‘Strains of Elvish Song and Voices', Bradford Lee Eden

[Pitchwife]

Having looked up Tennyson's poem (thanks for the link!), I'd like to add just one little bit to Faramir's comparison of the two poems:
Tennyson hopes to see my Pilot face to face, which I agree is obviously a reference to God; Bilbo goes to see the Valar - not God but the gods, the officers of the ship, so to speak, i.e. the closest thing to God that can be found within the confines of Arda; and we have every reason to assume he will move on to see the true Pilot (captain?) shortly after.

[Faramir Jones]

Thanks for your contribution, Pitchwife!

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Having looked up Tennyson's poem (thanks for the link!), I'd like to add just one little bit to Faramir's comparison of the two poems:

Tennyson hopes to see my Pilot face to face, which I agree is obviously a reference to God; Bilbo goes to see the Valar - not God but the gods, the officers of the ship, so to speak, i.e. the closest thing to God that can be found within the confines of Arda; and we have every reason to assume he will move on to see the true Pilot (captain?) shortly after.

I had thought about that when writing my previous entry, but wasn't sure about including it. Tolkien deliberately leaves out the question as to what happens to mortals in his universe after they die, with the exception of the Dwarves. Of Men and Hobbits, we know nothing. Do they see Eru Ilúvatar after death? We do not know.

He did talk in a draft of a letter of about September 1963 on what awaited Frodo and Bilbo at the end of their voyage:

Frodo was sent or allowed to pass over Sea to heal him - if that could be done, before he died. He would have eventually to 'pass away': no mortal could, or can, abide for ever on earth, or within Time. So he went both to a purgatory and to a reward, for a while: a period of reflection and peace and a gaining of a truer understanding of his position in littleness and in greatness, spent still in Time amid the natural beauty of 'Arda Unmarred', the Earth unspoiled by evil.

Bilbo went too. No doubt as a completion of the plan due to Gandalf himself. Gandalf had a very great affection for Bilbo, from the hobbit's childhood onwards. His companionship was really necessary for Frodo's sake - it is difficult to imagine a hobbit, even one who had been through Frodo's experiences, being really happy even in an earthly paradise without a companion of his own kind, and Bilbo was the person that Frodo most loved. (Cf III 252 lines 12 to 21 and 263 lines 1-2.) But he also needed and deserved the favour on his own account. He bore still the mark of the Ring that needed to be finally erased: a trace of pride and personal possessiveness....As for reward for his part, it is difficult to feel that his life would be complete without an experience of 'pure Elvishness', and the opportunity of hearing the legends and histories in full the fragments of which had so delighted him. (Letters, Letter 246, p. 328)

[Bêthberry]

Thanks for the elaboration of similarities, Faramir and Pitch. This relationship is, I think, substantially different from the one that Eden implied in Tolkien's early writings and for that reason I think the question is quite a bit different than one of unacknowledged debt and influence which he tried to argue.

I see a few other differences, such as those of metre and rhyme scheme. "Bilbo's Last Song" is much more like Tennyson's "Blow, bugle, blow", particularly with its sonority and alliteration. The themes of sea and death and melancolic longing are common in Victorian poetry-- such as, as I'm sure you know, Arnold's"Dover Beach" and even Swinburne's 'In the Bay", which uses the 'harbour-bar' image a little over ten years before Tennyson does. However, what I think is the most importance difference between the two poems, in spite of their similarities, is their provenance.

Right you are that "Crossing the Bar" is traditionally set at the end of Tennyson's collected poems. Hallam Tennyson in his Memoir reported his father's last request, which has been honoured down through the years. However, Tolkien's "Bilbo's Last Lay" (the original title of this lyric) was written under a very different context. As Tennyson Sr.'s request makes clear, he conceived of the poem as a conclusion to his entire life's work and a fitting end. He must have assumed the audience that existed for all his work. With Tolkien, however, we have a very different situation. He wrote the poem for one person, his secretary, and she kept the poem private until after his death. I don't know what prompted the writing--was it to thank her for years of work with him, was it at her request for a final song from Bilbo, did they discuss Tennyson's final lyric? Certainly Tolkien never asked his editors to include it in future editions of LotR and he never asked his son Christopher to make it public as his final work. Did Tolkien ask that the poem be kept private, at least until after his death? More contextual knowledge of the poem would be helpful.

You see, I think "Bilbo's Last Lay" is an elaborate literary joke on Tolkien's part. He had a lively and even wicked sense of humour, as, I think, most professional medievalists do. Even his title, "Lay" is full of punnery and was ultimately rejected because it's association with medieval lays would not be widely appreciated. It is very important that the speaker in Tennyson's poem would appear to be the poet himself whereas Tolkien's poem clearly identifies Bilbo. This is not Tolkien's last poem, but Bilbo's. And Bilbo, while a wonderful character, is clearly at times the repository of some affectionate humour over his scribblings and his inopportune habit of falling asleep. Perhaps one could suggest that Tolkien was here providing a comment on Tennyson's role as the expositor of elven lore for a new age.

You see, I doubt very much that Tolkien had much admiration for Tennyson. This could explain the absence of any comment on him, as much as simple lack of knowledge of the elder poet's work. I would love to know what is in Tolkien's Arthurian romance, the one which Humphrey Carpenter and Verlyn Flieger mention as uncompleted so I could compare it with Tennyson's Idylls. But I am not the only one who finds Tennyson's Arthurian romance a disappointment. According to Roger Sale, in his review ("Tennyson as a Great Poet") of John D. Rosenberg's The Fall of Camelot, quite a few others have as well. Henry James apparently thought Tennyson's Arthur was "rather a prig" and Swinburne thought he was reduced "to the level of a wittol, Guinevere to the level of a woman of intrigue, and Lancelot to the level of a 'co-respondent' ". Hopkins offered "Charades from the Middle Ages" as a title while Swinburne, again, suggested, "Idylls of the Prince Consort" (p. 443). That's quite a cat fight, to borrow a comparison from the American figure skater Johnny Weir, as most of these writers have fairly prestigious credentials in medievalism themselves. Was it simply professional jealousy? What I would like to do is suggest where Tolkien thought Tennyson didn't 'get it quite right' as a way of explaining why "Bilbo's Last Song" could be an elaborate literary joke rather than evidence of deep and abiding influence.

To do that, I'd like to present some of Tolkien's thoughts on translating Old English into modern English. Faramir, you have thoughtfully referred to Tolkien's Letter 171 which offers some explanation of what Tolkien thought a modern translation should be. I'd like to expand on that.

Tolkien's "On Translating Beowulf" presents some of the cruxes in translating Old English. (His thought is applicable to the language generally and not limited to the great poem. ) For example, how is one to translate recurring words. The word eacen can variously be translated as 'stalwart', 'broad', 'huge' and 'mighty'. These are all somewhat acceptable to Tolkien, except that in using all these variations, we lose the

Originally Posted by Tolkien, p. 50, The Monster and the Critics and Other Essays

hint that in poetry this word preserved a special connotation. Originally it means not 'large' but 'enlarged', and in all instances may imply not merely size and strength, but an addition [italics Tolkien's] of power, beyond the natural, whether it applied to the superhuman thirtyfold strength possessed by Beowulf (in this Christian poem it is his special gift from God), or to the mysterious magical powers of the giant's sword and the dragon's hoard imposed by runes and curses. . . . This is only a casual example of the kind of difficulty and interest revealed by the language of Old English verse . . . For many Old English poetical words there are (naturally) no precise modern equivalents of the same scope and tone: they come down to us bearing echoes of ancient days beyond the shadowy borders of Northern history.

Another problem is how to convey the sense of poetic and archaic words--that is, words which for the time of Beowulfs creation were intended to convey the verbal affect of archaism. Tolkien provides multiple examples of situations where both "colloquialism and false modernity" will fail to provide "the understanding of the original which it awakes" (p. 53)--I have bolded this because I think it shows the central germ of Tolkien's feeling about translation. What is to be aimed for is something which helps render as similarly as possible the feelings of the original.

Originally Posted by Tolkien, p. 55

But, whether you regret it or not, you will misrepresent the first and most salient characteristic of the style and flavour of the author, if in translating Beowulf, you deliberately eschew the traditional literary and poetic diction which we now possess in favour of the current and trivial. In any case a self-conscious, and often silly, laughter comes too easily to us to be tempted in this way. The things we are dealing with here are serious, moving, and full of 'high sentence'--if we have the patience and solidity to endure them for a while. We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity and just to the solemn temper of the original, if we avoid 'hitting' and 'whacking' and prefer 'striking' and 'smiting'; 'talk' and 'chat' and prefer 'speech'and 'discourse'. . . .

Note that Tolkien also counsels against the opposite fault of using words merely because they are old or obsolete. Diction must be, for him, words which "remain in literary use, especially in the verse, among educated people" (p. 55). So he's not calling for "antiquarian sentiment' or 'philological knowingness' (p. 56).

If we look at Tennyson's translation of an Old English poem and compare it with a contemporary literal translation, we can see some of these problems. Here's a link which provides the original Old English, Tennyson's version, a literal translation, and a line by line translation of The Battle of Brunnaburh.

I have difficulty getting passed Tennyson's Bracelet bestower, when the original is ring-giver to men. On what grounds would Tennyson forgo the culturally significant "ring" for the Old French word "bracelet'? Alliteration for the sake of alliteration destroys meaning. Why would he give us "lifelong glory in battle" rather than be faithful to the original warrior concept of "won eternal glory in battle"? To say nothing about how horribly the metre is mangled, which makes the translation full of derision. It makes a mockery of the Old English alliterative verse in its attempt to recapture it. No wonder W.H. Auden--a student of Tolkien's--said that Tennyson "had the finest ear, perhaps, of any English poet; he was also undoubtedly the stupidest" (Sale, p. 450). (Ohhh, I was right to quote Johnny Weir, this is a cat fight.) And to judge Tennyson's inability to awaken the ancient heroic ideal, consider the last verse.

Originally Posted by Tennyson, final stanza

Never had huger
Slaughter of heroes
Slain by the sword-edge--
Such as old writers
Have writ of in histories--
Hapt in this isle hither
Saxon and Angle from
Over the broad billow
Broke into Britain with
Haughty war-workers who
Harried the Welshman, when
Earls that were lured by the
Hungy of glory gat
Hold of the land.

Originally Posted by literal translation

Never was there more slaughter
on this island, never yet as many
people killed before this
with sword's edge: never according to those who tell us
from books, old wisemen,
since from the east Angles and Saxons came up
over the broad sea. Britain they sought,
Proud war-smiths who overcame the Welsh,
glorious warriors they took hold of the land.

I'll take "Proud war-smiths" as more fitting of the ancient ideal than "Haughty war-workers." And I'll sure pass on 'gat' and 'Hapt'. None of this is "moving, serious, and of high sentence."

In fairness of course, this translation is not Tennyson's finest poem. But I think it demonstrates more than adequately how not to translate Old English and how not to be a medievalist according to Tolkien. It's risible and as such I think Tolkien rather slyly and with some ingenuity found a way to parody Tennyson's final lyric.

[Faramir Jones]

I was pleasantly surprised to read your last entry, Bêthberry, which gave me a lot to think about!

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I see a few other differences, such as those of metre and rhyme scheme. "Bilbo's Last Song" is much more like Tennyson's "Blow, bugle, blow", particularly with its sonority and alliteration. The themes of sea and death and melancolic longing are common in Victorian poetry-- such as, as I'm sure you know, Arnold's"Dover Beach" and even Swinburne's 'In the Bay", which uses the 'harbour-bar' image a little over ten years before Tennyson does.

I agree that the metre and rhyme are different.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

However, what I think is the most important difference between the two poems, in spite of their similarities, is their provenance.

Right you are that "Crossing the Bar" is traditionally set at the end of Tennyson's collected poems. Hallam Tennyson in his Memoir reported his father's last request, which has been honoured down through the years. However, Tolkien's "Bilbo's Last Lay" (the original title of this lyric) was written under a very different context. As Tennyson Sr.'s request makes clear, he conceived of the poem as a conclusion to his entire life's work and a fitting end. He must have assumed the audience that existed for all his work. With Tolkien, however, we have a very different situation. He wrote the poem for one person, his secretary, and she kept the poem private until after his death. I don't know what prompted the writing--was it to thank her for years of work with him, was it at her request for a final song from Bilbo, did they discuss Tennyson's final lyric? Certainly Tolkien never asked his editors to include it in future editions of LotR and he never asked his son Christopher to make it public as his final work. Did Tolkien ask that the poem be kept private, at least until after his death? More contextual knowledge of the poem would be helpful.

It would certainly be helpful to know more about the background to Tolkien's poem, if such information can be found. I agree completely that Tennyson conceived of his poem as 'a conclusion to his entire life's work and a fitting end. He must have assumed the audience that existed for all his work'; and we don't have any similar evidence to arrive at a similar conclusion regarding Tolkien and his poem.

I was very interested in what you had to say here:

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

You see, I think "Bilbo's Last Lay" is an elaborate literary joke on Tolkien's part. He had a lively and even wicked sense of humour, as, I think, most professional medievalists do. Even his title, "Lay" is full of punnery and was ultimately rejected because it's association with medieval lays would not be widely appreciated. It is very important that the speaker in Tennyson's poem would appear to be the poet himself whereas Tolkien's poem clearly identifies Bilbo. This is not Tolkien's last poem, but Bilbo's. And Bilbo, while a wonderful character, is clearly at times the repository of some affectionate humour over his scribblings and his inopportune habit of falling asleep. Perhaps one could suggest that Tolkien was here providing a comment on Tennyson's role as the expositor of elven lore for a new age.

You see, I doubt very much that Tolkien had much admiration for Tennyson. This could explain the absence of any comment on him, as much as simple lack of knowledge of the elder poet's work. I would love to know what is in Tolkien's Arthurian romance, the one which Humphrey Carpenter and Verlyn Flieger mention as uncompleted so I could compare it with Tennyson's Idylls. But I am not the only one who finds Tennyson's Arthurian romance a disappointment. According to Roger Sale, in his review ("Tennyson as a Great Poet") of John D. Rosenberg's The Fall of Camelot, quite a few others have as well. Henry James apparently thought Tennyson's Arthur was "rather a prig" and Swinburne thought he was reduced "to the level of a wittol, Guinevere to the level of a woman of intrigue, and Lancelot to the level of a 'co-respondent' ". Hopkins offered "Charades from the Middle Ages" as a title while Swinburne, again, suggested, "Idylls of the Prince Consort" (p. 443). That's quite a cat fight, to borrow a comparison from the American figure skater Johnny Weir, as most of these writers have fairly prestigious credentials in medievalism themselves. Was it simply professional jealousy? What I would like to do is suggest where Tolkien thought Tennyson didn't 'get it quite right' as a way of explaining why "Bilbo's Last Song" could be an elaborate literary joke rather than evidence of deep and abiding influence.
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If we look at Tennyson's translation of an Old English poem and compare it with a contemporary literal translation, we can see some of these problems. Here's a link which provides the original Old English, Tennyson's version, a literal translation, and a line by line translation of The Battle of Brunnaburh.

In fairness of course, this translation is not Tennyson's finest poem. But I think it demonstrates more than adequately how not to translate Old English and how not to be a medievalist according to Tolkien. It's risible and as such I think Tolkien rather slyly and with some ingenuity found a way to parody Tennyson's final lyric.

I'm in agreement that Tolkien had fun with 'Crossing the Bar', just as he had fun with the nursery rhyme 'Hey Diddle Diddle', inventing its 'ancestor' in the shape of 'The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late'. But I don't see any evidence that a reason for having such fun in this case was due to a dislike of Tennyson and his works. I don't rule your theory out as a possibility; it's just there is no evidence for it.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Faramir Jones

I'm in agreement that Tolkien had fun with 'Crossing the Bar', just as he had fun with the nursery rhyme 'Hey Diddle Diddle', inventing its 'ancestor' in the shape of 'The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late'. But I don't see any evidence that a reason for having such fun in this case was due to a dislike of Tennyson and his works. I don't rule your theory out as a possibility; it's just there is no evidence for it.

Having written a long post in reply this afternoon, only to have the Downs crash when I attempted to post it, I have now remembered the wisdom of Word.

The evidence lies in the exposition, which is an acceptable method of scholarly argument, particularly in the absence of historical references such as that provided by letters. My main point of contention in my first post is that Eden’s essay lacks a solid method for establishing the possibility of influence. He failed to provide either historical evidence or discussion about the nature and type and method of establishing relationship; his essay was not much more than quotation, summary and description. There are ways of exploring influence and conceiving of the “retextualisation” of earlier sources even in the absence of historical data. Were I to write a scholarly article, I would elaborate further on how Tennyson’s translation of The Battle of Brunanburh fails to satisfy Tolkien’s criteria for successful translation. There are a great many more points in Tolkien’s preface on translating Beowulf which could be applied to Tennyson’s poem. The deductions would be my own, but they would be based on Tolkien’s criteria and so my method would be legitimate. For instance, Tennyson’s poem was in fact based on his son Hallam’s prose translation of the Old English poem (first published in The Contemporary Review November, 1876) and some of the more egregious errors are Hallam’s rather than Tennyson’s. (See here for comparison: Comparison of Tennyson's translation with Hallam's. But Tennyson repeated them. He was clearly not working with original sources and this was Tolkien’s frustration with Wagner in particular, as well as other writers of more generally good renown. It is also interesting that the summary of the events which Tennyson provided didn't in fact present what is now understood to be the facts about the poem's provenance and significance.

Tennyson’s translation first appeared in his Ballads and Other Poems in 1880 and was very popular. I’m sure that students, as is the wont of students, would grasp at any opportunity for a crib and I’m equally sure that their teachers were wise to their ways. I would happily make another trek to Oxford to explore curricula and journals and diaries of the days as there is a good possibility of finding evidence there that Tolkien would have directly known the translation.

What I would also do, in this theoretical paper of mine, is consider how Tolkien handled other literary influences. Here particularly I would point out the importance of George MacDonald. If I remember correctly (my Tolkien books were put in storage during home renovations and unfortunately I haven’t been able to find their boxes) Tolkien began to write a preface to a new edition of The Golden Key but he became more and more convinced that MacDonald got it wrong. And so Tolkien abandoned the preface to explore how to get it—faerie--right in Smith of Wootton Major. Again, I would be establishing Tolkien’s habits of writing. I’ve forgotten who now, but one critic I’ve read even suggested that Nokes somehow represented MacDonald himself. I’ll have to track down that reference and see if it’s really worth using.

I might also use your example, with appropriate acknowledgement of course, of Tolkien’s “The Man in the Moon”.

Of course, the nature of parody is tricky. It can be a sign of respect or a sign of ridicule, humourous or satirical. What I am doing really is using Shippey’s explanation of Tolkien’s point about the integrity of original sources and the failures of tone and spirit in some modern writers and by analogy applying it to a possible relationship between Tennyson and Tolkien over “Bilbo’s Last Lay” and “Crossing the Bar”. (By the way, apparently Joy Hill owns the poem and not the Estate.) And my argument would be as open to debate as Shippey's argument about Smith is, from Flieger's point of view. But it would be an acceptable method.

And to return this to my original point. I didn't begin with a desire to denigrate Tennyson or Swinburne or Morris. In fact, I quoted his contemporaries’ opinions about the Idylls to suggest that there were many different points of view about how to recontextualise medieval material—there was no one way and a great deal of difference amongst the writers who were handling the material. I began with deep frustration that a scholar had such a poor grasp of method and material. There have been several very good studies of the influence of Victorian medievalism on Tolkien that aren't limited by a limited presentation of music and sea imagery. And in particular I didn't like Eden's suggestion that Tolkien was not quite upfront about his influences--"whether he chose to admit it or not" (p. 162). The study of influences on writers is a far, far more complex subject than Eden gives thought to. It's also one deserving of a great deal of care and respect. Didn’t Tolkien himself say something to the effect that the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of older literature are extremely complex?

EDIT: Helen, I've had no time to follow up your gracious note about Vestr Um Haf. Sorry.

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

The study of influences on writers is a far, far more complex subject than Eden gives thought to. It's also one deserving of a great deal of care and respect. Didn’t Tolkien himself say something to the effect that the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of older literature are extremely complex?

Off of a quotes page from a Google search ; I am entirely ignorant of the particular source:

"One writes such a story not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one's personal compost-heap; and my mould is evidently made largely of linguistic matter." ~On the creation of LotR

[Faramir Jones]

Bêthberry and mark, you're quite right about the difficulties of trying to discern the possible literary influences on a writer, in this case on Tolkien. As you showed, mark, the latter himself made it clear of his own awareness that a lot of such influences are unconscious.

I'm sure we agree that any person writing about such possible influences needs to exercise humility, making clear that there is a large element of speculation involved. Words like 'might', 'may' and 'possible' need to be used a lot. I myself have tried to say this in my own writings. Whether I have succeeded or not is another matter.

I came across something interesting on this subject by the writer George MacDonald Fraser (1925-2008), in his book The Light's on at Signpost (2002), which dealt with his scriptwriting days in Hollywood, but which also included other matters. He said that he was working for the newspaper The Glasgow Herald in the 1960s; and there was a debate in the canteen on whether the orcs in LotR were the same as the goblins in The Hobbit. He wrote to Tolkien, and received a reply:

Yes, orcs and goblins were identical, and he added the fascinating information that they had been inspired by his childhood reading of The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, eerie spellbinders which had helped to freshen my own infant nightmares. Their author was a Scottish minister named George MacDonald. (George MacDonald Fraser, The Light's on at Signpost: Memoirs of the movies, among other matters, (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003), p. 53.)

Fraser, after saying that this George MacDonald was related to him through his paternal grandmother, discussed the difficulty of discerning other inspirations, giving as an example what had been written on himself:

His [Tolkien's] orcs and goblins are George MacDonald's, but as to other inspirations, who knows? It is a common mistake to think that one can spot with certainly the wellsprings of an author's imagination, as I know only too well, having had a critic state flatly that I was plainly much influenced by Conrad - of whom I had not read a single word at that time. (Ibid., pp. 53-54.)

That said, I think that what you, Bêthberry, wrote in your last post is worthy of publication; and I hope to see it in print in the future.