🚀 go-pugleaf

Belba Grubb wrote:

> So, there is this investment of the author into /The Lord of the Rings/
> that is not present in /The Silmarillion/, and I think it is this
> complex emotional and intellectual and spiritual element in the work
> that draws so many of us in, makes it live for us, and also gives us
> lastingly different eyes to see our mundane world (I have really never
> ceased to wonder at our ceilings, for instance, ever since Frodo woke
> up in Rivendell and was very surprised to see a flat ceiling above
> him!); as Chesterton would put it, to remember that we have forgotten
> so much of our childhood wonder.
>
> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood," and
> where does it come from;  where can it be found (or not found) in
> either work?

a lot of it, i think, is related to the sense of loss.  there's
something about this in garth's /tolkien and the great war/, though
that work is more concerned with the origins of the /silmarillion/.
from a biographical point of view, the loss of sarehole and the death
of his close friends in WWI may have been factors.  but he doesn't
fully express this sense till LOTR, that i recall at least.  (perhaps
it took time to turn it into art?)

a relevant comment from tolkien's foreword to LOTR:

[tolkien cd not publish the silmarillion, so went back to hobbits.]
"but the story was drawn irresistably towards the older world, and
became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its
beginning and middle had been told."

there are similar hints in the story itself, as when theoden meets the
ents.

i think a lot of what is going on is the fading and loss of the
mythical and legendary worlds into mere "history."

Belba Grubb <trungsisterfan@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've always found it easier to get into /The Lord of the Rings/ than
> /The Silmarillion/ [...]

> I used to think this preference for the LOTR was because there are
> hobbits in it to "humanize" things;

Certainly, and you're not the only one who observed that. The LotR
also started out as a narration in itself, while the SIL is a collage
of many things JRRT has thought about for a long time, so in this
respect again the LotR is much more accessible.

> "It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I
> can no other."  (Letter 109)

> He spoke truth there -- he never finished /The Silmarillion/, even
> though that could be said to have been a life's work for him.  If he
> ever spoke so movingly about "the Sil," it either never made "Letters"
> or it appeared somewhere else and I missed it (quite possible).

It's my impression that the SIL was as dear to him as the LotR,
probably even dearer, but he still suffered from the rejection
its first reader. He compares both in Letter #98:

  As for larger work. Of course, my only real desire is to publish 'The
  Silmarillion': which your reader, you may possibly remember, allowed
  to have a certain beauty, but of a 'Celtic' kind irritating to
  Anglo-Saxons. Still there is the great 'Hobbit' sequel -- I use
  'great', I fear, only in quantitative sense.

Note the presence of what Shippey calls the "specialised
politeness-language of Old Wester Man, in which doubt and correction
are in direct proportion to the obliquity of expression."

> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood," and
> where does it come from;

It's the same thing that Feanor put in the Silmarils, or any artist or
creative person in things that are important to him (or her).

The German term, BTW, is /Herzblut/, "heart-blood": the inner essence
of somebody.

- Dirk

In message
<news:1156968487.929664.225390@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
"Belba Grubb" <trungsisterfan@yahoo.com> enriched us with:
>
> I've always found it easier to get into /The Lord of the Rings/
> than /The Silmarillion/

Quite a common experience, I'd guess, and one that I surely share.

> although the CoTW discussions on the latter work here very
> interesting and well thought out indeed; I must get back into
> it again as soon as there is enough time.

You should. Preparing for the CotW discussions on /The Silmarillion/,
reading each chapter with rather more focus and attention than I've
ever done before, has allowed me to "get into" /The Silmarillion/ in a
way that I haven't been able to before.

> I used to think this preference for the LOTR was because there are
> hobbits in it to "humanize" things; indeed, there's a comment in
> one of JRRT's letters about that.

One of the points Tom Shippey makes in /J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the
Century/ is that the Hobbits are not just humans, but they are humans
that are far more contemporary to the reader. The whole hobbit society
is completely anachronistic in the setting of Middle-earth (both in
/The Hobbit/ and in /The Lord of the Rings/), and as such they can
serve us to interpret and to throw into relief the ancient world. I
think Shippey touches on something very essential in that analysis.

I furthermore think that /The Silmarillion/, which lacks this
presentation through a mechanism providing a modern light on the
subject matter, becomes as a result, to the modern mind, harder to
enter into.

> But I was just thinking now while transcribing, and  Tolkien's
> remark after he sent in the MS for the LOTR came to mind:
>
> "It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin;
> and I can no other."  (Letter 109)
>
> He spoke truth there -- he never finished /The Silmarillion/, even
> though that could be said to have been a life's work for him.  If
> he ever spoke so movingly about "the Sil," it either never made
> "Letters" or it appeared somewhere else and I missed it (quite
> possible).

I think that the phrase "and the Silmarils are in my heart" is the best
candidate that I know of:

    But I am sure you will sympathize when I say that the
    construction of elaborate and consistent mythology (and
    two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the Silmarils
    are in my heart.
[Letter #19 To Stanley Unwin, 16 December 1937]

    My heart and mind is in the Silmarillion, but I have not
    had much time for it. ....
[Letter #202 to Christopher and Faith Tolkien, 11 September 1957]

> So, there is this investment of the author into /The Lord of the
> Rings/ that is not present in /The Silmarillion/,

I can't agree to that assessment at face value. The investment in /The
Lord of the Rings/ is of another kind, perhaps, but in terms of many of
the usual parameters (time, effort, re-writing) the investment in the
Silmarillion is greater -- and I venture to suggest that the
Silmarillion was still closer to Tolkien's heart in many ways -- that,
despite the popularity of the Hobbits, Tolkien's own heart was still
given to the Silmarils (and the couple who wrested one from the Iron
Crown).

> and I think it is this complex emotional and intellectual and
> spiritual element in the work that draws so many of us in, makes
> it live for us, and also gives us lastingly different eyes to see
> our mundane world

Yes, I agree that that is important for my enjoyment of the book, but I
don't agree that it is lacking, or weaker, in the Silmarillion. These
elements have, I think, an even stronger presence, a larger role, in
the Silmarillion, but due to the book being less easily accessible, the
elements are less obvious.

The hobbits are essential in mediating the ancient world that they live
in -- the hobbits themselves are modern; they are essentially creatures
of the twentieth century transported into this ancient world, and they
are therefore capable of mediating this world for us and represent the
modern (of seventy years ago, admittedly) view. This mediating is
strengthened (and at the same time made less obvious) by the narrative
conceit of the books -- both books are essentially told /by/ hobbits.
This has allowed Tolkien to 'hide' the mediating in the narrative
voice, making it natural in the context that the narrator should apply
a more modern view on events.

<snip>

> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood,"
> and where does it come from;  where can it be found (or not found)
> in either work?

I think that if you asked Tom Shippey, he would tell you that it was
philology.

      Philology, indeed, appears to have lost for these
    students its connotations of terror if not of mystery. An
    active discussion-class has been conducted, on lines more
    familiar in schools of literature than of language, which
    has borne fruit in friendly rivalry and open debate with
    the corresponding literary assembly.
      [...]. If elected to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Chair I
    should endeavour to make productive use of the opportuni-
    ties which it offers for research; to advance, to the best
    of my ability, the growing neighbourliness of linguistic
    and literary studies, which can never be enemies except by
    misunderstanding or without loss to both; and to continue
    in a wider and more fertile field the encouragement of
    philological enthusiasm among the young.
[Letter #7 To the Electors of the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship
of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford, 27 June 1925]

To this Shippey adds:
      Tolkien was wrong about the 'growing neighbourliness',
    and about the 'more fertile field', but that was not his
    fault. If he had been right, he might not have needed to
    write /The Lord of the Rings/.
      Tolkien's fiction is certainly rooted in philology as
    defined above. He said so himself as forcefully as he
    could and on every available opportunity, as for instance
    (/Letters/, p. 219 [#165, TF]) in a 1955 letter to his
    American publishers, trying to correct impressions given
    by a previous letter excerpted in the /New York Times/:

        the remark about 'philology' [in the excerpted
        letter, 'I am a philologist, and all my work is
        philological'] was intended to allude to what is I
        think a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is
        all of a piece, and /fundamentally linguistic/ in
        inspiration . . . The invention of languages is the
        foundation. The 'stones' were made rather to
        provide a world for the languages than the reverse.
        To me a name comes first and the story follows.

    The emphasis in the passage quoted is Tolkien's, and he
    could hardly have put what he said more strongly, but his
    declaration has been met for the most part by bafflement
    and denial.
[Tom Shippey, /J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century/, "Foreword"]

Shippey tries, in several places, to give examples of this
fundamentally philological approach by showing how (he thinks that)
Tolkien worked by trying to fill in the cultural contextual world-view,
knowledge and beliefs that are implicitly understood in the stories he
worked with professionally. According to Shippey Tolkien believed that
people have a kind of instinctive philological understanding which he
utilized in his writing.

Reading Shippey has, for the first time, given me an idea of what
Tolkien /may/ have meant when he wrote that the task he had set himself
was "precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present
them with a mythology of their own:" a mythology and epic tradition
that could possibly have led to and inspired the stories and story-
fragments in Old English which he knew so well from his studies; a
filling-out and reading between the lines of stuff such as /Beowulf/,
/Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/ etc. etc.

I'm not entirely convinced that Shippey tells the full story (he is,
himself, a philologist by profession and thus possibly liable to
enlarging the influence of that on Tolkien's writings), but he does
make a convincing case for most of it; in particular his explanation
for the fact that much of Tolkien's world, even with the only hinted-at
background, feels so familiar, so homey, to the reader: that this is
basically a result of Tolkien's deep interest in, and understanding for
the interplay between language and the stories that are told in the
language (as is displayed already in his application for the chair at
Oxford in 1925 as quoted above).

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>

    Love while you've got
        love to give.
    Live while you've got
        life to live.
 - Piet Hein, /Memento Vivere/

In message
<news:1156998325.725124.260010@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
"Count Menelvagor" <Menelvagor@mailandnews.com> enriched us with:
>
> Belba Grubb wrote:
>>

<snip>

Before responding to specifics, I think it's been interesting to see
the different takes on this. It seems, however, to me that we're all
trying to pin down some elusive artistic quality from different
directions (and weighing aspects of it differently). I don't actually
disagree with any of the answers ;)

>> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood,"
>> and where does it come from;  where can it be found (or not
>> found) in either work?
>
> a lot of it, i think, is related to the sense of loss.

I think that's part of the feeling underlying much of the thematic
content: when Tolkien describes "this stuff" as being "mainly
concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine" this seems to relate
very much to loss; thematically even the 'Machine' is about loss:
both the spiritual and the physical loss that is related to the
invention and use of the Machine.

> there's something about this in garth's /tolkien and the great
> war/, though that work is more concerned with the origins of the
> /silmarillion/.

Another library book waiting on the shelf (for me to finish Shippey's
/Author of the Century/).

I could very well imagine the feeling of loss being mentioned in
Garth's book, and it probably belongs in any book about an author who
lived through the experiences of western Europe in the first half of
the last century.

> from a biographical point of view, the loss of sarehole and the
> death of his close friends in WWI may have been factors.

Yes.

> but he doesn't fully express this sense till LOTR, that i recall
> at least.  (perhaps it took time to turn it into art?)

Those losses are of a more personal kind, while the sense of loss in
the Silmarillion (except for the tragedy of Túrin Turambar, IMO) is
less personalized.

In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement etc.)
associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses associated with
fighting a war which is meaningless and, though they are fighting
Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a people, not of a
person . . .

In the Silmarillion the loss is, furthermore, not mediated by a
single narrator (quite common in mythic tales, I think), but
seemingly through a whole people. In LotR, though (as you note) also
concerned with loss at a much higher level (the passing of the old
world and beginning of a new), the narrative conceit allows a
peronalized view on the process -- we get the sense of loss brought
down from the high and translated into something we can identify with
(the hobbit viewpoint).

Merry puts it quite well in the Houses of Healing about living on the
heights:

    But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honour
    them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to
    love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some
    roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are
    things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his
    garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he
    knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them,
    a little. But I don't know why I am talking like this.
    Where is that leaf? And get my pipe out of my pack, if it
    isn't broken.

That is the role of the Hobbits in LotR -- to allow the reader to
experience the heights and to interpret them through their deep roots
in the Shire.

> a relevant comment from tolkien's foreword to LOTR:
>
> [tolkien cd not publish the silmarillion, so went back to
> hobbits.] "but the story was drawn irresistably towards the older
> world, and became an account, as it were, of its end and passing
> away before its beginning and middle had been told."

Good catch.

> i think a lot of what is going on is the fading and loss of the
> mythical and legendary worlds into mere "history."

Yes, indeed.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>

      Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does
    knowledge.
  - Charles Darwin  (1809 - 1882)

"Troels Forchhammer" <Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xns9833E312D1E96T.Forch@130.133.1.4...
> In message
> <news:1156998325.725124.260010@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
> "Count Menelvagor" <Menelvagor@mailandnews.com> enriched us with:
> > Belba Grubb wrote:
<snip>
>
> Before responding to specifics, I think it's been interesting to
see
> the different takes on this. It seems, however, to me that we're
all
> trying to pin down some elusive artistic quality from different
> directions (and weighing aspects of it differently). I don't
actually
> disagree with any of the answers ;)
>
> >> What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood,"
> >> and where does it come from;  where can it be found (or not
> >> found) in either work?
> >
> > a lot of it, i think, is related to the sense of loss.
>
> I think that's part of the feeling underlying much of the thematic
> content: when Tolkien describes "this stuff" as being "mainly
> concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine" this seems to
relate
> very much to loss; thematically even the 'Machine' is about loss:
> both the spiritual and the physical loss that is related to the
> invention and use of the Machine.

<snip>
> > but he doesn't fully express this sense till LOTR, that i recall
> > at least.  (perhaps it took time to turn it into art?)
>
> Those losses are of a more personal kind, while the sense of loss
in
> the Silmarillion (except for the tragedy of Túrin Turambar, IMO) is
> less personalized.

Perhaps Turin's tale expresses loss so well in part because the
Kalevala on which it is based, *was* very personal to Tolkien, the
discovery of Finnish and its legends coming so early in his life, and
inspiring such passion.

> In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement
etc.)
> associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses associated with
> fighting a war which is meaningless and, though they are fighting
> Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a people, not of a
> person . . .

Ah, I see. You mean personal re the characters rather than personal
re the author. Had we been given the story from Fëanor's POV, perhaps
the sense of loss (which I agree is associated with the Fall of the
Elves, and by extrapolation our Fall as well) would feel more
personal. It makes me wonder what would have happened if Tolkien had
finished (re)writing Galadriel's history. He was setting her up for a
terribly noble role in the drama of the First Age, and had enormous
sympathy for her character. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could read
the Silm. tales through Galadriel's eyes?

> In the Silmarillion the loss is, furthermore, not mediated by a
> single narrator (quite common in mythic tales, I think), but
> seemingly through a whole people. In LotR, though (as you note)
also
> concerned with loss at a much higher level (the passing of the old
> world and beginning of a new), the narrative conceit allows a
> peronalized view on the process -- we get the sense of loss brought
> down from the high and translated into something we can identify
with
> (the hobbit viewpoint).

And it works so beautifully. The Silm. tales would have felt much
"lower" if you will, if seen through the eyes of a fallen Elf, or a
Man: and so 'felt' much less mythic. Which wouldn't have served
Tolkien's purpose in writing the tales, I imagine. And that brings us
back to Barb's question, because it indicates that the "life blood"
that Tolkien spilled in writing LotR was spilled intentionally: he
meant to make LotR personal, and the mythos and ancient history less
so. As the Count said in many fewer words, "a lot of what is going on
is the fading and loss of the mythical and legendary worlds into mere
'history'". But it couldn't have been done in any other way, or the
myths and legends would have read too 'low'.

- Ciaran S.
-----------------------------
Suburbanites on a plane

"Dirk Thierbach" <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> wrote in message
news:20060831134529.2101.0.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de...
> Belba Grubb <trungsisterfan@yahoo.com> wrote:

<snip>
> > What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood,"
and
> > where does it come from;
>
> It's the same thing that Feanor put in the Silmarils, or any artist
or
> creative person in things that are important to him (or her).
>
> The German term, BTW, is /Herzblut/, "heart-blood": the inner
essence
> of somebody.

Someone far less exalted once said "Writing is easy. You just sit
down at a typewriter and open a vein."

- Ciaran S.
------------------------------------------------------
"I'm not lurking! I'm hanging about.
It's a whole 'nother vibe."
                              - BtVS

Troels Forchhammer wrote:
> In message
> <news:1156998325.725124.260010@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
> "Count Menelvagor" <Menelvagor@mailandnews.com> enriched us with:

> In the Silmarillion the loss is, furthermore, not mediated by a
> single narrator (quite common in mythic tales, I think), but
> seemingly through a whole people. In LotR, though (as you note) also
> concerned with loss at a much higher level (the passing of the old
> world and beginning of a new), the narrative conceit allows a
> peronalized view on the process -- we get the sense of loss brought
> down from the high and translated into something we can identify with
> (the hobbit viewpoint).

yes, in LOTR we see through the eyes of the people experiencing the
loss, and so we empathise; in Sil we see it all(*) from above.  which
shows how narrative technique can affect the reader profoundly.

<snip excellent merry quote>

(*) except turin to some extent, and possibly beren and luthien.  but
even that's a little remote.

Shanahan wrote:

> Ah, I see. You mean personal re the characters rather than personal
> re the author. Had we been given the story from Fëanor's POV, perhaps
> the sense of loss (which I agree is associated with the Fall of the
> Elves, and by extrapolation our Fall as well) would feel more
> personal. It makes me wonder what would have happened if Tolkien had
> finished (re)writing Galadriel's history. He was setting her up for a
> terribly noble role in the drama of the First Age, and had enormous
> sympathy for her character. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could read
> the Silm. tales through Galadriel's eyes?

i think it's a real pity tolkien never developed her story.  he wd
probably be the first to agree that his jottings on her were rubbishy,
especially compared with her wonderful portrayal in LOTR.

"Troels Forchhammer" <Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xns9833E312D1E96T.Forch@130.133.1.4...
>
> I could very well imagine the feeling of loss being mentioned in
> Garth's book, and it probably belongs in any book about an author who
> lived through the experiences of western Europe in the first half of
> the last century.

A lot of people, particularly artists, fell apart after WWI and the loss of
the old way.  The exceptions are people like Stravinsky and Varese --
others, like Ives, were devastated and never recovered.  (Too bad about
Mahler -- if he had lived & made the transition to the '20s, music would
have been still more interesting.)

> In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement etc.)
> associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses associated with
> fighting a war which is meaningless and, though they are fighting
> Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a people, not of a
> person . . .

I think a lot of people can relate to that crap today...

I will be a daring newbie.  Not only respond, but take a few risks...

It's true that Tolkien never finished an edition of the Silm which
could be published, but in many ways, LOTR completes what the Silm (be
it ever so scattered) begins.

The Silmarillion is a tale of something that should not have happened,
and hence the mighty sense of loss that others describe in this
thread.  It is possible that the Noldor were destined to enter Middle
Earth regardless of the Silmarils, but the fact is, they entered
Middle Earth BECAUSE of the Silmarils, according to an oath which was
bound to the very fiber of Arda.  They were admonished not to do this,
and they did.  Everything that follows is a disaster, and not just for
them, but for the men, and for the Avari as well.  The Silmarillion is
a tale of the triumph of the lies of Morgoth.

But the one thing that the Eldar give to Middle Earth are the union of
men and elves.  (The union of Beren and Luthien, arguably, is
exceptionak even here, because it did not involve the Noldor, although
their descendants mixed with the Noldor).  Between the Silmarillion
and LOTR, this joining of Elves and Men lies fallow, so to speak.
Although the Eldar in Middle Earth fight the long defeat through many
ages, it is still a defeat.  I would argue this is because the Eldar
are not capable of preserving anything in Middle Earth, they aren't
supposed to be there.  Galadriel doesn't just refuse the Ring, she
keeps out of the War of the Ring altogether, as does Elrond.  Why?
Because they have learned their lesson.  The resolution to the
disaster of Oath of Feanor lies with mortals, not with the Eldar, who
started something they were incapable of finishing (rather like
Tolkien in relation to his Silm).

Even Saruman, presumably a Maia in Aman, is ultimately as mortal as
everything else, because he uses his powers to shape ends against the
rules, rather than merely guiding and persuading.

But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
Aman.  Like Luthien, she offers herself for love, not for the ruinous
oath of her forebears.  She takes on death, because that is the fate
of things in Middle Earth.  The Silmarillion is a tale of loss because
the lies of Morgoth were the essence of the Noldor's arrival there.
The defeat of Morgoth/Sauron comes with the acceptance by the First
Born that Middle Earth is ruled not by their greatness, their wisdom
or their beauty, but by those who were given the Gift of Illuvatar.

Inside all of this, there is a connection with Christian theology,
although I think it labors the point, and I am not good at drawing the
connections.  But a quotation from Paul comes to mind "For as in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."  Acceptance of
death is fundamental to redemption.

Tolkien's "life's blood" can be taken to mean (not absolutely, but
speculatively) that LOTR is the completion of the Silmarillion.  He
may not have finished the beginning, but he finished the ending. Given
how difficult it was for him to finish things, it was an
accomplishment indeed.  Like Yavanna's trees, Feanor's Jewels, even
Sauron's Ring, there was so much of Tolkien's self in LOTR that
nothing of them could be changed or taken away without taking his
blood.


On 30 Aug 2006 13:08:07 -0700, "Belba Grubb"
<trungsisterfan@yahoo.com> wrote:

>I've always found it easier to get into /The Lord of the Rings/ than
>/The Silmarillion/ (although the CoTW discussions on the latter work
>here very interesting and well thought out indeed; I must get back into
>it again as soon as there is enough time.
>
>I used to think this preference for the LOTR was because there are
>hobbits in it to "humanize" things; indeed, there's a comment in one of
>JRRT's letters about that.  But I was just thinking now while
>transcribing, and  Tolkien's remark after he sent in the MS for the
>LOTR came to mind:
>
>"It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I
>can no other."  (Letter 109)
>
>He spoke truth there -- he never finished /The Silmarillion/, even
>though that could be said to have been a life's work for him.  If he
>ever spoke so movingly about "the Sil," it either never made "Letters"
>or it appeared somewhere else and I missed it (quite possible).
>
>So, there is this investment of the author into /The Lord of the Rings/
>that is not present in /The Silmarillion/, and I think it is this
>complex emotional and intellectual and spiritual element in the work
>that draws so many of us in, makes it live for us, and also gives us
>lastingly different eyes to see our mundane world (I have really never
>ceased to wonder at our ceilings, for instance, ever since Frodo woke
>up in Rivendell and was very surprised to see a flat ceiling above
>him!); as Chesterton would put it, to remember that we have forgotten
>so much of our childhood wonder.
>
>What is this complex element that JRRT called his "life-blood," and
>where does it come from;  where can it be found (or not found) in
>either work?
>
>Barb

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:19:59 GMT from Donald Grove
<donaldgrove@verizon.net>:
> I will be a daring newbie.  Not only respond, but take a few risks...

One of which, apparently, is posting upside down. Please don't.

http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/unice.htm#upside

> It's true that Tolkien never finished an edition of the Silm which
> could be published, but in many ways, LOTR completes what the Silm (be
> it ever so scattered) begins.

True. I believe somewhere Tolken himself says that LotR is a sequel,
not to /The Hobbit/ a had been requested by Unwin, but to the
unpublished Silm.

> Even Saruman, presumably a Maia in Aman, is ultimately as mortal as
> everything else, because he uses his powers to shape ends against the
> rules, rather than merely guiding and persuading.

I cannot agree with this statement. Neither Saruman nor Sauron (nor
Morgoth, come to that) ever became mortal. They were immortal in
their very nature.

They could have a body killed, and that seriously weakened and
inconvenienced them, but in time they could rebuild. They were
unhoused when their body was killed, but they themselves were not
killed.

> But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
> when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
> Aman. ...  She takes on death, because that is the fate
> of things in Middle Earth.

Sorry, but no. The Elves in Middle-earth did not have death as their
fate. Arwen's father had chosen to be of Elven-kind. She herself was
given the choice, and she chose to be mortal. She could just as well
have chosen to stay with the Elves, in which case she need not have
died.


--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
                                  http://OakRoadSystems.com
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen's site)
Tolkien letters FAQ:
  http://users.telerama.com/~taliesen/tolkien/lettersfaq.html
FAQ of the Rings: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
Encyclopedia of Arda: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm
more FAQs: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/faqget.htm

Donald Grove wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 23:19:55 -0400,
>

> Stan Brown <the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> >....I guess that is true.  At the end of ROTK it isn't really clear what
> happens to Saruman.  A mist rises from his body, appears to make some
> kind of supplication to the West, and then is blown away by the wind.
> Perhaps it was one last ounce of Saurman's power squeezing out one
> last embodiment before being completely unhoused.  I rather got the
> impression that this was death.

I thought it was perfectly clear: that was the Valar overturning the
natural order (according to which Sauruman would have been reincarnated
in Oversea) by utterly ending his existence. But that is unique in
Tolkien's world. The Silmarillion says that men have an afterlife
different from Elves reserved for them and that the Elves don't know
what it is, but that doesn't seem like something one would say about
oblivion. Surely he was hinting at soemthing like the Christian heaven?



>
> >> But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
> >> when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
> >> Aman. ...  She takes on death, because that is the fate
> >> of things in Middle Earth.
> >
> >Sorry, but no. The Elves in Middle-earth did not have death as their
> >fate. Arwen's father had chosen to be of Elven-kind. She herself was
> >given the choice, and she chose to be mortal. She could just as well
> >have chosen to stay with the Elves, in which case she need not have
> >died.
>
> Yes, absolutely she could have chosen to stay with the elves.  But she
> chose death, which was precisely my point.  What is it that you
> disagree with.  Her choice of death is the fulfillment the resolves
> the several millenia of disaster that plagued Middle Earth and the
> Noldor as a result of the Oath of Feanor.

When I first read the book (in middleSchool) I thought that she made
that choice becuase it was a precondition for wedding a human being.
But that is obviously not the case. She must have wanted to share the
unknown with Aragorn rather than to live on for eternity without him.
Does anyone recall off hand whether there was anything outre about the
after-life/ death of Beren and Luthien?

On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 23:19:55 -0400,

>Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:19:59 GMT from Donald Grove
><donaldgrove@verizon.net>:
>
>> Even Saruman, presumably a Maia in Aman, is ultimately as mortal as
>> everything else, because he uses his powers to shape ends against the
>> rules, rather than merely guiding and persuading.
>
Stan Brown <the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>I cannot agree with this statement. Neither Saruman nor Sauron (nor
>Morgoth, come to that) ever became mortal. They were immortal in
>their very nature.
>
>They could have a body killed, and that seriously weakened and
>inconvenienced them, but in time they could rebuild. They were
>unhoused when their body was killed, but they themselves were not
>killed.
>
I guess that is true.  At the end of ROTK it isn't really clear what
happens to Saruman.  A mist rises from his body, appears to make some
kind of supplication to the West, and then is blown away by the wind.
Perhaps it was one last ounce of Saurman's power squeezing out one
last embodiment before being completely unhoused.  I rather got the
impression that this was death.

>> But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
>> when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
>> Aman. ...  She takes on death, because that is the fate
>> of things in Middle Earth.
>
>Sorry, but no. The Elves in Middle-earth did not have death as their
>fate. Arwen's father had chosen to be of Elven-kind. She herself was
>given the choice, and she chose to be mortal. She could just as well
>have chosen to stay with the Elves, in which case she need not have
>died.

Yes, absolutely she could have chosen to stay with the elves.  But she
chose death, which was precisely my point.  What is it that you
disagree with.  Her choice of death is the fulfillment the resolves
the several millenia of disaster that plagued Middle Earth and the
Noldor as a result of the Oath of Feanor.

On 6 Sep 2006 06:25:01 -0700, "Dea.Syria@gmail.com"
<Dea.Syria@gmail.com> wrote:

>Does anyone recall off hand whether there was anything outre about the
>after-life/ death of Beren and Luthien?

Well, yes, depending on how you mean outre.  The solution is certainly
very legalistic.  The case of Beren required special pleading by
Luthien with Mandos.  He is moved, but mortal spirits are not
something he can retrieve.  The case is referred to Manwe, who, after
pondering the will of Iluvatar, reveals that either he or some other
power CAN retrieve Beren's spirit, but without any promise of joy.
Luthien takes him up on this.

The curiousity here is that the decision is justified because of
Luthien's "labours and sorrow."  It seems rather particular on the
part of the Valar that Luthien's labours and sorrow were more
significant than, say, Hurin Thalion's or Finrod Felagund's labours
and sorrow.  Why should Beleg Cuthalion have remained in the halls of
Mandos after all his labours and sorrows, just because of a grotesque
accident.

Yes, Luthien acted admirably, seducing Morgoth himself, aiding in the
rescue of a Silmaril, etc.  But she was doing this for love of Beren,
not with any high-minded notions about the doom of Arda or bringing
down Morgoth.  In fact, all she was doing was assisting Beren in
carrying out the preposterous bride price set by her father.   In the
meantime, all kinds of Elves and Mortals had substantial labours and
sorrows.

I would emphasize that the entire misadventure of the Silmarils and
the Oath of Feanor could only be resolved by this union of Elves and
Men.  So it is possible that the special dispensation was made so that
Luthien could bear a child???

In message <news:oiatf2tfb3rds1bhrls1nftgqlkanss4v8@4ax.com>
Donald Grove <donaldgrove@verizon.net> enriched us with:
>
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 23:19:55 -0400,
> Stan Brown <the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>
>> Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:19:59 GMT from Donald Grove
>> <donaldgrove@verizon.net>:
>>>
>>> Even Saruman, presumably a Maia in Aman, is ultimately as mortal
>>> as everything else,
[...]
>>
>> I cannot agree with this statement. Neither Saruman nor Sauron
>> (nor Morgoth, come to that) ever became mortal. They were immortal
>> in their very nature.
>>
>> They could have a body killed, and that seriously weakened and
>> inconvenienced them, but in time they could rebuild. They were
>> unhoused when their body was killed, but they themselves were not
>> killed.
>
> I guess that is true.  At the end of ROTK it isn't really clear
> what happens to Saruman.  A mist rises from his body, appears to
> make some kind of supplication to the West, and then is blown away
> by the wind. Perhaps it was one last ounce of Saurman's power
> squeezing out one last embodiment before being completely
> unhoused.  I rather got the impression that this was death.

I agree that it isn't really clear within the context of /The Lord of
the Rings/ itself -- it isn't clear either that Gandalf, Saruman and
Radagast are angelic beings of the same order as Sauron.

Saruman's end, however, is a very close image of Sauron's, except that
where the mist rising from Saruman's corpse petitions "the West" (the
Valar, which are only mentioned directly a few times in the book),
Sauron made a threatening gesture. In the end, however, the smoke-
figures are both blown away (to nothing) by a wind out of the west
(that should probably be capitalized: the West, implying the Undying
Lands, the Blessed Realm, Aman).

The close similarities between the visual effects of the end of Sauron
and the end of Saruman implies, I think, that the similarities go
beyond that. Gandalf describes Sauron's fate in the event of the
destruction of the One Ring:

    [...] and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere
    spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but
    cannot again grow or take shape.
[LotR V,9 'The Last Debate']

It is reasonable, I'd say, even within the context of LotR only, to
assume that Saruman's fate would be similar.


The next thing is whether this constitutes his 'death'? Here the
problem is rather that 'death' can mean too many things in Tolkien's
world, concerned as he was with Mortality and Immortality. Elves are
immortal, but they can nevertheless die. When they die, their spirits
are summoned to 'Mandos' in Valinor (the Blessed Realm), where it,
after some indefinite period of waiting (a purgatory period) will be
'rehoused' -- i.e. a new body will be created by the Valar: an exact
copy of the body the spirit remembers (the exception to this rule is
the real baddies who are not allowed to be rehoused).

Men, however, are mortal, and when they are killed their spirit
(possibly after some indefinite period -- here both Beren and the Army
of the Dead come to mind) leaves "the Circles of the World". Their
death is, in other words, described in a way that is consistent with
Christian thought.

The Ainur are, by default, not corporeal. Their true being is pure
spirit, but they have the ability to 'clothe' or 'array' themselves in
a body (it is compared to the way we put on clothes). How, then, should
we treat the killing of the body in which an Ainu has arrayed himself?
If we use the Elven case as our guide, it is definitely meaningful to
say that it constitutes the death of the Ainu (in that particular
embodiment), but basing the case on the simile with clothing, it is as
meaningful to describe it as a death as it would be to call a human
death who has had their clothes burned off their body . . .

Finally the ends of both Sauron and Saruman are similar to the death of
a human in that they will never again be able to become embodied.

Ultimately I agree that there are ways to meaningfully call the end of
Saruman his death, but one needs, of course, to be aware that it is not
entirely a death in the human sense (as is also the case for the
Elves).

<snip>

> Yes, absolutely she could have chosen to stay with the elves.  But
> she chose death, which was precisely my point.  What is it that
> you disagree with.

As I understood Sam's point, it was that death was not the fate of
/all/ things in Middle-earth (I don't know if that was what you
intended, but it was the impression I got, even if you didn't use the
word 'all'). There are 'things' that are deathless, and the Elves is
one example of that (although their eventual fate in Middle-earth is to
fade as their spirit consume their bodies, but that is a different
discussion altogether).

On the other hand, all things in Middle-earth are doomed to diminish
and eventually to fade -- that applies to the United Kingdom of King
Elessar as much as to the Elves or the Ents. Possibly Tom Bombadil is
an exception, though even he would not, I think, be able to survive the
covering of all of England with concrete.

> Her choice of death is the fulfillment the resolves the several
> millenia of disaster that plagued Middle Earth and the Noldor
> as a result of the Oath of Feanor.

I don't think so. The rule of King Elessar and Queen Evenstar provided
a new beginning -- it ensured that as much as possible of what was good
about the past was remembered and honoured -- that the Elves, Hobbits,
Ents, Orcs etc. were not completely forgotten in the new Age of Men,
but they did /not/ offer any salvation or resolution of the Marring of
Arda -- this becomes painfully obvious with Tolkien's abandoned attempt
at a sequel to LotR. Set some years after the death of King Elessar, it
would have displayed that Men were still fallen and Arda still marred:

    Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we
    should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of
    their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the
    people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity,
    would become discontented and restless - while the dynasts
    descended from Aragorn would become just kings and
    governors - like Denethor or worse. I found that even so
    early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a
    centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys
    were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage.
[J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter #256 to Colin Bailey 13 May 1964]

I am reminded of the story of Frode Fredegod (King Fródi -- the
Latinized version of which is Frotho or Frodo), during whose reign the
realm had peace, fertility and prosperity, but upon his death the peace
ended (in one version his men would drive his corpse around to keep the
peace and wealth, but when his corpse rotted, the peace and prosperity
was over).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%B3%C3%B0i>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotte>

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>

    Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
    absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
 - Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887.

In message <news:edg3qp0e7@enews2.newsguy.com>
"Shanahan" <pogues@bluefrog.com> enriched us with:
>
> "Troels Forchhammer" <Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote in message
> news:Xns9833E312D1E96T.Forch@130.133.1.4...
>>

<snip>

>> In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement
>> etc.) associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses
>> associated with fighting a war which is meaningless and, though
>> they are fighting Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a
>> people, not of a person . . .
>
> Ah, I see. You mean personal re the characters rather than
> personal re the author.

Precisely -- and to an even greater extent re the narrator, I think. It
is the mediation through the personal narrator that brings the story
down to eye level -- of course it's a difficult distinction to make
when the narrator is also one of the characters in the story, but I
think it comes down to the very personalised narratives in LotR (and,
to a lesser degree, /The Hobbit/).

The narrative viewpoint in LotR is much different from that in the Silm
-- in the former we get much closer to the emotions and thoughts of the
characters, and the anachronistic aspects of the hobbits telling the
story helps us identify with the narrator (we can appreciate just how
far out his depth Bilbo was when he found himself facing three trolls,
or alone in the caves of the goblins).

> Had we been given the story from Fëanor's POV, perhaps the sense
> of loss (which I agree is associated with the Fall of the Elves,
> and by extrapolation our Fall as well) would feel more personal.

Yes, I think so, though it would, I believe, also have changed the
nature of the loss: it would have been the personal loss of his mother
and his father and his greatest work that would have dominated the
story.

> It makes me wonder what would have happened if Tolkien had
> finished (re)writing Galadriel's history. He was setting her up
> for a terribly noble role in the drama of the First Age, and had
> enormous sympathy for her character.

I wonder with you ;)

I agree about the role she was being set up for -- there are strong
hints in e.g. the idea that she left Valinor independently of the
Noldorin rebellion. (I have also wondered to what extent the remake of
Galadriel's role was influenced by readers seeing in her a reference to
Virgin Mary).

But I'm not sure that she wasn't still too much the mythological
figure, 'larger than life', as you might say. Galadriel was being set
up, it seems to me, for a role that would make her too good to be true
-- too noble for the reader to identify with easily.

> Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could read the Silm. tales through
> Galadriel's eyes?

It would definitely -- although as an addition to the tales (I wouldn't
like to loose the 'high' tales).

>> In the Silmarillion the loss is, furthermore, not mediated by a
>> single narrator (quite common in mythic tales, I think), but
>> seemingly through a whole people. In LotR, though (as you note)
>> also concerned with loss at a much higher level (the passing of
>> the old world and beginning of a new), the narrative conceit
>> allows a peronalized view on the process -- we get the sense of
>> loss brought down from the high and translated into something we
>> can identify with (the hobbit viewpoint).
>
> And it works so beautifully. The Silm. tales would have felt much
> "lower" if you will, if seen through the eyes of a fallen Elf, or
> a Man: and so 'felt' much less mythic.

<enthusiastically> Exactly! </enthusiastically>

The narrative and emotional viewpoints of myths have become
impersonalized so that the viewpoint can be that of a whole people
reflecting, identifying and confirming themselves in the myth. The
mythical heroes are not personal heroes, but cultural heroes.

This is probably most obviously in pantheistic myth, where the story is
focused about the doings of divine beings, but it is also present in
heroic myth (there's a gradual transition from myth via legend and saga
to the exaggerated stories of historical heroes, but here I'm concerned
about the mythical end of that spectrum).

In the mythical story, the characters become almost-incidental
representations of forces and nations, removing to a large extent the
personal aspect of their deeds (except where the personal can be
generalized, representing the 'proper' or 'typical' reaction of someone
belonging to the ethnic group represented by that character).

> Which wouldn't have served Tolkien's purpose in writing the tales,
> I imagine.

Precisely. The stories in /The Silmarillion/ were always intended to be
mythical, and that purpose wouldn't have been served by the
personalized stories.

> And that brings us back to Barb's question, because it indicates
> that the "life blood" that Tolkien spilled in writing LotR was
> spilled intentionally: he meant to make LotR personal, and the
> mythos and ancient history less so.

Yes. And the personal view-point ultimately had to come from himself,
hence, I suspect, the feeling that he put 'more of himself' into LotR
(though obviously he put at least as much effort and agonizing into the
development of the mythology). There's the idea of an author 'writing
it out' -- writing as a psycho-therapeutical tool; in LotR Tolkien was
capable of 'writing it out' at a more intimate level than what he was
(generally) in the Silmarillion, precisely because LotR had the more
personal and intimate narrative viewpoint.

> As the Count said in many fewer words, "a lot of what is going on
> is the fading and loss of the mythical and legendary worlds into
> mere 'history'".

Yes indeed.

> But it couldn't have been done in any other way, or the myths and
> legends would have read too 'low'.

Agreed.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>

    People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom
    of thought which they avoid.
 - Soren Kierkegaard

Troels Forchhammer wrote:
> In message <news:edg3qp0e7@enews2.newsguy.com>
> "Shanahan" <pogues@bluefrog.com> enriched us with:
>> "Troels Forchhammer" <Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid> wrote in message
>> news:Xns9833E312D1E96T.Forch@130.133.1.4...

<snip>
> but I think it comes down to the very personalised narratives in LotR
> (and, to a lesser degree, /The Hobbit/).
> The narrative viewpoint in LotR is much different from that in the
> Silm -- in the former we get much closer to the emotions and thoughts
> of the characters, and the anachronistic aspects of the hobbits
> telling the story helps us identify with the narrator (we can
> appreciate just how far out his depth Bilbo was when he found himself
> facing three trolls, or alone in the caves of the goblins).

Yes. The anachronisms are stronger in TH (clocks, umbrellas, worries
about handkerchiefs and What Will The Neighbors Think) than in LotR,
which works both for and against it as a story, I think--as you say,
they help the reader identify with Bilbo, and also to laugh at him in a
genial, self-deprecating manner. It's especially effective when placed
in direct contrast to the 'higher', old-world patterns: Thorin's
deathbed farewell to Bilbo, "child of the Kindly West", springs to mind.
Or in RotK, in Merry and Aragorn's exchange in the Houses of Healing
"may the Shire live forever unwithered!"
The technique also, sometimes, pulls me out of the story, more in TH
than LotR. It can break the spell.
In Silm., the anachronisms are of a wholly different kind: they're
story-external, if those're the right words to use. They're archaic to
the reader's times, and so they serve to pull us from our own world to
the mythical one. As the narrative POV does. Tolkien was a hell of a
craftsman.

<snip>
> But I'm not sure that she wasn't still too much the mythological
> figure, 'larger than life', as you might say. Galadriel was being set
> up, it seems to me, for a role that would make her too good to be true
> -- too noble for the reader to identify with easily.

That occurrs to me too. She's somewhat that way even in LotR; too great,
too far away to be real. Although Sam can still see her as "merry as any
lass I've ever seen in springtime with daisies in her hair". Yet if she
carried the narrative POV, Tolkien might have been able to switch
between a 'high' voice and a 'lower' one, perhaps. Her character might
have been able to carry both voices with equal authenticity.

<snip mucho eloquence from both of us>
> The narrative and emotional viewpoints of myths have become
> impersonalized so that the viewpoint can be that of a whole people
> reflecting, identifying and confirming themselves in the myth. The
> mythical heroes are not personal heroes, but cultural heroes.

Or, Jungian archetypes, perhaps? <wink>

> This is probably most obviously in pantheistic myth, where the story
> is focused about the doings of divine beings, but it is also present
> in heroic myth (there's a gradual transition from myth via legend and
> saga to the exaggerated stories of historical heroes, but here I'm
> concerned about the mythical end of that spectrum).

Dude, now you're talkin' my language!

> In the mythical story, the characters become almost-incidental
> representations of forces and nations, removing to a large extent the
> personal aspect of their deeds (except where the personal can be
> generalized, representing the 'proper' or 'typical' reaction of
> someone belonging to the ethnic group represented by that character).
<snip>
> Precisely. The stories in /The Silmarillion/ were always intended to
> be mythical, and that purpose wouldn't have been served by the
> personalized stories.

Now this is where I really get interested. Let's take Tolkien's (early)
stated purpose of writing a mythology for England.* Was it ever
achievable? Can a mythology be written for a people by one man, or does
that invalidate the whole enterprise? Must a mythology spring up
spontaneously, in order to be valid--boil up on its own out of the Soup,
if you will.

Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So stories.
Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and adults, define
the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a history and a set of
values to that culture, structure and create the universe for them. They
are a reflection of ritual and sacred space in the cultural mind.

Does /The Silmarillion/, even in its edited and elided form, do any of
that for Western, or even English, culture? Would it, if JRRT had
finished it? Does LotR?  (Jaysus and the Virgin forfend, does Joyce's
/Ulysses/?)

*(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth version, I
think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not just as stories.
Although it put too great a strain on the tales as they were.)

>> And that brings us back to Barb's question, because it indicates
>> that the "life blood" that Tolkien spilled in writing LotR was
>> spilled intentionally: he meant to make LotR personal, and the
>> mythos and ancient history less so.
>
> Yes. And the personal view-point ultimately had to come from himself,
> hence, I suspect, the feeling that he put 'more of himself' into LotR
> (though obviously he put at least as much effort and agonizing into
> the development of the mythology). There's the idea of an author
> 'writing it out' -- writing as a psycho-therapeutical tool; in LotR
> Tolkien was capable of 'writing it out' at a more intimate level than
> what he was (generally) in the Silmarillion, precisely because LotR
> had the more personal and intimate narrative viewpoint.

So, Barb, how do you react to all this?

- Ciaran S.
------------------------------------------------------
"I'm not lurking! I'm hanging about.
It's a whole 'nother vibe."
                              - BtVS

Donald Grove wrote:
> I will be a daring newbie.  Not only respond, but take a few risks...

Well done. <g>

<snip>
> Although the Eldar in Middle Earth fight the long defeat through many
> ages, it is still a defeat.  I would argue this is because the Eldar
> are not capable of preserving anything in Middle Earth, they aren't
> supposed to be there.

Interesting! A couple of things occur to me: first, Tolkien calls the
whole motivation of 'preserving things' into moral question; so maybe
the enterprise is doomed because it is flawed at the root. The Elves
most definitely want to preserve ME as it is, in all its beauty and
power, and the Three are forged with that goal in mind. But it's an
unrealistic and unachievable goal, and it cuts off the possibility of
growth.
Second, I'm not sure about whether they're supposed to be in Aman or ME.
There are some strong hints that the Valar made a serious mistake when
they invited the Eldar into Aman in the first place. They seem to think
so, at least, and decide to withdraw from that degree of intervention as
time draws on.

<snip>
> But finally, the one gift of the Eldar to Middle Earth is fulfilled,
> when Arwen marries Elessar, and surrenders her right to return to
> Aman.  Like Luthien, she offers herself for love, not for the ruinous
> oath of her forebears.  She takes on death, because that is the fate
> of things in Middle Earth.

I like that interpretation.

<snip>
> Tolkien's "life's blood" can be taken to mean (not absolutely, but
> speculatively) that LOTR is the completion of the Silmarillion.  He
> may not have finished the beginning, but he finished the ending. Given
> how difficult it was for him to finish things, it was an
> accomplishment indeed.  Like Yavanna's trees, Feanor's Jewels, even
> Sauron's Ring, there was so much of Tolkien's self in LOTR that
> nothing of them could be changed or taken away without taking his
> blood.

Putting it in 'Leaf by Niggle' terms, does that leave us (who are trying
to fill in the gaps in the canvas) in Parrish's role?

- Ciaran S.
------------------------------------------------------
"I'm not lurking! I'm hanging about.
It's a whole 'nother vibe."
                              - BtVS

Donald Grove wrote:
> On 6 Sep 2006 06:25:01 -0700, "Dea.Syria@gmail.com"
> <Dea.Syria@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Does anyone recall off hand whether there was anything outre about
>> the after-life/ death of Beren and Luthien?
<snip>
> The curiosity here is that the decision is justified because of
> Luthien's "labours and sorrow."  It seems rather particular on the
> part of the Valar that Luthien's labours and sorrow were more
> significant than, say, Hurin Thalion's or Finrod Felagund's labours
> and sorrow.  Why should Beleg Cuthalion have remained in the halls of
> Mandos after all his labours and sorrows, just because of a grotesque
> accident.

It seems to me that she is able to move Mandos and other Valar because:
a) She sings really, really well.
b) She's really, really beautiful.
(Always kinda bugged me.)

- Ciaran S.
------------------------------------------------------
"I'm not lurking! I'm hanging about.
It's a whole 'nother vibe."
                              - BtVS

[This "Life's blood versus life's work" thread is great - some really great
posts, and so varied as well. I've wanted to chime in with something to say
about it, but have't had time yet. And when I do, I go and write about winds
instead... :-/ Hence the change in the subject line.]

Troels Forchhammer wrote:

<snip>

> Saruman's end, however, is a very close image of Sauron's, except that
> where the mist rising from Saruman's corpse petitions "the West" (the
> Valar, which are only mentioned directly a few times in the book),
> Sauron made a threatening gesture. In the end, however, the smoke-
> figures are both blown away (to nothing) by a wind out of the west
> (that should probably be capitalized: the West, implying the Undying
> Lands, the Blessed Realm, Aman).

Actually, the wind that disperses Sauron's "cloud" is not said to
specifically come from the West, or even the west. [Indeed, further research
(see later) has revealed it was not from the west at all!] But the scene is
so dramatic that this is not immediately apparant:

"Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above
the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with
fire. [...] And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed
to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of
shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it
reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening
hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind
took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell." (The
Field of Cormallen)

I would think the first darkness is a volcanic eruption column of ash,
generating lightning storms and containing glowing, hot materials. Of
course, the second darkness, the "shape of shadow", could simply be a
secondary eruption, but within the story it is intended to be Sauron's
unhousing and dissolution.

There is another point where we read about this wind:

"Then presently it seemed to them that above the ridges of the distant
mountains another vast mountain of darkness rose, towering up like a wave
that should engulf the world, and about it lightnings flickered [...] a
great wind rose and blew, and their hair, raven and golden, streamed out
mingling in the air. And the Shadow departed..." (The Steward and the King)

Interestingly, just moments before this scene, we are told that the wind had
been blowing from the North, before it died away. At least in Minas Tirith:

"It was cold. A wind that had sprung up in the night was blowing now keenly
from the North, and it was rising [...] she [Eowyn] now shivered beneath the
starry mantle, and she looked northward, above the grey hither lands, into
the eye of the cold wind where far away the sky was hard and clear." (The
Steward and the King)

Though this doesn't really help determine which direction the "blowing
Sauron away" wind came from, the fact that they are looking north means that
it makes sense that the wind comes from that direction, otherwise they would
be getting hair in their faces, which wouldn't look that impressive! (I'm
sure I've seen at least one artwork that has their hair blowing in the wrong
direction...) There are also other, more direct clues, and, eventually, an
answer. We have to turn yet again to the fortunes of the two small hobbits
trapped in this maelstrom:

"...even while he spoke so, to keep fear away until the very last, his eyes
still strayed north, north into the eye of the wind, to where the sky far
off was clear, as the cold blast, rising to a gale, drove back the darkness
and the ruin of the clouds." (The Field of Cormallen)

Or we could just get our information straight from the eagle's mouth! :-)

Gandalf: "...we have need of speed greater than any wind, outmatching the
wings of the Nazgul." Gwaihir: "The North Wind blows, but we shall outfly
it. [...] And so it was that Gwaihir saw them with his keen far-seeing eyes,
as down the wild wind he came [...] daring the great peril of the skies..."
(The Field of Cormallen)

The behaviour of the wind over the past few days of the story is
interesting. Looking back to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, we see that
Aragorn's fleet is wafted up the Anduin by a wind from the Sea (this would
seem to be a south wind, or a south-west wind). Indeed, this is the wind
that starts the metaphorical tide turning:

"Then suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in
his face! Light was glimmering. Far, far away, in the South the clouds could
be dimly seen as remote grey shapes, rolling up, drifting: morning lay
beyond them." (The Ride of the Rohirrim)

But earlier than this, we see other characters sense this change before
Merry does:

"...suddenly he stood looking up like some startled woodland animal
snuffling a strange air. A light came in his eyes. 'Wind is changing!' he
cried..." (Ghan-buri-Ghan, The Ride of the Rohirrim)

"'Do you remember the Wild Man's words, lord?' said another. 'I live upon
the open Wold in days of peace; Widfara is my name, and to me also the air
brings messages. Already the wind is turning. There comes a breath out of
the South; there is a sea-tang in it, faint though it be. The morning will
bring new things. Above the reek it will be dawn when you pass the wall.'"
(The Ride of the Rohirrim)

This gradual sensing of the change in wind by the characters, from the Wild
Man of the Woods, to the seasoned traveller, to the young Hobbit, is
masterful, subtle storytelling by Tolkien.

What is also really interesting, is how Sam and Frodo see the winds changing
as they leave Cirith Ungol and start out into Mordor:

"The easterly wind that had been blowing ever since they left Ithilien now
seemed dead." (The Land of Shadow)

So already, the tide is turning. Sauron's wind is about to be pushed back.
Over a few key paragraphs, we see Sam and Frodo witness this battle:

"...they both stared in wonder. Away to their left, southward, against a sky
that was turning grey, the peaks and high ridges of the great range began to
appear dark and black, visible shapes. Light was growing behind them. Slowly
it crept towards the North. There was battle far above in the high spaces of
the air. The billowing clouds of Mordor were being driven back, their edges
tattering as a wind out of the living world came up and swept the fumes and
smokes towards the dark land of their home." (The Land of Shadow)

As Sam says:

"The wind's changed. Something's happening. He's not having it all his own
way. His darkness is breaking up out in the world there. I wish I could see
what is going on!" (The Land of Shadow)

Well, Sam can't see what is going on "out there", but Tolkien wastes no time
telling the reader what is happening "out there":

"...the Sun was rising above the eastern shadow, and the south-west wind was
blowing..." (The Land of Shadow)

Later on in the same chapter, we read, "The wind of the world blew now from
the West" and "A strong wind from the West was now driving the fumes of
Mordor from the upper airs."

A few chapters and days further on, we are told: "In the morning a grey
light came again, for in the high regions the West Wind still blew..."
(Mount Doom)

The effect on Sauron is told later in the same chapter: "even in the
fastness of his own realm he sought the secrecy of night, fearing the winds
of the world that had turned against him" (Mount Doom)

Right at the end, as Sam and Frodo prepare for their last desperate struggle
up the slopes of Mount Doom, the final change in the wind is communicated to
the reader:

"The wind had fallen the day before as it shifted from the West, and now it
came from the North and began to rise..."  (Mount Doom)

In other words, the initial wind direction was from the east, out of Mordor,
bring the Darkness of Sauron. Then the wind shifted to blow from the south,
beginning to blow away the clouds and allowing dawn to herald the arrival of
the Rohirrim at Pelennor. Then the wind continues shifting round the
compass, blowing south-west as Aragorn and his fleet arrive at Pelennor. The
wind then settles into a strong West wind that continues to blow away the
clouds of Mordor for a few days. Then, at the climax of the story, the wind
swings round again, to blow from the final compass direction, from the
North. This completes a circle of wind directions. Does anyone know if the
wind acts like this often in the real world?

Going back to the descriptions of the winds in Mordor (as seen by Frodo and
Sam), compare them with the descriptions of the winds back in Minas Tirith:

"The morning came after the day of battle, and it was fair with light clouds
and the wind turning westward" (The Last Debate)

And as the Army of the Captains of the West marches to the Black Gate:

"The weather of the world remained fair and the wind held in the west" (The
Black Gate Opens)

Both these passages show the same weather as we see Sam and Frodo
experiencing in Mordor. As the Army actually approaches the gate:

"As morning came the wind began to stir again, but now it came from the
North, and soon it freshened to a rising breeze." (The Black Gate Opens)

This corresponds with the moment when Sam and Frodo feel a wind from the
North as they are on the slopes of Mount Doom. And finally, although this
wind from the North is not strictly a wind from the West, it does bear with
it the deus ex machinae, the agents of the Lords of the West, the Eagles!
They come, "from the northern mountains, speeding on a gathering wind." (The
Field of Cormallen)

Incidentially, a north wind makes great sense to blow the ash and
destruction away from the Army of the West, who are north of Mount Doom, and
allows the Eagles to go in and rescue Frodo and Sam in relative safety (as
opposed to flying in from the south, against the wind and the ash).

But moving away from such mundane matters, if you want a really strong
candidate for a wind from the West, how about this scene here, where Aragorn
heals the Lady Eowyn:

"...it seemed to those who stood by that a keen wind blew through the
window, and it bore no scent, but was an air wholly fresh and clean and
young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing and came
new-made from snowy mountains high beneath a dome of stars, or from shores
of silver far away washed by seas of foam." (The Houses of Healing)

The "seas of foam" bit recalls Bilbo's song of Earendil in Rivendell ("until
he heard on strands of pearl / when ends the world the music long, / where
ever foaming billows roll
/ the yellow gold and jewels wan."). And Galadriel's song of Eldamar and
Valinor has interesting bits about winds and seas of foam. Undoubtedly, the
implication of the "snowy mountain" (Taniquetil) and "dome of stars"
(Elbereth imagery) and "shores of silver", is that the wind has come from
Aman, from the Land of the Blessed, the Land of the Deathless.

Getting back to what you said, way up there at the beginning of the post...
:-) , the similarity of Sauron's "death scene" with Saruman's is indeed very
striking:

"To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist
gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a
pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered,
looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away,
and with a sigh dissolved into nothing." (The Scouring of the Shire)

> The close similarities between the visual effects of the end of Sauron
> and the end of Saruman implies, I think, that the similarities go
> beyond that. Gandalf describes Sauron's fate in the event of the
> destruction of the One Ring:
>
>    [...] and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere
>    spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but
>    cannot again grow or take shape.
> [LotR V,9 'The Last Debate']
>
> It is reasonable, I'd say, even within the context of LotR only, to
> assume that Saruman's fate would be similar.

I agree. But hey, who could have thought that winds could be so
_interesting_! :-)

Christopher

Troels Forchhammer wrote some great stuff:
> "Shanahan" <pogues@bluefrog.com> enriched us with more great stuff:

<snip>

>> And that brings us back to Barb's question, because it indicates
>> that the "life blood" that Tolkien spilled in writing LotR was
>> spilled intentionally: he meant to make LotR personal, and the
>> mythos and ancient history less so.
>
> Yes. And the personal view-point ultimately had to come from himself,
> hence, I suspect, the feeling that he put 'more of himself' into LotR
> (though obviously he put at least as much effort and agonizing into
> the development of the mythology). There's the idea of an author
> 'writing it out' -- writing as a psycho-therapeutical tool; in LotR
> Tolkien was capable of 'writing it out' at a more intimate level than
> what he was (generally) in the Silmarillion, precisely because LotR
> had the more personal and intimate narrative viewpoint.

See what I mean? Some great stuff in this thread. :-)
And I'm very annoyed that I don't have time to repond in detail.
As I said to someone else recently: Auta i lómë! (The Night is Passing).
(And I need to get to bed and then to pack for my holiday!)

Christopher

<Dea.Syria@gmail.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:1157549100.979011.5030@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

> I thought it was perfectly clear: that was the Valar overturning the
> natural order (according to which Sauruman would have been reincarnated
> in Oversea) by utterly ending his existence.

   In Tolkien's subcreation the spirit is the person, whether housed in a
body or not.  To Elves the natural state is that the spirit is housed in a
body, for as long as Arda endures, while to Men the severance of the spirit
and the body and the decomposition of the latter is the natural occurrence,
once the Man has lived out his natural lifetime.  For the Ainur the case is
more complex.  The greatest of the Ainur, such as the Valar, can house
themselves if they so choose.  Or they can walk unhoused, ie. without a
body.  They can put on a body as a raiment, and shed it when they choose to.
Eg. Yavanna may incarnate herself as a tree, because she loves trees.  For
other occasions she can appear as a person, a Queen of great majesty.  But
if an Ainu inhabits a body for long, and does certain things with it, he or
she will become increasingly bound to it.  One of these things is to commit
evil.  Melkor was originally able to build and shed a body at will like the
rest of the Valar, but when he committed the evil of destroying the Two
Trees, he became finally bound to his body beyond even his vast power to
shed it like a garment, or to change its appearance at will.  After that,
while he still lived (ie. inhabited his body), it remained a hideous and
terrifying one, echoing the disposition of Morgoth.
    Sauron likewise became bound to his body.  And the Istari, including
Saruman and Gandalf, voluntarily took on bodies that they would be bound to,
as a prerequisite for the mission given them by the Valar.
   All spirits are immortal.  Ilúvatar does not destroy spirits, and nothing
else even remotely has the power to do so.  An evil power may break or
corrupt a spirit, but not unmake it.
   Sauron died thrice, in that the body that he had formed and had become
bound to beyond its being mere raiment and tool was violently destroyed.
Twice he reincarnated, becoming diminished as he spent some of his innate
power on building a new body for himself without help.  The first time he
managed it swiftly, because he had his Ring, the second time much more
slowly, because it was not with him.  Both times the body that he formed was
not according to his choice, but echoed by necessity his disposition: a
great, commanding, hideous and terrifying figure - and the second time with
one finger missing.  He was still mighty enough to form a new body for
himself, but no longer mighty enough to shape it at will: he could no longer
appear as a beautiful and majestic figure as when he cheated the Mírdain in
the shape of Annatar.  The third time his body perished the Ring, which had
aided his reincarnation by having part of him in it, was unmade, and he
became too weak to ever reincarnate again.  He became an impotent spirit,
ever gnawing itself in powerless anger and hate in the shadows.  Only with
the help of the Valar or Ilúvatar could he have become rehoused, and they
would be unlikely to help ---
   When Saruman was killed by Gríma, the body that he had become bound to
was destroyed and could no longer house his spirit.  He did not have
sufficient power to form a new body, at least for the foreseeable future,
and in this he shared the fate of Sauron.  Only with the help of the Valar
(or Ilúvatar, as with Gandalf) could he have become reincarnated.  The mist
that rose from his body seems to have been his spirit, his *person* or
*essence*, turning towards the Valar in supplication.  But he was rejected:
a wind from the West blew the mist away and dissolved it.  But his
immaterial spirit was not unmade.

Wu[1] Ya[1].

Raven <jonlennart.beck.god@damn.get2net.that.dk.spam> wrote:

Great explanation, I'd just like to nitpick on a few details:

>   Sauron died thrice, in that the body that he had formed and had become
> bound to beyond its being mere raiment and tool was violently destroyed.
> Twice he reincarnated, becoming diminished as he spent some of his innate
> power on building a new body for himself without help.  The first time he
> managed it swiftly, because he had his Ring,

Or because he still had enough "power" (or whatever one could call it)
left to embody himself quickly.

> the second time much more slowly, because it was not with him.

Or because he now had less "power" left to build himself, having lost
now too much "power" by dying twice.

I am not really sure if the presence or absence of the Ring really
influenced his ability to embody himself. The main purpose of the
Ring, after all, was to rule others.

> The third time his body perished the Ring, which had aided his
> reincarnation by having part of him in it, was unmade, and he became
> too weak to ever reincarnate again.

And the way I understand it, that's because he had externalized some
of his "power" by making the Ring, so he could never loose that part
as long the Ring existed. (Similar to the fairy story "The Cold
Heart", where the protagonist puts his heart into a glass jar and
cannot die as long as this jar stays hidden). So without the Ring
being destroyed, he would always be able to embody himself again (no
matter if the Ring was in his possession or not), though maybe every
time more slowly.

>   When Saruman was killed by Gríma, the body that he had become bound to
> was destroyed and could no longer house his spirit.  He did not have
> sufficient power to form a new body,

Maybe the reason is that Istari were already restricted in their "power"
when they were sent to middle-earth: They were "incarnated" and bound
firmly to their bodies.

- Dirk

Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:

>> But I'm not sure that she wasn't still too much the mythological
>> figure, 'larger than life', as you might say. Galadriel was being set
>> up, it seems to me, for a role that would make her too good to be true
>> -- too noble for the reader to identify with easily.

> That occurrs to me too.

Yes, it would have been a great danger. Like the alternative, longer
ending of the LotR, which he fortunately dropped.

> She's somewhat that way even in LotR; too great, too far away to be
> real. Although Sam can still see her as "merry as any lass I've ever
> seen in springtime with daisies in her hair".

Yes. I think that's one of the descriptions that has shaped my image
of Galadriel most: Like a young girl and awe-inspiring at the same time.

So I'd say in the LotR she's very much real.

> Yet if she carried the narrative POV, Tolkien might have been able
> to switch between a 'high' voice and a 'lower' one, perhaps.

I am not sure if it would have been a good idea to give her the
narrative POV. It works great in the movies (they should have used
this idea more often), but I cannot see it working for the whole SIL.

>> In the mythical story, the characters become almost-incidental
>> representations of forces and nations, removing to a large extent the
>> personal aspect of their deeds (except where the personal can be
>> generalized, representing the 'proper' or 'typical' reaction of
>> someone belonging to the ethnic group represented by that character).
> <snip>
>> Precisely. The stories in /The Silmarillion/ were always intended to
>> be mythical, and that purpose wouldn't have been served by the
>> personalized stories.

I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very well.
Lots of fairy tales are made this way.

> Now this is where I really get interested. Let's take Tolkien's (early)
> stated purpose of writing a mythology for England.* Was it ever
> achievable?

I'd say he came pretty close.

> Can a mythology be written for a people by one man, or does
> that invalidate the whole enterprise? Must a mythology spring up
> spontaneously, in order to be valid--boil up on its own out of the Soup,
> if you will.

I don't think it must spring up "spontanously". And in any case,
Tolkien seems to have imitated the process rather well.

> Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So stories.
> Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and adults, define
> the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a history and a set of
> values to that culture, structure and create the universe for them. They
> are a reflection of ritual and sacred space in the cultural mind.

Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths carry
some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't necessarily
define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries. Though they
can of course help structure the world.

> Does /The Silmarillion/, even in its edited and elided form, do any of
> that for Western, or even English, culture? Would it, if JRRT had
> finished it? Does LotR?

I think both the SIL and the LotR qualify as myths in the above sense
because they contain "Truths" about human nature: pride, sacrifice,
love. And both, the LotR IMHO even more than the SIL, do that in
a style I would characterize as "English". So in this sense, both
are a "Mythology for England".

Do they define the boundaries of English culture? Probably not.

> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth version, I
> think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not just as stories.
> Although it put too great a strain on the tales as they were.)

Hm. I am not sure. From letters, my impression is more that he tries
to make the stories more credible, more like an alternative world
that would have been really possible instead of "just a story".

- Dirk

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:

> I agree. But hey, who could have thought that winds could be so
> _interesting_! :-)
>

I stand in awe!  I wouldn't have thought there was nearly so much
interesting wind-lore in those few chapters.  Thank you.
--
derek

Christopher Kreuzer <spamgard@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> I would think the first darkness is a volcanic eruption column of ash,
> generating lightning storms and containing glowing, hot materials. Of
> course, the second darkness, the "shape of shadow", could simply be a
> secondary eruption, but within the story it is intended to be Sauron's
> unhousing and dissolution.

And it's again a mix of a natural phenomenon (a volcanic eruption)
with a second layer of "personalized" meaning, like the trees in the
old forest, or the snow at Caradhras.

[...]
> In other words, the initial wind direction was from the east, out of Mordor,
> bring the Darkness of Sauron. Then the wind shifted to blow from the south,
> beginning to blow away the clouds and allowing dawn to herald the arrival of
> the Rohirrim at Pelennor. Then the wind continues shifting round the
> compass, blowing south-west as Aragorn and his fleet arrive at Pelennor. The
> wind then settles into a strong West wind that continues to blow away the
> clouds of Mordor for a few days. Then, at the climax of the story, the wind
> swings round again, to blow from the final compass direction, from the
> North. This completes a circle of wind directions. Does anyone know if the
> wind acts like this often in the real world?

I'm not an expert in meteorology, but if there was a stable high
pressure area to the north, there'd be wind from the east for some
time. Then, when the high becomes unstable, the wind would die out,
and with the high gone, now a depression could move in. Depressions
move usually to the east in the northern hemisphere, and if this
depression would pass to the north then turn a little bit to the
south, you'd first get winds from SW, turning to W and finally NW and,
after the depression has move southwards and is now to the east, a wind
from the north.

So it looks plausible.

- Dirk

In message <news:SxJLg.14945$r61.2197@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>
"Christopher Kreuzer" <spamgard@blueyonder.co.uk> enriched us with:
>
> [This "Life's blood versus life's work" thread is great - some
> really great posts, and so varied as well. I've wanted to chime in
> with something to say about it, but have't had time yet. And when
> I do, I go and write about winds instead... :-/ Hence the change
> in the subject line.]

So, now we're getting long-winded and putting on airs . . . ;-)
(sorry -- I found that irrestistible)

> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>

Saruman and Sauron:

>> In the end, however, the smoke- figures are both blown away
>> (to nothing) by a wind out of the west (that should probably
>> be capitalized: the West,
[...]
>
> Actually, the wind that disperses Sauron's "cloud" is not said to
> specifically come from the West, or even the west.

I shall, of course, maintain that the north-wind was sent by the West
;-)

Your account of the winds is interesting. I've tried to set dates to
it.

Date    Wind    Frodo & Sam     Aragorn
10      East    Crossroads      Ringló
11      East    Stairs          Lebennin
12      East    Shelob          Lebennin
13      East    Tower           Pelargir
14      E->S    Tower           River
15      S->S-W  Morgai          Minas Tirith
16-17   W       Morgai          The Last Debate
18      W       Durthang road   Osgiliath-ish
19      W       Isenmouthe      Morgul vale
20-21   W       Road
22      W       Due North of
                Orodruin
23      W                       Exit Ithilien
24      W->Still
25      N       Mount Doom      Morannon

The change from the eastern wind of the first days to the southern
wind is interesting. Story-internally, it is first to commented upon
by "Sea-crafty men of the Ethir gazing southward" (this is in Gimli's
account in "The Last Debate") around midnight, and then by the Drú in
the wee hours (the attack is at dawn, so this must be a couple of
hours before dawn).

<snip>

> This gradual sensing of the change in wind by the characters, from
> the Wild Man of the Woods, to the seasoned traveller, to the young
> Hobbit, is masterful, subtle storytelling by Tolkien.

And then, later in the narrative, but earlier in the chronology, to
be noticed by the sailors in the fleet.

<more snippage>

> The effect on Sauron is told later in the same chapter: "even in
> the fastness of his own realm he sought the secrecy of night,
> fearing the winds of the world that had turned against him" (Mount
> Doom)

Yes. There is a very strong sense in these chapters that the old
adage about sensing what way the wind is blowing (that's an adage in
English as well, isn't it?) becomes literally true: the winds of the
world follow the luck of the war and thus they carry a deeper
signficance than just to blow away the noisome fumes from Orodruin,
or wafting away the insubstantial clouds of Sauron's downfall.

Even allowing for some time before the change would be noticable on
the boats struggling against the current of the Great River, I can't
quite find a good point to declare that this was when it turned. I
would have liked to have the change begin in the far south when
Aragorn took command of the fleet as Isildur's heir, but that would,
I think, be stretching it a bit too far -- the wind seems rather to
start at exactly the right time to allow all the things to happen
that were doomed to happen (including the deaths of Denethor and
Théoden).

But once it has started, it seems to follow the threat Aragorn poses
to Sauron -- first it sweeps his fleet up to Minas Tirith in time to
decisively turn that battle, and then, during the next day, it turns
over to the west (also, in some places, 'the West'). Finally, when
Aragorn reaches the Morannon it dies out, only to start up fresh from
the north the next day. That is two days after Frodo and Sam left the
road due north of Mount Doom.

There is no doubt that the wind-directions are both deliberate and
significant, though that doesn't tell us whether there is, story-
internally, a driving intention (other than Sauron's intention
driving the initial east wind). Such an intention would most likely
be Manwë's, the real "Lord of the West" and the guy with the Eagles
(who came from the Misty Mountains borne by the north wind . . .)

The conclusion that Manwë did, indeed, control the winds, and that
the North-wind was, in that sense, sent by the West, is tempting
(particularly in my situation <G>), but though I find it suggestive,
I cannot, in honesty, say that I find the evidence conclusive.

> But moving away from such mundane matters, if you want a really
> strong candidate for a wind from the West, how about this scene
> here, where Aragorn heals the Lady Eowyn:

Good catch! Thanks.

Though I don't think that this is air carried all the way from the
Blessed Realm by a wind out of the true West, it certainly has a
quality of not only freshness, but of being unsullied and unmarred.

<snip>

>> It is reasonable, I'd say, even within the context of LotR only,
>> to assume that Saruman's fate would be similar.
>
> I agree. But hey, who could have thought that winds could be so
> _interesting_! :-)

I say, my winds are normally a cause for embarrasment . . .

Sorry -- the actual point was to try to point out just how many
places wind and/or air metaphors are used in idiomatic language. The
English, as we, are a people of sailors and farmers, and to them the
wind and weather are the most important facts of life. What the name
of the King is and whether his tax-collectors collect too much or far
too much is less important than what the weather will be like
tomorrow.  We understand the wind metaphors implicitly and Tolkien
makes expert use of them.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>

    Knowing what
    thou knowest not
    is in a sense
    omniscience
 - Piet Hein, /Omniscience/

In message
<news:20060907082145.C5B.1.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>
> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>
>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>>

[Galadriel as narrator of Silm]

>>> But I'm not sure that she wasn't still too much the mythological
>>> figure, 'larger than life', as you might say. Galadriel was
>>> being set up, it seems to me, for a role that would make her too
>>> good to be true -- too noble for the reader to identify with
>>> easily.

<snip>

>> She's somewhat that way even in LotR; too great, too far away to
>> be real. Although Sam can still see her as "merry as any lass
>> I've ever seen in springtime with daisies in her hair".
>
> Yes. I think that's one of the descriptions that has shaped my
> image of Galadriel most: Like a young girl and awe-inspiring at
> the same time.
>
> So I'd say in the LotR she's very much real.

I think that you experience her as closer in LotR than I do. To me
she is portrayed as of a higher kind, though capable of the same
faults as humans. Sam may see her as " as merry as any lass I ever
saw with daisies in her hair in springtime," but that is in the same
breath as recognizing not only that she is far beyond (and above)
him, but also that she embodies a contradiction: she is both "proud
and far-off as a snow-mountain" and the merry lass. The implication,
to me, is that she spans further than normal people can do, and that
this is putting her, again, outside the scope of my ability to
identify.

    Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes like a great tree
    in flower, sometimes like a white daffadowndilly, small
    and slender like. Hard as di'monds, soft as moonlight.
    Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and
    far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I
    ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime. But
    that's a lot o' nonsense, and all wide of my mark.

And Sam is still dissatisfied with his ability to describe what he
means ;-)

But she is, indeed, closer to the human condition in LotR, with her
admission of temptation and fallibility, than what she is in the
Silmarillion (both the published version and the source texts), but
she is still, IMO, far removed from the reader. The changes Tolkien
was considering to her role in the Flight of the Noldor (and the
Beleriandric wars) would have removed her even further; her story (if
these changes were introduced) would have become the story of a saint
-- too noble and good for the reader to identify easily with her,
thus once again removing the feeling of seeing eye-to-eye with the
narrator.

>> Yet if she carried the narrative POV, Tolkien might have been
>> able to switch between a 'high' voice and a 'lower' one, perhaps.

I don't think that that would have worked for a narrative viewpoint,
though if anyone could do it, Tolkien would be a likely bid (and
certainly one in a position to disregard all traditional wisdom and
advice about writing -- such as Tolkien did in several cases).

The problem would be to have the reader identify closely with her in
one moment, and then, the next moment, having her remove herself so
far above the reader as to be impossible to understand and identify
with.

> I am not sure if it would have been a good idea to give her the
> narrative POV. It works great in the movies (they should have used
> this idea more often), but I cannot see it working for the whole
> SIL.

And there is the problem of Galadriel's more elevated role evolving
for the Silm. It does work, I agree, in the films, although it also,
IMO, tends to weaken the remoteness and coldness of her character.
The duality, the "balance of opposing forces" that Sam notices is not
really evident in the films, IMO.

>>> In the mythical story, the characters become almost-incidental
>>> representations of forces and nations, removing to a large
>>> extent the personal aspect of their deeds (except where the
>>> personal can be generalized, representing the 'proper' or
>>> 'typical' reaction of someone belonging to the ethnic group
>>> represented by that character).
>> <snip>
>>> Precisely. The stories in /The Silmarillion/ were always
>>> intended to be mythical, and that purpose wouldn't have been
>>> served by the personalized stories.
>
> I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very
> well. Lots of fairy tales are made this way.

Well, I don' think that fairy tales an myth is the same - far from
it.

Ignoring definition such as 'a false belief' or simply 'something
fictitious', 'myth' (in the sense of something belonging to a
mythology), the defintions of 'myth' emphasize the collective scope
in the applicability and meaning of the stories. I don't think that a
myth can work at the highly personalized level of the narrative voice
and/or viewpoint in /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/.

It is, of course, not a matter of hard and fast divisions, but a
gradual transition, but 'myths' belong, I would say, to the end with
the least personalized narrator[#] where there isn't really a
narrator the reader can identify with (there migh be a narrator,
whether overtly or not, but not one that displays the kind of
personal attachment to the story that helps the reader to identify
with the narrator).

[#] Here 'narrator' doesn't necessarily refer to the narrative voice,
    but also to the one who carries the narrative viewpoint, such as
    Bilbo does in /The Hobbit/, but which doesn't, IMO, occur in /The
    Silmarillion/.

I'm currently reading Tom Shippey's /Author of the Century/, and
there are many, very many, places that I find extremely interesting,
and enlightening (not to mention the places where I lean back to note
that he is just exactly right <G>).

Shippey also tries to address the question of what kind of a book
/The Lord of the Rings/ is, citing a division of 'literary modes':

      The most comprehensive description we have of literary
    modes is that of Northrop Frye, in his book /An Anatomy of
    Criticism/, which came out only just after /The Lord of the
    Rings/, in 1957. Frye never mentions Tolkien's work in the
    /Anatomy/. However, the framework he gives both allows us to
    place /The Lord of the Rings/, and to see why it is an
    anomaly. In Frye's view, there are five very general
    literary modes, defined only by the nature of their
    characters. At the top is /myth/: if the characters in a
    work are 'superior in kind both to other men and to the
    environment of other men', Frye declares, then 'the hero is
    a divine being and the story about him sill be a myth'. One
    level down is /romance/: here the characters are superior
    only in 'degree' (not 'kind') to other men, and again to
    their environment. The next level down is /high memesis/,
    the level of tragedy or epic, where the heroes and heroines
    are 'superior in degree to other men but not to [their]
    natural environment'. [...]
[Tom Shippey, /J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century/, p. 221]

This definition of myth is probably as good as any (even if the
common dictionary definitions emphasize the explanatory power to the
people the myth belong to ), and one which shows the problem inherent
in attempting to have the personalized narrative viewpoint in a myth;
it requires a protagonist as the narrative focus with whom the reader
can identify, and that is, I'd say, not generally possible for divine
(or semi-divine) characters.

>> Now this is where I really get interested. Let's take Tolkien's
>> (early) stated purpose of writing a mythology for England.* Was
>> it ever achievable?
>
> I'd say he came pretty close.

I agree, though it would probably be better to ask the English ;)

Much of it of course depends on what Tolkien actually meant by that
statement. The impression I get from reading Shippey is that he
(Shippey) thinks that he (Tolkien) meant it very much in a
philological sense -- that the whole of Tolkien's writings was
basically driven and inspired by Tolkien's philological views and
interests. In that view, I would say that Tolkien did indeed succeed.

>> Can a mythology be written for a people by one man, or does
>> that invalidate the whole enterprise? Must a mythology spring up
>> spontaneously, in order to be valid--boil up on its own out of
>> the Soup, if you will.
>
> I don't think it must spring up "spontanously".

I don't think that any myth has done that, actually. They have rather
evolved over the ages, being retold from generation to generation
until the original conception was forgot in the traditional mode.

> And in any case, Tolkien seems to have imitated the process rather
> well.

Yes, very well.

> Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths
> carry some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't
> necessarily define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries.
> Though they can of course help structure the world.

I think the definition comes very close -- the basic function of
'myth' in a culture is precisely this definition of who 'we' are
(those to whom the myth belong) -- it doesn't matter very much
whether or no they believe the myth to be actual truth.

I agree also with the idea that myths carry some 'truth' (I think I'd
prefer to call it merely 'explanation' <G>), but that is a highly
contextualized truth: one that is valid for that particular people.
Therefore the truth itself is part of the boundary-definition aspect:
it is defining 'us' as those who share this belief, and 'them' as
those who don't.

<snip rest>

Gah! I have more to say, but it will have to wait, as I have to get
ready to get away for the weekend. So I'll address the last couple of
items later.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.

    Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
    simpler.
 - Albert Einstein

Dirk Thierbach wrote:
> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> Now this is where I really get interested. Let's take Tolkien's
>> (early) stated purpose of writing a mythology for England.* Was it
>> ever achievable?
>
> I'd say he came pretty close.

I'd say that LotR succeeded in this regard, but the Silm. tales did not.
(see below)

> And in any case,
> Tolkien seems to have imitated the process rather well.

Oh yes! No argument there! But the question I'm asking is, did the
imitation 'take' -- i.e., is it *functioning* as a myth functions in a
culture?

>> Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So stories.
>> Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and adults,
>> define the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a history and
>> a set of values to that culture, structure and create the universe
>> for them. They are a reflection of ritual and sacred space in the
>> cultural mind.
>
> Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths carry
> some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't necessarily
> define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries. Though they
> can of course help structure the world.

Perhaps we're using different definitions of 'myth'. You seem to be
leaning towards the common usage of the term, and I towards the academic
usage. For example, English-speakers commonly use the word 'myth' to
describe old stories of the gods, whether Greco-Roman, Norse, Celtic,
tribal, etc. This usage of the word implies that these are ancient tales
which don't carry much modern relevance; although they may express some
truths about universal human nature, they don't really have much to say
about the modern world. To take CS Lewis' phrase, they are "lies
breathed through silver". They do not function as myths for our modern
society. (With the probable exception of the Oedipus/Electra stories,
which do function as living myths, in their retelling by Dr. Sigmund.)

The anthropological definition of myth posits that a true myth, a living
myth if you will, *does* carry strong current meaning for the society
that tells the myth. Otherwise, it's not a myth; it's just an old story.
For example, the myth of the lone, heroic cowboy carries such weight for
modern American society: it defines our cultural identity in many, many
ways, in all its iterations (not always for the best, but that's another
matter). For the Christian world, the myth of Christ's resurrection is
an even better example.

So the question I was trying to get at could be better rephrased as:
Did Tolkien succeed in creating a real, living, myth for England / for
his readers? Does the mythos of the Silmarillion tales function in the
deeper anthropological sense as a myth?

> I think both the SIL and the LotR qualify as myths in the above sense
> because they contain "Truths" about human nature: pride, sacrifice,
> love. And both, the LotR IMHO even more than the SIL, do that in
> a style I would characterize as "English". So in this sense, both
> are a "Mythology for England".
> Do they define the boundaries of English culture? Probably not.

I'd say Tolkien both succeeded and failed. Succeeded, because I think
LotR *is* beginning to function as a true myth, for far more than just
England. Failed, because the Silmarillion tales do not, and also because
what success LotR has had as a myth applies across so much more than
just English culture.

>> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth
>> version, I think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not just
>> as stories. Although it put too great a strain on the tales as they
>> were.)
>
> Hm. I am not sure. From letters, my impression is more that he tries
> to make the stories more credible, more like an alternative world
> that would have been really possible instead of "just a story".

Well, yes. But what would his motivation have been in doing that? It
seems to me that in making ME more like a really possible world, the
round-earth version would have made the Silmarillion tales a more likely
candidate for a living myth.

- Ciaran S.
------------------------------------------------------
"I'm not lurking! I'm hanging about.
It's a whole 'nother vibe."
                              - BtVS

Troels Forchhammer wrote:
> Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:

<snip>
>> I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very
>> well. Lots of fairy tales are made this way.
>
> Well, I don' think that fairy tales an myth is the same - far from
> it.

My thoughts were going this same way, and then it occurred to me: what
about the Christ story? Tolkien says that "The Gospels contain a
fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence
of fairy-stories" containing the greatest eucatastrophe of all, and yet
it's certainly one of the most powerful cultural myths for Christians.

<snip>
> Ignoring definition such as 'a false belief' or simply 'something
> fictitious', 'myth' (in the sense of something belonging to a
> mythology), the defintions of 'myth' emphasize the collective scope
> in the applicability and meaning of the stories. I don't think that a
> myth can work at the highly personalized level of the narrative voice
> and/or viewpoint in /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/.

I just might make people angry at me for saying this. Nevertheless...
I agree with everything you've said about myths in this thread. However,
I don't think that the narrative voice, or POVs, in LotR is as
personalized as
your statement above might imply. And I think that LotR does have some
claim to success as a myth, precisely because its voice is actually
quite impersonal.

In part this goes back to the difference between LotR and the modern
novel. I'm sure we've all heard in criticisms of Tolkien that his
characters are flat and lifeless. Well, in a way, I'm standing up to say
that this is true. <ducks flying projectiles>

That is in comparison to the way characters are revealed in a modern
novel. Whether 1st person or 3rd, there is a confessional, psychological
mode of insight into character thought and motivation. We are used to
being deep inside the characters' heads (or at least the protagonist's
head) in almost all 20th-century novels. That doesn't happen in LotR.
Yes, we do get an occasional voice from inside a character, most often
Frodo, always a hobbit; but even then it's not a terribly revealing
glimpse inside the character. It's more often a POV, observational
moment. Even in instances of deep emotion, Sam's "But I love him,
whether or no", Frodo's "and there is no veil between me and the wheel
of Fire", we aren't inside the character in the way readers of the
modern novel have come to expect. Nor does the narrator break into the
characters' heads for us, to explicate their thoughts and motivations.

That's what critics are trying to express when they call the characters
in LotR one-dimensional. What is really happening, of course, is that
Tolkien intentionally wrote this way. He was not trying to write a
modern novel; he was writing a great romance, a fairy story. And it's
this distance from the characters, from self-confession and
psychological underpinnings, that I think allows enough room for us to
say that LotR can function as a myth for our times.

(P.S. - Northrup Frye. Urrgh. Tom Shippey and AotC, wonderful!)

- Ciaran S.
------------------------------------------------------
"I'm not lurking! I'm hanging about.
It's a whole 'nother vibe."
                              - BtVS

Troels Forchhammer wrote:
> In message
> <news:20060907082145.C5B.1.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
> Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:

<snip>
> Shippey also tries to address the question of what kind of a book
> /The Lord of the Rings/ is, citing a division of 'literary modes':
>
>       The most comprehensive description we have of literary
>     modes is that of Northrop Frye, in his book /An Anatomy of
>     Criticism/, which came out only just after /The Lord of the
>     Rings/, in 1957. Frye never mentions Tolkien's work in the
<snip>

An aside: Not to diss Shippey, whom I adore, but Northrup Frye is
emphatically not a reliable source for a definition of myth. He was a
literary man, and myths are much more than literature. Just as they can
be about much more than just divine beings. Even if you're talking
strictly literature, Frye is terribly outdated. <g>

- Ciaran S.
------------------------------------------------------
Suburbanites on a plane.

Donald Grove <donaldgrove@verizon.net> wrote in message <gsoqf2dm1poc9jdut57h53vqvtt6octjhv@4ax.com>

> I will be a daring newbie.  Not only respond, but take a few risks...
>
> It's true that Tolkien never finished an edition of the Silm which
> could be published, but in many ways, LOTR completes what the Silm (be
> it ever so scattered) begins.
>
[snip]

Interestingly, you have just reminded me of my long-since-forgotten
first reaction to finishing "The Silmarillion"; that it made the ending
of "The Lord of the Rings" into a happy one instead of a sad one :-)
--
Igenlode            Visit the Ivory Tower   http://ivory.150m.com/Tower/

But we must not be hasty; for it is easier to shout 'stop!' than to do it.

Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:
> Dirk Thierbach wrote:
>> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:

>>> Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So stories.
>>> Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and adults,
>>> define the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a history and
>>> a set of values to that culture, structure and create the universe
>>> for them. They are a reflection of ritual and sacred space in the
>>> cultural mind.

>> Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths carry
>> some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't necessarily
>> define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries. Though they
>> can of course help structure the world.

> Perhaps we're using different definitions of 'myth'. You seem to be
> leaning towards the common usage of the term, and I towards the academic
> usage.

I have to admit that I don't know much about the academic usage.
So, just for the sake of distinction, let's call the first "fairy-tale
myth" and the second "contemporary myth" (of course, if anyone can
come up with better terms, we should switch to those. Maybe "common
myth" and "academic myth"? SCNR :-).

> For example, English-speakers commonly use the word 'myth' to
> describe old stories of the gods, whether Greco-Roman, Norse, Celtic,
> tribal, etc. This usage of the word implies that these are ancient tales
> which don't carry much modern relevance; although they may express some
> truths about universal human nature, they don't really have much to say
> about the modern world.

I am not so sure they don't have to say anything about the modern world.
They don't have to say much about modern *culture*, but human nature
is still much the same as it was 2000 years ago. Many children love
fairy-tales and myths. If it has no relevance to them, then why do
they still do?

Of course one can just define "(contemporary) myth" the way you did,
by cultural relevance, and then by definition the old "fairy-tale
myths" are not interesting, but that's a somewhat circular argument,
and it begs the question why this definition is a good one.

> To take CS Lewis' phrase, they are "lies breathed through silver".

Nice :-) Didn't know this one. But I'd say this applies to both kinds
of myths.

> They do not function as myths for our modern society. (With the
> probable exception of the Oedipus/Electra stories, which do function
> as living myths, in their retelling by Dr. Sigmund.)

But Oedipus/Electra is again mainly about human nature, and not about
defining culture. So maybe the human nature aspect *is* the more
important one, and the rest is just "dressing", to make application
easier?

> The anthropological definition of myth posits that a true myth, a living
> myth if you will, *does* carry strong current meaning for the society
> that tells the myth.

Why does it have to be for the *society*?

> Otherwise, it's not a myth; it's just an old story.

> For example, the myth of the lone, heroic cowboy carries such weight for
> modern American society: it defines our cultural identity in many, many
> ways, in all its iterations (not always for the best, but that's another
> matter).

Do you have other examples for "contemporary myths"? I can think of
quite a lot of "modern myths" that would express "truths" about human
nature in a contemporary setting (Dilbert, for example :-), but I have
really trouble imagining any that really define cultural identity.

> For the Christian world, the myth of Christ's resurrection is
> an even better example.

Does that really define modern Christian *culture* in any way? I am
not so sure. (And I don't want to go into the problem that "Christian"
can mean quite a lot of different things).

> So the question I was trying to get at could be better rephrased as:
> Did Tolkien succeed in creating a real, living, myth for England / for
> his readers? Does the mythos of the Silmarillion tales function in the
> deeper anthropological sense as a myth?

But maybe that's the wrong question. I think the question one has to
ask first is "what kind of 'myth' was Tolkien referring to when he
said he wanted to create a mythology for England"? Tolkien studied
Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Kalevala, the Edda. None of those are
contemporary myths -- for example, the modern German cultural identity
isn't defined by them in any particular way, and OTOH lot's of children
outside Germany still read and enjoy them. Nevertheless, they are
fairy-tale myths with a disctinctive German flavour. And I'd say that
Tolkien missed having a similar "heritage" for England (lots of it
was destroyed during the "cultural invasions", and he was *very*
interested in the few surviving parts), so he set out to create
a substitute. Not as a living contemporary myth, but, especially in
the SIL, as a replacement of those "old stories" that were lost.

> I'd say Tolkien both succeeded and failed. Succeeded, because I think
> LotR *is* beginning to function as a true myth, for far more than just
> England.

In the "contemporary myth" sense? Does it really define any cultural
identity, anywhere? I don't think so, at least, I haven't notice
any evidence for it.

>>> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth
>>> version, I think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not just
>>> as stories. Although it put too great a strain on the tales as they
>>> were.)

>> Hm. I am not sure. From letters, my impression is more that he tries
>> to make the stories more credible, more like an alternative world
>> that would have been really possible instead of "just a story".

> Well, yes. But what would his motivation have been in doing that?

I think it's the same motivation that is shared by all science fiction
and fantasy writers: To make the "suspension of disbelief" work, to
achieve internal consistency. A flat world changing into a round one is
not very believable today. As Tolkien says in letter 154: "So deep was the
impression made by 'astronomy' on me that I do not think I could deal
with or imaginatively conceive a flat world".

- Dirk

Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:
> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>> Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>>> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:

>>> I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very
>>> well. Lots of fairy tales are made this way.

>> Well, I don' think that fairy tales an myth is the same - far from
>> it.

> My thoughts were going this same way, and then it occurred to me: what
> about the Christ story? Tolkien says that "The Gospels contain a
> fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence
> of fairy-stories" containing the greatest eucatastrophe of all,

Yes. So it again boils down to the question: How did Tolkien use the
word 'myth'? Shippey quotes Tolkien saying that "history resembles
'myth'", and states that Wilhelm Grimm refused to segregate "myth"
from "Heroic Legend". And considering his eassy "On Fairy-Stories", I
really think that for Tolkien, "myth" leans more in the "fairy-tale
myth" direction, and not towards the "contemporary myth" defining
cultural identity.

>> I don't think that a myth can work at the highly personalized level
>> of the narrative voice and/or viewpoint in /The Hobbit/ and /The
>> Lord of the Rings/.

> I just might make people angry at me for saying this. Nevertheless...
> I agree with everything you've said about myths in this thread.
> However, I don't think that the narrative voice, or POVs, in LotR is
> as personalized as your statement above might imply.

Yes. It's told as "seen by the Hobbits", as the title page says, but
that doesn't mean "highly personalized".

> In part this goes back to the difference between LotR and the modern
> novel. I'm sure we've all heard in criticisms of Tolkien that his
> characters are flat and lifeless. Well, in a way, I'm standing up to say
> that this is true. <ducks flying projectiles>

And with respect to this subject, I find it interesting to compare
the way characters are handled in the "modern novel" and in, well,
"unmodern tales". In a fairy-tale, and in the saga, many characters
are fixed and don't develop: There's the "evil stepmother", the "wise
king", and so on. And while in the LotR some characters do have
different aspects (Aragorn is both the low ranger and the noble
king), they don't change, either. However, some characters do change:
The hobbits, with maybe Frodo changing the most and Sam the least.
And that's maybe not so surprising, as they are the link between
the "modern world" (and the modern novel) and the "old world" (and the
heroic legends).

> That is in comparison to the way characters are revealed in a modern
> novel. Whether 1st person or 3rd, there is a confessional, psychological
> mode of insight into character thought and motivation. We are used to
> being deep inside the characters' heads (or at least the protagonist's
> head) in almost all 20th-century novels. That doesn't happen in LotR.

OTOH, I really don't see why everyone has to bow to fashion and write
books the way 20th-century novels are written. :-)

> That's what critics are trying to express when they call the characters
> in LotR one-dimensional. What is really happening, of course, is that
> Tolkien intentionally wrote this way.

Exactly.

> He was not trying to write a modern novel; he was writing a great
> romance, a fairy story. And it's this distance from the characters,
> from self-confession and psychological underpinnings, that I think
> allows enough room for us to say that LotR can function as a myth
> for our times.

Hm. Sorry, I don't see a relationship here -- I think that "freedom"
from the way characters are handled in modern novels is neither
necessary nor sufficient to make it function as a myth.

- Dirk

Troels Forchhammer <Troels@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:
> Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:

>>> She's somewhat that way even in LotR; too great, too far away to
>>> be real. Although Sam can still see her as "merry as any lass
>>> I've ever seen in springtime with daisies in her hair".

>> Yes. I think that's one of the descriptions that has shaped my
>> image of Galadriel most: Like a young girl and awe-inspiring at
>> the same time.
>>
>> So I'd say in the LotR she's very much real.

> I think that you experience her as closer in LotR than I do. To me
> she is portrayed as of a higher kind, though capable of the same
> faults as humans.

I think the point is not so much that she is capable of the same
faults -- the "like a young girl" means that she is "approachable"
for humans (though with a greater "depth" than humans normally have).

> The implication, to me, is that she spans further than normal people
> can do, and that this is putting her, again, outside the scope of my
> ability to identify.

But maybe not outside your imagination? At least not outside of mine.
I can picture her very clearly in those respects (and my picture
is very different from those in the movies, BTW).

> The changes Tolkien was considering to her role in the Flight of the
> Noldor (and the Beleriandric wars) would have removed her even
> further;

Again, I think that's not the point. The tendency of Tolkien to make
persons "pure" and "wholly good" just makes things more uninteresting.

> her story (if these changes were introduced) would have become the
> story of a saint -- too noble and good for the reader to identify
> easily with her,

Again, I'd say to noble and good to *interesting*. Identification
is more closely related to how the story is told, not to the character
of the person the reader has to identify with.

>> I am not sure if it would have been a good idea to give her the
>> narrative POV. It works great in the movies (they should have used
>> this idea more often), but I cannot see it working for the whole
>> SIL.

> And there is the problem of Galadriel's more elevated role evolving
> for the Silm.

The main problem I see is how to rewrite the SIL as "seen by
Galadriel" in the first place. Galadriel can take the role of a
narrator, telling all these old stories, and adding personal details
when appropriate (like Elrond at the Council, when he tells of
Gil-Galad). But in LotR, the hobbits take part as "travellers", who
come from the familiar rural-English shire into the less familiar
world of the "Great Legends", play more or less small roles in the
action (though they may have important consequences), but nevertheless
see it with there own eyes (or hear it from their close friends
later). And that's an ideal device to carry the reader along on the
journey, and something that would be next to impossible to copy for
the SIL (which is more like missing history, going on for thousands of
years).

> It is, of course, not a matter of hard and fast divisions, but a
> gradual transition, but 'myths' belong, I would say, to the end with
> the least personalized narrator[#] where there isn't really a
> narrator the reader can identify with

I think it would be not difficult to re-tell next to any myth with a
personalized narrator. Maybe it's easier to look at this in the
context of a concrete example?

> I'm currently reading Tom Shippey's /Author of the Century/, and
> there are many, very many, places that I find extremely interesting,
> and enlightening (not to mention the places where I lean back to note
> that he is just exactly right <G>).

I've read AotC only once, but I think I stell prefer /The Road to
Middle Earth/. And yes, lots of interesting stuff, but sometimes I
think Shippey goes too far, and generalizes too much.

>    In Frye's view, there are five very general
>    literary modes, defined only by the nature of their
>    characters. At the top is /myth/: if the characters in a
>    work are 'superior in kind both to other men and to the
>    environment of other men', [...]

I think this is one of the worst attempts to define myth, romance, etc.
I don't mind different definitions, but this "superiority"-criterion
just doesn't reflect the available material well.

> I think the definition comes very close -- the basic function of
> 'myth' in a culture is precisely this definition of who 'we' are
> (those to whom the myth belong) -- it doesn't matter very much
> whether or no they believe the myth to be actual truth.

Can you give an example of a 'myth' that defines 'who' we are, and
describe in what way it defines that?

> I agree also with the idea that myths carry some 'truth' (I think I'd
> prefer to call it merely 'explanation' <G>), but that is a highly
> contextualized truth: one that is valid for that particular people.

Yes, certainly. Though some of the 'Truths' can apply for a quite wide
range of people.

> Therefore the truth itself is part of the boundary-definition aspect:
> it is defining 'us' as those who share this belief, and 'them' as
> those who don't.

Hm. No, I don't think so. I'd say if there is any common element that
divides 'us' and 'them', it's more the 'heritage' aspect (if he/she is
one of us, he/she very probably knows the story), and additionally, it
is the secondary ingredients that make the story feel 'familiar'.

And it's not so much a question of 'belief' (and I am even not sure
*what* one should believe *in*. Maybe you can give an example?)

I guess the 'core' part (or parts) would probably even recognized by
'them', and would only become unregocnizable in totally different
cultures. An Englishman like Tolkien can study and enjoy scandinavian
myths. So can, say, Japanese people, and vice versa.

- Dirk

On Sat, 9 Sep 2006 23:08:33 -0400, "Shanahan" <pogues@bluefrog.com>
wrote:

>Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>> Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>>> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>>> Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>
><snip>
>>> I am not sure. I think "myth" and personalized stories mix very
>>> well. Lots of fairy tales are made this way.
>>
>> Well, I don' think that fairy tales an myth is the same - far from
>> it.
>
>My thoughts were going this same way, and then it occurred to me: what
>about the Christ story? Tolkien says that "The Gospels contain a
>fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence
>of fairy-stories" containing the greatest eucatastrophe of all, and yet
>it's certainly one of the most powerful cultural myths for Christians.
>
><snip>
>> Ignoring definition such as 'a false belief' or simply 'something
>> fictitious', 'myth' (in the sense of something belonging to a
>> mythology), the defintions of 'myth' emphasize the collective scope
>> in the applicability and meaning of the stories. I don't think that a
>> myth can work at the highly personalized level of the narrative voice
>> and/or viewpoint in /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/.
>

There isn't a solid working definition of myth, but I agree that a
myth usually survives because it is adaptable to varying
interpretations within a culture over time.

Personally, I subscribe to the view taken by Robert Graves, that many
myths are representations of religious rituals or historical events,
which are reshaped into a timeless or imaginary structure.  Whether or
not that is the case, I have always been interested in repeated themes
and devices in mythology, such as fruit (Persephone eating the
pomegranate, Freia cultivating apples of eternal youth), the various
events that lead up to the death of a god or god-like hero (Baldur or
Herakles), or the preservation of a childhood object that later proves
a hidden identity (Moses' swaddling cloth, Orestes sandal etc).

I have a tentative list of such things from Tolkien. Although there is
no arguing that any of these things conform to the Robert Graves
definition, there is a wonderful pattern of symbolic repetition which
is reminiscent of myth, whether intentional or not.  In my list, I am
not arguing for how Tolkien's themes relate to any other mythology,
but only the repetition within his own.

1.	The theme of hidden cities or kingdoms.  Gondolin,
Nargothrond, Doriath, finally after the first age, Aman itself.  And
the shifting magical boundaries resonate even in the Barrow Downs and
the Paths of the Dead, where hidden or invisible realms open
themselves in particular ways at particular times.  Even secret
entrances, available only to those with the correct spells (or keys).

2.	The theme of the severed hand wielded at a moment of
challenge.  The hand of Barahir is held forward as a token of the
promise made to the elves, the hand of Beren is pulled from the belly
of Carcharoth and when held up, reveals that the Silmaril was
captured.  This has a sort of diminution in LOTR, where the finger
wearing the Ring is severed twice, and at the end, ironically held
aloft by Gollum.

3.	The theme of stumbling or falling, only to awaken later after
a great change has occurred.  Bilbo stumbles, faints and finds the
Ring.  Bilbo falls at Battle of the Five Armies, awaking to find the
Orcs were vanquished.  Frodo falls at Bruinen and wakes at Rivendell.
Frodo falls at Mount Doom and awakes at Cormallen.  Merry falls at
Pellenor, and awakes to find himself with Pippin.  Pippin has his fall
at the Last Battle, reminiscent of Bilbo.  Gandalf falls at the peak
of Zirak-Zigil, and is reborn.  The list goes on.  And stumbling both
discovers the Ring for Bilbo and loses it for Gollum.

4.	The theme of magical gifts.  This is mostly LOTR.  Galadriel's
vial with the light of Earendil, Sting, even the Ring itself, when
Bilbo finally leaves it for Frodo.

These are but a few of the repetitions through different stories that
give a quasi-mythological feeling to Tolkien's tales.  In the case of
the R Graves style interpretation, it would argue for historical or
ritual similarities between stories.  In Tolkien's case, it is pure
invention.  But invention with a powerful mind behind it!

Donald

>(P.S. - Northrup Frye. Urrgh. Tom Shippey and AotC, wonderful!)
>
>- Ciaran S.

Hear hear!

In message <news:ee00eh02sec@enews2.newsguy.com>
"Shanahan" <pogues@bluefrog.com> enriched us with:
>

[Tom Shippey citing Frye's 'literary modes']

> An aside: Not to diss Shippey, whom I adore, but Northrup Frye is
> emphatically not a reliable source for a definition of myth.

The main reason for me to include it was that I had come across it
the same day while reading /Author of the Century/, and I noted that
it pertained to the current discussions ;-)

> He was a literary man, and myths are much more than literature.

Oh, definitely!

'Myth', in the traditional sense (i.e. stories belonging to the
handed-down mythologies), seems to me to be rather 'illerate' in
origin  ;-)  (by which I mean that it is based in an oral, pre-
literate, tradition).

> Just as they can be about much more than just divine beings.

His definition of 'divine' as characters being 'superior in kind'
seems to me broader than the usual definition of divine (or even
semi-divine).

There's a Scand word, 'sagn' (sorry), that seems to be appropriate
here. My dictionary translates it as both 'myth' and 'legend', and
something in-between seems to me to be implied. The heroes of 'sagn'
seem to fill a place where it is difficult to say if they are really
'superior in kind' or (just) 'superior in degree' to their
environment.

Is Beowulf a myth or a legend?

I suspect that if one is sufficiently broad-minded about'superior in
kind', then his definition of 'myth' would work quite nicely ;-)

> Even if you're talking strictly literature, Frye is terribly
> outdated. <g>

I wouldn't be surprised ;-)

Shippey, of course, isn't speaking from a strictly literature
viewpoint, but from a generally philological viewpoint (he also
doesn't use the 'myth' definition very much, but seems to focus on
the modes from romance to irony).


Out of curiosity, I've been looking about a bit for definitons of
'Myth', and if I had been hoping for some kind of nice agreement on a
clear-cut definition, I'd've been very disappointed ;-)

I don't know if it helps us in any way, but here's a sampling of it:

Cambridge International Dictionary of English
    an ancient story or set of stories, especially explaining
    in a literary way the early history of a group of people
    or about natural events and facts:
<http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?keyR767&dictÊLD>

AskOxford (Oxford Concise Dictionary)
    a traditional story concerning the early history of a
    people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon,
    typically involving the supernatural.
<http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/myth?view=uk>

Merriam-Webster
    1 a : a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical
          events that serves to unfold part of the world view
          of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural
          phenomenon
      b : PARABLE, ALLEGORY
    2 a : a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around
          something or someone; especially : one embodying the
          ideals and institutions of a society or segment of
          society <seduced by the American myth of individualism
          -- Orde Coombs>
      b : an unfounded or false notion
    3 : a person or thing having only an imaginary or
          unverifiable existence
    4 : the whole body of myths
<http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=myth>

ODLIS: Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science
      From the classical Greek word mythos, meaning "story." A
    socially powerful narrative rooted in the traditions of a
    specific culture, capable of being understood and
    appreciated in its own right but at the same time part of
    a system of stories (mythology) transmitted orally from
    one generation to the next to illustrate man's
    relationship to the cosmos. In traditional societies,
    myths often serve as the basis for social customs and
    observances, although their origins may be long-forgotten.
      Many of the archetypes of classical Greek mythology
    recur in the literature of Western culture, and some have
    been appropriated by disciplines outside the arts and
    humanities (example: Oedipus complex in psychology). Some
    scholars have argued that mythic thinking is integral to
    human consciousness and that myths are simply a
    manifestation of the way culture is created by the human
    mind. Dictionaries of mythology are available in the
    reference section of public and academic libraries.
    Bulfinch's Mythology is available online in full-text. See
    also Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts and the
    Yahoo! list of Web sites on mythology and folklore.
    Compare with folktale and legend.
<http://lu.com/odlis/odlis_m.cfm#myth>

ArtLex Lexicon
    myth - A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with
    supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a
    fundamental type in the world view of a people, as by
    explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the
    psychology, customs, or ideals of society. (pr. mith) See
    attribute, Greek art, mythology, narrative art, and Roman
    art.
<http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/Mol.html>

Irivng Hexham's Concise Dictionary of Religion
    MYTH: a myth is a type of narrative which seeks to express
    in imaginative FORM a BELIEF about man, the world, and/or
    GOD or GODS which cannot adequately be expressed in simply
    PROPOSITIONS. Since this word is used in both contemporary
    scientific and theological literature, any DEFINITION of
    it appears to be arbitrary. In common language, the word
    is used to denote stories that have no basis in FACT. This
    meaning is too loose for anthropologists and philosophers.
      Myths can be contrasted with LEGENDS, fairy tales, etc.
    This implies no JUDGMENT on the TRUTH of the story;
    indeed, it is possible to have a true story serve as a
    myth. Critics of myth argue that it tends to open the door
    to IRRATIONALISM. Myth has been held to be a truer or
    deeper version of REALITY than SECULAR HISTORY, realistic
    description, or scientific explanation. This view ranges
    from irrationalism and post-CHRISTIAN supernaturalism to
    more sophisticated accounts in which myths are held to be
    fundamental expressions of certain properties of the human
    mind. Myth is both a very significant and difficult word.
      One very useful DEFINITION is a story with culturally
    formative power that functions to direct the life and
    thought of INDIVIDUALS and GROUPS or SOCIETIES.
<http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/books/concise/WORDS-M.html>

Anthropology dictionary
    myth: stories that are told about the deeds that
    supernatural beings played in the creation of human beings
    and the universe itself.
    <http://www.webref.org/anthropology/m/myth.htm>
    mythology: a body of stories which have become traditional
    for a given human society; very frequently, mythologies
    are associated with religious beliefs. Other types of
    stories which can be a component of mythology include
    legends and folktales.
    <http://www.webref.org/anthropology/m/mythology.htm>

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>

    Lo! we have gathered, and we have spent, and now the time
    of payment draws near.
 - Aragorn, /The Lord of the Rings/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)

On Sun, 10 Sep 2006 00:58:33 +0100, Igenlode W
<Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:

>Donald Grove <donaldgrove@verizon.net> wrote in message <gsoqf2dm1poc9jdut57h53vqvtt6octjhv@4ax.com>
>
>> I will be a daring newbie.  Not only respond, but take a few risks...
>>
>> It's true that Tolkien never finished an edition of the Silm which
>> could be published, but in many ways, LOTR completes what the Silm (be
>> it ever so scattered) begins.
>>
>[snip]
>
>Interestingly, you have just reminded me of my long-since-forgotten
>first reaction to finishing "The Silmarillion"; that it made the ending
>of "The Lord of the Rings" into a happy one instead of a sad one :-)

Interesting take!  I would say that although the conclusion of LOTR is
mixed.

This thread has given me so much food for thought, I am not sure what
I think of anything right at the moment.  Well done, everyone!

In message
<news:20060907082145.C5B.1.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>
> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:
>>

<snip>

>> Anthropologists define myth as much more than mere Just So
>> stories. Myths, in their repeated retellings to both children and
>> adults, define the boundaries of a culture and a people, give a
>> history and a set of values to that culture, structure and create
>> the universe for them. They are a reflection of ritual and sacred
>> space in the cultural mind.
>
> Hm. I am not sure I agree with that definition. I think myths
> carry some "Truths" about the human nature, but they don't
> necessarily define history, or a culture, or even its boundaries.
> Though they can of course help structure the world.

Tolkien describes in many places the complex of stories that constitute
the Silmarillion (in the widest possible sense) as a 'mythology'. In a
letter in 1949 to Naomi Mitchison (letter #133), he describes the book
he hopes to publish (besides /LotR/), as "pure myth and legend of times
already remote in Bilbo's days."

In the long letter to Milton Waldman, we have the famous passage where
he tells about his ambition:
      Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long
    since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less
    connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic,
    to the level of romantic fairy-story-the larger founded on
    the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing
    splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could
    dedicate simply to: to England; to my country.
[Letter #131, To Milton Waldman, late 1951?]
<http://www.americanidea.org/handouts/06240106.htm>

But, perhaps more importantly, he describes the transition from the
Ainulindalë, 'a cosmogonical myth', from where:

      It moves then swiftly to the History of the Elves, or
    the Silmarillion proper; to the world as we perceive it,
    but of course transfigured in a still half-mythical mode:
    that is it deals with rational incarnate creatures of more
    or less comparable stature with our own.
[ibid.]

Later, '[a]s the stories become less mythical, and more like stories
and romances. Men are interwoven' and finally, 'as the earliest Tales
are seen through Elvish eyes, as it were, this last great Tale, coming
down from myth and legend to the earth, is seen mainly though the eyes
of Hobbits'.

My impression is that Tolkien looked at the transition from myth to
romance as gradual, with the majority of the Silmarillion (certainly
everything after the flight of the Noldor) concerned with precisely the
span between the purely mythical, and the purely down to earth.

So, about this famous 'Mythology for England':

    Having set myself a task, the arrogance of which I fully
    recognized and trembled at: being precisely to restore to
    the English an epic tradition and present them with a
    mythology of their own: : it is a wonderful thing to be
    told that I have succeeded, at least with those who have
    still the undarkened heart and mind.
[Letter #180, To 'Mr Thompson', January 1956]

That Tolkien imagined the stories of the Silmarillion to belong to a
mythology didn't mean that he considered all of them to be 'myths' or
even equally 'mythical'.

>> Does /The Silmarillion/, even in its edited and elided form, do
>> any of that for Western, or even English, culture? Would it, if
>> JRRT had finished it? Does LotR?
>
> I think both the SIL and the LotR qualify as myths in the above
> sense because they contain "Truths" about human nature: pride,
> sacrifice, love.

I don't think that that is enough for 'myth' -- many stories, and
nearly all good stories, deal with truths about human nature in this
way, but I wouldn't consider them as myths for that -- not even when
the answers they provide (or investigate) can have an ethnically very
narrow applicability.

> And both, the LotR IMHO even more than the SIL, do that in a style
> I would characterize as "English". So in this sense, both are a
> "Mythology for England".

The odd thing is that while Tolkien was definitely thinking of the
Silmarillion (the whole body of writings rather than just the parts in
the published /The Silmarillion/), his response in letter #180 above is
to someone who had read /The Lord of the Rings/ and seen in it
something of the sort that Tolkien had wanted to create.

> Do they define the boundaries of English culture? Probably not.

I think Tolkien's view on 'myth' would be primarily philological.

Venturing onto very thin ice, my impression is that Tolkien had strong
opinions about the relationship between language, stories and people.
He believed, I think, that the three parts all influence each other,
shaping and defining each other, so that a language without myths,
legends and stories to and in it was dead, and a people was defined by
its language and the tales in that language.

When Tolkien spoke about 'restoring to the English [...] a mythology of
their own', I think that there is a good chance that he was thinking at
least as much of mythology in the philological sense as in any literary
or anthropological sense.

>> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth
>> version, I think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not
>> just as stories. Although it put too great a strain on the tales
>> as they were.)
>
> Hm. I am not sure. From letters, my impression is more that he
> tries to make the stories more credible, more like an alternative
> world that would have been really possible instead of "just a
> story".

I don't know what I think ;-)

If intended to be read as myths, I think it would have to be in the
sense of the original audience to the myth, but that is clearly not the
role the Greek, Roman, Finnish or Norse mythologies have today in the
societies that have evolved from the peoples who created (and believed
in) the myths.

My big problem is that the move would, I believe, at the same time as
it was intended (based on the phrase 'astronomically absurd') to make
the mythology more credible to a modern mind, have made the wholy
mythology /less/ credible, as a mythology, to the modern mind.

The round-world version contained elements that would be credible to
both the modern reader and to his English longfathers; the problem
would be that much of the stuff that was credible to one, would seem
anachronistically incredible to the other and vice versa. The older
flat-world version always had to me the the quality of something my
long-fathers might very well have believed, but the projected round-
world version lose, IMO, some of that 'authenticity'.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>

++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot ++
 - /Hogfather/ (Terry Pratchett)

Troels Forchhammer <Troels@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:
> Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>> Shanahan <pogues@bluefrog.com> wrote:

[quotes snipped]
> My impression is that Tolkien looked at the transition from myth to
> romance as gradual,

Again, I'd be careful in which sense Tolkien uses "myth" here -- I
have the impression that the "something that does not look real"
aspect of the word is very strong in some of the qoutes.

> That Tolkien imagined the stories of the Silmarillion to belong to a
> mythology didn't mean that he considered all of them to be 'myths' or
> even equally 'mythical'.

Given that the term isn't particularly well-defined in the first
place, I don't think we have to niggle about such details :-)

>> I think both the SIL and the LotR qualify as myths in the above
>> sense because they contain "Truths" about human nature: pride,
>> sacrifice, love.

> I don't think that that is enough for 'myth' -- many stories, and
> nearly all good stories, deal with truths about human nature in this
> way, but I wouldn't consider them as myths for that -- not even when
> the answers they provide (or investigate) can have an ethnically very
> narrow applicability.

Yes, certainly. It's not a sufficient condition.

> The odd thing is that while Tolkien was definitely thinking of the
> Silmarillion (the whole body of writings rather than just the parts in
> the published /The Silmarillion/), his response in letter #180 above is
> to someone who had read /The Lord of the Rings/ and seen in it
> something of the sort that Tolkien had wanted to create.

It's not so odd when one remembers that lots of stuff from the SIL got
"drawn in" in the process of writing LotR, so it's still present and
makes up a large part of the "mythological/historical" background. As
I said, presentation doesn't really matter so much (whether it is told
from a personal or impersonal POV, for example), the material itself
matters.

>> Do they define the boundaries of English culture? Probably not.

> I think Tolkien's view on 'myth' would be primarily philological.

It would play an important role, certainly.

> Venturing onto very thin ice, my impression is that Tolkien had strong
> opinions about the relationship between language, stories and people.
> He believed, I think, that the three parts all influence each other,
> shaping and defining each other, so that a language without myths,
> legends and stories to and in it was dead, and a people was defined by
> its language and the tales in that language.

Yes, I'd agree.

>>> *(Aside: That's why he tried so hard to make the round-Earth
>>> version, I think. So that moderns could read them as myths, not
>>> just as stories. Although it put too great a strain on the tales
>>> as they were.)

> If intended to be read as myths,

But they are not "intended" to be read as myths. Primarily, they are
stories, and as such, there's nothing wrong to tinker with the
"presentation" and tell it in a way that is less offending to people
with a stronger "scientific" background.

It's perfectly possible to re-tell a myth in, say, a science fiction
setting, with a background rigorous enough to make it plausible. /The
Snow Queen/ by Joan D. Vinge may be an interesting example in this
respect.

> My big problem is that the move would, I believe, at the same time as
> it was intended (based on the phrase 'astronomically absurd') to make
> the mythology more credible to a modern mind, have made the wholy
> mythology /less/ credible, as a mythology, to the modern mind.

Why? It doesn't really matter if he starts out with a flat world
that is then transformed to a round world, or if the world is round
from the start. The real problem is that in the latter setting,
some of the devices of the original version (the Lamps, the Trees)
now stand out as somewhat strange. So one would have to change those,
too, and so on, and when those changes pile up, there's maybe not
much left of the original idea.

> The older flat-world version always had to me the the quality of
> something my long-fathers might very well have believed, but the
> projected round-world version lose, IMO, some of that 'authenticity'.

I didn't read up details on Tolkiens projected idea (where exactly
is it in HoME?), but in general, I think one could make an round
world creation-myth with an 'authentic' feeling without any problem.

- Dirk

In message
<news:20060907075642.C5B.0.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>
> Raven <jonlennart.beck.god@damn.get2net.that.dk.spam> wrote:
>>
>
> Great explanation, I'd just like to nitpick on a few details:

And I'll pick a little further ;-)

>>   Sauron died thrice,

There are hints, I believe, that Tolkien was considering that he
should have died four times, the first being in the fight against
Huan and Lúthien.

>> in that the body that he had formed and had become bound to
>> beyond its being mere raiment and tool was violently destroyed.
>> Twice he reincarnated, becoming diminished as he spent
>> some of his innate power on building a new body for himself
>> without help.  The first time he managed it swiftly, because he
>> had his Ring,
>
> Or because he still had enough "power" (or whatever one could call
> it) left to embody himself quickly.

It is, in any case, difficult to attribute the increased time merely
to the loss of the /enhancement/ of his power, that he had when
holding the Ruling Ring, and it also goes against what Tolkien said
about the matter:

    After the battle with Gilgalad and Elendil, Sauron took a
    long while to re-build, longer than he had done after the
    Downfall of Númenor (I suppose because each building-up
    used up some of the inherent energy of the spirit, which
    might be called the 'will' or the effective link between
    the indestructible mind and being and the realization of
    its imagination). The impossibility of re-building after
    the destruction of the Ring, is sufficiently clear
    'mythologically' in the present book.
[Letter #200, To Major R. Bowen, June 1957]

The use of 'I suppose' suggests, to me, that Tolkien hadn't thought
it through very well. It is entirely possible that he would, had he
had to give a more official explanation, have come up with some kind
of combined explanation (i.e. both the absence of the Ruling Ring and
the loss of inherent energy), but such as it is, the suggestion is
that the loss of energy due to two deaths was the primary reason for
the increase of the time he took to rebuild a body.

<snip>

>> The third time his body perished the Ring, which had aided his
>> reincarnation by having part of him in it, was unmade, and he
>> became too weak to ever reincarnate again.
>
> And the way I understand it, that's because he had externalized
> some of his "power" by making the Ring, so he could never loose
> that part as long the Ring existed.

And as long as the Ring was not 'mastered' by someone else. While he
wore the One Ring, he was, however, enhanced, and I'm willing to
consider that 'wearing' the One Ring didn't necessarily require him
to have a physical finger through it -- after all he was able to
carry it from Númenor to Mordor at the drowning.

> (Similar to the fairy story "The Cold Heart", where the
> protagonist puts his heart into a glass jar and cannot die as
> long as this jar stays hidden).

Yes -- the externalisation of power is a quite common motif in both
fairy-stories and in myth (having the antagonist to put his heart or
soul in an external container, requiring the protagonist to find it
and destroy it is the version that I'm most familiar with).

> So without the Ring being destroyed, he would always be able to
> embody himself again (no matter if the Ring was in his possession
> or not), though maybe every time more slowly.

Perhaps not 'always', but he could definitely have got through more
re-embodiments if he had not lost the power he instilled in the One
Ring (I'm not convinced that it's basically meaningful to ask how
large a part of his power he had put in the Ring, nor how many re-
embodiments it would take for him to lose the ability to re-embody).

>>   When Saruman was killed by Gríma, the body that he had become
>> bound to was destroyed and could no longer house his spirit.
>> He did not have sufficient power to form a new body,
>
> Maybe the reason is that Istari were already restricted in their
> "power" when they were sent to middle-earth: They were
> "incarnated" and bound firmly to their bodies.

I like this idea.

There is solid evidence telling us that the incarnation of the Istari
was different from the normal self-arrayal of the Ainur. I have long
felt that this difference was not only in degree, but in kind, and
this idea seems to fit quite well with my thoughts.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.

    Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
    simpler.
 - Albert Einstein

Shanahan wrote:

> So, Barb, how do you react to all this?

I have been thinking over the first few posts in response, and thinking
some more, and then thinking some about it...just checked the thread
today and found so many more insightful responses.  I am still reading
them, so please forgive any overlap with later posts.

I would only add as a supplement (and Troels will not be at all
surprised by this), that there are also some insights to be gleaned
from "On Fairy-stories," which I don't have in front of me right now,
so a detailed analysis will have to wait.  It took some time to
appreciate, but as I became more familiar with the biographical
setting, realizing that JRRT delivered the lecture soon after he had
begun /The Lord of the Rings/, its importance became more clear.  This
was further established by JRRT's own comments on what had by then
become an essay and then "scurvily allowed to go out of print." (Letter
163)

Just from what I can recall of the essay, JRRT's enthusiasm stands out.
 He is the master, and speaks familiarly both of Elves, as if he were
holding discourse with them every day (as he is doing just about every
night at this point, per the biography), and of linguistics.  Philology
and its contribution to fairy-stories is prominent in /On
Fairy-stories/.  Among the many excellent insights in this thread, the
importance of philology is an especially good point.

Most importantly, perhaps, is that JRRT was at the height of his powers
then, in his late 40s.  The "life-blood" comment was made almost 10
years later, as JRRT was in his mid-50s, with the Big Six-Oh looming,
and he was starting to realize (as all of us must) that from now on
life was going to be a rather downhill course.  Ambrose  Bierce said it
best in his definition of "yesterday" for /The Devil's Dictionary/.

    But yesterday I should have thought me blest
        To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak
        Of middle life and look adown the bleak
    And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,
    Where solemn shadows all the land invest
        And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak
        Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak
    The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.
    Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame
        To stay the shadow on the dial's face
    At manhood's noonmark...

Perhaps JRRT was simply recognizing that he was no longer capable of
the effort and life experiences that had resulted in /The Lord of the
Rings/.  Also, the world had changed and everything was new and
strange: his work was rooted in pre-WWII times (but see below for note
on his letters to Christopher), and he could have no idea how this new,
materialistic and mechanistic world would react to his fairy-tale for
adults.  He was vulnerable, exposed, and getting old.

Then there is CS Lewis.  He is mentioned indirectly in "On
Fairy-stories" (in the amended excerpt from /Metamorphosis/).  By
considering Lewis as part of the "soup,' one can see great difference
between /The Silmarillion/, which Lewis knew in MS form, and /The Lord
of the Rings/, selections of which JRRT read to Lewis and the other
Inklings for comments and criticism.  I am not familiar enough with the
personal stories of both men and of the Inklings history to say much
about that, but Lewis certainly helped shape /The Lord of the Rings/
and at his death JRRT would describe himself feeling as if he were a
tree that had taken an axe blow to the roots; there is certainly some
major tributary of the "life-blood" river there that distinguishes it
from /The Silmarillion/.

JRRT was a man of contradictions, and it was endearing but also
confusing.  One can't rely totally on what he says at any one time;
it's as if he were in contact with reality on a constantly interactive
basis and would likely reinterpret the whole thing at another point in
time, and be quite sincere and truthful in both statements, which might
appear to a confused bystander as diametrically opposite in meaning.

One has to look at what he did, and also look at him from an angle, as
it were, as if trying to see a multidimensional entity from a 1- or
2-dimensional plane.  The man was most definitely a genius, and so may
always be a puzzle to us.

In viewing what he did, I would return to his enthusiasm in "On
Fairy-stories" and his lasting friendship with  Lewis and their
interaction during the creation of /The Lord of the Rings/.  I would
also mention Christopher being away at war during part of that time.
In some of the letters to CJRT of that period, there is the same
"voice" that one hears in /The Lord of the Rings/.  It was as though
JRRT were taking little verbal snapshots of the land back home that
both he and CJRT knew and loved so well, and sending them to his son.

It worked both ways.  There is the poignant image in the book of
Denethor's frustration at spending even his sons, and how he slept in
mail at night.

Indeed there is a nexus here between /The Lord of the Rings/, written
with CJRT was at war, and /The Silmarillion/, which first began to take
shape in 1916 when JRRT was in the hospital after his own experiences
of war.  But I hesitate to say too much about it just now.

There was something of life-blood about that "voice," though, and it
was directed at Christopher, who has certainly committed much of his
own in return.

It is sad, in /Letters/, how tired the old man sounded for a while, but
then came letter 323, begun in mid-1971, which echoed, though it did
not reproduce, the vitality and "you are there"-ness of the earlier
"verbal snapshots."  On reading that, I felt as one does in September
(up north) or October (here in the South), when a warm day comes that
reminds one of summer.

Well, those are just some thoughts, since you asked, Ciaran.  (g)

Back to reading the posts and thinking some more.

Barb

Troels Forchhammer wrote:
> In message <news:edg3qp0e7@enews2.newsguy.com>
> "Shanahan" <pogues@bluefrog.com> enriched us with:
> >> In /The Silmarillion/ it is the loss (of innocence, ennoblement
> >> etc.) associated with the Fall from Grace, and the losses
> >> associated with fighting a war which is meaningless and, though
> >> they are fighting Evil, not justified. These are the losses of a
> >> people, not of a person . . .
> >
> > Ah, I see. You mean personal re the characters rather than
> > personal re the author.
>
> Precisely -- and to an even greater extent re the narrator, I think. It
> is the mediation through the personal narrator that brings the story
> down to eye level -- of course it's a difficult distinction to make
> when the narrator is also one of the characters in the story, but I
> think it comes down to the very personalised narratives in LotR (and,
> to a lesser degree, /The Hobbit/).

Could it be that JRRT, recognizing this, attempted to bring the
"greater matter" down to the popular level, through the mediation of
the eyewitness narrator of those times, Tom Bombadil?  And that he
inserted into the earthy, personalized viewpoint of the hobbits in /The
Lord of the Rings/ what he considered the quintessence of his other
works about Arda?

        ...it seemed as if, under the spell of his words,
       the wind had gone, and the clouds had dried up,
       and the day had been withdrawn, and darkness
       had come from East and West, and all the sky
       was filled with the light of white stars...[Frodo]
       did not feel either hungry or tired, only filled with
       wonder.  The stars shone through the window
       and the silence of the heavens seemed to be
       around him.  He spoke at least out of his wonder
       and a sudden fear of that silence:"

And of course the question that Frodo then asked has gone on to haunt
and tantalize and torment us ever since we first heard it.  I'm not
saying that what JRRT did here, if he was indeed trying to insert his
"greater work"  into what he could actually get published and to
interest the reader in the wonder of Arda, worked; it seems to have
drawn attention more to the character of Tom Bombadil than to the
remarkable time Tom described to the hobbits.  Whether it worked or
not, this is still a remarkable piece of writing.  I like the
simultaneous presence of darkness from East to West and all the sky
filled with white starlight.  I think there is something about the
opposites of total evil and total good in Faerie in "On Fairy-stories"
(unless it was GK Chesterton in the Elfland part of /Orthodoxy/), but
as mentioned in another post of this date, OFT is not available to me
right now.

> The narrative viewpoint in LotR is much different from that in the Silm
> -- in the former we get much closer to the emotions and thoughts of the
> characters, and the anachronistic aspects of the hobbits telling the
> story helps us identify with the narrator (we can appreciate just how
> far out his depth Bilbo was when he found himself facing three trolls,
> or alone in the caves of the goblins).

Somebody has mentioned here what it would have meant had Galadriel been
fully developed as JRRT apparently intended.  I wonder, given the
above, what if Tom Bombadil had been the narrator.  It probably
wouldn't have worked -- he's too flighty and odd.  Galadriel was much
more accessible a character.

Barb

Dirk Thierbach wrote:

<snip>
> Yes. So it again boils down to the question: How did Tolkien use the
> word 'myth'? Shippey quotes Tolkien saying that "history resembles
> 'myth'", and states that Wilhelm Grimm refused to segregate "myth"
> from "Heroic Legend". And considering his eassy "On Fairy-Stories", I
> really think that for Tolkien, "myth" leans more in the "fairy-tale
> myth" direction, and not towards the "contemporary myth" defining
> cultural identity.

Yes, going by OFS. But there's a discussion between he and CSLewis about
myth, CSL calling them basically lies, and Tolkien disagreeing and
comparing the historical mode with the mythological, stating that
mythology is a far superior way of conveying truth. But of course I
can't locate my reference to that conversation. Da*n.

> OTOH, I really don't see why everyone has to bow to fashion and write
> books the way 20th-century novels are written. :-)

Agreed! I find much to dislike in modern novels. Especially Hemingway
and Joyce.

> Hm. Sorry, I don't see a relationship here -- I think that "freedom"
> from the way characters are handled in modern novels is neither
> necessary nor sufficient to make it function as a myth.

I'll be thinking about this, you may very well be right. <g> What then
is necessary to make a story function as myth?

- Ciaran S.
-----------------------------------------
Do I contradict myself
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes)
        - Whitman

Shanahan wrote:
> Dirk Thierbach wrote:
>
> <snip>
> > Yes. So it again boils down to the question: How did Tolkien use the
> > word 'myth'? Shippey quotes Tolkien saying that "history resembles
> > 'myth'", and states that Wilhelm Grimm refused to segregate "myth"
> > from "Heroic Legend". And considering his eassy "On Fairy-Stories", I
> > really think that for Tolkien, "myth" leans more in the "fairy-tale
> > myth" direction, and not towards the "contemporary myth" defining
> > cultural identity.
>
> Yes, going by OFS. But there's a discussion between he and CSLewis about
> myth, CSL calling them basically lies, and Tolkien disagreeing and
> comparing the historical mode with the mythological, stating that
> mythology is a far superior way of conveying truth. But of course I
> can't locate my reference to that conversation. Da*n.

there's an account of it in carpenter's biography of tolkien.  (and i
thinka slightly different version somehwere else, unless i'm thinking
of the bit in OFS.)

Donald Grove wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Sep 2006 23:08:33 -0400, "Shanahan" <pogues@bluefrog.com>
> wrote:

<snip>
> There isn't a solid working definition of myth, but I agree that a
> myth usually survives because it is adaptable to varying
> interpretations within a culture over time.

Definitely. This is the structural anthropological definition, which
always posits that structures in human society endure only when they
have a current function as well as a past function.

> Personally, I subscribe to the view taken by Robert Graves, that many
> myths are representations of religious rituals or historical events,
> which are reshaped into a timeless or imaginary structure.

Another very important part of what mythology encompasses. For example,
the way that the myth of the Last Supper and the Mass reflect each
other.

<snip>
> I have a tentative list of such things from Tolkien.
<snip nifty list>
> These are but a few of the repetitions through different stories that
> give a quasi-mythological feeling to Tolkien's tales.  In the case of
> the R Graves style interpretation, it would argue for historical or
> ritual similarities between stories.

Great list! This also argues for the similarities between the varied
structures of human minds and human societies, that lie behind the
similarities between stories. We aren't all that different from each
other after all...

> In Tolkien's case, it is pure
> invention.  But invention with a powerful mind behind it!

Powerful, and creative, and deeply learned, and with a great sense of
the beauty of words and the best that humankind can be. Oh yes.

- Ciaran S.
----------------------------------
Do I contradict myself
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes)
           - Whitman

Troels Forchhammer wrote:
> In message <news:ee00eh02sec@enews2.newsguy.com>
> "Shanahan" <pogues@bluefrog.com> enriched us with:

<snip>
> 'Myth', in the traditional sense (i.e. stories belonging to the
> handed-down mythologies), seems to me to be rather 'illerate' in
> origin  ;-)  (by which I mean that it is based in an oral, pre-
> literate, tradition).

That's exactly right, and it's why I have a problem with Frye's
definition: something created by many folks, changed by each generation
to reflect its own reality, belongs to an entire society in terms of
authorship, and can't be effectively analyzed by literary criticism.
Also, Frye's def. leaves out the functional aspect of myth.

> Is Beowulf a myth or a legend?

I wish we had Tolkien's answer to that question! (I'd put multiple
exclamation points on the end there, but that would be the sure sign of
an insane mind.) I'm ashamed to admit that I've never read "The Monster
and the Critics". Is there any answer there?

<snip>
> Out of curiosity, I've been looking about a bit for definitons of
> 'Myth', and if I had been hoping for some kind of nice agreement on a
> clear-cut definition, I'd've been very disappointed ;-)
> I don't know if it helps us in any way, but here's a sampling of it:

Goddess, what a mess! No wonder we can't agree on it!

> ODLIS: Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science
>       From the classical Greek word mythos, meaning "story." A
>     socially powerful narrative rooted in the traditions of a
>     specific culture, capable of being understood and
>     appreciated in its own right but at the same time part of
>     a system of stories (mythology) transmitted orally from
>     one generation to the next to illustrate man's
>     relationship to the cosmos. In traditional societies,
>     myths often serve as the basis for social customs and
>     observances, although their origins may be long-forgotten.
>       Many of the archetypes of classical Greek mythology
>     recur in the literature of Western culture, and some have
>     been appropriated by disciplines outside the arts and
>     humanities (example: Oedipus complex in psychology). Some
>     scholars have argued that mythic thinking is integral to
>     human consciousness and that myths are simply a
>     manifestation of the way culture is created by the human
>     mind.

Add to this what Donald referenced above, that:
"many myths are representations of religious rituals or historical
events,
which are reshaped into a timeless or imaginary structure"
and I think this definition covers most of the bases.

>       One very useful DEFINITION is a story with culturally
>     formative power that functions to direct the life and
>     thought of INDIVIDUALS and GROUPS or SOCIETIES.
> <http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/books/concise/WORDS-M.html>

I also like this one. And it has the advantage of being concise.

- Ciaran S.
----------------------------------------
Do I contradict myself
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes)
            - Whitman

May I say that this has been one of the most enjoyable discussions I've
ever participated in on this ng? It's been thoughtful, deep,
wide-ranging and fruitful. It has gone far afield from Tolkien at times,
yet we always return to him as a touchstone. And no one has gotten angry
or egotistical or called anyone else names, or even been snippy! I'm a
happy camper. <deep satisfied sigh>

- Ciaran S.
----------------------------------------
Do I contradict myself
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes)
            - Whitman

Dirk Thierbach wrote:
> Troels Forchhammer <Troels@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:

>> My impression is that Tolkien looked at the transition from myth to
>> romance as gradual,
>
> Again, I'd be careful in which sense Tolkien uses "myth" here -- I
> have the impression that the "something that does not look real"
> aspect of the word is very strong in some of the qoutes.

If we're going to use only the sense in which Tolkien uses 'myth',
that's something other than what I intended. But perhaps a more
legitimate sense to use on this ng. I do wish we had the references to
make this more clear. I know nothing whatsoever about philology as a
discipline, and so nothing about how it might define 'myth'.

<snip>
> It's perfectly possible to re-tell a myth in, say, a science fiction
> setting, with a background rigorous enough to make it plausible.
> /The Snow Queen/ by Joan D. Vinge may be an interesting example in
this
> respect.

A wonderful book. Both the Vinges are fabulous writers, although I
wasn't terribly impressed with Vernor's latest book. The series of
retellings of fairie stories by various authors, published by Terri
Windling, I think, are also very interesting.

- Ciaran S.
-----------------------
mooreeffoc

In message
<news:20060911093302.12BF.0.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de> Dirk
Thierbach <dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de> enriched us with:
>
> Troels Forchhammer <Troels@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:
>>

<snip>

>> My impression is that Tolkien looked at the transition from myth
>> to romance as gradual,
>
> Again, I'd be careful in which sense Tolkien uses "myth" here

I don't think it really matters all that much in this case -- the point
is not what exactly he meant by it, but whether he considered it a
matter of either-or, a binary 'scale', or a gradual scale.

> I have the impression that the "something that does not look real"
> aspect of the word is very strong in some of the qoutes.

Oh?! I never got that impression anywhere. I'm sure Tolkien would have
agreed that the Biblical stories are 'myths' even though he also
firmly believed that they were real.

The impression I get is that 'myth' require an element of the
supernatural, or preferably the divine.

>> That Tolkien imagined the stories of the Silmarillion to belong
>> to a mythology didn't mean that he considered all of them to be
>> 'myths' or even equally 'mythical'.
>
> Given that the term isn't particularly well-defined in the first
> place, I don't think we have to niggle about such details :-)

I'm not sure I agree entirely. The precise words are not very important
in any case, but I'm curious about what he meant by his statements
about this 'mythology for the English' concept, and for this it is
interesting to discuss what he saw it as consisting of, and how he
distinguished between the various modes.

In this context, IIRC, the interest is particularly in the differences
between the Silmarillion stuff and the texts in /The Hobbit/ and /The
Lord of the Rings/ -- and especially in explaining the commonly
experienced difference in 'getting into' the story, which Belba
originally commented upon.

The question here would be if Tolkien's view on the role and mode of
the stories (e.g. 'myth' vs. 'romance', if that was how he saw it)
influenced the texts so that this difference in 'getting into' became
inevitable; or if the two are otherwise causally connected.

I believe that the mythical / legendary air that Tolkien wanted to
convey in the Silmarillion would not work with, or be possible with,
the very intimate narrative voice in the hobbit stories, and that it is
this intimacy between the narrator and the reader that makes the
hobbit-narrated books so much easer to 'get into'. I furthermore
believe that the anachronistic elements about the hobbits is an
importartant part of establishing that intimacy between the reader and
the narrator where the reader is able to identify with the narrator (or
the character carrying the narrative focus).

<snip>

>> I think Tolkien's view on 'myth' would be primarily philological.
>
> It would play an important role, certainly.
>
>> Venturing onto very thin ice, my impression is that Tolkien had
>> strong opinions about the relationship between language, stories
>> and people. He believed, I think, that the three parts all
>> influence each other, shaping and defining each other, so that a
>> language without myths, legends and stories to and in it was
>> dead, and a people was defined by its language and the tales in
>> that language.
>
> Yes, I'd agree.

Excellent ;-)

Now, I think one could make a case for Tolkien's intention with his
'mythology for the English' to be mainly philological (at least
initially) -- a body of tales that could stand in the stead of the
truly lost mythology and which could have led to the same fragments
that he knew (such as /Beowulf/ and /Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/
etc.) as well as given certain words to the English language, and
which, in the anthropological sense, might have 'defined' a culture
that could have been the predecessor of the known English cultural
development. It would not be the 'real thing', but an approximation
that could be reached by working one's way backwards; one possible
mythology that could have led to the observed results.

Tolkien did, according to Shippey, make writings that were very
obviously of this kind -- e.g. an elaborate riddle in Old English,
which just might have been the predecessor of a nursery-rhyme; an
activity which Shippey likens to the philological / linguistic exercise
of re-creating the word from which other, modern, words are derived
(e.g. the common Germannic word that has given us the English 'Dwarf').
Tolkien, the argument goes, was, however, not satisfied with
establishing the form of the word -- he also wanted to know what it
meant, and that is where the 'mythology' comes into this.



About re-working the mythology to the round-world version "So that
moderns could read them as myths" (Shahanan):

>> If intended to be read as myths,
>
> But they are not "intended" to be read as myths. Primarily, they
> are stories,

I'm not so sure about that. That is why I think it is interesting to
look at what Tolkien called them, and his descriptions consistently
evoke such concepts as 'myth' and 'legend' and he discuss their
relative levels of 'mythological'.  It seems to me clear that Tolkien,
at the least, wanted the stories to read as myth, i.e. to impress the
reader in the same way as reading the tales of a traditional mythology
would.

The big question, for me, is rather which reader (or audience) he
intended for his readers to feel like.

One possibility, which I think was the original idea, is that he wanted
his mythology to read, to a modern English reader, in the same way as
the old Norse mythology reads to a modern norse reader.

The problem, however, with that view is that it doesn't explain the
transition to the round-world version, which, at best, does nothing for
that -- a modern reader would accept the 'astronomically absurd
business' without problems; he might even slightly expect the mythology
of his ancestors to contain scientifically absurd elements (it is so
nice to feel we've progressed from their 'primitive' views <G>).

> and as such, there's nothing wrong to tinker with the
> presentation" and tell it in a way that is less offending to
> people with a stronger "scientific" background.

In this particular case, it might have worked, I don't know, but I
believe that it would have felt less 'mythical' in a round-world
version. Quite possibly my main problem has nothing to do with Tolkien,
but rather with the Old Norse version of Middle-earth (which, of
course, takes 'astronomically absurd' to new levels <G>).

> It's perfectly possible to re-tell a myth in, say, a science
> fiction setting, with a background rigorous enough to make it
> plausible.

But I don't think a retelling of a myth is really itself a myth (it
might be, of course, but recasting it in a scientifically plausible
form would, IMO, make it extremely difficult, as myth will generally,
and almost per definition, contain supernatural elements).

In the case of Tolkien's mythology it would, naturally, not mean a
complete abandonment of supernatural elements (and thus not necessarily
completely plausible scientifically), and he might have retained the
mythical air even then, though I rather suspect that I might not find
it quite as satisfying as the flat-world version.

<snip>

> I didn't read up details on Tolkiens projected idea (where exactly
> is it in HoME?),

It's in the "Myths Transformed" section of /Morgoth's Ring/. The first
few texts are the most relevant.

> but in general, I think one could make an round world creation-
> myth with an 'authentic' feeling without any problem.

In general I agree, and my problem isn't as much the round world per
se, but rather the context in which it would appear (or perhaps I
should just trust Tolkien's ability to work it out).

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put '[AFT]', '[RABT]' or 'Tolkien' in subject.

    Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
    simpler.
 - Albert Einstein