LotR - Foreword [Archive] - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

davem

06-07-2004, 06:37 AM

Well, I don’t know how relevant this will be, but as we’re starting with the Foreword, I thought it might be interesting to look at Tolkien in the period just prior to, & just after publication of LotR, & his feelings about the work.

This is an excerpt from a talk given at the 1992 Centenary conference in Oxford, published in the Proceedings of the Conference, & published jointly by The Tolkien Society in the UK & the Mythopoeic Society in the US.

The speaker was George Sayer. He tells about the time he spent walking with Tolkien & the Lewis brothers in the Malvern Hills.

“Though he (Tolkien) was generally interested in birds & insects, his greatest love seemed to be for trees. He had loved trees ever since childhood. He would often place his hand on the trunks of ones we passed. He felt their wanton or unnecessary felling almost as murder. The first time I heard him say ‘’ORCS’ was when we heard not far off the savage sound of a petrol driven chainsaw. ‘’That machine,’ he said, ‘is one of the great horrors of our age.’ He said that he had sometimes imagined an uprising of trees against their human tormentors. ‘Think of the power of a forest on the march. Of what it would be like if Birnam Wood really came to Dunsinane.’....

‘Except at Inklings mettings I saw nothing of Tolkien for perhaps two years after this. Lewis gave me bulletins about him, & talked quite a lot about the Lord of the Rings, its greatness & the difficulty oof getting it published. He thought this was largely Tolkien’s fault because he insisted that it should be published with a lengthy appendix of largely philological interest. In negotiation with Colllins he had even gone so far as o insist that it should be published with the earlier work, The Silmarillion, a book that Lewis had tried to read in typescript, but found very heavy going. The two together would make a volume of over a million words. Even alone The Lord of the rings would. Lewis thought, be the better for pruning. there was a large section that in his opinion weakened the book.

Of course Lewis’s enthusiasm made my wife & me mnost eager to read the book. Lewis said that he would try & get a copy for us, but he did not see how. Then on one of my visits to Magdalen he told me that Tolkien had given up hope of ever having it published. This was a real calamity, but it brought great good to me. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘at what I have here for you!’ There on his table was the typescript of The Lord of the Rings. Of course i must take the greatest care of it, read it in a month or less, & return it personally to the author, ‘phoning him first to mmake sure that he would be there to recieve it. It was far too precious to be entrusted even to the more reliable post of forty years ago.

Of course my wife & I had the thrilling experience that all of you remember vividly. Well before the month was up, I turned up with iit at Tolkien’s house, then in Holywell. I found him obviously unhappy & dishevelled. He explained that his wife had gone to Bournemouth & that all his friends were out of Oxford. He eagerly accepted my invitation to come to Malvern for a few days. ‘But what about the other book? I can’t leave it here.’ So i drove Tolkien to Malvern with the typpescripts of The Lord of the Rings & The Silmarillion on the back seat. What a precious cargo!

His talk now was mainly of his books. He had worked for fourteen years on The Lord of the Rings & before that for many years on The Silmarillion. They really were is life work. He had in a sense planned them before he went to school, & actually written one or two of the poems while he was still at school, I think the Tom Bombadil poems. He had now nothing to look forward to except a life of broken health, making do on an inadequate pension. He was so miserable & so littlle interested in anything except his own troubles that we were seriously worried. What could we do to alleviate his depression? i could walk with him & drive him around during the day, but how were we to get through the evenings? Then I had an idea. I would take the risk of introducing him to a new machine I had in the house & was trying out because it seemed that it should have some valuable educational applications. It was a large black box, a ferrograph, an early model tape recorder. To confront him with iit was a risk because he had made it clear that he disliked all machinery. He might curse it & curse me with iit, but there was a chance that he would be interested in recording on it, in hearing his own voice.

He was certainly interested. First he recorded the Lord’s Prayer in Gothic to cast out the devil that was sure to be in iit since it was a machine. This was not just whimsey. All of life for him was part of a cosmic conflict between the forces of good & evil, God & the devil. I played it back to him. He was surprised & very pleased. He sounded much better than he had expected. He went on to recoord some of the poems in The Lord of the Rings. Some he sang to the tunes that were in his head when writing them. He was delighted with the resullt. It was striking how much better his voice sounded recorded & amplified. the more he recorded, & the more often he played back the recordings, the more his confidence grew. He asked to record the great riddle scene from the Hobbit. He read it magnificently & was especially pleased with his imppersonation oof Gollum. Then I suggested he should read one or two of the best prose passages from The Lord of the Rings, say, the ‘Ride of the Rohirrim’, & part of the account of the events on Mount Doom. He listened carefullly &, I thought, nervously, to the playback. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘they are all wrong. The publishers are wrong, & I am wrong to have lost my faith in my oown work. i am sure this is good, really good. But how am I to get it published?’

Of course I had no idea. But i had to say something, so I said, ‘Haven’t you an old pupil in the publishing business?’ After a pause he said:’There’s only Rayner. ‘Then send it to him & ask him to help.....

He doubted if many people would buy the book at the high price of 25 shillings a volume. He feared too that the few people who read it would treat it as an allegory oor morality tale about the nuclear bomb or the horrors of the machine age. He insiisted over & over again that his boook was essentially a story, without any further meaning. 'Tales of Faerie,' he said, 'should be told only for their own sake.'

At long last, after the three volumes were successfully launched, he became ‘cock-a-hoop’ & talked with great enthusiasm of the fate of the pirated paperback version & the astonishing growth of the tolkien cult. He enjoyed recieving letters in Elvish from boys at Winchester & from knowing that they were using it as a secret language. He was overwhelmed by his fan mail & would be visitors. It was wonderful to have at long last plenty of money, more than he knew what to do with. He once began a meeting with me by saying: ‘I’ve been a pooor man all my life, but now for the first time I’ve a lot of money. Would you like some?’

Sorry for such a long quote, but I think its fascinating to get that insight into Tolkien's state of mind & his feelings about the book, as we set off.

Kransha

06-07-2004, 06:42 AM

There I halted for a long while. [etcetera]

As mentioned, the Foreward to LotR gives us some abnormal insight into the mind of our revered author, Professor Tolkien. Here, specifically, Tolkien speaks of the generic hardships of writing literature. Note, perhaps, that he was drawn to a halt in his writing at numerous places, all of which would've left his readers hanging in the dankes, darkest pit of suspense-wrought confusion. This leads those who speculate on such matters to believe that Tolkein may not, in fact, have known where his books were headed on their grand scale abroad. This may be an incorrect assumption, since the dramatic haltings of the 'typing and re-typing' may merely have been based in time management, or simple author interest in the subject matter, but one would think that the latter was not the case, since Tolkien indicates that most of the points he stopped at were points of crucial importance (i.e. Moria, prelude to Pelennor, etc). But, yet again, I may be generalizing.

Some quotes to be paraphrased that have aroused controversy, or possibly confirmed its absence resolutely, are as follows, unmentioned above:

'I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author'
One of the singular quotes from the forward (as read from my beloved, two-decade old, leftover Ballantine edition with the jacket withered off), represents a great deal of importance, at least in my mind, since so many thoughts of allegory or symbolism have 'spawned,' for lack of a better word, around this edition and the Professor's whole legacy. For purpose, Tolkien suggests with a blunt but eloquent simplicity, in my opinion (must be careful not to incur the wrath of those who disagree), that the two areas exist, both, in the works present under his name. There is a certain degree of allegory that is applicable, though it has been somewhat contorted over the years, but not to rashly, and a certain degree of applicability that is allegorical, though I have no idea whatsoever that statement intends...

To them, and to all who have been pleased by this book, especially those Across the Water for whom it is specially intended, I dedicate this edition.
(Italics mine own). Since I have read the paraphrased quote above this one, referencing allegory and applicability, this line means little to me except as a dedication from a father of a soldier and a grandfather to those who read and were, in turn, inspired by his works, to them. After reading the above quote, you see that this is all this is, since the remark entailing special intention probably refers in full to the fact that Chris Tolkien was enlisted in the RAF at the time (aldo subsequently revealed through the Foreward at the dawn of this edition. Some would-be philosophers of yesterday and today, may have found 'unapplicable allegory' in this statement, and allegory which I saw, but didn't exactly confide in. I make the assumption that you, my fellow BDers, know of the allegorical symbolism I speak of, so I will fade here, as the discussion is oozing into controversy, which my feeble brain is oft unable to comprehend.

mark12_30

06-07-2004, 06:50 AM

Edit: Dave and Kransha, we cross-posted, so there's no response to your peices in this... Edit #2, Davem, thanks so much for that long quote, it was wonderful!!! I must go back and listen again to those recordings!

Esty, I'll start with #2, the glimpses he gives us of the development of the story.

As a writer, his admissions of difficulty have always given me great hope.

Stories, apparently, can get stuck for other writers too. If Tolkien plodded for five *years* til he stood by Balin's tomb in Moria for a year, perhaps I am not so stuck as I think. When greeted by surprises in my stories I am assured by Tolkien that's all right too. Arry "Revised and indeed largely re-written backwards"-- that strikes me too.

His defiant dismissal of the critics I find both charming and encouraging. Beauty is in the eye of the reader.

His WW2 outline: Sauron is subjugated, Barad-Dur is occupied, Saruman comes up with a ring of his own. The man's wit is sharper than the shards of Narsil.

His diatribe against allegory is neatly balanced against his preference for history, real or feigned, and his endorsement of applicability.

His list of desires: to write a tale that would entertain, etc-- is that the reader may "even" be deeply moved. Here is a hint of his aim at eucatastrophe, his admission that all will not experience it, his hope that some will.

And lastly, the first-person narration always brings me to the same conclusion: how I love Tolkien as a professor, as a creative and witty Loremaster, as a staunch and kindly man of faith who wrote stories for his children. I'd like the chance of adopting him as an uncle, although I'm not sure he and my other family members would have gotten along!

Estelyn Telcontar

06-07-2004, 06:57 AM

...those Across the Water for whom it is specially intended... Kransha, the Foreword was written for the American edition, for those who are, from the author's point of view, "across the water" - in this case, the Atlantic Ocean.

Fordim Hedgethistle

06-07-2004, 07:26 AM

His diatribe against allegory is neatly balanced against his preference for history, real or feigned, and his endorsement of applicability.

The thing that always strikes me about the Foreward is Tolkien’s very clear insistence that the LotR is a ‘historical’ work in which he attempts to recover the events that the hobbits got caught up in. His insistence as well that the work is “philological” in nature is an incredibly important point. The very genesis of Middle-Earth was the invention of Quenya and Sindarin: he made up the languages first, then had to find the speakers of that language, whom he called Elves, then he had to figure out their history, and thus it all began. I think this is so important to acknowledge from the outset because it will call our attention to the primacy of language and words in the book. As a professor of philology – indeed, as one of the founders of modern approaches to linguistics-based analysis of literary texts – Tolkien was a master of the English language like very few before or since. I think it is no bad comparison to put him alongside Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton in his careful and full response to the richness of English and the wide possibilities it contains. All that time he spent rewriting and then typing the book was far from wasted, I think, insofar as it would have given him the opportunity to revise and revise and rework the prose word-by-word, with the result that his text will, I think, bear great fruit when brought under the kind of extremely close scrutiny that I hope this forum will provide.

The sense of passivity that he expresses before the story is more than charming, it seems genuine. Kransha makes an excellent point when he indicates that the great ‘gaps’ in the writing took place just before the major turning points in the narrative. I think that is because Tolkien kept writing himself to a point where he did not know what was going to happen next, and was able to resolve this only be ratcheting up the stakes. While he doesn’t mention the particular emergence of Aragorn in Bree here, that was another point at the narrative where he got stuck very early on (in Bree, the hobbits originally met another hobbit ranger called Trotter). The impasse in Moria was resolved by Gandalf’s death, and the impasse of the Pelennor by Aragorn taking the Paths of the Dead. This is why the tale “grew in the telling” as that ‘older’ material of the Second Age just kept impressing itself onto what began as a relatively simple story giving more hobbit-stuff.

Then when the ‘end’ had at last been reached the whole story had to be revised, and indeed largely re-written backwards.

The quotation marks around ‘end’ here are just wonderful as they invite – demand – us to move past the simple idea of his book as being one composed of beginning middle and end in some linear form. The tale did indeed “grow in the telling” and continued to do so after its ‘completion’ – the Appendices were added, and a Prologue written; then the Foreward. And even after his death it continued with the publication of the Sil, and then the HoME – and then with places like this Forum! The most important connection between this book and history is that neither one is a ‘closed shop,’ constructed by the author for the benefit of the reader. The book challenges us to reinterpret it and make it our own; only a very great fool accepts unquestioningly somebody else’s version of history, and the same is to be said of this book. That’s why, I think, Tolkien writes with such vigour and energy in the Foreward about allegory and applicability. Having created a book that lends itself to such openness (that is, it’s such a readerly book that the author has little or no ‘control’ over its reception – and he doesn’t want any) that there were a lot of people who were perhaps abusing that freedom, and Tolkien wanted to add a minor corrective to that by nudging people away from simplistic interpretations of the tale (the War of the Ring is World War II) and toward more subtle and fluid interpretations. Just as historical events are never allegorical (the War of 1812 is not an allegory of the Expulsion from Eden!) but are examples of certain ideas and themes (imperialist aggression, revisionist history, birth of a national identity), so too is LotR.

So, to finish my long first post (I’m just so excited to be underway) – what are the themes that Tolkien seems to be indicating his book is ‘about’? The one thing he identifies as being central is, quite brilliantly I think, the Ring itself. He says that having chosen to use the Ring as the “link” between [/I]The Hobbit[/I] and LotR, the story was pretty much determined to proceed as it did. So the book is ‘about’ the (history of) the Ring – that, for me, will be the point I try very much to keep in mind as I go through it this time.

EDIT -- I forgot to say thanks very much davem for that interesting (and lengthy!) quote. I get chills when I think how close we all came to never having LotR!!!

HerenIstarion

06-07-2004, 07:32 AM

When those whose advice and opinion I sought corrected little hope to no hope

That allegedly refers to Allen and Unwin and their reader. But Tolkien knew not that reader haven't seen what was sent to publisher, by and large, but only portion of Lay of Leithan (or maybe some other lay, but some lay it was for sure). So, there probably was a bit of misunderstanding there - no knowing what would have happened if the reader was to see all of the paperwork provided. There is no conjuctive mood to history, it is said, and one of my mostly beloved quotes of Tolkien is 'things might have been different, but they could not have been better', but sometimes I feel inclined to muse over things, I do

Bêthberry

06-07-2004, 09:00 AM

Oh indeed, I very much enjoy the "ten fingered typist" remark too. Like Tolkien's comment that he has similar opinions about works which others like, it strikes me as evidence of Tolkien's wit and sly humour. We are all very much aware of the humour in The Hobbit but I don't think we've yet considered the humour in Lord of the Rings.

Out of the many points which have already been made here--swiftly goes this discussion, if so many posts since Estelyn's first is any indication--I would like to ponder one which has me wondering, one which Estelyn suggested, Tolkien's statement of his intention. I have no clear cut answer, but it strikes me that Tolkien, as all authors, is of a subtle, complex mind.

Now, before any of you throw tomatoes at me, let me explain. I read this Foreward, written, as Estelyn points out, some years after the publication of the book and even more after its conception and long gestation, and think about the many references in the Letters to his claims that the story became imbued with subtle hints of his faith. I am thinking particularly here of littlemanpoet's wonderful old thread "and consciously so in the revision." Those letters which gave inspiration to that thread were for private reading, of course.

This is a public foreward, but how many times does Tolkien here insist that the story is mainly story--or, as Fordim has pointed out, history, with a primary inspiration in linguistics.

The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. ... As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none.

I know that Helen reads this as implying the eucatastrophe of which Tolkien speaks in On Fairy Stories but I really wonder about this. Many people can read a story and be deeply moved without having a religious experience. Surely to take 'deeply move' as a hidden code to refer to eucatastrophe is to suggest that Tolkien is here positing a second, secret hidden language. Would he be doing that? Particularly when davem's quotation reiterates Tolkien's idea that the story should be enjoyed for itself as story. Here's the part I mean:

He insiisted over & over again that his boook was essentially a story, without any further meaning. 'Tales of Faerie,' he said, 'should be told only for their own sake.' quoted above by davem

To this I point to Tolkien's disavowal of autobiographical impulse: the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppost that the movements of thought or the events of time common to both were necessarily the most powerful influences.

Perhaps Tolkien's main point here is to disavowal the interpretations which saw contemporary political/historical references in his books. Yet he places such repeated emphasis on story as story that I think he is also suggesting something about the reading experience itself. I don't wish to get into a discussion of the ideology of the books, such as bogged down the Canonicity thread. What I rather wonder about is why Tolkien would not make any mention in the Foreward of some of the things he discusses in his Letters or in On Fairy Stories. I am not accusing him of dishonesty or anything like that, by any means, but rather that he is defending a particular way he wished his work to be regarded..

I think we have something here which can suggest his idea of what constitutes reading and particularly what constitutes his idea about how his stories should be read. Once more, I think, we have an author, as Helen states above, who deeply respected the right of the reader to see a story as he wishes, even as Tolkien was wanting to suggest that his history was something wider and grander than a grubby World War II allegory. It is a very subtle way to suggest that one interpretation is misguided without at the same time forcing his "purposed domination" on the reader. A very thoughtful and respectful balancing act, eloquently done.

davem

06-07-2004, 09:14 AM

On the allegory question, I think Tolkien is maybe protesting too much. In Letter 71 he writes:

‘For romance has grown out of ‘allegory’, & its wars are still derived from the ‘inner war’ of allegory in which good is on one side & various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, & angels. But iit does make some difference who are your captains & whether they are orc-like per se’

And in letter 66 he he even draws an allegorical comparison beween the Nazi’s & his own mythology:

‘For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. but the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, & slowly turn Men & Elves into Orcs.

In Letter 163 he writes to WH Auden:

‘each of us is an allegory, embodying in a particular tale & clothed in the garments of time & place, universal truth & everlasting life.’

‘
Perhaps its not so clear cut, though. Stratford Caldecottt in ‘Sacred Fire’ writes:

‘Tolkien always insisted that his fantasy was not an allegory. mordor was not Nazi germany, or Soviet Russia, any more than it was intended to be Saddam’s Iraq. ‘To ask if the Orcs ‘are’ Communists is to me as sensible as asking if Communists are Orcs’. But at the same time he did not deny that the story was ‘applicable’ to contemporary affairs, indeed he affirmed this. It is applicable not merely in providing a parable to illustrate the danger of the machine, but in showing the reasons for that danger: sloth & stupidity, pride, greed, folly & lust for power, all exemplified in the various races of middle Earth.

Against these vices he set courage & courtesy, generosity & wisdom, in those same hearts. There is a universal moral law, but it is not the law of a tyrant. It iis the law that makes it possible for us to be free.’

Personally, I think its a case of what John Garth called ‘seeing the world through enchanted eyes’. What Tolkien seems to do is not so much ‘allegorise’ as ‘mythologise’ the world in his stories. (But...- I'll get to that in a moment) At the same time he didn’t dispise allegory as much as he claims - Niggle is an allegory, so is the ‘story’ of the Tower in the Beowullf essay, & as Verlyn Flieger points out in regard to Smith:

‘It must be conceded, however, that to some extent it invites reading as allegory & that Tolkien is in part responsible. Dislike it though he might, having started off with an allegorical conception he found it hard to shake off, & as a consequence it is all too easy to play at the same game’

The question that arises then is, given that he didn't 'cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations', as he was happy to make use of it when necessary, why is he so dogmatic in his condemnation of it here? I can't help feeling that he wanted to emphasise as strongly as possible that the Lord of the rings should not be taken by the reader as 'allegorical'. He wanted to disuade the reader from even trying to find any allegory in it - yet isn't there some allegorical dimension to the story - if we see it as a 'human' story - which it must be if it moves us, then it is 'allegorical' of us, of man's life in this world. We are all allegories, he tells Auden. Romance grows out of allegory. I think he had no problem with 'high' allegory - as in Beowulf. LotR can be taken as an allegory of the life of man on this planet, as can Beowulf. The Dragon is an allegory of Death, & the writer intends it to be. Its not a case of 'you can see this Dragon as Death if you wish'. Tolkien seems to be saying he doesn't want LotR to be taken as 'low' allegory - the War of the Ring = WW2.( But there are 'Orcs' wandering the woods of England with chainsaws).

If 'high' allegory is taken to refer to mythologising, then he seems fine with it - it 'allegorises' the human condition, living on this planet, facing the inevitability of Death. Indeed, I think he wants us to read it on that level, or he would not have advised that it shouldn't be read by children, only by adults who, hopefully, would be able to read it in the way he wanted it to be read & understood in the way he wanted it to be understood. To mythologise is to allegorise, but it is also to free the ideas & experiences the author wishes to communicate from the specific events of the primary world. This indeed makes the story timeless, as it can be applied to whatever events the reader experiences in their own lives.To mythologise is to allegorise the 'eternal', those events & experiences which recur in all lives, at all times. Shippey compares the Gondorian's faith in the Rammas to the Maginot Line of the allies in WW2. But Lewis & Currie (in The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien) relate it to the 'Star Wars' satellite defence system - a defensive system in the first two cases (& prob. in the third) that failed the hopes of their builders. Because Tolkien chose 'high' allegory, to 'mythologise' the attitude which produces Maginot Lines & 'Star Wars', etc, etc, then the Rammas can stand for all such defense systems.

Anyway, I fear I'm hogging this thread!

Fordim Hedgethistle

06-07-2004, 09:32 AM

davem - the "high allegory" you speak of here is, methinks, Romance in the original and fullest sense: that is, the dramatisation through a narrative, of an idealised exploration of the human condition/human self (human experience in the world). All of the really enduring Romances of the Middle Ages aspire to do much 'more' than tell a story: La Romaunt de la Rose, Roland and Gawain all spring to mind.

I think that what Tolkien is doing in the Foreward is perhaps more semantic than anything else: defining "allegory" as something simplistic (Ring=Bomb) and using a term of his own "applicability" to describe what he is doing, which is what Romances used to do. I guess the difference is that his book is happy to use allegory as a strategy (i.e. Frodo becomes an allegorical representation of the soul in torment? Sam becomes an allegorical representation of Everyman? I'm not saying that these are right -- only that the book can be read according to such allegories without doing it wrong or violence), while not being completely apprehended according to some total allegorical vision (Frodo and Sam are soldiers in World War II and everything else must fall into place around that).

Bêthberry

06-07-2004, 09:53 AM

I think it would be helpful here if we recall Child's excellent post from the Canonicity thread where she argued cogently that Tolkien rejected allegory in the manner of C.S. Lewis.

Also, perhaps we should recall that "Allegory" is a specific literary genre, such as Spenser's The Faerie Queen or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, a definition with which Tolkien would have been very familiar. The tower story about Beowulf and other things which davem refers to as allegorical would perhaps more fittingly be referred to as symbolic, in order to distinguish it from the genre.

Another difficulty I think with conflating 'allegorise' with 'mythologise' is that, philologically, the two words and their cognates are not related at all. Also, definitions of allegory usually mention some form of figurative style or representation, a style which mythology eschews with its specific names for characters. However much we can understand Frodo and Aragorn as acting with moral virtues, they are still depicted in the style of specific characters, one a more realistic style and the other a heroic style from old epics, but nonetheless they are embody more than just one character or moral trait, a case which does not pertain to the characters in Spenser and Bunyan. Using allegory in Leaf by Niggle does not in and of itself suggest that Tolkien was employing it in LOTR. Their styles are very different.

And at the risk of inciting yet another off topical discussion, I would suggest, too, but very politely so of course, that davem has not proven this point, but taken it as axiomatic, a point which several of us have previously disagreed with.

Indeed, I think he wants us to read it on that level, or he would not have advised that it shouldn't be read by children, only by adults who, hopefully, would be able to read it in the way he wanted it to be read & understood in the way he wanted it to be understood.

From the witty and self-possessed way in which Tolkien acknowledges the displeasure of even those who like the tale--and includes his own as well-- I venture to suggest yet again that he abjures "the purposed domination of the author."

mark12_30

06-07-2004, 11:57 AM

Bethberry and davem,

I would like to further focus on the difference between allegory and applicability, and between allegory and mythology.

Tolkien used the word "history" to refer to LotR; allow me to do the same for a moment. Applicability belongs to history, I think. "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it"-- not in a literal sense, of course, but because of failure to apply the lessons learned to current-day issues. Those lessons learned-- from history, from LOTR-- are applicable. Let the trees be. Subjugation is nasty. Virtue is better than vice. These are applicable lessons learned. And Tolkien used his language to make his points; for instance, those who cut down trees are orcs because they've lost the ability to see something for more than what it is made of. This isn't allegory. It's plain simile/ metaphor.

History, to be applicable, need not treat the supernatural, or anything metaphysical. However, myth (and Faerie-tale) is all about the meeting of the natural and the supernatural. Tolkien desired to write a myth for England; this we know, although he doesn't mention it in the foreword. For the story to have the supernatural impact of a myth, he had to let it go-- completely-- release any domination that he might have liked to exert.

A myth has to be a good story, or nobody will repeat it. It has to hold together as a story, it has to entertain, and move, or it will be forgotten. And if it is forgotten, it cannot enlighten.

In order for a myth to point to the "One True Myth" (see On Faery Stories) it must be a good enough myth to survive. It has to be a good story, entertaining, interesting, moving. He had to start there. In a sense, he had to wind it up, set it on the floor, and let it go-- to see if anyone would wind it up again after he was done. Was it interesting enough to live, to last, to be a myth?

With hindsight we say "of course."

However, in order for the reader to let his myth be a myth, and not an allegory, or a cheesy simile for world politics, he had to (in a sense) rein in his readers, and tell them: Just read the story. If the truth is going to shine through it, it doesn't need my help or yours. Just listen to the story, and see what happens.

Durelin

06-07-2004, 12:11 PM

As always, we return to focus so much on this one word and it's Oxford Dictionary defined meaning. 'Allegory' is a mere word, and is very specific in its definition, as Bêthberry just stated. I know that any author can purposely place parallels, or perhaps 'tributes' to other works, aspects of life, religion, history, etc. And they can purposely, even strategically place these for the benefit of the reader or the work itself, without writing allegorically. It is obvious that Tolkien was influenced by certain things, and that he chose to include them in his writing (I really do like to think of them as tributes), but never would he use the word allegory to express this. For one thing, readers of this century are too mixed up in making separations and definitions. And so an allegory has its own specific definition, is a specific genre, and we still are trying to define what exactly an allegorical work expresses. What Tolkien obviously was not aiming for was a work that had symbolism, merely, the fact that aspects of his story resemble things the readers and, of course, Tolkien himself, are (were) familiar with shows that Tolkien was influenced by certain things in devising his world, characters, names, etc. I hope that this may be separated from the narrow-minded label of 'allegory'.

Stated by Fordim Hedgethistle: The thing that always strikes me about the Foreward is Tolkien’s very clear insistence that the LotR is a ‘historical’ work

He insists, and it shows. I have heard complaints before that The Lord of the Rings is too much like a historical text, and so bores the reader. Most of this had to do with Tolkien's style of writing, which often did convince you that these events were real and had already taken place. And, of course, Tolkien's love and respect for history most certainly shown through in his work, his respect for history also driving him away from allegory.

Speaking of history...I'd like to comment on this quote a bit more (though since Fordim covered it already, my comment will be decidedly short :D ):

Then when the ‘end’ had at last been reached the whole story had to be revised, and indeed largely re-written backwards.

It is obvious that Tolkien was writing a history, and a love of his style of writing tends to come with the attachment of love of the epic: which is, essentially, a historical piece (more details to come...). History does not end, as Tolkien's tale did not truly end. There are many ways Tolkien's tale could have lived on, with history continuing and repeating itself. It could continue in the real history of the world (as it does fit in rather nicely, in its way, as I will elaborate upon...), or in the world of its readers, and in their imaginations (as corny as that may sound!).

In accordance with the epic, it is a historical piece in more ways than one. (Perhaps how I describe the epic is limiting, but taking this particular 'type' of epic as the 'original' epic might help justify.)

The first is basic: it usually takes place in a historical time period, and may deal with true events, people, places, etc. More of it may even be true than these basics. The second I think is less basic, and I like to think less obvious: I relate the epic to the ancient author, who wrote long, winding tales that echo through time and inform us on our history as man. These epics are immortal in this case, and yet are old and dusty in a comfortable sort of way. Though they have survived far down the timeline, they are set in a specific place on it, a relatively large and unspecific place in history, that they cannot be freed from. They are, in this sense, a historical piece.

The Lord of the Rings has often been described as an epic, and I like to think that this helps to make it just what Tolkien wanted it to be: an history. The thing about Tolkien's epic is that it is not stuck in its specific place in history. It can tell of history in general, expressing all the parts of an epic and all the epic parts of history that we should be continually searching for and remembering. Tolkien's history can fit so well into the history of man because of this. (Told you I'd get back to that.)

One last thing for the moment....(and I'm back to allegory!)

Stated by Fordim Hedgethistle:...defining "allegory" as something simplistic (Ring=Bomb) and using a term of his own "applicability" to describe what he is doing...

It is truly sad when people define a meaning for ideas (not words, mind), saying that all reason should lead to this certain conclusion.

Well, the final conclusion I have come to is this: my organizational skills for discussion need improving. ;) Oh, and do forgive all the quotations. I like using them a bit too much, for a certain emphasis on the trickery of words.

-Durelin

EDIT: cross-posted with mark12_30. I still think, with all said concerning myths, 'history' can still be accurate. And whether we say 'myth' or 'history', we are still drawing conclusions. And let me say that, in my mind: myth ~ epic.

mark12_30

06-07-2004, 12:21 PM

Durelin: I most certainly agree that LOTR is a history. I did not mean to imply otherwise. However, I also believe it qualifies thoroughly as a myth.... okay, also as an epic... (Aren't we agreeing? Must go, more later...)

Fordim Hedgethistle

06-07-2004, 12:34 PM

OK, I admit, I am at least partially responsible for having set off the debate around terminology, for which I am profoundly sorry. Bethberry is, as so often, entirely correct that we shouldn't get bogged down in a discussion of definitions -- using the correct words is important, sure, but I'd be far more interested in seeing what Tolkien's book does and how it does it, than worrying about what to label it.

So, whether we call Tolkien's style "myth," "allegory," "epic" or "Fred", what's the effect of that style on our interpretation of the whole?

In other words -- what Durelin said!

In an effort to open this thread up a bit further (and avoid heading once more down the canonicity road. . . :eek: ) -- I would really like to hear what other people think Tolkien is identifying in the Foreward as the important themes of his work. As has been pointed out here, this foreward was written about 10 years after the appearance of LotR: what in that time has Tolkien decided his book is 'about'??

Kransha

06-07-2004, 12:56 PM

In an effort to open this thread up a bit further (and avoid heading once more down the canonicity road. . . :eek: ) -- I would really like to hear what other people think Tolkien is identifying in the Foreward as the important themes of his work. As has been pointed out here, this foreward was written about 10 years after the appearance of LotR: what in that time has Tolkien decided his book is 'about'??

At last, an attempt to slide oh-so-secretely back into this debate. The theme of this 'thematic epic' is again stated with uncharacteristic bluntness, and the odd lack of Prof T's usual eloquence. He states, in one of the first paragraphs of the Foreward, his generic motive, not quite as grand as some may have speculated, which I could use as inadvertant defense for my last ill-stated point. Mon amis, Observe:
The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of the readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or greatly move them.
So, thus is the desire of so many of the world's simple authors. The desire, at least that conveyed in the Foreward, was simply to be an appealing work of dramatic, and now considered epic, fiction. Holding attention was an easy feat, though I suppose the humble professor didn't consider his achievement so great. Now, as I said, and continue to say, again and again, with utter resoluteness, there have been those who think more, or less, or in between of Prof. T's motives may simply look to this phrase. It has a curt simplicity, does it not? Though it is phrased with so much less of the dramatic, and often melodramatic flourish we might be used to (i.e. to try his hand at a really long story: Does that not sound somewhat less contived than the accustomed), it has a similar beauty, considering. When one thinks that the man who 'contrived' such a world, had such a simple notion originally in mind. The mind boggles (or, at least, mine does).

P.S. Estelyn, I believe the above quoted was a misplaced paraphrasing of my own. The point was the one I'd intended. Thank you for pointing that out, since the whole tirade does sound foolish with the wrong quote attached to it. Wait, does that make an ounce of sense? I'm not entirely sure myself. Must rummage some more, for I have bewildered myself. The correction is there, but I know not where exactly there is.

Estelyn Telcontar

06-07-2004, 12:58 PM

Going back to the text of the Foreword, a side-note occurred to me on Tolkien's use of the word "ten-fingered" in connection with LotR. The book has two characters who were not "ten-fingered" - the Ringmaker and the Ringbearer! I wonder if he made that connection consciously?

"Ten-fingered" implies nimbleness, dexterity - the loss of a finger would diminish that. Now, to take that train of thought around a corner - would Tolkien identify himself with a "nine-fingered" person, since he is not "ten-fingered"?! ;)

(I know - the opposite of "ten-fingered" is, where typing is concerned, "two-fingered". Still, the thought is intriguing, isn't it?!)

Alatariel Telemnar

06-07-2004, 01:00 PM

... and I had little hope that other people would be interestied in my work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues.

So, I s'pose he is saying that his reasoning for writing Lord of the Rings was to give a world for the Elven language to exist. In the Introduction of Quenya (Which can be found at Ardalambion (http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/) Thank'ee Lindolirian, for the link ;) ) it gives the following quote:

...what I think is a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. [...] It is not a 'hobby', in the sense of something quite different from one's work, taken up as a relief-outlet. The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows. I should have preferred to write in 'Elvish'. But, of course, such a work as The Lord of the Rings has been edited and only as much 'language' has been left in as I thought would be stomached by readers. (I now find that many would have liked more.) [...] It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in 'linguistic aesthetic', as I sometimes say to people who ask me 'what is it all about'. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, pp. 219-220)

The bolded section focuses more on what I am trying to get across. There he is also saying that the Lord of the Rings was written, not for the story of it, but for his languages to have a place to exist. What do the rest of you think?

Dispite the fact he wrote such a beautiful story, just amazing, it was all just so his language could have an existance. When I first read this, I was amazed. It took me awhile for it to sink in.

Durelin

06-07-2004, 01:16 PM

Stated by Kransha: The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of the readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or greatly move them.

To add to this (and continuing with my history theme), I believe Tolkien wished to write his own history, in his love of history. That, and, of course, her wished to please the reader...I hope... :D

Though his love of language, of course, could also be an impetus for writing The Lord of the Rings. As said many times before, the languages were created first.

Stated by Estelyn Telcontar:...would Tolkien identify himself with a "nine-fingered" person, since he is not "ten-fingered"?!

Tolkien's writing certainly is not devoid of wit and irony! The odds are for that possibility, I think.

Rather short, but I will depart for now.

-Durelin

davem

06-07-2004, 01:21 PM

It almost seems that Tolkien is saying its not about anything - or at least he's denying its about whatever any reader thinks its about. Whatever suggestion was made to him he seemed to take particular delight in disabusing them of the notion. In fact the only interpretation of it that he didn't reject was that it was a Christian work.

He 'seemed' not to want it to mean anything, or relate in any way to the primary world - at least the primary world as it was when he lived. Yet he acknowledged it could be applied to events in the primary world - yet every single attempt anyone made to apply it in such a way was instantly refuted. Applicability = a good thing in Tolkien's eyes, yet when people 'applied' what they found in the work to WW2, or to atomic power, he instantly corrects them & shows them they are 'wrong' to interpret it that way. Yet, if it is NOT applicable to 'x' or 'y', if Tolkien repeatedly refutes these interpretations as wrong he must have some idea of what it does mean. Why can't a reader 'apply' the events of the War of the Ring to the events of WW2? Why does Tolkien keep feeling it necessary to deny 'free' individuals interpretations? He doesn't want to 'dominate' the reader's interpretation, yet he'll tell them in no uncertain terms that they're WRONG if they claim its an allegory of WW2, or that the Ring is the Bomb. Maybe he's not attempting to dominate their thinking by presenting them with an allegory, but he'll damn sure dominate them by telling them what it doesn't mean, & showing them that their attempt to apply it is mistaken. He'll even construct his own 'allegory' (much though he hates it!) to show them what a real allegory of WW2 would be like.

In short, I don't believe him when he says its just a fairy tale & should be read by the individual reader who should take from it what they will, because he just keeps on telling them exactlywhat it doesn't mean & why they're all wrong. Why shouldn't I interpret it as being about WW2 if I want - why shouldn't I find such applicability in it? He isn't offering it to the reader to interpret as they want. He wants us to interpret it in a specific way, it seems to me, but he seems very reticent to tell us in exactly what way.

Sorry, being a bit controversial & provocative, but I don't believe he spent 12 years writing a story simply to entertain - if he had he wouldn't care how people interpreted it as long as it entertained them. He at least had a moral agenda - as Garth shows in Tolkien & the Great War, & he reinforced that 'agenda' in his letters, & in his references to men with chainsaws as 'Orcs', the devil as Sauron, etc. He won't stand by & see readers apply events in the book willy nilly. Those who destroy the natural world are 'mythologised' into Orcs, & then the term 'Orc' is 'applied' to those who destroy the natural world. And the reader is NOT free to apply the term or concept Orc to anyone behaving in any other way, not if Tolkien has anything to do with it.

He will attempt to 'purposely dominate' any reader who interprets the Ring as the Atomic Bomb, because he knows the Ring isn't the Bomb, its Sin, the Machine, will to power, etc. Its not 'strict allegory', of course, more a case of 'What's it got in its pocketses?Not string, but not nothing, precious'.

Orofaniel

06-07-2004, 01:37 PM

As has been pointed out here, this foreword was written about 10 years after the appearance of LotR: what in that time has Tolkien decided his book is 'about'??

That is an interesting question. Although I've read the foreword several times, I cannot quite find an answer.

As Alatariel said, that Tolkien wanted to write a background history for his Elvish tongues is rather interesting. I think it's interesting because it shows how dedicated he was to his works. We all knew that he was dedicated, but by writing this I'm even more convinced. It's spectacular how he wanted to write a background history for the languges he created, if it really was why he wrote it.

It's written later in the foreword that Tolkien himself used a long time writing this story. He says:In spite of the next five years I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin's tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while.
This was certainly not a book that was written in a rush, something we already know. However, I think this means that the history wasn't fully definite before actually writing it. Since there is obviously a long time by each of his "writing-periods" I see nothing but that he has been a bit influenced by his own life - for then maybe to use that in his story? I'm not quite sure. He writes this later though: An Author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience.

The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

06-07-2004, 03:06 PM

Before I proceed with this post's intended subject, I should like to share with you an excerpt from Letter #109 (31 July 1947), in which Tolkien offers a concise and convincing resolution to the debate over allegory and applicability. In my opinion, Bêthberry has almost certainly hit the nail on the head by suggesting that Tolkien was trying to walk a very fine line between on the one hand, debunking the more egregiously foolish interpretations that had been placed on his work, and on the other letting his readers know that he was not about to tell them what The Lord of the Rings means.

Perhaps this is why the following comments are not echoed so explicitly in the foreword to the second edition, which is that normally printed with the work today (more on that later). In any case, they allow a great deal more latitude for the term 'allegory' than the later foreword, while more fully explaining why his book should not be considered as such.Of course, Allegory and Story converge, meeting somewhere in Truth. So that the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily can it be read 'just as a story'; and the better or more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it. But the two start out from opposite ends. You can make the Ring into an allegory for our time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work. You cannot write a story about an apparently simple magic ring without that bursting in, if you really take the ring seriously, and make things happen that would happen, if such a thing existed.

That's quite enough allegory for me for one evening, so now I should like to provide an alternative to the foreword under discussion, if that isn't verging on the off-topic. I'm fortunate enough to have in my possession a copy of the first edition, the foreword to which I find in many ways to be more enjoyable than the later, more serious version. Bear with me: it's a long one.This tale, which has grown almost to be a history of the great War of the Ring, is drawn for the most part from the memoirs of the renowned Hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, as they are preserved in the Red Book of Westmarch. This chief monument to Hobbit-lore is so called because it was compiled, repeatedly copied, and enlarged and handed down in the family of the Fairbairns of Westmarch, descended from that Master Samwise of whom this tale has much to say.
I have supplemented the account of the Red Book, in places, with information derived from the surviving records of Gondor, notably the Book of the Kings; but in general, though I have omitted much, I have in this tale adhered more closely to the actual words and narrative of my original than in the previous selection from the Red Book, The Hobbit. That was drawn from the early chapters, composed originally by Bilbo himself. If 'composed' is a just word. Bilbo was not assidious, nor an orderly narrator, and his account is involved and discursive, and sometimes confused: faults that still appear in the Red Book, since the copiers were pious and careful, and altered very little.
The tale has been put into its present form in response to the many requests that I have received for further information about the history of the Third Age, and about Hobbits in particular. But since my children and others of their age, who first heard of the finding of the Ring, have grown older with the years, this book speaks more plainly of those darker things which lurked only on the borders of the earlier tale, but which have troubled Middle-earth in all its history. It is, in fact, not a book written for children at all; though many children will, of course, be interested in it, or parts of it, as they still are in the histories and legends of other times (especially in those not specially written for them).
I dedicate this book to all admirers of Bilbo, but especially to my sons and daughter, and to my friends the Inklings. To the Inklings, because they have already listened to it with a patience, and indeed with an interest, that almost leads me to suspect that they have hobbit-blood in their venerable ancestry. To my sons and my daughter for the same reason, and also because they have all helped me in the labours of composition. If 'composition' is a just word, and these pages do not deserve all that I have said about Bilbo's work.

For if the labour has been long (more than fourteen years), it has been neither orderly nor continuous. But I have not had Bilbo's leisure. Indeed much of that time has contained for me no leisure at all, and more than once for a whole year the dust has gathered on my unfinished pages. I only say this to explain to those who have waited for the book why they have had to wait so long. I have no reason to complain. I am surprised and delighted to find from numerous letters that so many people, both in England and across the Water, share my interest in this almost forgotten history; but it is not yet universally recognized as an important branch of study. It has indeed no obvious practical use, and those who go in for it can hardly expect to be assisted.
Much information, necessary and unnecessary, will be found in the Prologue. To complete it some maps are given, including one of the Shire that has been approved as reasonably correct by those Hobbits that still concern themselves with ancient history. At the end of the third volume will be found some abridged family-trees, which show how the Hobbits mentioned were related to one another, and what their ages were at the time when the story opens. There is an index of names and strange words with some explanations. And for those who like such lore in an appendix some brief account is given of the languages, alphabets and calendars that were used in the West-lands in the Third Age of Middle-earth. Those who do not need such information, or who do not wish for it, may neglect these pages; and the strange names that they meet they may, of course, pronounce as they like. Care has been given to their transcription from the original alphabets and some notes are offered on the intentions of the spelling adopted* But not all are interested in such matters, and many who are not may still find the account of those great and valiant deeds worth the reading. It was in that hope that I began the work of translating and selecting the stories of the Red Book, part of which are now presented to Men of a later Age, one almost as darkling and ominous as was the Third Age that ended with the great years 1418 and 1419 of the Shire long ago.* There is a footnote at this point explaining some minor points of pronunciation that are covered in the Appendices.

*****

I find Tolkien very entertaining when he writes as translator and editor. I think that in the original foreword, although less is said in the way of guidance as to the book's meaning, one gets much more of a sense that this is intended to be an enjoyable story. The complicated details often beloved of fans are dismissed (although not so completely that they may be entirely overlooked) and the foreword itself becomes a part of the mythology, giving it shape and context and beginning, before even the prologue has been reached, to tell the story. The tributes to the Inklings and to his children therefore weave them in with the history of the text, making them almost a part of the story themselves. My time is short, so I shall leave you to make of this alternative (shall we say 'A'?) foreword what you will.

EDIT: My apologies to all those with whom I've just cross-posted. Hopefully I've managed not to break up the flow too much by taking so long to finish.

Child of the 7th Age

06-07-2004, 05:16 PM

Squatter,

Thanks for putting the first foreward up.

My own response to the "two" forewards is similar to your own. (I have an old set of the first American edition with the funky covers.)

The two forewards leave such different impressions! In the later one, Tolkien is distanced from his audience. He is looking back on the publication of the book from a space of ten years. He talks about "meaning" and those who do not care for the book, the history of the actual publication and the issue of applicability versus allegory, almost as if he's trying to answer all those questions that had been sent to him in letters over so many years. I always wonder how much of this was in his head when he actually finished the book and how much floated in during that ten-year interval. It's as if the professor is giving a general audience a polite but somewhat formal lecture.

When I read the first foreward, I'm left with a different feeling. You actually have a sense that Tolkien really did not expect his book to generate a wide audience. Instead, he seems to be talking to people he personally knows -- family, friends, members of the Inklings, and to those "admirers of Bilbo" who'd already crossed his path before. He also addresses Bilbo as the original composer of the early chapters, maintaining the fiction that the book is truly history and derived from earlier sources. Whenever I read this forward, I feel as if a secret door had opened and I've somehow managed to slip inside a private club where Tolkien is complimenting the Inklings on their Hobbit ancestry!

Tolkien was so private about many aspects of his life. He was ambivalent about any possible biography, noting that such studies could yield only a "vain and false approach" in terms of his own work. He understandably did not like the attention showered on him by the crazy American college students of my day who came pounding on his door. So any personal glimpse we get of him, especially from his own pen, is indeed a treat. And that is how I read this early foreward. It carries a tiny hint of what the man himself was like: his natural grace and ease of expression when dealing with friends.

Durelin

06-07-2004, 07:08 PM

These 'first American edition with the funky covers' (a very nice description, btw, Child!) – which funky covers do you speak of? :) I myself have several copies of each book of what I believe to be the ‘first American editions with the funky covers’, but I found that the foreword contained within was the same as the one found in my single movie cover copy… Now I feel that I have failed in being official!

But on to my ramblings…

I think some of what spurned Tolkien's 'lecturing' of the reader was all that thought in the ten years since he had first published the novels. He obviously had received a great number of comments, and most that reached him were probably bad ones, if at least attempts at constructive criticism. It is my thought that Tolkien, with all of this, and most likely because he did doubt that the book would be at all popular, he became a grumpy old man! This, in my mind, was not the wish of such a man as Tolkien: fame. Though, truly, he still seemed able to find amusement in much of the questions, popularity, and assumptions.

As has been pointed out here, this foreword was written about 10 years after the appearance of LotR: what in that time has Tolkien decided his book is 'about'??

Right, lets see about this...

I desired to do this for my own satisfaction, and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues.

Interesting... He wrote for his own fulfillment, and did not believe that much of it would be wished to be read. Could this be applied to The Lord of the Rings itself? Or is this specifically speaking of the works later published, that he did not seem to think were worth publishing?

I went back to the sequel (the sequel = LotR), encouraged by requests from readers for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures.[/b]

Wow! This was the simple beginning? Obviously this 'sequel' became much more.

[quote]But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older world, and became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its beginning and middle had been told.

The older world: He is referring to the 'older world' of his world. It seemed that the histories he had written for the Elvish languages were becoming a part of this sequel, and this told of an end to those histories. And when he speaks of it ending before it began, was he speaking of the entirety of The Lord of the Rings as an end to his history/mythology, or did he actually, physically write (or at least devise) the ending to LotR first? It really was an end, if not the end. Since he was writing a history/mythology of this world, there really wasn't any final end, except the end of time. This sequel to the Hobbit brought to an end the evils in Middle-Earth, and ended the old world. It brought the time of elven domain in Middle-Earth to a close, and left it as a world of Men. The old word had come to an end by the beginning of the Fourth Age (to the extent that the Roman Empire fell on a certain date).

In spite of the darkness of the next five years, I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin's tomb in Moria.

I can just imagine him plodding along with the Fellowship on their journey! Odd that a dark time in his life paralleled with the darkness of the Fellowship's travels in Moria.

Continuing that idea...

It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlorien and the Great River...

Tolkien started writing again, and The Fellowship's spirits are lightened and overcome the loss of Gandalf. I wonder just how much his daily life affected his writing, since it was done in such great intervals...

The prime motive was the desire of the tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.

This has been described several times in the discussion, but it is smply a motive, and he has yet to speak of 'concerning...the meaning of the tale.'

As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches; but its main theme was settled from the outset of the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit

This 'main theme' he describes, though, is, of course, no enough for the reader. First of all, he does not even directly say what the main meaning is, only what it is outset from is described. These unexpected branches were inevitable, and made it inevitably impossible for any main theme that a reader might desire to be displayed to actually be present in the author's mind or purpose. What is in the mind of the reader, though, is up to the reader.

And so Tolkien points out...

I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

And so do I think, as well. Could Tolkien perhaps think of The Lord of the Rings as 'feigned history'? Or is he merely trying to include history in its many forms?

An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex...

Well Tolkien just summed up my whole spiel in my former posts in the two above quotes...

...but as the years go by it seems now often forgot that to be caught in youth by 1914 was not less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939...the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender...and much further back.

Now he tells of what did influence him, to get rid of all assumptions that all these similes and metaphors must be referring to the large crisis in which it was published. But, going back to what Tolkien said concerning applicability, the readers were taking their experiences and interpreting and applying. What Tolkien did not want them to think was that their experiences necessarily paralleled with his own, and so were the only way to 'apply' his, or any authors, works. That borders on the most loathéd idea of allegory.

I never liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman.

Ever in his witty way, Tolkien expresses the fact that he did not go that deeply and try and express his experiences in his writing. They merely influenced him, as inevitably they would, and so influence his writing.

Well, I went through it all, and probably overdid it on the quotes, but I still covered so very little. But now I am out of time, as Tolkien came to be.

But still, I shall return to continue at another time. It is very wise to take this in intervals, as well.

-Durelin :D

Bêthberry

06-07-2004, 07:26 PM

Let me echo Child's applause for Squatter's quotation of the first British foreward. What a difference ten years (or so) makes!

Rather than repeat some of the very interesting differences between the two Forewards, what I would like to do is consider some of the well-taken contributions made by others, particularly as they relate to the question of history.

Orofaniel, you suggest, if I have understood your post correctly, that Tolkien, when faced with some of the 'fallow' periods in the writing, would have turned to his own life's experience for inspiration. This is, I think, tempting, but two points make me hesitate to accept such a possibility for a writer like Tolkien. This first is how he talked about 'what gets into the cauldron of story' in his essay "On Fairy Stories". I know we should limit our main discussion here to the text of the Forewards, but I think it is valuable to recognise that for Tolkien, story or narrative had a life or purpose or MO of its own, separate from any private personal experience. (Think of his funny line about the bishop and the banana peel.) If anything from his private life, which, as Child says, he
treated modestly and reticently, did get into the stew, he would, I am sure, include it only if it made sense in terms of the story, not in terms of personal self-expression. Certainly the way Tolkien defended the poem Beowulf as a unified work of art in his "Monsters and the Critics" essay suggests that he valued narrative as artistic expression rather than as personal expression. I think it is us in our post-Freud, post-psychoanalytical age that wants to reduce everything to an author's psyche, but this perspective is only a recent one of the last hundred years and does not represent the kind of understanding of philology or of ancient literature with which a scholar like Tolkien would be familiar.

That Letter provides interesting correlation, Alatariel Telemnar for Tolkien's claim in the Second Foreward that LOTR was "primarily linguistic in inspiration and begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues." Thanks for providing it here. Being a great fan of words and language myself, I am not sure that this necessarily downgrades the value of his desire to write a good story. It would think they would be complementary. He would want the best story to highlight or reflect his created languages to their best advantage. For Tolkien as a philologist, everything began with words and structures of language, which then moved out to create patterns and order in stories.

Durelin's point about history and epic can, I think, be considered in light of a very interesting historical discovery made in 1884. An entrepreneurial fellow by name of Heinrich Schleimann, acting apparently on suggestions from one Frank Calvert who owned property in Turkey, discovered the ruins of the ancient city of Troy from Homer's Iliad. There are, in fact, nine successive cities on the site. The discovery at the time astounded the nineteenth century world for it showed to people then that Homer's civilization was not entirely fictional but had some basis in historical fact. The new study of archeology was uncovered! It was into this exciting new world view that Tolkien was drawn, as he studied the histories and dvelopments of ancient languages. There was a scholarly impetus to making his mythology appear, as he claims in the First Foreward, as a true history, transcribed by several hands. After all, one way of understanding the word 'mythology' has been to call it linked narratives in a religion that was once believed in, as were the Greek and Roman pantheons of gods and goddesses or Norse ones as well.

Well, I hope this post adds a new flavouring of 'thyme' to the cauldron of our own discussion here. (covers ears to hide from the groans on that one)

Edit: cross posting with Durelin, so I've been referring to the earlier posts and not the most recent.

Mister Underhill

06-07-2004, 07:33 PM

Thanks for that, Squatter. For my part, I'm glad we have both versions of the foreword. The first edition version is delightful for all the reasons mentioned, but I also like the glimpses inside the writing process that the second one affords.

I've always meant to start a thread that focused on Tolkien's working methods, and any such thread would certainly have to start here with the second edition foreword. I think it's great that Tolkien wrote the book mostly on instinct and without a clear outline. It seems you can divide writers into two groups -- those who plan, outline, and structure aforehand, and those who dive right in and trust to gut instinct, inspiration, and blind luck to carry them through. The latter method seems to me to be the most romantic and pure sort of writing. One can picture Tolkien in his study (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/timmorris/tolkienhouse/study.html), bathed in the orange glow of a crackling fire, scratching away furiously into the deep watches of the night, pausing only to throw another log onto the hearth when the embers burned low.

And then, those long dry spells when "foresight had failed". Reminds me of some verse in Kipling: This is the doom of the Makers -- their Daemon lives in their pen.
If he be absent or sleeping, they are even as other men.
But if he be utterly present, and they swerve not from his behest,
The word that he gives shall continue, whether in earnest or jest.I also sense a note of wistfulness in the line, "...the tale was brought to its present end." Present end. As if somewhere deep inside him there's still that irresistible pull to revise and perfect it some more.

As to Tolkien's "lecture" on the meaning (or lack thereof) of the story, I think davem is right in that Tolkien falls prey a bit to the false modesty characteristic of authors' forewords (I could swear there's a letter in which Tolkien criticizes the practice, but for the life of me I can't find it). The most amusing specimen I know of is T.E. Lawrence's introduction to his Seven Pillars of Wisdom:Half-way through the labour of an index to this book I recalled the practice of my ten years' study of history; and realized I had never used the index of a book fit to read. Who would insult his Decline and Fall, by consulting it just upon a specific point?

I am aware that my achievement as a writer falls short of every conception of the readable: but surely not so far as to make it my duty, like a Stubbs, to save readers the pain of an unnecessary page. The contents seem to me adequately finger-posted by this synopsis.Maybe "false modesty" isn't quite right. I think he has an agenda of sorts when he protests that LotR is only a story. I'm reminded of Letter 131: "[The Arthurian mythos] is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal." I wish he would have elaborated, but I think we can get the gist of those reasons. To call attention to any meaning of his story is to transform it instantly into a sermon or a lecture, and so he says in effect, hey -- it's just a story; take from it what you will.

But lurking under that is some ambition. Letter 153: "I would claim, if I did not think it presumptuous in one so ill-instructed, to have as one object the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to 'bring them home'."

EDIT: Cross-posting on this fast-paced discussion has put me after a string of posts leading in different directions. Apologies for disrupting the flow from me too.

Saraphim

06-08-2004, 12:17 AM

Here I go...wish me luck. I am not terribly good at expressing my views on this subject.

Allegory. Alright, we know that Tolkien hated it. But he also said this:

An Author cannot of course remain wholly unnafected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadiquate and ambiguous
In this lovely sentence, Tolkien admits that his own personal experiences are imbued into what he writes, as it is with everyone who takes up a pen. He also says that it is impossible to find where and how a specific bit in the story correlates with the specific bit in the memory, be it him or anyone else trying.

I much prefer history, true or feined, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers It is here that he gives us, the readers, free reign over what we make of the story. We don't read this book, this book reads us. It touches the parts in our mind, the thoughts and emotions and memories that are unique to everyone, and gives everyone a different perception on what things mean that are read, even though we read the same words.

Estelyn Telcontar

06-08-2004, 01:31 AM

Thank you very much for the text of the First Foreword, Squatter! We definitely want to discuss it as well, and comparing the two in light of the time that passed between the writing of them is highly interesting! It looks like the terms "First Foreword" (1950s) and "Second Foreword" (1960s) have evolved on this thread, so we'll continue to use them. I have added a footnote to the opening post on this thread, pointing the way to Squatter's post so that those who (like myself) only have the text to the Second Foreword can read and discuss it.

davem

06-08-2004, 03:27 AM

My immediate thoughts on the first forword - If I cross post with anyone, or repeat points already made, sorry. this has come to me as I write

The thing that strikes me most strongly in reading the first forword is that I want it to be TRUE. I want LotR to be a translation of the Red Book. I want it all to have happened - Frodo & Sam, Aragorn & Arwen, Gandalf, & even Gollum! When I allow myself that fantasy it all becomes much more powerful, more affecting, more beautiful & precious - & is this Tolkien’s intention in presenting us with this forword? But if it is, then why change it ten years on? Why change role from translator to composer, from teller of an old story to writer of a new one?

Why, in the first forword does he point out that:

‘ it is not yet universally recognized as an important branch of study.’

(implying that it will be, & perhaps also that it should be).

But then go on to say:

‘It has indeed no obvious practical use, and those who go in for it can hardly expect to be assisted.’

(attempting to have it both ways again?)

Those two ‘contradictory’ statements are reflected in the second forward, & in other statements & letters. He seems to be saying on the one hand ‘this is important stuff, you should take note of this, you need to know it’ & then, almost immediately, telling us it’s meaningless - unless we can apply it to something in our own experience (well, if he’ll let us apply it in that way, & not show us we’re wrong & that it can’t be applied to that particular situation!)

That’s what I find odd - why put in all that work if the goal is merely to produce an entertaining story, why struggle so hard to get it published, as it was, even if possible with the Silmarillion, if he really believed it didn’t mean anything? He strikes me rather as a man who knew he had something very important to say, something which he believed needed to be ‘universally recognised as an important branch of study’.

He seems to want us to take it all as seriously as he does, place the same value on it as he does - but I don’t think his motive is vanity. He comes across as if he has something vital to say to us, something that we need to hear, but as soon as he catches our attention, has us believing he’s going to reveal the secrets of the Universe & the meaning of life to us, has our full attention, he immediately laughs & says ‘of course, you shouldn’t believe any of it, or take it seriously!”

And our response? Well, we laugh at the ‘joke’, repeat the ‘applicability not allegory’ statement as a kind of Paternoster for ‘protection’ & plunge in, taking it all absolutely seriously, as though its the most important branch of study there is. And when we emerge from Middle Earth, transformed, different, hopefully better, human beings, we repeat ‘applicability not allegory’ & laugh again.

Yet, he has actully said it has no ‘obvious’ practical use - implying that it does have practical use, but that use is not obvious - not obvious to whom? I think it was obvious to him, & that he wanted it to be obvious to us. So, the stories of Middle Earth are ‘practically’ useful. They are useful ‘in practice’ - practice of what? Jesus said those who are well don’t need a doctor, only those who are sick. I think Tolkien was offering us a cure for an illness that most of us had forgotten we had, because we’d had it for so long. But to trick us he ‘sweetened the medicine’ with sugar, & told us its just candy. Yet, he drops hints for those ‘with ears to hear’, that its much more than that, but that it will work if we trust it. We just have to let it do its work on us, & one day we’ll wake up, cured.

************************************************** ***************

Just wondering if anyone thinks we should have the original text of the Riddles in the Dark section posted for next week, to help with understanding that part of the Prologue? I have it in Annotated Hobbit & could post it, unless anyone else wants to - or unless someone knows of a site where its available?

HerenIstarion

06-08-2004, 05:22 AM

Just wondering if anyone thinks we should have the original text of the Riddles in the Dark section posted for next week

I do. It would be nice, since, having only brief summary of what was in the original edition of the Hobbit, I would be glad to read it in full

Orofaniel

06-08-2004, 07:45 AM

Orofaniel, you suggest, if I have understood your post correctly, that Tolkien, when faced with some of the 'fallow' periods in the writing, would have turned to his own life's experience for inspiration. This is, I think, tempting, but two points make me hesitate to accept such a possibility for a writer like Tolkien. This first is how he talked about 'what gets into the cauldron of story' in his essay "On Fairy Stories". I know we should limit our main discussion here to the text of the Forewards, but I think it is valuable to recognise that for Tolkien, story or narrative had a life or purpose or MO of its own, separate from any private personal experience. (Think of his funny line about the bishop and the banana peel.) If anything from his private life, which, as Child says, he treated modestly and reticently, did get into the stew, he would, I am sure, include it only if it made sense in terms of the story, not in terms of personal self-expression. Certainly the way Tolkien defended the poem Beowulf as a unified work of art in his "Monsters and the Critics" essay suggests that he valued narrative as artistic expression rather than as personal expression. I think it is us in our post-Freud, post-psychoanalytical age that wants to reduce everything to an author's psyche, but this perspective is only a recent one of the last hundred years and does not represent the kind of understanding of philology or of ancient literature with which a scholar like Tolkien would be familiar.

About his own life, I think that, perhaps when he was "stuck" he used his own life as an inspiration. I'm not saying that he directly "used" his life in the tale, just that he used it as a source. I think your point Bethberry is very reasonable and good. I also think that Tolkien is such a writer that would look beyond most of his personal experiences when he writes. I don't think that LotR would have turned out like the LotR we know if Tolkien had surely just written about his own personal experiences. He had a story he wanted to convey, I'm sure of that, but it doesn't mean that his life hasn't inflicted him during the writing process. However, I think the valuable and the importance of that personal experience that the writers put in their work is very different from each and everyone. Maybe Tolkien felt that his story was so strong in itself that he didn't need much inspiration from his own life? :rolleyes:

The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

06-08-2004, 11:54 AM

Why, in the first forword does he point out that:

‘ it is not yet universally recognized as an important branch of study.’

(implying that it will be, & perhaps also that it should be).

But then go on to say:

‘It has indeed no obvious practical use, and those who go in for it can hardly expect to be assisted.’I don't see this as a contradictory statement, given its context. Rather I see it as an oblique reference to those studies in which Tolkien was engaged that are recognised as important branches of study, and which kept him away from his manuscript for months at a time. 'I am not complaining about my lack of leisure,' says Tolkien. 'But the academic community has yet to legitimise the subject that we find so interesting; so we can expect no help from them in our studies.'

It is interesting that Tolkien expands upon the pretence of having translated a history by presenting his 'history' as a minor and unregarded academic subject, deprecated by the establishment and yet awaiting a resurgence. This is a common occurrence in the academic world, and Tolkien's own area of expertise is suffering because fewer and fewer people nowadays can see the value in studying ancient languages. If you want to learn Gothic, you will probably find that you can expect little help; and if you compile a set of translations, the chances are that it will have to be done in your spare time and take second place to paying work.

As for wanting The Lord of the Rings to be true, I can see what you mean. Personally I find pretend history amusing; and particularly so when the author throws in knowing digs against his own work by criticising the 'author' or the 'copyists' of his source. Whilst I'm content to see the story as a work of literature in an unusual vein, it is nice in more fanciful moments to imagine that it could be true, and that one day someone may find the Westron Rosetta Stone and set to publishing great tracts of unknown Endorian history. Certainly, although the later foreword is more useful as a guide, the earlier is a lot more fun. I agree with Child that it makes things seem as though Tolkien and the reader are co-conspirators or at least fellow scholars in an esoteric and obscure field; and that is the impression that I think he intended to convey. The second foreword is, I think, intended to reach out to those people whose letters Tolkien had not had the opportunity to answer; to explain a few points about the work and to set people on the right road to understanding it. In order to do this, Tolkien had to drop the mask of the translator and admit to his authorship, thus losing the opportunity to take the new comments in the same direction as the old. Perhaps this is also an admission that his histories were becoming for many an important branch of study, and one in need of some sober academic guidance from its leading authority.

Durelin

06-08-2004, 07:43 PM

Originally Posted by Bêthberry...Tolkien, when faced with some of the 'fallow' periods in the writing, would have turned to his own life's experience for inspiration. This is, I think, tempting, but two points make me hesitate to accept such a possibility for a writer like Tolkien. This first is how he talked about 'what gets into the cauldron of story' in his essay "On Fairy Stories". I know we should limit our main discussion here to the text of the Forewords, but I think it is valuable to recognise that for Tolkien, story or narrative had a life or purpose or MO of its own, separate from any private personal experience. (Think of his funny line about the bishop and the banana peel.) If anything from his private life, which, as Child says, he
treated modestly and reticently, did get into the stew, he would, I am sure, include it only if it made sense in terms of the story, not in terms of personal self-expression. Certainly the way Tolkien defended the poem Beowulf as a unified work of art in his "Monsters and the Critics" essay suggests that he valued narrative as artistic expression rather than as personal expression. I think it is us in our post-Freud, post-psychoanalytical age that wants to reduce everything to an author's psyche, but this perspective is only a recent one of the last hundred years and does not represent the kind of understanding of philology or of ancient literature with which a scholar like Tolkien would be familiar.

A long quote, but there is little that can be pulled out! It all goes so well together...

I see little difference between artistic and personal expression. At least, these two may constantly intertwine. The fact is that in our creative natures as humans, we express so much personal experiences, thoughts, and what makes 'you, you'. Now, I have constantly been annoyed by the much-overused phrase 'express yourself', but this is mainly because it has been abused. Still, in an artistic creation of your own, formed from your own creativity, it cannot be free of personal expression. The artistic forms are a way of expression, if not necessarily displaying any personal beliefs or experiences. I believe this is basically what you were suggesting, Bêthberry, but I think you went a little too far in saying that The Lord of the Rings, or any of Tolkien's works, were not personal expressions. Though I of course agree that any personal expression would be for the benefit of the story, mainly because it is an artistic expression.

Whilst I'm content to see the story as a work of literature in an unusual vein, it is nice in more fanciful moments to imagine that it could be true, and that one day someone may find the Westron Rosetta Stone and set to publishing great tracts of unknown Endorian history.

Most likely just how Tolkien wished the reader to think of his feigned history.

Tolkien had to drop the mask of the translator and admit to his authorship, thus losing the opportunity to take the new comments in the same direction as the old. Perhaps this is also an admission that his histories were becoming for many an important branch of study, and one in need of some sober academic guidance from its leading authority.

Tolkien had taken an obscure and unrecognized 'subject of study' and made it recognized. Perhaps this was pleasing to, in a way, 'show them', but most likely he found it less enjoyable once he was forced to take on the role as the author rather than the translator and a fellow enthusiast of the subject.

-Durelin

Aiwendil

06-08-2004, 08:14 PM

I have been hesitant to enter the discussion for fear of repeating all the arguments from the Canonicity (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=10593) thread (though I do eagerly await discussion of the chapters themselves). But I guess that some people will be reading this thread that have not put in the necessary hours of reading to keep up with the Canonicity thread, so I'll repeat, briefly, the gist of my argument against some of the views espoused by Davem.

Davem wrote:
That’s what I find odd - why put in all that work if the goal is merely to produce an entertaining story, why struggle so hard to get it published, as it was, even if possible with the Silmarillion, if he really believed it didn’t mean anything?

I don't see why we must qualify it as "merely" an entertaining story. To me that would seem to be exactly the point. Why is it not enough to "merely" create a good story? Is the creation of a thoroughly and profoundly enjoyable work of art not something worthwhile in itself?

I, for one, think it is. And to be quite honest, this view strikes me as the one requiring the least clarification and interpretation in order to make it fit with Tolkien's statements about allegory and applicability.

But this certainly does not mean that it is not to be taken seriously! On the contrary, I think that Davem is quite right when he says:

He seems to want us to take it all as seriously as he does, place the same value on it as he does - but I don’t think his motive is vanity.

But there is serious and then there is serious. The issue becomes confused because in the modern and post-modern mind set "serious" can refer only to the most pretentious sort of allegory. I think the critical point is that Tolkien wants us to take it seriously just as a story, because Tolkien thinks that stories are serious things in themselves - not because they have some hidden meaning, not because they change us or teach us how better to live our lives, but just because they are good stories.

As I said, I don't want to get carried away; so I'll end on a completely different point. Mr. Underhill wrote:

I've always meant to start a thread that focused on Tolkien's working methods, and any such thread would certainly have to start here with the second edition foreword. I think it's great that Tolkien wrote the book mostly on instinct and without a clear outline. It seems you can divide writers into two groups -- those who plan, outline, and structure aforehand, and those who dive right in and trust to gut instinct, inspiration, and blind luck to carry them through. The latter method seems to me to be the most romantic and pure sort of writing.

I once had the very same idea for a thread, but for some reason I never got around to it. One of us should start one some day. The insight it affords into Tolkien's writing habits is certainly one of the most interesting features of the foreword - though of course it cannot compete with the exceedingly (sometimes tediously) thorough work of Christopher Tolkien in HoMe VI, VII, VIII, and IX. Also, it must be noted that the foreword cannot be considered the final authority on matters of the dates at which various sections were written - for example, in the foreword Tolkien says that the whole was written between 1936 and 1949, but it seems completely clear from the extant manuscripts as well as from a letter to Stanley Unwin that it was in fact begun not in 1936 but late in 1937. For these matters, HoMe is the most accurate authority.

Mister Underhill

06-08-2004, 09:00 PM

Why is it not enough to "merely" create a good story? Is the creation of a thoroughly and profoundly enjoyable work of art not something worthwhile in itself?

I, for one, think it is. And I agree. Although -- and here I risk opening an old, old can of worms -- this begs the question of what makes a great story profoundly enjoyable. ;)

You are quite right that the hypothetical thread would be bound to range through HoME, and, I would add, Letters. I love his letter to Auden (#163): ...I had no conscious notion of what the Necromancer stood for (except ever-recurrent evil) in The Hobbit, nor of his connexion with the Ring. But if you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the comer at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlórien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horse-lords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fangorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystified as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22. I knew nothing of the Palantíri, though the moment the Orthanc-stone was cast from the window, I recognized it, and knew the meaning of the 'rhyme of lore' that had been running in my mind: seven stars and seven stones and one white tree. These rhymes and names will crop up; but they do not always explain themselves. I have yet to discover anything about the cats of Queen Berúthiel. But I did know more or less all about Gollum and his part, and Sam, and I knew that the way was guarded by a Spider.It's possible that Tolkien is romanticizing here, but if what he says isn't true, then it ought to be. That sense of sheer discovery in the writing seems like pure magic, and does in fact make the First Foreword true in a sense, casting Tolkien in the role of transcriber and editor as much as author.

The Saucepan Man

06-08-2004, 09:09 PM

I’ve taken a bit of time to catch up, so I’m coming rather late to this thread. Here are some thoughts that occurred to me while reading the (Second) Foreword and the many wonderful posts that have already appeared in this, the inaugural “Reading Club” thread.

What is the purpose of a foreword? This, it seems to me, is to provide the author with an opportunity to tell his readers a little bit about the book before they launch into the story itself. How the author chooses to exercise this opportunity is up to him/her. It is interesting that Tolkien uses his opportunity in different ways in the two Forewords that have been posted (and my thanks too go to Squatter for posting the First Foreword, which I had not seen before).

As to the First Foreword, I agree with Child when she says:

he seems to be talking to people he personally knows -- family, friends, members of the Inklings, and to those "admirers of Bilbo" who'd already crossed his path before.As Squatter suggests, you get the sense that he is continuing a private joke shared with his family and scholastic co-conspirators. But, at the same time, he is opening up the joke to the wider audience that is encountering the book for the first time following its publication. And, while I would not go as far as some in wishing that the story really was real (*ducks metaphysical apples in a materialistic manner*), I do find the First Foreword charming for this reason. One feels rather privileged to be let in on the private joke. And it is, I suppose, valid to consider whether there is, in any event, an element of truth (or should that be Truth ;) ) to the joke, in the sense that LotR draws on themes and ideas that have been conveyed throughout our history in mythology and folklore. In that sense, it might be said that LotR is a part of our history, or at least a presentation of aspects of it in a fresh (and beautifully crafted) vehicle. In this context, I am put in mind of the oft-quoted incident when a visitor asked Tolkien “Of course you don’t suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself”, to which he replied “No, I don’t suppose so any longer” (Letter 328).

So, Tolkien uses the First Foreword to continue the “myth” that LotR is a fragment of a real history. But he does also include some authorial guidance when he says:

But since my children and others of their age, who first heard of the finding of the Ring, have grown older with the years, this book speaks more plainly of those darker things which lurked only on the borders of the earlier tale, but which have troubled Middle-earth in all its history.While still couched in terms of a commentary on the history of Middle-earth, this passage also serves to provide an authorial (as opposed to editorial) function in preparing his wider audience for the marked difference in tone from the Hobbit, the only work of his which they will previously have encountered.

And so on to the Second Foreword. As others have noted, this fulfils quite a different function. Far more than the First Foreword it is aimed at those who have not yet read the book, and it seeks to provide some insight and guidance to them. In broad terms, as I see it, Tolkien is here using his opportunity to accomplish three things:
to provide an insight into how the book was written;
to flag up some of the book's themes; and
to explain how the book should be approached by the reader (or, more precisely, how it should not be approached).
As to the first of these, like others, I get the sense from the Foreword that the book almost wrote itself. Tolkien states at the outset that:

This tale grew in the telling …It started out as a sequel to the Hobbit, to satisfy “requests from readers [of The Hobbit] for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures”. But it:

… was drawn irresistibly towards the older world …So, while the LotR was borne of a desire to satisfy his readers’ yearnings for a sequel to The Hobbit, Tolkien was irresistibly drawn back to the tales that he had been working on since his youth and it became something altogether more dark and epic. These tales of the older world were the ones which Tolkien really wanted to tell and, since he was given the impression that they were “unpublishable”, LotR became a kind of bridge between those tales and the later more childish tale, which had already received a favourable reaction from the public. While the book did not of course write itself, it was natural (almost instinctive, perhaps) for Tolkien to write something more than simply “The Hobbit Revisited”. And, although The Hobbit is (to my mind) a wonderful book, LotR is undoubtedly the better for this.

I wonder if this is the reason that he was so steadfast in his resolve to complete the book, despite the many delays and interruptions that he encountered. Once it became inextricably linked in his mind to the older world that was so close to his heart, did it assume greater importance in his mind? Did he then feel compelled to complete it and achieve publication of something that, for these reasons, had achieved greater importance to him? Is this the reason why, as davem states, he wanted his readers to take the story as seriously as he did? And would the story ever have been completed if Strider had simply remained Trotter?

As to how the Foreword flags up the themes of the book, Tolkien (as Fordim points out) identifies the Ring as the central theme:

As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but the main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit.Again, the suggestion is that the story grew almost of its own accord. But what does Tolkien mean when he says that the Ring provides the main theme of the story? The Ring is a (the) subject of the story. How can it also be its theme? Since he gives no further explanation, this provides no real idea as to the nature of the theme that he is discussing here to a reader who is reading the Foreword and has yet to read the story. But what he is doing is flagging up for the reader the importance of the Ring in signifying the underlying theme (and, incidentally, highlighting the importance of the “crucial chapter”, ‘The Shadow of the Past’). And the Ring really does signify the essence of the story: the conflict between good and evil, between the corrupting influence of power and the ennoblement of the humble, between Sauron’s desire to control and the Elvish wish to maintain and preserve. Practically every “sub-theme” within the story revolves around that which the Ring represents and that which opposes everything that it stands for.

Thinking about it, it seems that Tolkien does give a further clue in the passage explaining how the story would have gone had it in fact been intended as an allegory of the “real war”. In suggesting that that the use of the Ring against Sauron and Saruman’s creation of his own Great Ring would have led to both sides holding Hobbits in hatred and contempt, he is indicating that the Ring is a corrupting influence and that the qualities displayed by those who seek to oppose what it represents are ones which should be valued. Sadly, but perhaps realistically, he impliedly concludes that they are qualities which are woefully lacking in the “real world”, at least among those with power.

As Fingolfin II states:

He says that in real life the Ring would have been used against Sauron, but in order to make a story of it he had to change reality to idealismBut perhaps he believed, or at least hoped, that the “ideal” still existed somewhere in “reality”. If so, I think that the immense and enduring popularity of LotR would certainly bear him out on this.

Finally Tolkien uses the Foreword to state categorically that the book is not to be taken by the reader as an allegory. While I accept that he was perhaps overstating his case in expressing his strong distaste for allegory, I neverthless find his concise statement of the difference between allegory and applicability to be profoundly instructive:

… one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.I have no difficulty in accepting this. Nor do I see any conflict with what he states elsewhere concerning his motives in writing LotR and his other “Fairy Stories”. To me, “allegory” in the sense that Tolkien is using it here requires two essential elements: it must be specifically intended by the author and it must relate to a specific set of circumstances. What Tolkien is saying here is that he did not intend LotR to represent any specific set of circumstances. Specifically, it was not intended as an allegory of the gobal conflict which was raging throughout much of the period in which he was writing the book. So, he is telling the reader, do not take it as an allegory of that, or of anything else, because that was not my intention in writing it. At the same time, he is (as he is bound to) giving his readers complete freedom to find within the book meanings which are applicable to their own lives, and doing so expressly. Yes, the book contains themes relevant to the human condition and the history of human existence. But this does not make it an allegory. It simply makes it applicable, in varying ways, to the “thoughts and experience” of the readers who share that condition and history.

Of course Tolkien had his own ideas as to what the book meant, and he accepts in the Foreword that it was influenced by his own experiences, but he does not impose those ideas and experiences on his readers. Even when he flags up the Ring as the central theme, he does not tell them what that theme actually is (and, in any event, themes to not equate with meaning in my mind: they simply provide a framework for applicability). So, Tolkien simply tells his readers in this Foreword that he wrote the book as a tale that he hoped would “amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them”, but leaves them to draw their own conclusions as to what it actually means to them. And I doubt that any who have read and enjoyed LotR could deny that he has succeeded in achieving this mission statement (even if some of us, while being deeply moved by parts of the book, are still waiting to experience that elusive moment of eucatastrophe :p ). Like Aiwendil, I run the risk of embroiling myself once again in the twists and truns of the Canonicity thread on this point ( :eek: ), so I will leave it at that.

But finally, and before I outstay my welcome (or perhaps I already have) I wanted to comment on one sentence which jumped out at me:

The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or write it again, he will pass over these in slience, except one that has been noted by other: the book is too short.While I would not go so far as to describe any work of literature as utterly flawless, LotR seems to me to be pretty much nearing that ideal. I wonder what “major defects” Tolkien had in mind. But I find his comment that it is “too short” even more interesting. It contrasts nicely with CS Lewis’ belief, referred to in davem’s first post ( #5), that it would be “the better for pruning”. But that aside, I wonder what additional material Tolkien would have liked to have included. Or perhaps he was simply making a veiled reference here to his original wish to publish LotR and the Silmarillion together in two volumes.

Apologies for wittering on at length but, since I am not sure that I’ll have a chance to post again this week, I thought that I would simply blurt out all my thoughts at once. I’ll get my coat now.

davem

06-09-2004, 02:05 AM

Aiwendil Not wanting to re-hash the old Canonicity debate either, I do think we have to ask whether Tolkien really was simply attempting to entertain. SpM has stated:

'And the Ring really does signify the essence of the story: the conflict between good and evil, between the corrupting influence of power and the ennoblement of the humble, between Sauron’s desire to control and the Elvish wish to maintain and preserve. Practically every “sub-theme” within the story revolves around that which the Ring represents and that which opposes everything that it stands for.

Thinking about it, it seems that Tolkien does give a further clue in the passage explaining how the story would have gone had it in fact been intended as an allegory of the “real war”. In suggesting that that the use of the Ring against Sauron and Saruman’s creation of his own Great Ring would have led to both sides holding Hobbits in hatred and contempt, he is indicating that the Ring is a corrupting influence and that the qualities displayed by those who seek to oppose what it represents are ones which should be valued. Sadly, but perhaps realistically, he impliedly concludes that they are qualities which are woefully lacking in the “real world”, at least among those with power.'

which I agree with as regards the 'meaning' of the story. Tolkien clearly felt that his story, while it should entertain, should at least reflect his moral values, so that, one assumes, he would have excluded anything which, while it might 'entertain' would conflict with them.

In the George Sayer essay I quoted from there is the following sentence:
' All of life for him was part of a cosmic conflict between the forces of good & evil, God & the devil'

Further on the author reveals:

' Once he spoke to me of Ireland after he had spent part of summer vacation working there as an examiner: 'It is as if the earth there is cursed. It exudes an evil that is held in check only by Christian practice & the power of prayer.' Even the soil, the earth, played a part in the cosmic struggle between forces of good & evil.'

I think we must take this into account when we try to understand Tolkien's motives in writing - if the universe was a battleground between the forces of good & evil, then every person, & every decision & act of every person, every thought, perhaps, will aid one side or the other. Tolkien saw himself as a 'warrior' in a 'holy war'. And the methods of the enemy must not be studied. Evil must be stated to be evil, it must not be examined, even in an attempt to discover its weaknesses (hence his disapproval of the Screwtape Letters). LotR is as much an attempt at producing a 'weapon' for use in that battle as anything else - probably more than anything else.

Which is not to say we can't read it as simple entertainment. We just have to recognise that it wasn't written as that. And at the time Tolkien was writing such an attitude, such a way of seeing the world, was not popular - just the opposite.

On the subject of personal experience entering into the story - well during one of the major breaks in writing LotR he did write Notion Club Papers, which grows out of his personal experiences - Inklings meetings - but draws in the mythology with the breaking in of 'Numenor', which perhaps shows how his personal life & his imaginative life were deeply intertwined, & how the mythology couldn't be excluded from his writing. The mythology even crops up in Roverandom.

Oh, & as for him not having time to devote to writing - it wasn't just academic pressures that stopped him - Sayer recounts visits across a period of weeks after he's retired, & finding him sitting at his desk wit the Silmarillion manuscript at the same page with nothing done - apparently he'd been spending most of his time reading detective stories (Lord Peter Wimsey, perhaps ;) )

The Saucepan Man

06-09-2004, 03:01 AM

Davem

Which is not to say we can't read it as simple entertainment. We just have to recognise that it wasn't written as that.I tend to agree that Tolkien did not write the story purely to entertain his readers. It assumed greater importance than this to him, which is, I suspect, why we get the sense that it almost wrote itself. But I disagree that we, the readers, necessarily have to recognise that or that he is requiring us to do so.

If we are looking at the Foreword for what it is, a foreword, rather than as part of the material on which to base an assessment of Tolkien the author (and, indeed, Tolkien, the man), then we must take what he says in it at face value. Readers approaching his work for the first time will have nothing else to go on. And here he is telling such readers that he wrote it as a piece to entertain, to move and to amuse them. While his reference to the Ring as providing the central theme points to the importance of the conflict between good and evil as a theme, readers do not necessarily have to accept this conflict as something which is real to them (or as real to them as the material which you have provided suggest that it was to Tolkien). They may simply find certain aspects of it, certain “sub-themes”, for example the importance of friendship or the the importance of respect for the environment, as applicable to them and leave it at that. Or they might simply allow themselves to be entertained, amused and moved by it without really analysing why. And Tolkien gives them carte blanche to do so here in the Foreword when he champions the freedom of the reader above the purposive domination of the author. He may have hoped that his readers found in it what he did, but he does not here require this of them.

Firefoot

06-09-2004, 05:38 AM

And now I believe I finally have something to contibute here.

Readers approaching his work for the first time will have nothing else to go on. I agree with this statement very much, and that is why I find it both amazing and sad how few people I talk to actually take the time to read both the Foreward and the Prologue. When I was a first time reader, I remember being particularly intrigued by the Foreward, especially by such sentences as "I stood at Balin's tomb in Moria" and references to Lothlórien. These things made me wonder, and I was eager to read to find out what he was talking about. Then I came across the statements "Some who have read the book... have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; ... It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved." I had no concerns about the first idea: having recently read the Hobbit and finding it an amazing book I had been waiting for nearly a week to start LotR. But the rest of it made me wonder just what I was getting into. So before I had even started the book I was already interested, curious, and intrigued, and I must wonder what sort of a difference there is between reading the Foreward (and the Prologue) first rather than just plunging in at chapter 1.

Bêthberry

06-09-2004, 08:07 AM

SaucepanMan and Firefoot, this was really what I was suggesting way back in my first post when I noted that the Second Foreward did not contain the statements of intent which can be found in the Letters. How are we regarding this chapter by chapter reading? Firefoot's remembrance is I think close to what I would find very intriguing about our process here.

SpM's statement: Readers approaching his work for the first time will have nothing else to go on.

Perhaps few of us here can 'go back' and recall entirely what it was like the first time we read LOTR (for some it was so long ago! ). Others cannot dismiss easily everything we have learned about Tolkien from a variety of other sources. It is not easy to return ourselves to the state of naive (I would use the word virgin, but fear many might object to that concept) reader again. Still, I think it would be very interesting to discuss here in this sub-forum the process whereby so many come to see the moral intent which they profoundly profess to find in Tolkien's work and which his Letters suggest. How and where and by what means do these readers take on this meaning where others do not?

My first post seemed to provoke a sense that this moral intent must be found in the Forewards. None of the arguments put forth by davem or Mr Underhill or Helen persuade me that Tolkien was obliquely hinting at a specifically Christian or Catholic meaning in the Forewards. Instead, I see, as Saucy has suggested, that Tolkien

may have hoped that his readers found in it what he did, but he does not here require this of them.

Tolkien is not the only author who takes this kind of approach, believing that his or her book serves a particular purpose, but wanting to leave readers free to find that purpose for themselves. (For those of you who might be curious, Charlotte Brontë was another author who wrote explicitly to create a 'page turner' but who also left records which suggest that she was content to sit back and let readers make of Jane Eyre what they would, simply a straight forward romance or a more complex perspective on the narrator, Jane, as a girl whose imagination is governed and controlled by her own reading in romance. Note, I am not saying this specific interpretation applies to LOTR, but the method.)

I think this moral freedom of the reader is absolutely imperative in Tolkien and relates crucially to his notion of free will. Telling readers explicitly as Lewis or the author of the Morte d'Arthur has done that there is a specific worldview that one must get from the books was, I believe, for Tolkien the wrong way to help people find the moral bearings which he discovered as he wrote in his story.

Tolkien came slowly to understand the full significance of his mythology--it was not something he planned consciously at the outset, but was led to realise in the very process of his writing. This, by the way, is for me a very significant point about writing, that the very act of writing somehow engages the creative mind to generate ideas. (It is certainly a way I come to know the characters I create in RPGs despite all the planning aforehand.) Mr. Underhill is very right to point out that there are different ways of proceeding as a writer and this was Tolkien's way.

I suggest that Tolkien wanted his readers to proceed in a similar way, to find for themselves in the act of reading this vital and profound truth if possible. He was content to accept the possibility, perhaps even probability, that not all readers would necessarily find this, but would still find worth and value in his writing. Perhaps Tolkien learnt, from his insistence that Edith convert to Catholicism for their marriage and her subsequent unhappiness or unease with various aspects of it, that faith is a personal experience that cannot be forced. (The Catholic Church does not itself demand that spouses convert to Catholicism upon marriage with a Catholic and this idea is speculation of course.)

All of this is, of course, an interpretation of the man and the writer based on my reading of his Letters and other works and various biographies. Yet even today when I read the Forewards, I see a writer content to suggest a general direction and tenor of interpretation without stating explicitly what his meaning was. Very few writers of the calibre of Tolkien choose to be so 'flatfooted' or empirical about their work. They rather hope that the writing itself will lend itself to interpretation without extraneous signposts. They place their faith in the story itself rather than in prose exposition about it.

I would reply to Durelin about my use of the term "personal self-expression" but I am called away and must return later.

tar-ancalime

06-09-2004, 08:29 AM

Bethberry said:

I think this moral freedom of the reader is absolutely imperative in Tolkien and relates crucially to his notion of free will.

I think it goes even farther than that: it is a way for Tolkien as an artist to show confidence in the art he has made. Only if the reader (or listener, or viewer--this is true of any medium) is free to interpret the art as s/he sees fit can the creator ever know if it stands alone and achieves any meaning at all, let alone the intended one. Authors who use forewords to go on endlessly about meaning or metaphor have always seemed to me to be the literary equivalent of parents who can't stop smoothing cowlicks, straightening collars, and wiping faces long enough to send their children out into the world to succeed or fail. And in the end, that's what any piece of art has got to do: regardless of the high or low intentions of the creator, it must stand on its merits. Both Tolkien and Bronte are quite right to step back and let their readers find what they will in their stories.

davem

06-09-2004, 09:38 AM

Bethberry:

'Tolkien came slowly to understand the full significance of his mythology--it was not something he planned consciously at the outset, but was led to realise in the very process of his writing.'

Up to a point - yet his mythology grew out of the 'soil' of the TCBS, as much as it grew out of his love of mythology & language, & the TCBS was essentially a High Church/Catholic group of individuals, who had a dream of bringing back 'medieval' moral values & virtues to the modern, secular world. The Legendarium did what he wanted it to do. Or at least it bacame what he wanted it to become.

Of course no-one needs to accept his value system or accept his beliefs, anymore than they need to study Sindarin, or learn the Tengwar, or even read the Silmarillion, to understand LotR. My own feeling though, is that the more you know of the man & his beliefs the more you will gain from the books. I still can't go along with the idea that the art can be totally divorced from the artist.

One can read LotR in two ways, & get different things from both - it can be read as a fairy story, a traditional tale, in which any 'meaning' it may have for the individual is 'imposed' by that individual, who will decide whether the story is relevant to them or not. This seems to be what Tolkien wishes his readers to do with LotR.

But the novel can also be read as the product of Tolkien's mind, moral value system, personal experiences transformed into epic story.

I feel there is something to be gained from both. The first gives us access to Middle Earth, the art, the second gives us access to the man, the artist. The Legendarium is not simply the story of Middle Earth, it is also the story of Tolkien himself. Is the one to be considered relevant & the other irrelevant?

This is why I feel we have to take into account Tolkien's beliefs & values. Take Lembas (& to a lesser extent Miruvor). Can we truly understand what Tolkien is doing if we limit ourselves only to what Lembas is in Middle Earth? Lembas is too much like the Host, the body of Christ - & statements Tolkien makes about it in the story itself & in the letters make it abundantly clear that it is as close to being an allegory of the Host as it is being simply an Elven food concentrate. Now, only a Catholic would come up with Lembas - a non Catholic writer would simply have produced a magic food concetrate, which would not have the symbolic value of Lembas (Yet if we see Lembas as the Host what do we make of movie Gollum taking it & casting it away, & accusing Sam of stuffing his face with it? The point I'm trying to make with this example is that in the movie, Lembas is not a 'sacramental' substance, it is merely a food concentrate, so there is no sgnificance in the way it is treated). If we don't see Lembas in the light of the Host, divorcing what it meant to Tolkien the Catholic from its presence in the story, we won't get a real insight into what Lembas is, even in its Middle Earth form. The fact that it is Galadriel who gives the Lembas to the Fellowship emphasises her 'Virgin Mary' aspect.

That's just an example which springs to mind, & will be better pursued when we get to the relevant chapter. The point is, though, that LotR is full of such symbolism, which is not present on the surface, but it is there, under the surface, & is as much a part of the 'art' as what is on the surface. LotR is a work which contains many primary world elements 'mythologised'.

Is Lembas 'unsuccessfully' mythologised? Should Tolkien have gone further in (Middle)'Earthing' it, so that there would be no reason to connect it with the Host? Yet no Catholic could fail to see the symbolism. And what better way to bring out Galadriel's nature than by linking her with such a life giving substance?

Galadriel as Elven Queen, offering the Fellowship food concentrate bars, or Galadriel as 'pointing to' the Mother of God offering the body of Christ to preserve the lives of those who must Harrow Hell. How important is Tolkien's belief to our understanding of the story?

Mister Underhill

06-09-2004, 09:43 AM

Very succinctly and well put, tar-ancalime!

Bethberry -- for the record, I wasn't trying to persuade anyone that "Tolkien was obliquely hinting at a specifically Christian or Catholic meaning in the Forewards". On the contrary, I think in Tolkien's view it was "fatal" to try to overtly impose or even discuss meaning or to link the truths of his story to a specific system. I think Tolkien would agree with the excerpt I posted on our old friend, the Canonicity thread, regarding story (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?p=321327&highlight=mckee#post321327). For those not inclined to click over, the salient point is this: "A great story authenticates its ideas solely within the dynamics of its events."

I think this is why Tolkien resists, as Saucepan has observed, getting specific about theme and meaning, though you can feel the temptation to lecture burning behind his refutation of certain approaches and interpretations which had arisen in the ten years between First and Second Forewords (incidentally, Sauce, I agree completely with your assessment of Tolkien's use of the term "allegory" in the Foreword -- harmony for once!). He is content to hope that his tale will at times "maybe" excite or deeply move his readers.

And that's as it should be. As t-a has observed, you have to send your children out into the world to stand on their own two feet (or not) sooner or later.

Dang it -- cross-posting with davem means I have neglected his latest provocative post. I have thoughts on it, but alas, not time to address them at the moment.

Mister Underhill

06-09-2004, 09:54 AM

Actually, I will add this, briefly -- I think the sort of one-to-one interpretation that equates lembas with the Host is precisely the sort of allegorical reading that Tolkien was trying to discourage.

Alatariel Telemnar

06-09-2004, 10:09 AM

That Letter provides interesting correlation, Alatariel Telemnar for Tolkien's claim in the Second Foreward that LOTR was "primarily linguistic in inspiration and begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues." Thanks for providing it here. Being a great fan of words and language myself, I am not sure that this necessarily downgrades the value of his desire to write a good story. It would think they would be complementary. He would want the best story to highlight or reflect his created languages to their best advantage. For Tolkien as a philologist, everything began with words and structures of language, which then moved out to create patterns and order in stories.

Bêthberry, I agree. For if he would bother with such a story for his languages, of course he would want the best for them. And if I put off anything that made anyone get the feeling that it downgraded anything, then I didn't mean to.

The prime motive was the desire of a taleteller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times, maybe excite them or deeply move them.

Per'aps he was just killing two birds with one stone, as some say (three, possibly?) Maybe he wanted to create a world for his languages, yet write a good story, and hold the attention of readers as well (or, in other words, entertain us.)

mark12_30

06-09-2004, 10:58 AM

Mr. Underhill and davem-- about Lembas and the host, as well as Galadriel and Mary (and Aragorn and the harrowing of hell and.... -- Augh! Brakes! Brakes!... phew.)

Regarding Tolkien and the one-to-one correspondence of these things, I agree with you, Mister Underhill, that caution is advised. However I also see davem's point that these things (lembas, Galadriel) sprang from somewhere deep, and I think must bear some imprint of Tolkien's faith. How to reconcile?

A "type" is not the same as an "allegory". A type is an imperfect forshadowing rather than a tight one-to-one correspondence. Allegories are properly one-to-one correspondences. Types are less tightly bound. With this I think Tolkien would have been comfortable, because (from his perspective) types have prophetically arisen in historical personages since the beginning of the Pentateuch.

Alert: Those uninterested in Biblical discussions may happily skip to the next post now.

For those few who are still with me: Isaac, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Jeremiah, and other historical personages are each considered a 'type' of Christ, meaning that they are an imperfect foreshadowing, and it is the 'job' of each of them to foreshadow only certain aspects of Christ, not the whole deal (which would be difficult.) This is the most sensible application here as well. Three of the main characters exhibit imperfect foreshadowings of certain aspects, and may therefore be considered 'types'. (They commonly are.) Taken together, the three make a fair beginning of a picture, whereas any of the three individually would not.

In addition, this leaves room for more 'types' to be discovered. I can think of a Tolkienish fourth right off.

This expands into other areas as well. Lembas, yes; what about Miruvor? Etc. I don't want to go into it here but I think it allows more of Tolkien's own beliefs to shine through (in various places) without his intending to dominate the reader. I interpreted that when he was asked, "Lembas?" his answer was essentially a pleased "Okay, yes, I see that too", not "Well, finally somebody got it."

davem

06-09-2004, 11:56 AM

As to Lembas as the 'Host: we have in Letter 210:

'It also has a much larger significance, of what one might hesitatingly call a 'religious' kind. This becomes later apparent, especially in the chapter 'Mount Doom'.

And Letter 213 specifically:

'Or more important , I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), & in fact a Roman catholic. The latter 'fact' perhaps cannot be deduced; though one critic (by letter) asserted that the invocations of elbereth, & the character of Galadriel as directly described (or through the words of Gimli & Sam) were clearly related to Catholic devotion of Mary. Anoother saw in waybread (lembas) = viaticum & the reference to its feeding the will (vol. III, p213) & being more potent when fasting, a derivation from the Eucharist. (That is: far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fairy story.)'

We can also take the examples of the Fellowship setting out from Rivendell on Dec 25th, & the destruction of the Ring & the Downfall of Barad Dur taking place on Mar 25th - which as Shippey points out is the date of both the Annunciation & the old date of Good Friday. Neither of these dates has any significance within the calendars of Middle Earth. But their Christian significance is obvious. As perhaps is the 'apocalyptic' ending - a 'sacred' tree & a symbolic marriage.

What we have in LotR is a story that works on two levels. One is as a straightforward fairy story, which can be read as simple entertainment. The other level is highly symbolic (& 'consciously so' as Tolkien admitted).

Of course, one can read, & explore, the story on the level of fairytale, leaving out the symbolism, but that is to miss a great deal of what Tolkien put in there.

There is constant 'symbolic' overshadowing running through the story - some deliberate, some unconscious on Tolkien's part. Much of it, admittedly, he only came to realise later, after finishing the story, yet, he has told us that it is consciously Catholic, & I can't see the point in refusing to acknowledge that.

mark12_30

06-09-2004, 12:09 PM

davem, I'm quite familiar with (and fond of) all that you quote. Nor do I doubt one word of it from the professor's standpoint (or indeed from any standpoint!)

However I find it *very* significant that he did *not* point these things out in his prologue. I think Mister Underhill is very much on target when he talks about Tolkien's modesty and lurking ambition.

Maybe "false modesty" isn't quite right. I think he has an agenda of sorts when he protests that LotR is only a story. I'm reminded of Letter 131: "[The Arthurian mythos] is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal." I wish he would have elaborated, but I think we can get the gist of those reasons. To call attention to any meaning of his story is to transform it instantly into a sermon or a lecture, and so he says in effect, hey -- it's just a story; take from it what you will.

But lurking under that is some ambition. Letter 153: "I would claim, if I did not think it presumptuous in one so ill-instructed, to have as one object the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to 'bring them home'."

In other words (my paraphrase)...:

If I tell you what it represents to me in my own heart as I write it and reread it afterwards, then you won't have the joy of discovering that for yourself. Maybe by my not telling you, you'll miss it completely; who knows? But maybe you'll find it, and maybe you'll find deeper things that I didn't even know were there. Either way, if I let the story speak for itself, you'll find what you are meant to find. So just read the story. By the way, don't look for Atom bombs, or communism or fascism or politics, and don't look for the Incarnate Messiah; and don't psychoanalyze me. That's not what I put in there. But read the story. You might find something.

I firmly believe he is (desperately) hoping that we do, because On Faery Stories states the purpose of myth & Faery tale, and implies that he wants us to reach that. But if we start out looking for it, we just might miss the story.

Mister Underhill

06-09-2004, 12:15 PM

I for one am not refuting the religious influence in LotR or the obvious (and perhaps not so obvious) symbolic connections. I think, however, that you might be overreaching in your close correlation between Tolkien's religion and his fiction, moving it beyond symbolism and into allegory: lembas equals the Host.

I see your Letter and raise you: Theologically (if the term is not too grandiose) I imagine the picture to be less dissonant from what some (including myself) believe to be the truth. But since I have deliberately written a tale, which is built on or out of certain 'religious' ideas, but is not an allegory of them (or anything else), and does not mention them overtly, still less preach them, I will not now depart from that mode, and venture on theological disquisition for which I am not fitted.

#211When Tolkien denies allegorical intent, both here in the Foreword and in many other places, I don't see why we shouldn't take him at his word. He understood that implicit expressions of the truth as he saw it -- through the actions and decisions and attitudes of his characters -- would be far more persuasive (not to mention accessible and applicable) than overt sermonizing and allegory.

Estelyn Telcontar

06-09-2004, 01:56 PM

Firefoot, your post is the kind I wish we had more of on this thread! As interesting and enlightening as the discussions of the letters pertaining to the Foreword are, I think we need to remember the first impact that reading this book had on us. I've always read Forewords, but I don't specifically remember my impressions of this one - it's been many years since I first read the book. Thanks for sharing your experience with us!

The Saucepan Man

06-09-2004, 06:54 PM

Thumbing through Tolkien's Letters, I rediscovered the following passage in a draft of a letter addressed to Peter Szabo Szentmihalyi (Letter #329):

One of my strongest opinions is that the investigation of an author's biography (or such other glimpses of his 'personality' as can be gleaned by the curious) is an entirely vain and false approach to his works - and especially to a work of narrative art, of which the object aimed at by the author was to be enjoyed as such: to be read with literary pleasure. So that any reader whom the author has (to his great satisfaction) succeeded in 'pleasing' (exciting, engrossing, moving etc.), should, if he wishes others to be similarly pleased, endeavour in his own words, with only the book itself as a source, to induce them to read it for literary pleasure.It seems to me that this sums up in even more strident terms the 'guidance' that Tolkien is giving his readers in the (Second) Foreword: "Here is my tale. I wrote it simply with the intention that you should derive pleasure from it. Go ahead. Read it and enjoy."

Whatever other (unexpressed) motives he may or may not have had in writing the book seem to me to be irrelevant in any analysis of the Foreword. What really matters is the message that it conveys to his readers. And that is simply that he wrote the story with the intention that they should enjoy it.

davem

06-10-2004, 01:08 AM

Whatever other (unexpressed) motives he may or may not have had in writing the book seem to me to be irrelevant in any analysis of the Foreword. What really matters is the message that it conveys to his readers. And that is simply that he wrote the story with the intention that they should enjoy it.

But if the 'message that it conveys to his readers' includes the religious, specifically Catholic, dimension should we ignore that? It would seem to me as wrong to do that as to ignore the Pagan mythological or historical influences/dimension. Is there no 'connection' between three 'racial' groups of Hobbits led into Eriador by two brothers & the Angles, Saxons & Jutes led into England by the brothers Hengist & Horsa, for instance.

What I'm saying is that both consciously & unconsciously, Catholicism underlies LotR. Its present. I can't accept that Tolkien would choose the two most significant dates in the Christian calendar for two of the most significant events in his story without realising that significance until someone points it out to him later. If Tolkien didn't realise that March 25th was of the greatest importance from the Christian perspective, & choose to 'commemorate' the Middle Earth event with the Eagle's song (which as Shippey points out uses the style & metre of the Psalms of the King James Bible) with lines including:

'Sing & rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard,
For your watch hath not been in vain,
And the Black Gate is broken,
And your King has passed through & he is victorious.

Sing & be glad, all ye children of the West
for your King shall come again,
And he shall dwell among you
all the days of your life.'

Too much of this king of thing runs beneath the surface of the story. His description of Elbereth in 'The Road Goes Ever On' :

As a 'divine' or 'angelic' person Varda/Elbereth could be said to be 'looking afar from Heaven' (as in Sam's invocation); hence the present participle. She was often thought of, or depicted, as standing on a great height looking towards Middle Earth, with eyes that penetrated the shadows, & listening to the cries for aid of Elves (& men) in peril or grief. Frodo (vol 1, p208) & Sam both invoke her in moments of extreme peril. The Elves sing hymns to her. (These & other references to religion in The Lord of the Rings are frequently overlooked)

is a 'mythologised' account of the Virgin Mary as 'Queen of Heaven'.

Look, I'm happy to leave out of this discussion any Catholic, folkloric, historic or linguistic references/investigations, but I think that would leave out Tolkien himself, to a great extent. All those elements, including also his personal experiences - particularly his wartime experiences - have produced LotR, but they are all successfully mythologised, & Middle Earth is a perfectly realised, self contained world. But if we exclude the sources, & the personal dimension, what the events of the story signified for Tolkien, how can we include our own personal responses, & the meaning the story has for us. I'm not a Catholic (I wouldn't even call myself a Christian) but when I read of Galadriel's gift of Lembas to the Fellowship the Middle Earth dimension is 'overshadowed' (not cancelled out) for me by the Catholic dimension, & the meaning of the former event resonates with the latter. Just as when I walk through any wood my experience is overshadowed by thoughts of Lorien or Fangorn. This is why LotR is not, & cannot be, for me merely an entertaining story. And this is not a 'choice' I'm making - it is simply how I respond to the story. I think if we remove all such 'resonances' & overshadowings from our experience (if that were possible) we'd be left with the simple 'escapism' that our critics accuse us of.

I love LotR not because of what it is, but because of what it means to me, personally. If the book belongs in some sense to each reader, then each reader's response is valid. If I read it in the way I do, with all the 'resonances; & 'overshadowings' I find in it, then that's valid - or do we exclude 'applicability' from this discussion as well as 'allegory'?

Hopefully, no-one feels that they have to accept my interpretations. I'm simply pointing out what I feel are the 'overshadowings' I percieve in the work, & arguing that some of them are there because Tolkien deliberately placed them there.

The Saucepan Man

06-10-2004, 02:36 AM

But if the 'message that it conveys to his readers' includes the religious, specifically Catholic, dimension should we ignore that? Davem, I was talking about the Foreword. I of course agree that the matters to which you refer (including one's personal response to the text) are entirely valid and relevant in any discussion of the book itself and the individual chapters that we will be working through. My point was that, in any analysis of the Foreword as a foreword, the emphasis should be on how Tolkien chose to use this opportunity to speak to his readers before they set about reading the story, ie what message he chose to convey to them in the Foreword, and on how we, as readers, respond to that message.

Child of the 7th Age

06-10-2004, 03:07 AM

Davem,

The specific points you are making in regard to Tolkien and the Catholic influence on his writing are certainly valid. Few would dispute that Tolkien's religious sensibilities are indirectly reflected in much of his writing. And all the examples that you've given -- the figure of Galadriel, lembas, the "hymns" to Elbereth, the similarities between some of the poetry and the Psalms--are wonderful instances of this kind of feeling percolating up from underneath.

A number of years ago, Littlemanpoet and I went at it hammer and tongs in a thread where we tried to find such examples and consider how these related to the varying drafts in HoMe, i.e, whether or not the "Christian" elements were indeed the product of later revisions as Tolkien maintained. And I am quite sure that as we go through the book, chapter-by-chapter, there will be many intriguing examples put forward of this type. I honestly don't think anyone is suggesting that this process isn't important.

Yet, in the end, I must concur with the assessment that SpM has given:

Whatever other (unexpressed) motives he may or may not have had in writing the book seem to me to be irrelevant in any analysis of the Foreword. What really matters is the message that it conveys to his readers. And that is simply that he wrote the story with the intention that they should enjoy it.

In terms of the second foreward itself, Tolkien has clearly stated the following:

I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

The italics are my own. These words are critical because they underline the fact that Tolkien is not asking us to respond to the text in the identical way that he did. He is asking each of us to come at things from our own background and experience. I am not a Catholic, nor am I a Christian. While I may have an intellectual understanding of Catholicism and Christianity, I can not replicate the exact mental and spiritual approach that Tolkien took to his material. My personal motives in approaching the text will not be the same as Tolkien's. Nor is the author asking me to do this. He has stated in the foreward that I can deal with the story on my own terms, prompted by my own individual motivations.

Yes, it is always helpful to understand how the author approaches something, whether this is a question of Christian influences or the many other type of personal beliefs and values that are so clearly evident in LotR. For many of us, those glimpses of Tolkien's persona will indeed merge with what is in our own hearts so that the "overshadowing" placed there by the author (either consciously or subconsciously) will become part of our own emotional and intellectual response to the text. In some cases, where our personal background or preferences merge with those of Tolkien, this will be one means by which we can perhaps see over the "wall" and catch a glimpse of faerie, almost as if we were medieval men, small in stature but standing on the shoulders of the "great ones" that came before us.

Similarly, there are certain images and values that I see mirrored in LotR, which have special meaning for me: namely, Tolkien's mistrust of the machine and his intense desire to protect the environment. In one of the few interviews with CT regarding his father's work, his son flatly stated that his dad had identified these as among the most important themes within the book. I am very aware of "overshadowings" of this type in the text, probably because there are aspects of my own past experiences that resonate with that. For this reason, I will probably place greater stress on such ideas than another poster might.

The problem does not lie in my identifying such themes and examples as important. Rather, the problem would come if I insisted that this was the only way to see and interpret certain things. If I was to do that, I would thrust aside the very thing that Tolkien was praising: "the varied applicability to the thought and experience of the reader."

I am not saying you are doing this. Indeed, you clearly stated that you don't feel others should feel compelled to accept your own interpretations. By the same context. however, I honestly don't think that SpM is saying that we should ignore the religious or Catholic aspects we see in the text, which is what your own first paragraph implied. (SpM -- If I have misinterpreted you, please correct me.)

Rather, the core message of the second foreward is precisely to praise that diversity of backgrounds and responses: for indeed it mirrors the incredible diversity of goodness we find in Middle-earth itself. We are not locked into one way of looking at things, but can each approach the story from our own vantage point and, in so doing, find enjoyment and entertainment. Tolkien openly states that he hopes this story will at times "deeply move" us. To me, those last words say it all. The most profound meaning, the most intense learning, take place when we are touched in our inner soul. Tolkien is not saying or defining exactly how that will happen--whether through love of trees, love of our fellows, or love of God. He leaves that to our own imagination and ways of approaching things. But he does hope that somehow, someway, that kind of valuable one-on-one interaction between reader and text will occur.

P.S. SpM -- It took me so long to hack this out, that you and I managed to cross-post!

mark12_30

06-10-2004, 06:31 AM

Child wrote: Tolkien openly states that he hopes this story will at times "deeply move" us. To me, those last words say it all. The most profound meaning, the most intense learning, take place when we are touched in our inner soul. Tolkien is not saying or defining exactly how that will happen--whether through love of trees, love of our fellows, or love of God.

Child, you have here said in a few brief sentences what I have so struggled to say... As a writer of stories, I heartily sympathize with Tolkien in his foreword. Been there; held my tongue just so; til I had a chance to vent in private, that is...

It's good to remember that his letters are private, and so some of these declarations of types and shadows (Catholic-style) were intended to be private. His lectures and essays are another matter of course, and I think from On Faery Stories we know that Tolkien did have ulterior motives.

But he did not declare them in his foreword. And I think if he had, he would have stolen his own thunder.

davem

06-10-2004, 07:59 AM

Having been rightly taken to task:o , I must apologise. My explanation is that, being restricted to the forword I was attempting, at first, to analyse Tolkien's claim that the work has no inner meaning. Let me quote from John Crowley's novel Aegypt:

Dawn came; Doctor Dee wrote out in his scribble hand (he had four different hands he wrote in, besides a mirror hand) one meaning of Mr Talbot's book:

IF EVER SOM POWR WITH 3 WISHES TO GRANT

Which made little sense to him. But if he went backward - backward through the forest where the rooks called in the hawthorns along the track below the fortress, backward through the ogham & the Greek & the stars & the letters & the numbers, the same line could be read this way:

THERE WERE ANGELS IN ye GLASS 246 MANY OF THEM

And that made his heart pause for an instant, & fill again with a richer blood.

What I'm saying is LotR is a book which can be read in two ways, on two levels. One way of reading it gives us an entertaining, moving, work of art, a story. The other way of reading it gives us an exploration of Catholicism, language, history, folkore, the nature of time & most importantly of the man himself, the artist.

Of course, we must read it in one way or the other each time - if we try to read it as a story, continually stopping to analyse its other 'meaning', the ingredients of the 'soup', we are breaking it to find out what it is made of. Conversely, if we read it as an exploration of the themes & ideas I mentioned, & stop to find how Tolkien used those themes, the story will not affect us.

My point is LotR is both things. Yet these two things overlap - & that overlap is sometimes intentional, & the intervention of those themes & sources give a significance to the story. The dates of the birth & death of Christ are used by Tolkien to enhance the significance of the events in the story. This calls into question for me at least the claim made by Tolkien that the story has no 'inner meaning'.

This exploration of the Forword seemed to me the only place where such points could be made.

As I said, I am happy for this reading to focus solely on the 'story'. The underlying themes can be put aside totally - because the story is self contained, & Tolkien no doubt wanted it to be read in this way, yet, as Shippey & Flieger among others have shown, the other LotR is also there, under the surface, for those who wish to explore it, & it is just as much LotR.

It interests me - that's all I can say - that Tolkien should 'mythologise' the Virgin Mary into Elbereth - who is not in any way a figure drawn from Norse, or any other, mythology. Yet the 'Queen of Heaven' is present in Middle Earth, as one of the most significant 'off-screen' figures in the story, & Galadriel is present, as almost a manifestation of her, in the woods of Lothlorien.

Yet, I have strayed from the point - though beginning with the statement of the author that the tale had no inner meaning. I still don't believe that - though I accept that Tolkien may have wanted that to be true, or wanted us to believe it, at least.

I will, however try to curb my tendency to 'preach'.

Sorry.

Fordim Hedgethistle

06-10-2004, 08:23 AM

I had to go back and re-re-read the Foreword to once again get my bearings in this (very interesting) discussion. The thing that struck me about the Foreword this time through – both of them, actually – is the invitation that the author extends to the reader to engage in a dialogue. What came through to me very clearly is the conversational tone of both pieces, and the sense that Tolkien is replying or responding directly to his readers. The significant difference that I see between the two Forewords is that the ‘first’ is addressed to a much smaller group of readers. In this sense the Forewords are very much a ‘forward’ look to the conversation that is about to begin – that’s very much how I think we all wish to think about The Lord of the Rings. Despite the differences in what we find therein, I think that all of us have a very real sense of carrying on a dialogue either with the text, with the author (through the text), or with each other (about the text). Some of us privilege or prefer the conversation with the author, while others prefer the conversations with the text or each other: none of us, I think, is claiming that any one of these conversations is the “only” or the “best” one, we just disagree about which one is the most interesting, fruitful or productive.

I, for my part, tend to privilege each of them at different times and in different manners – and in this regard I think that I am like everyone else here. When reading the book as a pleasurable story, I think of if as a conversation with the text as I concern myself with what I ‘get’ out of it. When approaching it somewhat more critically, I like to engage in conversations with others about the text in order to broaden or extend my understanding (the Socratic method is still, far and away, the hands-down best method to learn, after all!). When I want to learn about or explore the composition of the text, or how it came into being, I have a conversation with the author. All of these modes or kinds of conversation are necessary for a full understanding of the text and I am delighted to see that they are all going on at the moment – this bodes well, I think, for the discussions to come when we get into the ‘actual’ book.

I offer all of this here because I think that there is beginning to emerge in this thread something of an unjustified sense of ‘schism’ much like the one that came to dominate the canonicity thread, as different posters privilege different types of conversation. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing – quite the reverse, as this has lead to a lot of very interesting discussion. I only wish to point out that we are all of us in total agreement on the most important point here: that the conversations we have about and with the text and the author are all parts of a much larger Conversation: one that can’t ever really be concluded or perhaps even conducted except in a fragmentary and particularised way.

Sidebar: I share with Durelin, Seraphim, Mark 12_30, Alatariel Telemnar, Orofaniel, Child, Bêthberry, and Squatter the sense that it is, at the least, useful and, at the most, necessary, to approach LotR as ‘historical’ insofar as history gives us the greatest scope for conversation. When reading a history, we do not seek the meaning of the events by reducing those to the intentionality of the author (who is the chronicler of the events, not the maker of them); nor do we willy-nilly construct our own meaning for those events without making some reference to the meaning of the events to those caught up in them; nor do we seek the meaning of historical events only through conversations about them with our contemporaries. The point I think that I am making – and if I may be so bold as to suggest that many others are making here as well – the strength and promise of Tolkien’s ‘pretense’ or ‘myth’ or ‘fiction’ that he is chronicling history rather than creating a story encourages us to pursue the many different types of conversation that are necessary to get a full (but by no means complete or total) view of the matter he has recorded for us.

Durelin

06-10-2004, 09:13 AM

Originally posted by davem:The point is, though, that LotR is full of such symbolism, which is not present on the surface, but it is there, under the surface

This is a perfect example of taking applicability too far. You may see symbolisms that relate to you, as it is your own mind reading and comprehending. But the symbols I see may be very different, and though I see them, that does not mean that they were placed there. There are just certain aspects of any writing that can be applied to life, religion, anything personal, etc, simply because all literary, historical, etc works were written by human beings. And once their read by human beings...

Originally posted by davem:We can also take the examples of the Fellowship setting out from Rivendell on Dec 25th, & the destruction of the Ring & the Downfall of Barad Dur taking place on Mar 25th - which as Shippey points out is the date of both the Annunciation & the old date of Good Friday.

Think of these as tributes...

Originally posted by Fordim Hedgethistle:The thing that struck me about the Foreword this time through – both of them, actually – is the invitation that the author extends to the reader to engage in a dialogue....In this sense the Forewords are very much a ‘forward’ look to the conversation that is about to begin

I think that this dialogue leading into a conversation just goes to show how necessary it is to explain yourself. Sadly, really, if you do not wish for people to take what you say the wrong way, you must show them that you are joking or serious or happy or sorry, etc. Through showing such emotions when you are having a physical conversation with someone in person, what you are saying can take on a different meaning, usually the true meaning you wish to express. Tolkien, or any author, in their foreword, has a way to express the kind of emotion the following dialogue is in. I said that this is sad, that this is needed, but perhaps it just shows how speech and writing are bonded at their roots, still, though we seem to separate them so much.

Originally posted by Fordim Hedgethistle:All of these modes or kinds of conversation are necessary for a full understanding of the text

What comes to mind is the age of Scholasticism, in which the early Roman Catholic Church attempted to bring classical (Greek and Latin) literature into context with Church dogmas, and, particularly, the Bible. They came to a basic conclusion that a basis of classical learning was needed to fully understand the Bible. The fact that the Bible emerged from the time of classical literature and was a literary work makes it an 'offspring' of the classics, the next generation. The study of classical literature gives you an idea of where the Bible and it's teachings are coming from. Perhaps it is best that you know where anything you read is coming from, and the more distant what you are reading is from you, the more difficult determining where it's coming from is. Could forewords, appendices, etc, all be considered necessary backing for understanding?

*Note: please excuse all useless ramblings. I just got out of a biology exam!

-Durelin :D

davem

06-10-2004, 11:24 AM

Think of these as tributes...

In what sense? Either they don't belong in the story, or they are placed there deliberately. They either shouldn't be there, if the story is to stand alone as a self contained story set in a self contained world, or they are chosen for a specific reason.

This brings us to the question of what Tolkien was doing. Was he really writing a story which had no specific inner meaning, or relevance to the primary world? Or at least no meaning beyond what the individual reader could find there. Did he have any hopes for the story, did he want it to produce any particular effect - beyond the emotional responses he mentions in the forword? And if the work did produce more profund effects in the reader, would he have disowned 'responsibility'?

His exploration of the nature of time & our experience of it, of language, of myth. Its all in the book - deliberately placed there. So does he want us to pick up on that or simply be carried along by the effect of those things - part of the 'spell' he is casting? Does he wish us to read the novel in that 'other' way I described? Its a Catholic work, as he said - does he want us to read it in that way, or is that 'private'? Or does his opinion in that count?

Are such things too personal to him, so that he will go out of his way to disuade us, as in the second forword, from exploring those things, seeking them in the novel? Why introduce the Incarnation into Middle Earth (Athrabeth). In his later writings he seems almost driven to Christianise Middle Earth, bring it into line with the history of this world - would he have published this, if given the chance, or would it have remained private?

All I have are questions. The Christianity is too blatant - perhaps necessarily, given the man. He is clearly writing about things he loves, but he's disguising them - though he disguises them less & less the older he gets. The Legendarium becomes increasingly a reflection of the man himself. How detached from it was he able to be at the time he wrote LotR? It seems that in the first forword he was closer to it (or it closer to him) than he was when he wrote the second one, but is that the case? And his tendency to refer to the devil as Sauron - in the essay its stated he considered the sacraments as a defense against Sauron. Men with chainsaws are 'Orcs'. Is this simple 'applicability'? or has the myth overlaid the primary world to the extent that they in the end they became one?

Perhaps in his mind Elbereth was the Virgin Mary - or her 'manifestation' in Middle Earth, so that Middle Earth really was this world 'seen through enchanted eyes'. In that case how could we treat Middle Earth as a stand alone work of art? To what extent was he able to detach himself from his creation, or to detach this world from the world he had invented?

Or should we even care? If Middle Earth can stand alone, shouldn't it? My weakness in this context is that I can't divorce the artist from the art. It all blurs together in my mind as perhaps it did in his. Perhaps he saw this as a problem, that if it happened it would stop the reader truly appreciating his creation - maybe this is why he refused to write an autobiography. Its interesting to speculate on - because I can't do it any longer - what we would come up with if we only had LotR & Hobbit. If we had no letters, biography, HoME, just the books he published in his lifetime. Yet, did he really want that? If he did then why re-write the forword - the first places him as detached translator, the second is his admission, his claim to be its inventor. It becomes his work, the product of his mind, & brings an invitation to speculate on why he wrote what he did. In the first one he claims he has nothing to do with its content, in the second he claims he has everything to do with it - it takes on a biographical dimension - he even gives us some biography, telling us that he fought in the first world war, that he has a son who fought in the second, that he suffered from writers block, he gives us his opinion on literary critics, & by extension on modern literature. He tells us that he has been affected by his experiences - inviting us to specualte on those experiences, & the way in which they affected him. He tells us about the loss of his childhood friends, & the pain he suffered at he loss of the places he knew as a child. He even gives us information about his financial state - he couldn't afford to pay a typist (we know from the essay I quoted). He even tells us that he was not too organised - 'I have failed to keep my notes in order'.

He is making himself a part of the story - he is not 'playing the game'. He is stating clearly that this story is his invention, that it has come from his mind & out of his own experience. He tells us a great deal about himself. We get to know a lot about him. He must want us to. To say the story has no 'inner' meaning or message is almost to claim that he himself has none, or at least none to communicate - yet doesn't any author wish above all to communicate?

Could he really have written a story that didn't reflect himself, his beliefs & the things that moved him? Yet are those things that have no inner meaning? Or perhaps he is saying that the meaning is not concealed - it is out in the open, for those who can see it. Perhaps for him it is such a blatantly Catholic work that he thought it would be obvious to others, that he expected attentive readers to see Mary in Galadriel & Elbereth - that for them that would not constitute an 'inner' meaning. In that case Galadriel wouldn't be an 'allegory' of Mary, she would be Mary, by another name.

All speculation, yet genuine, & not intended to be 'provocative'. I accept Durelin's point:

This is a perfect example of taking applicability too far. You may see symbolisms that relate to you, as it is your own mind reading and comprehending.

Maybe I am. Yet my 'applicability' corresponds in part with Tolkien's own - Elbereth & Galadriel as Mary, Lembas as the Host - not that either of us has any claim to being right in it. If Tolkien tells us that Elbereth = Mary, or Lembas = the Host, or that they are the Middle Earth equivalent or 'echo' of them, no-one has to accept that, if Middle Earth is taken as a 'historical' place, with its own existence, not as the invention of JRR Tolkien, & as such a reflection of him. Tolkien would probably have said that the reader did not need to see Elbereth as Mary, but would he have denied any connection, would he have rejected the idea out of hand?

So we end up back at the original 'conflict' - do we approach Middle Earth as being an 'objective' historical place, which we can enter, analyse within its own terms, or do we see it as Tolkien's creation? Is there any room for Tolkien - or should there be? Does he want to be there - does he want us to include him?

That's another question I can't answer.

Fingolfin II

06-11-2004, 04:08 AM

That's a very interesting post, davem. It's a pity I can't quote you as it would take up the whole page :).

Tolkien didn't create Arda and it's inhabitants from nowhere- he based it on the real world and borrowed a lot from Beowulf and Christianity. I certainly agree with you when you say that as he got older, his work seemed more "personalised" and included his own thoughts and beliefs more than previously, where he was keen to wave aside any deeper meaning in his books. The Ultimate God (Eru) and the demi-gods (the Valar) are very similar to Greek mythology and Tolkien has gone to extreme lengths to make these works 'his own' as much as possible.

One possible solution is that after writing the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion - both momentous works - is that though there were parallels between Christian beliefs (i.e. Elbereth=Mary), these were not intended- subconscious ideas if you would like to label it that way. As he got older, maybe Tolkien became more attached to his works and gave it more of his own personal touch and liked us to be both 'carried along' by the books and create a universe that we can indentify with, though his works are fantasy.

Tar-ancalime said:

Both Tolkien and Bronte are quite right to step back and let their readers find what they will in their stories.

I think he/she has absolutely hit the nail on the head here, since Tolkien's world is very similar to ours and becomes more 'Christianised' in his later works, as you correctly said davem. So as for any 'inner meaning', I believe Tolkien intended to write his works, base it on the real world and leave the reader to search for watever they may be looking for in his books. Most authors have a certain moral or meaning that they wish to convey to the reader, but some (like Tolkien) prefer the reader to find that meaning themselves.

So we end up back at the original 'conflict' - do we approach Middle Earth as being an 'objective' historical place, which we can enter, analyse within its own terms, or do we see it as Tolkien's creation? Is there any room for Tolkien - or should there be? Does he want to be there - does he want us to include him?

As I said earlier, Tokien's stories - like most other myths - are always based on something else. In this case it is based on several stories and beliefs, Christianity prevalent amongst them. So, therefore I think the overall story should be seen as Tolkien's creation, though the concepts behind it are older and not his. I mean, all original fantasy stories are figments of the authors' imaginations, though their content can't be entirely original, as it all needs to be related in a world that we know, or can at least partially understand.

As for the last part of your question, I think you're right in saying it can't really be answered as only the Professor really knows.

mark12_30

06-11-2004, 07:27 AM

"Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible..."

Many of those on this thread have read the book already.

Which parts did you find boring, absurd, or contemptible the *FIRST* time you read the book? If you've read the book more than once, what do you think of those parts now? Has your opinion changed? Why or why not? Be brief, succinct-- and be honest, now!

(I bring this up because I expect that we will all have a better, deeper appreciation of those "boring/absurd/contemptible" sections after this project! So this is a way of taking stock before we begin.)

'*************************

Since we haven't gotten there yet, we'd best keep these to a brief summary. I will start.

Tom Bombadil. I thought he was the wierdest thing going. In some ways I still do and in some ways I really enjoy him. Reading posts about him on this board did help me alter my opinion somewhat.

The Barrow Downs. Huh? It lost me completely. I just had to get past it. Same with Midgewater.

The songs. I blush to admit it but the first time I read the book I skimmed or skipped them. I love them now.

In short, I struggled terribly through book one and thought it all rather dull. It wasn't til they left Rivendell that it picked up for me. (No assassination attempts, please. I was twelve at the time! ) For two decades, I majored in the mannish parts of the book, and found the purely hobbitish parts less interesting.

Again, I love the hobbit-centric sections best now. How one does change.

Anyone else care to chime in?

ps.
boring: The bloomin' detailed descriptions of EVERY landscape feature and EVERY campsite. "Where's the dialog!!"
Thirty years later: "Oh, that description of dreary barren wasteland is so evocative and so heartbreaking..."

tar-ancalime

06-11-2004, 08:23 AM

ps.
boring: The bloomin' detailed descriptions of EVERY landscape feature and EVERY campsite. "Where's the dialog!!"
Thirty years later: "Oh, that description of dreary barren wasteland is so evocative and so heartbreaking..."

Exactly what I was going to say! I used to scan the pages, looking for "something to happen!" I remember finding the descriptive writing during the first travels of the Fellowship ("The Ring Goes South") especially dull. Who cared what the country looked like? When were they going to meet some more interesting people?

But now as I read the book I find the descriptions to be some of the most precious passages. They're so evocative and so vital to the story--the landscape always furthers the story and is never irrelevant. For example, would the adventure in the Barrow-Downs seem so liminal without the long passages describing the crests of each hill in turn and the hotter and hotter weather? The very landscape builds the tension like the humid weather before a thunderstorm, and by the time the hobbits fall asleep under the standing stone it's clear that something very, very sinister is about to happen.

The Barrow-Wight

06-11-2004, 08:28 AM

Please let's stick to the appropriate chapter/part. We're veering off into some tangents that would make better stand-alone topics than part of this discussion.

Mister Underhill

06-11-2004, 08:28 AM

First, a quick Moderating Note:

Now that we're underway and things are taking shape, I'd like to make a few suggestions.

We usually let discussions in Books have their head, but I think it would enrich the Chapter-by-Chapter project for us to remain more tightly focused on the matter at hand -- namely, the section of the book that is under examination.

This doesn't mean we can't dig deep or consider outside sources, but I'd like to encourage members to make an effort to stay on topic. If you find your post is starting to draw in characters and events that don't happen until a few hundred pages down the line, or is simply rehashing arguments you've already had in other threads, try to rein it in. Characters and events should probably only be discussed in great detail as they arise in the text. Otherwise, we could find ourselves repeating the same pet arguments week after week, and soon only the very few people engaged in the wrestling will be interested in reading it, let alone participating.

Note that this advice is directed at myself as much as anyone else.

I don't want any hurt feelings to come out of these comments. The Foreword in fact provides an overview of the text to come, and I don't think we've wandered too, too far off-base here. But staying focused is something we should all bear in mind moving forward.

Here endeth the Moderating Note.

On a more personal note, upon reflection I think I prefer the original Foreword, and I wish I could cut-and-paste it into my hardback edition. I like the way it's part of the story, too. The second, as davem has observed, smacks of Tolkien trying to reassert control over his work -- to answer his critics and the analysts who had hijacked it over the years. I don't think the book needs anyone to defend it or to tell us how we should or shouldn't think about it. Including the author.

Did I find any parts boring or contemptible? The latter, certainly not. I admit that I was a poetry-skimmer in my youth (still am, to an extent), and I thought Bombadil was a pretty strange duck too.

EDIT: Er... What the Barrow-Wight said. ;)

The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

06-11-2004, 08:30 AM

Although it's been a good eleven years since first I read the book, I think I can honestly say that I didn't find a single part of it either boring, absurd or contemptible. The only section that comes close to being the first of these is the index, which isn't intended to be read from beginning to end.

Tolkien's writing wasn't perfect, but the odd awkward phrase or minor inconsistency doesn't merit such condemnation. Tolkien, while recognising inconsistencies in the work, very tellingly says "Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it..." (italics mine). It may seem childishly unfair of Tolkien to suggest that someone might review a book that they have not, in fact, read, but I can think of two examples of people who had attempted a publicly broadcast review without taking this (one would think) elementary step. The first of these is mentioned by Tom Shippey in J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, although not by name. Having concluded a radio debate on the subject, one of the panellists admitted privately to Shippey that they had never read The Lord of the Rings; and one of the reviwers on the B.B.C.'s literature popularity contest, The Big Read, also commented on the book after admitting that she had not finished it. While I do not intend to suggest that only those who have not read The Lord of the Rings will fail to find it enthralling, it is interesting to note that Tolkien couldn't resist getting in a dig at his critics, at least some of whom may well have based their opinions on just such lazy and slapdash research.

Firefoot

06-11-2004, 12:22 PM

Contemptible parts? None. There is nothing that I can say I completely dislike about the book. Boring? Yes. The first time, I honestly can't remember if I found anything boring, though I think not due to the fact that I was completely enraptured by the whole story. But starting the second time through, there were two parts in particular that I began to skim (even skip!) because I find them boring. They are: Tom Bombadil (he drives me crazy, and the hey dol stuff doesn't help), and Treebeard and the Ents (for which I can find no reason other than it bores me).

As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving I think it would be interesting to know which parts Tolkien originally meant to be the 'moving or appealing' parts. My guess is that quite frequently, it would be different than what people would think. Many of the deeply moving parts are for me in RotK. There are very few specific examples I can think of from FotR or TTT that are moving. Appealing, yes, very much so, but moving? not nearly so much.

Aiwendil

06-11-2004, 09:31 PM

Mister Underhill wrote:
The second, as davem has observed, smacks of Tolkien trying to reassert control over his work -- to answer his critics and the analysts who had hijacked it over the years. I don't think the book needs anyone to defend it or to tell us how we should or shouldn't think about it. Including the author.

I certainly understand and sympathize with this sentiment. There is something very nice about the first foreword - both in its light-hearted fun and in its lack of the stern words found in the second. But when I think about it, I cannot agree that the book doesn't need anyone to defend it or tell us what to think about it. We must not lose sight of the fact that the book was generally (and still is) seriously misinterpreted as being a real allegory by many in the literary establishment (by those that deign to discuss it at all). Tolkien actually meant something when he said that the book is not an allegory, and I think it is good that he said it. It really has been read as being entirely about World War II. I do not think that it is intrusive or domineering of an author to announce what his intention was and was not.

As for finding any parts boring or contemptible on my first reading - alas, my first reading was so early in my childhood that I don't remember it very clearly at all. I do have a vague recollection of finding Book IV somewhat sluggish - though I would certainly not say "boring". To be honest, it remains my least favorite book out of the six, thought I think I have come to appreciate certain aspects of it more fully.

Firefoot wrote:
I think it would be interesting to know which parts Tolkien originally meant to be the 'moving or appealing' parts. My guess is that quite frequently, it would be different than what people would think. Many of the deeply moving parts are for me in RotK. There are very few specific examples I can think of from FotR or TTT that are moving. Appealing, yes, very much so, but moving? not nearly so much.

This doesn't directly answer your question, but there is a letter (and I'm afraid I don't have time to search for a citation at the moment) from after the book's publication wherein Tolkien says that the parts he found the most moving at that time (i.e. after finishing it) were Aragorn's departure from Cerin Amroth in Book II and the coming of the Rohirrim and dawn in Book V. The latter is one of my favorite moments in the book, if not my absolute favorite. The former, I must admit, doesn't affect me all that much. I've never been a huge fan of the Aragorn-Arwen romance; to me it's always felt like a much flatter and more lifeless replica of Beren and Luthien.

Son of Númenor

06-11-2004, 09:52 PM

What I was most interested in when re-reading the Foreword was the passage that describes what The Lord of the Rings would have been like if Tolkien had written it as an allegory for World War II. The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves" (The Lord of the Rings, "Foreword to the Second Edition," xv). The allegory described in this alternate tale is pretty straightforward and does not require explanation for the purpose of my post. What was interesting to me in this passage was not the content, but the bitterness with which he describes this bizarro-Lord of the Rings - the wholly negative outcome of the work if it had followed Tolkien's views on WWII. It made me wonder. Though Tolkien stated that any allegorical connection to WWII was out of the question, and that the First World War affected him far more than the Second, what effect did World War II really have on The Lord of the Rings?

Earlier in the Foreword, Tolkien says: The delay was, of course, also increased by the outbreak of war in 1939, by the end of which year the tale had not yet reached the end of Book One. In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin's tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while. It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlórien (xiii).In this account of the writing of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien fails to mention a crucial part of the novel: the fall of Gandalf in Moria. While he is quick to note in the Letters that Gandalf had to pass through death to become powerful enough to deal with Saruman, Théoden and Denethor, he also notes that...the return of G. [Gandalf] is as presented in this book a 'defect', and one I was aware of, and probably did not work hard enough to mend" (Letters 203).Why didn't he work to fix this 'defect' if indeed he was aware of it? Could Tolkien, in the 'darkness' of the time that he wrote the chapters concerning Moria and Lothlórien, have initially intended for Gandalf's death to be permanent? Could he have lost faith in the ideals that Gandalf represented, only to realize later that his reincarnation was vital to the work as a piece transcendent of contemporary comparison or accusation of allegory? Did Gandalf 'represent', to some extent, the values that Tolkien held? Was Gandalf's fall in Moria (unconsciously) a reflection of Tolkien's disillusionment with those values during the World War II years, and his rebirth a way for Tolkien to make the work transcendent of politics and conflict, and make it what he truly wanted it to be: an enjoyable story with a pleasant, unambiguous, traditional morality behind it?

I'm sorry to pose all of these questions without bothering to answer any of them. Of course gaps and antitheses abound, some of the latter posed by the Professor himself, but I would still like to know what you think of my little....erm...shall we call it a lengthy suggestion?

Edit: Sorry. I took such a long time trying to get out what I was trying to say, agonizing over how on earth I was going to say it, and writing it in a way that made some kind of sense to me (not sure if I succeeded; I'll have to read it again in the morning when I've forgotten what I wrote, and when I'm less delirious from cold medication), that I did not get a chance to read Aiwendil's post. Nor did I continue on the thought track that has been at the forefront of this thread.

davem

06-12-2004, 12:47 AM

What I was most interested in when re-reading the Foreword was the passage that describes what The Lord of the Rings would have been like if Tolkien had written it as an allegory for World War II. The allegory described in this alternate tale is pretty straightforward and does not require explanation for the purpose of my post. What was interesting to me in this passage was not the content, but the bitterness with which he describes this bizarro-Lord of the Rings - the wholly negative outcome of the work if it had followed Tolkien's views on WWII. It made me wonder. Though Tolkien stated that any allegorical connection to WWII was out of the question, and that the First World War affected him far more than the Second, what effect did World War II really have on The Lord of the Rings? .

I'm also struck by the words in the first foreword:

But not all are interested in such matters, & many who are not may still find the account of those great & valiant deeds worth the reading. It was in that hope that I began the work of translating & selecting the stories of the Red Book, part of which are now presented to Men of a later age, one almost as darkling & ominous as was the Thrid Age that ended with the great years 1418 & 1419 of the Shire long ago

This 'darkling & ominous age' was the post WW2 period, the Cold War. Does he mean that he considered the Cold War worse than WW2? Its strange that he should. Did he fear the possibility of Russian nuclear attack as a worse threat than that of the Nazis? Did he see a Third World War as imminent in the mid fifties? And if he did, then had those fears abated by the mid sixties when he came to re write it? Was his belief that the 50's were 'darkling & ominous' a reflection of his struggles at the time, before the book became successful, & he became 'rich' as a result? And was his success in the 60's reflected in the fact that in the second foreword he can claim it has no 'inner meaning"?

In other words, did he feel during the 50's that it did have some inner meaning - at least to the extent of being able to sustain readers during what he felt to be a world on the brink of destruction? Perhaps by the 60's, optimistic & wealthy, he could dismiss such fears, & felt able to present it as simple entertainment?

Lhunardawen

06-12-2004, 01:03 AM

Thank you very much for quoting that part of the Foreword, Son of Numenor! Much as I would like to read all the posts in this thread, time constrains me, so I would just have to find someone who would quote that. I was beginning to give up, but I found your post. Thanks, indeed.

It was easy to see Tolkien's bitterness toward the Second World War when he said that. Forgive me, but I just couldn't help looking at it allegorically. If Tolkien intended LotR to be an allegory of WWII, then who would the poor hobbits be? The innocent "by-standers" that are inevitably affected by the war? If so, why would they be held in hatred and contempt? If not, would it be those who underneath the war are trying to restore peace?

HerenIstarion

06-12-2004, 01:11 AM

This doesn't directly answer your question, but there is a letter (and I'm afraid I don't have time to search for a citation at the moment) from after the book's publication wherein Tolkien says that the parts he found the most moving at that time (i.e. after finishing it) were Aragorn's departure from Cerin Amroth in Book II and the coming of the Rohirrim and dawn in Book V

I would be glad to be of service:

Letter 165 To the Houghton Mifflin Co. (1955)

I came eventually and by slow degrees to write The Lord of the Rings to satisfy myself: of course without success, at any rate not above 75 percent. But now (when the work is no longer hot, immediate or so personal) certain features of it, and especially certain places, still move me very powerfully. The heart remains in the description of Cerin Amroth (end of Vol. I, Bk. ii, ch. 6), but I am most stirred by the sound of the horses of the Rohirrim at cockcrow; and most grieved by Gollum's failure (just) to repent when interrupted by Sam : this seems to me really like the real world in which the instruments of just retribution are seldom themselves just or holy; and the good are often stumbling blocks. ..

Besides:

Letter 241 From a letter to Jane Neave (September 1962)

...It was not until Christopher was carried off to S. Africa that I forced myself to write Book IV, which was sent out to him bit by bit. That was 1944. (I did not finish the first rough writing till 1949, when I remember blotting the pages (which now represent the welcome of Frodo and Sam on the Field of Cormallen) with tears as I wrote. I then myself typed the whole of that work all VI books out, and then once again in revision (in places many times), mostly on my bed in the attic of the tiny terrace-house to which war had exiled us from the house in which my family had grown up.) But none of that really illuminates 'Leaf by Niggle' much, does it? If it has any virtues, they remain as such, whether you know all this or do not. I hope you think it has some virtue. (But for quite different reasons, I think you may like the personal details. That is because you are a dear, and take an interest in other people, especially as rightly your kin.)...

It is to be said that I can't read the description of Rohirrim arrival to the Pelennor fields without at least shivers down my spine myself, but that is to be more profoundly investigated in chapter discussion to come

cheers

Mister Underhill

06-12-2004, 08:04 AM

Aiwendil, you're right that LotR was and is misinterpreted by some critics and "literary establishment" types. But so what? Those who wish to read allegory in the story still do so regardless of Tolkien's denial. I daresay that the vast majority of his readers enjoy the book in exactly the sort of way that he hoped they would.

The letter H-I dredged up contains the exact sentiment, even if he intended it for a different context: "If it has any virtues, they remain as such, whether you know all this [background information] or do not."

Son of Númenor

06-12-2004, 08:38 AM

DavemIn other words, did he feel during the 50's that it did have some inner meaning - at least to the extent of being able to sustain readers during what he felt to be a world on the brink of destruction? Perhaps by the 60's, optimistic & wealthy, he could dismiss such fears, & felt able to present it as simple entertainment?I think it may well be the case that Tolkien ascribed to The Lord of the Rings some special 'meaning' when reflecting upon it in the 1950's. In a letter to Rayner Unwin dated October 24, 1952, Tolkien refers to the impact of the atomic bomb:Mordor in our midst. And I regret to note that the billowing cloud recently pictured did not mark the fall of Barad-dûr, but was produced by its allies - or at least by persons who have decided to use the Ring for their own (of course most excellent) purposes ([I]Letters - #135, 165).This is the second time that I note his use of comparison between World War II and The Lord of the Rings - or, more specifically, the effect that the insertion of a 'Ring=atomic power' allegory would have on the work. The first, of course, would be the reference to Saruman filling in the missing gaps of Ring-lore in Mordor after Sauron's enslavement. Tolkien's intent in the juxtaposing of his Lord of the Rings with the Lord of the Rings that could have been if it had been an allegory for World War II may well indicate Tolkien's desire for The Lord of the Rings to be, as you said Davem, sustenance for readers whose world felt threatened by the prospect of near-future nuclear war. By the time he wrote the Second Edition Foreword, then, he would have dismissed the work as 'sustenance' and chosen instead to present it to readers as merely an enjoyable tale. By describing in the Foreword what The Lord of the Rings would have been like had it been based upon World War II, he is able to express his discontent with the atomic power that 'won' WWII, and at the same time distance his work from those views for future readers.

davem

06-12-2004, 12:13 PM

By the time he wrote the Second Edition Foreword, then, he would have dismissed the work as 'sustenance' and chosen instead to present it to readers as merely an enjoyable tale. By describing in the Foreword what The Lord of the Rings would have been like had it been based upon World War II, he is able to express his discontent with the atomic power that 'won' WWII, and at the same time distance his work from those views for future readers.

Yet some of us still read it for 'sustenance'. Would he have been pleased? Did he find such 'sustenance' in the work? (did he 'love too well the work of his own hands?). I wonder what he felt about the powerful effect the book had on some readers - Carpenter mentions his response to being told of a young man who, on finishing reading LotR, simply began reading it again. Tolkien's response was 'I've ruined their lives'. Did he want to try & prevent that kind of reaction - tell people, 'Look, its entertainment, it has no 'meaning', don't look to it to sustain you in these 'darkling & ominous times'. Its just a 'story' I made up, its only there to entertain you.'

How much of that is an attempt to avoid 'ruining their lives' - did he really feel able to 'let go' of the book, did he still feel responsible for any effect it had on those who read it? The second Forword is quite 'cold' compared to the first. He's almost encouraging the critics dismissal of the work as 'meaningless' nonsense. Did he fear he'd created something too 'powerful'?

Bêthberry

06-12-2004, 01:18 PM

[A] young man who, on finishing reading LotR, simply began reading it again. Tolkien's response was 'I've ruined their lives'. Did he want to try & prevent that kind of reaction - tell people, 'Look, its entertainment, it has no 'meaning', don't look to it to sustain you in these 'darkling & ominous times'. Its just a 'story' I made up, its only there to entertain you.'

I rather suspect, davem, this could possibly be another example of Tolkien's self-deprecatory wit. He loves poking fun at himself, as do, actually, many academics, but of course I shall have to find this in the Letters and spend many hours pondering the nuances and the particular correspondent to whom he was writing, and possibly consider the various definitions of 'ruined' in the OED before I offer a fully reasoned argument. Who knows, maybe he meant "runes their lives" as in planning out a secret code for them. ;) :D

Durelin

06-12-2004, 08:29 PM

I've ruined their lives

I've never seen that quote before, but I can certainly imagine Tolkien saying that. Most likely this comes from his wit, but he's also making a good point, if not seriously. Really, I think he's just commenting on how seriously these readers have taken his story. And that does not at all call for seriousness on his part! Perhaps he could say the same things about us... ;)

consider the various definitions of 'ruined' in the OED

Oh dear, it haunts us once again... :D

davem

06-13-2004, 01:28 AM

As to the 'ruined their lives' quote - I probably shouldn't have used it, as I know I've read it - was sure it was in the Carpenter biog - but can't find it there. I will try & dig it out. There are numerous similar quotes in Letters & Biog.

Found it - its not in the Biog, its from Donald Swann's forword to The Road Goes Ever On( I did 'misremember' the context of the comment, though):

Along with many others I often found myself desiring to vanish into Middle Earth, to escape utterly into fantasy! On the other hand this was a temptation making one unfit to live in this earth at all; on the other, the phrase Middle-Earth is but a medieval way of describing our own world poised between Heaven & Hell. Is Tolkien’s world of fantasy an escape at all, or do we therein meet ourselves, with all our problems? His books, as those of CS Lewis, include well-nigh perfect creatures, Elves, eldila, great lords & magicians. These heroes, I decided, were bu pardigms of humans with a sense of destiny & purpose; & Frodo, the central hero, carries mortality in the shape of a lasting wound. The heroes of Greek legend were often real people of a past time, only with wings drawn in. To sum up this paragraph, I used to feel that the Tolkien dimension was almost a danger. I then went against this, & decided I would enter it at any time I chose, but with this golden rule (with this phial glowing on my desk?) that i must be able to emerge, to shut the boook, & get up from the chair. If I can’t, I will earn the disapproval of the author. He was an upright man in the real world, & had no intention of casting a spell on anyone. I told him once of a young man who thought he was Frodo. ‘I’ve ruined their lives.’ he said disconsolately.

Bêthberry

06-13-2004, 10:14 AM

Hearsay, davem, hearsay! Not allowable in court. ;)

Perhaps this is the time to note another piece of reported comment from Tolkien. My HarperCollins paperback includes a "Note on The Text" by Douglas A. Anderson, dated April 1933 from Ithaca, N.Y., which is placed before the (Second) Foreword. Here is what Anderson says about Tolkien's decision to write a second foreword:

In addition to revisions within the text itself, Tolkien replaced his original foreword with a new one. He was pleased to remove the original foreword; in his check copy, he wrote of it: "confusing (as it does) real personal matters with the 'machinery' of the Tale, is a serious mistake."

A very quick review of the Letters found no reference to the Forewords, but perhaps someone who knows them better than I can find one.

I did, however, find a passage in a Letter which speaks to an issue we have discussed here, why Tolkien would refrain from directly addressing his 'religious' meaning. This is from Letter 281, written to Rayner Unwin, 15 December 1965, so it is written around the same time as the Second Foreword. He is discussing one of the publisher's 'Blurbs' for TH; he objected to the blub as he felt it destroyed the 'magic' of the tale. Bolding mine.

Bilbo was specially selected by the authority and insight of Gandalf as abnormal: he had a good share of hobbit virtues: shrewd sense, generosity, patience and fortitude, and also a strong 'spark' yet unkindled. The story and its sequelare not about 'types' or the cure of bourgeois smugness by wider experience, but about the achievements of specially graced and gifted individuals. I would say, if saying such things did not spoil what it tries to make explicit, 'by ordained individuals, inspired and guided by an Emissary to ends beyond their individual education and enlargement'. This is clear in The Lord of the Rings;but it is present, if veiled, in The Hobbite from the beginning, and is allueded to in Gandalf's last words.

My own personal interpretation of this is that for Tolkien, story-telling is preferable to explict statements because it requires a more active form of participation in the generation of meaning than the passive receiving of information from direct statement.

Guinevere

06-13-2004, 02:10 PM

For me it is only 3 years ago that I have read LotR for the first time - and I did read the foreword first. Like Firefoot, it made me feel intrigued and curious, but also rather mystified. Only after I had read the books (and reread the foreword) could I really understand what Tolkien was alluding to in the foreword. (I think this is generally often so. Why are forewords even called so and stand at the beginning? Mostly they deal with things which one can only appreciate fully after having read the book!)

And I thought it strange that Tolkien stated flatly that the book had "no inner meaning". For me it seemed full of meaning and timeless wisdom, even though I neither could nor wanted to analyze this. ( I remember that I used to hate it when when we had to analyze literature at school and "dig out" ulteriour meanings ..)
After having read "on Fairy-stories" , Tolkien's biography and his letters (and countless wise threads here in the BD) I think I understand better what motivated Tolkien.
... if saying such things did not spoil what it tries to make explicit, That's exactly the point. And I agree fully with your opinion, Bethberry.

mark12_30

06-13-2004, 06:14 PM

For me it seemed full of meaning and timeless wisdom, even though I neither could nor wanted to analyze this. .

Yes. Better just to see, hear, and to experience it.

As we go, I hope you point out the sections that seemed full of meaning to you, especially if you can't articulate why. Sometimes that's the deepest stuff.

Mister Underhill

06-13-2004, 06:25 PM

Regarding Tolkien's attitude on over-zealous fans and his creation: I know from a personal standpoint, I too often fall into the trap of trying to boil down Tolkien's attitude on any particular topic, such as this one, into a single pat answer.

But JRRT was a complex person who lived a long life. Like the rest of us, his opinions were subject to change according to what time in his life and under what circumstances you asked him.

I think there were times when he was flattered and happy to have moved so many people; then I'm sure there were other days -- say, after some rabid, half-psychotic "Frodo" had invaded his garden -- that he wondered if he hadn't done more harm than good.

In short, I think JRRT had a very complex relationship with LotR (and its impact on fans and the literary world), one that isn't easily boiled down.

piosenniel

06-14-2004, 11:12 AM

Better late than never . . .

Just a brief comment on the Foreword before the opportunity passes by and the discussion has wholly gone onto the Prologue. And you will excuse me, if you will, if this does nothing to add to the well done thoughts on allegory, The Great War, religious impact of Tolkien’s belief systems, and etc.

First, let me confess, that in all my many years of reading Tolkien, I have managed to skip, overlook, pass quickly by the Foreword every time. The few author forewords I have read have proved tedious, at best, in my opinion. So it was with a sense of resignation that I prompted myself to look through this one, this time.

And quick that look-through began until I came to this section:

. . . I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin’s tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while. . . .I went on and so came to Lothlórien and the Great River. . . .

I gasped . . . something rang a bell of recognition in me. The old fellow, I thought, would have made a cracking RP-Gamer!

An invisible player intrigued by the unfolding of his storyline, he stands with the fellowship at the fallen Dwarf’s tomb - tarries a while as creative juices fail for the moment; real life becomes insistent (one or the other or both); then, journeys on with them to The Great River and into the heart of the Golden Wood. Late at night, after what passes for the real work is done, he plods on as he can . . . tapping the keys of his typewriter in a two-fingered staccato (nod to Arry for that earlier image).

He’s hooked on the tale that grows in the telling of it . . .

I’d give my eye teeth to have been able to game with him! Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

And then, of course, there are the maps . . . lovely maps . . . a Gamer’s delight . . . but that should wait ’til the Prologue is discussed, I suppose.

~*~ Pio

*. . . written in the late watches of the night . . . herself rather unskilled in the art of ten-fingered typing . . .

Gorwingel

06-17-2004, 07:44 PM

Sorry that I didn't get to this thread sooner. But it is just that I have been so busy recently with things that I just haven't had the time.

I have read the Foreword everytime I have read LOTR, and even sometimes I have read it multiple times through. I find it to be very insightful, and interesting, and actually worth the time to even the regular reader.

As others have said the 2nd edition prologue is very much influenced by what Tolkien was going through at the time (i.e. massive fandom). Like for example at the end when he talks about all the "comments and enquiries" he has received from "attentive readers". At this time he was being bombarded with letters, people coming to his home, and phonecalls (some directly from the U.S.) at the most unconvienant of times. All of this activity would most definitely effect your opinion towards your work of writing (especially because he was such a quiet gentleman).

I also must bring up this quote because to me it is just so brilliant...

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.
I just love how he was so truthful, and candid when he wrote this. We learn that the story was taken in by the public, in a way that he didn't expect (i.e. the entire section on alligory). We also learn about the actual writing process, and how long it took for him to eventually finish his masterwork. It is only 3 1/2 pages long but it tells a ton about the person behind the story.

Guinevere

06-19-2004, 06:35 AM

I agree, Gorwingel! :) I have similar opinions of their works, or the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. I wonder what books those were actually? Does anyone know some examples?

The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

06-19-2004, 08:38 AM

Since those words appear largely to have been motivated by resentment at some of the more dismissive criticism that his writing had received, I doubt that any solid examples will ever be forthcoming. I think that Tolkien had anticipated adverse criticism, but had expected it to be more courteously phrased than some of the reviews he received. As is probably only to be expected, he dismisses such criticism out of hand as the opinions of those who enjoy reading drivel. Sad though it is to say it, I think that the phrase quoted above was more a malicious response to certain reviewers of his work than a serious criticism of any particular books.

Fordim Hedgethistle

06-19-2004, 10:35 AM

As it happens, we do have a fairly good idea of the kinds of books/critics who Tolkien was talking about in that moment. Most of the most cutting reviews of LotR (and they only became more cutting as the years went by and the book went through edition after edition, and worse, became a bestseller in America) came from the critics who wrote for the more "literary" reviews (The Times Literary Supplement for example).

These critics were, throughout the middle part of the last century, almost wholly in accord with one another that the "best" kind of novels were those of the High Moderns (Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad) and their inheritors. They valued experimentation in style (non-linear narrative, mixing genres, shifts in voice/tone/point of view) and an aesthetic that priviledges uncertainty and ambiguity. Tolkien, they felt, offered none of these things: he was writing in a style that was not only not-new, but was in fact very very old, and behind the interesting questions of his work, there was little ambiguity or uncertainty (we know not only who but what is good and evil in LotR).

It wasn't just Tolkien who came in for this kind of dismissive treatment. Evelyn Waugh (of Brideshead Revisited fame) and Graham Greene received similarly bad reviews. Interestingly, all of these writers were "openly" Catholic in their writings and dealt with issues of faith, belief and absolute notions of good and duty. You won't find much of that in the Moderns valued by the critics at the TLS in Tolkien's lifetime!

mark12_30

06-19-2004, 11:53 AM

These critics were, throughout the middle part of the last century, almost wholly in accord with one another that the "best" kind of novels were those of the High Moderns (Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad) and their inheritors. They valued experimentation in style (non-linear narrative, mixing genres, shifts in voice/tone/point of view) and an aesthetic that priviledges uncertainty and ambiguity. Tolkien, they felt, offered none of these things: he was writing in a style that was not only not-new, but was in fact very very old

To paraphrase Reepicheep (who always reminded me of Boromir): It is, then, my very good fortune not to be a "modern critic." I much prefer the older styles.

It's interesting that conservationism and conservativism are regarded as opposites these days, for Tolkien was both. He brings them into harmony within his own personality and in his writings. He cherished, protected, and championed that which was old, good, honorable, and vulnerable. Everything from forests to epic prose to gentleness, humility, and self-sacrifice, to honor, responsibility, and just plain "The Good Old Way Of Doing Things"-- as long as it is honorable and high, purged of the gross, beautiful, poetic, he brings us to love Age and the Ancient, and faith, belief and absolute notions of good and duty

The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

06-19-2004, 12:08 PM

It's all well and good to identify a major source of criticism and point to the tastes of its authors, but since Tolkien refuses to name names, either of the reviewers he was describing or of 'the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer', it's very difficult to pin him down to specific examples of books or authors that he considered inferior. I don't remember reading any comment by Tolkien on any of the 'high modern' authors mentioned above, let alone anything resembling an opinion on them. His only comments on modern literature (in one case, English literature in general) admit an absence of both knowledge and interest, and the most recent writers I find mentioned in his letters are Isaac Asimov and Mary Renault, of whom he approved. Although we might speculate as to which authors and critics were the target for his broadside in the 1966 foreword, there's no indication that Tolkien had even read a book by Joyce or Woolf, let alone decided what he thought of their writing.

I think that Tolkien intended his comments to be taken personally by a few reviewers and critics who had been particularly scathing about The Lord of the Rings. 'What they think is immaterial to me,' says Tolkien, 'because I have no desire to write the sort of rubbish that appeals to them.' This isn't a precise indication of Tolkien's literary tastes, but pure defensive aggression. He may well have disliked modern literature (actually his attitude towards it seems to have been closer to indifference), but as far as his actual words are concerned, his statement comes across simply as a counter-blow in print against the people who had been most contemptuously critical of his own work. Perhaps more completely than any other line in the later foreword, this gives away its true nature as the author's response to his work's reception, and by no means is it an apologia.

davem

06-20-2004, 01:59 AM

I suspect what Tolkien disliked was the trend towards moral relativism (see Aragorn's words to Eomer) & the taste for irony he found in modern literature ( not much irony in LotR - though as Brian rosebury points out Saruman attempts it in his confrontation with Frodo).

Tolkien obviously felt he had something to offer modern readers which was lacking in the literature of the time. I think he was simply taking a stance, & felt that stance would be acceptable - which he probably didn't at the time of the first forword, where he seems almost apologetic about 'inflicting' this 'old fashioned', 'reactionary' work on the world. His first forword seems almost submissive, in his second he seems to have realised that he's not a voice crying in the wilderness. He cleary believed that literature could have some effect on society, & wanted to make his own position clear.

As to the 'applicability' thing, Rosebury (Tolkien: a Cultural Phenomenon) makes an interesting comparison - that Tolkien is doing, in a sense, what Illuvatar does with the Ainur - giving them the theme to sing, but they apply it in the way they wish - some positively, some negatively, but they are free to apply their creativity to making the world reflect the ideal - Eru's or their own. In that sense Tolkien gives the reader LotR, & we apply it to our lives & our thinking, but just as Eru, having given the gift of creativity & the freedom to apply it to the Ainur & the Children, so Tolkien does with his 'Theme'. Eru is not a dictator, but a creator, whose greatest gift to his children is the ability to 'apply', & the freedom to bring forth, what they have been given; to create themselves in His image. As he puts it:

If I am right, his rejection of the author's 'purposed domination' over the responses of the reader is much more than an acceptance of the modern truism that a literary text, once published, becomes an item of 'public property' which anyone can interpret or misinterpret; rather, it is an intentional adoption of the creative ethic of Illuvatar Himself, & is in absolute harmony with the moral & political values which pervade Tolkien's work

Guinevere

06-20-2004, 01:13 PM

Thank you all for the interesting responses to my question! :)

As for Tolkien's taste in literature, didn't he and CS.Lewis at one time say something like "There is not enough literature of the kind we like , so we have to write it ourselves!" (Sorry I don't remember the exact quote and cannot find it now)
And I remember that in one letter he wrote that he disliked Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Whimsey. (I do like him, though.. ;) Although not of English mothertongue, I've read Henry James and Virginia Woolf and can imagine that that wasn't what Tolkien would have fancied. (I didn't like it, at any rate. Joyce I've never read, although he is buried in Zürich, where I live. Sorry for the o.t. :( )

Now something different which I noticed : As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches.
In this sentence in the foreword, Tolkien used almost the same words as in "Leaf by Niggle" about the painting of the tree:The tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots.
When I read this, I took it immediately for a kind of symbol of LotR. Although Tolkien denied allegory, he wrote in letter # 241 about "Leaf by Niggle": Also, of course, I was anxious about my own internal Tree, "The Lord of the Rings". It was growing out of hand, and revealing endless new vistas - and I wanted to finish it, but the world was threatening.

Aiwendil

06-20-2004, 08:33 PM

Guinevere wrote:
As for Tolkien's taste in literature, didn't he and CS.Lewis at one time say something like "There is not enough literature of the kind we like , so we have to write it ourselves!" (Sorry I don't remember the exact quote and cannot find it now)
And I remember that in one letter he wrote that he disliked Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Whimsey. (I do like him, though..

I believe he said that he read and enjoyed Peter Whimsey up to Gaudy Night, but found that book to be a turn for the worse. I also recall a letter where he says he enjoys, as he puts it, "so-called 'science fiction'" - particularly Isaac Asimov. I've always enjoyed the fact that my favorite author appears to have been a fan of my second favorite.

Child of the 7th Age

06-22-2004, 03:54 PM

I have decided to try and read the corresponding section of HoMe as I review LotR for these discussions. In any case, I was reading Return of the Shadow, the chapter entitled "Of Gollum and the Ring", which was eventually incorporated in Chapter 2, "Shadow of the Past", surely one of the most important sections of the entire book.

The interesting thing is that when JRRT did the earliest draft of "Shadow of the Past", he later called it a "foreward". CT says it is clear his father wrote it as a possible new beginning of the book, in which Gandalf tells Bingo before the Party of the history of the Ring, the danger it posed, and urges Bingo to leave! (At this point in the successive drafts, Bingo was giving the party and Bilbo had already taken off into the wilds.)

Would this foreward have been put forth instead of the current one or, more likely, would it have replaced the prologue we now have? We know this piece was written in about the spring of 1938, prior to any part of the prologue being written (and certainly prior to the composition of the foreward).

In any case, the book would have had a very different tone if it had started off with this dark "foreward" rather than the existing foreward or prologue. I am reminded of what Tokien said later on: how important it is that we know about Rose Cotton and other things back home since we must have some idea of what Frodo and Sam were fighting to defend. Perhaps for the same reason, Tolkien decided to drop the "gloomy" foreward and instead stress the "hominess" of the Shire so we would all understand that the book was not just about fighting evil, but also the preservation of goodness.

Estelyn Telcontar

06-23-2004, 02:07 AM

What a wonderful idea, Child! I'll join you, as this seems to be a good motivation for continuing in my very slow-paced reading of HoME! (I just picked up my copy of Return of the Shadow from the bookshelf - this HarperCollins edition has John Howe's lovely illustration 'Gandalf Returns to Bag End' on the cover.)

mark12_30

06-23-2004, 07:12 AM

Chile!!! ... great idea... I hope I can do it. (As I still haven't read Ch1 yet, I'm bashfully lerry!) But I'd love to do that too. I've had 'em for long enough...

Mister Underhill

06-24-2004, 08:19 AM

Having agreed with Fordim that the discussion of how (or whether) to integrate HoME info into the Chapter-by-Chapter read-through belongs in the Feedback and Suggestion Box thread, I've gone ahead and moved the relevant posts over there, starting with Child's "Slightly off-topic but pertinent to future discussion..." (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?p=331625#post331625) post.

Go there to continue that line of conversation.

Thanks!

Estelyn Telcontar

01-06-2008, 12:59 PM

3 1/2 years later, I just reread the Foreword in my new copy; my old Ballantine's paperback has suffered more in the past few years since I've been on the Downs than it did in the decades before that! :eek: That could give me a fresh outlook, I thought, and underlined as I read - only to see that much of what is important to me now was the same when I wrote in my introductory post on this thread!

Famous first words - people who don't read forewords aren't always missing something in other books, but much of what Tolkien writes here has been quoted over and over again in discussions of his books. The second edition foreword is the one that has survived and has been kept in newer printings and editions of the LotR.

One thing that I noticed more this time around was the analogy of the story as a tree - having studied Tolkien's biography im comparison to his story Leaf by Niggle this past year, it was an obvious connection.

Another thing I particularly noticed was his theory about what would have happened with Saruman had LotR been patterned after the real war - he speculates that the wizard would then have learned enough Ring-lore to make a Great Ring for himself!

In the light of Jackson's explanations (understandable, I'm sure, regarding the length of the films!) for the absence of the Scouring in the movie, I took note of Tolkien's evaluation that it was planned from the beginning, essential and necessary for the story.

Oh, and I smiled over his statement that some questions could not be answered because "I have failed to keep my notes in order"! It took his son years to find his way through all those papers!

I will post my thoughts on the corresponding chapter in the Companion later - hoping that others will add to the discussion to keep me from double posting!

Estelyn Telcontar

01-08-2008, 01:21 PM

I read Hammond and Scull's Reader's Companion with great interest and found some remarks that gave me a fresh look at the Foreword. First of all, I read the original Foreword for the first time since the last discussion; it was interesting to see how the translator conceit was emphasized in it. I smiled over Tolkien's reference to the study of Hobbits as having "no practical use" - it reminded me of his lecture that referred to the development of his languages as a "secret vice".

It amuses me that the author is more tolerant than some of his fans; he allowed those who aren't interested in his appendices on languages etc. to "neglect these pages; and the strange names that they meet they may, of course, pronounce as they like."

The thought that I found most fascinating was the fact that both versions of Tolkien's Foreword contain spoilers for those who haven't yet read the story. Did you notice those when you first read it? Did you read the Foreword first, or not at all? Let's have a closer look and see what spoilers lurk there!

note: For those who do not have a book that includes the original Foreword, Squatter posted it here (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?p=328671#post328671) in the first discussion.

Legate of Amon Lanc

01-09-2008, 02:32 PM

I'm here to break your monologue, Esty :) I only hope it does not get out of hand. (EDIT after looking at the completed post: already happened... and warning, seems this contains lot of personal ramblings and not much actual thoughts that should have any objective value)

One thing that I noticed more this time around was the analogy of the story as a tree - having studied Tolkien's biography im comparison to his story Leaf by Niggle this past year, it was an obvious connection.
Exactly, I definitely thought about it, and mainly, I don't know, I would have to check, but the words "as the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches" are (almost?) word-to-word (the "threw out unexpected branches" part) the same as in one place of the Leaf by Niggle, at least in Czech translation of both. It must be for the first time I read the Foreword properly since reading Niggle, which means about eight years anyway, but this sentence just hit me in the eye. I don't have the Leaf in English, so I cannot say it for sure about the original.

The thought that I found most fascinating was the fact that both versions of Tolkien's Foreword contain spoilers for those who haven't yet read the story. Did you notice those when you first read it? Did you read the Foreword first, or not at all? Let's have a closer look and see what spoilers lurk there!
Yup, I wanted to say that even when I reread it today, and even when I read your first post now where you mention the foreword. Fortunately, I have to say, fortunately I did not read it first, and I did not read even the Foreword, and I don't remember it exactly, but I believe I was quite upset even with the narrative rant before the Party itself started - I was about eight back then, so no wonder, I wanted some action (now looking at it, probably I started to read properly around the moment when old G talks to Bilbo for the first time inside Bag End, right after Gandalf's arrival with the fireworks - I remembered that part, nevertheless, because it features the rune G, as I was intrigued by the runes back then, and not knowing Tengwar yet but the runes from The Hobbit only - I fluently wrote and read in them - I kept thinking it is a Dwarven G-rune, which would be of course great, as I missed G in the Dwarven runes). Nevertheless, I read the foreword sometime during reading the rest. It must have been after Rivendell, most probably during Two Towers - that means around February that year, I don't know, 1995? Anyway, why I am sure it was after Rivendell and Two Towers - I already knew Saruman and when reading that Tolkien said in the Foreword the tale is not inspired by the WW2, I was quite, well, not surprised, I accepted it calmly, but I said to myself something like "and you know what, Tolkien? I always thought Mordor is like the Nazi Germany and Saruman is like the Soviet Union." I remind you once again, I was 8, and my view was rather flat, but the model of WW2, as I saw it, was the same model as the one I read about: evil Germans and good Western allies and good yet at the beginning treacherous Soviets (referring to Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, yet in the end they took the "good" side and went against Hitler). The archetypal "the good, the bad and the one who is good, yet commited treachery at certain point" was there for me.
Anyway, what was I talking about? :) Yes, the Foreword. Obviously there are major spoilers, the Scouring (but obviously, after what I wrote above, I must have read this spoiler before reading the chapter itself - obviously, it did not bother me. After all, there is just something about Saruman and then Tolkien jumps to rambling about his childhood, which for a reader who does not care hardly has any value - especially when he has thousands of more important things to read at the moment, like Pippin finding the Palantír and so on).

Another thing I would like to mention is this:
It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved.
I emphasised the second part, because from the moment I read the FotR for second time, I, for reasons unknown, have stuck in my mind that this is referring to the moment when Frodo looks from Amon Hen. I know Tolkien speaks in general, but back then I cared a little for that part when I first read it (maybe even skipped it... ahem) and when I read the book for the second time, chills went down my spine and I thought it was fascinating. And so I thought that probably many people could have skipped or not liked this part (like I did in the first place) but some others found it absolutely unearthly wonderful (like I did while reading it properly). And every time I read this part of the Foreword, I thought: oh my, good Tolkien that you did not heed the advices of the many (in my imagination there were many, and only a few chosen ones were able to discover the beauty of the part ;) ) and did not revide your works by skipping it...

Another thing, and maybe (hopefully for you) this is going to be the last one. I did not fully realise, till the time I re-read this foreword now, that actually, the most brilliant or at least one of the best books (as some minimalists could say) in the world was written almost whole during the time of the Second World War. I mean, isn't it strange? Just think about it. I don't know what do you imagine when someone says "1939-45", probably depends on where you come from and other factors, but I think: battles, people dying, bombardements, innocent people dying, concentration camps, the most horrible deeds against humanity, gestapo, ending with an image of tanks passing through silent, half-destroyed city with houses with doors locked, blinds pulled... and now I should also add to this chain of images the image of the Professor sitting somewhere and writing LotR? This LotR? This fantastic, beautiful, kind book we all so love to read? It is in complete contrast? And now, I will say it otherwise to make it more apparent (I hope) - when you say "Shakespeare, Hamlet" and I should say when it was written, I imagine the 16th century England; when you say "Homer, Illias and Odyssey" I imagine some ancient Greek people in front of this beautiful temple with these funny outfits, and so on, but always, I imagine some peaceful, stylized picture. But when someone says "Tolkien, Lord of the Rings", I should actually imagine the things I named above about the World War. That's just horrible. You know what I mean?