Two Gandalfs

[davem]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Still - I don't see The Hobbit as horror-less at all. On the contrary, I think that horror is an integral component of it, and of many other succesful 'children's stories'. I think you are right about tragedy - and I suppose that if the style of the revision differs significantly from that of the original, it is in this. But horror and tragedy are different things.

They are different things - I wish I'd posted that at a time when I should'nt have been in bed!

The 'horror' I meant wasn't that of a 'big scary monster coming to eat you up' - which is basically what all the enemies in TH are, & what the original gollum was - its a deeper horror, of being trapped alone in the dark, by yourself, for age upon age. In short, none of the other 'monsters' Bilbo encounters seem to have feelings or emotional needs - we never wonder whether Smaug gets lonely on his bed of gold under the Mountain. We never think of any of the other 'monsters' having any kind of inner life, so we don't feel pity for them. With the 'revised' Gollum we do feel pity - Tolkien goes out of his way to make him a pitiable figure - & we feel such pity because of the horror of his existence.

[littlemanpoet]

Problem? Solution? What is all this? I just made a light hearted observation, and wham-o! eye yigh yigh!

I don't have time to respond to anything in specificity or in depth. I just want to say for the record that I see - - - that is, saw initially - - - three different types of responses/takes on the two Gandalves (I like that spelling too); each was equally legitimate.

1) the revisionist response - trying to follow Tolkien through his own creative process. (Child's approach)

2) the fabled historian response - getting in Tolkien's back pocket and sub-creating how Frodo and Bilbo and the rest of them could have given us the various - - um - - variants! (Heren Istarion's approach, I believe?)

3) the fan response - loving Tolkien's characters as presented, not needing all this extra bosh (which isn't really bosh, just a certain kind of nerdy fun!).

Me, I'm apt for the #2 & #3 approaches, both.

As to problem in need of impossible solution, I don't see it that way at all, and didn't when I whimsically started this humble thread. I see the two (or more) Gandalfs as part and parcel of that which attracts me to the whole creative work.

Just one additional note, having read through most of the posts - - it strikes me that The Hobbit has more of a Brothers Grimm feel than LotR, especially with talking purses, and trolls that turn to stone at daybreak; not to mention the feel of Mirkwood and all that. In other words, The Hobbit strikes me as strongly folkloric, though canted for children (which Tolkien later regretted, according to some letter or other). I still don't have The Letters! - it's on my Christmas list. Puleeze, Santa, pretty puleeze! Maybe you can send a special delivery by means of that Polar Bear......

[Gil-Galad]

thankfully i've never seen the Cartoon, but i feel that TH shows, in a way, Gandalfs true path, point of view, and he develops many ways to get it, when he realizes that he himself must act, then he throws off what people think of him...err yea...

[davem]

Originally Posted by LMP

- it strikes me that The Hobbit has more of a Brothers Grimm feel than LotR, especially with talking purses, and trolls that turn to stone at daybreak; not to mention the feel of Mirkwood and all that. In other words, The Hobbit strikes me as strongly folkloric, though canted for children (which Tolkien later regretted, according to some letter or other)

There's some interesting stuff re the origin of TH in this 1967 interview with Tolkien:

http://www.nytimes.com/1967/01/15/bo...interview.html

Try these quotes from Tolkien himself, which may shatter some long held beliefs:

"The Hobbit" wasn't written for children, and it certainly wasn't done just for the amusement of Tolkien's three sons and one daughter, as is generally reported. "That's all sob stuff. No, of course, I didn't. If you're a youngish man and you don't want to be made fun of, you say you're writing for children. At any rate, children are your immediate audience and you write or tell them stories, for which they are mildly grateful: long rambling stories at bedtime.

"'The Hobbit' was written in what I should now regard as bad style, as if one were talking to children. There's nothing my children loathed more. They taught me a lesson. Anything that in any way marked out 'The Hobbit' as for children instead of just for people, they disliked-instinctively. I did too, now that I think about it. All this 'I won't tell you any more, you think about it' stuff. Oh no, they loathe it; it's awful.

...Tolkien says his mother gave him his love of philology and romance; and his first stories were gathering in his mind when he was an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford. When war came, however, he didn't write in the trenches as some chroniclers insist. "That's all spoof. You might scribble something on the back of an envelope and shove it in your back pocket, but that's all. You couldn't write. This [his study] would be an enormous dugout. You'd be crouching down among the flies and filth."

[THE Ka]

Hmm... that quote has me thinking...

Brian Froud said something, that i think, reflects wonderfully on what tolkien's interview or his message.

"I always assume that children live in the same world we do. I always approach it that way, so I don't specifically do books for children that are for adults however I always assume that children will read them."

That, for my opinion, is a wonderful example of the Hobbit...

Brian Froud is also an author and well known fantasy artist, if you are curious...


~Fae Ka~

[littlemanpoet]

Child: You raise some interesting points ... of course (I'd expect no less!). I don't think I've ever had the problem you speak of, regarding reading The Hobbit through the lens of LotR and The Silmarillion. It's not that I ever tried to keep the two separate in my mind, either. Maybe it's that I read The Hobbit first, and always cherished it for what it was.

Your first post on this thread, Child, cause two separate but linked thoughts for me.

One is the different geographies of the two stories. It's as if the setting of The Hobbit is actually Middle Earth (thing "midgeard"), with its Shire, Rivendell, Misty Mountains, Great River of Wilderland, Mount Gundabad, Mirkwood with its Elven King's Halls, Lonely Mountain, Iron Hills, Long Lake, Esgaroth, Dale, Withered Heath, and all the rest. Notice how the names are all non-Elvish? It's only with LotR that we get the Elvish names for these places: Imladris, Hitheiglin, Anduin, Ered Mithrin, Rhovanion, Thranduil's Palace, Erebor, and so forth. And it's with LotR that we discover that Middle Earth (midgeard) has a past that reaches back into the Silmarillion, making it Arda where there is Valinor, Beleriand, Doriath, and Tol Eressea. Really, I'm only expanding on Child's theme that The Hobbit started out having nothing to do with the legendarium. The Maps show it.

The second is the similar plot structure of the two works. They both start out lighthearted, with a trickster Gandalf, who by the time we're well into the story is revealed as a counsellor and arbitrator between powers. Think of the Battle of Five Armies to get a sense for the Gandalf that seems so familiar to us from LotR. So are there really two Gandalfs? Yes, but not between TH and LotR, I'm thinking. Rather, the Gandalf # 2 is revealed in The Sil and UT, where we learn of him as one of the Istari who is known as Olorin, a Maia. Whereas his resurrection (or whatever you prefer to call it) seems to make of him a virtually messianic figure, we still have no inkling of him as a Maia. But it's clear that once Gandalf was revealed as the White, Tolkien's creative imagination was already at work making the connections.

I'm glad of it.

Aiwendil:

But to me to say that there are "two Gandalfs" or "two Gondolins" sounds suspiciously mystical.

Mystical as opposed to what, pray tell? Tangible, perhaps? As usual, I find your closely reasoned logic rather befuddling. I think I figured out what you were really trying to say after I came to (almost) the same conclusion through my own intuitive process. And maybe I'm just kidding myself, and still don't know what you're talking about.

The claim is that we have different portrayals. But what specific things did Gandalf do in The Hobbit that LotR Gandalf could not have done? Is there really enough there to call the portrayals implicitly contradictory?

Are you sure that "implicitly contradictory" is actually what we're talking about? Allow me to turn that on its head: Perhaps you are claiming that we do not have different portrayals? Are there not many specific things that Gandalf did do in LotR that Gandalf in The Hobbit did not do? Is there really not enough there to call them two Gandalfs?

[Man-of-the-Wold]

First, I find Gandalf to be a satisfactory bridge between the (revised) Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, along with Gollum, Gloin, Eagles and some other things. Elrond, Bilbo, and above all, the relative distances travelled, are harder to reconcile. But so it goes.

Magic rings, well there were a bunch of lesser rings attributed to Celebrimbor and his elven-smiths. Though supposedly destroyed, they may have been part of legend. The Elves of Rivendell, of course, turn out to me decendants of some of those same people, and they may certain sing and make merry in the woods, despite being of serious High-Elven kind.

To JRRT's credit, he sometimes within the larger legend has his characters discuss legends, rumours and fantastic things that may not be or are not really true within his sub-creation. Even Gandalf reports on false information in places. Consider how careful Faramir and others, who are among his most noble characters, are about relaying hearsay or information that cannot be vouched for. Clearly, he's heard more about Cirith Ungol than he reports to Frodo.

Middle-Earth is a place where conjecture may or may not be more fantastic than reality in all cases, but the two don't always meet, and misinformation abounds.

In The Hobbit as originally written and with hindsight one may chalk some things up to confusion, misinformation or exaggeration on Bilbo's part.

Still, besides tone, there are things that might be best edited out, but it won't happen. So, I try to explain them this way or that, or ignore. I can even explain why it took Thorin & Company so many weeks to get to the Trollshaws or across Mirkwood, based on circuituity or serpetine-ness that is not reported or shown. For example, they took excessively round-about ways through and out of the Shire to avoid being noticed as necessarily heading eastward, and the Wood-Elves' magic in making their path may have been limited in that the path had to find its own way, and as a result it bends to and fro in addition to weaving among individual trees, as described. Not straight at all.

The talking purse is a curiousity, but various kinds of incomprehensible "magic" are ascribed to all of the various races. Beorn's extreme shape-shifting is really difficult. And what's with the Stone Giants, who are actually mentioned rather matter-of-factly twice!? The Arkenstone seems too fantastic in light of the Silmarils.

In any event, consider that there is also The Hobbit's Gondolin. In fact, that Book already consciously harks back to early (BoLT/Quenta Noldorina) elements of JRRT's larger, more serious legendarium. Gandalf's and Thorin's swords once belonged to Turgon and possibly Ecthelion. The three elf kinds are primitively noted. There is Elrond, the common thread in all Middle-Earth works. The attack of the Dwarves on Doriath is suggested.

Finally, for Telvido, consider that the Eye of Sauron is catlike. Perhaps, a now trite observation.