Quote:
Originally Posted by Inziladun
I don't think the song has any beauty, only cleverness. The latter can be applied equally to good or evil purpose.
|
I was thinking in terms of how Tolkien discusses the pleasure of language in "A Secret Vice". Most of what he says pertains to invented languages, but he does eventually get to discussing poetry. Here's a random sampling of his comments:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Tolkien, A Secret Vice
This idea of using the linguistic faculty for amusement is however deeply interesting to me. . . . The instinct for 'linguistic invention'--the fitting of notion to oral symbol, and pleasure in contemplating the new relation established is rational, and not perverted. . . .
Certainly it is the contemplation of the relation between sound and notion which is the main source of pleasure. We see it in an alloyed form in the peculiar keenness of the delight scholars have in poetry or fine prose in a foreign language . . . . This compensation remains a great freshness of perception of the word-form. . . .
The very word-form itself, of course, even unassociated with notions, is capable of giving pleasure--a perception of beauty,which if of a minor sort is not more foolish and irrational than being sensitive to the line of a hill, light and shade, or colour.. . .
There is purely artistic pleasure, keen and of a high order, in studying a Gothic dictionary from this point of view. . . .
It [the invention of languages] is also--like poetry--contrary to conscience, and duty; its pursuit is snatched from hours due to self-advancement, or to bread, or to employers. . . .
The communication factor has been very powerful in directing the development of language; but the more individual and personal factor--pleasure in articulate sound, and in the symbolic use of it, must not be forgotten for a moment. . . . [my bolding]
By way of epilogue, I may say that such fragments [his own poems in one of his invented languages] , nor even a constructed whole, do not satisfy all the instincts that go to make poetry. It is no part of this paper to plead that such inventions do so; but that they abstract certain of the pleasures of poetic composition (as far as I understand it) and sharpen them by making them more conscious. It is an attenuated emotion, but may be very piercing--this construction of sounds to give pleasure. The human phonetic system is a small-ranged instrument (compared with music as it has now become); yet it is an instrument, and a delicate one. . . .
In poetry [of our day] . . . it is the interplay and pattern of notions adhering to each word that is uppermost. The word-music, according to the nature of the tongue and the skill or ear (conscious or artless) of the poet, runs on heard, but seldom coming to awareness. . . . So little do we ponder word-form and sound-music, beyond a few hasty observations of its crudest manifestations in rhyme and alliteration, that we are unaware often that the answer is simply that by luck or skill the poet has struck out an air which illuminates the lines as a sound of music half-attended to may deepen the significance of some unrelated thing thought or read, while the music ran.
|
Sorry for the long quotation and the selectivity, but I think they demonstrate Tolkien's keen interest in how sound affects us, particularly patterned sound in language, both in invented languages and in living languages (or dead).
This fascination with sound is I think a major characteristic of the Goblins' song, its alliteration, its beat and emphasis and the way in which certain sounds are used very deliberately to suggest the sound of roaring fire. The poem even concludes with some 'created' words, "Ya hey!/Ya-harri-hey!/ Ya hoy!".
This isn't orcish grunting but suggests a delight in sound music. Maybe it's meant to suggest the goblins' delight in slaughter, but nonetheless, I think there is here something close to the linguistic pleasure that Tolkien speaks of.
And when we consider it beside the songs Bilbo makes up (in the chapter "Flies and Spiders'), on the spur of the moment, to attract and anger the spiders, I'm not sure how much the songs differ, other than the explicit details of being burnt in the goblin song. The same applies to the elves' song in "Barrels out of Bond".
I guess what I might be suggesting is that Tolkien enjoyed very much writing the goblin song and finding sounds to fit their nasty threats. It might not demonstrate the characteristics he ascribed to his own elven poetry of being "
over-pretty" and "
phonetically and semantically sentimental" but I do think it shows great pleasure and delight in linguistic form, "pleasure in articulate sound".