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

‘sufficient tragedy’

 

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

            (M&C, 18, italics original)

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FR 2.vi.352

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

RK App. A 1063

 

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

Ents that are and Ents that En't.

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

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

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

'I en't never deceived anyone!'

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

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

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

Eucatastrophae non sunt multiplicandae praeter necessitatem.

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

(OFS ¶ 104)

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

A thought on the 'sentience' of the Ring

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

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

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

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

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

(S 43-44) 

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

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

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

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