Christopher Tolkien to finish lost Middle Earth novel

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

I don't know if Tolkien in the 50s really had the Nazis especially in mind, any more than he did when writing Lord of the Rings (when they were still around)- and of course the basic lineaments of the story go back to the old Kaiser.

I do think however that Tolkien was more-or-less consciously creating an anti-Siegfried, a counter to the Wagnerian portrait which JRRT I'm sure found repulsive. Wagner's hero was indeed an Ubermensch, at least in the Nietzchean if not quite the Nazi sense, an embodiment of Might Makes Right and Triumph of the Will. For Tolkien, both notions were not only wrong but extremely dangerous- as Turin's story shows.

Up to a point - I can almost accept - at a stretch - that the story of Numenor owes something to what was happening in Germany in the 30's/40's, but was the ubermensch in his mind to such an extent during the writing of CoH? After all, by the time of writing CoH the world had already seen the failure of the Nazi 'ideal'?

I did start a thread some time back on Tolkien & the Nazis - asking whether his desire to create a 'mythology for England' (& his subsequent statement that in that his 'crest had long since fallen') had been shattered by the use to which the Nazis had put Northern myth. It seems at least possible. National myth suddenly seemed to carry a very dangerous potential. Yet, as I say, by the time he turned to write CoH its clear that if all he was doing was attempting to show the flaw in the Nazi ideal he was pretty much preaching to the converted.

[Aiwendil]

Does this make any sense at all? The story originated in the BoLT (circa 1917), & the Narn was composed in the 1950's.

It makes very little sense as stated. However, one certainly could see the 'Narn' as a rebuttal of the 'ubermensch' in a different context. Tolkien draws, of course, on the whole body of Germanic myth concerned with Siegfried/Sigurd and the Volsungs - the same body of myth that Wagner drew on (Tolkien would probably say 'perverted') in his Ring cycle. If there's any connection between Nietzsche and the Turin saga surely it lies in the analogy between Turin and Siegfried.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

It makes very little sense as stated. However, one certainly could see the 'Narn' as a rebuttal of the 'ubermensch' in a different context. Tolkien draws, of course, on the whole body of Germanic myth concerned with Siegfried/Sigurd and the Volsungs - the same body of myth that Wagner drew on (Tolkien would probably say 'perverted') in his Ring cycle. If there's any connection between Nietzsche and the Turin saga surely it lies in the analogy between Turin and Siegfried.

You see, that makes sense, but Drout's comment doesn't. Of course, I don't see CoH simply as Tolkien sticking two fingers up at Wagner. Turin isn't simply an anti-ubermensch figure - for all his reckless pride he is a sympathetic figure, a human being. Tolkien isn't satirising, or mocking the Nazi ideal in the figure of Turin. He is showing a man whose reach exceeded his grasp. Turin constantly fails, but he fails heroically. I can't escape the feeling that Tolkien did consider Turin a hero, that he admired him for what he attempted, rather than offering him as an example of overweening pride.

[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

Of course, I don't see CoH simply as Tolkien sticking two fingers up at Wagner. Turin isn't simply an anti-ubermensch figure - for all his reckless pride he is a sympathetic figure, a human being.

Oh, certainly. As with most of Tolkien’s work, there many layers or shades of meaning in the ‘Narn’. Actually, I think that the Siegfried/Wagner thing is one of the less important thematic threads. But I do think it’s there. It’s as if Tolkien was fashioning a great heroic masterpiece without a thought about ubermenschen, then, by chance, he happens to think of Wagner and says, “Incidentally, this is the true spirit of those old Germanic myths, not that nonsense about supermen.”

[davem]

Aiwendil

Good review here

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/04/26/MiddleEarth/

In a sense, Tolkien is satirizing medieval heroic romances just as Cervantes did in Don Quixote. But Tolkien finds little to laugh at in his own hero, and much to pity. It is tempting to read The Children of Húrin as one of the first novels of World War I, transposed into a different era but presaging the destruction of a great civilization.....

Tolkien's silence in this novel is even louder. Húrin's children, for all their high birth and prowess, destroy themselves in a brutal war. The best they can offer us, like the House of Atreus and like the ignorant armies of World War I, is a warning against self-deceiving pride.

[Child of the 7th Age]

This isn't surprising but there were copies of Children of Hurin being sold on e-bay today, which Christopher Tolkien and Alan Lee had purportedly signed. One look at the signatures will tell you that they were definitely fake.. There were an even larger number of bogus bookplates "signed" by Lee and Christopher Tolkien offered for purchase (totally separate from any book).

For a rather humorous but sad discussion of these type of forgeries, which seem to be more commonplace every day, see this thread on a collecting website: here. A number of the posters on this forum are book dealers.

The family and estate has to hate this kind of thing.

[davem]

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/artic..._lure_of_hrin/

http://media.wildcat.arizona.edu/med...-2882861.shtml

[davem]

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

This isn't surprising but there were copies of Children of Hurin being sold on e-bay today, which Christopher Tolkien and Alan Lee had purportedly signed. One look at the signatures will tell you that they were definitely fake.. There were an even larger number of bogus bookplates "signed" by Lee and Christopher Tolkien offered for purchase (totally separate from any book).

I think many of us saw this coming. Have to say that I wouldn't trust any of the signed items on ebay at the moment. And much of the fault should be laid at the doors of the publishers & booksellers - of course if you effectively 'dump' 450 signed bookplates in one store, & offer them on a first come first served basis, you're playing into the hands of the con men. People know there are a whole lot of the things out there, but they have no idea of who got them & whether the ones advertised are genuine or not.

I can't for the life of me see why the bookplates weren't numbered for instance, so that it would have been possible to check for duplicates.I wonder how many of these fakes will pass muster & end up being treated as genuine?