*sailing around the room on this most glorious smokeship* 'Wheeeeeee! Thank you, Gandalf the Grey! Hoist the Jib! Belay the haubards!' (Um, what is that thing you belay as I think it's not haubards!)
We'll have to agree to disagree, Davem. But let me clarify, since I misquoted myself in my second post with 'space'. What I originally said was 'He is time and she is place' and I'm much happier with that, Goldberry as 'place' --'space' introduces a cosmic-Einstein-sci-fi quality that wasn't in my mind at all when I wrote that line. Mentally, I was within Arda, with a humming in my mind from something I'd never grasped before.
In my discussion of Tom I was speaking of the spirit of time in Arda, and it is the song of Arda that created and contains the land and its history-- well, I won't repeat my whole argument! In my discussion of Goldberry I was speaking of the spirit of a place in Arda that sums up what the land is meant to be.
There's no need for you to agree, Davem! I'd like to make sure, though, that you're disagreeing with my thought and not a more abstract interpretation that I didn't intend. I was seeing Goldberry as the spirit of the river with its riverbanks, not as the spirit of 'Space, the final frontier...' aiee, no!
This first sequence from the Shire through the Barrrowdowns has alway felt to me like a 'microcosmos' rehersal of the whole of the book -- the author trying out all the elements that will later reappear in a grander, larger way. Gildor and the starlight feast a precursor to Elrond and the Council, Old Man Willow a precursor to the ents, the Barrow a precursor to the the blasted lands around and in Mordor and the way through Sammath Naur to the cavern where the world, and souls, are won or lost.
I must say that Tom and Goldberry feel to me like they have something more in them (put there by Tolkien's mind and indeed by the back of Tolkien's mind, his mythic unconsciousness) in a way that Merry or Pippin or Frodo do not, that even Elrond or Galadriel do not. The psychology of Goldberry and Tom is elusive, their sayings are cryptic, self interest is never a part of their thoughts or the slightest temptation --as it is for Galadriel for all her wisdom and resonance as a character. Goldberry and Tom just do not talk or track like members of any of the races of Middle Earth.
Because I see this first section of the book through Barrowdowns as the writer's working his way into the themes of the book, playing with the elements that will later appear, as a microcosm of the whole of the book and the whole of the land, and because Tom and Goldberry DO feel different from all other characters, I'm very comfortable with viewing them on multiple levels: as specific characters, as mysterious and mythic beings intimately connected with the Shire, the old forest, the Brandywine, and the Withywindle, and as the heart of Arda and Arda as a world and creation myth for England.
You are correct, Tolkien did hate allegory (Saruman = appeasing politician, etc.). However, he accepted the idea of applicability. I don't think that this is a case of 'applicability', however. I think that Goldberry and Tom are quite literally spirits in Arda, and I'm discussing which spirits they are. Tolkien himself called Tom 'the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside' (Letters, #19). I think that a deeper interpretation of what the 'spirit of the land' is becomes possible when the creation-story of Arda enters the picture, because this land is created with a song, and all its history comes from that song. The song of creation is taken from the beginning of the Silmarillion and it is there stated that echoes from the song linger on in the ocean. Tolkien's ambition to create an English myth I took from Letters, #51 and I believe that's the letter reprinted as the preface of the Silmarillion.
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