A rchive Date
[ 06-11-2004 ]
Category
[ Art & Literature ]
sub-Categoy
[ J. R Tolkien ]
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[http://www.inklingbooks.com/inklingblog/C1886987029/E2126398086/
How "Nordic" was Tolkien?
The Nazi glorification of "Nordic" culture has led some to see Nazi-like tendencies in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. But Tolkien's own letters tell a far different story.
Tolkien was well aware of a link between Nordic literature and European racism. He knew enough about the history of the idea to hint at how "Nordic" tales became linked with racism in a 1968 letter in which he associated his dislike for the word "Nordic," with "racialist theories" of "French origin."
Tolkien was referring to Count Arthur de Gobineau's 1853, Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines. As Hannah Arendt noted, Gobineau's basic idea was "that the fall of civilizations is due to the degeneration of races and the decay of races is due to a mixture of blood" with inferior races. That once respectable-sounding idea lay at the heart of the foulness of Nazi ideology.
At first Gobineau's ideas were poorly received because, as Arendt put it, "the liberal optimism of the victorious bourgeois wanted a new edition of the might-right theory" (Social Darwinism), rather than pessimism about "inevitable decay." It took half a century for that optimism to fade, and it took the huge death toll of World War I to make pessimism fashionable. Because Gobineau's master race was Germanic, his ideas, echoed by others, would prove particularly attractive in Germany. Unlike France, Germany had to explain a lost war. They did that by blaming another 'race' that was mixing with Germans - the Jews.
In that letter Tolkien went on to point out that racial theories glorifying the people of Northern Europe find no support in his writings. The Lord of the Rings concludes, he wrote, with a Gondorian empire centered on Minas Tirith that is "far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome than anything that would be devised by a Nordic." He also pointed out that in his invented mythology, "The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil."
Tolkien's ideal "Northern" culture (his favored term) was tempered by ideas passed from Mediterranean civilizations through the Judeo-Christian religion. It is not "Nordic" in any Gobineau sense. Tolkien had nothing but loathing for the sort of "Nordic" thinking being championed in Germany while he was writing The Lord of the Rings.
Notes:
This article is adapted from "Blending the Northern with the Mediterranean in Chapter 3 of Untangling Tolkien. Tolkien's 1968 letter quoted here is No. 294 in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien . In that same letter, Tolkien described his love for Latin languages, particularly Spanish. Hannah Arendt's remarks are from her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 172-73
Romance in William Morris and J. R. R. Tolkien
The writings of William Morris may explain why there is so little romance in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
William Morris (1834-1896), a brilliant nineteenth-century writer and artist, was one of the first to modernize and popularize the tales of ancient Northern European literature. He blended it with traditional folk and fairy tales and wrote in the style of novels to create some of the first fantasy stories. Tolkien would follow in his footsteps.
In a 1914 letter to his wife-to-be, Edith, Tolkien wrote of hoping to "turn one of the stories" in the Finnish epic Kalevala "into a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris' romances." In a letter written at the end of 1960, Tolkien explained one way Morris influenced him. Some readers had wondered if parts of his stories reflected his experiences in the Battle of the Somme during World War I. Tolkien said they did, but that more was owed, "to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains."
Morris was a marvelous writer and deserves to be better known among Tolkien fans. In him you'll find tales much like those in Tolkien. There's even a horse named Silverfax, not that different from Shadowfax, and a powerful (although evil) Gandolf. But it's also possible that Tolkien noticed what he considered a failing in Morris' heroes and corrected it in his stories. (Some might even say he overcorrected.)
Thiodolf, in The House of the Wolfings almost betrays his people because of his love for Hall-Sun, a goddess. Gold-mane, in The Roots of the Mountains, is drawn into war after becoming smitten by the lovely Sun-beam. In The Wood Beyond the World, Walter seems little more than an errand boy for the Maid he loves. It is she who tells him what they must do to escape the evil Mistress of the Wood. In The Well at the World's End, Ralph is distracted and led about, first by a Mysterious Lady and then by the pretty Ursula. In each tale, the men are handsome, strong warriors. But in each the impression is left that the women, for good or ill, are better at setting their minds on some great goal and achieving it. At the sight of a pretty face, Morris' men lose what little sense they have. They are more besmitten than heroic.
It's certainly difficult to find in either of Tolkien's two hobbit tales men who have fallen in love to the degree that you find in Morris. The story of Beren's "enchantment" as Luthien dances in the moonlight is, you might remember, in The Silmarillion, a totally different sort of book.
Of course, Aragorn certainly loves the lovely Arwen. But their 29 years of courtship, followed by 29 years of informal engagment, and 10 years of actual engagement - a total 68 years in which they spend almost all their time apart - make clear that Aragorn hasn't fallen into a love-sick state that leaves him incapable of doing anything but sigh in the moonlight.
Nor do Sam's romantic ties to Rose keep him from departing with his buddy Frodo for over a year, leaving her to flip the pages of a Shire calendar, wondering when he will come home. The closest anyone comes to being smitten in these tales is Eowyn's attraction for Aragorn (a woman for a man), and that ends in a marriage with Faramir that seems based as much on mutual respect as love.
Even the praise that Gimli, a short and ugly dwarf, has for Lady Galadriel is less romance than the awe a knight might feel for his queen in the Age of Chivalry. And without romance, Tolkien had little reason to give his central characters the usual movie star qualities.
So it is possible that, while Tolkien loved Morris' stories, he also felt that romance was taking too much away from the heroism of his leading men and, consciously or unconsciously, put little romance into The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In fact, in both stories the leading characters are bachelors in their fifties with no romances visible in their lives, something rather unusual in literature.
If you're like me, reading The Lord of the Rings inspired a desire to read more tales like Tolkien's. If so, you might want to check out the writings of a marvelous English writer named William Morris.
I first read The Lord of the Rings in the best of all circumstances. I was living on the Ein Hashofet Kibbutz in Israel and was given a couple of weeks vacation for Passover and Easter. I decided to put it to good use in what friends told me was one of the greatest of adventures - roving the Sinai Desert bouncing around in the back of a Bedouin pickup truck. In Jerusalem I picked up the three paperback volumes of the Unwin edition of Ring to keep me occupied. After that delightful experience I was "hooked" on Tolkien. On my way back to the states, I bought The Hobbit at London's Heathrow Airport.
You can imagine how unhappy I was later when I discovered that Tolkien hadn't written any other stories quite like those two. Of course, if you like elves, there's The Silmarillion. But I find elves a bit weird and prefer to read about wizards, men and especially hobbits in adventures that have more detail and personality development than The Silmarillion.
Even back then, I should have looked into William Morris. The same guy who had told me about Tolkien also told me about William Morris. But he talked about the Morris who created beautiful limited edition books through his famous Kelmscott Press, not the Morris who wrote like Tolkien. Check out The William Morris Society , and you'll see that there wasn't much in the arts that the ever-busy Morris did not do and do well. When he died in the fall of 1896 at the age of 62, the doctor noted on the death certificate that Morris had died from "having done more work than most ten men."
Like Tolkien, Morris loved the ancient sagas of Northern Europe and, again like Tolkien, he wrote adaptations of those tales for modern day readers. In a letter written at the end of 1960, Tolkien acknowledged his debt to Morris and told a Professor Forster that, although the "Death Marshes and the approaches to the Marannon" were related to his experiences as a World War I soldier in the 1916 Battle of the Somme, "they owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains."
Unfortunately, Morris books tend to go in and out of print and, even when they are available, often command outrageous prices as reprints sold to libraries. The world, I thought, needs inexpensive editions of Morris. And, being both an editor and publisher, I decided to create them, paying special attention to Tolkien fans.
Coming first were the two tales Tolkien specifically mentioned above. More to William Morris transformed Tolkien's 1960 remarks into the title of a book that would combine both Morris' great tales about brave warriors, The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains, into one book that would use a wide, double-column format to keep printing costs down. It included a Foreword to show the link between the two men and an introduction to each tale. Shortly afterward, I also released each book in separate hardback and paperback editions.
Next, I turned to remarks Tolkien made in the earliest of his published letters in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. In 1914 he wrote to his future wife, Edith, that he was hoping to turn one of the stories in the great Finnish epic, Kalevala, "into a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris' romances." Those words became the inspiration for Inkling's second set of Morris books, On the Lines of Morris' Romances. It contains Morris' two great romantic quests about travel to strange and distant places: The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World's End. I plan to release the single volume editions of each in the near future.
Those who are interested in Morris, might go to the William Morris Society or The William Morris Society of Canada
For those who would like to know more about the relationship between Morris and Tolkien, here are descriptions of stories by Morris that influenced Tolkien:
More to William Morris
The House of the Wolfings
The Roots of the Mountains
On the Lines of Morris' Romances
Posted: Wed - March 31, 2004 at 09:22 PM
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