Christopher Tolkien to finish lost Middle Earth novel - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

William Cloud Hicklin · 04-25-2007, 01:57 PM

I don't know if Tolkien in the 50s really had the Nazis especially in mind, any more than he did when writing Lord of the Rings (when they were still around)- and of course the basic lineaments of the story go back to the old Kaiser.

I do think however that Tolkien was more-or-less consciously creating an anti-Siegfried, a counter to the Wagnerian portrait which JRRT I'm sure found repulsive. Wagner's hero was indeed an Ubermensch, at least in the Nietzchean if not quite the Nazi sense, an embodiment of Might Makes Right and Triumph of the Will. For Tolkien, both notions were not only wrong but extremely dangerous- as Turin's story shows.

04-25-2007, 01:57 PM	#11
William Cloud Hicklin Loremaster of Annúminas Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,332	I don't know if Tolkien in the 50s really had the Nazis especially in mind, any more than he did when writing Lord of the Rings (when they were still around)- and of course the basic lineaments of the story go back to the old Kaiser. I do think however that Tolkien was more-or-less consciously creating an anti-Siegfried, a counter to the Wagnerian portrait which JRRT I'm sure found repulsive. Wagner's hero was indeed an Ubermensch, at least in the Nietzchean if not quite the Nazi sense, an embodiment of Might Makes Right and Triumph of the Will. For Tolkien, both notions were not only wrong but extremely dangerous- as Turin's story shows.