Ring Cycle Films

[jallanite]

I didn’t see the Toronto Lord of the Rings musical either.

Problems with new mechanical scenery devices are normal enough. In computerese it is usual to interpret leading edge as bleeding edge. If you are trying something entirely new, it should be expected that it will not work altogether properly. The genuine bugs in “the machine” had been worked out by the time the films had been made.

Beyond that, opera itself depends a lot on willing suspension of disbelief in any case.

I really don’t see many parallels between Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Lord of the Rings beyond the totally obvious. Both have a supreme Ring of Power. Sméagol’s killing of Déagol parallels Fafner’s killing of Fasolt. The are more parallels between the Siegfried story and Tolkien’s story of Turin.

Wagner and Tolkien have almost no philosophical base in common and Wagner changed some of his ideas during his writing of the Ring Cycle which partly leads to the contradictions within his work. Partly the problem is that Wagner is adapting stories where the originals have nothing to do with a Ring of Power. Tolkien’s work is far more coherent. Wagner’s popularity has more to do with his amazing music, individual pieces of drama, and the panache with which he carries off the impossible.

The Ride of the Valkyries, in particular, succeeds on its own terms, unconnected with Wagner’s basic plot.

For years I have heard various people announce that they planned to write an essay comparing Wagner and Tolkien but none of these planned efforts have appeared. I suspect that this is because when these persons began to seriously think about it there is so little that is similar beyond the grossly obvious.

Wotan/Óðinn is of course obviously similar to Gandalf in some ways. But so are Merlin, Maugis of Aigremont, Väinäimöinen, Teiresias, Elijah, Elisha, Vashistha, Visvamitra, and some other traditional figures.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by jallanite

For years I have heard various people announce that they planned to write an essay comparing Wagner and Tolkien but none of these planned efforts have appeared. I suspect that this is because when these persons began to seriously think about it there is so little that is similar beyond the grossly obvious.

Wotan/Óðinn is of course obviously similar to Gandalf in some ways. But so are Merlin, Maugis of Aigremont, Väinäimöinen, Teiresias, Elijah, Elisha, Vashistha, Visvamitra, and some other traditional figures.

The first book I referenced has already been published while the other is listed by the publisher as forthcoming. Given that Walking Tree is a very credible, respectable press, I think both books should be interesting.

[jallanite]

The first book, Tolkien and Wagnar: The Ring and Der Ring by Christopher MacLachlan I have found to be mostly horrible.

MacLachlan does a reasonable job in showing that some scholarly and fan comment on Tolkien are misguided but the shows himself to be even more misguided. He misinterprets Tolkien’s famous statement:

Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases.

MacLachlan understands this to refer to Wagnar, but Ohlmarks’ statement includes a large amount that does not appear in Wagnar at all and Tolkien correctly refers to this being from the “Old Norse″ side and finds it a farrago of nonsense. It is even more so if one attempt to interpret it as a summary of Wagnar’s Ring Cycle.

MacLachlan ignores the rest of Ohlmarks’ rubbish and interprets it be mean that Tolkien is lying about the influence of Wagnar’s Ring Cycle on his work when the letter is not about the Ring Cycle at all. MacLachlan then attempts to show that there is a purposeful conspiracy begun by J. R. R. Tolkien and continued by his son to deny the influence of the Ring Cycle on The Lord of the Rings.

The claim is that Tolkien based almost the entire Lord of the Rings on Wagnar’s Ring Cycle and no-one has noticed until now. But the parallels MacLachlan draws between the two works require a great amount of special pleading to accept. In two cases MacLachlan thinks that it proves something that he thinks that Jackson’s film resembles Wagnar more than the book.

His main point is that Wagnar’s Wotan is the prototype to Tolkien’s Gandalf and tries to make Gandalf’s career to resemble Wotan’s, principally by trying to claim that Gandalf increasingly withdraws from the action. This means that Machlachlan must ignore Gandalf’s healing of Théoden and later the increase in courage that comes when Gandalf wanders among the defenders of Minas Tirith, as supposedly Gandalf like Wotan should be leaving all actions to others at this time.

MacLachlan claims more than once that the post-resurrection Gandalf noticeably performs less magic than the pre-resurrection Gandalf. That is simply not true.

In an Appendix MacLachlan blames Christopher Tolkien for not including more on the Ring Cycle in an Appendix on The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún but does not mention any details in the Ring Cycle also found in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún that are not in the Norse texts which answers why more does not appear. Apparently it does not bother MacLachlan at all that the Nibelungenlied, or the Thiðreks Saga, or William Morris’ The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs, or other medieval or more modern reworkings are not treated by Christopher Tolkien here. He doesn’t see anything but Wagnar.

One outrageous statement by MacLachan on page 106 is complete fantasy:

Later Tolkien would try to identify his Necromancer with Sauron himself, thus trying to connect the plots of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring, although in fact problems of chronology would in the end defeat him.

The second book is Wagnar and Tolkien: Mythmakers by Renée Vink and it is a very different book, quite wonderful. Vink clearly indicates that Tolkien’s “Both rings were round, …” statement is not related to Wagnar at all and mostly simply talks about differences and similarities between Tolkien and Wagnar. She has great fun in cutting up the work of more than a hundred authors who have tried to distort either Tolkien or Wagnar to fit what they wish were true. She also fully discusses Wagnar’s use of alliteration and other Norse poetic devices in Wagnar’s librettos and Tolkien’s rendering of the Old Norse lays in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.

This book is almost perfect in my estimation.

I have had a review of MacLachlan’s book published in the August issue of Nancy Martsch’s fanzine Beyond Bree. A review of Vink’s book and a discussion of Tolkien’s “Both rings were round, …” statement have been accepted for forthcoming issues.