{"id":3591,"date":"2021-06-30T17:50:56","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T17:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=3591"},"modified":"2021-09-30T18:33:31","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T18:33:31","slug":"rustics-the-ring-and-the-lure-of-immortality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/30\/rustics-the-ring-and-the-lure-of-immortality\/","title":{"rendered":"Rustics, the Ring, and the Lure of Immortality"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

Rustics, the Ring, and the Lure of Immortality:\nUnderstanding Tolkien through His Letters\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Tolkien\u2019s letters give us glimpses of the writer\u2019s life, his inspirations, and the basis of his hopes for a world he saw steadily slipping away.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

By Michael Toscano
<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Sir Stanley Unwin, head of George Allen & Unwin, took a risk publishing The Hobbit<\/em> in September 1937, after a strong review by his young son. Sir Stanley was rewarded with high sales and readers looking for more information on hobbits. He wanted a sequel brought to market quickly. J.R.R. Tolkien, an Oxford philologist shocked by the reception of his little book, replied by letter, \u201cI will start something soon, & submit to your boy at the earliest opportunity.\u201d<\/p>

Start something soon, Tolkien did; but it was not until October 1948, eleven years later, that he wrote to a friend: \u201cI succeeded at last in bringing the \u2018Lord of the Rings\u2019 to a successful conclusion.\u201d<\/p>

As we find in the 1981 edition of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien,<\/em> compiled and published after his death by his biographer Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien, his son and literary executor, Tolkien\u2019s hopes of a quick go at it snagged on a thicket of interruptions\u2014professional busyness, family obligations, bouts of melancholy. But nothing delayed him more than the story itself, which shifted in his hands. It forced backwards revisions repeatedly as ideas dimly grasped at the outset became understood. Even the nature of the Ring and the quest to destroy it\u2014that is, the plot\u2014was not discovered until far into the writing.<\/p>

It wasn\u2019t until 1954, another six years later, that Sir Stanley got the book to readers. Tolkien\u2019s correspondences over these seventeen years form the heart of The Letters, <\/em>which span the period from 1914 to Tolkien\u2019s death in 1973; and they show that the book, to quote Lady Galadriel, stood \u201cupon the edge of a knife.\u201d Be it a work of Heaven or just a million happy accidents along the way (Tolkien, near the end of his life, appears to have concluded the former), a masterpiece was delivered. The Letters <\/em>peer into his struggle to give form to the matter in his mind. The thing inside him that got it done, the compressing force within that made a unity of the sundry deposits of taste, learning, and experience, The Letters<\/em> show, was his intense desire to make art that elevated the parochial\u2014quite literally the country bumpkin\u2014to the height of world history. At a time, such as ours, when all men, like it or not, are drawn into politics and the struggle for civilization, for the smaller among us Tolkien expresses hope for a good ending to the story of our age\u2014and The Letters<\/em> tell the story behind the story.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Over the course of his 81 years, Tolkien witnessed old worlds pass away and new worlds replace them.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

They also show that Tolkien was a credible witness to the times. Over the course of his 81 years (1892 to 1973), Tolkien witnessed old worlds pass away and new worlds replace them. He spent his formative childhood years in Sarehole, a small hamlet just south of Birmingham. It was the inspiration for the Shire, home of Bag End. In a 1955 letter to Allen & Unwin, Tolkien writes, \u201c[The Shire] is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee.\u201d It was green and full of life, and the works of its people touched nature lightly there. If Tolkien was nostalgic for a lost world, it was his own, and it disappeared within his lifetime. He wrote in 1958, \u201cI… lived my early years in \u2018the Shire\u2019 in a pre-mechanical age.\u201d<\/p>

He was there at the Somme (1916), one of the deadliest battles in human history, where the weary old European order sent its young men to be crushed under the wheels of the first machine war. In the carnage of almost a million casualties, Tolkien lost two of his dearest friends, G.B. Smith and Robert Gilson, who shared his love of poetry, languages, and art, and whose companionship elevated Tolkien intellectually. In Tolkien and the Great War<\/em>, John Garth recounts:<\/p>

From Tolkien\u2019s school [King Edward\u2019s], 243 died; from his college [Exeter], 141. From Oxford University as a whole, nearly one in five servicemen was killed, considerably more than the national average…<\/em><\/p>

Tolkien wrote later, \u201cBy 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.\u201d<\/p>

No man on earth could have been prepared for such a blow, but if one ever was, it was Tolkien. At the age of four \u201cDaddy\u201d died in faraway Bloemfontein, South Africa. \u201cMother\u201d died eight years later in a diabetic coma, cut off from financial support by both sides of the family because she became Catholic. \u00a0As he wrote to his son Michael in 1965, \u201cWhen I think of my mother\u2019s death… worn out with persecution, poverty, and… disease, in an effort to hand on to us small boys the Faith… I find it very hard and bitter, when my children stray away [from the Church].\u201d<\/p>

Tolkien knew grief, but he held to the promise of final victory. \u201cActually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic,\u201d he wrote to an inquiring fan in 1956, \u201cso that I don\u2019t expect \u2018history\u2019 to be anything but a \u2018long defeat\u2019\u2014though it contains… some samples or glimpses of final victory.\u201d<\/p>

In Mabel Tolkien\u2019s final maternal act in 1904, with \u201cRonald,\u201d as she called him, aged twelve and Hilary ten, she entrusted her sons to Mother Church, placing them in the kindly hands of Father Francis Xavier Morgan, a priest of the Birmingham Oratory, which had been founded by Saint John Henry Newman less than 60 years prior. Fr. Francis was there at Mabel\u2019s bedside in her final hours, but she was too weak to be administered viaticum. Her sons passed to him as wards.<\/p>

The Oratorian was pious and true to his word. He demanded that Ronald take his education at King Edward\u2019s seriously, and the young man excelled in classics and extra curriculars. Ronald developed a refined taste for words. As much as he loved Latin, Greek, French, and German, he took up as a hobby more specialized languages, such as Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, and the recently-reconstructed Gothic. He became interested in philology, the study of the evolution of languages through literature, and could be pleased by the simple phonetics of speech the way others might be moved by a melody or verse. Tolkien began to play at making his own (elegant and basically real) languages, out of a desire to hear words spoken in a delightful way.<\/p>

Fr. Francis was a spiritual father, too, drawing the boys deeply into the life of the Oratory, requiring that they serve Mass (almost) daily before hurrying off to school. Looking back, Tolkien thought the life \u201cstrict,\u201d but he was grateful for it and referred lovingly to his guardian as his \u201csecond father.\u201d Years later (in 1965), Tolkien\u2019s son Michael wrote to him seeking counsel, his faith teetering, it appears, because of scandalous priests. \u201c[I\u2019ve known] snuffy, stupid, undutiful, conceited, ignorant, hypocritical, lazy, tipsy, hardhearted, cynical, mean, grasping, vulgar, snobbish, and even (at a guess) immoral priests,\u201d Tolkien replied. But no matter, because Fr. Francis \u201coutweighs them all.\u201d<\/p>

He added: \u201cThe only cure for sagging of fainting faith is Communion.\u2026 Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals.\u201d His love for the Holy Mass is a recurring theme in The Letters,<\/em> as in this rhapsodic note of 1941: \u201cOut of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth:<\/p>

the Blessed Sacrament…. There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, by the taste… of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man\u2019s heart desires.<\/em><\/p>

Of the \u201cglimpses of final victory\u201d Tolkien caught sight of, Holy Communion was the chief.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The wisdom of Tolkien\u2019s hobbit stories is his grasp that, in this late hour in history, the great and cosmopolitan fail as stand-ins for \u201cmankind.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.\u201d That much we know. But what are hobbits and where do they come from?<\/p>

After years of futile search into the question of hobbits, in 1970 no less than the Oxford English Dictionary asked Tolkien directly, confident he was drawing on some obscure text as their origin. Having worked on the letter \u2018W\u2019 in the 1928 edition, Tolkien was personally familiar with the OED\u2019s methods. He didn\u2019t give them what they wanted. Hobbits:<\/p>

One of an imaginary people, a small variety of the human race, that gave themselves this name (meaning \u2018hole-dweller\u2019) but were called by others <\/em>halflings, since they were half the height of normal Men.<\/em><\/p>

A credible source for hobbits beyond Tolkien\u2019s mind has never been found. They are something new; entirely his own. Yet we accept them instantly as if they were quite familiar. Tom Shippey, a scholar of Middle and Old English literature and a Tolkien expert, put it this way: \u201c[Tolkien] was able to imagine and to make real things which nobody had ever thought about before… [such as] hobbits. \u2018Hobbit\u2019 even sounds like a proper English word, but it isn\u2019t. He made it up.\u201d<\/p>

Tolkien recalls the moment they came to him. When grading student papers, to his delight he found a blank sheet. He scrawled:<\/p>

\u201cIn a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.\u201d<\/em><\/p>

He adds, \u201cNames always generate a story in my mind. Eventually I thought I\u2019d better find out what hobbits were like.\u201d<\/p>

Stories really did arrive in his mind like that, not whole, not refined; but real and demanding further attention. He didn\u2019t pre-select a moral to teach, and only vaguely understood the thematic implications of them during the writing. As we can see in The Letters,<\/em> this makes him an odd commentator on his own stories. He wants readers to receive them the same way he did: as real. Which also makes him, in the long run, an illuminating guide, because he has something like an outsider\u2019s perspective on his own works.<\/p>

Tolkien did, in time, discover that hobbits had an inspiration. The origin was quite plain: \u201cHobbits are just rustic English people.\u201d They are \u201cmade small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination\u2014not the small reach of their courage or latent power.\u201d The smallness of their imagination Tolkien knew from his childhood in Sarehole. Their courage and power he encountered in the Great War, where it \u201cwent over the top\u201d time and again to meet its end. The wisdom of Tolkien\u2019s hobbit stories is his grasp that, in this late hour in history, the great and cosmopolitan fail as stand-ins for \u201cmankind.\u201d The parochial and, well, ignorant are the era’s universal. The mass of readership evidently agrees with Tolkien on this point. They see themselves reflected in these small persons, swept up into world-defining events, weak things\u2014but important things\u2014called to do great things in an age of Great Powers.<\/p>

The dramatic value of the hobbits is that they must reach for higher things and become subjects for \u201cennoblement\u201d (Letters 163 and 181). Without the burden of the quest, which can be borne only by progress in humility (or a magnification of spirit, depending on their role), the hobbits would be mere props. Instead, they grow in moral stature as they journey on. Some quite literally grow taller.<\/p>

And as for the Great Ones, the hobbits force them to grow, too\u2014to grow in their appreciation of the small. As Thorin put it on his deathbed: \u201cIf more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.\u201d<\/p>

In The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, Gondor and the Shire complete each other. They are parts\u2014one great, one small\u2014of an imperial whole that has been severed by decline. The Shire became backwards in its detachment from the higher concerns of Gondor, and Gondor governs emptily without the Shire, decaying from continuation without purpose. Without the Shires\u2019 simplicity and gentleness calling the eyes of the great downward, the ruling elite become unmoored from the people. This is what happened to Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, who became trapped in the opulent confines of his lofty tower and fell into despair; unlike Th\u00e9oden, who rose from his spiritual tomb by taking up arms with the people in their struggle against the enemy and leading the final charge, even unto death.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Arise, arise, Riders of <\/em>Th\u00e9oden!<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fell deeds awake; fire and slaughter!<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, <\/em><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>

Th\u00e9oden dies on the battlefield among his people. Denethor burns in the tower above, a useless suicide at a desperate hour.<\/p>

There is a hidden dream of Tolkien\u2019s working in the background here, giving shape to the story. The \u201ctale ends in what is… like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome,\u201d Tolkien writes. If the Shire is England, and Gondor is Rome, then victory brings nothing less than the restoration of Christendom and the reunion of Merry Old England with the See of Peter.<\/p>

In one of the most interesting letters in the collection, Tolkien imagines a new conclusion to The Lord of the Rings. <\/em>In it, Gollum steals the Precious back from his master, and out of love for both the Ring and Frodo, he casts himself into the fire, destroying and possessing his heart\u2019s desire in one sublime act. He saves Middle-earth, his liberator, and his soul, while never relinquishing that which he craved most. Gollum would have been a tragic hero, and the maker of a vastly different story.<\/p>

But it was not meant to be. Why so? Well, Samwise\u2014in whose \u201cmental myopia,\u201d his \u201csmugness,\u201d \u201ccocksureness, and a readiness to… sum up all things from a limited experience,\u201d has convinced himself that Smeagol is irredeemable. So when Frodo, by pity, works the unearthing of Smeagol from within the mental abyss of Gollum, setting him\u2014quite possibly!\u2014down the path of redemption, Sam botches it. He cannot grasp the potential for Smeagol\u2019s repentance, so he attacks him; Gollum, in self-defense, reasserts himself. As Tolkien writes,<\/p>

For me perhaps the most tragic moment in the Tale comes… when Sam fails to note the complete change in Gollum\u2019s tone and aspect… His repentance is blighted and all of Frodo\u2019s pity is (in a sense) wasted. Shelob\u2019s lair becomes inevitable.<\/em><\/p>

Sam, \u201cthe most closely drawn character, the successor to Bilbo of the first book, the genuine hobbit,\u201d and arguably the hero of the tale, also secures the damnation of one turning from darkness to the light.<\/p>

In sum, Tolkien might delight in these \u201crustics,\u201d but he has no illusion as to their natural perfection, nor that of their homeland, however much he might love it.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Tolkien was inside the tradition in a way that his literary heirs are simply not.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

When I was a boy, nine or ten years old (I can\u2019t remember exactly), I was reading The Fellowship of the Ring<\/em>. This next part I remember vividly. The fellowship was winding its way through the darks of Moria, seeking passage to the other side of the mountain. Frodo hears a faint patter of feet behind him. Something follows. After a long march, the fellowship stops to rest.<\/p>

A deep silence fell…. Frodo was on guard. As if it were a breath that came in through unseen doors out of deep places, dread came over him… His watch was nearly over, when… he fancied that he could see two pale points of light, almost like luminous eyes. He started.<\/em><\/p>

Just then, I gasped aloud and pulled the book from my face. I was in the real world again. But I had seen those eyes<\/em>. For some time, I had stopped perceiving the written words and was watching the story as if present there.<\/p>

I\u2019m told by Men of Taste that Tolkien is a bad writer. I disagree. But I must admit, the craft didn\u2019t come as easily to him as it did to, say, Newman, Waugh, and even his pal C.S. Lewis, some contemporaries and near contemporaries of his whose work I enjoy. Those writers\u2019 prose has an easy beauty and subtle magic in every sentence. Tolkien was, by comparison, dwarvish: working at it and working at it, taking a hammer and chisel to hard rock, turning up rare stones, and with finer hews shaping them into elegant jewels.<\/p>

Critics also snigger at his use of the high style. His elevated tone, we are told, is as serious as boys playing with plastic swords in the yard. Rubbish. Perhaps no one writing at the time knew better than Tolkien\u2014who served as both the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature\u2014the broad evolution of the English tongue, from Old to Middle to modern, how it all relates and how best to adapt archaic speech to contemporary use.<\/p>

Across The Letters<\/em>, Tolkien enters the lists with well-meaning copy editors who, out of ignorance, were \u2018correcting\u2019 his deliberate choices to break with modern standardized English. They repeatedly opposed his “dwarves” and preferred the accepted “dwarfs,” for instance, and his manuscripts were \u2018improved\u2019 more than once to reflect it. But dwarves, Tolkien conjectured, was likely to be an older form of the word which conveyed something different from the dwarfish dwarfs of modern day. He preferred it, as Shippey explains,<\/p>

because the \u2013ves ending is a sign of a word\u2019s antiquity, and so its authenticity. Even in modern English, old words ending in \u2013f make their plural with \u2013ves, as long as they have remained in constant use: so hoof\/hooves, life\/lives, sheaf\/sheaves, loaf\/loaves. Dwarf\/dwarves might have developed the same way [Tolkien speculated], but clearly fell out of general use, and so was assimilated (probably by literates, schoolteachers, and printers) to the similar pattern of tiff(s), rebuff(s), and so on.<\/em><\/p>

Tolkien was unearthing old usages with which they were unfamiliar and which he thought still conceptually valuable to his story. They are. We know immediately that we are dealing with something other than diminutive \u201cdwarfs\u201d when the thirteen cross the threshold of Bilbo\u2019s door.<\/p>

The Letters<\/em> are a dream for those interested in English and other languages (including those Tolkien invented), as Tolkien is often called to explain the linguistic root of things in his works. Inevitably, this leads him to texts that only the utmost expert has ever heard of\u2014this fragment, that scrap, this legend, that tale. He is well versed in the Greek and Latin literature but unparalleled on the Northern mythologies. Tolkien was inside the tradition in a way that his literary heirs are simply not.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

That we can compel nature to give us whatever we want, whenever we want, is the foundational promise of modernity. Tolkien gives this power to the Ring, a specifically modern<\/em> power.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

When Bilbo and the Ring found each other, Gandalf guessed, knowing a thing or two about the world, that it was one of many magic rings, the kind that could be found beyond count on adventures like this one. The ring was to be treated with seriousness and care. It is \u201cdangerous for mortals,\u201d as Gandalf put it, but not \u201cperilous.\u201d<\/p>

Gandalf was wrong. It was the One Ring:<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.<\/em><\/p>

Its maker, its Lord, was none other than Sauron, a fallen angel who, Tolkien writes, was a leader in a \u201cSatanic rebellion\u201d against God.<\/p>

\u201cIn my story I do not deal in Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is Zero…. [Even] Satan fell,\u201d says Tolkien, sounding like St. Augustine in The Confessions<\/em>, who points out that, because of creation ex nihilo<\/em>, not even the devil is essentially evil. On the other hand, \u201cIn my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible.\u201d<\/p>

Being an angel, \u201c[Sauron] went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination.\u201d <\/em>This is, plainly, the Augustinian understanding of the libido dominandi<\/em> (i.e., the \u201clust of domination\u201d), which, in The City of God,<\/em> is defined as the chief aim of the City of Man: to dominate others by power. The peoples of the Earthly City are yoked by a threefold domination, by their own sins, the power of others, and the pride of demons. Demons feed the lust for the getting of riches and glory, and in return they exact the \u201cdivine honours and religious services… due to the true God.\u201d Outside of the City of God, the mass of men is enslaved by false worship to satisfy the pride of devils. Tolkien speaks like Augustine again when he says, \u201cSauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants.\u201d His aim was to capture the worship of all mankind, and to render it enslaved.<\/p>

When The Lord of the Rings<\/em> was released, fans searched for its deeper meaning, and their minds naturally moved to the atomic bomb. The Ring was atomic power, it was said. Tolkien disabused readers of this theory through his letters. The impulse was too limited. As Tom Shippey remarks in Author of the Century<\/em>, the Ring is clearly something from our time\u2014a Ring of Power is not found in the ancient literature, though magic rings certainly are. In that sense at least, it is a modern device, though in an antique setting.<\/p>

\u00a0But what is the Ring? It is the \u201cMachine,\u201d Tolkien writes,<\/p>

By [which] I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of developments of the inherent inner powers or talents \u2013 or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills.<\/em><\/p>

There are two parts to this, one of which we are already familiar: it is a tool used for the \u201cmotive of dominating\u201d to \u201ccoerc[e] other wills,\u201d to empower the lust for domination. The second part is new to this analysis, but it won\u2019t be new to the readers of Fare Forward<\/em>. It is the Baconian connection of science and power, which Tolkien describes sharply. As Bacon famously said,<\/p>

[Science] must force the apparent facts of nature into forms different to those in which they familiarly present themselves; and thus make them tell the truth about themselves, as torture may compel an unwilling witness to reveal what he has been concealing.<\/em><\/p>

That we can compel nature to give us whatever we want, whenever we want, is the foundational promise of modernity. Tolkien gives this power to the Ring, a specifically modern<\/em> power. It is not in the ancient literature because only modernity and its machine power could produce it.<\/p>

It is the power that plants seeds that produce fruit year-round, beyond the limits of the natural potency of the soil; the power that contracepts and aborts to feed \u2018the economy\u2019 with \u2018productive\u2019 workers, so that consumption need never stop; the power that binds<\/em> all persons into a single, worldwide \u2018social\u2019 web, promising to crystallize their individuality but instead absorbing them into the hivemind; the power that will realize the dream of Silicon Valley to go beyond the human, to conquer our flesh and death by becoming the transhuman. This, and so much else, is the power of the Ring.<\/p>

In The Hobbit, <\/em>Sauron went by the name \u201cNecromancer,\u201d and that is no accident: conquering death unnaturally is the quintessence of the Ring. Tolkien calls it the main theme of his mythos in several letters: \u201cDeath and the desire for deathlessness,\u201d \u201cDeath, and immortality,\u201d and \u201cthe hideous peril of confusing true \u2018immortality\u2019 with limitless serial longevity.\u201d For, in the world of Middle-earth, God grants deathlessness to elves, and he grants the \u201cgift of death\u201d to men, and with it the hope of an afterlife. Sauron exploits these gifts differently. The false promise of \u201cLongevity or counterfeit \u2018immortality,\u2019\u201d Tolkien says, \u201cis the chief bait of Sauron.\u201d Sauron tempts the elves to craft Great Rings of their own, the Three, to arrest change and stop time. As the burden of years grew heavier, where once they would take up arms to defend Middle-earth, they retreated into the shadows and became conservative \u201cembalmers\u201d\u2014using Sauronic power to freeze the natural world and halt the decline of their works. The temptation of men is simpler. The Ring will overthrow human nature itself. You will not die, it says, and essentially, \u201cyou will become like gods.\u201d In Newsweek<\/em>\u2019s recent headline, \u201cCan Blood from Young People Slow Aging? Silicon Valley Has Bet Billions It Will,\u201d Tolkien would have seen the workings of Lucifer and the Ring.<\/p>

The power of the Ring is contrasted with the power of just rule, and especially that of the king. After all, Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli, Treebeard, Th\u00e9oden, Faramir, and Aragorn, just to start with, have awesome power and use it violently for justice. This is a power that respects the natural ends of things, loves them as they are, and uses the might of warfare and the throne to help them accomplish their natural potential. Imperial rule is reestablished under Aragorn\u2019s seat, and with it, freedom and happiness reign. The Shire flourishes under the government of Elessar. But there is a spiritual dimension, too: the curse on the Dead Men of Dunharrow is lifted by the king\u2019s return. While Sauron enslaves the dead, the true king lifts their bonds.<\/p>

Still, there are evils against which kingly power and the strength of arms are no match. The tyranny of the demonic Ring could only be unmade by a priestly sacrifice, which, even though it failed under the fallible hands of Frodo, will not under the pierced hands of the High Priest of which he was a mere type. In this dark hour, the Kingly and the Priestly must take up the Two Swords to defeat Sauron, as Tolkien shows. But the Ring cannot be used. It must be cast into the fire from whence it came. For a Christian\u2014if Tolkien is right about its diabolism\u2014there is no other option, lest one becomes a demoniac by its use.<\/p>

In the end, I recommend The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien<\/em> to any priest or king who would strive against the Spirit of the Age. And let me not forget the small folk for whom Tolkien principally wrote. With the armies of darkness on the move, we need them to reach now for nobler and higher things. They would do well to enter the thought of one who, having witnessed some of the bleakest hours of this \u201clong defeat,\u201d never lost hope, but instead gave the world a shining glimpse of \u201cfinal victory\u201d; a victory which will be ultimately theirs, if only they hold fast.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Michael Toscano<\/strong> is a husband and father. He writes from Charlottesville, Virginia.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tolkien\u2019s letters give us glimpses of the writer\u2019s life, his inspirations, and the basis of his hopes for a world he saw steadily slipping away. By Michael Toscano<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","category-issue-12","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farefwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/1024px-Hobbit_Hole-Jeff-Hitchcock.jpg?fit=1024%2C678&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3591"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3654,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions\/3654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}