C. S. Lewis's Tortured Planet.

I discovered just the other day that C. S. Lewis abridged That Hideous Strength for publication as a mass market paperback in the United States in 1957. The new version was called The Tortured Planet and cost thirty-five cents. Having recently reread the first two books of Lewis's Space Trilogy -- Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra -- I had been planning to reread That Hideous Strength for the first time in many, many years. Two friends whose opinions I respect had diametrically opposed opinions on the book. One said that it was not the sort of book she reread for pleasure, and the other disagreed entirely. It had been so long since I last read it that all I could remember was the general impression that it was interesting, but not a lot of fun. But the idea of the glimpse into Lewis's mind I could get from comparing the original to the abridgement seemed very interesting and even fun. What would he cut? What would he leave in?

So here is the first page or so. The words in bold indicate the text after abridgement, as published in "The Tortured Planet."

“Matrimony was ordained, thirdly,” said Jane Studdock to herself, “for the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other.” She had not been to church since her schooldays until she went there six months ago to be married, and the words of the service had stuck in her mind.

Through the open door she could see the tiny kitchen of the flat and hear the loud, ungentle tick tick of the clock. She had just left the kitchen and knew how tidy it was. The breakfast things were washed up, the tea towels were hanging above the stove, and the floor was mopped. The beds were made and the rooms “done.” She had just returned from the only shopping she need do that day, and it was still a minute before eleven. Except for getting her own lunch and tea[. T]here was nothing that had to be done till six o’clock, even supposing that Mark was really coming home for dinner. But there was a College Meeting today. Almost certainly Mark would ring up about teatime to say that the meeting was taking longer than he had expected and that he would have to dine in College. The hours before her were as empty as the flat. The sun shone and the clock ticked. 

“Mutual society, help, and comfort,” said Jane bitterly. In reality marriage had proved to be the door out of a world of work and comradeship and laughter and innumerable things to do, into something like solitary confinement. For some years before their marriage she had never seen so little of Mark as she had done in the last six months. Even when he was at home he hardly ever talked. He was always either sleepy or intellectually preoccupied. While they had been friends, and later when they were lovers, life itself had seemed too short for all they had to say to each other. But now . . . why had he married her? Was he still in love? If so, “being in love” must mean totally different things to men and women. Was it the crude truth that all the endless talks which had seemed to her, before they were married, the very medium of love itself, had never been to him more than a preliminary? 

“Here I am, starting to waste another morning, mooning,” said Jane to herself sharply. “I must do some work.” By work she meant her doctorate thesis on Donne. She had always intended to continue her own career as a scholar after she was married: that was one of the reasons why they were to have no children, at any rate for a long time yet. Jane was not perhaps a very original thinker and her plan had been to lay great stress on Donne’s “triumphant vindication of the body.” She still believed that if she got out all her notebooks and editions and really sat down to the job, she could force herself back into her lost enthusiasm for the subject. But before she did so— perhaps in order to put off the moment of beginning— she turned over a newspaper which was lying on the table and glanced at a picture on the back page. 

The moment she saw the picture, she remembered her dream[;] She remembered not only the dream but the measureless time after she had crept out of bed and sat waiting for the first hint of morning, afraid to put on the light for fear Mark should wake up and fuss, yet feeling offended by the sound of his regular breathing. He was an excellent sleeper. Only one thing ever seemed able to keep him awake after he had gone to bed, and even that did not keep him awake for long.

"The Art of Mercy in Middle-earth: Paintings Inspired by Tolkien's Legen...

The Sad Tale Behind Tolkien's Famous 1938 Letter to a German Publisher

It is well known that in 1938 a German Publisher, Rütten & Loening, contacted Tolkien about publishing a German translation of The Hobbit. Under the laws in Nazi Germany it was illegal to publish works by Jewish authors. So, they asked Tolkien if he was "arisch," that is, "Aryan." Tolkien, being Tolkien, responded with all the fury of a philologist who detested the Nazis. As described in Letter 29 of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, he wrote two letters and sent them to Allen & Unwin, his own publisher, telling Stanley Unwin to forward whichever one he deemed it best to send. Letter 30 in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, the only one of the two that survives, is caustic, learned, sarcastic, and dripping with contempt for the antisemitism of the question. Letter 30 is not the one sent to Germany, but Stanley Unwin let Tolkien know how much his staff enjoyed it.

The sad tale here is that until July 1936 Rütten & Loening had been owned and operated by Jews, who were forced to sell the company precisely because they were Jewish. I wonder if Unwin and Tolkien knew this. Here is a link to the German Wikipedia page on this publisher. Below you will find a translation (by Google Translate) of the most relevant sections of that page.

In 1936, publishers Wilhelm Ernst Oswalt and Adolf Neumann received an order from the Reich Chamber of Literature, based on the Nuremberg Laws, ordering them to sell the publishing house to an "Aryan" publisher or close down. In July 1936, Rütten & Loening was sold to the Potsdam publisher Albert Hachfeld (Athenaion Verlag), and the business was immediately relocated to Potsdam, taking with it all of its assets, archives, and some employees. All "Jewish" and "international" authors (including Romain Rolland) were abandoned. During the war, the publishing house produced primarily classical literature, but also "edifying literature" for the Wehrmacht.

Forced to sell his publishing house, the principal owner and publisher of Rütten & Loening, Wilhelm Ernst Oswalt, was a broken man after the sale. In 1942, he was denounced and arrested for refusing to publicly wear the Star of David. Two weeks later, he was murdered in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Oranienburg. The elder son, Heinrich Oswalt, fled to Switzerland and survived the Nazi era there. The younger son, Ernst Ludwig Oswalt, was deported "to the East" and murdered.

The publishing director and 25% co-owner of Rütten & Loening, Adolf Neumann, once one of the most respected publishing figures in the German Reich, fled to Norway, and after its occupation by the Nazis, to Sweden. He survived the war. He then granted licenses to the Potsdam publishing house for several titles that had not been sold in 1936 for political reasons. Neumann died in Stockholm in 1953.

In 1942, as was customary after the murder of Jews, Wilhelm Ernst Oswalt's private assets were publicly auctioned on behalf of the Gestapo, and the proceeds were confiscated for the benefit of the Reich. The extremely valuable and extensive private library, comprising over 10,000 volumes, compiled over a nearly century-old family tradition, was acquired by the renowned antiquarian bookshop "Frankfurter Bücherstube Schumann & Cobet" (known before 1937 as the Frankfurter Jugendbücherstube Walter Schatzki), which operated until the 1990s, for the ridiculous price of 8,500 Reichsmarks.

________________________________

"Nazis, I hate these guys" -- J.R.R. Tolkien (no, not really a Tolkien quote. Marcel 

‪@thetolkienist.com‬ will confirm this.)

Dreamflowers and Lotus-eaters.

Upon meeting Merry and Pippin, Treebeard exchanges names with them. As he does so, he teaches them about the connection between the name of a thing and its history. Since in his language "real names tell you the story of the things they belong to," names grow longer the longer the story goes on (TT 3.iv.465). Thus, Treebeard's real "name is growing all the time." 

When he later learns that Merry and Pippin got both into and out of Lothlórien, he is surprised. The reflections on Lothlórien he offers speak very much to his idea of how names work. 

"...Laurelindórenan! That is what the Elves used to call it, but now they make the name shorter: Lothlórien they call it. Perhaps they are right: maybe it is fading, not growing. Land of the Valley of Singing Gold, that was it, once upon a time. Now it is the Dreamflower. Ah well! But it is a queer place...." (3.iv.467, emphasis mine)

From Laurelindórenan to Lothlórien, from the Land of the Valley of Singing Gold to the Dreamflower, the name is becoming shorter when it should be growing longer. To him that makes it a "queer place," which may be fading rather than growing. Treebeard does not see this as a good sign. Yet he doesn't know the half of it. He does not know, apparently, that the name is now cut even shorter, to just Lórien, which he would know could be translated as "Dreamland" (“Lórien.” Parf Edhellen, https://www.elfdict.com/wt/502964). The Golden Wood is called Lórien twice as often by the characters and narrator as it is called Lothlórien.*

The first element in Lothlórien is loth-, which is Sindarin for flower or blossom (Quenya lóte). It may be that Tolkien is remembering something from his school days and working in an obscure philological allusion to a type of dreamland he encountered in Homer's Odyssey. In the Odyssey ix.80-104 Odysseus arrives in the land of the Lotus-Eaters (λωτοφάγοι/lotophagoi), where eating the fruit of the lotus/λωτός leaves his crew in a dreamlike, happy state. As Alfred Heubeck has observed, “the λωτός- plant, with its magical properties of suppressing the desire to return home, is symbolic of the insecurity of human existence poised precariously between the spheres of empirical reality and mythical unreality” (Heubeck et al. 18, emphasis mine).** 

Heubeck's assessment of the λωτός-plant's significance resonates rather eerily with Galadriel's words to the Company when they arrive in Lórien: "your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true" (FR 2.vii.357). That Odysseus has to drag his companions back to the ship by force echoes Treebeard's surprise that Merry and Pippin "ever got out"  of Laurelindórenan (TT 3.iv.465). Faramir, who is the only other character in The Lord of the Rings to call the Golden Wood by the name Laurelindórenan, will later express his own surprise that Frodo and Sam had been there, citing ancient wisdom: "For it is perilous for mortal man to walk out of the world of this Sun, and few of old came thence unchanged, ’tis said" (TT 4.v.667).

So, did Tolkien derive the loth of Lothlórien from Greek? Perhaps, perhaps not. Yet it remains an intriguing convergence of sound, meaning, and context. 

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*Not counting the Prologue, Appendices, and Index, Lórien occurs 74 times and Lothlórien 37 times. Treebeard of course mostly calls it Laurelindórenan, and a couple of times Lothlórien, but never Lórien.

** Alfred Heubeck, et al. A Commentary On Homer's Odyssey. Vol. II: Books IX-XVI. Oxford University Press. 1990.

Elrond's long westward road

Before I retired I listened to several podcasts while driving back and forth to work. For me, driving seemed the best time. Now I don't listen very often, since when I'm sitting at home I am usually trying to write or research something. Lately I've been doing a lot of walking and often use that time to listen to a podcast. One of the advantages of listening to others speak about things I am interested in is that I get ideas arising from observations made by others, whether I am agreeing or disagreeing. 

Today I was listening to The Prancing Pony Podcast with the inimitable Alan Sisto and the redoubtable Sara Brown. They were discussing the "Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings. So as I was walking through Prospect Park I heard them talk about Celebrían, wife of Elrond and mother of Arwen. According to Appendix B orcs captured and tortured her in 2509 of the Third Age. Although she was soon rescued by her husband and sons, she had suffered so much that in 2510 she set sail across the sea for Valinor, the only place where she might be healed.

Now here's where the idea comes in.

Five hundred years later in 3018 at the Council of Elrond, Elrond says  "The world has changed much since I last was on the westward roads." 

So, was the last time Elrond traveled on these roads when he took Celebrían to the Grey Havens?

Since he had gone with his sons to rescue her, imagining that he also escorted her to the Grey Havens is hardly far-fetched. Now from what I can tell Celebrían was not invented until long after that sentence appeared in "The Council of Elrond." So there's no evidence that Tolkien wrote this sentence with an allusion to her departure built into it (for those with eyes to see), but it can certainly be read as one after she has been invented. As he often did, Tolkien invested the old words with new meaning through a change of context. I can't say whether he realized how the creation of Celebrían would recontextualize this sentence. Maybe, maybe not. Still Celebrían's subsequently invented story allows us to discover Elrond's reminiscence of his faraway wife in his words. 

My thanks to Alan and Sara for prompting this thought. I like it.