The Truth Beyond Memory
 

There is a good article by John J. Miller about JRRT in the 12/31/01 issue of National Review called "The Truth Beyond Memory". Unfortunately it's not on the magazine's online version so I can't post a link. Among the interesting factoids in the article (some or most are probably known to you):

1. LotR was named the most important book of the century in a 1997 poll by the British bookseller Waterstone's (I only knew about the amazon.com poll which reached a similar result).

2. Tolkien "penned what is perhaps the most influential essay ever written about Beowulf . (Sharkû, you gotta read that !)

3. Tolkien once wrote that Venice (Italy) was "like a dream of Old Gondor".

4. The word "orc" (which I assumed JRRT took from Blake) comes from Beowulf , where the word "orc-neas" appears, which means something like "demon-corpse".

5. March 25th (the date that Gollum and Sauron fall) is, in the traditional English calendar, the date of the Fall of Man, the Annunciation and the Crucifixion.

6. Finally, Miller quotes W. H. Auden on LotR: "If someone dislikes it, I shall never trust their literary judgment about anything again."

Pretty good article, read it if you can.

"Thanks Turambar that's really interesting stuff." [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

Sheesh I have to answer my own posts !!

It is interesting...I didn't know that about March 25th. Tolkien's Beowulf essay is excellent, most definitely.

Enough feedback? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I feel much better. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Why do you think JRRT said #3?

Thoughts...comments...

The author of the article uses it as an example of how ME was so real to Tolkien that he compared real places to ME locales. The two cities don't seem very similar to me.

Pretty cool facts Turambar [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Is there an on-line version of the Beowulf essay? Failing that, do you have the title to hand? It's a fascinating story and I'd love to see what Tolkien made of it.

I didn't know about that essay until I read the article, but I'm defintiely going to try to find it. I've read Beowulf, it's great. If I find where it is, I'll let you know.

P.s. are we named for the same person? Is the Squatter of Amon Rudh, Turin? Or does that refer to Mìm?

I've found the title since posting that message: "Beowulf - The Monsters and the Critics". It's down on a reading list for an American university (I think it was West Virginia) as something that everyone on the course should read. I also saw a nice-looking collection of lectures and essays by JRRT for sale (one lecture was delivered the day after RoTK's UK publication).

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"P.s. are we named for the same person? Is the Squatter of Amon Rudh, Turin? Or does that refer to Mìm?"
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Call me petty if you will, but that would be telling. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I thought I'd better flesh out my last posting:

The anthology to which I referred was The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (HarperCollins, 1997), which comprises the following:
The Monsters and the Critics obviously
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Ker Memorial Lecture, University of Glasgow, 1953)
On Fairy-Stories (University of St. Andrews, 1939)
English and Welsh (Oxford, 21 Oct 1955 - this is the post-RoTK lecture I mentioned, but you all knew that.)
A Secret Vice (1931 - Contains some early Elvish poetry!)
and Tolkien's Valedictory Address (delivered at Merton College, Oxford, 1959)

The imperative I quoted is from The University of Virginia

Apologies to those who knew all or most of that already.

Incidentally, on the subject of JRRT's Venice/Gondor statement: One of the things that really strikes me about Middle Earth is that to Tolkien it was all so real: I believe he even wrote philological essays on Sindarin.
By comparison, H.P. Lovecraft did make up some lore, even titles of books, but only those he required for the stories he was writing. Tolkien came up with everything and then quoted fragments of it in his text and this really shines out on reading. So much more convincing.

This is by way of a whimsical musing, for which I apologise in advance, but if JRRT had invented the Cthulhu mythos, I wonder if we'd be able to buy complete copies of the Necronomicon... I can't help feeling that we would.

Squatter - that anthology is on amazon, I just ordered it. I'm looking forward it to it. Have you read Beowulf ?

Although it's on my list of books to read, no, which is pretty awful coming from someone who's supposed to have studied Anglo-Saxon England at university. I think I learned more about skiving, truth to tell. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
I read the story in a book called Heroes, Myths and Legends, which was published by Reader's Digest, embarassingly enough. The opposite page bore a photograph of an A-S dragon carving under the heading "Is this the dragon that killed Beowulf?"

Have you read the real thing?

We'd probably have the flawed version edited by Christopher, followed by a multi-volume analysis of the corpus through its various incarnations. Maybe even a discussion forum dedicated to assembling a "Revised Necronomicon". [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] Sample thread: "Bye bye tentacles!"

You have a point there. Still, any mythological system worth its salt has a few inconsistencies here and there. Helps create a nice bit of academic debate (after the vicious religious wars are over, of course) [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I've never read H. P. Lovecraft, so that all went right over my head !

Yeah, I've read the actual Beowulf, there's a relatively new translation by Seamus Heaney (I think that was the name) that was very good IMHO. Can't wait to read the Tolkien esasy !

Well this is a Tolkien forum. I'm still not sure that it wasn't bad form to start talking about other authors, but I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. The Necronomicon is a book containing the insane ramblings of a mad Arab called Abdul Alhazred, which provides a lot of information about Lovecraft's various unwholesome gods. He quoted it so convincingly that there are still people who believe that it actually exists. I was just musing that JRRT always went that little bit further with his mythologies, so that he might even have left a copy, had he invented it, but I expect that Mister Underhill's right: We'd have some vast collection of disjointed notes and prose, with endless comments about the great burden of editing a dead author's work. I think that the comment about tentacles is a sideswipe at the Balrog's wings debate (Cthulhu's nickname at school was probably 'Squid-face' if you take my meaning).
That's the fellow: Seamus Heaney, the Nobel laureate, and author of poems about bog corpses. I'm looking forward to reading my new copy of that, as it comes so highly recommended: I went out looking for the anthology of lectures on Saturday and came back with a couple of maps, some HoME volumes, that translation of Beowulf and a John Betjeman anthology, but no lectures. Apparently Tolkien's academic writings haven't yet been recognised as a source of film-related income by our local bookshops.

Pity I can't use Amazon really: I knew there had to be a reason why people applied for credit cards. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Well visiting a good bookstore is still great, but amazon is th eultimate lazy man's friend. Place an order from your desk, in 5 day maybe they deliver your books to your front door ! My stuff should be here today perhaps (Monday).

I'm going to read all of HoME . . . someday. Some of the volumes are at my library.

That's true. If only there happened to be one in Reading. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
There are rather a lot of them, aren't there? I can think of worse things than reading Tolkien for months, though.