A Long-expected Parenthesis -- Textual Clues to How Much of The Lord of the Rings Bilbo Wrote

 

This essay first appeared back in November and December of 2021 as five separate posts, which I have now decided to combine into one, while adding a sixth part with some conclusions in it. When I first got the idea for this post, my idea was to write it up quickly. The more I looked at the evidence I had gathered (with the welcome support and feedback of Joe Hoffman1), the clearer it became that a longer post was in order. The divisions reflect the original posts.

Part One

For some years now I have been inclined to believe that Bilbo is the narrator of the early chapters of The Lord of the Rings. But how far he carried on with the story remains hard to say. I had also heard that Michael Drout had a similar opinion, which he was kind enough to confirm for me, but we didn't have the chance to discuss details. Recently, however, I noticed something about the text that looks very much like it might be a clue. First let's look at what we know.

Bilbo's conversation with Frodo and Sam in Rivendell in Many Partings makes clear that he didn't get very far.

The evening deepened in the room, and the firelight burned brighter; and they looked at Bilbo as he slept and saw that his face was smiling. For some time they sat in silence; and then Sam looking round at the room and the shadows flickering on the walls, said softly:

'I don't think, Mr. Frodo, that he's done much writing while we've been away. He won't ever write our story now.' 

At that Bilbo opened an eye, almost as if he had heard. Then he roused himself. 'You see, I am getting so sleepy,' he said. 'And when I have time to write, I only really like writing poetry. I wonder, Frodo my dear fellow, if you would very much mind tidying things up a bit before you go? Collect all my notes and papers, and my diary too, and take them with you, if you will. You see, I haven't much time for the selection and the arrangement and all that. Get Sam to help, and when you've knocked things into shape, come back, and I'll run over it. I won't be too critical.'

        (RK 6.vi.988)

It has also been long observed that the narrator of the earliest chapters of The Lord of the Rings starts out sounding much like the narrator of The Hobbit, but that changes before too long. Further, we have Tolkien's remarks in letter 151 of September 1954.

Frodo is not intended to be another Bilbo. Though his opening style is not wholly un-kin. But he is rather a study of a hobbit broken by a burden of fear and horror — broken down, and in the end made into something quite different. None of the hobbits come out of it in pure Shire-fashion. They wouldn't. But you have got Samwise Gamwichy (or Gamgee).

In the Letters Tolkien uses 'style' many times, but almost invariably he is speaking of words -- of narrative, diction, and language -- when he does so. It's little likely then that his reference to Frodo's 'opening style' refers to anything but his writing style, a remark he offers as a concession of some regard in which they were a bit alike. We might expect Frodo, then, to begin in a style similar to Bilbo's, but to develop his own reasonably soon. But when does his portion of the narrative 'open'? And when does his style begin to diverge from Bilbo's?

I would suggest that the punctuation gives us a clue. During a recent reading of A Long-expected Party I noticed, not for the first time, that the narrator made an awful lot of parenthetical remarks. I found myself relishing the marvelous running social commentary the narrator was offering on his fellow hobbits. 'For what do we live', we might almost hear him ask, 'but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?' That so much of this commentary is nested in and around parentheses made me wonder. On reflection I could not recall it as a conspicuous feature of the entire work. 

A quick search revealed my impression was correct. The entire Lord of the Rings (removing the appendices) contains 158 parenthetical remarks, 20 percent of which (32/158 = 20.25%) occur in A Long-expected Party. If we discount the 25 instances in the Prologue, which we know was written by a Man rather than a Hobbit, the portion in A Long-expected Party approaches a quarter (32/133 = 24%). Numbers aren't everything of course, but this compares rather well with An Unexpected Party, which contains 25 parenthetical remarks out The Hobbit's total of 120 (25/120 = 20.08%) in The Hobbit as a whole.2

Two thirds (22/32) of the parentheses in A Long-expected Party occur before or during the party up to the reactions of the guests to Bilbo's disappearance (FR 1.i.31: 'with a few exceptions'). Of these 22, 14 are funny per se or in their context, and eight simply add information (e.g., 1.i.22: 'the Old Took himself had only reached 130'). There is, however, not a single parenthesis in all of Bilbo's argument with Gandalf about the Ring or in Frodo's brief conversation with Gandalf after Bilbo has gone. The remarks resume again the following morning in very much the same generally humorous vein. Only two of these ten comments are strictly informational ('two Boffins and a Bolger' and 'old Odo Proudfoot's grandson', both at 1.i.39).

Surely it is noteworthy that a long (5+/21 pages), centrally located, and thematically crucial section of this chapter has none of the types of comments we find on almost every other page of it. True, the two scenes found in these pages (31-36) are much more dramatic, more dialogue than narrative, which leaves less scope for parenthetical remarks; but it is also true that there is nothing that either the characters in these scenes or their narrator found in the least amusing. It is a bitter, uneasy darkness at the heart of the chapter, bracketed, as it were, by the far brighter sections on either side (pp 21-31, 36-42).

Part Two

After the 32 parentheses in A Long-expected Party, the number in The Shadow of the Past plunges to five. Of these one occurs in direct speech (Gandalf: 1.ii.53). Three present genealogical information, always of interest to hobbits (all on 1.iii.42). A fifth wryly signals that Frodo had a bad feeling about the 'significant (or ominous)' approach of his fiftieth birthday (1.ii.43), the age at which 'adventure had suddenly befallen Bilbo.' Since Tolkien always uses 'befall' of evil or at least strange and unpleasant events, this explains the rather proleptic 'ominous' as well as pointing to Frodo as the author of this comment. For Bilbo did not regard his adventure as an evil, even when he came to understand that the Ring was; and Frodo, whatever he may have genuinely felt about 'adventures' before Gandalf told him about the Ring, certainly did not want the 'adventure' he got. It would be no surprise then, though it need not be so, if as narrator Frodo took his disquiet as he neared fifty as ominous.

Three is Company contains seven parenthetical statements, of which four are purely informational (1.iii.65, 68, 70, 81), two are humorous comments on Hobbits (1.iii.71, 77) and one again suggests uncertainty in Frodo's attitude towards something that made him uncomfortable (1.iii.70), namely the conversation he overhears between the Gaffer and a stranger later discovered to be one of the Black Riders.

In A Shortcut to Mushrooms one pokes fun at Sam's disappointment about missing the beer at The Golden Perch (1.iv.88) and the other at the way farmers complain about their prospects (1.iv.92).

A Conspiracy Unmasked provides five, three informational (all at 1.v.98), one showing Sam's mixed emotions about leaving the Shire (1.v.99), and one Frodo's about seeing his and Bilbo's things in the house at Crickhollow (1.v.100).

All three in The Old Forest suggest uncertainty. Merry isn't confident that it is the bonfire glade ahead of them (1.vi.111); Frodo doubts it's even possible to turn back (1.vi.113); and Frodo and Sam think the words Old Tom is singing are 'nonsense', but they aren't entirely sure (1.vi.119).

While the first parenthesis In the House of Tom Bombadil conveys details about the house itself (i.vii.124), the other three highlight Frodo's ambivalence regarding the Ring. Indeed these three seem to work together to accomplish precisely that in the scene with Bombadil and the Ring (all at 1.vii.133). When Old Tom returns it, Frodo suspects trickery '(like one who has lent a trinket to a juggler)'. Having put the Ring to the test by donning it, he is 'delighted (in a way)' and 'laugh[s] '(trying to feel pleased)'. It is as if on some level Frodo wished it were not his Ring, even though compelled to prove that it was. Bombadil's imperviousness to the effects of the Ring seems important to Frodo only in so far as it makes him doubt the Ring.

Fog on the Barrow-Downs is reminiscent of A Long-expected Party, which lacks parenthetical statements in the parts in which no one would find anything amusing. Here the scenes telling of the hobbits' capture by the Barrow-wight have no parenthetical remarks until the narrator reaches the moment when he recounts the awakening of Frodo's courage, a virtue 'hidden (often deeply it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit', and informs the reader that 'though [Frodo] did not know it, Bilbo (and Gandalf) thought him the best hobbit in the Shire' (both at 1.viii.140). There is a gentle humor in the humble concession of the first and the citation of Gandalf as an authority in the second, which suggests a resolution in Frodo we have not seen before, and the narrator's faith in that resolution. As such it marks a strong contrast with the uncertainty we've seen before. 

Once Old Tom appears to rescue them the more broadly humorous commentary returns. just as it does in A Long-expected Party once Bilbo has let go of the Ring and left it to Frodo. The next five parenthetical comments, including one in direct speech by Bombadil (1.viii.144), are either amusing themselves or embedded in an amusing context (1.viii.142, 144, 145). Yet as the hobbits are about to return to the road, ending the passage through Faërie they had begun when they entered The Old Forest, even Bombadil makes a remark parenthetically that could be taken to express uncertainty (1.viii.147): 'Tom will give you good advice, till this day is over (after that your own luck must go with you and guide you)'. As always with Tolkien, however, what is called luck or chance is often far more. Bombadil's mention of luck here nicely balances his answer to Frodo's question upon their first meeting (1.vi.126) and thus bookends their acquaintance:

‘Did you hear me calling, Master, or was it just chance that brought you at that moment?’

Tom stirred like a man shaken out of a pleasant dream. ‘Eh, what?’ said he. ‘Did I hear you calling? Nay, I did not hear: I was busy singing. Just chance brought me then, if chance you call it. It was no plan of mine, though I was waiting for you. We heard news of you, and learned that you were wandering.'

Consider also consider that even as Old Tom tells them they must trust to their luck, Strider -- unbeknownst to the reader and the hobbits (and Bombadil?) -- is on the other side of the hedge dividing the Downlands from the road (1.x.163-64): Strider, whose role and arrival had been foreshadowed that very afternoon outside the barrow in Bombadil's conjuring of visions of the 'sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folk that are heedless' (1.viii.146). He, too, had heard news and was waiting for them, though it was no plan of his to find them here (1.x.163-64). 

When Frodo steps out into the larger world and takes on the task of saving the Shire, he leaves behind the place which defined him, where he was 'the Mr. Baggins of Bag End'; and he does so on the very night when it becomes clear -- to the reader if not immediately to Frodo the character -- that this identity is not quite the advantage it had long seemed to be, even within the Shire. Farmer Maggot's attitudes towards Hobbiton show this, as do those of most of the hobbits who discuss the 'queerness' of the Bagginses in the evening at The Ivy Bush and The Green Dragon. Mr. Baggins may find them 'too stupid and dull for words' at times, but behind their deference they have their own opinions of how strange he and Mr. Bilbo are. When Maggot links Frodo's present troubles to Bilbo's adventures, he is doing no more than voicing to Frodo's face the longstanding common opinion that no good could come of adventures to the 'queer' folk who went on them. 

The larger world in which such adventures take place is far more dangerous in fact than even the most parochial hobbit imagines. Even the more broadminded Mr. Baggins of Bag End fails to grasp that not only is he 'quite a little fellow in the wide world after all', but that the wider world, whether it is the Faërie of The Old Forest, Bombadil, and the Barrow-wights, the world of History, or that blending of both in which a man might walk, will not be fenced out forever. The Ring, which threatens Frodo's identity because he already cannot do with it as he wishes, compels him to leave the place that helps define that identity. 

Part Three

As we saw in Part One and Part Two, the number of parenthetical comments rapidly declines from the first chapter onwards. Thirty-two parentheses in A Long-expected Party alone are followed by thirty-four all told in chapters 2 through 8 of Book 1, from 1.5 parentheses per page (32/21) in chapter one to 1 every three pages (34/107) in the next seven chapters. 

In the section of text I will be discussing here in Part Three, At the Sign of the Prancing Pony starts us off with fifteen in thirteen pages, but from Strider through Flight to the Ford we find only eight in the next fifty-two pages. After At the Sign of the Prancing Pony we find only one more chapter that has a comparable number of parentheses, namely Treebeard, with fourteen. But these two chapters are aberrations. For in the balance of the book only once more do we find as many as five (Window on the West), and only three times do we encounter as many as four (A Knife in the Dark, The Ring Goes South, and The Grey Havens). By contrast there are thirty-four chapters with none at all, and seven with only one. At this point a simple chart (not a single logarithm, Joe) makes all perfectly clear: 

The fifteen parentheses in At the Sign of the Prancing Pony are indeed anomalous as far as the trend of the numbers goes, but not without an explanation as far as Hobbits go. As we saw in A Long-expected Party, the comments are good humored until something unpleasant happens, in this case, until Frodo puts on the Ring. Of the fourteen parentheses in the body of this chapter,3 only one is strictly informational -- 1.ix.151: '(mostly dwarves)'. The rest smile upon the various characteristics of hobbits, touching upon their love of food, drink, genealogy and song as well on their peculiar relationship with the Men of Bree and those who pass through the town. If we bear in mind that the lighthearted parentheticals in Fog on the Barrow-Downs follow the horror of the barrow and round out the chapter on a (generally) much more positive vibe than it had at the start, we can see that At the Sign of the Prancing Pony begins emotionally where the previous chapter ended. This provides us with a story that sweeps more or less happily along from the moment when Frodo does precisely the right thing in the barrow to a moment when he does absolutely the wrong thing at the inn, leading to the rescue of his friends from the wight in the former, and plunging them into grievous danger in the latter.

These two moments help define his relationship with the Ring for Frodo as well as the reader. The decision Frodo faces in the barrow mirrors Bilbo's beneath the Misty Mountains, where he had Gollum's life in his hands. For Bilbo the choice to use the Ring to escape was correct, but for Frodo it would have been wrong; for Bilbo the choice to strike would have been wrong, but for Frodo it was right. Each passed the test. To choose otherwise was to become another Gollum. This is why Gandalf considered the experience in the barrow so crucial. Frodo's situation at Bree also mirrors that of Bilbo at his party. Bilbo, however, put the Ring on intentionally and meant to cause the consternation his disappearance provoked. How the Ring came to be on Frodo's finger in Bree is unclear in the moment, even to Frodo, and draws precisely the sort of comment and attention that Frodo had most wished to avoid. In both cases dark, unpleasant conversations follow, with friends suspected of being enemies. By disappearing, however, Frodo has revealed himself to friends and enemies alike. In fact the two parenthetical comments in the following chapter, Strider, occur in the context of Gandalf's letter, which serves to demonstrate that Strider is a friend despite his rascally looks and Sam's wariness (FR 1.x.167, 169). Once the hobbits have survived the night thanks to Strider, a bit of humor returns with the parentheses in A Knife in the Dark, which smile wanly at Butterbur's insistence that he hadn't slept, Pippin's declaration that he can carry as much as he must, and the hobbits' leaving the 'evil relatives of the cricket' behind in the Midgewater Marshes (FR 1.xi.177, 178, 183). A fourth comment, recounting the happy fate of Merry's ponies who found their way back to Bombadil and thence to Butterbur, hints at a broader happy ending while reminding the reader that the ponies were more sensible when it came to danger than the hobbits (1.xi.179 ; cf. 1.viii.144), a truth which makes quite clear how lucky the hobbits were to meet Strider, just as they had been to meet Bombadil earlier. Strider, as Gandalf and Frodo will both say, is the one who saved [them] from disaster (FR 2.i.220).

Earlier the parentheses helped us see the ambivalence with which Frodo looks down the road ahead of him. We will do well to recall here Bilbo's own inability to make up his mind about the Ring and then to stick to the decision he had made to give the Ring to Frodo, and which he had at least in part arranged his party to enforce. Now they help to illuminate a range of behaviors seen in Frodo and Bilbo alike. These behaviors are at times intentional, at times accidental, at times even heroic. Yet a bad ending is not far off, as we see when Bilbo threatens Gandalf with his sword the night of the party, and when Frodo by betraying his identity and location to the Black Riders endangers the lives of the very friends his courage had saved only the day before. 

The inconsistencies of Frodo's behavior are of a piece with the ambivalence of his feelings, and in these the earliest days of his quest the two give the measure of his burden. What comes next at Weathertop, at the Ford, and in Rivendell will take Frodo further down this road while adding new dimensions to his struggle. He will show courage and insight, hatred of his road and of his enemy, defiance and a wish to dominate those who would dominate him, a willingness to take on the quest to save Middle-earth and the desire to strike even his dearest kin when he reaches for the Ring.

Part Four

Unsurprisingly, given what we've seen in Parts One, Two, and Three of this post, the narrator includes no lighthearted parenthetical comments once the Witch-king stabs Frodo on Weathertop. The only such remark in Flight to the Ford describes the rather grim state, doubly grim for Hobbits, of their provisions by the time they met Glorfindel: 'stale bread and dried fruit (which was now all they had left)' (FR 1.xii.211, emphasis mine). Once Frodo is recovering safely in Rivendell, the commentary picks up again slightly, with one parenthetical in direct speech (Gandalf: FR 2.i.221, sourcing an idiom), one strictly informational (the age of Dáin: 2.i.229), and one in which Frodo, himself just out of his sick bed, curiously wonders whether anyone is 'ever ill in Rivendell'(FR 2.i.230). Again unsurprisingly the serious matters of The Council of Elrond leave no room for such commentary, but once more in The Ring Goes South we find four hobbitish asides of a humorous bent (FR 2.iii.277, 280 twice, 288). Once the fellowship sets out, however, another 48 pages pass before the next such item appears, in Lothlórien (FR 2.vi.346), which notes the hobbits' approval of the food shared with them by the elves on their first night in the Golden Wood. Two hundred and twenty pages then pass before we come to another, in the chapter Treebeard, to which we now turn.

Here we encounter the last significant spike upwards, with fourteen parenthetical remarks. No chapter after Treebeard has more than five. Now Joe Hoffman over at Idiosophy has made several excellent observations and -- what is not necessarily the same thing -- has been quite complimentary of my analyses of these texts. Treebeard does sound like an old hobbit dispensing advice to the young, and Merry and Pippin must have been Frodo's sources for this chapter as well as the preceding chapter, The Uruk-hai (where regrettably neither Uglúk nor Grishnákh sounds like the gaffer or even Ted Sandyman). That eleven of the fourteen parentheses annotate descriptions of Treebeard and the other ents bears out Joe's observation (TT 3.iv.465, 470, 471, 472, 478, 480 five times, 483), which receives further support from the three such comments Treebeard makes himself (TT 3.iv.465, 473 , 476). So, too, and more directly does Pippin's quoted reminiscence about Treebeard's eyes, which the narrator makes clear derives from a later time (TT 3.iv.463): 'often afterwards Pippin tried to describe his first impression of them.'

With Merry and Pippin in these two chapters we see again much the same as we have previously seen with Bilbo and Frodo. Painful and frightening experiences close down the good humor on display in the parentheses. The quarrel with Gandalf, the horror in the barrow, the terrible mistake with the Ring at the Prancing Pony, the abduction by the orcs shows that the Hobbit tendency to make jokes even in serious situations has it limits (RK 5.viii.870). Some experiences are too dreadful for asides. But we can also see their resilience. Once they have left the barrow behind once they have escaped the orcs, their spirits quickly revive. 

As with Frodo in the barrow, the seeds of Pippin's courage begin to grow when things looks darkest for him and Merry as captives of the Uruk-hai. Pippin here started to be less the 'fool of a Took' Gandalf had called him (FR 2.iv.313), just as Frodo there became less one of the 'ridiculous Bagginses' (FR 1.ii.49). We also learn from Pippin that Merry had displayed exceptional bravery when the orcs first attacked them (TT 3.iii.444), though he had not had so far to go. The parallel between Frodo and Pippin here, and through Pippin's recollection to Merry, is maintained by the resumption of parenthetical comments once the danger is behind them. The emergence of Pippin and Merry in book three will be followed by Sam's in book four where he begins to carry the narrative burden, i.e., the tale is told increasingly from his perspective as Frodo becomes more isolated in his lonely struggle with the Ring. The parallel thus signals a shift which I shall follow up on in my next post. 

Part Five

Previously we have noted that parenthetical commentary appears and disappears as the story grows lighter and darker by turns, and that this in general follows the relationship of Bilbo and then Frodo with the Ring. We have also just seen a very similar dynamic occur with Merry and Pippin in Book Three. Though neither of them ever possesses the Ring, it is nevertheless Saruman's lust to acquire it and Sauron's to regain it that motivates their kidnapping by the orcs, thus directly causing the darker and lighter turns the narrative takes in The Uruk-hai and Treebeard. Indeed Merry and Pippin perceive the role the Ring is playing in their captivity, and with desperate audacity play upon Grishnákh's mistaken belief that they have it, wagering their lives for a chance at escape. So here, too, the Ring is intimately connected to the dynamic at work and the parentheses. Since it transfers so smoothly from Bilbo and Frodo to Merry and Pippin, and, as we shall presently see, to Sam, it should also be evident just how closely concerned with the hobbit voice these asides are. 

After the cluster of parentheses in Treebeard a long gap of 155 pages follows (TT 3.iv.483-4.iii.638), empty except for the somewhat knowing comment on the sinister multiple meanings of Orthanc (TT 3.viii.555). An even longer gap of 177 pages before Treebeard (3.iv.465) extends back to The Ring Goes South (FR 2.iii.288), also interrupted only once (2.vi.344). This lack of parenthetical comments elsewhere in Book Three coincides with the general absence of the hobbits from this book despite the crucial role played by Merry and Pippin, a dynamic to be repeated in Book Five. Something similar holds true also in Book Two, where the narrative attends more to the Company as a whole than to the hobbits or Frodo specifically. So darker turns in the narrative connected to the Ring may be the most striking reason for the absence of parentheses, but not the only reason.

In Book 4 parentheses reappear in The Black Gate Is Closed. As I noted in Part 4, in this book Sam begins to carry the burden of the narrative as Frodo becomes increasingly preoccupied by his struggle against the Ring. It is Sam to whom the three parenthesis in The Black Gate Is Closed refer, at least two of which give us Sam's commentary on his own thoughts at the time (TT 4.iii.638, 640), and the third almost certainly does, too (4.iii.647). This last is perhaps the most remarkable since Sam's behavior in the tale here is as lighthearted as his comment on it, recalling Frodo from the darkness of his cares and purpose by this recitation of 'the old fireside rhyme of Oliphaunt' outside the Black Gate of Mordor, and recalling for the reader an earlier such moment where Sam did the same thing in the same way, hands behind his back and all (FR 1.xii.206-208). Consider also the comment in Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit where we learn that Sam is 'a good cook, even by hobbit reckoning' (TT 4.v.653), an art hobbits 'begin to learn before their letters (which many never reach)'. Here we must remember that Sam was called out by name a full chapter and seventeen years before we met him as a hobbit who had learned his letters. As with his pose while 'speaking poetry', the narrator is using the parentheses to remind the reader of how special Sam is. Not only could he cook the cabbages and potatoes which his Gaffer thought he'd be better off minding, but he knew his letters and poetry and great tales, which repeatedly helped to sustain him on the long road into darkness he and Frodo had to walk. His sense of mission comes from his learning his letters. Sam Gamgee had read all the right books.

These parentheses also further mark the shift we saw earlier with Merry and Pippin, a shift away from Frodo as his hobbit comrades step forward and begin to take up the roles they will play until the end of the book. This is not to say that Frodo is becoming less important. Far from it. But his are now not the only small hands that turn the wheels of the world while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. Sam in particular becomes critically important, and increasingly the story of Frodo's journey is seen through his eyes because Frodo's eyes are elsewhere.

Part Six

It seem quite clear then that parenthetical asides are an essential element of hobbitry. When the narrative grows more serious or the hobbits are less central, the down-home folksiness of virtually disappears. This is consistent with the much greater density -- roughly 4 times as much -- of parenthetical comments in The Hobbit, which either is or is based on the memoir written by Bilbo alone. (See note 2 below.) It is also consistent with Tolkien's remark, quoted in part one, that Frodo's style was at first somewhat like Bilbo's, but as the Quest took its toll on the spirits of all the hobbits, the similarity to Bilbo and his style fades.

So how much did Bilbo write? In view of all we've seen above a piece of evidence from the Prologue is quite suggestive (FR 12-13). There we are told that even after Bilbo had admitted to Gandalf, Frodo, and all the Council of Elrond, that story he had put about winning the Ring from Gollum was a lie, he never went back and changed it in his memoirs. The true story was preserved by Frodo and Sam and included as an alternative to Bilbo's original tale, but they did not rewrite his story either. Considering this together with the sudden stop in humorous parenthetical comments as A Long-expected Party shifts from the lightheartedness of the leadup to the party to the darkness and anger of Bilbo's argument with Gandalf about the Ring, it's not unreasonable to conclude that Bilbo got no farther than the moment he put on the Ring at the party and vanished. Consider also that Bilbo suddenly came to a new and painful understanding of the Ring in the moment he looked into Frodo's face at their first meeting in Rivendell. For he saw the look in Frodo's eyes when Frodo wished to strike him for reaching for the Ring. He confesses as much:

The music and singing round them seemed to falter, and a silence fell. Bilbo looked quickly at Frodo’s face and passed his hand across his eyes. ‘I understand now,’ he said. ‘Put it away! I am sorry: sorry you have come in for this burden; sorry about everything. Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story. Well, it can’t be helped. I wonder if it’s any good trying to finish my book? But don’t let’s worry about it now – let’s have some real News! Tell me all about the Shire!’

            (FR 2.i.232)

And even if he tries here to change the subject with a joke, as hobbits do, the next morning at the Council he again says he understands when he disavows and apologizes for having lied about the Ring before:

But I will now tell the true story, and if some here have heard me tell it otherwise’ – he looked sidelong at Glóin – ‘I ask them to forget it and forgive me. I only wished to claim the treasure as my very own in those days, and to be rid of the name of thief that was put on me. But perhaps I understand things a little better now. Anyway, this is what happened.’

(FR 2.ii.249)

Given this, I would suggest that Bilbo either wrote nothing at all, or he stopped with his disappearance from the party. If he couldn't bring himself to change his memoir to reflect the truth he had now admitted and apologized for, that he could write an honest account of his ugly confrontation with Gandalf that night is hard to imagine. If either of these suggestions of mine is correct, then his only written contribution to Frodo's story would be his poems and the snarky notes he left with the gifts for his friends and relatives. 

______________________________________

1 I have found Joe's friendship, humor, and commentary invaluable for some years now. He is also my second if I am challenged to any duels. 

2 The Hobbit is also far more densely packed with parentheses: 120 in 95356 vs 158 in 481,103. The Hobbit also raises its own questions about narrators, which we shall examine elsewhere in connection with the narrators of The Lord of the Rings. The interested reader should look to Paul Edmund Thomas' 'Some of Tolkien's Narrators' in Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edd. V. Flieger and C. Hostetter (2000).

3 The one parenthesis not in the body of the text is in a footnote on 1.ix.160 which explains that 'Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She.'

Tolkien Reading Day 2023

 

Here's my contribution for this year's Tolkien Reading Day. I hope you enjoy it.

Beren One-Hand, Bruce the Shark, and Homer

It's fairly common knowledge that, when Tolkien has the werewolf Carcharoth bite off Beren's hand in The Silmarillion, he is drawing on Norse mythology, in which the wolf Fenrir did the same to the god Týr. What many don't recognize is that Tolkien is also drawing on Homer here, not for the story itself, but for the name of the wolf. In The Silmarillion Tolkien translates Carcharoth as 'the Red Maw', but his original name in The Tale of Tinúviel was Karkaras/Carcaras, which meant 'knife-fang.'

In Ancient Greek κάρχαρος, karkharos, meant 'saw-like, jagged, so with saw-like jagged teeth.' One word deriving from this is καρχαρίας, karkharias, defined as 'a kind of shark, so called from its saw-like teeth'. Also connected are the adjectives καρχαρόδους, karkharodous, and καρχαρόδων, karkharodon, both of which mean 'with saw-like teeth.' 

These words may also seem familiar from the scientific name of The Great White Shark, carcharodon carcharias (to use the Latin spelling of the words), or 'the shark with the saw-like teeth.'

Whether Tolkien knew anything about Great White Sharks, I don't know. But he certainly knew his Homer, and twice in the Iliad Homer uses different forms of καρχαρόδους to describe dogs. At line 360 of book 10, he speaks of καρχαρόδοντε δύω κύνε, karkharodonte dyo kyne, 'two saw-toothed dogs', and at line 198 of book 13 we again find κυνῶν ... καρχαροδόντων, kynon ... karkharodonton, 'dogs ... [with] saw-like teeth.' 

I'll leave it to you to decide, gentle reader, how many degrees of separation there are between Tolkien and Bruce the Shark.

No, not that 'Red Maw.'

Pre-order 'Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many'

Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many now has a publication date -- 12/12/2023 -- and an ISBN: 9781606354711.

A feature of special note is that the book will be published in paperback, in order to make it more readily available to readers.

It is available for pre-order from most of the usual suspects. As more are rounded up, I will add links here. But to begin with:

Bookshop.org

Book Depository

Barnes and Noble

Amazon.com

Amazon.uk

Amazon.ca

Amazon.de

Amazon.fr

Amazon.com/mx

Amazon.com.br

Amazon.es

Waterstones

'The Faun's Bookshelf' by Emily Austin Design.

Was Tolkien riffing on Genesis A 36-38 at RK 5.vi.841? From the houses of lamentation to the House of Mirth.

While reading the Old English poem Genesis A this Monday evening (as one does) I came across the word helleheafas in the following passage (lines 36-38):

                                 sceop þam werlogan 

            wræclicne ham    weorce to leane,

            helleheafas,   hearde niðas

        [God] appointed for the faithbreakers
a miserable home    in repayment for their deed,
the lamentations of hell,      hard troubles.

The context here is the war in heaven imagined to have taken place before creation began, that is, before Genesis1. So, despite the title of the poem, it begins before the beginning, which for the early medieval English was an even better place to start. (It wasn't much of a war either. God swatted them into Hell without the least ado.)

Now, while I recognized 'hell' in the first half of the word, I didn't immediately scan the second part as 'lamentation, mourning, wailing'. Checking the Dictionary of Old English the word helleheaf seems to occur only here in extant Old English. There isn't even an entry for it in the older Bosworth-Toller Old English Dictionary. When a word appears only once, scholars have a term for that, and like all 'proper' scholarly terms originating before the 20th Century, that term comes from Latin or in this case Greek: hapax legomenon (ἅπαξ λεγόμενον). It means 'said once.' A. N. Doane, the editor of my text of Genesis A, points out that there are some odd marks in the manuscript which make helleheafas hard to make out at first. It looks like it says helleheaftas, the second part of which -- heaftas -- doesn't seem to exist in Old English. 

This is precisely the sort of thing that would have made an old-school bold philologist like Tolkien cock an eyebrow. Hold that thought a moment.

Two things resonated in my head as a I read these lines. First, given the association of 'misery' and 'home' in the phrase wrætlicne ham in line 37, the retribution for the angels' rebellion in weorce to leane ('in repayment for their deed'), and the 'lamentations of hell' of helleheafas, I was reminded of RK 5.vi.841, where the Witch-king threatens Éowyn with ghastly payback for trying to hinder him:

‘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.’

Second, the juxtaposition of the vowels in helleheafas made me think of a simliar juxtaposition in line 101 of Beowulf, which calls Grendel a feond in helle, 'a devil in hell.' Now some scholars have argued from time to time since the 1880s that, since Grendel is quite alive at this moment in the poem and thus is clearly not in hell, we should emend the words feond in helle to feond in healle. In this case Grendel is not 'a devil in hell', but a 'devil in the hall,' that is, in Heorot, Hrothgar's hall in Beowulf. Tolkien certainly knew of this suggested emendation, but appears to have discounted it. In his translation and commentary he uses 'devil in hell,' though he signals his awareness that Grendel's place in hell is at least metaphorical to start with (Beowulf T&C 158-59).

What I am wondering in view of all of this, is if Tolkien might have looked at helleheafas, 'lamentations of hell' and thought healleheafas, 'hall of lamentations' or 'halls of lamentation'? Not as a proposed emendation to the text of Genesis A, but simply as a word that might have existed and been an apt description of the house of misery where retribution is meted out. 

Consider also that the Witch-king immediately afterwards calls Éowyn a fool because 'no living man can hinder' him' and she laughs at him because she is 'no living man,' and the text underlines her laughter by noting that to Merry it seemed 'of all the sounds in that hour the strangest.' So we have a reference to 'the houses of lamentation' and someone laughing and being called a fool. This brings to mind Ecclesiastes 7:4 (KJV): 'The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

In Tolkien's day this verse would have been quite well known, a popularity made even greater by the widespread fame of Edith Wharton's splendid and successful 1905 novel, The House of Mirth. Whether Tolkien read Wharton's novel is anybody's guess -- don't count him out -- but the title would have been familiar to him and its allusion would at any rate have been entirely clear. The Old English word heaf, which we find in helleheaf, may also be translated as 'mourning.' So the houses of lamentation to which the Witch-king refers are also the houses of mourning. And, as we all know, it is he who is really the fool here, not Éowyn. For him the house of mirth and the house of lamentation are one. So Tolkien is not simply retasking Macbeth in this particular scene, but also Ecclesiastes, maybe Edith Wharton, and just perhaps, with truly magnificent philological obscurity, Genesis A as well. 

__________________________

I'd like to thank my good friend, Simon Cook, for quoting a bit of Beowulf which reminded me of a bit of Genesis A, which sent me down a delightful rabbit-hole at 2 AM. ;-)

The Avoidance of 'Sin' in Tolkien

        In my forthcoming book, Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many, I discuss Tolkien's use of the Greek word ἁμαρτία (hamartia) in his essay Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics (17). He mentions the word there in connection with 'doom' as alternative factors effecting the tragedy we often see in human life and portray in stories. He is clearly thinking about Aristotle's use of ἁμαρτία in The Poetics, where it refers to the 'mistake' or 'flaw' in action, understanding, or both that causes the reversal of fortune and downfall of tragic protagonists like Oedipus. As the many mistakes and flawed choices made by characters such as the doomed character Túrin show, Tolkien saw both fate and choice as significant questions in the mythic world he created. 

        Of course Tolkien was also quite well aware that ἁμαρτία had another meaning, a Christian meaning, namely 'sin.' So I took the time to investigate places in his works where we find the word 'sin', and I thought some about what it might have to tell us. I found the time interesting and well spent, but for various reasons I decided not to include my discussion of it in the final copy of my book. But I still think what I found is interesting, and thought that some others might, too. I may yet spend more time on it and write it up as an article, but for now I'll just share it here. No doubt in some places the discussion will seem to refer to a larger discussion, which will (surprise) be found in my book when it appears later this year.

 ______________________

        In view of the spiritual harm mortal Ring-bearers suffer from possessing and using the Rings of Power, and the significance we have already attached to how they begin their possession of it, both of which have a bearing on pity especially in this wider context, we should recall that another meaning of hamartia was available to Tolkien’s mind. For in the writings of early Christianity hamartia commonly means ‘sin.’[i] Yet in recalling this particular meaning we must not ignore that, though mistakes and misdeeds abound within the legendarium, Tolkien eschews the word sin in telling of them. It never appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, or The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, or in any of the original texts published in the eleven volumes of The History of Middle-earth. The three occasions in The History of Middle-earth where we find ‘sin’ used are editorial – once Christopher Tolkien, once C. S. Lewis, and once Tolkien himself – and serve only to emphasize how far from direct contact with his legendarium Tolkien kept the word and the concept.[ii]

        Similarly, in The Nature of Middle-earth three of the four uses of ‘sin’ are also editorial. In his appendix on the Metaphysical and Theological Themes found within the legendarium, Carl F. Hostetter discusses Death and the Fall of Man as related by Andreth in connection with the Roman Catholic view on ‘original sin’ (Nature 408-09). Tolkien himself, in a note from the 1970s speculating on life-cycles of the Elves, comments that it was ‘uncertain’ whether the fading of the Eldar was always a part of their nature or a ‘“punishment” for the sins of the Eldar’ (Nature 156). Finally, however, in a text written in the mid-1950s from the perspective of someone within the legendarium the unnamed author states that the Eldar did not regard eating the flesh of animals as ‘sinful or against the will of Eru’ (Nature 271). Indeed the closest engagement with ‘sin’ comes in his translations of the Hail Mary and the Our Father into his Elven tongues, a feat which blends his ‘secret vice’ with this personal devotion and gives it expression through the once widespread practice of translating English verse into ancient tongues, whether as a lark or a lesson.[iii] Tolkien’s contemporary, Maurice Bowra, may have produced a brilliant rendering of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan into Ancient Greek verse, but he didn’t have to invent Greek, too.[iv]

        From what we can see, Tolkien generally avoided categorizing the misdeeds and mistakes of characters as ‘sins,’ despite ample opportunities across decades of writing; or, if he did so name them, as we have seen him do on rare occasions after he finished The Lord of the Rings his practice resembles the editorial comments of his editors, like Christopher Tolkien and Carl F. Hostetter, or the mock editorial engagement of C. S. Lewis with The Lay of Leithian. Morgoth and Sauron, for example, and their works may be called evil, but neither narrator nor character within the legendarium calls them sinful or their deeds sins. So much for what we find in Tolkien’s writings in or on the legendarium. What of ‘sin’ in his letters, which are likely the single most important source for the legendarium that is not itself a part of it?

        Of the ten letters which speak of ‘sin,’ six use the word wholly in connection with Tolkien’s personal faith and his life in this world, with no mention at all of his writings.[v] Of the remaining four, one is a bit of a joke to his son, Christopher, about the RAF planes, called ‘Mordor-gadgets,’ whose destructive power and purpose Tolkien detested as an actualization of the desire to dominate others (no. 75, p. 88). In the other three, he is pondering certain actions or possibilities within the Secondary World in terms of the Christian understanding of ‘sin,’ but he is once again cautious in the application of Primary World Christian terminology to the theology of the Secondary World. In Letter 153 (p.195) in answering a fellow Catholic’s theological queries and objections about The Lord of the Rings he accepts that some acts within the legendarium can be viewed as ‘sinful,’ but at the same time he makes clear that in doing so he is undertaking a characterization in Primary World terms of what would be the case within the Secondary World if Morgoth or the Valar took certain actions contrary to the will of Eru.[vi] In Letter 181 (p. 237) he speaks of the Istari being susceptible to ‘the possibility of “fall”, of sin, if you will.’ Lastly, in Letter 212 (p. 285) he points out that the Elvish view of Death as the Gift of Ilúvatar to Men ‘does not necessarily have anything to say for or against such beliefs as the Christian that “death” is not part of human nature, but a punishment for sin (rebellion).’ His caution signals that he sees the applicability of the terminology of one world to the other, but that he resists going further. ‘Mistake’ and ‘sin’ both exist along the continuum of meaning inhabited by the word hamartia, but within Arda Marred the mistakes the characters make or avoid making determine whether they are in a tragedy of some sort or a fairy-story. In the same way the truth of myth partakes of the truth of the evangelium (OFS ¶ 103), but that does not make them the same.

        The avoidance of ‘sin’ suits the focus on pity and the problematic nature of justice being imposed by anyone who cannot provide justice for those who die but do not deserve to die as much as for those who do deserve death. Healing is another concern Gandalf has for both Gollum and Bilbo, but the death Gandalf admits that Gollum deserves perforce denies all possibility of the healing he hopes against hope that Gollum might find. The avoidance of ‘sin’ also better suits the pagan world of the Third Age of Middle-earth and better allows pity to span the divide between the hope of Christians and the hopelessness of Heathens. Just as the vision of the Beowulf-poet looks back from the Christian day into the Heathen night, so does Tolkien.

---

[i] In Romans 5:13, Saint Paul writes: ‘Before the Law sin existed in the world, but sin is not counted [against us] if there is no Law.’ (‘ἄχρι γὰρ νόμου ἁμαρτία ἦν ἐν κόσμῳ, ἁμαρτία δὲ οὐκ ἐλλογεῖται μὴ ὄντος νόμου’.). That an accounting was not made of sins before the law existed might possibly have some bearing on why Tolkien almost never uses the various forms of the word sin within the legendarium.

[ii] Christopher Tolkien states that ‘suicide is declared a sin’ in his father’s description of why Túrin chose against it at LT II 125, but this is rather the son’s characterization than the father’s words. At Lays 379 ‘sin’ occurs in one of C. S. Lewis’ mock commentaries on The Lay of Leithian. Finally, in Morgoth’s Ring (392) Tolkien himself comments that ‘Manwë must be shown to have his own inherent faults (though not sin)’ which he follows directly with a footnote, pointing out that such a ‘weakness’ or ‘inadequacy’ ‘is not sinful when not willed, and when the creature does his best…as he sees it – with the conscious intent of serving Eru.’ So, in his one mention of ‘sin’ Tolkien mentions it only to deny it would be right to describe the fault in question as sin.

[iii] On the prayers, see J. R. R. Tolkien, Vinyar Tengwar 43 (2002) 5-39; 44 (2002) 5-38. On Tolkien’s ‘secret vice’ of language invention, see Tolkien, D. Fimi and A. Higgins.

[iv] C. M. Bowra’s rendering has the added charm of translating the cultural references into meaningful Greek equivalents. Kubla Khan becomes Minos, and Xanadu become Knossos. Such translations were something of a college industry at the time. Thus, Bowra’s Greek could be published alongside Coleridge’s original without explanation. See S.T. Coleridge, C.M. Bowra, et al. (178-82). Tolkien and Bowra were acquainted, if not always friendly. Tolkien once claimed to have poured melted butter over Bowra’s head and Bowra wrote a letter opposing honors proposed for Tolkien. Any link between the events is speculative. See Scull and Hammond (“C&G”) 2.195-96.

[v] Letters no. 43, p. 48 (to Michael Tolkien); no. 89, p. 101 (to Christopher Tolkien); no. 113, p. 127 (to C. S. Lewis); no. 213, p. 288 (to Deborah Webster[Rogers]); no. 250, p. 337 (to Michael Tolkien); no. 306, p. 395 (to Michael Tolkien).

[vi] Tolkien’s correspondent here was the manager of a Catholic bookshop in Oxford. In the passage, Tolkien’s is careful in his wording, as he imagines what ‘would’ or ‘could’ or ‘might’ come about, ‘if [the Valar or Maiar] fell.’

I also cite:

• The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (978-0261102637)
• Tolkien of Fairy-stories (978-0007582914)
• The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, vol 2 (978-0008214524)
• S. T. Coleridge, Maurice Bowra, et al. 'Versions' in Greece and Rome 3 (1934) 178-82.

"Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring" shortlisted for The Tolkien Society Best Book Award 2024

 

Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring:

 To Rule the Fate of Many

by 

Thomas P. Hillman

A brief description

As the magical ring Bilbo found in The Hobbit became the One Ring to rule them all in The Lord of the Rings, the tale he told of how he had won it became a lie, and the pity that spared Gollum’s life emerged from the darkness beneath the Misty Mountains to challenge the might of Sauron. Yet the pity that Gandalf holds essential to destroying the Ring and defeating Sauron offers the bearer no protection against the corruptions of its power. By joining Tolkien and Frodo on their long and weary road, Pity, Power, and the Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many illuminates the inner struggle Frodo had to face, and Tolkien had to create and explore, between the power Frodo weighs in his hand and the pity for the darkness he comes to hold in his heart.

In composing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent over a decade exploring the dynamics of the power of the Ring and powerlessness of pity. As he did so, all the themes his mythology had embodied since its earliest days during The Great War – Death and Immortality, Fate and Free Will, Divine Justice and the Problem of Evil, Power and War – took on a new aspect at once more vulnerable and more heroic in Frodo Baggins. In turn, as Tolkien began to ponder the expression of these constant themes in The Lord of the Rings, his meditations led him onward to a more philosophical and theological treatment of the unfolding of Ilúvatar's themes in history in later works like the Atrabeth Finrod a Andreth and Laws and Customs Among the Eldar. Like the Beowulf-poet he understood so well, Tolkien could encompass in his sympathy Christian religion and Pagan mythology, the Primary World in which he lived the questions of life and the Secondary World in which he imagined the working out of their answers.

Kent State University Press has in recent years extended a warm welcome to the study of The Inklings, publishing twenty-seven titles so far, including fourteen on J. R. R. Tolkien. It is, therefore, with great pleasure that I announce the forthcoming publication of my book, Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many, which studies the evolving dynamics of the Ring of Power and the paradoxical yet all-important quality of pity, and how this quality came to resonate throughout the entire legendarium as a result of the decade and more Tolkien spent unfolding the history of Arda through the writing of The Lord of the Rings. 

I am abashed, to say the least, to find my book keeping the company of works by scholars such as Verlyn Flieger, Diana Pavlac Glyer, and Amy Amendt-Radeuge -- to name only those who have won The Mythopoeic Society's award for scholaship in Inklings Studies for their work on Tolkien. These and the other scholars who have published on the Inklings with Kent State University Press have of course been nominated for or won awards from scholarly bodies too many to mention here. It is a very flattering thing for my book to be included among them, to borrow a phrase from Tolkien, as a member of 'a class not as a competitor' (Letters no. 156, p. 201)

The ISBN for my book is 9781606354711. It may be purchased from all the usual suspects. 

Two Paragraphs and Two Threats Converging in Tolkien (FR 2.ix.382)

Here's a piece of analysis I decided to take out of my book, To Rule the Fate of Many: Truth, Lies, Pity and the Ring of Power, about which I hope to have an official, public announcement soon. (Absit omen!). I didn't really want to remove it, but I don't think it shows us as much about the argument I am making in my book as it does about Tolkien's ability to construct a scene in a landscape that is more than a backdrop but contributes meaningfully to the way in which this scene from the journey of the Company on the river quite literally flows. The River moves them all along, dividing them, grouping them, moving them apart and back together; and in the eddy and flow of the narrator's attention as it shifts from one character to the next the dreams, thoughts, and anxieties of the members of the Company converge in the two threats threatening them, one from within and one from without. So much of what we've learned about these characters and theirs stories so far is implicit here, and so much that will become clear after the convergence of the threats causes the threads of their stories to separate after the breaking of the Fellowship on Amon Hen and the meeting of Frodo and Gollum in the Emyn Muil.

_____________________

The heart of Legolas was running under the stars of a summer night in some northern glade amid the beech-woods; Gimli was fingering gold in his mind, and wondering if it were fit to be wrought into the housing of the Lady's gift. Merry and Pippin in the middle boat were ill at ease, for Boromir sat muttering to himself, sometimes biting his nails, as if some restlessness or doubt consumed him, sometimes seizing a paddle and driving the boat close behind Aragorn's. Then Pippin, who sat in the bow looking back, caught a queer gleam in his eye, as he peered forward gazing at Frodo. Sam had long ago made up his mind that, though boats were maybe not as dangerous as he had been brought up to believe, they were far more uncomfortable than even he had imagined. He was cramped and miserable, having nothing to do but stare at the winter-lands crawling by and the grey water on either side of him. Even when the paddles were in use they did not trust Sam with one.

As dusk drew down on the fourth day, he was looking back over the bowed heads of Frodo and Aragorn and the following boats; he was drowsy and longed for camp and the feel of earth under his toes. Suddenly something caught his sight: at first he stared at it listlessly, then he sat up and rubbed his eyes; but when he looked again he could not see it any more.

(FR 2.ix.382)

What beautiful paragraphs these are in detail and movement, from character to character, from boat to boat, and from threat to threat. Beginning with the loveliness of Legolas' vivid, dreamlike memory, and Gimli's chivalrous, romantic imaginings, we never expect the uncomfortable turn it takes, with the uneasiness of Merry and Pippin at the disturbing, almost threatening, behavior of Boromir. We then follow Boromir's gaze through Pippin's eyes straight to Frodo in the boat ahead with Strider and Sam. But suddenly and unexpectedly, since our attention has just been directed to Frodo, we find ourselves with Sam instead. But the introduction of Sam here, uncomfortable, unhappy, and untrusted Sam, is a misdirection. It lightens the menace of the sentences on Boromir, but only in order to refocus it a moment later on another threat that is present on the Great River, another one who has his had eyes fixed on Frodo and Frodo's burden for some time now.

It is of course Gollum whom Sam has seen, but the way in which the narrator shifts our gaze from Boromir to Gollum is masterful. Notice how Sam is looking back towards the boats behind his own. Given the previous paragraph, we might expect him to have caught the same look in Boromir's eyes as Pippin had. But it is not so. For just as we followed Boromir's gaze forward to Frodo, but found Sam instead, so, too, we now follow Sam's back, not to Boromir, but to Gollum. When Sam comes to tell Frodo what he has seen, he remarks over and over again on Gollum's eyes, five times in all, thus further pairing these two threats (FR 2.ix.382-83). Nor is this the first time that Frodo has been the object of the intense gaze of Gollum and Boromir (FR 2.vi.345; vii.358; viii.369; ix.383; cf. ix.388). As the day draws near when Frodo must decide between Minas Tirith and Mordor, danger is converging on him from more than one direction. From Gollum of course, as he tracks Frodo down the Great River, but also from his companion Boromir, who, desperate to save his homeland, feels quite keenly the anguish of the choice which lies before Frodo as he sits in the boat just ahead of him with Sam and Strider. And if Gollum, as Boromir himself said, is 'small, but great in mischief' (FR 2.ii.255), what is Boromir?

Tolkien between two publishers, feeling like a fool

14 April 1950

Dear Unwin,

It was odd that our letters crossed. I might have waited a day longer; but the matter is for me becoming urgent. Weeks have become precious. I want a decision yes, or no: to the proposal I made, and not to any imagined possibilities.

Letters  no. 127

________

17 April 1950

[Sir Stanley Unwin to Tolkien:]

.... As you demand an immediate "yes" or "no" the answer is "no"; but it might well have been yes given adequate time and the sight of the complete typescript.

Quoted in note on Letters 128

I've recently been working on an article in which I argue that Tolkien's famous letter 131, so often cited and quoted, actually plays a large role in shaping the subsequent course of his writings on Middle-earth. For in this letter he is attempting to persuade Milton Waldman and Collins publishing to bring out The Lord of the Rings and 'The Silmarillion' together, and in order to do so he has to step back himself and come up with an explanation of how it all fits together, from the Ainulindalë to the tale of Beren One-hand and the Great Jewel, to the tale of Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom. In the Waldman letter Tolkien undertakes for his legendarium what he accomplished for Beowulf in his essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics and for fantasy in On Fairy-stories. The Beowulf essay directly precedes the writing of The Lord of the Rings; On Fairy-stories was written and re-written while he wrote The Lord of the Rings; and the Waldman letter follows immediately after its completion and marks a turning point towards the more philosophically and metaphysically focused writings on the 1950s -- works such as Laws and Customs among the Eldar and the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth. Together these three -- the Beowulf essay, On Fairy-stories, and the Waldman letter are indispensable for understanding the shape of The Lord of the Rings, most immediately, and the legendarium as a whole. 

But I digress. 

As I was looking through the Letters the other night and thinking about Tolkien's struggle, first with Allen and Unwin, and then with Collins, to get someone to publish his work as he thought it should be published, I spotted some details that were both very funny and very interesting. In the first place, there is the humor innate in Tolkien, whose writing process could not unfairly be called asymptotic, demanding an immediate 'yes' or 'no' answer to whether Allen and Unwin would publish both The Lord of the Rings (12 years in the writing and only just 'completed') and 'The Silmarillion' (over 30 years in the writing and not even close to finished, then or later).

What struck me as very funny, however, was the transition from his addressing Sir Stanley Unwin as 'Dear Unwin' in Letter 127 to his addressing Milton Waldman in Letter 131 far more personally as 'My dear Milton'. Tolkien had been in correspondence with Sir Stanley Unwin for more than a dozen years by this time. For at least the first four and a half years Tolkien had addressed his letters to 'Dear Mister Unwin'. Somewhere between February of 1942 (Letters no. 47) and March of 1945 (Letters no. 98), Tolkien became more familiar, dropping 'Mister' and beginning, as we saw above, with 'Dear Unwin'. By the time Tolkien wrote Letter 105 in the summer of 1946 Unwin had been knighted, and so Tolkien, as was proper, addressed him as 'Dear Sir Stanley.' Within a year, however, Sir Stanley suggested that they dispense with titles such as 'Sir' and 'Professor' altogether, to which Tolkien agreed and resumed addressing him as 'Dear Unwin' (Letters no 109).

Now many these days might find 'Dear Unwin' and 'Dear Tolkien' to be a little distant still, perhaps even frosty, but it was not so. For in Beleriand in those days using someone's first name was a privilege reserved for family and maybe very close friends. Tolkien and Lewis were for a long time extremely close, but even they did not call each other by their first names. Lewis called him Tollers or Tolkien. Tolkien called him Lewis or Jack (which was not of course Lewis's name at all). To illustrate this custom, no better or more appropriate authority can be cited than Tolkien's own letter from December 1965 to Rayner Unwin, son of Sir Stanley:

Very Best Wishes for Christmas and the New Year. Do you think you could mark the New Year by dropping the Professor? I belong to a generation which did not use Christian names outside the family, but like the dwarves kept them private, and for even their intimates used surnames (or perversions of them), or nicknames, or (occasionally) Christian names that did not belong to them. Even C. S. Lewis never called me by a Christian name (or I him). So I will be content with a surname. I wish I could be rid of the 'professor' altogether, at any rate when not writing technical matter. It gives a false impression of 'learning', especially in 'folklore' and all that. It also gives a probably truer impression of pedantry; but it is a pity to have my pedantry advertised and underlined, so that people sniff it even when it is not there.

(Letters no. 281)

So it is remarkable to see Tolkien in late 1951 addressing Waldman, whom he had met only in in the autumn of 1949, and whom he was addressing as 'Dear Waldman' in March 1950 (Letters no. 126), as 'My dear Milton'. It stands out even more when we notice that about a year and a half passed between Sir Stanley's rejection of Tolkien's ultimatum, which freed Tolkien to make a deal with Waldman and Collins, and Tolkien's 'My dear Milton,' a year and a half in which Tolkien found himself unexpectedly encountering resistance to his hopes and requests that The Lord of the Rings itself be cut. By late 1951 Tolkien's prospects for publication at Collins were fading, so much so that Waldman himself suggested that Tolkien write a letter to convince Waldman's associates at Collins that the two books must be published together. In this context, 'My dear Milton' has the ring of 'Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.'

At about the same time Tolkien was composing his 10,000+ word letter to Waldman, in late November 1951, called upon Tolkien at home in Oxford, but did not see him since Tolkien was unwell (Scull and Hammond, C&G 1.401). He followed up with a letter, in which among other things he asked Tolkien if he could see 'The Silmarillion', but Tolkien did not reply. By the time Rayner Unwin wrote again in June of 1952 Tolkien's relations with Collins had completely failed, in a manner not unlike his negotiations with Sir Stanley two years earlier, ultimatum, rejection, and all. The failure was catastrophically disheartening and embarrassing for Tolkien, and you can hear it in his response to Rayner Unwin:

When I have a moment to turn round I will collect the Silmarillion fragments in process of completion – or rather the original outline which is more or less complete, and you can read it. My difficulty is, of course, that owing to the expense of typing and the lack of time to do my own (I typed nearly all of The Lord of the Rings) I have no spare copies to let out. But what about The Lord of the Rings? Can anything be done about that, to unlock gates I slammed myself?

(Letters no. 133)

The Salutation? 

Wait for it. 

'My dear Rayner'.

And if 'My dear Milton' makes me think of Princess Leia begging for Obi Wan's help, 'My dear Rayner' reminds me of Frodo's plea to Gandalf: 'O Gandalf, best of friends, what am I to do?' (FR 1.ii.59).

As we know, Tolkien and Allen & Unwin were able to work out their differences, and Tolkien never finished 'The Silmarillion'. 

It may be worth noting that Tolkien's Letters preserve only two further letters addressed to Stanley Unwin. Both come more than ten years after Tolkien's return to Allen & Unwin. In the only one of the two to preserve the salutation, Tolkien reverts to the more formal 'Dear Sir Stanley' (Letters nos. 241 and 248). Rayner Unwin, however, records an amusing and entirely predictable moment, the last time his father and Tolkien ever met, in 1967, which is quoted in Scull and Hammond (C&G III 1369):

"'It was at the Garrick [Club in London]. They were both rather deaf. My father talked about the balance sheet, which Tolkien didn't understand, and he talked about The Silmarillion, which my father didn't understand. But they were full of goodwill. They knew they owed each other a lot -- but they weren't sure for what.'"

Finally, for all Sir Stanley's attention to the balance sheet, in fairness to him we should remember that when Rayner told him in the autumn of 1952 that The Lord of the Rings could lose £1,000, which was a lot of money at the time, Sir Stanley replied:

'If you believe it is a work of genius, then you may lose a thousand pounds.'

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According the Scull and Hammond's Companion and Guide, the last paragraph of Tolkien's Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin was written on a page torn from September in a 1951 planner. Since Tolkien must have begun writing his massive letter to Waldman soon afterwards, I wonder if this is why Tolkien stopped writing the much loved and much longed for story of Tuor. As John Garth has rightly pointed out to me, Tolkien had a lot of other work to do in the fall of 1951 and was also not well, so the Waldman letter may not be solely to blame for Tolkien's ceasing work on Tuor. Even if the Waldman letter should be the reason, however, for Tolkien's stopping, it would not be the reason why he never resumed this marvelous regrettably unfinished tale. Unless, perhaps, we consider the disappointment he felt at the failure of the Waldman letter to secure the simultaneous publication of 'The Silmarillion' and The Lord of the Rings. That surely stung, as did the fact that his experience with Collins had played out similarly to the his experience with Allen & Unwin had done. When Tolkien did return to work on 'The Silmarillion' a couple of years later, his concerns were more philosophical and theological as I mentioned at the beginning of this post. That is, I believe, a result of the overview of his legendarium which the Waldman letter necessitated. But I will argue this in much greater detail elsewhere. 

(Kudos if you got the joke in the title of this post.)

There's a lot more that could be said here. For the moment, I'll just give you the sources. In addition to Letters, there is Scull and Hammond's Companion and Guide for the relevant dates and people, Carpenter's biography of Tolkien, and Rayner Unwin's George Allen and Unwin: A Remembrancer.

Hobbits and the Shire: The strength of the hills is theirs also.

Yesterday, a friend sent me something he was working on about The Lord of the Rings, and what he had to say about Hobbits and the Shire in it immediately made me think of the passage I have quoted below. I couldn't remember where I had read these comments before, though. I was pretty sure it wasn't in anything Tolkien wrote, and I thought it was in Lewis. As it turned out, I was right. It just took me a while to track it down. So to prevent me from forgetting the location of the comments again, I am sharing it with all of you.

The allusion to the 95th psalm in the penultimate sentence just makes me think of Tom Bombadil himself as well as old Tom's assessment of Farmer Maggot: ‘There’s earth under his old feet, and clay on his fingers; wisdom in his bones, and both his eyes are open' (FR 1.vii.132). Remember, too, that the Shire has a power of its own (FR 2.i.222) and it was in the Shire (faced with the redoubtable Gaffer and Farmer Maggot) that 'the hunters before whom all have fled or fallen' faltered (FR 2.ii.260. And am I the only one who hears an echo of T. S. Eliot in 'We are synthetic men, uprooted'?

Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the wood-they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air & later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours. My pen has run away with me on this subject.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to Arthur Greaves, 22 June 1930

Not to find them, not to bind them -- Elrond and the Ring verse

'Yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go farther than you will.'

(FR 2.iii.280)

As I was listening to Corey Olsen on episode 226 of Exploring the Lord of the Rings say that Elrond refuses to 'bind' the members of the Company to the Quest, the word 'bind' suddenly leaped out at me. For obvious reasons (though they were obscure before the moment). The most prominent and important use of the word 'bind' in The Lord of the Rings comes of course in 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.(FR 2.ii.254)

And as soon as I thought of this verse in this connection, my mind then leapt to a statement Elrond made at the start of the council:

‘That is the purpose for which you are called hither. Called, I say, though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.

(FR 2.ii.242)

Elrond's entire approach (not to mention Gandalf's) rejects the kind of control and domination Sauron seeks and the Ring was created to impose, and embraces 'chance as it may seem' and hope. 

A Random Thought about Bill the Pony

I was listening to episode 221 of Corey Olsen's Exploring The Lord of the Rings podcast today (I am about 20 episodes behind -- hey, when I retired I no longer had an hour of driving a day. So my podcast consumption plummeted like a sheep in Monty Python), and the subject of why Bill the pony is so called. Everybody not unreasonably assumes that Sam named Bill after his previous owner, the hateful Bill Ferny. There is some evidence to support that Tolkien saw it this way at least in passing, since in one of the drafts he says Sam called the pony 'Ferny' (Treason 173). So between the inference and the evidence, it may well be true that Sam named Bill after his cruel former owner whom Sam had hit in the nose with a thrown apple (FR 1.xi.180), and whom the pony had kicked the first chance it got.

Bill Ferny flinched and shuffled to the gate and unlocked it. ‘Give me the key!’ said Merry. But the ruffian flung it at his head and then darted out into the darkness. As he passed the ponies one of them let fly with his heels and just caught him as he ran. He went off with a yelp into the night and was never heard of again. 

‘Neat work, Bill,’ said Sam, meaning the pony.

(RK 6.viii.999)

Given Sam's love for the pony and loathing of Ferny, it's hard to see why Sam would have given it the name of a villain who had cruelly mistreated it. As a joke? Perhaps, but to me at least that doesn't seem a joke Sam was likely to make. It would seem hurtful to Bill and too good for Ferny. I just don't see it as in his character. Contrast this with the humor we hear of in The Grey Havens, where we learn that the renewed Bagshot Row came to be known as Sharkey's End, a 'purely Bywater joke' for the place where the Saruman met his end (RK 6.ix.1021-22). But Sam was not from Bywater and Saruman was hated. The bitterness of the joke was founded on a very real sense of Saruman's deserts.

Now to be honest I can only admit that my incredulity proves nothing. It's not much of an argument. Yet who else could Bill the pony be named after? Is there any other alternative? There is, though I concede it's not the strongest or most direct. I just like it better.

What if Bill the pony is named after Bilbo? After all Sam loved the old hobbit, whom he met again in Rivendell after many years, and as far as we can tell it was in Rivendell that Sam first began using the name for the pony. It is there in any event that our attention is drawn to this fact. The text, moreover, supplies us with a parallel for a hobbit naming a pony after a beloved friend. In Minas Tirith Frodo gets a pony which he will ride all the way home. He named the pony 'Strider' and the only time its name is mentioned is in conjunction with Bill (RK 6.ix.1027): 

On September the twenty-first they set out together, Frodo on the pony that had borne him all the way from Minas Tirith, and was now called Strider; and Sam on his beloved Bill.

The unforgiving, unforgotten minute.

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

(TT 4.iv.661)

The moment is as transient in itself as it is enduring in its significance. If only these moments could persist on our memory as it did in this man's, or Sam's, or Tolkien's, to be recalled later in reflection. Part of the tragedy of our species is that with the passing of the individual all these flashes of thought, all the leaps of pity in the dark, all the instants of transcendent beauty glimmering above the things we call good and evil here below -- all these moments are lost. 

We forget (and want to forget) the horrors which we have inflicted on each other and which we have suffered at each other's hands. And forgetting them all, we suffer and inflict them all again, in a thousand other Sommes, a thousand other Treblinkas, a thousand other Hiroshimas, a thousand other Potato Famines, a thousand other Trails of Tears, a thousand other Middle Passages. 

 

Another Allusion to Macbeth?

Tolkien quite famously supplanted Shakespeare's humdrum imagining of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane with the march of the Ents upon Isengard. Even better known thanks to Peter Jackson's film of The Return of the King is Éowyn's clarification for the Witch-king of just how tricky a thing prophecy can be.* I have also long believed that the hobbits' vision, prompted by Bombadil, in which 'strode shapes of Men, tall and grim with bright swords, and last came one with a star on his brow' (FR 1.viii.146) owes something to the vision given to Macbeth by the witches of Banquo's Stuart progeny (Macbeth 4.i).**

This morning, even before coffee, I believe I found another allusion to Macbeth. In The Taming of Sméagol, as Frodo and Sam are trying in vain to find a way down from the heights of the Emyn Muil, Frodo decides they have done enough search for one day:

‘Well,’ he said, at last withdrawing his eyes, ‘we cannot stay here all night, fix or no fix. We must find a more sheltered spot, and camp once more; and perhaps another day will show us a path.’ 

‘Or another and another and another,’ muttered Sam. ‘Or maybe no day. We’ve come the wrong way.’

(TT 4.i.604)

Did you catch the cadence of Sam's answer about tomorrow? The iambic meter of Sam's 'another and another and another' and Macbeth's 'tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow' match perfectly (Macbeth 5.v). Each repeats a three syllable word with the stress on the second syllable, and punctuates the tedium of its creeping pace from day to day with the stress it places on the repeated 'and' which binds them. 'And', as Patrick Stewart says in the clip below, quoting Ian McKellen's advice to him, is 'the important word' in that speech. It carries the burden of what the speaker is feeling, whether it's Macbeth or Sam. 

When I catch things like this, I swear, for a moment I can hear the Inklings laughing.

 

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* As I noted back in 2016, the prophecy about the Witch-king comes true, not in one, but three unexpected ways. Éowyn is no man; Merry is no Man; and the smith who had forged the blade long ago is no living Man. One thing I am going to have to do, I have just realized, is to look beyond Tolkien's reinterpretation of the misinterpreted prophecy to the equivalence of the Witch-king and Macbeth.

** In keeping with Tolkien's belief that Shakespeare was best studied on the page as a concomitant to its being viewed on the stage, I did not make the connection between the vision of Banquo and his  descendants and of Aragorn and his ancestors until I was watching Kenneth Branagh's staging of the play some years ago. Banquo's descendants appeared and strode off across the stage much as the hobbits saw the 'sons of forgotten kings' do in their vision. 

Faramir and the Shards of Boromir's Horn

Quite a while back I came to the conclusion that Faramir doesn't actually see Boromir's funeral boat, as he is convinced he does, but a vision of it, as Frodo insists. It is of course impossible to prove either way; and that is probably as it should be. The mythic aspect of Faramir's vision is far more significant than whether it is factually true. I daresay even Faramir would have thought so, regardless of what he believed. His openness to the idea that the boat could have survived the Falls of Rauros because it came from Lothlórien is sufficient evidence of this notion.

Yet the other day I noticed a detail in The Chronology of The Lord of the Rings, edited by William Cloud Hicklin, and just published as a supplement to volume XIX of Tolkien Studies. In the entry under 28 February 3019, Tolkien wrote 'First shard of horn of Boromir found' (56), and under 30 February* 'Second shard of the horn of Boromir found' (58). Hicklin comments in a single footnote to both entries (57): 'The entries regarding Boromir's horn are in pencil'. Since the Chronology is otherwise written in ink of different colors, the pencil insertions would seem to be later additions. 

Now we already know from TT 4.v.667 that the two shards were found on two different days in two different places, and we know from The Tale of Years in Appendix B (1092) that Faramir saw the boat on 29* February. Thus the first shard was found on 28 February; Faramir saw the boat on 29 February; and the second shard was found 30 February. At some point before 7 March, when Faramir speaks of the shards to Frodo, word of their discovery reaches both Faramir and Denethor. 

What I find curious in all this is that only The Tale of Years gives us a date for Faramir's sight of the boat, and only the Chronology gives us dates for the shards. The Chronology says nothing of the boat after 'Boromir's funeral boat sent down over Rauros' in the entry for 26 February (54). It could be that each text is telling us something different here. 

The silence of the Chronology on Faramir's sighting of the boat may not prove that what he saw was a vision, but it is consistent with that interpretation. As Faramir himself tells Frodo: 'Tidings of death have many wings. Night oft brings news to near kindred, ’tis said' (TT 4.v.665).

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* In the Shire Reckoning all months had 30 days, February included.

The First Sentence of 'The Lay of the Children of Húrin'

Lo! the golden dragon   of the God of Hell, 

the gloom of the woods   of the world now gone, 

the woes of Men,   and weeping of Elves 

fading faintly   down forest pathways,

is now to tell,   and the name most tearful           5 

of Níniel the sorrowful,   and the name most sad

of Thalion’s son Túrin   o’erthrown by fate.

                (The Lays of Beleriand 5) 

What really got me to stop and look more closely at the first seven lines of The Lay of the Children of Húrin was a question: Does 'fading', the first word in line 4, modify 'weeping' or 'Elves'? Is it the sound of the Elves' weeping which is fading, or is it the Elves themselves who are fading? That, after all, is something they are known to do, an exceptionally important part of the Doom of the Elves. It's also true that the two other participles in these lines, 'gone' (2) and 'o'erthrown' (7) must be taken closely with the nouns, 'world' (2) and 'son Túrin (7), just before them, as 'Elves' is just before 'fading.' On the basis of these two points I am much more inclined to take 'fading' with 'Elves' than with 'weeping.'

But while I was considering this, I noticed something I find much more interesting in the structure of the sentence, which has six subjects, four before and two after the verb phrase -- 'is now to tell'. The first four are the dragon of Morgoth, the gloom of a lost world, and the sufferings of Men and Elves within that world. Having set forth the particular agents of the general misfortunes of the two kindreds in that lost world, the sentence then pivots on the verb, like a lever on a fulcrum, to name the particular victims, Níniel and Túrin, whose sorrows are the focus of this lay. Lines 1 and 7, moreover, enclose the whole, opposing the dragon and Túrin as well as the figures of Morgoth and Húrin whose conflict shapes the unfolding of the tale they watch from afar. The reference to fate and the description of Morgoth as 'the God of Hell' also serve to tie this tale into the larger themes of the problem of Evil and its relationship to the plan of Ilúvatar which Tolkien saw as fundamental from the beginning of his legendarium.

It's a very nice little package to introduce the Great Tale and link it intimately to what we might call the Great Themes, a unity further underscored by the six subjects with a singular verb.*

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* An alternate reading would be to construe the six words I take as the collective subject of 'is' (in one big noun clause) as the objects of 'tell.' It may also simply be that 'is' takes its number from that of the nearest subject, which doesn't happen often in English of late, but Tolkien knew any number of languages in which it did.