The Sea Bell is not "autobiographical" for JRR Tolkien; but for Frodo

In his essay On Fairy Stories; JRR Tolkien influentially invented the word eucatastrophe - i.e. a good-catastrophe: 

The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function. The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

Tolkien is saying, indirectly, that the 'happy ending' (when done well) is a special and desirable quality; and one of the main reasons why someone might want to read fairy stories. 

From this perspective it is striking that one of the very best poems Tolkien wrote, The Sea Bell (see below for text) ends not in eucatastrophe, but in hopelessness - in despair. 

In his Preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil in which poem was published; Tolkien adopts the persona of the editor of a manuscript from which The Sea Bell had been taken; and as such he notes that an unknown hand had annotated the poem with the words "Frodo's Dreme" - linking it to "the despairing dreams which visited him... during his last three years".

In the poem itself; the despair is linked to the exile from Faery; having made a sea voyage to an enchanted and perilous land, the protagonist cannot find satisfaction or peace in the normal, mundane world. In the pre-Christian world of The Lord of the Rings, a world without hope of salvation beyond death; a permanent loss of enchantment  

The reader is therefore being nudged towards inferring that Frodo was the author of The Sea Bell, and that the despair reflects Frodo's personal mood of hopelessness that increased in the years after the One Ring had been destroyed - and following Frodo's claiming of the One Ring for himself, on the slopes of Orodruin and by the Cracks of Doom. 

I think we are meant to regard The Sea Bell as expressive of Frodo's world view, and not therefore (as sometimes the poem is interpreted) as expressive of Tolkien's own perspective. 

In a nutshell; The Sea Bell is fundamentally not a coded autobiography of JRR Tolkien, not expressive of the feelings of a man whose once participated in the enchanted world of Faery but now is exiled by old age - but instead The Sea Bell is an "in universe" poem by Frodo.

A poem in which Frodo is - symbolically, or by analogy - looking back on the core experiences of his life in relation to his interactions with the divine and demonic powers, especially his quest for the destruction of the One Ring - and what that destruction did to Frodo. 

 

It is worth clarifying that the attitude of despair expressed by The Sea Bell is one that Tolkien as a devout Roman Catholic Christian personally rejected as sinful. 

The sinfulness of the kind of despair expressed in The Sea Bell is exemplified repeatedly throughout The Lord of the Rings, for instance in relation to the Palantiri.    

Tolkien's own convictions can be read in another of his poems that is also about a sea voyage to enchanted and perilous lands: The Death of St Brendan (from The Notion Club Papers) which was later revised and published as Imram. 

In The Death of St Brendan; we hear the dying Bishop telling a young priest of the wonders he beheld in the lands he discovered. There is a similar sense as in The Sea Bell of having returned to a mundane and un-enchanted world in the final stanza:

In Ireland, over wood and mire, 

in the tower tall and grey, 

the knell of Cluain-ferta’s bell 

was tolling in green Galway. 

Saint Brendan had come to his life’s end 

under a rainclad sky, 

and journeyed whence no ship returns, 

and his bones in Ireland lie.   

If this was all to say - with mire, rain and bones - then the poem would tend to induce despair. 

But this comes after a eucatastrophic turn in which the possibility of the young priest sharing that supernatural joy - if he too is prepared to strive and labour diligently and with a good heart:

‘But men say, father that ere the end 

you went where none have been. 

I would here you tell me, father dear, 

of the last land you have seen.’ 

‘In my mind the Star I still can find, 

and the parting of the seas, 

and the breath as sweet and keen as death 

that was borne upon the breeze. 

But where they they bloom those flowers fair, 

in what air or land they grow, 

what words beyond the world I heard, 

if you would seek to know, 

in a boat then, brother, far afloat 

you must labour in the sea, 

and find for yourself things out of mind: 

you will learn no more of me.’   

I enjoy that Gandalf-like, and perhaps Tolkien like, admonition: that if you want for yourself what I have had, then you need to do what I have done, and don't expect me to do it for-you! 

And also, stop your endless questions: "You will learn no more of me"!

In sum: the content and message of The Sea Bell probably tells us mostly about Frodo, and the finally-tragic nature of life before any knowledge of Christ; whereas the similarly-themed St Brendan poem seems much closer to the the understanding and aspirations of Tolkien himself, and to a world where there is always hope.  

 

***

The Sea Bell

I walked by the sea, and there came to me, 

as a star-beam on the wet sand, 

a white shell like a sea-bell; 

trembling it lay in my wet hand. 

In my fingers shaken I heard waken 

a ding within, by a harbour bar 

a buoy swinging, a call ringing 

over endless seas, faint now and far. 

Then I saw a boat silently float 

On the night-tide, empty and grey. 

‘It is later than late! Why do we wait?’ 

I lept in and cried: ‘Bear me away!’ 

 It bore me away, wetted with spray, 

wrapped in a mist, wound in a sleep, 

to a forgotten strand in a strange land. 

In the twilight beyond the deep 

I heard a sea-bell swing in the swell, 

dinging, dinging, and the breakers roar 

on the hidden teeth of a perilous reef; 

and at last I came to a long shore. 

White it glimmered, and the sea simmered 

with star-mirrors in a silver net; 

cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone 

in the moon-foam were gleaming wet. 

Glittering sand slid through my hand, 

Dust of pearl and jewel-grist, 

Trumpets of opal, roses of coral, 

Flutes of green and amethyst. 

But under cliff-eaves there were glooming caves, 

weed-curtained, dark and grey’ 

a cold air stirred in my hair, 

and the light waned, as I hurried away. 

 

Down from a hill ran a green rill; 

its water I drank to my heart’s ease. 

Up its fountain-stair to a country fair 

of ever-eve I came, far from the seas, 

climbing into meadows of fluttering shadows; 

flowers lay there like fallen stars, 

and on a blue pool, glassy and cool, 

like floating moons the nenuphars. 

Alders were sleeping, and willows weeping 

by a slow river of rippling weeds; 

gladdon-swords guarded the fords, 

and green spears, and arrow-reeds. 

 

There was echo of song all the evening long 

down in the valley, many a thing 

running to and fro: hares white as snow, 

voles out of holes; moths on the wing 

with lantern-eyes; in quiet surpise 

brocks were staring out of dard doors. 

I heard dancing there, music in the air, 

feet going quick on the green floors. 

But wherever I came it was ever the same: 

the feet fled, and all was still; 

never a greeting, only the fleeting 

pipes, voices, horns on the hill. 

 

Of river-leaves and the rush-sheaves 

I made me a mantle of jewel-green, 

a tall wand to hold, and a flag of gold; 

my eyes shone like the star-sheen. 

With flowers crowned I stood on a mound, 

and shrill as a call at cock-crow? 

Why do none speak, wherever I go? 

Here now I stand, king of this land, 

with gladdon-sword and reed-mace. 

Answer my call! Come forth all! 

Speak to me words! Show me a face!’ 

 

Black came a cloud as a night-shroud. 

Like a dark mole groping I went, 

to the ground falling, on my hands crawling 

with eyes blind and my back bent. 

I crept to a wood: silent it stood 

in its dead leaves; bare were its boughs. 

There must I sit, wandering in wit, 

while owls snored in their hollow house. 

For a year and day there must I stay: 

beetles were tapping in the rotten trees, 

spiders were weaving, in the mould heaving 

puffballs loomed about my knees. 

 At last there came light in my long night, 

and I saw my hair hanging grey. 

‘Bent though I be, I must find the sea! 

I have lost myself, ,and I know not the way, 

but let me be gone!’ Then I stumbled on; 

like a hunting bat shadow was over me; 

in my ears dinned a withering wind, 

and with ragged briars I tried to cover me. 

My hands were torn and my knees worn, 

and years were heavy upon my back, 

when the rain in my face took a salt taste, 

and I smelled the smell of sea-wrack. 

 

Birds came sailing, mewing, wailing; 

I heard voices in cold caves, 

seals barking, and rocks snarling, 

and in spout-holes the gulping of waves. 

Winter came fast; into a mist I passed, 

to land’s end my years I bore; 

Snow was in the air, ice in my hair, 

darkness was lying on the last shore. 

 

There still afloat waited the boat, 

in the tide lifting, its prow tossing. 

Wearily I lay, as it bore me away, 

the waves climbing, the seas crossing, 

passing old hulls clustered with gulls 

and great ships laden with light, 

coming to haven, dark as a raven, 

silent as snow, deep in the night. 

 

Houses were shuttered, wind round them muttered, 

roads were empty. I sat by a door, 

and where drizzling rain poured down a drain 

I cast away all that I bore: 

in my clutching hand some grains of sand, 

And a sea-shell silent and dead. 

Never will my ear that bell hear, 

never my feet that shore tread, 

never again, as in sad lane, 

in blind alley and in long street 

ragged I walk. To myself I talk; 

For still they speak not, men that meet.

"Pork-pie peril" and a plot-loop on the Barrow Downs?

Since my earliest readings of The Lord of the Rings, I have felt that there is "something wrong" with the Barrow Wight episode in the chapter "Fog on the Barrow Downs" (FotBD). 

At first, there was just my vague awareness "doesn't seem to work" as well as the rest of the book; that it fails to make an impact. 

There is a nagging sense that the Barrow Wight forms an (almost) redundant, potentially detachable, "plot-loop" - and perhaps an instance of what I sometimes call needless-, or "gratuitous-, or "pork pie-" peril (i.e. the piling-on of peril-upon-peril) - of the kind to which too-many movie-makers are addicted. 

This is the hobbit's second potentially lethal peril of the journey - the first being the encounter with Old Man Willow in the Old Forest. But, in contrast to the Barrow Wight episode, The Old Forest chapter seems to work superbly.

The reasons now seems clearer to me. In the first place FotBD is too abbreviated, too short, too summary in its nature. FotBD lacks the process of incrementally drawing the reader into the hobbit-perspective on events, which was so well achieved in the Old Forest. 

After entering the Old Forest, there are some eight pages before the hobbits are trapped by Old Man Willow; during which there is a lot of dialogue, the stages of the journey is vividly described, and several sub-episodes are distinguished.

By the time they meet Old Man Willow and mortal peril afflicts the hobbits, we are well prepared for it; and the dangers are themselves depicted in detail from the hobbit's point of view as they develop. Such as increasing feelings of hostility from the trees, difficult terrain, frequently getting lost, being funnelled in the direction the hobbits most wish to avoid, encroaching inexplicable sleepiness, and Frodo's falling insensible into the river Withywindle.   

But after entering the Barrow Downs there are less than four pages before Frodo is captured by the Barrow Wight and awakes inside the Barrow. 

During these pages, the hobbits' journey is described externally, and with much less detail than for the Forest, there are just one exchange of two lines of dialogue. There is a good section concerning Frodo's separation from the others, and his increasing fear and confusion - but somehow this does not quite suffice. 

In short, the peril seems to come upon them too fast and without enough length of preparation for the reader to feel and see it "in real time" and from the hobbit perspective. 

Another problem is in picturing the Barrow Wight itself: "a tall dark figure like a shadow against the stars" having two eyes lit with a pale and cold light. 

This just isn't enough information for me to work-with! Then, after Frodo has awoken inside the barrow; the Wight stays out of his sight, After hearing an evil incantation by the Wight; Frodo sees only a long arm, reaching around a corner, walking on its fingers towards a sword intending to kill Sam.

(Which reaching around a corner, seems to me rather an absurd way to conduct a ritual sacrifice!) 

Then, after a well-described inner struggle; Frodo suddenly grabs a sword and hacks-off the hand at its wrist - after which everything goes dark; so that we do not "see" the physical consequences on the Wight. 

Only after a page later and following the rescue; Frodo thinks he sees the severed hand wriggling like a wounded spider on a heap of earth... It would (surely?) have been more engaging to see that hand immediately after Frodo had chopped it! 

Furthermore; this is the second time in just two days that the hobbits are rescued from mortal peril by Tom Bombadil. 

Rescued in a broadly-similar fashion, and only a few hours since Frodo last saw Bombadil. 

Such repetition seems obviously unsatisfactory. 

As to why this chapter is deficient; it may be related to the section having been among the earliest-written by the author - yet (according to The History of Middle Earth) very little revised, by comparison with the other early-written parts. 

The "Barrow Wight" chapter of HoME Book 6 "The Return of the Shadow" is consequently less than seven pages, including notes; because of this fewness of significant revisions. 

It may also be contributory that in its original sketched-conceptualization, Bombadil's rescue from the Barrow Wight was the first time the hobbits actually met him, before returning to his house. 

(The escape from Old Man Willow having been a consequence of merely the effect of a song, overheard coming from the unseen and unknown voice of Bombadil who happened to be passing nearby.) 

However, this merely leads to the question of why the chapter was not more-extensively worked-over during revision; and one can only assume either that Tolkien did not see any problem, or else other narrative factors were perceived more important.  

Anyway; I have now answered to my own satisfaction the structural why - despite several superb passages I would certainly not wish to be without - FotBD has always failed to make the strong impact made by the rest of Fellowship of the Ring.  

Tolkien's subcreated world is Not a modern "myth"

Tolkien's subcreation - his Legendarium as a whole - is often described as a modern "myth" or its mythic qualities are emphasized. I do not think this is correct, because of a quality of myth that seems essential, but is distinct from the situation with Tolkien's work. 

I will first describe what I regard as an essential attribute of a myth - which is that a myth is distinct from any specific expression, and particular "version", of that myth...

While, on the other side; Tolkien's world is ultimately rooted in his own work: his own rather specific words and the actual published structure. 

"Fuzziness" - imprecision - seems to be a characteristic of a myth; such that the specific form in which a myth is expressed - e.g. its exact words - does not seem to matter very much. It is as if the myth has a life of its down, and the words or images by which a myth is presented are not its origin; but serve some secondary purpose, as reminders or pointers. 

The two great myths of England are King Arthur - including Merlin; and Robin Hood and his Merry Men. 

When I think of either of these, no specific version comes to mind; and indeed I find that none of the versions of these myths is very satisfactory. 

For instance, whenever I decide to read one of the Arthur accounts - whether historical (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon, Malory) or a modern description, novel, story, TV programme or movie - I am often overwhelmed with a kind of irritation at their inadequacy; and end-up quitting, bailing-out before I have gone very far. 

The best I can hope for is odd and brief hints, images, phrases, or gestures; that imply rather than depict the mythical - and many versions lack even this. 

I also find the "explanations" of myth to be unsatisfactory - and when a myth gets decoded or unpacked, and its supposed underlying meaning is described - this too always distorts the "reality", and again often evokes a rather strong sense of rejection, or even revulsion. 

So what is the myth? On the one hand it is nebulous, indefinable; on the other hand the particular feeling and expectation that it evokes is quite precise. 

If I am engaging with some version of Arthur I seem to have a pretty clear grasp of what I am looking for and what is valid - even if I could not say just what that is. 

But really, the situation with respect to myth is not really unusual. After all - much the same applies to such everyday and real-life matters as our attitude to a place or nations, or loving a particular someone. 

A real myth is a kind of "miniature" or "model" of something in real life. The situation is just that any specific "model" we make of reality, is really just that: a model; whether it is made of words, pictures, or theories. 

A model is made by leaving-out almost everything, and only including a few things - so it never captures real life, always distorts it; and indeed the relationship between the model and the real is itself indefinable. And the number of ways that any actual model is wrong are innumerably large.    

Unless we have some way of knowing reality directly, and without intermediary communications such as words, images, stories, or other models; then we cannot ever know it At All. 

At bottom, our ability genuinely to live in a relationship with this world depends on the ability to know directly and unmediated; and we need to decide, each for himself, whether or not this direct knowing is actually real and actually happens.

By this account a myth that "works" and is not a fail or fake, works first for one person at a time - no matter how national (or international) it may supposedly be; and secondly by a direct, person-to-person sharing of that myth. 

And this situation is the bottom line "collective" mythic reality, towards which any particular version of a myth may gesture - or not.

From the above, if the argument is regarded as valid; it seems that Tolkien's world is not a myth-proper; but a literary creation. 

The essential depth and relevance of Tolkien's work is not, therefore, the same as that of a myth-proper - although of course there are similarities and overlaps, "mythic qualities" in Tolkien.

This not-myth nature of Tolkien strikes me as significant, because there are malign tendencies that want instead to declare Tolkien's work a myth, with the implication that new "versions" - in other media than literature, and by other authors than Tolkien - validly add-to, re-shape, and re-interpret that myth...

And even, potentially, that these "re-imagined" versions may be equally valid expressions of the "Tolkien myth". 

In a nutshell; when Tolkien's world is regarded as a myth, then Tolkien himself and his published work are nothing more than the first and oldest expression of a universal and universally-accessible myth. This line or reasoning would justify - indeed already has "justified" - an "open-season" of commercialization, exploitations, subversions, and inversions of Tolkien's work. 

Further reflections deriving from yet-another engagement with Tolkien's On Fairy Stories

In Master of Middle Earth, Paul Kocher's superb literary criticism of Tolkien's published work as of 1972, the author reflects on the frequency and significance of the theme of a Man in (literal or imaginative) contact with Faery. 

Kocher further, and plausibly, suggests that Tolkien's interest derives from his personal feelings - the contrast he felt between those times when he dwelt imaginatively, and created, in the enchanted world of fairy stories; and the rest of his life. 

The painful nature of this contrast is evident at least from Looney (from 1934, when Tolkien was aged 42) which was the earlier-published version of a poem that later became The Sea Bell - and it is the main theme of Tolkien's last published new work, Smith of Wootton Major (1967). 

**

At the end of my teens, in the late summer and autumn (after my family moved from Somerset to Scotland), I seemed to go through a stage of development towards becoming more self-aware. 

This manifested in many ways, including a greater interest in philosophy of an existential flavour, and in books that explored similar territory. But in terms of personal relationships, I became aware that there was a qualitative difference between the level of everyday interactions on the one hand, and what I then termed as "touching minds" - which phrase is pretty self explanatory. 

I would nowadays probably equate touching minds with "direct knowing" - an un-mediated relationship between persons or other Beings, without the interposition of senses and communications - something akin to a simultaneous (albeit momentary) sharing of thoughts. 

Anyway; I had the idea that touching minds was what it was all about; and would often brood on the rarer occasions in which this had happened, and what these might mean - and, reciprocally, I also became much more conscious of the lower, and unsatisfying, level of most of life. 

In sum; I became aware of the problem of "alienation" and that it was my usual state - and apparently that of nearly everybody around me; the difference being that (unlike most people around me) I was aware of and interested by the situation, and wanted to escape from it, as much as possible - whereas "they" were neither aware nor interested.

This self-recognition coincided-with, followed, and was amplified-by; reading Colin Wilson's The Outsider, and parts of William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (especially Wilson's introduction to this). I was ready and primed for this reading; and/but the reading also interacted with my dawning self-awareness to accelerate it.  

Ever since that time, some half a century ago, I have believed that such moments as "touching minds" are among the most significant in life - and this significance somehow transcends the moment, and has almost nothing to do with what happens afterwards; and also that the great bulk of our life (including most of our relationships with other people) are, by comparison, trivial.

At first, I imagined that this new knowledge would enable me to transform my own life positively - for example by having more of these enriching mind-touching experiences, more often and with more people. 

At first I supposed that this lack of mind-touching was due to the undoubted presence of those defensive shells or manipulative pretences with which most people chose to surround themselves. Maybe if these shells could perhaps be dissolved mutually, or the self-image unilaterally cracked... Maybe we could live in realities rather than images? 

But I soon discovered that - once the mind's capacity for self-delusion had washed-out (and the touching of minds had become distinguished from sexual attraction!) - this was, beyond a rather limited point, not something to be got by wanting, nor even by striving.      

This early conclusion was, I now think, a correct generalization about life; and one that tends to lead to the condition of "romantic despair" so commonly found among the most reflective and responsive people. 

I mean the conclusion that the primary and most-valued of our experiences are relatively infrequent and temporary - and the bulk baseline of mundane living is second-level, and a majority of human relationships (even some that have frequent interactions, and are relatively long-term and intense), are apparently stuck at a level of indirect, distanced, symbolic "communication" - with a complete (or nearly complete) absence of mind-touching.  

The idea that the higher we have risen, the further we shall be compelled to fall - so that one who successfully sometimes "escapes" into a more intense, better, more creative and participatory - more real world; is "doomed" to a sharply-divided, and thereby tragic life...

In that the mundane and false troughs will always be our baseline; but can never be merged with the best of which Men are capable. 

This would be, and was, where matters rested - until after I began to understand more about the possibility (and choice) of Resurrection and Heaven; and how these post-mortal states are rooted in our mortal experiences and character.

Without that which Jesus did for us - life is a Tragedy, albeit it rises to the level of a comic-tragedy: fun and joys en route to a bad finale, the stage strewn with corpses: an unhappy ending. 

Whereas with Jesus; life is a Comedy, symbolized in Shakespeare by the open-ended possibilities of loving "marriage"...

Albeit that life is more like a tragi-comedy than a pure comedy - life usually being strewn with serious travails (including deaths) en route to that happiest of possible endings...

Which will include "touching minds" featuring as the normal, maybe universal, form of relationship; instead of being a rare and fleeting experience.  

Heaven will also be, as Tolkien stated at the conclusion of his essay On Fairy Stories; the fulfilment of the romantic impulse as it applies to Faery. 

In conclusion; it seems to me that, as Kocher suggested, the incompatibility between Faery and the mundane world, between the realm of Fantasy and ordinary life, was and is insoluble in mortal life. Tolkien never found an answer to it, because there is no answer to be had. 

But if Faery is seen to be a glimpse of some aspects of Heaven, much as "touching minds" is a brief experience of normal relationships in Heaven; then a Christian can look forward with confidence to living whatever is good and valid in Faery on the other side of death...

Such that the relatively brief glimpses of enchantment Tolkien (and others) experience, will also be discovered to have served as both incentive and permanent memories throughout eternal resurrected life...

Much as Tolkien himself described allegorically in Leaf by Niggle.  

   

**

Note: The above derived from reflections provoked by yet-another engagement with JRR Tolkien's great essay On Fairy Stories.  

Faery by John T Kruse - 2020; the elves of folklore compared with those of Tolkien

I have been reading some of the work of John T Kruse on the subject of fairies; especially  - especially his Faery: a guide to the lore, magic and world of the Good Folk (2020) - which is, by far, the single most informative and readable work on the subject I have encountered. 

Elf is the usual name for such people among Anglo-Saxons and ancient Scandinavians, and this survived into the Middle Ages and beyond in the Scottish Borders - where they form the subject of numerous ballads. 

The word "Fairy" is a more recent, French-derived import - spreading from the metropolis. 

I also read his annotated collection Fairy Ballads and Rhymes (2020) - which features and discusses the fairy-referencing Ballads (mostly originating from the Marches of Northumberland and Cumberland and the southernmost counties of Scotland). 

Some of my particular favourite examples of these include Thomas the Rhymer, and Tam Lin - to which I would add (although it is not included here) Willy O' Winsbury. 

Another perhaps fairy is the protagonist of Long Lankin (or, in Northumbrian Lang Lonkin) - the site of whose exploits we recently encountered during a walk. In his novel about the return of the elves, Lords and Ladies; Terry Pratchett names the Fairy Queen's (especially cruel) lieutenant Lankin - and this certainly fits some versions of the ballad (although this is not the usual explanation).  

Once you have tuned-into fairy references in literature and song, which are often implied rather than explicit; then you can see they may be present at a pretty high frequency. For example in the Arthurian stories - where Wendy Berg and Gareth Knight have both argued that nearly-all of the women, including Guinevere, are probably fairies. 

What has this to do with the elves of JRR Tolkien? Not very much! 

Tolkien's elves - as depicted in The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - have little relationship to folklore and are mostly his own creation. 

Indeed the high elves of Middle Earth (who are the focus of the stories) were at first called fairies; (in poems then the Lost Tales) then called Gnomes until a pretty advanced stage of publication. Although the Gnome name was chosen for its etymological link to knowledge (as in "gnosis"), rather than from its previous usage in folklore, magic etc. 

(Only after garden gnomes - which are more like mini-caricature-dwarves - became popular between the wars, did Tolkien drop the name.)  

If you want Ballad or folklore elves, you can find them (more or less) in Alan Garner's first two novels, Terry Pratchett, and Susanna Clarke's stories - and many other places, including the more authentic fairy stories, such as those of the Grimm brothers.  

Within Tolkien's oeuvre the closest are the Mirkwood elves, in The Hobbit

The feasting people were Wood-elves, of course. These are not wicked folk. If they have a fault it is distrust of strangers. Though their magic was strong, even in those days they were wary. They differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise. For most of them (together with their scattered relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West... In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost. They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk. Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People. 

Tolkien's emphasis on elves as Good People is un-ironic, and is a symptom of the fact that his understanding of faery folk originally derived from literary sources; rather than folklore - where the appellation "good" is apparently fear-motivated and propitiatory.  

However, in the writings of Morgoth's Ring (volume ten of The History of Middle Earth) Tolkien made provision for the transformation of his genuinely good elves, into the much more ambiguous elves of folklore; when he described the fate and nature of the "lingerers" - those elves who refused to migrate to the undying lands when their time was ended: 

It would seem that in these after-days more and more of the Elves, be they of the Eldalie in origin or be they of other kinds, who linger in Middle-earth now refuse the summons of Mandos, and wander houseless in the world, unwilling to leave it and unable to inhabit it, haunting trees or springs or hidden places that once they knew. 

Not all of these are kindly or unstained by the Shadow. Indeed the refusal of the summons is in itself a sign of taint....

The Unbodied, wandering in the world, are those who at the least have refused the door of life and remain in regret and self-pity. Some are filled with bitterness, grievance, and envy. Some were enslaved by the Dark Lord and do his work still, though he himself is gone. They will not speak truth or wisdom. 

To call on them is folly. To attempt to master them and to make them servants of one own's will is wickedness. Such practices are of Morgoth; and the necromancers are of the host of Sauron his servant.

This is all much closer to the folklore and ballad descriptions detailed by John T Kruse in his Faery compilations. 

The passage indicates that Tolkien saw value in explaining how the nature and reputation of elves had undergone such a transformation from the era of his Legendarium down into recorded history. 

We can also note how thoroughly Tolkien had left-behind his early "Victorian" attitude to fairies* as tiny, pretty creatures who were harmless when not benign - but never scary or wicked. 

  

*Most notoriously evident in his very early, and quite popular anthology, poem Goblin Feet; which Tolkien later detested - but which, at the time of its composition in 1915, was typical of his fairy writings.  

Aunt Grace Day - A new Tolkien tradition established: March 3rd

Last week, my wife and I decided to establish a new tradition of celebrating the anniversary day of the death of JRR Tolkien's Aunt Grace, by laying some flowers on her grave - this being the most tangible link between JRRT and Newcastle upon Tyne.  

The most chilling lines in The Lord of the Rings...

From The Two Towers "Shelob's Lair" (slightly edited):

‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ Gollum said often to himself, when the evil mood was on him, as he walked the dangerous road from Emyn Muil to Morgul Vale, ‘we’ll see. 

'It may well be, O yes, it may well be that when Shelob throws away the bones and the empty garments, we shall find it, we shall get it, the Precious, a reward for poor Smeagol who brings nice food. 

'And we’ll save the Precious, as we promised. O yes. 

'And when we’ve got it safe, then She’ll know it, O yes, then we’ll pay Her back, my precious. 

'Then we’ll pay everyone back!’

Then we'll pay her back... Then we'll pay everyone back!

These sentences from Gollum/ Smeagol chill me, deeply, whenever I read or hear them. 

Here we have encapsulated the power of that most evil of motivations: spiteful resentment. 

The self-righteous, insatiable, lust for revenge.

The will to hurt, to destroy every-one, every-thing... all of divine creation. 

Was this JRR Tolkien's holiday home in Newcastle upon Tyne?

9 St George's Terrace, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne - photographed in 2024; 

this is where JRR Tolkien's Aunt Grace and Uncle William lived.  

John Benjamin and Mary Jane Tolkien had eight children. The oldest was Arthur Reuel, who was JRR Tolkien's father. The third born was a daughter Grace Bindley Tolkien (1861–1947). 

Grace married William Charles Mountain, and they lived in the Newcastle upon Tyne area at 9 St George’s Terrace, Jesmond; South Street, Hexham; Sheriff Hill, Gateshead; and in Sydenham Terrace, Newcastle.

According to Alan Myers; Tolkien visited Newcastle upon Tyne in each of the years from 1910–1912. 

If so, then he would have stayed either at the above house in St George's terrace, or else in Sydenham Terrace, a parade of spacious properties, now demolished, which stood south of Exhibition Park. 

Part of Sydenham Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne photographed in 1909.

These houses were evidently considerably larger (and more expensive) than that which the Mountain family had earlier inhabited in St George's Terrace - as would be expected from the increasing status and prosperity of Uncle William Mountain. 

Which of these places is most likely for the young Tolkien to have visited? It seems that the relevant part of St George's Terrace was previously called Moor View and had been built 1882-5; and Syndenham Terrace(above) was photographed in 1909 - so both houses had been built before the time of Tolkien's presumed visits in 1910-12. 

Aunt Grace apparently died in 1947 while living in Sydenham Terrace. So the question is whether she had been living there for some forty years or if in 1910 she was resident in St George's Terrace. 

Perhaps she was in Jesmond in 1910. There was still still plenty of time to move to living the other two listed houses - in Hexham and Gateshead - before finally returning to Sydenham Terrace in Newcastle. 

"Anxiety of Influence" can be powerful and harmful - Alan Garner and JRR Tolkien

It is some decades since I read Harold Bloom's 1973 book "The Anxiety of Influence". The idea I retain from it is that a "strong" (and would-be "major") writer will sometimes (I recall that Bloom says always, which isn't true - but let's say "sometimes") have his work shaped by the "anxiety" of his major precursor. 

So that the Roman poet Virgil's work was shaped by his own sense of debt to the Greek poet Homer. 

Bloom's idea is that the earlier major poet casts a shadow and exerts such an influence that the later poet must either engage-with and transcend the earlier poet - or else be resigned to being a derivative and second-rate version of the earlier poet. 

If this goes well; the later writer will be the equal of, but qualitatively different from, the earlier poet. 

But if this fails - if the later author fails positively to transcend the earlier writer, yet is compelled by "anxiety" to make his own work as different as possible; then the result will merely be that the later author negatively reacts-against the earlier. 

I see this latter negative, reacting-against, version of the anxiety of influence; in the relationship between Alan Garner and JRR Tolkien.

Garner's earliest works were The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. I like these both very much, especially Gomrath; and have re-read them multiple times. 

But they were clearly deeply indebted to Tolkien, and in his shadow. 

These books were indeed significantly different in form; being set in modern times, with a parallel occult magical world breaking-into the protagonist's lives. The magical world is also of a much more folkloric nature than Tolkien's autonomous world-building.

Nonetheless, the Tolkien influence is undeniable. 

 

Garner continued on this line with his next two books, Elidor and The Owl Service. 

Elidor does not work for me; but The Owl Service (1967) is both powerful and original in its use of a Mabinogion atmosphere and theme - probably Garner's "best book", qua book. 

These two later books introduce themes very different from Tolkien - an increasingly psychologically-tormented male protagonist, and socialist-type elements of class-conflict and -resentment. These are both autobiographical themes for Alan Garner*; as evident in his book of essays The Voice that Thunders.

Elidor and Owl Service also eschew the "eucatastrophic" (Tolkien's word) happy endings of classic fairytale; although OS has a satisfying sense of closure.

But Elidor, in particular, ends very abruptly with an atmosphere of pessimism and disgust, almost despair. 

 

Garner has often spoken either slightingly, or in a definitely hostile way, about JRR Tolkien and his work; and about both of the first two - and most obviously Tolkien-esque - books. 

Tolkien and garner indeed shared several strikingly similar characteristics, personal experiences, and professional interests.  

Tolkien's background was lower middle class. His childhood and young adult sufferings were (I think) much greater than Garner's, since Tolkien's childhood was distinctly impoverished. He was orphaned age twelve, and served in the First World War on the frontlines. Many close friends were killed. 

By contrast, Garner had a loving family background among the upper working classes of rural Cheshire. He did a short period of compulsory Army National Service during peacetime. His main unusual sufferings were three prolonged and severe, life-threatening, childhood illnesses. 

Both Tolkien and Garner were scholarship boys at famous and academically-rigorous old Grammar Schools in their nearby cities. Both joined the Army after school; and both went on to Oxford University to study Classics (Literae Humaniores) - with ambitions to become an academic; and both had an academically-undistinguished first couple of years. 

However, here their biographies diverge. 

Tolkien changed to an English degree, discovered his true academic interest, became a philologist, a full-time academic, and eventually a Professor. His major writings were done part-time, in his meagre spare time; for his own personal motivations, and without regard to making-a-living. 

Garner dropped-out of Oxford without taking a degree in 1956, shortly after Tolkien had published The Lord of the Rings. From then onwards, Garner was a full-time professional author; and either needed to accept state or personal subsidies, or make a living from his writing to support his family.

Garner was an excellent writer; but from age 22 his whole life became focused on writing, publishing, selling books etc. 

And in terms of making a living from writing, it became evident that the more Tolkienian were Garner's books, the more popular they were and the money they made. 

Weirdstone is still, by some distance, Garner's best-selling book on Amazon. 

It is my inference, but it seems evident that Garner's anxiety of influence therefore got worse with time. The less Tolkien-esque he was, the less successful were his books...

He desired to be a major writer, and had great talent in that direction - but, as with many other full-time professional writers - I get a sense of running-out of things to say; and a change to focusing on form rather than content.

A sense of focusing on how the book is written, more than what the book is "about".  

This is, I believe, one of the reasons for literary "modernism" and the stylistically and structurally "experimental writings" of the 1920s and 30s; such as Joyce's Ulysses, Eliot's The Waste Land, and the like. 

So, rather belatedly, Garner made a decisive break with the earlier Tolkien-esque stories; and wrote Red Shift (1973) - which is extremely difficult to follow, and very experimental and stylized in its structure and prose. 

Yet which is underneath (as with Ulysses) somewhat banal and stereotyped, melodramatic, in its action and emotions. 

RS also ends extremely negatively; in disgust, extreme pessimism, and despair; with the tormented male protagonist descending into psychosis - and a coded intention of suicide. 

Since Red Shift; Garner has continued to write in a broadly similar deliberately obscure and experimental style - and typically aimed at adults, rather than children or adolescents. 

His books are critically acclaimed in the high-brow media, and have "garnered" and sustained a dedicated - almost fanatical - cult following. 

Yet they are not popular because they are not enjoyable, and don't sell well. 

This outcome seems, from what he says, to have hardened and intensified Garner's negative reaction-against Tolkien and his earlier Tolkien-indebted fictions. 

He has doubled-down on his modernistic experimentations; obscurity, the puzzle-like decoding required of the reader.  

But, in terms of quality, there has been a price to pay - and this includes a pervasive atmosphere of horror, misery, resentment, bitterness - and hopelessness.  

The recurrence of suicide as a theme, or resolution, is especially telling - and dismaying. 

Such have been, by my judgment, the extremities of the phenomenon of anxiety of influence for a very talented writer. 

I am sympathetic about Garner's dilemma, and the problem is genuine. 

But I believe he made wrong choices, fell into endorsing wrong attitudes; and has chronically refused to repent his errors. 

*This relatively late arrival of autobiographical themes, strikes me as retrogressive. Autobiographical concerns ought, I feel, to be worked-through at an early stage (a classic "first novel" concern!) - and something a writer transcends as his work proceeds. But in the case of professional authors, with their writing-focused lives; it seems they feel compelled to dredge their own lives - often of their pre-writing lives - over and again; for lack of any other personally-motivating theme. Either that or they start writing-about-writing!

 

Gimli the Dwarf is the only non-Hobbit point-of-view character in The Lord of the Rings

I was only in the past few years that I noticed that the Dwarf Gimli is (I think) the only point-of view character in The Lord of the Rings who is not a Hobbit. 

For all the rest of the book, when there is direct report of the consciousness of a character, it is always Frodo, Sam, Merry or Pippin. 

But for just a couple of pages it is Gimli. No other character is given such a distinction.  

The Gimili perspective passage is near the end of the chapter "The Passing of the Grey Company", and describes the Dwarf's inner reactions, especially his almost paralysing fear, as he walks the Paths of the Dead inside the Dwimorberg - the Haunted Mountain.   

I think the Gimli POV passage is easily missed, because it is short and seamlessly bracketed by the normal third person narrative. It begins just after :

And there stood Gimli the Dwarf left all alone. His knees shook, and he was wroth with himself.  

The report of Gimli's inner narrative starts with: "it seemed to him that he dragged his feet like lead over the threshold; and at once a blindness came upon him...". 

And we continue revisiting Gimli's inner reactions until: "the Dwarf saw before his face the glitter in the Elf's bright eyes."

After which we hear no more of Gimli's stream of consciousness. 

I find this a fascinating exception to Tolkien's self-imposed rule throughout LotR to "see" the events of Middle Earth and the story through the mediating consciousness of a Hobbit. 

Indeed, it seems that Gimli is here taking the role of a "surrogate Hobbit" - presumably because there are no Hobbits present, and perhaps Gimli's mind is in some ways the most suitable for the job. 

But why is Gimli most suitable? 

Well the alternatives among characters of the Fellowship present at this time; are Legolas and Aragorn. 

Legolas is perhaps regarded as too strange, too much a part of the "high" and enchanted phenomena of Middle Earth to be a suitable mediator. As an Elf, Legolas is not scared by the atmosphere of the Paths of the Dead, nor by the presence of the ghosts of Men. 

And much the same applies to Aragorn, at this point and in this context. Aragorn a Numenorean, partly elish; and has chosen to take the Paths and is leader of the Company; and he does so by ancient right and prophecy. 

Therefore the reader cannot readily identify with Aragorn's point of view - at least not at this particular point of the narrative.

Gimli is chosen, I believe; because, although of a different race than Men, we can in this situation easily identify with him. 

He is terrified by the experience, as we also would be if we found ourselves in the same situation. 

And probably also because Gimli is established by this point as a likeable and realistically-flawed character - a "rough diamond" whose emotions run close to the surface, and are less tightly disciplined than those of Aragorn and Legolas.  

Anyway; it seems that the Gimli-focused passage works well enough to do the job of putting the reader emotionally into the situation in the absence of any Hobbit; and without drawing attention to itself as breaking Tolkien's own rules about a Hobbit-centric story.