"And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking" -- A Case in Point

The Angelus -- Jean-Francois Millet

Tolkien was appalled by our modern obsession with speedy locomotion. It annihilates space, he said, blinding us to the glories that we are traversing. As with much of modern technology, he feared that jet travel is yet another instance of what Thoreau called "improved means to unimproved ends." We take off from New York or Atlanta and land in Cairo or Delhi a few hours later, as if these vastly different cities in vastly different countries were abstract and featureless places, mere dots on a map. No wonder that Tolkien penned a tart note to one year's income tax payment, refusing his support of supersonic jet travel: "Not a penny for Concorde." 

Ralph C. Wood. The Gospel According to Tolkien

And as if in answer there came from not too far away another note. For at the bottom of this page on my screen is the following message:

"7 hrs 35 mins left in book"

QED

There has to be a place and a time where all this haste stops, just stops, just stops.  And that place and that time must be home, where we may be enchanted out of the world where we lay waste our powers, and recover our selves from the hasty, locomotive days outside our door. Or, as Pink Floyd tell us:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today,
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time,
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say .

Home, home again,
I like to be here when I can.
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire.
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell.

Time, David Gilmour and Richard Wright. 

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Works Consulted

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'She died' -- The Choice of Lúthien and the Destiny of the Elves (FR 1.xi.191-93)

In one of the most disappointing scenes in the extended edition of Peter Jackson's film, The Fellowship of the Ring, Strider and the hobbits are encamped in the wild. Frodo wakes to hear Strider singing The Lay of Leithian.  When Frodo asks him how the story ends, Strider murmurs sadly: 'She died.'  Given the fundamental and essential importance of the Tale of Beren and Lúthien to Tolkien's legendarium, as a lifelong reader of his works I could only be stunned by the choice Jackson made. I could only laugh in disbelief. I still do.

Now, whatever my opinion of the choice Peter Jackson made, it's his right as the film-maker to make it.  Clearly, since he chose to undermine the moral stature of nearly every mortal human in the story, and to change Aragorn from someone who has labored all his life towards this hour into someone full of doubts who has avoided the path that is as much his heritage as his destiny, the Tale of Beren and Lúthien cannot play the same role. To be fair, these choices make it very difficult to include it in any other way than he has done, as a sad commentary on the choice Arwen must make if she is to be with Aragorn. It is a limited and personal perspective.

How different a role The Lay of Leithian plays in Tolkien. There, in a tense moment as the Ringwraiths are closing in on them, Strider sings a song not only of sorrow, but of joy and love, of sacrifice and victory against a heartless darkness. Unlike the bit of Bilbo's simple translation of The Fall of Gil-galad, which Sam had sung to them just that morning and which ends in sadness and uncertainty, Strider's rendering of the Lay is as lush and intricate as the fates of its heroes, with final words that echo onward through the reunion beyond death of Beren and Lúthien to the renewed triumph of Eärendil and the Silmaril that they had made possible.

The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless 

(FR 1.xi.193)

Like the earlier but harder to understand fairy-tale encounter with Tom Bombadil, or like Gandalf's prosaic and terrifying history lesson in The Shadow of the Past, this is one of the moments in the text when the world of Middle-earth suddenly opens up for both hobbits and readers alike. This was especially so for those of us who read The Lord of the Rings before The Silmarillion was published and before instant resources like The Tolkien Gateway came to exist.  This poem was all we had. With the Lay's moving account, and with Strider's commentary not only on what the future held for Beren and Lúthien and their descendants, but even on the prosody of the verses he has just chanted, fairy-story and history come together and come alive as they have not done before.

Part of what accomplishes this blending is the aptness of the tale to the situation in which Strider and the hobbits find themselves, menaced by the same darkness that destroyed Amon Sûl centuries ago, the same darkness that centuries earlier than that Gil-galad had set forth from this place to fight. Though Gil-galad's star fell into shadow, Beren and Lúthien won a silmaril from the darkness against all hope, and to revive hope that jewel became a star to rise above all darkness.

Part of what accomplishes this is the unexpected elan with which the till now dour and wry Strider tells it. The depth of his sudden passion carries with it conviction:

As Strider was speaking they watched his strange eager face, dimly lit in the red glow of the wood-fire. His eyes shone, and his voice was rich and deep. Above him was a black starry sky.

(FR 1.xi.194)

Part of what accomplishes this is the enchanting beauty of the verses themselves. We've already heard quite a few poems before now, pub songs and bath songs and walking songs from the hobbits, the impossibly lofty hymn to Elbereth, the chill spell of the Barrow-wight, and the running wonder and delight of Bombadil. But we haven't heard anything that tells a story with such beauty and power. I'm sure I can't speak for everyone, but it was these verses in particular that first seized me and shook me and made me pay attention to Tolkien's poetry.

And the last part of what accomplishes this blending comes from outside The Lord of the Rings itself. For as Corey Olsen has recently argued, and I believe quite rightly, it is here, with the introduction of the story of Beren and Lúthien into this story, that The Lord of the Rings, and perforce The Hobbit as well, become once and for all part of the world of The Silmarillion. The literal globing of Arda that began with The Fall of Númenor is now literarily complete. The lines that were parallel on the flat world cross on the round. The Elrond, Necromancer, and Gondolin of The Hobbit are no longer lesser, alternate universe versions of themselves. This meeting of the worlds of myth and history gives a life to them that they did not have before, and so transforms the Tale of Beren and Lúthien into a means by which past, present, and future are linked together and may be measured against each other.

Thus Frodo and Sam's discussion of this tale on the stairs of Cirith Ungol gives them strength and courage to go on, and even to laugh at the darkness before they reach the pass; it gives Sam the courage to fight on against Shelob, just as Beren fought against the spiders in Nan Dungortheb; and when Frodo seems dead it gives him the resolve to go on living when all seemed lost, as Beren did, and as Túrin did not.  (The names of both heroes are evoked in this episode.) And just as the light of Eärendil's star in the phial of Galadriel enables Sam to rescue Frodo from the tower, so the glimpse he has of the star itself allows him to grasp the meaning of the Tale:

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

(RK 6.ii.922)

It is this same light and beauty arising from the Tale of Beren and Lúthien that moves Strider so in the dell beneath Weathertop. But the Tale plays more than one role here. For if Frodo and Sam are repeating it on the level of the quest, Aragorn and Arwen are repeating it on the level of the love story. At first of course the readers don't know that, nor do they receive the least hint until Arwen enters the scene at Rivendell, where she is described in a lofty language similar to that which Aragorn used of Lúthien herself:

So it was that Frodo saw her whom few mortals had yet seen; Arwen, daughter of Elrond, in whom it was said that the likeness of Lúthien had come on earth again; and she was called Undómiel, for she was the Evenstar of her people. Long she had been in the land of her mother's kin, in Lórien beyond the mountains, and was but lately returned to Rivendell to her father's house.  

(FR 2.i.227).  

So we see here a connection established between Arwen and Lúthien, but her link to Strider remains unexpressed. Bilbo's words to Aragorn after dinner -- 'Why weren't you at the feast? The Lady Arwen was there' -- allude to it, but not so clearly that Frodo gets it, since he is surprised to see Aragorn at her side later that evening (FR 2.i.238). Yet, although the relationship of Arwen and Aragorn becomes more apparent with time (FR 2.vi.352; viii.375; RK 6.ii.775, 784; vi.847), it does not truly emerge until late in the tale that their love rehearses the key element of Beren and Lúthien's. Arwen herself makes it explicit: 'I shall not go with [my father] now when he departs to the Havens; for mine is the choice of Lúthien, and as she so have I chosen, both the sweet and the bitter' (RK 6.vi.974). It receives its fullest expression, however, only in The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen as the two confront the choice of Lúthien and its inevitable consequence: death.

Which brings us back to 'she died,' a summary not without its importance. When the Aragorn of the film says it, he does so as if there were nothing more to say: no victory over Morgoth, no return from death, no silmaril, no Eärendil, no star to dispute the darkness forever. It is a story, in short, with no hope. This very hopelessness, however, allows us to see how ripe with hope Aragorn's telling of this tale is in the book; and when we turn again to The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen the reason Aragorn finds such hope in The Tale of Beren and Lúthien becomes clearer:

'And Arwen said: "Dark is the Shadow, and yet my heart rejoices; for you, Estel, shall be among the great whose valour will destroy it."  

' But Aragorn answered: "Alas! I cannot foresee it, and how it may come to pass is hidden from me. Yet with your hope I will hope. And the Shadow I utterly reject. But neither, lady, is the Twilight for me; for I am mortal, and if you will cleave to me, Evenstar, then the Twilight you must also renounce." 

'And she stood then as still as a white tree, looking into the West, and at last she said: "I will cleave to you, Dúnadan, and turn from the Twilight. Yet there lies the land of my people and the long home of all my kin."

(RK A.1061)

'Yet with your hope I will hope' and 'I will cleave to you, Dúnadan' -- these are the words that inspire Strider at Weathertop as he sings the same song as when he first met Arwen and mistook her for Lúthien. Even in that moment Arwen said 'maybe my doom will not be unlike hers' (RK A.1058). Thus The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen expands our view of this scene. For by her choice Arwen does not just pledge herself to him, or merely repeat the choice of Lúthien, as romantic as that might be. She renews that choice by embracing the doom of Lúthien,

This doom [Lúthien] chose, forsaking the Blessed Realm, and putting aside all claim to kinship with those that dwell there; that thus whatever grief might lie in wait, the fates of Beren and Lúthien might be joined, and their paths lead together beyond the confines of the world. So it was that alone of the Eldalië she has died indeed, and left the world long ago. Yet in her choice the Two Kindreds have been joined; and she is the forerunner of many in whom the Eldar see yet, though all the world is changed, the likeness of Lúthien the beloved, whom they have lost.

(Silm. 187)

And

"I speak no comfort to you, [Aragorn said] for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men."

"Nay, dear lord," [Arwen] said, "that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear the hence,and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." 

"So it seems," [Aragorn] said. "But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"

(RK A 1062-63)

One of the most remarkable aspects of these passages from both tales, if taken together, is that in the end it is the Man who offers hope to the Elf. She must now hope with his hope, since she cannot foresee the end. Through the Choice of Lúthien the Man can offer the Elf something beyond memory, something beyond the bondage to the circles of the world to which the Elves are of their nature subject. What is more, since 'in her choice the Two Kindreds have been joined', and since through Arwen this choice was renewed, does this not suggest that the same hope may be in store for all Elves, and that they will not perish utterly with Arda at the world's ending? Is this then the 'release from bondage' which the very title of The Lay of Leithian proclaims?

To conclude that this is so would perhaps be hasty, and to argue that Lúthien and Arwen play some kind of messianic role would be foolish. Tolkien was seldom so clumsy. Yet it is clear that the Elves had their concerns about what would become of them after the end of the world (Silm. 42; Morgoth 311-26).  The Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, moreover, discusses these matters of life, death, and 'immortality', specifically in the context of 'the gulf that divides our kindreds' (Morgoth 323, emphasis original).  Finrod even suggests that part of the original role of Men might have been to help bring Elves across the gulf by facilitating the healing of Arda (Morgoth 318-19). Finally the dialogue of Finrod and Andreth ends with their discussion of the sad tale of the love of Andreth and Finrod's brother Aegnor, which could not bridge that gulf and join the kindreds as Beren and Lúthien were destined to do (Morgoth 323-25). Even so in its very last words Finrod asks Andreth to await Aegnor and himself in whatever light she finds beyond death (Morgoth 326), just as Lúthien later asks a dying Beren to wait for her (Silm. 186).

To be sure, some passages in the Athrabeth anticipate the biblical story of the Fall and the Incarnation, but that is hardly all there is. It is impossible not to see the Tale of Beren and Lúthien prefigured in the desperate lives of Andreth and Aegnor.  This attention to their failure to join their kindreds, presented in the culmination of the Athrabeth's discussion of life and death and the fates of Men and Elves in and beyond this world, is not to be slighted. It underlines the importance of those later loves that succeeded in bridging the gulf between the kindreds. Lúthien's departure beyond the circles of the world is as significant for the future of the Elves as Eärendil's rising as a star in the West is for the struggle against The Shadow. Each of them is a pathfinder and a testament to the 'deeper kind' of Hope or 'trust', the Elvish word for which is Estel (Morgoth 320).  It is also Aragorn's Elvish name, by which Arwen calls him in sorrow as he dies. The last word we hear from the mouth of Arwen Evenstar, who shared the doom of Lúthien and now shares the bitter gift of mortals, is hope.

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Works Consulted

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Troilus and WHO? (RK 6.x.892-93)

Then Pippin stabbed upwards, and the written blade of Westernesse pierced through the hide and went deep into the vitals of the troll, and his black blood came gushing out. He toppled forward and came crashing down like a falling rock, burying those beneath him. Blackness and stench and crushing pain came upon Pippin and his mind fell away into a great darkness.  

'So it ends as I guessed it would,' his thought said, even as it fluttered away, and it laughed a little within him ere it fled, almost gay it seemed to be casting off at last all doubt and care and fear.  And even then as it winged away into forgetfulness it heard voices, and they seemed to be crying in some forgotten world far above: 

'The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming!' 

For one moment more Pippin's thought hovered.  'Bilbo!' it said. 'But no!  That came in his tale, long, long ago. This is my tale, and it is ended now. Good-bye!'  And his thought fled far away and his eyes saw no more. 

(RK 6.x.892-93)

What first drew my attention here is the peculiar use of 'thought' in the second and fourth paragraphs, which is quite similar to its use in the famous scene in which Gollum's two 'thoughts' struggle with each other while Sam listens, fascinated and appalled (TT 4.ii.632-34). While there 'thought' seems very close to what we would call 'personality,' here 'consciousness' is a better fit. The word 'consciousness' did not enter English before the 17th Century, and the meaning in question here -- 'the totality of the impressions, thoughts, and feelings, which make up a person's conscious being. In pl. = conscious personalities' (OED sv. 5, emphasis original) -- seems to have awaited the invention of Locke.  Given Tolkien's linguistic predilections, it is not hard to see why he would have preferred 'thought', since MED þoht (3c, d) offered the requisite meanings.  

I am as yet, however, unaware of any use of þoht to describe situations similar to those we see in these two passages of Tolkien.  (If any reader knows of one, please, do let me know.)  So I began to think that perhaps I should look for passages with similar elements.  Almost immediately Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde came into my mind, specifically the scene in which Troilus dies:

1800   The wraththe, as I began yow for to seye,
       Of Troilus, the Grekes boughten dere;
       For thousandes his hondes maden deye,
       As he that was with-outen any pere,
       Save Ector, in his tyme, as I can here.
1805   But weylawey, save only goddes wille,
       Dispitously him slough the fiers Achille.

       And whan that he was slayn in this manere,
       His lighte goost ful blisfully is went
       Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere,
1810   In convers letinge every element;
       And ther he saugh, with ful avysement,
       The erratik sterres, herkeninge armonye
       With sownes fulle of hevenish melodye.

       And doun from thennes faste he gan* avyse
1815   This litel spot of erthe, that with the see
       Embraced is, and fully gan* despyse
       This wrecched world, and held al vanitee
       To respect of the pleyn felicitee
       That is in hevene above; and at the laste,
1820   Ther he was slayn, his loking doun he caste;

       And in him-self he lough right at the wo
       Of hem that wepten for his deeth so faste;
       And dampned al our werk that folweth so
       The blinde lust, the which that may not laste,
1825   And sholden al our herte on hevene caste.
       

(Troilus and Criseyde, V.1800-1825)

(*gon (11a) = 'proceed to', 'set about', 'go to', as in 'go to sleep'.)

Now clearly Pippin's experience here is meant to remind us first of all of Bilbo's at the Battle of Five Armies, when the Eagles came and Bilbo was knocked unconscious, but woke to find himself 'not yet one of the fallen heroes' (Hobbit 298-99). But there's more to it than that. Bilbo has no 'thought' as he loses consciousness. His reflections come after he revives. 

What happens to Pippin's 'thought' is far more like the experience of Troilus' 'goost': both of them laugh and undergo a profound change in attitude towards the troubles of the world of which they are letting go. Each of them believes his tale is over. True, Pippin is not in fact dying, but he thinks he is. So, the contrast between him and Troilus is also noteworthy. His 'thought' flies 'away', but Troilus' 'goost' rises heavenward. Troilus looks back down at the 'woe / of hem that wepten for his deeth so faste' and dismisses it; Pippin hears the 'voices...crying from some forgotten world above' (emphasis added) and dismisses them and the hope the coming of the Eagles should offer. These directions reflect the differences in world view in each work. Chaucer's Troy is Medieval and Christian, whereas Tolkien's Middle-earth is pre-Christian and without any concept of a heaven above. Hence also Tolkien drew on a word like þoht rather than 'goost'. Whether hobbits have any notion at all of a continued existence after death is unknown and doubtful. And perhaps as a final bit of the absurdity that has often attended this once 'fool of a Took', Pippin is ignominiously squashed by a troll he has killed himself, while Troilus, a great warrior, is killed by the greatest of all warriors. In both cases, however, the dignified serenity both Troilus and Pippin attain with their last thoughts is remarkable. For neither of them could be said to have possessed that before.

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Works Consulted

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On Selling Objectionable Books

A customer with a book in her hand came up to me one morning a few months back. She showed it to me and asked why we carried a book that was anti-Catholic. She added that we had a number of other, similar books in the Christianity section. Could we move the book to another section, she asked. Could we bring in a title she recommended on the persistence of anti-Catholic prejudice today? 

...

Now I was brought up Catholic, and I have run across such prejudices in person.  There was a particularly adorable young woman I was quite taken with at 17. We were out on a boardwalk date one sultry summer night, when she launched into this buzz-killing rant about those Papists.  (Yes, she said those Papists.)  I let her go on for about 20 minutes before suddenly interjecting "I'm Catholic."

Grinding gears, screeching brakes, the smell of rubber left on the road. 

Of course, she didn't mean me. 

Still, I didn't find her nearly so cute thereafter.

There were other instances, but this one at least has the virtue of being amusing and featuring nemesis.  I am not insensitive to such things, nor, being of Irish descent, to the remarks I often hear passed about the Irish. The strangest and most dumbfounding of these (because of its veneer of enlightened sympathy) came while I was living on the West Coast. An intelligent, otherwise well-educated man, asked me whether I had ever seen one of those 'No Irish Need Apply' signs back in New York.  Just allow me to clarify: I lived on the West Coast in the 21st Century, not the 19th.

But you know what? Compared to what a lot of people have to put up with all the time, even now, perhaps especially now, from people who look a lot like me, my life is very easy indeed. So I tend to take such ridiculous little remarks as come my way in stride.

...

So I look at this lady with The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism in her hand. I look at the cover, which I knew my mother would have laughed at, and my aunt, her sister, would have thought showed no respect for the Church. Both of them were quite devout, and both of them would have been quite right in their reaction to this book. I could feel them both behind me, one at each shoulder. Still, you know, it wasn't The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

But all I could think was, 'For God's sake, lady, we sell Mein Kampf here.' In a day and age when people debate the ethics of punching Nazis.  Despite the fact that the last time anyone thought Nazis could be reasoned with 50,000,000 people died. Bricks and baseball bats are what get a message across to such people.

We Sell Mein Kampf.

And you know what, we should sell Mein Kampf, even though it gives me a knot in my stomach to say that.  It is as vile a piece of rancor, hatred, and stupidity as a vicious, deranged little man could trump up.

But to suppress such a book would in fact be far worse than punching a Nazi. For that would make us Nazis in our hearts far more than slugging them ever would. If we start suppressing books like Mein Kampf, we will become the Nazis and end up slugging them anyway.  Thomas de Quincey makes quite clear that this slippery slope leads to the punching of Nazis:

'If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.'

On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts

Now, does this mean that it does our souls less harm just to punch some Nazis? You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

But perhaps the best reason for selling Mein Kampf was discovered by William Foyle, of Foyle's Books in London. As it says on Foyle's website:

When Hitler started burning books in the 1930s, William had immediately telegrammed the Fuhrer to request that he be able to purchase them instead and would offer a good price; the response quickly came back that Germany had no books to sell and the burning would continue. Years later at the start of the Blitz Foyles filled sandbags with old books to protect the shop from damage and William announced that he was covering the roof with copies of Mein Kampf to ward off bombers. Then a near miss left a giant crater just outside the shop, destroying the front of the Sun Electric offices across the road. William treated the sappers to sandwiches and ginger beer while they worked and when the bridge was complete they happily let him name it the Foyle Bridge, complete with ribbon cutting ceremony!

(emphasis added)

Anthony Burgess on The Dick Cavett Show

This is eternal.

Review: Norse Mythology

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review covers both Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology and Carolyne Larrington's The Norse Myths: A Guide to the Gods and Heroes.

Unlike their Greek counterparts with whom most readers are far more familiar, the Norse gods impose little order upon the world. The best they seem able to do is withstand a greater chaos, for a time. Of course, they are rather chaotic themselves, as well as violent, willful, lusty, sometimes ridiculous and quite often treacherous. Only Odin seems to spend much time thinking about the future or the role of humans in this world, but that concern for humans is self-serving, as he seeks, favors, and betrays warriors in order to swell the ranks of his forces for the final battle at the world’s ending.

Now both Carolyne Larrington, the eminent and accomplished scholar of Old Norse, and Neil Gaiman, who surely needs no introduction, have published volumes on Norse Mythology within days of each other. It’s all so convenient the Norns might have had a hand in it. Each of these books is interesting and entertaining, but in quite different ways.

Gaiman, as one might expect, opts for a more dramatic treatment of his subject, retelling a selection of important myths at varying lengths, all building towards the climax of ragnarök. His tales are at times touching, at times quite funny. There’s a moment near the end, for example, where Kvasir, the wisest of the gods, guides Thor, not the wisest of the gods, to understanding the importance of a net Loki had created and destroyed, a moment which strongly reminds me of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which Sir Bedivere explains to the peasants how one determines who is and who is not a witch. Yet the fine and frequent humor of Gaiman’s treatment obscured for me, as it also did in his earlier American Gods, the overwhelming sense of loss now and disaster to come that haunts the world of gods and men in Norse mythology. In the end it seems reduced to a joke and a game, as a dying Heimdall gleefully informs a dying Loki that the last laugh is on him. The book’s last words 'And the game begins anew' only reinforce this impression.

Larrington, like Kvasir with his recreation of Loki’s clever net, captures more of what she seeks. By not focusing narrowly on the drama of the tales she captures more of their tragedy, and suggests more of their meaning for Norse and more broadly for Teutonic culture in general, since these tales were told from Vinland to the Volga and across the centuries before and after the North became Christian. Her inclusion of the part humans play in Norse Mythology -- of Sigmund and Sigurd and all their bloody-minded, bloody-handed kin, more accursed than the House of Atreus, more trapped by the needs of the gods but without the least final justice, doomed in every sense – gives the world of gods and men a fuller, rounder shape. For the tales involve us. The twilight of the gods is also our own. By including humans, the unwilling and often unwitting players in the doom of the gods, Larrington allows us to understand better the world which told these tales, because through them, as Lewis put it in Surprised By Joy, ‘pure “Northernness” engulf[s us]: a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer, remoteness, severity….’

I did not laugh as often reading Larrington’s book as I did Gaiman's, but I nodded more and learned more. I would suggest, however, that they are most profitably enjoyed together.

Review: The Norse Myths: A Guide to Viking and Scandinavian Gods and Heroes

The Norse Myths: A Guide to Viking and Scandinavian Gods and Heroes by Carolyne Larrington
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review covers both Carolyn Larrington's The Norse Myths: A Guide to Viking and Scandinavian Gods and Heroes and Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology

Unlike their Greek counterparts with whom most readers are far more familiar, the Norse gods impose little order upon the world. The best they seem able to do is withstand a greater chaos, for a time. Of course, they are rather chaotic themselves, as well as violent, willful, lusty, sometimes ridiculous and quite often treacherous. Only Odin seems to spend much time thinking about the future or the role of humans in this world, but that concern for humans is self-serving, as he seeks, favors, and betrays warriors in order to swell the ranks of his forces for the final battle at the world’s ending.

Now both Carolyne Larrington, the eminent and accomplished scholar of Old Norse, and Neil Gaiman, who surely needs no introduction, have published volumes on Norse Mythology within days of each other. It’s all so convenient the Norns might have had a hand in it. Each of these books is interesting and entertaining, but in quite different ways.

Gaiman, as one might expect, opts for a more dramatic treatment of his subject, retelling a selection of important myths at varying lengths, all building towards the climax of ragnarök. His tales are at times touching, at times quite funny. There’s a moment near the end, for example, where Kvasir, the wisest of the gods, guides Thor, not the wisest of the gods, to understanding the importance of a net Loki had created and destroyed, a moment which strongly reminds me of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which Sir Bedivere explains to the peasants how one determines who is and who is not a witch. Yet the fine and frequent humor of Gaiman’s treatment obscured for me, as it also did in his earlier American Gods, the overwhelming sense of loss now and disaster to come that haunts the world of gods and men in Norse mythology. In the end it seems reduced to a joke and a game, as a dying Heimdall gleefully informs a dying Loki that the last laugh is on him. The book’s last words 'And the game begins anew' only reinforce this impression.

Larrington, like Kvasir with his recreation of Loki’s clever net, captures more of what she seeks. By not focusing narrowly on the drama of the tales she captures more of their tragedy, and suggests more of their meaning for Norse and more broadly for Teutonic culture in general, since these tales were told from Vinland to the Volga and across the centuries before and after the North became Christian. Her inclusion of the part humans play in Norse Mythology -- of Sigmund and Sigurd and all their bloody-minded, bloody-handed kin, more accursed than the House of Atreus, more trapped by the needs of the gods but without the least final justice, doomed in every sense – gives the world of gods and men a fuller, rounder shape. For the tales involve us. The twilight of the gods is also our own. By including humans, the unwilling and often unwitting players in the doom of the gods, Larrington allows us to understand better the world which told these tales, because through them, as Lewis put it in Surprised By Joy, ‘pure “Northernness” engulf[s us]: a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer, remoteness, severity….’

I did not laugh as often reading Larrington’s book as I did Gaiman's, but I nodded more and learned more. I would suggest, however, that they are most profitably enjoyed together.

Review: James I of Scotland: The Kingis Quair: A Modern English prose translation

James I of Scotland: The Kingis Quair: A Modern English prose translation by Jenni Nuttall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An interesting example of medieval dream and prison poetry, with a fine sense of humor, as befits a work that declares itself in the tradition of Chaucer and Gower. The translation is clear and sharp, while preserving the flavor and often eye-crossing sentence structure of the original. Jenni Nuttall, whose Stylisticienne blog contributes so much to our understanding of the meter used in the poetry of this age, has done a good service for all those fascinated by the literature of these times.

Review: Stories about Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth

Stories about Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth by Brian Attebery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a good book, not a great one, and there is the measure of my disappointment. Attebery is at his very best -- which is exceptionally good -- when actively analyzing and commenting on individual texts and authors. He is usually quite skilled in integrating such analysis with the opinions of other scholars. Attebery makes many fascinating observations on Charles Williams, Hope Mirlees, George MacDonald, and Ursula K. Le Guin, among others, as well as on various species of fantasy, angels, and post-colonial fantasy. This book is an excellent education in the history of the genre.

Yet it is not without fault. At times Attebery slips into that self-renewing world in which scholars reference only each other and make pronouncements for which they neither adduce evidence nor produce an argument. Some call this engagement, but elopement might be the better term. True enough, this turning away from evidence is a common enough failing in academic writing over the last couple of generations, but it is the flight of the deserter rather than the escape of the prisoner (and so not to be commended). Mercifully, Attebery never stumbles into the Mirkwood of Jargon, where every utterance is impressive, but only as clear as the lyrics to Close to the Edge.

He seems a bit harder on C.S. Lewis than is necessary, however, and is at times dismissive: the entry of Joy Davidman into Lewis' life is apparently the sole reason that Till We Have Faces is less open to the charge of misogyny than Narnia is. While Joy Davidman surely had a profound effect on him, perhaps Till We Have Faces should suggest the need for a re-examination of the case again Lewis rather than the facile conclusion that he was swept off his feet and into enlightenment.

He also makes the occasional bald assertion, such as claiming that 'in order to avoid direct representation of religious iconography' Shakespeare substituted 'fairies for angels.' Did he? How so? But no proof is offered, no argument made. Since Shakespeare's fairies could not be mistaken for angels, and since Shakespeare's audience knew well that fairies and angels were not the same. this is an odd claim.

In discussing the attempt, specifically of G. P. Taylor, to write fantasy acceptable to literalist Christians, a failed attempt as it turned out, Attebery comments: 'Even the most faithful transcription of faith language into a work of fantasy has the effect of setting religion adrift.' But this one unsuccessful attempt by Taylor doesn't establish this. Perhaps Taylor just did it badly. Moreover, while it only takes one example to prove that something can be done, one example cannot prove that it cannot be done.

So I do recommend this book, but not without reservation. I found much to profit by here, but also some moments that could mislead the unwary.

Théoden King, or, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's

Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day's rising
he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
Hope he rekindled, and in hope ended;
over death, over dread, over doom lifted
out of loss, out of life, unto long glory. 

But Merry stood at the foot of the green mound, and he wept, and when the song was ended he arose and cried: 

'Théoden King, Théoden King! Farewell! As a father you were to me, for a little while. Farewell!' 

(RK 6.vi.976-77)

As many fans of Tolkien are perfectly well aware, the personal names of the kings of Rohan are all Old English words for king or ruler, or for an attribute that would be valued in a king in a more violent time. 

Eorl  -- a nobleman of high rank
Brego -- a leader, governor, prince
Aldor -- a chief or prince
Fréa -- a lord or master
Fréawine -- from Fréa plus wine, a 'dear or beloved lord.'
Goldwine -- a generous and kindly prince.
Déor -- 'brave, bold, as a wild beast.' Cf. Lionheart
Gram -- 'furious, fierce.'
Helm -- a helm, poetically used of a king who protects his people like a helmet.


Fréaláf -- Fréa, 'lord', 'master', plus láf, 'what is left, remnant.' Since both of Helm's sons had perished, he was succeeded by Fréaláf, his sister's son.
Brytta -- 'bestower, distributor, prince.'
Walda --  'ruler'. See also here.
Folca -- from folc, 'people, folk;' in the form 'folca,' meaning 'of the people.'
Folcwine -- from folc plus wine, meaning 'friend of the people.'
Fengel -- 'prince.'
Thengel -- 'prince.'
Théoden -- 'prince, king.'

That's rather a lot of words for king or prince, no? Tolkien is obviously having a bit of philological fun, but a couple of points are worth making. First, although nearly every one of the words for ruler listed above appears in Beowulf, one of the most common in this -- for Tolkien -- poem of poems is entirely absent, drihten, which is also an important term, even in Beowulf, for God, i,e, 'the Lord.' This suggests that Tolkien was not just haphazardly converting words into names. (As if that would ever happen.) Which brings me to my second point. Given this, was Tolkien perhaps taking a cue from the history of another name that became a title? Caesar, as we know, became both kaiser and czar. Did the names of the kings of his beloved Rohirrim become titles in the same way? Was it part of Théoden King's 'long glory' that his name outlived his memory and became synonymous with king?

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Works Consulted 

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Some Thoughts on Structure and Meaning in The Lord of the Rings

Yes, Simon. There she is again

Quite a few years ago now in his still highly relevant article, 'The Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings', Richard West made clear how intricately woven together The Lord of the Rings is. Unlike the simpler and more 'organic' practice common in modern novels, the medieval technique of '[i]nterlace, by contrast, seeks to mirror the perception of the flux of events in the world around us' (West 78), which leads to a narrative that, like life, is 'cluttered', 'digressive', and 'chaotic' (79). But there's more to it than that, as West points out:

Yet the apparently casual form of the interlace is deceptive; it actually has a very subtle kind of cohesion. No part of the narrative can be removed without damage to the whole, for within any given section there are echoes of previous parts and anticipations of later ones. The medieval memory (lacking modern information retrieval systems and therefore necessarily greater than ours) delighted in following repetitions and variations of themes, whether their different appearances were separated by scores or hundreds of pages. Musical art gives an analogous aesthetic pleasure and shows a similar structural binding ... but in literature, the interlace structure allows detailed examination of any number of facets of a theme.

(West 79)

Now in the course of The Lord of the Rings Frodo offers to give the Ring to others three times, but all of these come in the first two books, and never again after that.  A proximate cause is easy to spot -- Boromir's attempt to take the Ring at the end of the second book -- but that is only part of it. It is not the truest cause.  For in the first two books Tolkien weaves together a series of offers by Frodo with a series of (real and imagined) attempts by others to take the Ring. How these offers and attempts are made are telling in themselves, but as with Boromir each of them is part of the larger web of the story and allows us to reflect on questions of the effect the Ring has on those who possess it, claim it, or who have considered what they might accomplish if it were theirs.

1. In The Shadow of the Past Frodo offers the Ring to Gandalf in fear, but has just proved himself unable even to throw the Ring into his fireplace, which, it has already been demonstrated, is scarcely able to warm it up (FR 1.ii.49-50, 60-61). Gandalf refuses the Ring, also out of fear, because he knows his 'pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good' will make him a prey to the Ring's power. Given the truculence with which Bilbo, like Gollum before him, asserted and defended his claim to ownership of the Ring in A Long-expected Party, Frodo's offer to Gandalf is tantamount to a denial of a claim to the Ring. 


2. In The Council of Elrond Frodo, upon learning that Aragorn is Isildur's heir, seems almost relieved: '"Then [the Ring] belongs to you, and not to me at all!" cried Frodo in amazement, springing to his feet, as if he expected the Ring to be demanded at once.' Aragorn replies, 'It does not belong to either of us...but it has been ordained that you should hold it for a while' (FR 2.ii.237).  Frodo here in fact asserts Aragorn's claim to the Ring. This not only shows how true and wise Aragorn is by his refusal, but also supports the view taken above that Frodo has so far refused to claim the Ring. 


3. In The Mirror of Galadriel Frodo's perception of things that are hidden and secret is enlarged, because he is 'the Ring-bearer, and one who has seen the Eye' in Galadriel's Mirror. This puts him on more of an even footing with Galadriel, since it allows him to recognize her as another Ring-bearer. Now he asks her what she wants, just as she had asked all the members of the Fellowship earlier in this chapter, and the fears for Lothlórien she reveals in her response parallel Frodo's fears for the Shire in The Shadow of the Past (FR 1.ii.62), as well as those stirred in Sam by what he has just seen in the Mirror.  In all humility then, it seems, Frodo offers to give her the Ring, and by implication renounces any claim to it: 'I will give you the One Ring, if you ask for it. It is too great a matter for me.'  Like Gandalf and Aragorn, Galadriel also refuses, but not without admitting the dreams of power and glory she had dreamt, as she pondered what she would do if the Ring ever came into her possession; and not before giving Frodo a glimpse of the majesty she would attain with the One Ring on her hand (FR 2.vii.365-66). It is intriguing, however, that here the offer of the Ring is conditional -- 'if you ask for it.' Requiring her to ask for it is an assertion of power and control, and suggests that Frodo's attitude towards the Ring has been changing. It is also intriguing that no sooner does she reject the Ring than he asks her how he might use it to 'see all the [other Rings] and know the thoughts of others', which Galadriel warns him not to try, since to use the power of the Ring would require him to train his 'will to the domination of others.' To try, she says, 'would destroy you.'

In addition to these three offers to give up the Ring -- whether Frodo could have actually done so if anyone had accepted is another matter -- Books One and Two begin and end with attempts, two real and two imagined, to seize the Ring -- 

1. In A Long-expected Party Bilbo claims that the Ring is his when Gandalf urges him to give it to Frodo: 'It is my own. I found it. It came to me.' But, as Gandalf continues to press him, Bilbo grows paranoid and fears that Gandalf wants the Ring for himself and will try to take it by force.  He lays his hand on his sword, implicitly threatening the kind of violence he had so significantly eschewed by not stabbing Gollum when he had the chance (FR 1.i.34).  


2. In The Flight to the Ford the Black Riders very nearly catch Frodo at the Ford of Bruinen (FR 1.xii.213-15). He attempts to command them, but they laugh at him. His questioning Galadriel about using the Ring needs to be read in connection with his failure here. His later invocations of the Ring to control Gollum (TT 4.i.618, iii.640; RK 6.iii.943-44), his wondering whether he was ready to confront the Witch-king at Minas Morgul ('not yet' -- TT 4.viii.706), and his claiming the Ring for his own (RK 6.iii.945), are all obvious 'facets' of this 'theme', but so, too, is his subsequent mourning for its loss (RK 6.ix.1024)


3. In Many Meetings Bilbo's reaching out to touch the Ring sparks a reaction in Frodo as paranoid and close to violence as Bilbo's response to Gandalf had been (FR 2.i.232). This moment is significant in three ways: first, in showing the effect the Ring is already having on Frodo by recalling Bilbo's behavior in A Long-expected Party; second, by enabling Bilbo to understand at last what the Ring does to those who bear it; and third, by the alarmingly small effect this moment has on Frodo's understanding of what the Ring is doing to him: he just moves on. 


4. In The Breaking of the Fellowship Boromir almost succeeds in seizing the Ring for himself (FR 2.x.396-400).  Frodo escapes only because he uses the Ring, which also results in vastly expanding his perception of the world, but in doing so he nearly reveals himself to Sauron, just as he had almost done, it would seem, when looking into Galadriel's mirror 11 days earlier. 

As Boromir's attempt follows so closely upon Frodo' offer to Galadriel, it might be worthwhile to consider these two moments side by side. Galadriel confesses that she has wanted the Ring, but will not take it or ask for it. She knows well that any good she might do at first will only end in despair. Boromir does not have the wisdom to see this -- he imagines himself becoming 'a mighty king, benevolent and wise.'  He not only wants the Ring, but requests it and will brook no refusal.  Frodo's psychic brushes with Sauron in these episodes, which emphasize his own increasingly complex relationship with the Ring -- 'He heard himself crying out: Never, never! Or was it: Verily I come, I come to you?' (FR 2.x.401) -- must be viewed in context with Galadriel's silent probing of Boromir's mind at their first meeting in Lothlórien, an encounter   that left Boromir rattled and suspicious, and Galadriel concerned that he was in peril (TT 3.v.496). Who would grasp that peril better than she? Who would find her desire to save her land and people more unnerving than Boromir? As Faramir later wonders, from a fascinating perspective that encompasses both sides of the experience: 'What did she say to you, the Lady that dies not? What did she see? What woke in your heart then?' (TT 4.v.667).  Boromir and Galadriel will have seen in each other's thoughts a reflection of their own fears and desires.

There are of course other scenes in the first two books that we might examine in greater depth, to see how they might contribute to our understanding of the Ring and the relationship of Frodo and others to it. In addition to some of the passages cited within the points made above, the scenes in the Shire, at Bree, and on Weathertop would be worth closer inspection. From my discussion of these same passages we can also see that much more lies ahead, which I have not yet fully thought through, and which will doubtless alter my own understanding of what I have seen so far. Still it would be foolish to think that every last passage can or should be fitted into some sort of pattern, as tempting as that can often be. 

But there is one more rather eccentric piece of this puzzle that I think requires comment at this time. In The Old Forest Tom Bombadil comes plunging into the story like some rogue comet from the Oort Cloud. The hobbits spend most of three chapters in Tom's Country, measuring from the High Hay to the East Road beyond the Barrow-downs, just as they do later in Lothlórien. Unlike Galadriel, however, Bombadil asks to see the Ring, which Frodo, to his own surprise, gives him without demur, but when Bombadil puts on the Ring and makes it disappear instead of vanishing himself, Frodo becomes alarmed and suspicious. Even though Bombadil immediately returns the Ring, Frodo must test it to be sure he hasn't been tricked. Again, the Ring has no effect on old Tom, who sees Frodo quite clearly (FR 1.vii.132-33).  Pardoxically Frodo reveals himself by disappearing. The Ring is already at work on him. Unlike Galadriel and everyone else in The Lord of the Rings, however, Tom is his own Master and desires nothing but what he has. Thus the power of the Ring has no pull on him. He knows of the Ring, but seems to have little interest in it except as a curiosity (cf. FR 2.ii.265).

Like Lothlórien, Tom's Country is also Faërie. Under his mastery time there flows differently from time in Bree or The Shire or Rohan, but not in the same way as it does in Lórien, from which one emerges to find that one has fallen behind time in the mortal world. In Tom's Country it is always the present, but the past remains vibrant and accessible: Tom can still go singing out into the ancient starlight when only the Elf-sires were awake (FR 1.vi.131); the trees can remember 'the times when they were lords' (FR 1.vii.130); the Barrow-wights can recall the first Dark Lord (FR 1.viii.141); and visions of Dunedain kings, once and future, can rise up before the hobbits' eyes as well as in their dreams (FR 1.viii.143, 145-46).  In Galadriel's Golden Wood we may also see visions of times past and times perhaps to come, but the land itself is anchored in an age long gone: In Lórien the Elder Days 'still lived on in the waking world' (FR 2.vi.349), but only if she had the One Ring could she perhaps preserve it that way forever. Tom and his Country serve as another structural counterpoise to Galadriel and hers.

What, finally, is the theme whose facets we are examining through this extensive and intricate web? Perhaps that which Gandalf touched upon first in The Shadow of the Past and which Elrond expands upon in The Council of Elrond, two chapters which occupy the same position and play much the same part in their respective books:

‘A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness. And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the dark power that rules the Rings. Yes, sooner or later – later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good purpose will last – sooner or later the Dark Power will devour him.’

(FR 1.ii.47)

And:

'Alas, no,' said Elrond. 'We cannot use the Ruling Ring. That we now know too well. It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil. Its strength, Boromir, is too great for anyone to wield at will, save only those who have already a great power of their own. But for them it holds an even deadlier peril. The very desire of it corrupts the heart. Consider Saruman. If any of the Wise should with this Ring overthrow the Lord of Mordor, using his own arts, he would then set himself on Sauron's throne, and yet another Dark Lord would appear. And that is another reason why the Ring should be destroyed: as long as it is in the world it will be a danger even to the Wise. For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so. I fear to take the Ring to hide it. I will not take the Ring to wield it.' 

'Nor I,' said Gandalf. 

Boromir looked at them doubtfully, but he bowed his head. 'So be it,' he said.  

(FR 2.ii.267)

This is how good becomes evil. Boromir's question to Frodo on Amon Hen -- if the Wise won't wield the Ring, someone has to: 'Why not Boromir?' (FR 2.x.398) -- is not all that different from Frodo's asking Galadriel about using the Ring himself the moment she has refused his offer.

It will be interesting to see how this line of inquiry unfolds from here.




Richard C. West, 'The Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings' in Jared Lobdell, A Tolkien Compass (1975), pp. 77-94.

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Works Consulted

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The Real Reason Tolkien Disliked 'The Chronicles of Narnia'

Tolkien hated cats.

The Dark Heart of the Smith Still Dwells in It (Silmarillion 201-02)

Fireball over Banff National Park, CA. Dec. 2014 © Brett Abernethy

[Melkor] began with the desire of Light, but when he could not possess it for himself alone, he descended through fire and wrath into a great burning, down into Darkness. And darkness he used most in his evil works upon Arda, and filled it with fear for all living things.

(Silmarillion 31)

With passages like this in mind, which recall for many of us the words of Isaiah 14:12 -- 'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! -- it is easy to forget that Melkor was not the only thing that fell from the sky and which a dark heart made evil.

'I ask then for a sword of worth,' said Beleg; 'for the Orcs come now too thick and close for a bow only, and such blade as I have is no match for their armour.' 

'Choose from all that I have,' said Thingol, 'save only Aranrúth, my own.' 

Then Beleg chose Anglachel; and that was a sword of great worth, and it was so named because it was made of iron that fell from heaven as a blazing star; it would cleave all earth-delved iron. One other sword only in Middle-earth was like to it. That sword does not enter into this tale, though it was made of the same ore by the same smith; and that smith was Eöl the Dark Elf, who took Aredhel Turgon's sister to wife. He gave Anglachel to Thingol as fee, which he begrudged, for leave to dwell in Nan Elmoth; but its mate Anguirel he kept, until it was stolen from him by Maeglin, his son. 

But as Thingol turned the hilt of Anglachel towards Beleg, Melian looked at the blade; and she said: 'There is malice in this sword. The dark heart of the smith still dwells in it. It will not love the hand it serves; neither will it abide with you long.' 

'Nonetheless I will wield it while I may,' said Beleg.

(Silmarillion 201-02)

Most people these days think of objects as morally neutral, and even if we tend to regard specific weapons as evil, we do not regard them as possessed, as it were, by the malice of their makers.  But clearly Tolkien portrayed things differently.  The intention of the smith, of the maker, matters greatly, for good or for ill, as Gandalf makes clear:

 ... let all put doubt aside that this thing is indeed what the Wise have declared: the treasure of the Enemy, fraught with all his malice; and in it lies a great part of his strength of old. Out of the Black Years come the words that the Smiths of Eregion heard, and knew that they had been betrayed: 

     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)

The Raven -- Christopher Lee

Today in 1845, Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven was first published.

Review: Peter Pan

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a sublime little book this is, which I had never read till now. It's so much sadder and full of longing, both for those who grow up and those who don't, than I ever expected it to be. Among the many things I found interesting was that there is only one actual fairy in it, the splendidly chaotic Tinker Bell, but the story isn't about her. In fact she disappears for much of it.

Rather, it is the adventures of humans in Faërie: the lost boys, the Darling children, the Pirates, the Indians, even Peter. But, as Tolkien, who as a very young man (1910) had seen the stage play of Peter Pan and was much impressed by it, pointed out decades later, that is what good fairy-stories are:

Stories that are actually concerned primarily with “fairies,” that is with creatures that might also in modern English be called “elves,” are relatively rare, and as a rule not very interesting. Most good “fairy-stories” are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches. Naturally so; for if elves are true, and really exist independently of our tales about them, then this also is certainly true: elves are not primarily concerned with us, nor we with them. Our fates are sundered, and our paths seldom meet. Even upon the borders of Faërie we encounter them only at some chance crossing of the ways.

On Fairy-stories,  ¶ 11

Part of what's interesting about this is that Tolkien of course grew to loathe fluttery gossamer fairies like Tinker Bell. Another interesting point, which Dimitra Fimi has discussed in her Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits (2010) 34-38, is the moment when Peter, in order to help save Tinker Bell, reaches out to children in the real world who are asleep and 'might be dreaming of the Neverland, and who were therefore nearer to him than you think: boys and girls in their nighties, and naked papooses in their baskets hung from trees' (chapter XIII, Do You Believe in Fairies?). The idea that dreaming children are 'nearer' to Faërie reappears in Tolkien's early poem (1915) 'You and Me and the Cottage of Lost Play,' in which children reach Faërie through their dreams. Tolkien also later speaks of this Path of Dreams, the Olórë Mallë, in The Book of Lost Tales, Part One.  We might also hear a more distant echo of this in Frodo's dream/vision of Elvenhome while in the house of Tom Bombadil.

So both for its storytelling and for its influence elsewhere, this is definitely a book worth reading.

John Hurt -- Jabberwocky

Anachronism and Artifacts of Translation (FR 1.i.27-28)

The lights went out. A great smoke went up. It shaped itself like a mountain seen in the distance, and began to glow at the summit. It spouted green and scarlet flames. Out flew a red-golden dragon – not life-size, but terribly life-like: fire came from his jaws, his eyes glared down; there was a roar, and he whizzed three times over the heads of the crowd. They all ducked, and many fell flat on their faces. The dragon passed like an express train, turned a somersault, and burst over Bywater with a deafening explosion. 

(FR 1.i.27-28, emphasis mine)

'Like an express train' is of course a simile entirely unsuited to the pre-industrial world of Middle-earth. Many have called it an anachronism, and it is, broadly speaking, but, as Corey Olsen has noted more than once in my hearing, strictly speaking it is not, because the 'translator' of the Red Book has introduced this phrase, not the narrator. Presumably the narrator (Frodo) used a phrase or idiom that conveyed the same meaning, only with different words. The translator, however, wasn't sufficiently alive to the words he was using to realize the paradox he was creating. 

Sound far-fetched?

Not quite.

Consider one of Aubrey de Selincourt's least happy translations of Livy's Latin:

The tribune would have been roughly handled but for the universal and determined support of the mob and the rapid filling of the Forum by excited men who ran from every part of the city to swell the crowd. Appius stuck to his guns, ugly though the situation was.... 

(Livy, Book 2, Chapter 56; emphasis added)

The events described here took place, according to Livy, in the year we would call 471 B.C.E.  So clearly Appius, one of the consuls of that year, had no guns to stick to. The Latin for 'Appius...was' is 'sustinebat tamen Appius pertinacia tantam tempestatem,' which may be easily rendered into the following English: 'Nonetheless through tenacity Appius withstood so great a storm.' De Selincourt, however, in his search for a forceful metaphor lost sight of the literal meaning of the words he chose.

Thus we can understand 'express train' as precisely analogous to 'stuck to his guns', as an artifact of a translation momentarily out of touch with the larger context of the words being translated.* And since Tolkien himself is the only 'translator' of the Red Book who lived in the age of express trains, he is poking fun at himself by not removing the 'anachronism', perhaps at first as unwittingly as de Selincourt later did with Livy. 

Livy, 'The Early History of Rome: Books I-V of 'The History of Rome from Its Foundations,' translated by Aubrey de Selincourt, Penguin (1960, reprinted with additional material 2002).

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Works Consulted

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*It has been suggested that a close paleographical analysis of the surviving ms of the Red Book of Westmarch is consistent with the reading 'like Bolgers at a buffet' for the original simile,

In the Realm of Useless Footnotes III

In the first chapter of Peter Pan, while reckoning up the costs of raising children with his wife, Mr Darling mentions mumps, measles, German measles (rubella), and whooping cough (pertussis). My edition of the text, which appeared in 2005, footnotes each of these diseases with a description of its symptoms. 

It took me a dull moment to realize why the editor felt the need to gloss these once common childhood diseases for her readers. Ah, once common. Then I could only laugh out loud. It isn't every day that a work of fantasy supplies evidence of the effectiveness of vaccination. 

______________________

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, with introduction and notes by Amy Billone, Barnes and Noble Books (New York: 2005).

After the Deluge

Sorry for all the reviews. I am consolidating both my blogs. But it is now safe to send out the dove in search of land.

Review: Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness

Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I give it four stars solely on the quality of the writing. The man really knew how to put words together. Often, though, and this is more often true of his prose than his poetry, which can be quite striking, what he had to tell was repulsive and left you feeling the need of a shower.

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Review: The First Man in Rome

The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book. It was well researched and not implausible, a tale well told, but each succeeding book in the series declined. When I reached the point, three or four books in, where Julius Caesar began talking to his masculinity, I just gave up.

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Review: Nightfall and Other Stories

Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

the collection is good overall, but the title story is outstanding, often and justly considered one of the greatest of SF stories.

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Review: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

some of the entries are so acidic you expect the pages to hiss.

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Review: The Ice Palace

The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

lovely and slow, dreamlike, full of sorrow and grief and hope again after.

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