Eleventy-one: Re-reading The Lord of the Rings 50 years on -- part one

Right about now in 1971 I am beginning to read The Lord of the Rings for the very first time. I had not read The Hobbit or even heard of it before I plucked the old Ballantine Books The Fellowship of the Ring, the one with the oddly fascinating cover illustration by Barbara Remington, from the spinner rack outside Ruth's Stationery store on Main Avenue in Ocean Grove, NJ, a seaside town much like the Shire would have been, had the Shire been settled by Methodists. That is, there were no pubs, and the older folks would have viewed Gandalf with as much suspicion as they would a Papist Papal Nuncio in a VW Bus with a Peace sign on the back.* We children, barefoot and oh so tan, would have loved him just as madly as the Hobbit children do. Beyond the borders of the town there were white spaces, with labels like 'beyond this be Pagans'** (on the Asbury Park side) and 'beyond this be Papists' (on the Bradley Beach side).

I loved the book at once, and re-read it at once. I cannot tell you how many times I have read it all told, but it has to be over fifty times, not counting extensive study and browsing. I would be lying if I said that it was not the most important book in my life. I still have those old Ballantine mass markets, yellow and brittle with the years, one of them even gnawed by a mouse. If I tried to read them, they would disintegrate entirely. There is always a copy of The Lord of the Rings open on my desk, however, and on laptop and on my tablet.

As many have done, I learned Old English (and so much else) because of J. R. R. Tolkien, though I wouldn't advise anyone learning it as I did, working my way through a couple of grammars on my own and plunging straight into Beowulf. The first time through was like wrestling with Grendel and his mother at once. But the second time through was much easier, and the third. I am looking forward to the fourth. I like to think Tolkien would have approved. 

To be brief, I am beginning to read The Lord of the Rings again in celebration of what I shall call my 'eleventy-first' reading. I will try to recall how I felt that first time I went through it and write about it.  Although I have been planning to do this for some time, I have taken added inspiration from my current reading, Katherine Langrish's From Spare Oom to War Drobe: Travels in Narnia with my Nine Year-old Self, a book I recommend while on my feet applauding. It's not out in the States just yet, but I hope it soon will be. 

I hope to put up the first post soon.

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* Really, I have nothing against Methodists, and I love Ocean Grove from the bottom of my heart. I was married by a Methodist minister whom I looked upon as my surrogate grandfather. 'One of my best friends' is a Methodist minister. But as a Catholic kid in Ocean Grove in those days, I got a lot of teasing for being a Papist. Yes, they used that word. And not just teasing. I once broke up with a girl I had started dating because, not knowing I was Catholic, she began making disparaging remarks about Papists. After letting her go on for about 20 minutes, I said 'I am a Catholic'. A silence most profound followed, which was broken by 'Oh, I didn't mean you, Tom.' This actually didn't annoy me as much as the assumption that I must root for Notre Dame.

**Aside from being a general den of iniquity and Rock and Roll, Asbury Park had a bar called Mrs Jays which often had a row of motorcycles belonging to the Pagans motorcycle gang out front. 

Stephen Maturin recites The Aeneid

In Patrick O'Brian's H. M. S. Surprise Stephen Maturin recites the entirety of The Aeneid in Latin while delirious with a fever. I remember laughing out loud as I read it because the narrator never points out that he has recited the whole poem. He merely quotes the first and last lines and leaves the reader to make the connection. 

'Arma virumque cano,' began the harsh voice in the darkness, as some recollection of Diana's mad cousin set Stephen's memory in motion.

'Well, thank God we are in Latin again,' said Jack. 'Long may it last.'

Long indeed; it lasted until the Equatorial Channel itself, when the morning watch heard the ominous words. 

'...ast illi solvuntur frigore membra

vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras'

followed by an indignant cry for tea -- 'for green tea, there. Is there no one in this vile ship that knows how to look after a calenture? I have been calling and calling.'

            (359-60) 

There's more here, however, than a private joke for those who know Latin. Stephen, a physician and intelligence agent, is fiercely secretive both professionally and personally, and his fever (calenture) has loosed his tongue as surely as the chill of death has loosed Turnus' limbs. As Turnus' life departs indignantly into shadow, Stephen emerges from the darkness into the light, equally indignant. More than that, Aeneas and Turnus have been fighting a war over which of them is to marry Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, just as Stephen and his friend, Jack Aubrey, have competed for the favors of, and nearly crossed swords over, Diana Villiers. Aeneas, like Jack, is a great warrior and has spent years at sea. Both of them are also dedicated to their duty, and yet have neglected that duty for love, or something resembling it. Indeed Stephen in his fever rebukes Jack for his romantic adventures, the most painful of which to Stephen of course involved his beloved Diana:

'Jack Aubrey, you, too, will pierce yourself with your own weapon, I fear.... You do not know chastity.' (359)

It's interesting that Stephen's metaphor here recreates for Jack the fate of Dido, who will commit suicide with a sword, and who is compared to the goddess, Diana, when she first appears in The Aeneid. When Diana Villiers first appears in Post Captain, the novel directly before H. M. S. Surprise, she is seen hunting. She will prove true to her name.

The limits of pity and mercy -- an excerpt from 'To Rule the Fate of Many'

 

        As close as Frodo comes to a fall, however, he never carries out his desires or threats. Unlike Sméagol with Déagol, he does not strike Bilbo or murder Sam, even though they appeared less than human to him in the moment when he saw them as a threat to his possession of the Ring. Conversely, he does not kill Gollum when he has the chance – and justification since Gollum is throttling Sam – because his own experience of the Ring has led Frodo to see him as a person, not a creature, and to pity him. It is at first curious that Frodo does not kill Gollum in their first encounter on Mt Doom, in which he has the upper hand and all pity is gone. Stranger still is how alike his threats here and outside the Black Gate are: death in the fires of Mt Doom. It is almost as if he recalls the first threat while making the second and wishes to remind Gollum of it, too. Though he cannot remember wind or water, tree or grass or flower, the evil thought that with the Ring he has the power to see Gollum cast into the ‘Fire of Doom’ has not faded. But Frodo’s words here outside the Sammath Naur indicate that he regards Gollum as a despised nuisance. Contempt spares Gollum now, just as pity had done before and will soon do again.

        Even so, it is the power of the Ring which has turned Frodo’s pity into contempt and upon which is founded Gollum’s unquenchable ‘lust and rage’. What is the significance of a moral force that can succeed only with the timely assistance of chance that was no chance at all? Its quality is not denied by failure, nor by its success in setting the stage for eucatastrophe. For pity, ‘defeat is no refutation’. In Letter 246, from 1963, Tolkien noted that Frodo’s ‘exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed.’ The difference between ‘mercy’ and ‘Mercy’ is worth noting. Earthly pity and mercy could not accomplish the destruction of the Ring, but they were repaid in Pity and Mercy. The redress is that he fails but does not fall. He is delivered from evil. Yet the limits of the pity and mercy of this world stand revealed.

---

'It did not always seem of the same size or weight' (FR 1.ii.47)

'Though [Bilbo] had found out that the [Ring] needed looking after; it did not seem always of the same size or weight; it shrank or expanded in an odd way, and might suddenly slip off a finger where it had been tight.'

(FR 1.ii.47) 

To argue that the Ring does not in truth change weight is fairly easy. For, although both Frodo and Sam feel it to be a physically heavy burden while they are bearing it, Sam is surprised to find when he carries Frodo up Mt Doom that he feels only the weight of Frodo (RK 6.iii.940). The changes in size, however, are probably not illusory. 

Recall that Sauron changes shape and appearance more than once in The Silmarillion, from human to werewolf to vampire bat (175). Recall also that in the Second Age, during which he forges the One Ring and transfers much of his native power into it, he can still change his form and appearance (285). After he is killed in the Drowning of Númenor, however, he can no longer 'put on his fair hue' (285) or 'appear fair to the eyes of Men' (280); and after he is killed again and the Ring taken from him he cannot take shape again for centuries (UT 388-89). Now since he had been able to change his size and shape previously it makes sense that the Ring would need to possess the same capacity if only for practical purposes. After his deaths the power he put into the Ring remains in the Ring, and so it adjusts to the hand that wears it. 

 

Taking the name of Elbereth in vain (FR 1.xii.212-13)

 

At Weathertop Strider says of the Witch-king that ‘more deadly to him' than Frodo's sword 'was the name of Elbereth’ (FR 1.xii.198), but he clearly does not mean the mere mention of her name any more than he means ‘deadly’ to be taken literally. Not only does the invocation of her name not kill the Witch-king, but Strider uses ‘deadly’ again in the very next sentence to describe the effect on Frodo of the Morgul knife, which does not kill its victim. To think that he means literally what he says about Frodo's use of the name Elbereth has absurd consequences. For if all one had to do to drive off the Ringwraiths were to say 'Elbereth', they would not be so fearsome: they would be the Knights Who Say Ni. The 'deadly voices' and the 'harsh and chilling laughter' with which they respond to Frodo's attempt to command them at the Ford of Bruinen proves the name of Elbereth alone cannot harm them.

Elbereth must have aided Frodo when he invoked her at Weathertop, but not when he did so at the Ford (FR 1.xii.212-13). It is impossible to say why this would be, but at the river Frodo's feelings and behavior when faced with the Ringwraiths differ in ways that may be quite significant. In the first place he is moved by hatred of the Riders, and in the second he attempts to command them to leave him and the Ring alone. If, as I think, Frodo is trying to harness the power of the Ring to dominate its dark servants here, it seems little likely that Elbereth would aid someone wielding the Ring any aid. However that may be, it seems entirely unlikely that acting out of hatred would win her support.