On the Beauty of the Ring

In reading Lisa Coutras' fascinating 2016 book, Tolkien's Theology of Beauty: Majesty, Splendor, and Transcendence in Middle-earth (9781137553447) last night, I came upon an interesting passage in which she states that 'while beauty illuminates goodness and truth, it carries an inherent danger. Beauty can easily deceive by nature of its attractiveness' (15). Coutras goes on to illustrate this essential observation by the beauty of Galadriel in her moment of temptation and by the beauty of Saruman's voice. As a counter example, she gives us Aragorn looking foul and feeling fair. 

To support her point here,* I can only point to the beauty of the Ring as the supreme example of such perilous and deceptive beauty. The allure of its beauty captivates Bilbo (FR 1.ii.47), Frodo (FR 1.ii.60), Sméagol who kills for it (FR 1.ii.53. 56), Déagol (FR 1.ii.53), and Isildur who will do nothing to endanger the Ring because of its beauty: 'of all the works of Sauron, the only fair' (FR 2.ii.253). Sauron, too, had once been deceptively and dangerously fair, but once he had transferred much of his native strength into the Ring he found that he could not recreate a fair form to mask his evil after he perished in the Downfall of Númenor. This was true even while he still had the Ring in his possession as he did in the years between his return from Númenor and his second death at the hands of Gil-galad and Elendil. 

As I have suggested before, I think it is reasonable to believe that what went into the Ring that made it so beautiful that characters as varied as Isildur and Sméagol fell prey to its allure at once was the very power which had made Sauron able to assume so pleasing a guise in the first place. Like Morgoth, the transference of power permanently outside himself left him unable to restore his appearance. Since Sauron had begun his existence as a transcendent being, it makes sense that the beauty which was originally his would be manifested in the form he took within the world, but as time went on and he grew more corrupt and evil only the appearance of beauty remained.

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* To which she may return later. I haven't gotten very far. It's one of those marvelous books whose footnotes and bibliography send one off on equally fascinating expeditions into the rabbit-holes of Academe.

I have wept like Stoner

Sloane had no family; only his colleagues and a few people from town gathered around the narrow pit and listened in awe, embarrassment, and respect as the minister said his words. And because he had no family and loved ones to mourn his passing, it was Stoner who wept when the casket was lowered, as if that weeping might reduce the loneliness of the last descent. Whether he wept for himself, for the part of his history and youth that went down into the earth, or whether for the poor thin figure that had once kept the man he loved, he did not know.

John Williams, Stoner, p. 89,

Many years ago now, on the day I was signing my first contract to teach full time at a small liberal arts college somewhere north of New York City, my father died. In truth he died before I left the city that morning. Strangely enough, I had woken up almost an hour before my alarm was set to go off. The time, 6:17 AM, later proved to be the time he died. That morning I thought it strange to wake up so spontaneously and so early when I usually needed more than one alarm to reach me. But I did not know as I set out for my glorious day that there was this shadow behind me. 

At the college I met the members of the department, and sat down to have a good conversation with its senior member, a wonderful, brilliant, funny, strange and somewhat mad Socratic figure of a man named James Day. We hit it off at once and I returned to the city somewhat triumphantly. On the way home from the train station I stopped at my local pub for a celebratory pint. Unasked, the bartender poured me a shot of whiskey, then stood in front of me to pour a second, and a third. I looked at him.

'Call your mother,' he said.

The only grieving I knew then was to mourn outwardly, grim-faced and inky-cloaked. I was, so I thought, the one who had to be strong for everyone else. We had a wake for my father, and then buried him funeral in the fitting, cold, pouring rain of early March. We went on. In the fall I went off to begin teaching. James Day, though nothing like my father, became a surrogate. He was so much that my father was not. To begin with, we could talk about Greek together, and did at great length in the campus cafe, in the pub, at his home, in restaurants over a meal. We spent a great many hours together, and I came to love him very much. 

A few years later I moved on to another small liberal arts college even further north. One day that winter a phone call came -- I am no longer sure from whom -- to tell me that James had died. His health had long been terrible, and he refused to change the way he lived. Perhaps he thought it would have made no difference, but I don't think he wanted it to. The news brought down a terrible silence within me. I went outside to split some firewood for the woodstove, since it seemed I needed something to do. 

In time I realized I was weeping as I set up the wood and let the axe fall, and set up the next piece and let the axe fall again. I did not know who I was weeping for, whether for James or for my father, for myself or for us all. The tears all flowed together. I don't think I have ever wept so long.

A year or so later I met one of James' sons, and from what James had once told me I believed there had been some estrangement between them. Yet one night in his house James had shown me videos of this son performing various impressive feats on a skateboard. Never had I heard James so purely delighted for so long. He laughed and he smiled and he beamed. I made a point of telling his son that because I knew James never could, or at least that he never had. To me it seemed that his son was moved to hear of his father's delight and pride. I was moved to tell him. Because we too often say what we shouldn't to those we love and too seldom say what we should. But mostly it becomes too late to say anything and we can only weep without knowing who we are weeping for. 

Guests, ghosts, and other creatures: Men as 'Guests' in Arda.

If you look up the word gyst -- 'guest, visitor, stranger, outsider, outlandish creature, enemy' -- in the Dictionary of Old English, you will find the following note: 

Wordplay on the senses of gyst¹;‘visitor, stranger’, and gāst‘spirit, soul; demon’ is common in poetry; some poetic examples spelled gæst(-) may alternatively be read as forms of gāst

Turning to the entry for gāst/gǣst -- 'breath, air, wind, spirit, soul, person, ghost, angel, demon', etc. -- you will find the same note. This observation is by no means new. Tolkien was well aware of it. He spoke of it in an appendix to Beowulf: The Monsters and Critics (1983: 35). 

Which all makes me wonder about the use of the 'guests' to describe Men, as seen by the Elves who quickly came to believe that the fëa of Men, that is, their souls or spirits, did not have Arda as their proper home. They were strangers in Arda, guests (S 42; Morgoth 315). The fëa of Men are at once gyst and gāst.

I want to explore this more later, but I am trying to finish my darn book. 

Shakespeare's Silmarillion

Shakespeare's Silmarillion:

Melkor: do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will - Eru: Mine. Melkor: I do not well understand that. Eru: I can fret you, I can play upon you. Mine instrument.

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I just wanted to add that it took me the longest time to see Eru's use of the word 'instrument' as a musical reference, despite that the entire metaphor of the Ainulindalë is musical. I had always seen 'instrument' as 'tool.' Once I made the connection, as blindingly obvious as things always are in hindsight, my mind leapt to Hamlet.

The Rules of Engagement: Scholars and Texts

These days it is not unusual to hear that scholars must engage with the scholarship of other scholars. This is as it should be. We are not writing in a vacuum. There is quite a lot out there that merits our diligence and will repay our scrutiny. I have been reading scholarship in several different fields for many years now and have learned so much from it. There have been other occasions, however, when I have read scholars that seem to be paying more attention to agreeing or disagreeing with the opinions of other scholars than they pay to the texts or events they claim to be writing about. However weighty the opinion of, say, Harold Bloom might be, I have a hard time regarding any opinion he uttered as evidence of anything but his own opinion. No opinion is evidence of anything but itself and the process by which it is reached. In the scales of argument it cannot have the same weight as the text.

I have also seen scholars create paragraphs of argument by stringing together quotation after quotation from the writings of other scholars. As long as it's all properly cited and quoted of course and done with restraint, there's nothing wrong with it. I have done it myself, but I try to keep it to a minimum. Sometimes, though, it seems like an box labelled 'scholarly engagement' is being lazily checked, and I wonder if the scholar whose name is on the work even has an opinion of their own on the text or events they are writing about. 

Laziness (if that is what this is and I am not being unkind) is one fault. Inattention is another. Today I was reading a particular article on Tolkien for the third or fourth time -- an article with more than a few thoughtful observations -- and found my eye drawn to a quotation from a very important passage for understanding the evolving relationship of Frodo and the Ring. The context here is crucial. I can't see how we can hope to understand without both of these paragraphs. Below I give those paragraphs. The parts presented in orange are the only words quoted in the article I was reading, with ellipses judiciously inserted so as not to distract us from the point the scholar was trying to make. 

All that host was clad in sable, dark as the night. Against the wan walls and the luminous pavement of the road Frodo could see them, small black figures in rank upon rank, marching swiftly and silently, passing outwards in an endless stream. Before them went a great cavalry of horsemen moving like ordered shadows, and at their head was one greater than all the rest: a Rider, all black, save that on his hooded head he had a helm like a crown that flickered with a perilous light. Now he was drawing near the bridge below, and Frodo’s staring eyes followed him, unable to wink or to withdraw. Surely there was the Lord of the Nine Riders returned to earth to lead his ghastly host to battle? Here, yes here indeed was the haggard king whose cold hand had smitten down the Ring-bearer with his deadly knife. The old wound throbbed with pain and a great chill spread towards Frodo’s heart.

Even as these thoughts pierced him with dread and held him bound as with a spell, the Rider halted suddenly, right before the entrance of the bridge, and behind him all the host stood still. There was a pause, a dead silence. Maybe it was the Ring that called to the Wraith-lord, and for a moment he was troubled, sensing some other power within his valley. This way and that turned the dark head helmed and crowned with fear, sweeping the shadows with its unseen eyes. Frodo waited, like a bird at the approach of a snake, unable to move. And as he waited, he felt, more urgent than ever before, the command that he should put on the Ring. But great as the pressure was, he felt no inclination now to yield to it. He knew that the Ring would only betray him, and that he had not, even if he put it on, the power to face the Morgul-king – not yet. There was no longer any answer to that command in his own will, dismayed by terror though it was, and he felt only the beating upon him of a great power from outside. It took his hand, and as Frodo watched with his mind, not willing it but in suspense (as if he looked on some old story far away), it moved the hand inch by inch towards the chain upon his neck. Then his own will stirred; slowly it forced the hand back and set it to find another thing, a thing lying hidden near his breast. Cold and hard it seemed as his grip closed on it: the phial of Galadriel, so long treasured, and almost forgotten till that hour. As he touched it, for a while all thought of the Ring was banished from his mind. He sighed and bent his head. At that moment the Wraith-king turned and spurred his horse and rode across the bridge, and all his dark host followed him. Maybe the elven-hoods defied his unseen eyes, and the mind of his small enemy, being strengthened, had turned aside his thought. But he was in haste. Already the hour had struck, and at his great Master’s bidding he must march with war into the West.

(TT 4.viii.706)

The scholar here sees Frodo responding with assurance to the 'command that he should put on the Ring' and offers this up as evidence that Frodo can tell the difference between his will and that of the Ring. This of course assumes that the Ring is conscious and has a will, and at the very least that assumption needs to be questioned, which the scholar never does at any point. If, however, the Ring is calling out to the Witch-king as the text suggests it may be, does that not support the scholar's contention that it is the Ring commanding Frodo to reveal himself? If so, why not include it? Of course, that would mean the Witch-king actually knows the Ring is present, and it beggars belief that he and the other Ringwraiths would have marched on if they had known that. Surely, merely grasping the phial cannot have communicated that 'These are not the hobbits you're looking for. Move along.' The suggestion is absurd, and is meant to be. But assuming that the Ring is conscious and calling out raises questions here that should not be skirted.

There is also more going on here than the selections chosen by this scholar disclose, none of which is irrelevant to Frodo's experience. What of Frodo's assumption that he may not yet be ready to face the Witch-king, but that, as the words 'not yet' make clear, one day he will be? One does not think what Frodo thinks otherwise. What of his having forgotten that he had the phial? What of the spell his own thoughts and dread of the Witch-king impose upon him? Is there no connection between the movement of his thoughts from his foe to the Ring? Is he really saying that the Ring is responsible for the 'command' he feels while, though pinned like a bird fascinated by a snake, he contemplates not flight but fight? All of the descriptions of Frodo's reaction to seeing the Witch-king -- his dread, the chill throbbing of his old wound, his inability to move, and his realistic understanding that the Ring would only betray him by revealing him and that he could not defeat the Witch-king -- make it much harder to see Frodo's slow struggle to force his hand away from the Ring as something he accomplished with anything approaching self-assurance. 

What I think the answers to these questions may be is a matter for another day. What I find myself wondering is just what degree of engagement with a scholar is needed when that scholar's engagement with the text they are writing about raises questions of its own. The identity of this scholar is not my concern here. I have no interest in savaging someone as if I were the great and terrible Housman. I am not the guardian of truth I thought I was when a young man. If in the course of making an argument of my own about this text I discover a need to engage with this scholar, I shall. However, I think the text is what I should be engaging with. The evidence I need to make my case is there, not in any other scholar's opinion, whether weighty or slight.