Still from the trailer for the movie, ‘Bhowani.” Public domain. At least I didn’t post another cover of the Tolkien book.
I’m sorry, I’m going to borrow material from The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien again. Just one more anecdote, I promise you. I think it’s too good to keep to myself – but then I’m a pathetic name-dropper (when I have a name to drop, which is rarely).
Anyway, here’s an story Tolkien relates in a January 9, 1965 letter to his son Michael:
An amusing incident occurred in November, when I went as a courtesy to hear the last lecture of this series of his given by the Professor of Poetry: Robert Graves…. It was the most ludicrously bad lecture I have ever heard. After it he introduced me to a pleasant young woman who had attended it: well but quietly dressed, easy and agreeable, and we got on quite well. But Graves started to laugh; and he said: ‘it is obvious neither of you has ever heard of the other before’. Quite true. And I had not supposed that the lady would ever have heard of me. Her name was Ava Gardner, but it still meant nothing, till people more aware of the world informed me that she was a film-star of some magnitude; and that the press of pressmen and storm of flash-bulbs on the steps of the Schools were not directed at Graves (and cert. not at me) but at her….
Robert Graves was, of course, the author of I, Claudius and various other stuff. Tolkien doesn’t seem to have respected him much, but I’ve omitted his personal comments.
And it’s happy Friday to you again, dear Brandywinians. I hope my repeated posts about The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien this week haven’t bored you – I know Tolkien himself isn’t boring, but my own penchant for finding parallels to my work might easily have become tedious.
As an antidote, I’ll just finish the week out with a few choice quotations from some of the letters:
In reference to a pair of reviews of The Hobbit by C. S. Lewis, published in 1937:
Also I must respect his opinion, as I believed him to be the best living critic until he turned his attention to me, and no degree of friendship would make him say what he does not mean: he is the most uncompromisingly honest man I have met….
From the same letter:
The presence (even if only on the borders) of the terrible is, I believe, what gives this imagined world its verisimilitude. A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.
From 1941:
Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the ‘real soul-mate’ is the one you are actually married to.
1943:
Anyway the proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men.
1944:
I should have hated the Roman Empire in its day (as I do), and remained a patriotic Roman citizen, while preferring a free Gaul and seeing good in Carthaginians.
1944:
The future is impenetrable especially to the wise; for what is really important is always hid from contemporaries, and the seeds of what is to be are quietly germinating in the dark in some forgotten corner….
1944:
…Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.
I think these will do for tonight. Have a blessed weekend!
In no circumstances will I agree to being photographed again for such a purpose. I regard all such intrusions into my privacy as an impertinence, and I can no longer afford the time for it. The irritation it causes me spreads its influence over a far greater time than the actual intrusion occupies.
I have finished, at last, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. (I recommend this revised and expanded edition, not the one I read – which is marred by numerous typographical errors and wrongly hyperlinked notes. I found the book, nonetheless, informational, fascinating, and (occasionally) moving.
The main impression it leaves me with, though (I’m afraid), is that (having read this book as well as C. S. Lewis’ complete correspondence) all in all, I’d rather have spent time with “Jack” Lewis than with Tolkien. Lewis was – if only through self-discipline – a more easygoing man, more inclined to suffer fools (like me). This was indeed one of Tolkien’s criticisms of his friend – Lewis was always letting people take advantage of him.
Tolkien, on the other hand, seems to have been rather tetchy. He was thin-skinned and protective of his turf. I get the impression that he nursed a grudge all his life against the Protestants around him, despite having many Protestant friends. He blamed their persecutions, in part, for the early death of his mother, an RC convert. He resented being made to feel like an outsider in his own, beloved country.
Of course, knowing a man’s letters is different from knowing the man. Much of Tolkien’s correspondence deals with business – teaching at Oxford and communicating with his publishers. He was forever behind in his work – he spent decades finishing The Lord of the Rings, and further decades trying to put the Silmarillion in shape, promising his publisher all the way that he’d get back to them as soon as he was finished with grading essays or handling domestic emergencies. (The Silmarillion was finally published after his death.) No doubt the prolonged stress contributed to his occasional short temper.
I was, of course, intrigued by what we learn here of his relations with the other Inklings. I was especially surprised by his early references to Charles Williams, which were more positive than I’d expected. I’d understood that Tolkien mistrusted Williams, but he seems to have gotten along well with him. But he explains this in a long 1965 letter:
I knew Charles Williams only as a friend of C.S.L. whom I met in his company when, owing to the War, he spent much of his time in Oxford. We liked one another and enjoyed talking (mostly in jest) but we had nothing to say to one another at deeper (or higher) levels.
He goes on to say of “Jack” himself:
But Lewis was a very impressionable man, and this was abetted by his great generosity and capacity for friendship. The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not ‘influence’ as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is well worth reading for any fan of The Lord of the Rings. It will take some time getting through it, but it’s worth it.
Theologically (if the term is not too grandiose) I imagine the picture to be less dissonant from what some (including myself) believe to be the truth. But since I have deliberately written a tale, which is built on or out of certain ‘religious’ ideas, but is not an allegory of them (or anything else), and does not mention them overtly, still less preach them, I will not now depart from that mode, and venture on theological disquisition for which I am not fitted. But I might say that if the tale is ‘about’ anything (other than itself), it is not as seems widely supposed about ‘power.’ Power-seeking is only the motive-power that sets events going, and is relatively unimportant, I think. It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality; and the ‘escapes’: serial longevity, and hoarding memory.
(Letter, Oct. 14, 1958, from J. R. R. Tolkien to Rhona Beare)
I’ll have to admit that I’ve always thought that The Lord of the Rings was about the temptations of Power, but Tolkien himself says, in more than one letter in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (which I continue to read), that the story is about death.
Sauron (if I remember correctly) is a Valar, an incarnate angelic being (fallen in his case). He is not the equivalent of Satan, but of a powerful lesser demon. A creature like he (again, if I understand it right) would ordinarily live till the end of the world. But Sauron, as a repeated rebel, has been “killed” and reborn more than once. He knows, or suspects, that if he’s killed again, he’s not coming back in Middle Earth – and he has no reason for hope where his spirit is going after that. He’s struggling to stay alive, even in the hellscape he’s made for himself in Mordor.
Smeagol has been enslaved by the One Ring, and was given (or suffered) extended life thereby – but the life the Ring imparts is not wholesome. Bilbo, who experiences the same thing, says he feels “stretched.” It’s an addiction too – as the pleasure decreases, the craving grows.
Aragorn, on the other hand, who was granted a very long life through his Numenorean blood, will voluntarily lay down his life before it runs out completely. This is regarded as a noble act (not, I’m confident, comparable in any way with assisted suicide).
The elves regard human death as a gift. It’s a mystery to them, but they envy it in a curious way.
These are matters worth pondering, for a man who, like me, is growing old. I can’t say that my whole Erling Saga is about death, but The Baldur Game certainly is. And I was aware of that before I read these letters.
J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1920s. Photo public domain.
I’m still working my way through The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. It’s quite a long book (though not nearly as long as the 3 volumes of C. S. Lewis’ letters. But this collection makes no claim to being complete).
In any case, the business takes time. So I hope you’ll forgive my giving the book my “reading report” treatment. I suspect there’s enough interest in Tolkien’s work among our readers to warrant multiple posts.
What may strain your tolerance more is my selection of passages from the letters that I relate to my own writing. I’m keenly aware that, even standing on the shoulders of authors like Tolkien and Lewis, I’m shorter than they are. But as I obsess my way through the final stages of producing The Baldur Game, I snatch at any straw of reassurance I can find – or imagine I find.
Anyway, here’s a nice one, from a September 30, 1955 letter to a reader (friend?) named Hugh Brogan. Brogan had written with a criticism of the archaic prose style Tolkien used in The Two Towers. The professor never actually sent this letter, but dispatched a note instead, saying “it would be too long to debate.” But he kept the letter in his files.
He agrees with Brogan’s rejection of what they called “tushery” – the use of archaic words in literature to give an impression of antiquity – words like “tush,” “forsooth,” and “eftsoons.” Victorian writers liked to toss such morsels into their dialogue, but they’re now considered an affectation.
However, Tolkien insists that he does not employ tushery:
But a real archaic English is far more terse than modern; also many of the things said could not be said in our slack and often frivolous idiom.
I jumped at this, because it relates to my own style (in my Viking books). I actually avoid archaic words, unless I can find no modern equivalent. (I’d love to use the word “leif” as an adjective, meaning “to wish to”, for instance. But I don’t think I ever have, because nobody knows the word anymore.)
I’ve actually chosen to simplify my word choices to achieve an antique effect in these books. The general modern writer’s rule, “Don’t use a Latin word when an Anglo-Saxon word will do,” is taken to an extreme. Rather than use a word derived from Latin or French, I’ll sometimes even invent a compound word (in the German fashion) made out of two simple English ones.
In addition, I make use of my knowledge of Norwegian. Norwegian sentences are often constructed differently from the English. I discovered that when I re-cast a sentence in Norwegian word order, I get an effect that “feels” like Old Norse.
I like to think it works. The most satisfying praise I ever got for my writing was back in the 1990s, when a reader told me he looked up from Erling’s Word and was surprised to find himself in the 20th Century.
