them even now. In telling their history Old Tom suggests a new hope to the hobbits, who glimpse the flow of past into present and even present into future. For the hobbits have no idea that the man with the star upon his brow is in their future and that one of the names he bears is Hope (Estel).

'Few now remember them,' Tom murmured, 'yet still some go wandering, sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folk that are heedless.'

The hobbits did not understand his words, but as he spoke they had a vision as it were of a great expanse of years behind them, like a vast shadowy plain over which there strode shapes of Men, tall and grim with bright swords, and last came one with a star on his brow. Then the vision faded, and they were back in the sunlit world. It was time to start again. 

          (FR 1.viii.145-46)

Just as Tom picks up the woman's memory with the brooch, which leads the hobbits to a hope they do not yet recognize, and to a courage they do not yet know, so too the vision of the man with a star upon his brow brings us to Aragorn, to the sword that was broken, and to Arwen Evenstar. We hear her voice so seldom, it is almost no surprise that her first words come to us through another, relayed to Aragorn by his kinsman, Halbarad:

'The days now are short. Either our hope cometh, or all hopes end. Therefore, I send thee what I have made for thee. Fare well, Elfstone!' 

(RK 5.ii.775)

Indeed Arwen's voice is so full of hope and grace the few times we do hear it -- whether she is renouncing both the Shadow and the Twilight (RK App. A 1060) for the love of Aragorn, or ceding her place beyond the sea to Frodo in the hope that he might find healing there (RK 6.vi.974) -- that it is stunning when in the face of Aragorn's death she is 'overborne by her grief' (RK App. A 1062):

'"But I say to you, King of the Númenóreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive."

'"So it seems," he said. "But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. 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!"

'"Estel, Estel!" she cried, and with that even as he took her hand and kissed it, he fell into sleep.'

(RK App. A 1062-63)

The faltering of Arwen at the last, now no longer immortal nor, it seems, elven-wise, is such an eloquent counterpoint to Aragorn’s faith. She puts on Men's knowledge when she puts on their sorrow. Yet the last words we hear her speak – ‘Estel, Estel!’ – testify ironically to the surety of the hope she does not recognize.

#TolkienReadingDay2021

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Review of Holly Ordway -- "Tolkien's Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages"

In this well made, thoroughly researched, and clearly written book, Holly Ordway has at long last rid us of the false notion that Tolkien neither read nor liked anything written after the Middle Ages. The specific suggestions she has made that a given author influenced Tolkien in a given way will be met with approving nods as well as eyebrows cocked in disbelief. That is the way of things. There were moments I did both in quick succession, within the same paragraph. Nevertheless, Ordway has proved her overall point quite persuasively and finally. Tolkien unquestionably read modern books, enjoyed them, and was influenced by them. 

Of equal or perhaps greater importance than the many positive proofs Ordway offers of Tolkien's engagement with modern books are her investigations in the book's first and last chapters into the sources of this common misunderstanding of Tolkien: it arose from a combination of the job Humphrey Carpenter did in his biography of Tolkien and Tolkien's own ways of expressing himself. One can only hope that Ordway's reassessment will lead the Tolkien Estate to authorize a new and more scholarly biography by a writer worthy of the task, someone like John Garth, whose 'Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth' has set a high professional standard.

Wile E. Coyote and the One Ring

 What does Wile E. Coyote have to do with the One Ring? Consider the words of Gandalf in The Shadow of the Past:

It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him....

The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!

Thus Gandalf provides us with the strongest argument for the supposed agency and sentience of the One Ring. Let us review, however, the events the old wizard is summarizing:

1. The Ring leaves Isildur as he is swimming across a great river, at the bottom of which it remains lost for 2,500 years.
2. Discovered by Déagol, it is taken from him by his murderer, Gollum, who hides in the dark beneath the Misty Mountains with it for another 500 years.
3. Finding Gollum no longer useful -- after 500 years in the dark beneath the Misty Mountains -- it fell out of his pocket to lie on the ground in the same dark beneath those same Misty Mountains, until someone should happen by to pick it up.

If we believe that the Ring consciously chose to leave Isildur, consciously chose Sméagol over Déagol as more apt, and consciously chose to fall out of Gollum's pocket, then the Ring is an idiot on a par with Wile E. Coyote. Every choice the Ring makes ends like one of the Coyote's plans to catch the Road Runner. 

 More to come.

And, yes, Wile E. Coyote does look like he's holding onto a finger.

Temptation, all I never wanted -- Old Tom and the One Ring

Speaking of Tom Bombadil in a letter to Naomi Mitchison in 1954 (Letter no. 144, p. 178-79) Tolkien wrote:

Tom Bombadil is not an important person – to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a 'comment'. I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in the Oxford Magazine about 1933), and he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function. I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. but if you have, as it were taken “a vow of poverty”, renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless.

Thomas Aquinas said that temptation can come from within or without. External temptation, like that of Adam and Eve in Eden or that of Christ in the desert, is the devil's work. Internal temptation, however, is all our own as fallen creatures out of harmony with God and ourselves. Without setting out to do so, Tolkien shows us in this letter how very much the temptation to claim the power of the Ring arises from within, from the deeps of our desires, whether to save the Shire or to save Gondor, or even to show pity and do good.

A Brief Note on "Exploring 'The Lord of the Rings'" episode 174

In discussing Elrond's commentary on the stories of Frodo and Gandalf in The Council of Elrond, Corey Olsen had occasion to wonder how recent the marriage of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry had been. Fairly recent it would seem -- at least as these things go in Middle-earth. 

The poem The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, first published in 1934, shows that the Barrow-wights were already around when Tom married Goldberry. In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien establishes them within the legendarium. From RK App. A 1040-41 comes the detail that the Barrow-wights first appeared in the 1630s of the Third Age when the Witch-king of Angmar summoned evil spirits to inhabit the burial mounds of Tyrn Gorthad, many of which had been built as far back as the First Age.

So by 3018 of the Third Age Tom and Goldberry could have been married for thirteen hundred years or more. Though it seems impossible to be more precise, Tom does tell the hobbits that he found Goldberry 'long ago' (FR 1.vii.126), a phrase he also uses in connection with the owner of the brooch he takes from the barrow hoard after rescuing the hobbits (FR 1.viii.145). This points more towards the early years (decades? centuries?) of the Barrow-wights' presence on the Downs.

_______________

(Now I am thinking that investigating the phrase 'long ago', as used by various characters, could be interesting.)

Sufficient Tragedy -- An excerpt from "To Rule the Fate of Many: Truth, Lies, Pity, and the Ring of Power"

‘sufficient tragedy’

 

‘[Beowulf] is a man, and that for him and for many is sufficient tragedy.’

            (M&C, 18, italics original)

  

In Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics Tolkien lays out his understanding of Beowulf, its Christian poet, and the legendary past he was writing about, an age whose ‘days were heathen – heathen, noble, and hopeless’ (M&C, 22). That hopelessness is rooted as deeply as Yggdrasil because the final defeat of men and gods alike is inevitable. It is the way the world ends. Their nobility, however, reveals itself in their fighting on regardless, in doing deeds worthy of song even if no one is alive to hear it, in the conviction that even final ‘defeat is no refutation’ of their ‘northern courage’ and the worth of their struggle against the darkness.[1]

We can see this nobility in Théoden, Éowyn, and Éomer during the battle of the Pelennor Fields. The old king has no regrets because he is dying well, having done great deeds himself. Éowyn, ‘one without hope who goes in search of death’ (RK 5.iii.803), defies the Witch-king to defend her own. Éomer, the young king, ‘laugh[s] at despair’ and sings his defiance of the doom that seems to be approaching them all (RK 5.vi.847). At the same time within the city, Denethor, the Steward of Gondor in whom ‘the blood of Westernesse runs nearly true’(RK 6.i.758), is yielding to despair (and madness) and failing this test. And just as the Beowulf poet reproaches those who turned to the heathen gods in despair when their own strength proved too little to defeat Grendel (170-88)[2], so Gandalf rebukes Denethor by likening him to ‘the heathen kings’ of old when he chooses death for himself and Faramir, a comparison Denethor has already embraced on his own (RK 5.iv.825; vii.852).

Yet Gandalf acknowledges the truth that led the Steward to despair: ‘… listen to the words of the Steward of Gondor before he died: You may triumph on the fields of the Pelennor for a day, but against the Power that has now arisen there is no victory’ (RK 5.ix.878, italics original; cf. 5.vii.853). In the end, as long as the Ring exists, no courage, no strength, no will in Arda can defeat Sauron without becoming Sauron, and the quest to unmake the Ring has never been more than ‘a fool’s hope’, another point made by Denethor and conceded by Gandalf (RK 6.iv.825; vii.852). That much power will crush or corrupt anyone in the end. It is as evident in the struggle within Frodo as it is on the battlefields of Gondor. No one who partakes of the substance of Arda Marred, whether by nature or by adoption, or who seeks to order it, change it, or to keep it from changing, can successfully resist. Only Bombadil who takes Arda as he finds it is beyond the pull of the Ring, and even he could not stand against Sauron; what makes him immune does not make him a savior (FR 2.ii.265).[3] The rest of us must simply fail: ‘the power of Evil in the world is not finally resistible by incarnate creatures, however “good”’ (Letters no. 191, p. 252).

This courage to face an ineluctable universal defeat is, as W. P. Ker, followed by Tolkien, called it, ‘perfect because without hope’ (Ker, 57-58; Tolkien, M&C 21). The pity Gandalf urges upon Frodo is analogous. It cannot defend the Ringbearer against the pull of the Ring any more than courage can succeed against the assault of Sauron. Yet its hopeless perfection also defies all refutation of its worth. Pity, however, opens a door that strength and courage, reinforced by grace, can hold open for a time. The pity Bilbo felt for Gollum, which Frodo and Sam, too, came to share, and the mercy they each chose to show him allowed the hope, however increasingly slim, that he could be healed, and preserved each of them from becoming another Gollum. More than that, as Gandalf intimated in The Shadow of the Past, pity may well have a role to play in a much larger and providential plan. Doom, as Tolkien knew, is as effective an agent of man’s ‘sufficient tragedy’ as hamartia (ἁμαρτία, M&C 15). Doom hung over Túrin Turambar, but it was his character and mistaken choices that brought it down upon him and so many around him.[4] Bilbo was ‘meant’ to find the Ring, and his ‘sudden understanding’ may have been granted by Providence, but his revulsion at the thought of killing Gollum was all his own and it came first. His choice both embraces his doom and avoids the mistake, the ἁμαρτία, that sufficed to make Sméagol into Gollum.

As he told Gollum’s sad story in The Shadow of the Past, Gandalf said that Gollum was ‘bound up with the fate of the Ring’ and had ‘some part to play yet’ (FR 1.ii.59). It is in precisely this connection, as we know, that the pity of Bilbo would prove critical. So, it is reasonable to think that he, too, was meant to have the Ring and to keep it hidden away until Bilbo came along. His embrace of his doom, however, made his story a tragedy at once. Just as sparing Gollum was all Bilbo, so the murder of Déagol was all Sméagol. Bilbo took a ‘leap in the dark’ (Hobbit 133). Sméagol’s leap was of a very different kind. Seeing something he wanted, he went straight to murder to obtain it. As A. C. Bradley pointed out in his lectures on Shakespeare, when the Witches prophesy that Macbeth will be king, ‘[their] words … are fatal to the hero only because there is in him something which leaps straight into the light at the sound of them’ (1991, 320, emphasis mine).[5] Doom and ἁμαρτία are compounded in the sudden tragedy of Sméagol (and Macbeth and Túrin). Yet the slow descents of Bilbo and Frodo nevertheless establish that their keeping of the Ring also ‘ends in night’, a phrase Tolkien uses to describe the heroic world as the Beowulf poet perceived it (M&C 23). It is just as apt here.

---

[1] Ker 57-58: ‘The Northern gods have an exultant extravagance in their warfare which makes them more like Titans than Olympians; only they are on the right side, though it is not the side that wins. The winning side is Chaos and Unreason; but the gods, who are defeated, think that defeat is not refutation.’ Note Tolkien’s slight misquotation of the final phrase.

[2] Tolkien (2014) pp. 169-86 believes (nor is he alone in this) that there are problems with the text here. He considers lines 168-69 and 180-88 later interpolations, which makes ‘Swylc wæs þeaw hyra / hæþenra hyht’ – ‘Such was their custom, the hope of the heathens’ (lines 178-79) – a more forceful and poetic judgement on the Danes here.

[3] See Letter no. 144, p. 178-79: ‘The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. but if you have, as it were taken “a vow of poverty”, renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless.’

[4] Thus the commentary of Rosebury (2008) 15 on The Children of Húrin: ‘[I]n reading the narrative it is difficult to take seriously the idea of Morgoth as a master-manipulator of events. Few of Túrin’s fatal decisions are, in fact, forced upon him. He acts as he does because of the kind of person he is, and that is, in turn, at least as much a consequence of what happens to him as of his innate temperament. (Morgoth is, of course, the direct or indirect cause of most of what happens to Túrin, but that does not make Túrin his puppet: rather, he improvises around Túrin’s own actions.)’ On Túrin and Oedipus, see Dimitra Fimi (2013) 43-56.

[5] In the second section of his first lecture on Macbeth, Bradley is discussing Macbeth’s Fate and the Witches. So ‘fatal’ is quite literal, as the emphasis indicates. Given Tolkien’s emotional engagement with Macbeth and his familiarity with Bradley’s lectures (published 1904) on it – he checked them out of the Exeter College library in 1915 (Cilli, 2019, 26) – Bradley’s view of how Macbeth succumbs to evil, i.e., from within, may well have influenced Tolkien’s portrayal of, among others, Boromir and the Ring. In TT 4.v.670 we learn that the thought of being king had occurred to Boromir long before he fantasized about it aloud to Frodo on Amon Hen (FR 2.x.398).

Never again as a living man -- Aragorn at Cerin Amroth

It is part of my 'head-canon' that the following two passages, taken together, suggest that the spirit of Aragorn was waiting for Arwen at Cerin Amroth, where they had plighted their troth*, just as the shade of Beren had waited in the Halls of Mandos for Lúthien.

'Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth,' he said, 'and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!' And taking Frodo's hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man.

FR 2.vi.352

'There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.

RK App. A 1063

 

*It's not like you get to use this phrase every day, okay?

Ents that are and Ents that En't.

The other day on episode 193of the The Prancing Pony Podcast Alan and Shawn were discussing Treebeard's statement to Merry and Pippin in TT 3.4.

There are Ents and Ents, you know; or there are Ents and things that look like Ents but ain't, as you might say.

I think there's a bit more wordplay going on here than the simple charming slant rhyme of 'Ents but ain't'. Paradoxically, I caught the wordplay because of Philip Pullman, well known for being no fan of Tolkien. In chapter 7 of The Golden Compass, for example, Lyra says: 

'I en't never deceived anyone!'

Lyra uses 'en't' for 'ain't repeatedly, as do other characters. Even without an electronic copy of the text, examples abound. According to the OED, 'en't' and 'ent' are but two of many regional and nonstandard variations on 'ain't'. Lyra is of course also a native of Oxford, brought up in one of its many colleges, but her world is not quite ours. So there, 'en't' seems more common than here. 

But it's common enough here for Tolkien to pun on it.

(I just wanted to dash off a quick post here. I would welcome any further information on the use of 'ent' and en't', particularly around Oxford.

Eucatastrophae non sunt multiplicandae praeter necessitatem.

‘The birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy’

(OFS ¶ 104)

These days I hear so many of the events in The Lord of the Rings described as eucatstrophes that I think we have lost sight of how very miraculous and weighty a thing Tolkien held a eucatastrophe to be. The eucatastrophes at the end of myths or fairy-stories are echoes of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, not the other way around. For a man as devout as Tolkien, who could write the sentence quoted above, it was no cheap parlor trick or deus ex machina which through overuse trivializes the events it brings about. It could not be so.

A thought on the 'sentience' of the Ring

To say definitively if the One Ring is or is not sentient may not in the end be possible. To do so would surely require an attentive and thorough examination of the question. I tend to believe that it is not, but I also think that the ambiguity is both intentional and important. I am not pursuing that overall question here today, only a portion of it that has only recently become clear to me.

It struck me that Of Aulë and Yavanna supplies important testimony against the sentience of the Ring. Here's the passage in question (emphases mine):

Now Ilúvatar knew what was done, and in the very hour that Aulë's work was complete, and he was pleased, and began to instruct the Dwarves in the speech that he had devised for them, Ilúvatar spoke to him; and Aulë heard his voice and was silent. And the voice of Ilúvatar said to him: 'Why hast thou done this? Why dost thou attempt a thing which thou knowest is beyond thy power and thy authority? For thou hast from me as a gift thy own being only, and no more; and therefore the creatures of thy hand and mind can live only by that being, moving when thou thinkest to move them, and if thy thought be elsewhere, standing idle. Is that thy desire?'

Then Aulë answered: 'I did not desire such lordship. I desired things other than I am, to love and to teach them, so that they too might perceive the beauty of Eä, which thou hast caused to be. For it seemed to me that there is great room in Arda for many things that might rejoice in it, yet it is for the most part empty still, and dumb. And in my impatience I have fallen into folly. Yet the making of things is in my heart from my own making by thee; and the child of little understanding that makes a play of the deeds of his father may do so without thought of mockery, but because he is the son of his father. But what shall I do now, so that thou be not angry with me for ever? As a child to his father, I offer to thee these things, the work of the hands which thou hast made. Do with them what thou wilt. But should I not rather destroy the work of my presumption?'

Then Aulë took up a great hammer to smite the Dwarves; and he wept. But Ilúvatar had compassion upon Aulë and his desire, because of his humility; and the Dwarves shrank from the hammer and were afraid, and they bowed down their heads and begged for mercy. And the voice of Ilúvatar said to Aulë: 'Thy offer I accepted even as it was made. Dost thou not see that these things have now a life of their own, and speak with their own voices? Else they would not have flinched from thy blow, nor from any command of thy will.' Then Aulë cast down his hammer and was glad, and he gave thanks to Ilúvatar, saying: 'May Eru bless my work and amend it!'

(S 43-44) 

Without the direct intervention of Ilúvatar, all of Aulë's power and craft and love cannot give sentience or consciousness to the Dwarves. Now Of Aulë and Yayanna dates from 1958, so we must naturally take care when using it to support a point about The Lord of the Rings. Yet the notion of making something in mockery recalls the remarks of Treebeard at TT 3.iv.486 and of Frodo at TT 6.i.914: 'The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them....' So, it seems clear enough that, when writing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien already had in mind some version of the principle we see several years later in Of Aulë and Yayanna. 

The story that Aulë made the Dwarves arose first in the 1930s, but Ilúvatar plays no role in it and the Dwarves have 'no spirit indwelling, as have the Children of Ilúvatar' (Lost Road, 129), though here this does not deprive them of sentience. This strongly suggests that Tolkien's thought was already moving along the lines we see later, even if he had not yet decided that only Ilúvatar could create autonomous beings which have 'a life of their own, and speak with their own voices'. In letter 153, moreover, written only weeks after the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring in 1954, Tolkien points out that while Melkor could have made the flesh and blood of the orcs by the power that was in him, he could not have given them souls or spirits, because that is not a power Ilúvatar 'delegated'. In the same letter he also remarks: 'when you make Trolls speak you are giving them a power, which in our world (probably) connotes the possession of a 'soul'. (Compare also the implicit link between consciousness and speech in Treebeard's remark that the old Elves woke the trees up and taught them to speak [TT 3.iv.468]). What Melkor could not do, Aulë and Sauron could not have done either. 

Note, too, that Gandalf says Sauron 'let a great part of his former power pass into [the Ring], so that he could rule all the others' (FR 1.ii.51), and that, if the Ring is destroyed, Sauron 'will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in the beginning', which would reduce him to 'a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot grow again or take shape' (RK 5.ix.878). Here we see a clear distinction drawn between Sauron's spirit and his power or strength. The Ring contained his power, but not his spirit. Nor could he give it one. So whatever sentience or consciousness the Ring may possess, if it should possess any at all, seems little likely to have arisen from Sauron's having endowed it with his power (which he did) or with his spirit (which he did not do). It was, however, 'fraught with his malice' according to Elrond (FR 2.ii.254), that is, 'furnished with' or 'filled with', 'carrying with it as an attribute', 'destined to produce' (OED). Which is not to say that it feels malice.

What we have seen here argues against the sentience of the Ring. There are other passages that bear on this question in different ways, and other objects that may or may not be sentient, but they are not my concern here. I shall return to them in time. 

The Shortsightedness of Denethor

Compare the following passages, the first Denethor's words, the second Faramir's. 

'I will go now to my pyre. To my pyre! No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No tomb! No long slow sleep of death embalmed. We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West. The West has failed.' 

            RK 5.iv.825

'... we look towards Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be.' 

            TT  4.v.676 

Denethor's vision does not see past Númenor that was. That is what he means by 'The West.' There is no more. Little wonder then that he and Faramir have such vastly different desires for what they would see present day Gondor be:

'For myself,' said Faramir, 'I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves. 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 4.v.671-72

'I would have things as they were in all the days of my life answered Denethor, 'and in the days my longfathers before me: to the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me who would be his own master and no wizard's pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.'

            RK 5.vii.853

One might almost say that there's a feeling Faramir gets when he looks to The West, but Denethor does not.

It is worth noting in this connection that Faramir had also spoken slightingly of 'tombs more splendid than the houses of the living' (4.v.677), and his calling Minas Tirith by its old name, Minas Anor, echoes Aragorn's words on seeing the Argonath (3.ix.393). Faramir's truer vision is in keeping with his experience of the dream about 'the Sword that was broken' and his encounter with the boat bearing his brother, the exact nature of which -- dream, reality, vision -- is never quite clear.

Predestination as Algorithm -- Boethius, Consolation, 5 pr. ii

In replying to Boethius' question about Free Will and Fate, Lady Philosophy states:

   'There is freedom,' said she; 'nor, indeed, can any creature be rational, unless he be endowed with free will. For that which hath the natural use of reason has the faculty of discriminative judgment, and of itself distinguishes what is to be shunned or desired. Now, everyone seeks what he judges desirable, and avoids what he thinks should be shunned. Wherefore, beings endowed with reason possess also the faculty of free choice and refusal. But I suppose this faculty not equal alike in all. The higher Divine essences possess a clear-sighted judgment, an uncorrupt will, and an effective power of accomplishing their wishes. Human souls must needs be comparatively free while they abide in the contemplation of the Divine mind, less free when they pass into bodily form, and still less, again, when they are enwrapped in earthly members. But when they are given over to vices, and fall from the possession of their proper reason, then indeed their condition is utter slavery. For when they let their gaze fall from the light of highest truth to the lower world where darkness reigns, soon ignorance blinds their vision; they are disturbed by baneful affections, by yielding and assenting to which they help to promote the slavery in which they are involved, and are in a manner led captive by reason of their very liberty. Yet He who seeth all things from eternity beholdeth these things with the eyes of His providence, and assigneth to each what is predestined for it by its merits.'

         (Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, 5 pr. ii., trans. M. R. James)

That last sentence sounds like God has an algorithm. Does that come with Prime?

'Der mentsh* trakht un got lakht': Divine Irony and the Ring Verse.

 Just this morning I was reflecting on the incantatory lines at the heart of the Ring verse:

One Ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them

The emphatically repeated 'them' refers as much to the bearers of the other Rings of Power as it does to the Rings themselves. The intent to enslave the bearers was imperfectly realized of course, except in the case of Men. It occurs to me, however, that these verses also reflect the relations of the three agents of the eucatastrophe at Mt Doom, Frodo, Gollum, and Sam, all of whom of course are Ringbearers. The Ring brought them all together and bound them in the literal darkness of Mordor. Frodo 'wouldn't have got far without Sam' (TT 4.viii.712) and 'but for [Gollum]' Frodo 'could not have destroyed the Ring' (RK 6.iii.947). Frodo, however, 'was meant to have the Ring' as much as Bilbo had been (FR 1.ii.55), but it was not the maker of the Ring who intended this.

'[T]here was something else at work', as Gandalf tells Frodo. That 'something' read the Ring verse ironically, in a sense no one else grasped, much like the words that in truth prophesied the Witch-king's death rather than his invulnerability. Just as Éowyn, Merry, and the barrow-blade were brought together as if by chance to belie the obvious meaning of 'not by the hand of man shall he fall' (RK 5.vi.840; App. A 1051), so too, the coming together of Frodo, Gollum, and Sam at Mt Doom reveals new meaning in the Ring verse. 

It is a new meaning such as Eru prophesied to Melkor before the world was made (Silm. 17) :

'.... And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'

____________________

*The use of this word here should not be taken to imply that Sauron was ever a mentsh to anyone, anywhere, at any time. 

From Lady Philosophy to Gollum: 'The roots of those mountains must be roots indeed' (FR 1.ii.54)

In telling Gollum's story to Frodo, Gandalf introduces him as follows:

'Long after, but still very long ago, there lived by the banks of the Great River on the edge of Wilderland a clever-handed and quiet-footed little people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind; akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors, for they loved the River, and often swam in it, or made little boats of reeds. There was among them a family of high repute, for it was large and wealthier than most, and it was ruled by a grandmother of the folk, stern and wise in old lore, such as they had. The most inquisitive and curious-minded of that family was called Sméagol. He was interested in roots and beginnings; he dived into deep pools; he burrowed under trees and growing plants; he tunnelled into green mounds; and he ceased to look up at the hill-tops, or the leaves on trees, or the flowers opening in the air: his head and his eyes were downward.'

(FR 1.ii.62)

The scene starts out like a fairy tale, and all seems well and good as we begin the transition from the formidable matriarch of the family to her grandson. The initial shine imparted by 'most inquisitive and curious-minded' is more glitter than gold, however. For the first often means not just 'curious' but 'unduly or impertinently curious; prying', and the second 'having a curious or inquisitive or strange mind'. 'Curious', too, often has a condemnatory sense: '[d]esirous of knowing what one has no right to know, or what does not concern one, prying'. From here, it is literally and metaphorically downhill. Yet it is more than simply that. Sam, being a gardener, also has his head and eyes turned downwards, often but not always. He has not forgotten what is above. He could never have seen that star above Mordor, had he done so, never have taken from it the lesson of hope and beauty that he did. 

It also seems clear that, however we may construe what happens when he first sees the Ring, Sméagol had begun this 'descent' of his own free will before that day in The Gladden Fields. His choice prepared him for the secrets hidden beneath the Ring's precious beauty. The comfortless dark beneath the Misty Mountains, within which he sought to hide from the light of the sun, was already within him.

All of this makes the following passage from Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy (5 pr. 2) seem rather apposite:

'But [I asked] in this series of closely connected causes is there any freedom of choice for us, or does the chain of Fate constrain the very impulses of human minds, too?'

'There is freedom of choice', [Philosophy] said. 'For no rational nature could exist without freedom of choice being present in it. That which can employ reason of its own nature has the judgement by which it discerns one thing from another; on its own, therefore, it recognizes the difference between what is to be shunned and what is to be desired. Truly what a man judges desirable he pursues, and truly he flees what he thinks must be shunned. So in those creatures in whom reason exists, there is also the freedom of willing and not willing. But I claim that this freedom is not equal in all creatures. 

'For in higher and divine beings there is at hand a penetrating judgement and a will uncorrupted and the power to achieve what is desired. Human souls must be freer in truth when they maintain themselves in contemplation of the divine mind, truly less free when they are dispersed to bodies, and even less so when they are bound to earthly flesh and blood. Truly extreme is their slavery when they have surrendered to their faults and fallen from the possession of their proper reason. For when they cast down their eyes from the light of the highest truth to dark and lower things, at once they live blind in a cloud of ignorance, and are ruined by destructive passions, by yielding and agreeing to which they foster the slavery they have brought upon themselves, and in a certain way, they are captives because of their own freedom. Nevertheless the gaze of Providence, looking out from eternity, descries all these things and establishes what is predestined according to their merits.'

The interplay of free will and Providence in Boethius and Tolkien deserve more attention than I will give it here, especially that final sentence which seems to indicate that what is predestined for us is what we have deserved. That is what is interesting here, not that 'aha! Tolkien's source for this portrayal is in Boethius!'. Quellenforschung, though fun for kids of all ages, needs to earn its keep here by answering the question: 'So what?'.  Here we can see the choices of all those who possess the Ring, or wish to, or fear to, reflected in the descent that Boethius describes. 

That is an essay for another day. It is worth noting, however, the connection between Boethius and Tolkien does not stop with the words I've just quoted above. For the next section, which is in verse, not only confirms the link, because Sméagol-Gollum seeks to hide from the Sun (personified with the capital letter) beneath the Misty Mountains: 'The Sun could not watch me there' (FR 1.ii.54). And perhaps the sun could not, and the Eye could not, but the swift glance of the mind of Ilúvatar could and did.

''All things he sees and all he hears"

Sang honey-voiced Homer 

Of bright Apollo with his clear light;

Yet he cannot break through the inmost

Bowels of the earth or sea with the 

Weak illumination of his rays.

Not so the Founder of the Great World:

To Him as He looks upon all things from above

The Earth with its mass is no obstacle;

Night does not block the stars with its mists;

What is, what was, and what is to come

He perceives with His mind in a single glance;

Since He alone looks upon all things,

You could say that He is the true sun.

(Cons. 5 m. ii)

__________________________

'sed in hac haerentium sibi serie causarum estne ulla nostri arbitrii libertas an ipsos quoque humanorum motus animorum fatalis catena constringit?' 

'est', inquit; 'neque enim fuerit ulla rationalis natura quin eidem libertas adsit arbitrii. nam quod ratione uti naturaliter potest id habet iudicium quo quidque discernat; per se igitur fugienda optandaue dinoscit. quod uero quis optandum esse iudicat petit, refugit uero quod aestimat esse fugiendum. quare quibus in ipsis inest ratio etiam uolendi nolendique libertas, sed hanc non in omnibus aequam esse constituo. nam supernis diuinisque substantiis et perspicax iudicium et incorrupta uoluntas et efficax optatorum praesto est potestas. humanas uero animas liberiores quidem esse necesse est cum se in mentis diuinae speculatione conseruant, minus uero cum dilabuntur ad corpora, minusque etiam cum terrenis artubus colligantur. extrema uero est seruitus cum uitiis deditae rationis propriae possessione ceciderunt. nam ubi oculos a summae luce ueritatis ad inferiora et tenebrosa deiecerint, mox inscitiae nube caligant, perniciosis turbantur affectibus, quibus accedendo consentiendoque quam inuexere sibi adiuuant seruitutem et sunt quodam modo propria libertate captiuae. quae tamen ille ab aeterno cuncta prospiciens prouidentiae cernit intuitus et suis quaeque meritis praedestinata disponit.'

Πάντ᾽ ἐφορᾶν καὶ πάντ᾽ ἐπακούειν
puro clarum lumine Phoebum
melliflui canit oris Homerus;
qui tamen intima uiscera terrae
non ualet aut pelagi radiorum
infirma perrumpere luce.
haud sic magni conditor orbis:
huic ex alto cuncta tuenti
nulla terrae mole resistunt,
non nox astris nubibus obstat; 
quae sint, quae fuerint ueniantque
uno mentis cernit in ictu;
quem quia respicit omnia solus
uerum possis dicere solem.

First they told us we couldn't punch Nazis

 So this morning I saw the following tweet:

I commented that the ALREADY DEAD serial killer should be treated more like a vampire. I received an email from Twitter informing me that my account had been locked for 'wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm'.

If an algorithm did this, the algorithm needs work. If a person did this, the person needs to look up the meaning of the word 'obituary', and attain an understanding of its applicability to ALREADY DEAD serial killers with respect to 'wishing and hoping that someone experiences physical harm.'

The slope doesn't get any more slippery than this, folks. First you go easy on the Nazis, and then before you know it, you can't even stake a vampire let alone an ALREADY DEAD serial killer. 

Questions on The Ring, the Ring-verse, and Elision at FR 2.ii.254

 1) If the Ring is sentient, as some suppose it to be, why doesn't it react at all when Gandalf recites the Ring incantation in the Black Speech at the Council of Elrond?

'Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, 

ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.'

The change in the wizard's voice was astounding. Suddenly it became menacing, powerful, harsh as stone. A shadow seemed to pass over the high sun, and the porch for a moment grew dark. All trembled, and the Elves stopped their ears.

Everything and everyone else has some reaction. Not the Ring.

2) If the Ring actually changes size, instead of just seeming to do so, might that not have something to do with Sauron's nature as a Maia who could change his size and appearance until his death in Númenor? Since Sauron put much of his power into the Ring, and since his ability to change his size appearance became severely limited thereafter, the Ring could well have an innate ability to adapt to the size of its possessor, which carried over from Sauron. This could also explain why the Ring does not change size when Bombadil handles it -- because he does not possess it.

3) In the words burzum-ishi in the Ring-verse, what is the hyphen telling us? None of the other words have this feature. Why is this different? These words, moreover, disturb the rhythm of the line. For this see the excellent discussion by Corey Olsen in Exploring the Lord of the Rings, session 151.* The question of an elision to smooth the line was raised, but quickly dropped since Corey Olsen rightly found the idea of eliding the final -i- of ishi impossible, given the -k- which follows. 

What if the hyphen is directing the reader to elide the final syllable of burzum with the first syllable of ishi? In Latin verse, which Tolkien read and wrote, a final -m- may be dropped if the following word begins with a vowel. The words are still written out fully. The pronunciation and the rhythm change. Whether it would end up up being said burzishi or burzushi, I cannot say.** The latter would suit the assonance of all those syllables with -u-, and the sound is harsher than that of the former would be. The Black Speech was meant to sound harsh. On the other hand, if Latin prosody still applies, burzishi is what we should expect. 

The hyphen remains unexplained otherwise, and the rhythm remains disturbed.

____________________________

*I composed this post before listening to session 152 of Exploring the Lord of the Rings.

**Alas, the famous treatise of Khamûl the Ringwraith on the Prosody of the Black Speech is lost. 

Σοφιστής and 'Saruman', part two

Recently I suggested that 'Saruman' is Tolkien's rendering into Old English of the Ancient Greek σοφιστής. Last night I discovered another interesting piece of evidence to support that suggestion. While looking at the entry for σοφιστής in the Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon, I found the following quotation from Demosthenes used to illustrate the pejorative sense of the word (II.2):

'γόητα καὶ σοφιστὴν ὀναμάζων' (Dem. 18.276).

We may easily render this straightforward phrase 'naming [me] a cheat and a sophist', but that would obscure a very interesting connection for us. The word γόητα, here translated 'cheat', is the accusative singular of γόης, the first meaning of which is 'sorcerer, wizard'. We find γόης and σοφιστής similarly paired at Plato Smp. 203d, with the addition of φαρμακεύς, another word for 'sorcerer'. Γοής is of course related to γοητεία, a word Tolkien knew well, as his discussion of it in a 1956 letter to Naomi Mitchison attests (Letters # 155). Note that the qualities Tolkien attributes to goeteia -- namely, 'to terrify and subjugate' and to 'deceive or bewilder unaware Men' -- are not at all unlike the qualities of Saruman's voice, by which he can persuade or daunt others.

But I suppose that, for the purposes of the tale, some would say that there is a latent distinction such as once was called the distinction between magia and goeteia. Galadriel speaks of the 'deceits of the Enemy'. Well enough, but magia could be, was, held good (per se), and goeteia bad. Neither is, in this tale, good or bad (per se), but only by motive or purpose or use. Both sides use both, but with different motives. The supremely bad motive is (for this tale, since it is specially about it) domination of other 'free' wills. The Enemy's operations are by no means all goetic deceits, but 'magic' that produces real effects in the physical world. But his magia he uses to bulldoze both people and things, and his goeteia to terrify and subjugate. Their magia the Elves and Gandalf use (sparingly): a magia, producing real results (like fire in a wet faggot) for specific beneficent purposes. Their goetic effects are entirely artistic and not intended to deceive: they never deceive Elves (but may deceive or bewilder unaware Men) since the difference is to them as clear as the difference to us between fiction, painting, and sculpture, and 'life'.

Goeteia -- and goety, its obsolete English descendant -- operate by invocation, that is to say, by being spoken or cried aloud. The Ancient Greek verb at the root of γοητεία is γοάω, to wail or bewail, especially the dead. That last sentence in the letter is of particular interest since it allows us to see a link between the power of Saruman's voice and Faërian Drama as a product of the power of Elvish minstrelsy. That, however, is an essay for another time. For today it will suffice to note the connections between γοητεία, σοφιστής, and Saruman, which make seeing Saruman as a translation of σοφιστής even more plausible. It draws Saruman even closer to those venal amoralists who used the power of their voices to make the morally worse argument defeat the morally better argument. 

Σοφιστής and 'Saruman', or, Tolkien at play in the fields of philology

Every now and then I see a connection that has been staring me in the face for a long time, one of those connections that seems unbelievably obvious in retrospect. By a long time I mean well more than half of my life, since I have been reading Tolkien for nearly 50 years and Greek for more than 40. Recently I have been read Dennis Wilson Wise's perceptive article, 'Between Rage and Eloquence in Saruman and Thrasymachus', in The Journal of Tolkien Research 3 (2016), and currently I am reading Simon Critchley's book, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us (2019).

Thrasymachus, to whom Wise compares Saruman, was a Sophist, one of those allegedly unscrupulous moral relativist teachers for hire who appeared across the Greek world in the Fifth Century B.C. and taught the art of persuasion. Wise argues that it is no accident that Thrasymachus and Saruman have so much in common. Rather, he argues, Tolkien constructed his portrait of Saruman with the Sophists in mind.

Last night I read the following in Critchley (94): 

The Greek word sophistes originally meant "skilled craftsman" or "wise man", but was used to describe travelling teachers who visited Athens from the mid-fifth century BCE and acquired a negative connotation in the comedies of Aristophanes, like The Clouds, and then in the writings of Plato and, later, Aristotle.

I knew all this, just as I knew that sophistes (σοφιστής) combines σοφία, 'skill', 'craft', 'wisdom', with the agent suffix -στής. I also knew that Saruman is formed in precisely the same way, combining saru, a Mercian dialectal form of Old English searu, 'skill' or 'craft' with the agent suffix -man. Not until I read Wise and Critchley in close proximity did I make the obvious connection. 

Saruman is not attested in extant Old English, but it is more than a significant name invented by Tolkien to suggest to those who know Old English that this particular wizard is cunning and crafty. It is a translation of σοφιστής into Old English, which subtly ties the portrayal of Saruman into the moral concerns of Greek philosophy and politics. 

It is always a pleasure to see Tolkien at play in the fields of philology.

******

I intend to spend more time researching this and writing it up. To my knowledge no one has observed this connection before me, but I only made the connection last night. I also know of at least one occasion where Tolkien considered the use of names based on Greek.

Ulmo, the outer Ocean, and Greek Mythology

Reading Megan Fontenot's recent post on Ulmo in her 'Exploring the Peoples of Middle-earth' series at Tor.com reminded me of a connection I'd recently noticed between this Vala and Greek Mythology. 

But mostly Ulmo speaks to those who dwell in Middle-earth with voices that are heard only as the music of water. For all seas, lakes, rivers, fountains and springs are in his government; so that the Elves say that the spirit of Ulmo runs in all the veins of the world. Thus news comes to Ulmo, even in the deeps, of all the needs and griefs of Arda, which otherwise would be hidden from Manwë.  

Silmarillion, p. 27

and

But Ulmo was alone, and he abode not in Valinor, nor ever came thither unless there were need for a great council; he dwelt from the beginning of Arda in the Outer Ocean, and still he dwells there. Thence he governs the flowing of all waters, and the ebbing, the courses of an rivers and the replenishment of Springs, the distilling of all dews and rain in every land beneath the sky. In the deep places he gives thought to music great and terrible; and the echo of that music runs through all the veins of the world in sorrow and in joy; for it joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomed at the foundations of the Earth. 

Silmarillion, p. 40

On p. 30 of Dr. Marie-Claire Beaulieu's fine book, The Sea in the Greek Imagination, she writes:

The sea also mediates between the different parts of the world due to its connection with a broader hydrological network. All ground water -- that is, not surface runoff -- radiates from the outer Ocean inward into the rivers and springs and then flows outward in to the sea [Plato, Phaedo 111c-112d]. In fact, according to Hesiod Theogony 337-62, the most important daughter of Oceanus is Styx, the river of the Underworld, and all the other rivers of the world are her sisters. Thus the hydrological network connects all the parts of the world, from the invisible world of the gods and the dead beyond the Ocean, to the Underworld, to the surface of the earth. The sea holds the middle position in this network as it receives the water that flows from the rivers and springs of the earth and brings it back to the outer Ocean.

Tolkien clearly knew the Phaedo from university*, if not before, and it would be strange if he had not read the Theogony at some point in school or out, in translation if not in the original. Dr Beaulieu discusses this aspect of the sea in greater length than I can quote here, but many of those texts, too, would have been familiar to Tolkien. The presence of such a 'hydrological network' in both Tolkien and Greek Myth and the general role of the sea as connecting the different worlds strongly suggests the influence of the myths he had read on the myths he was writing, though of course Tolkien re-imagines it by adding the echo of the music to the waters of the world, as well as Ulmo's ability to gather news by means of them.

 *Scull and Hammond, The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, vol 1. Chronology, p. 44 (2017).

Now this a first paragraph

Tragedy shows what is perishable, what is fragile, and what is slow moving about us. In a world defined by relentless speed and the unending acceleration of information flows that cultivate amnesia and an endless thirst for the short-term future allegedly guaranteed through worship of the new prosthetic gods of technology, tragedy is a way of applying the emergency brake.

Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks and Us, p. 3

Here in the first paragraph of his book, Critchley treats us to two sentences of rhetorical delight. The first sentence is balanced, succinct, stately, and tricolonic. Its three dependent clauses ('what...what...what....) move with the deliberateness of the strophe and antistrophe of a Greek Tragic chorus. The first sentence in no way prepares the reader for the second, which is fitting since the second sentence comes in like a tsunami sweeping all before it. It just keeps coming. The thirty-six word prepositional phrase depending on 'In' not only describes 'a world defined' but it portrays that world magnificently. It both shows and tells. Finally arriving at the main clause and finding the last two words of the sentence to be 'emergency brake', I laughed out loud with delight. It's just magnificent. That paragraph alone was worth the price of the book.

When put to shame by a dwarf and fairy queen, shut up and take it. (FR 2.vii.359)

'Dark is the water of Kheled-zâram, and cold are the springs of Kibil-nâla, and fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-dûm in Elder Days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone.' She looked upon Gimli, who sat glowering and sad, and she smiled.  

And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. Wonder came into his face, and then he smiled in answer. 

He rose clumsily and bowed in dwarf-fashion, saying: 'Yet more fair is the living land of Lórien, and the Lady Galadriel is above all the jewels that lie beneath the earth!' 

(FR 2.vii.356)

Often he took Gimli with him when he went abroad in the land, and the others wondered at this change.

(FR 2.vii.359)

A thought occurred to me on the drive home tonight. The reason for Legolas' change of heart towards Gimli once they got to Lothlórien lies in the interchange between Gimli and Galadriel. The kindness and understanding of the one and the humble courtesy and eloquence of the other shamed him, opening his eyes far more than Galadriel had opened Gimli's.




#headcanon

Again, sternly, 'with other vision' (RK 6.iii.945)

In my post on this subject on 9 May 2020 I did not comment on Sam's use of 'stern' to describe how he saw Frodo 'with other vision' both in the Emyn Muil and on Mt Doom. The persistence of this single word unaltered, while the rest of the description changes and darkens, makes it stand out quite proudly when comparing the two visions. Here are the relevant phrases once more:

a tall stern shadow, a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud

(TT 4.i.618)

stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire.

(RK 6.iii.945)

Sternness is of course commonly associated with a kingly or authoritative manner or appearance. Aragorn, Gandalf, Boromir, Faramir, Denethor, Théoden, and Éowyn are all called stern. Frodo is repeatedly called stern as he tries to tame Gollum by means of the Ring (TT 4.i.616, 618 twice;.iii.640, 643). Yet the word has another sense, one long obsolete and unfamiliar to most people today. In Middle and Early Modern English, in authors from Layamon to Shakespeare, it could also mean merciless or cruel. We need look no farther than Tolkien’s own edition of Ancrene Wisse for two most pertinent examples of precisely this sense of the word:

‘He dude him seoluen bitweonen us & his feader þe þreatte us forte smiten ase moder þe is reowðful deð hire bitweonen hire child ant te wraðe sturne feader hwen he hit wule beaten.’

‘He put himself between us and his Father who was threatening to smite us, just as a mother who is merciful puts herself between her child and the wrath of a stern father when he wishes to beat him’.

(187/17-20)

In this first passage we see the sturne feader contrasted with the moder þe is reowðful. Given the father's intent and the mother's compassion or mercy, 'cruel' would be accurately render sturne here. 

Rihtwisnesse, he seið, mot beo nede sturne, ant þus he liteð cruelte wið heow of rihtwisnesse. Me mei beon al to riht wis. Noli esse iustus nimis. In ecclesiaste.

‘Justice’, he says, ‘must necessarily be stern’, and thus he dyes cruelty with the hue of righteousness. But one may be all too righteous. ‘Be not excessively just.’ [It says] in Ecclesiastes.

(138/16-18)

That ‘untouchable now by pity’ follows 'stern' immediately further argues that by the time they reach Mt Doom Frodo’s sternness has gone beyond righteousness towards cruelty. For given the cardinal importance Gandalf assigned to pity and mercy in The Shadow of the Past, a lesson Frodo refused to learn until his own sufferings and the wretchedness of Gollum taught him otherwise, to be beyond pity’s touch simply cannot be good. 

Moreover, there is less to Frodo’s appearing to be ‘a figure robed in white’ than meets the eye. In the Emyn Muil Sam saw him as ‘a mighty lord’ who shone with a light from within, something Sam and Gandalf have seen Frodo do before. Here on Mt. Doom the most important element in the vision is the Wheel of Fire. Here it is the Ring which blazes with a light of its own and which has transfigured the ‘mighty lord’ into an indistinct ‘figure’, an ‘it’ rather than a person. 

The whiteness which robes the figure is also ambiguous, since whiteness can be deceiving. When Frodo becomes able to see beneath the cloaks of the Black Riders, he sees them and their clothing as grey and white (FR 1.xi.195; xii.213). Saruman the White also appears white, when he is so no longer. The dismissive 'but' that follows at once identifies the Wheel of Fire as by far the more important detail. In the end the Wheel is what remains, and thus it is from the Wheel that the voice seems to speak, loud and cruel. 

I'll show myself out (RK 6.iii.946)

'Precious, precious, precious!' Gollum cried. 'My Precious! O my Precious!' And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone. 

(RK 6.iii.946)

'Precious' six times and 'my' twice, which certainly makes clear his view of things:


'Methinks I could not die anywhere
so contented as in the [R]ing's company'

(Henry V 4.i.130-31).

I'll show myself out.

'With other vision' (RK 6.iii.945)

While working on the scenes at Mt Doom lately, I have been staring a lot at the passage quoted just below, and reflecting on the description of what Sam sees here 'with other vision'. The phrase 'a figure robed in white' (all italics mine) at first glance seems to be positive, and thus is not well-matched to the obviously negative phrases on either side of it.

A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire.  

(RK 6.iii.945)

This passage also directs our attention back to the scene in the Emyn Muil where Sam first saw Frodo and Gollum 'with other vision'. 

For a moment it appeared to Sam that his master had grown and Gollum had shrunk: a tall stern shadow, a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud, and at his feet a little whining dog. 

(TT 4.i.618)

Frodo, as Sam sees him in these two moments, has changed from 'a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud' to a 'figure robed in white'. In each scene what Sam sees is very much tied up with the power of the Ring, by which Frodo is seeking to dominate Gollum. In the Emyn Muil Frodo is doing so for the first time. In the second, they are on the slopes of Mt Doom not far from the Chambers of Fire. As they have gotten closer to the place of the Ring's forging and as Frodo has been slowly worn down by the burden of it, what Sam sees has changed from a mostly positive image to a mostly negative image. The first Frodo sounds more like Gandalf or Aragorn, the pitilessness of the second at once declares a crucial difference, as does his whiteness, which is undermined by its being external and denied by the Wheel of Fire. Even Sam can see it now. The liturgy of their sufferings between the Emyn Muil and the Sammath Naur has changed them, master and servant alike. In the first Sam regards Frodo with admiration and Gollum with contempt. In the second he looks upon them both in sorrow and pity. 

That Sam comes to view his master with pity is hardly a surprise. That in one instant he comes to pity Gollum and to see the disturbing truth of the effect of the Ring on Frodo -- that he is beyond pity and embracing the Ring -- is more remarkable. It also inevitably directs the reader back to the scene on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, in which Gollum is on the point of repentance, but Sam wakes and misunderstands what he is seeing. He rebukes Gollum, but the reader knows he is wrong to do so because the narrator has allowed the reader to see with other vision the truth of this scene.

Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee – but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing. 

(TT 4.ix.714)

Nor should we allow 'robed in white' to dupe us into thinking that the whiteness must betoken goodness, or that Sam takes it as such (though he has misjudged others, too, in protecting Frodo). Aside from the phrases before and after 'robed in white', our thoughts should quickly turn to Saruman the White, the color of whose robe had been first a lie and then an illusion for quite some time. More relevant here, however, is what Frodo sees at Weathertop, while wearing the Ring, and then at the Ford of Bruinen, while almost in the world of the wraiths himself because of the wound he suffered at Weathertop. He finds he can see beneath the robes of the Black Riders.

In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes;

(FR 1.xi.195)

 and

He could see them clearly now: they appeared to have cast aside their hoods and black cloaks, and they were robed in white and grey. 

(FR 1.xii.213)

There's obviously a great deal more to say about all of these passages and how they fit into the larger picture of how the Ring affects those bearing it and near it as well. For now, the lack of harmony within Sam's vision on Mt Doom is a clue to his own uneasiness about what he's seeing in Frodo moments before he claims the Ring for himself.

Authorial high-jinks on the slopes of Mount Doom

As we've seen before, Tolkien is hardly averse to slipping a bit of humor or even (gasp!) irony into his writing. We might not expect it on the slopes of Mount Doom, however.

And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dur was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung. 

(RK 6.iii.946, emphasis mine)

Sauron's discovery of what a fool he's been is apocalyptic both literally and metaphorically, and I would be hard-pressed to say which sense predominates. The Greek verb from which apocalypse and apocalyptic derive -- ἀποκαλύπτω -- means quite simply 'to reveal', as in 'the magnitude of his folly was revealed to him'. The New Testament book known in English as Revelation is called Ἀποκάλυψις (Apocalypsis) in the Greek original. Metaphorically, of course, it has been used for well over a century to mean: 

'Of, relating to, or characteristic of a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; cataclysmic.' 

(OED)

 That same sentence also recalls the moment thousands of years before, which Gandalf spoke of in The Council of Elrond:

For in the day that Sauron first put on the One, Celebrimbor, maker of the Three, was aware of him, and from afar he heard him speak these words, and so his evil purposes were revealed. 

(FR 2.ii.253)

and

Out of the Black Years come the words that the Smiths of Eregion heard, and knew that they had been betrayed: 

   One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
   One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.

(FR 2.ii.254)

The irony here is nothing short of precious.

Finally there's the 'blinding flash' which paradoxically allows Sauron to see, which it is tempting to see as an allusion to Amazing Grace, except that in Tolkien's time Roman Catholics and Protestants were rather less ecumenical with their hymns than they have since become. Then, too, Amazing Grace seems to have been far better known in the US than it was in the UK, where it only became popular in the 1950s and was first published in a hymnody in the 1960s. So, we had better regard this as unlikely to be an allusion, though not impossible.

Oedipus and the Royal Navy -- Not quite the thing, you know

This is probably my favorite fictional example of the reception of the myth of Oedipus. Captain Jack Aubrey is on deck speaking to his former midshipman, Captain William Babbington, commander of HMS Oedipus, while politely ignoring the argument raging below them in the captain's cabin between their newly married friends, Dr. Stephen Maturin and Diana Villiers.

The yards were braced just so, the Oedipus was heading for Dover over a quiet, gently rippling sea, her deck was almost as steady as a table, and now that all was coiled down and pretty there was scarcely a sound but the wind in her rigging, the distant cry of gulls, and the water slipping down her side. They were standing not far from the cabin skylight, and in the comparative silence they distinctly heard the words, ‘God’s death, Maturin, what an obstinate stubborn pigheaded brute you are, upon my honour. You always were.’

‘Perhaps you would like to see our figurehead, sir,’ said Babbington. ‘It is a new one: in the Grecian taste, I believe.’

Oedipus might well have been in the Grecian taste, if the Greeks had been much given to very thick paint, an insipid smirk, eyes fixed in a meaningless glare, and scarlet cheeks. The two captains stared at the image and after a while Jack said, ‘I was never any great fist at the classics, but was there not something rather odd about his feet?'

‘I believe there was, sir. But fortunately they don’t show, he being cut off at the waist.’ ‘Though now I come to think of it, was it not his marriage, rather than his feet?’

‘Perhaps it was both, sir: they might go together. And I seem to recall something in Gregory’s Polite Education to that effect.’

Captain Aubrey pondered, staring at the dolphin-striker. ‘I have it,’ he cried. ‘You are quite right: both marriage and feet. I remember the Doctor telling me the whole story when we lay alongside Jocasta in Rosia Bay. I do not mean the least fling at your figurehead, still less your brig, Babbington, but that family was not really quite the thing, you know. There were some very odd capers, and it ended unhappy. But then the relationships between men and women are often very odd, and I am afraid they often end unhappy....

Patrick O'Brian

The Surgeon's Mate