Tolkien lied!

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

Long ago I said to Littlemanpoet that I'd love to see someone go through HoMe and all the archival material and pinpoint exactly when this change occurred.

I'll bet you a large acorn squash that it came about the moment Trotter was replaced by Strider in the early drafts of LotR. The instant the tall, grim Man came to lead the hobbits on their journey in place of the faintly humourous hobbit marks the moment in which all the more "dark and serious matters" enter into the tale. Frodo's ring becomes for the first time the Ring, and this Hobbit sequel is suddenly connected to the vast material Tolkien had developed for what we now call the Silmarillion.

As to why this happened...Tolkien himself could never say. My personal favourite letter is the one in which he recalls his own surprise and curiousity when this Strider fellow turned up unexpectedly at the Prancing Pony. Who is he? Why is he so grim? What is his connection to Frodo's ring? Why has Gandalf appointed him as their guardian and guide? Answering these questions is what led Tolkien to write the story that he did (it also added about 10 years to the time he thought it would take him to finish writing it!).

[Child of the 7th Age]

Fordim,

And there's another letter even eerier than that one....the draft for Carole Batten-Phelps in 1971.

This is the story where Tolkien was visited by a famous MP who had been "struck by the curious way in which many old pictures seemed to have been designed to illustrate The Lord of the Rings long before its time". Tolkien politely declined knowing these pictures at which point this happened:

When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I had never seen the pictures before and was not well acquainted with pictorial Art, he fell silent. I became aware that he was looking fixedly at me. Suddenly he said, "Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?"

Poor Gandalf! I was too well acquainted with G to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said, "No, I don't suppose so any longer." I have never been able to suppose so. An alarming conclusion for an old philologist to draw concerning his private amusement. But not one that should puff any one up who considers the imperfections of "chosen instruments", and indeed what sometimes see their lamentable unfitness for their purpose.

The words "Christian" and "Christianity" never appear in this quote. Yet it's hard to read this and not get the feeling that Tolkien is no longer talking about Eru--he is talking about God and his own relationship with him, and God's use of his talents. We've come a ways from the earliest days of the Legendarium when Tolkien and his friends spoke mainly in terms of moral regeneration of the English. This is setting things on a whole different plane. I would love to know how and when this occurred. I do think it's why we can argue endlessly about whether the Legendarium has any explicit Christian or Catholic elements. It seems to me that what we start out with --the emphasis on universal myth--is a lot different than where we finally end up. Some people love this shift, while others including Christopher Tolkien are not especially happy with it.

That leaves another question unsolved. Were Tolkien's "revisions" (and I mean revisions in the widest sense involving everything from symbolic references to Mary or the host and essays like the Finrod/Andreth debate) so drastic that they completely changed the nature of the Legendarium by making it more Christian and geared to men? Or were these just surface gloss with the basic story and its emphasis on elves and universal myth still lying intact at the heart of things?

[Boromir88]

Fordim, I think this is the Letter you are looking for?

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. ~Letter 142

Lal remarks in another thread that there is a difference between the English use of 'fundamental' and the American use of the word.

The word fundamentally, or 'fundamentals' means the basics, or doing the simple things right. Sort of like in baseball, when someone says he is a 'fundamentally sound player,' he does the basic things right...(using both hands to catch the ball, keeping your weight on your back foot when you swing, as some examples). It's the simple things, the basics.

In the UK Lal says that it typically means 'lazily' or 'sloppily.'

Looking at this, I think it looks like 'fundamentally religious and Catholic work' means the basics of Christianity are in the story and they are 'absorbed in the symobolism.' There is nothing that comes out and hits you over the head like 'That's obviously Christianity,' kind of like Hookbill's point about the subtetly of the books. (Though, as a side note, I've seen it argued showing the English usage of the word).

I would love to know more about why this happened. Is it just a middle aged/older man coming closer to his doom and dwelling on questions of ultimate fate?~Child

It may have been something that happened as he got older, or at least he started thinking more about when he got older. Tolkien wrote repeatedly that he got sick quite a bit as his age increased, his health got worse, and he wrote about needing to 'rest.' Also as Simon remarks in some memories he had with his grandfather:

He was capable of extremely minute penwork and once gave me a farthing on which he'd written the entire Lord's Prayer in circular script.

I vividly remember going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My grandfather obviously didn't agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but my grandfather was oblivious. He simply had to do what he believed to be right. He inherited his religion from his mother, who was ostracised by her family following her conversion and then died in poverty when my grandfather was just 12. I know that he played a big part in the decision to send me to Downside, a Roman Catholic school in Somerset.

[Lalwendë]

Well, more that English people use English in a different way, in fact quite lazily and sloppily. I see the word fundamentally used all the time in serious papers and it means "kinda", "sort of". In much the same way if an English person says "It's a bit cold" they mean "Brrr, I'm freezing and I think I've got Hypothermia" or when Captain Scott left his tent and said "I could be some time" he meant "I'm going out there and I'm going to die".

Of course in the new world we have now, if someone sees the word "fundamental" they have visions of someone in a bomb belt who might just blow you up - they see the word and think it means fundamental in the fanatical sense.

The passage in more detail is below. In it you'll see that Tolkien himself says he has put what he says 'clumsily' and it comes across as 'self-important', so he was aware that he had made himself sound a bit pompous, Cardinal Sin to the Englishman:

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. However that is very clumsily put and sounds more self-important than I feel. For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little;

Likewise the Mythology For England quote is often misrepresented. He did not want to provide us with a mythology, because we've already got one thank you very much, and of all people Tolkien would have known this better than most. No, he wanted to dedicate his mythology to England - yet again a very different kettle of fish...

EDIT: I'd better say it was Captain Oates who vastly understated his intentions, before me father (or Mithalwen) reads this and beats me about the head with a volume of Scott of the Antarctic or something...