Turin the Hopeless?

[davem]

Just on the point of reading CoH 'in the context of' the Legendarium, & supplying the missing 'hope' either via the ultimate victory over Morgoth at the end of the First Age, over Sauron at the end of the Third, or in terms of the Prophecy & Turin's ultimate defeat of Morgoth – it seems to me that the problem with that is that it reduces CoH to 'more of the same'. The vision is the same as in LotR – there is darkness that is ultimately defeated & good wins out. From that point of view CoH is unnecessary & tells us nothing new.

However, CoH as a story without ultimate hope, where the hero is destroyed by a fate he cannot understand or hope to conquer (he hopes, but his hope actually betrays him), it seems to me is something unique from the pen of Tolkien & shouldn't be seen as merely a part of something else. To bring hope from the wider Legendarium is in a way to cheapen the tragedy – as if it was to turn out that Niniel wasn't really Nienor, that it was just a case of mistaken identity, & to have her turn up at the end with Hurin & Morwen after the death of Glaurung & to even have Niniel have fallen onto a ledge just below the precipice, so that everyone could live happily ever after. That would be a perfect Eucatastrophe, revealing a light & joy beyond the walls of the world, & make the tragedy more palatable. For Tolkien to deliberately miss out any hope or joy from the story is more than an interesting curiosity. As I said, we may wish that the world was like LotR, we may even believe that in the end it will be, that there will be an ultimate victory of good over evil, but what we know (after the Somme, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, 9/11, after all the personal tragedies we live through) is that the world is more like the one we see in CoH. We are more like Turin than Frodo.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

...if you take the story of CoH just by itself, without the context, was something else. Well, maybe not even intention, but just what he thought like when writing the story. I'll leave this to professional Tolkienologists, but as I mentioned much earlier, I think Tolkien was greatly inspired by Béowulf in many things he did, and I believe here this fact also takes part. I just stumbled upon this in the "Monsters and critics" (1936):
(I am really sorry, it's merely my translation - don't have original available - but I hope I haven't screwed up the main points while translating it.)

(about the author of Béowulf)...The poet looks back into the past, overlooking the history of kings and warriors of old tradition, and sees, that all the fame (we could say also "culture" or "tradition") ends in night. It does not come to solving that tragedy - this does not flow from the subject. What we have in front of us is actually a poem... looking back into the depths of time, written by a man acknowledged with ancient stories, who tries in all possible ways to look into them all in sort of a global perspective, when still perceiving the tragedy of fatal doom, which connects them, though still he feels them in a more poetic sense, because he himself is not anymore immediately threatened by the weigh of its hopelesness. The old dogma - hopelesness of the event connected with the faith in the way of hopeless resistance - he could see from outside and at the same time immediately and thoroughly feel it.

...we could say that this poem was inspired (from one part) by the dispute... are we going or are we not going to give over our pagan predecessors to condemnation? ...the creator of Béowulf showed the true value of that pietas which preserves and keeps like a treasure the memory of battles of man in dark pasttime, a man fallen but not yet redeemed, fallen to disfavour, but not dethroned.

The boldened part is mine and for me it actually is the key element here. Tolkien speaks about how he imagines the author of Béowulf thought, and I actually am inclined to think that the above can be in (some ways, of course) adopted to Tolkien's creation of the story of Túrin (among others). In my opinion, it might not be at all reflecting the situation in reality, it was just a free intention of the writer to write a story like these of "ancient days, when dark was dark and in darkness it ended". Whether it was or was not consistent with the Legendarium (in which the Light ultimately prevails) then might or might not bother him, and questions like whether Tolkien thought that in the context we would know the light will shine or whether he just haven't had the time to solve this somehow are probably just left to speculation.

[davem]

I think Tolkien is correct – up to a point. The Beowulf poet doesn't so much reflect the actual Pagan worldview so much as the Christian understanding of it. The Pagans weren't without hope – they didn't go around under a cloud, feeling depressed & hopeless. They were, like us post Christians for the most part, quite happy. However, they lived, again for the most part, in dangerous, violent times & didn't look much 'beyond the walls of the world' for hope or much else.

I think the same could be said of the Christian/religious understanding of the post-Christian/non relgious world view. It is not without hope, but it doesn't focus on anything beyond the world either during life or after death.

Turin doesn't look for hope or salvation from beyond the world, but faces the monsters within it with courage & determination – so, it isn't so much the tragic aspect of his story that makes it post religious – that's a side issue for the moment – it’s the fact that he doesn't look for any help to come from outside, for any divine intervention. He deals with his problems as best he can.

Tolkien may well have written from the perspective of a Christian looking back from a safe distance on a world without supernatural hope, or belief in a divine guiding hand, but what he has written is a work that lookedforward to a similar world.