[Faramir Jones]

I enjoyed reading your last post very much, Bêthberry.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Whether we rely on the Letters or on the characteristics about Gondor in LotR, Gondor clearly has a culture different from that of The Shire and again from that of Rohan and this I think is one of the interesting things you bring out in your essay.

Thanks for that.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Yet I don’t think Gondor quite resembles the city state that your very distinguished historian, Philip James Jones, means in his monumental study. Jones’s book is unquestionably authoritative and important and it has set the standard for study of Italian history (in English) for probably the generation to come. Yet The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria was first published in 1997, so it’s argument and perspective was not something Tolkien would have been familiar with. And while Jones was a Reader, Tutor, Fellow and Librarian at Oxford (Brasenose College) in the ‘60’s, ‘70’s, and ‘80’s, I think it unlikely Tolkien, had he even known of Jones’ earlier work, would have been much influenced by Jones’ ideas. That is, I doubt Jones' concept of city state can be found in Tolkien's Gondor.

Why? Because Jones’ work reset the definitions of what powered those city states and what motivated their cultures. He had a very different idea of how the classical world transformed into the modern world than did previous historians and poets and writers. His work is controversial precisely because he in effect denied the traditional humanist understanding of the Renaissance, as well as its dating in the 14th or 15th century. In focusing upon economics, trade, finances, and “mercantile morality” (as in the quote you provided above) and seeing the city-state’s relationship in terms of Adam Smith and Marx (again, as in your quotation), he took a view that was unlike the earlier thought about the inspiring painting, philosophy, art, and culture in the city-states. That is, he questioned traditional assumptions about the Renaissance and the bourgeois city-state. As he put it:

His is a very different “Venice” or “Florence” than that understood by, for instance, the many Victorians who flocked to Italy (to say nothing of the Romantic poets) and by the Pre-Raphaelites, who even took their name from the Italian painter. It could well be worth a thread to discuss Tolkien’s relationship to these immediate predecessors, who, like Tolkien himself, were not influenced by Machiavelli and Marx, as was Jones.

I agree that Tolkien would probably not have been influenced by Jones's ideas; but he may have been by Jacob Burckhardt's famous and still influential The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). Burckhardt regarded the Italian Renaissance as the beginning of the modern world, with the emergence in the Italy of that period of the modern concept of the state, both in the despotisms and in the republics. Also, the nature of those states led to the development of the idea of the individual, with consequences for the sciences, the arts and politics.

In Part I, 'The State as a Work of Art', Burckhardt said that in the republics and despotisms of Italy

a new fact appears in history - the state as the outcome of reflection and calculation, the state as a work of art. ('Introduction')

In looking at the larger despotisms, he had this to say:

The Italian princes were not, like their contemporaries in the North, dependent on the society of an aristocracy which held itself to be the only class worth consideration, and which infected the monarch with the same conceit. In Italy the prince was permitted and compelled to know and to use men of every grade of society; and the nobility, though by birth a caste, were forced in social intercourse to stand upon their personal qualifications alone. ('The Greater Dynasties')

He looked closely at the chief republics in Italy at that time, Florence and Venice. Regarding the latter, as Tolkien explicitly compared Gondor to it, what Burckhardt had to say about it is interesting. First, he quoted one writer who

conducts the reader from one quarter of the city to another till he comes at last to the two hospitals which were among those institutions of public utility nowhere so numerous as at Venice. Care for the people, in peace as well as in war, was characteristic of this government, and its attention to the wounded, even to those of the enemy, excited the admiration of other states. ('The Republics: Venice and Florence')

Burckhardt offered this explanation for Venice's political stability:

The cause of the stability of Venice lies rather in a combination of circumstances which were found in union nowhere else. Unassailable from its position, it had been able from the beginning to treat of foreign affairs with the fullest and calmest reflection and ignore nearly altogether the parties which divided the rest of Italy, to escape the entanglement of permanent alliances, and to set the highest price on those which it thought fit to make. The keynote of the Venetian character was, consequently, a spirit of proud and contemptuous isolation, which, joined to the hatred felt for the city by the other states of Italy, gave rise to a strong sense of solidarity within. (Ibid.)

One could argue that there is an overlap with Gondor here, with a sense of solidarity among Gondorians being the product of them, and certainly their ruler Denethor II, possessing a spirit of isolation, having only the Rohirrim to rely on, joined to the thousands of years of hatred felt for their city by Sauron.

I enjoyed what you had to say about chivalry here:

Originally Posted by Bêthberry;626.896

This understanding of chivalry is particularly important in a comparison of Boromir’s, Faramir’s, and Denethor’s stories.

Now, what does all this have to do with your paper? It is prompted by the emphasis, both in your paper and in your reply here, on the “nationality” of Gondor, for what I meant by “city-state” is not what you meant by the same word as evidenced by the quotation from Jones. Ultimately, I think, you place greater emphasis on certain modern aspects of Gondor than I would. For instance, I would not call the pride of Gondor “a strong sense of nationality” (p. 199), as you do, for to me the claims and comments that Boromir and Faramir make for the bastion of free peoples rather represents a fealty.

The characteristics of Gondor are not unalloyed, if I may make use of Tolkien’s metaphor in his discussion of chivalry, but blended. While Aragorn’s mitigating of Beregond’s doom shows Aragorn rejecting a knee-jerk application of the old punishment of death, Aragorn nonethess reaffirms the chivalric question of obedience and duty in a subordinate; he sends Beregond into exile as it were, but an exile of service to Faramir, for whose life Beregond broke the oath to Denethor. It’s as wise and neat an answer as any Solomon could have come up with and one the poet of Beowulf, who himself questioned the owner of such an allegiance, might well acclaim. There are many other aspects of Gondor that make it a realm of chivalry rather than incipient capitalist hoard. Faramir’s debate with Gollem and Frodo is based upon faithful word and ultimately Faramir respects the troth that Frodo has pledged with Gollem, despite his misgivings. Neither trade nor commerce binds Rohan and Gondor, but Eomer’s love for Aragorn and an ancient word. The symbolism of the medieval bower informs the story of Faramir and Eowyn. And Aragorn himself refers to the Gondorians’ attitude towards their city in a decidedly traditional way, “And who then shall govern Gondor and those who look to this City as to their queen . . .”(The Steward and the King).

I would say that the ultimate example of chivalrous behaviour in Gondor has to be that of the Ruling Stewards, from Mardil the Faithful to Faramir, who ruled Gondor in the name of the vanished kings, according to their oaths, but who did not attempt to claim the vacant throne. Faramir being made a prince is a reward by Elessar to him and all his ancestors for this fidelity.

I'm intrigued by the image of Minas Tirith as a queen. As well as the quote from Aragorn above, Faramir also earlier hoped to see that city 'as a queen among other queens''. Constantinople, the capital of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire, was called 'Queen of Cities'; and Tolkien explicitly compared Gondor to that state, saying that the former 'fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium'. (Letters, Letter 131, p. 157.)

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

This leaves me with a rejoinder about “Gondor, Gondor”, which you twice refer to as a national anthem, using quotation marks, p. 185, the first page, and p. 211, the last page.

The reasons for the quotation marks were, first, to provoke debate about the song, which I felt there was not enough of, despite the fact that it could be the only unambiguously Gondorian song we have; and second, I couldn't actually call it a national anthem, due to lack of evidence.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Leaving aside the question of how much the song resembles the Polish anthem, there doesn’t appear evidence that the song was known in Gondor or sung in Gondor. Amid all the music and singing and celebration after the destruction of the Ring and the fall of Sauron, not once is “Gondor, Gondor” mentioned. If it is the national anthem and not, as Helen eloquently suggests, Aragorn’s plaintive song of exile, then why is it absent from the celebrations? The narrative plays out the song with Aragorn’s discovery of the new tree but no one else sings the song. It would appear to be his and not Gondor’s.

I don't dispute that the song could certainly be his own composition, a song of exile. It could also be an older lament that he liked and made his own.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I like the distinction you bring out about the prevalence of song in different parts of LotR. I would not have pondered the nature of military music in it without your paper. I might not agree with your characterization of Gondorian music or of Gondor, but I certainly appreciate how your thoughts have been a springboard for mine and for that I sincerely thank you.

It's comments like yours that have made writing the essay worthwhile. I looked at the Rohirrim, and found that their songs and poems were almost all militaristic, by contrast to Gondor, which, despite indications of having a vibrant musical culture, had almost none of its songs or poems mentioned; and I wondered why this was the case. Also, I was very interested to read that the marching song of the Ents was compared by Tolkien to being like military music. Sadly, I ran out of space to discuss the Rohirrim and the Ents. Maybe in another essay...