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)

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'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.

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*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.

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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.