Back to school!

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

This is intended as a companion to the "Gems from the Letters" and "Most 'powerful' lines of Ea...." threads, this time for your favourite bits from Tolkien's academic and factual writing. In my opinion such was his joy in exercising his gift with words that even his most academic essays can approach a sublime beauty of their own, and I thought it would be rather nice to have a thread full of Tolkien doing what got his bust into the English Faculty Library.

To start us off, here's a real corker from Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture to the British Academy, 1936). Not only does it contain a rare example of Tolkien employing allegory (you can't get me for bringing that into it: he says so himself ) but he uses it to perfection, with not a little humorous effect:

I would express the whole industry in yet another allegory. A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man's own descendents, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

What a wonderful idea for a thread, Squatter! The Tolkien essay I know best is On Fairy-Stories; there are many passages which bear repeated reading, but in the light of the ongoing debate about geeks, real life and escapism, here is one which I especially appreciate:

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers of Escape are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds. Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought. Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.

[Bêthberry]

Both of these works, Squatter and Estelyn, the essay "The Monster and the Critics" and "On Fairy Stories" demonstrate, I think, not only elements of Tolkien's writing style and skill, but also his astonishingly acute perceptions as a reader. In his critical work, his role as a reader, as someone who responds to a work of art, was always foremost.

This perceptive reading is also shown in his brief comments on the Old English word ofermode in the heroic poem The Battle of Maldon.

Tolkien considers two passages. The first is the rightly famous,

Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
mod sceal þe mare þe ure mægen lytlað.

'Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens.'

The second is the much darker line with one of the most contested words in Old English translation:

ða se eorl ongan for his ofermode alyfan landes to fela laþere ðeode

'then the earl in his overmastering pride actually yielded ground to the enemy, as he should not have done.'

In considering how these two lines work, Tolkien provides an interesting contrast between heroic and chivalric. This is the passage I which to offer here.

The words of Beorhtwold (the first quote above) have been held to be the finest expression of the northern heroic spirit, Norse or English; the clearest statement of the doctrine of uttermost endurance in the service of indomitable will. The poem as a whole has been called 'the only purely heroic poem extant in Old English.' Yet the doctrine apppears in this clarity, and (approximate) purity, precisely because it is put in the mouth of a subordinate, a man for whom the object of his will was decided by another, who had no responsibility downwards, only loyalty upwards. Personal pride was therefore in him at its lowest, and love and loyalty at their highest.

For this 'northern heroic spirit' is never quite pure; it is of gold and an alloy. Unalloyed, it would direct a man to endure even death unflinching, when necessary: that is when death may help the achievemnt of some object of will, or when life can only be purchased by denial of what one stands for, But since such conduct is held admirable, the alloy of personal good name was never wholly absent. Thus Léofsunu in The Battle of Maldon holds himself to his loyalty by the fear of reproach if he returns home alive. This motive may, of course, hardly go beyond 'conscience': self-judgement in the light of the opinion of his peers, to which the 'hero' himself wholly assents; he would act the same, if there were no witnesses. Yet this element of pride, in the form of the desire for honour and glory, in life and after death, tends to grow, to become a chief motive, driving a man beyond the bleak heroic necessity to excess--to chivalry. "Excess" certainly, even if it be approved by contemporary opinion, when it not only goes beyond need and duty, but interferes with it.

His point is perhaps made more clear in his final remarks:

There could be no more pungent criticism in a few words of 'chivalry' in one of responsibility than Wiglaf's exclamation: oft sceall eorl monig anes willan wræc adreogan, 'by one man's will many must woe endure.' These words the poet of Maldon might have inscribed at the head of his work.

An absolutely steely-eyed, unsentimental view of chivalry. Amazing.

Bethberry

[ February 17, 2003: Message edited by: Bethberry ]

[lindil]

I have no quote to equal those 3 extremely enlightening gems but due to this most worthy of thread topics I was emboldened to try and open a previously unopenable file which yeilded these hopefully enjoyable and profitable comments:

VALEDICTORY ADDRESS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

It might be held characteristic that, though I have occupied two chairs (or sat uneasily on the edge of two chairs) in this university, I have not yet delivered an inaugural lecture: I am now about 34 years behind. At the time of my first election I was too astonished (a feeling that has never quite left me) to gather my wits, until I had already given many ordinary lectures as required by statute, and it seemed to me that an inaugural that would not inaugurate was a ceremony better omitted. On the second occasion, my ineffectiveness as a lecturer was already well known, and well-wishers had made sure (by letter or otherwise) that I should know it too; so I thought it unnecessary to give a special exhibition of this unfortunate defect. And, though twenty years had then gone by, during which this matter of the overdue inaugural had been much on my mind, I had not yet discovered anything special to say.
Fourteen more years have now passed, and I still have nothing special to say. Nothing, that is, of the kind proper to inaugurals -as far as I can judge by those that I have read: the products of minds more sanguine, or more efficient and magisterial than mine. The diagnosis of what is wrong, and the confident prescription of the cure; the wide view, the masterly survey; plans and prophecies: these have never been in my line. I would always rather try to wring the juice out of a single sentence, or explore the implications of one word than try to sum up a period in a lecture, or pot a poet in a paragraph. And I am afraid that what I would rather do is what I have usually done.
For I suppose that, at any rate since the golden days long past when English studies were unorganized, a hobby and not a trade, few more amateurish persons can ‘by a set of curious circumstances' have been put in a professional position. For thirty-four years my heart has gone out to poor Koko, taken from a county jail; though I had one advantage over him. He was appointed to cut off heads, and did not really like it. Philology was part of my job, and I enjoyed it. I have always found it amusing. But I have never had strong views about it. I do not think it necessary to salvation. I do not think it should be thrust down the throats of the young, as a pill, the more efficacious the nastier it tastes.
But if the ranks of Tuscany should feel inclined to cheer, let me hasten to assure them that I do not think their wares are necessary to salvation either; much of what they offer is peddler's stuff. I have indeed become more, not less, bigoted as a result of experience in the little world of academic English studies.
‘Bigoted’ is for the Tuscans. Speaking to the Romans, defending the city and the ashes of their fathers, I would say ‘convinced’. Convinced of what? Convinced that Philology is never nasty: except to those deformed in youth or suffering from some congenital deficiency. I do not think that it should be thrust down throats as a pill, because I think that if such a process seems needed, the sufferers should not be here, at least not studying or teaching English letters. Philology is the foundation of humane letters; ‘misology’ is a disqualifying defect or disease.
It is not, in my experience, a defect or disease found in those whose literary learning, wisdom, and critical acumen place them in the highest rank – to which so many in the Oxford School have in various ways attained. But there are other voices, epigonal rather than ancestral. I must confess that at times in the last thirty odd years I have been aggrieved by them; by those, afflicted in some degree by misology, who have decried what they usually call language. Not because they, poor creatures, have evidently lacked the imagination required for its enjoyment, or the knowledge needed for an opinion about it. Dullness is to be pitied. Or so I hope, being myself dull at many points. But dullness should be confessed with humility; and I have therefore felt it a grievance that certain professional persons should suppose their dullness and ignorance to be a human norm, the measure of what is good; and anger when they have sought to impose the limitation of their minds upon younger minds, dissuading those with philological curiosity from their bent, encouraging those without this interest to believe that their lack marked them as minds of a superior order.
But I am, as I say, an amateur. And if that means that I have neglected parts of my large field, devoting myself mainly to those things that I personally like, it does also mean that I have tried to awake liking, to communicate delight in those things that I find enjoyable. And that without suggesting that they were the only proper source of profit, or pleasure, for students of English.

[Bêthberry]

A gem indeed, lindil. A classic British self-deprecatory understatement. We need more reminders like this of Tolkien's sense of humour.

Bethberry

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Well chosen, lindil. I've always liked the Valedictory Address; particularly these lines, which drip with sarcasm:

On the second occasion, my ineffectiveness as a lecturer was already well known, and well-wishers had made sure (by letter or otherwise) that I should know it too

In his critical work, his role as a reader, as someone who responds to a work of art, was always foremost.

Indeed so, Bethberry. His irritation with other critics of Beowulf reminds me of something else that he wrote, with which most of us will be familiar: "...he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."

My all-time favourite Tolkien essay has to be A Secret Vice. Leaving aside the achingly beautiful examples of Elven poetry and the cheeky Nevbosh limmerick, when Tolkien speaks about inventing languages his tone becomes so celebratory, so joyful, so enthusiastic that we are carried along with him; perhaps even ourselves considering the possibilities presented by linguistic invention. This passage is classic Tolkien:

I shall never forget a little man - smaller than myself - whose name I have forgotten, revealing himself by accident as a devotee, in a moment of extreme ennui, in a dirty wet marqee filled with trestle tables smelling of stale mutton fat, crowded with (mostly) depressed wet creatures. We were listening to somebody lecturing on map-reading , or camp-hygiene, or the art of sticking a fellow through without (in defiance of Kipling) bothering who God sent the bill to; rather we were trying to avoid listening, though the Guards' English, and voice, is penetrating. The man next to me said suddenly in a dreamy voice: 'Yes, I think I shall express the accusitive case by a prefix!'
A memorable remark! Of course by repeating it I have let the cat, so carefully hidden, out of its bag, or at least revealed the whiskers. But we won't bother about that for the moment. Just consider the splendour of the words! 'I shall express the accusitive case.' Magnificent! Not 'it is expressed', nor even the more shambling 'it is sometimes expressed', nor the grim 'you must learn how it is expressed'. What a pondering of alternatives within one's choice before the final decision in favour of the daring and unusual prefix, so personal and so attractive; the final solution of some element in a design that had hitherto proved refractory. Here were no base considerations of the 'practical', the easiest for the 'modern mind', or for the million - only a question of taste, a satisfaction of a personal pleasure, a private sense of fitness.

[Rimbaud]

Indeed, good Sir, that can hardly fail to provide me with a smile, to hear his genuine pleasure; an almost child-like delight in such Sub-creation.

From On Fairy Stories, the beginning of the sub-chapter Fantasy; I am fond of this passage, highlighting the Professor’s understanding of the word and accompanying concepts.

The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. But in recent times, in technical not normal language, Imagination has often been hold to be something higher than the mere-image-making, ascribed to the operations of Fancy (a reduced and depreciatory form of the older word Fantasy); an attempt is thus made to restrict, I should say misapply, Imagination to the “power of giving to ideal creations the inner consistency of reality.”

Ridiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate. The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. The perception of the image, the grasp of its implications, and the control, which are necessary to a successful expression, may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a difference in the degree of Imagination, not a difference in kind. The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) “the inner consistency of reality,”* is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. For my present purpose I require a word which shall both embrace the Sub-creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression, derived from the Image: a quality essential to fairy-story. I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this purpose: in a sense, that is, which combines with its older and higher use as an equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of “unreality” (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World), of freedom from the domination of observed “fact,” in short of the fantastic. I am thus not only aware but glad of the etymological and semantic connexions of fantasy with fantastic: with images of things that are not only “not actually present,” but which are indeed not to be found in our primary world at all, or are generally believed not to be found there. But while admitting that, I do not assent to the depreciatory tone. That the images are of things not in the primary world (if that is indeed possible) is a virtue, not a vice. Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.

*That is: which commands or induces secondary belief.

This speaks very greatly for itself. Indeed, it is simple enough, yet enoyable to watch such erudite fulminations. Important, in light of the drivel created by some apparent devotees of this creed, to note “when achieved”.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Indeed Rim; only if it is achieved. Perhaps many of those who try (and fail so miserably) to don Tolkien's mantle would do well to read the lines that you have just quoted. I do hope that you have more of the same up your not inconsiderable amphibious sleeves.

Whilst Tolkien is famous for inventing languages, such as Quenya and Sindarin, it is often forgotten that he also enjoyed the study of natural languages. The obvious example is Anglo-Saxon, but he was even more fond of Welsh. On 21st October 1955 (the day after The Return of the King was first published) he delivered an O'Donnell Lecture at Oxford entitled English and Welsh, which I strongly urge you all to read. Below I shall show Tolkien expounding his personal theory on languages, which I find absolutely fascinating; but first I wish to quote a charming passage from the introduction:

In a missionary enterprise a converted heathen may be a good exhibit; and as such, I suppose, I was asked to appear. As such anyway I am here now: a philologist in the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic field. Indeed a Saxon in Welsh terms, or in our own one of the English of Mercia. And yet one who has always felt the attraction of the ancient history and pre-history of these islands, and most particularly the attraction of the Welsh language in itself.

Having thus set the scene, Tolkien launches into a breathtaking examination of the relationship between English and Welsh, and the history of the English suppression of the Welsh language; at all points demonstrating a deep love and understanding of his subject, and a staggering erudition. Anyone who is struck, as I am, by the wild beauty of the Welsh language will be enthralled by his chosen quotations, as he switches effortlessly between English, Welsh, Latin and various other tongues with bewildering speed. As the lecture progresses it becomes increasingly personal, and eventually we are granted an insight into Tolkien's most fundamental theory of language, which explains his fascination with words perfectly:

If I were to say 'Language is related to our total psycho-physical make-up', I might seem to announce a truism in a priggish modern jargon. I will at any rate say that language - and more so as expression than as communication - is a natural product of our humanity. But it is therefore also a product of our individuality. We each have a native language. But that is not the language that we speak, our cradle-tongue, the first learned. Linguistically we all wear ready-made clothes, and our native language comes seldom to expression, save perhaps by pulling at the ready-made till it sits a little easier. But though it may be buried, it is never wholly extinguished, and contact with other languages may stir it deeply.

As Frederick Wheelock says in the introduction to his famous Latin textbook: Apprendre une langue, c'est vivre nouveau

I don't care who you have to kill: read this essay as soon as you can.

[Bêthberry]

Squatter,

We each have a native language . But that is not the language that we speak, our cradle-tongue, the first learned. Linguistically we all wear ready-made clothes, and our native language comes seldom to expression, save perhaps by pulling at the ready-made till it sits a little easier. But though it may be buried, it is never wholly extinguished, and contact with other languages may stir it deeply.

I wonder what manner of idea this is. Having not read the entire essay, I need to ask you.

Is this Tolkien's personal credo about poetry? That while all might have the potential, only some--only those who are stirred deeply by contact with other native languages--can recover/discover/uncover the wholly unique language which is pure poetic achievement?

Or is it rather simply a statement of our long defeat, that all of us always fail and fall short?

Bethberry

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I would say, Bethberry, that it is none of these things. To my mind, Tolkien's statement in this remarkable lecture has to do with the very nature of the bond between thought and language. Tolkien is positing a theory that may be observed in many strands of modern philosophy, which is that language places restrictions on the mind; that human thought must be shoe-horned into language in order to make it communicable to others. It is an idea that Orwell uses to great effect in Nineteen Eighty-Four with the grimly inexpressive Newspeak, and it must be remembered that Orwell's dark distopian fantasy was published during Tolkien's lifetime, in fact while work was in progress on The Lord of the Rings. I think it likely that Tolkien was at least aware of the work, even if he had not read it.

If you will forgive a computer scientist for drawing comparisons between men and machines, computer hardware runs along the same lines: a computer has its own internal language, which only it and its designers can understand. On top of that are placed numerous layers of other code, the scripts at each more comprehensible to humans than those below, until we reach the high-level languages with which I work. These languages make the computer run less efficiently: they take time to compile and they take up space in data storage, yet without them two machines manufactured by different companies would be unable to run the same software. Tolkien's argument appears to be that English, French, German and Chinese are thus not so very different from C++, COBOL, PERL and Visual Basic, although they are much more complicated and expressive: they make it more difficult for us to express our feelings, yet without them it would be impossible for large groups of people to share their ideas.

Tolkien's comments about contact with other languages become much more transparent when we see them in this light. He is saying that our internal language begins to flourish when it comes into contact with other tongues. Therefore by learning other languages we come closer to an understanding, not only of the "cradle tongues" spoken in the countries of our birth, but also of that deeply personal "native language" that is unique to each individual. As Wheelock wrote in the same paragraph from which I lifted my quotation above, "Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts seiner eigenen." ("He who does not know a foreign language does not know his own" - Goethe). Within the context of Tolkien's argument this would not necessarily have to mean the language of one's native country.

Remaining on the subject of translations, the following seems pertinent to another thread on this board:

No defence is usually offered for translating Beowulf. Yet the making, or at any rate the publishing, of a modern English rendering needs defence: especially the presentation of a translation into plain prose of what is in fact a poem, a work of skilled and close-wrought metre (to say no more). The process has its dangers. Too many people are willing to form, and even to print, opinions of this greatest of the surviving works of ancient English poetic art after reading only such a translation, or indeed after reading only a bare 'argument', such as appears in the present book. On the strength of a nodding acquaintance of this sort (it may be supposed), one famous critic informed his public that Beowulf was 'only small beer'. Yet if beer at all, it is a drink dark and bitter: a solemn funeral-ale with the taste of death. But this is an age of potted criticism and pre-digested literary opinion; and in the making of these cheap substitutes for food translations unfortunately are too often used.

To use a prose translation for this purpose is, none the less, an abuse. Beowulf is not merely in verse, it is a great poem; and the plain fact that no attempt can be made to represent its metre, while little of its other specially poetic qualities can be caught in such a medium, should be enough to show that 'Clark Hall', revised or unrevised, is not offered as a means of judging the original, or as a substitute for reading the poem itself. The proper purpose of a prose translation is to provide an aid to study.

Those words were taken from 'On Translating Beowulf', submitted by Tolkien as 'Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of "Beowulf"' to the 1940 edition by Professor C.L. Wrenn of Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment, A Translation into Modern English Prose by John R. Clark Hall (1911).

[EDIT] I didn't know that the quotation in German was from Goethe. My thanks to Estelyn for passing that on, and for correcting my translation.

[Mister Underhill]

As a companion to the above, there’s this bit from “On Fairy-Stories”, which celebrates the inventive power of language as opposed to the restrictions it imposes:

But Language cannot, all the same, be dismissed [in an inquiry into the origins of fairy-stories]. The incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval. The human mind, endowed with the powers of generalization and abstraction, sees not only green-grass, discriminating it from other things (and finding it fair to look upon), but sees that it is green as well as being grass. But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is more potent. And that is not surprising: such incantations might indeed be said to be only another view of adjectives, a part of speech in a mythical grammar. The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter's power—upon one plane; and the desire to wield that power in the world external to our minds awakes. It does not follow that we shall use that power well upon any plane. We may put a deadly green upon a man's face and produce a horror; we may make the rare and terrible blue moon to shine; or we may cause woods to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear fleeces of gold, and put hot fire into the belly of the cold worm. But in such “fantasy,” as it is called, new form is made; Faerie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator. An essential power of Faerie is thus the power of making immediately effective by the will the visions of “fantasy.”

What I dig about this passage is that the evocative and beautiful prose that the prof uses to frame his paean to the power of Language (I love the unironical reverence in that capital “L”) speaks as much to his thesis as do his arguments.

[ March 05, 2003: Message edited by: Mister Underhill ]

[Dininziliel]

What an aerobic workout this thread is for my somewhat rusted brain! I intend to find and read the "Gems from the Letters" (my new best book) and "Most 'powerful' lines of Ea...." threads.

The same night after reading all the posts, I resumed my re-reading of LotR, Fellowship. I was in "The Ring Goes South" when I read Elrond's charges & caveats to the Company:

... The others go with him as free companions, to help him on his way. You may tarry, or come back, or turn aside into other paths, as chance allows. The further you go, the less easy will it be to withdraw; yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will. For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet upon the road.'
'Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,' said Gimli.
'Maybe,' said Elrond, 'but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.'
'Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,' said Gimli.
'Or break it,' said Elrond. 'Look not too far ahead! ..."

I felt a tremor of recognition. Is this an illustration of Bethberry's post about Tolkien's notions regarding heroism and chivalry, or must I erase my tremulous annotation & reset my tremorizer?

(And, lo, after all these many years, I discovered why I like Gimli--he'll argue with anybody in a fearless, forthright manner.)

Also, I am pleased to see that I have ordered two of the very books cited in the juiciest quotes. Ah, antici .... pation!

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

That's a nice quotation, Underhill. As you say, a perfect counterpoint. And welcome to the thread, dininziliel; I trust your books arrived safely. It's an interesting comparison that you draw, and it demonstrates (if demonstration were necessary) how deeply Tolkien's literary works were rooted, and how closely related they were to his professional interests.

One of those studies was the Welsh language, of which Tolkien was rather fond. Here he explains his predilection, giving some intriguing examples:

Perhaps I may say just this - for it is not an analysis of Welsh or of myself that I am attempting, but an assertion of a feeling of pleasure, and of satisfaction (as of a want fulfilled) - it is the ordinary words for ordinary things that in Welsh I find so pleasing. Nef may be no better than heaven, but wybren is more pleasing than sky. Beyond that what can one do? For a passage of good Welsh, even if read by a Welshman, is for this purpose useless. Those who understand him must already have experienced this pleasure, or have missed it forever. Those who do not cannot yet receive it. A translation is of no avail. For this pleasure is felt most immediately and acutely in the moment of association: that is in the reception (or imagination) of a word form which is felt to have a certain style, and the attribution to it of a meaning which is not received through it. I could only speak, or better write and speak and translate, a long list: adar, alarch, eryr; tân, dwfr, awel, gwynt, niwl, glaw; haul, lloer, sêr; arglwydh, gwas, morwyn, dyn; cadarn, gwan, caled, meddal, garw, llyfn, llym, swrth; glas, melyn, brith, and so on - and yet fail to communicate the pleasure. But even the more long-winded and bookish words are commonly in the same style, if a little diluted. In Welsh there is not as a rule the discrepancy that there is so often in English between words of this sort and the words of full aesthetic life, the flesh and bone of the language. Welsh annealladwy, dideimladrwydd, amhechadurus, atgyfodiad and the like are far more Welsh, not only being analysable, but in style, than incomprehensible, insensibility, impeccable, or resurrection are English.

And for translators of Beowulf he had these words of caution:

A warning against colloquialism and false modernity has already been given by implication above. Personally you may not like an archaic vocabulary, and word order artificially maintained as an elevated and literary language. You may prefer the brand new, the lively and the snappy. But whatever may be the case with other poets of past ages (with Homer, for instance) the author of Beowulf did not share this preference. If you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient; but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic, artificial (if you will), in the day that the poem was made. Many words used by the ancient English poets had, even in the eighth century, already passed out of colloquial use for anything from a lifetime to hundreds of years. They were familiar to those who were taught to use and hear the language of verse, as familiar as thou or thy are to-day; but they were literary, elevated, recognized as old (and esteemed on that account). Some words had never, in the senses given to them by the poets, been used in ordinary language at all. This does not apply solely to poetic devices such as swanrad; it is true also of some simple and much used words, such as beorn 211 etc. and freca 1563. Both meant 'warrior', or in heroic poetry 'man'. Or rather they were used for 'warrior' by poets while beorn was still a form of the word 'bear', and freca a name for the wolf, and they were still used in verse when the original senses were forgotten. To use beorn and freca became a sign that your language was 'poetical', and these words survived, when much else of the ancient diction had perished...

Has anyone else a quotation? I am rather hogging this thread.

[Dininziliel]

Squatter--oink away to your heart's content! It is a delight to see that this thread is not dead. I went looking for it last night and couldn't find it in the first 2 pages of topics. I wanted this one in particular because it seemed an antidote to the latest news. I felt in need of enjoining a fellowship in quest of sanity.

So, here's a question--what would Tolkien think about Heany's (sp?) recent translation of Beowulf? Perhaps this was covered in the previous contributions, but I am in urgent need of sleep and unwilling to take time to re-read (just spent 3 hours installing hard/software for broadband).

I did receive one of the books I ordered, but right now cannot find it nor do I recall its title.

Squatter quoted Tolkien:

You may prefer the brand new, the lively and the snappy. But whatever may be the case with other poets of past ages (with Homer, for instance) the author of Beowulf did not share this preference. If you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient; but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic, artificial (if you will), in the day that the poem was made.

I wish I could articulate the effect that reading his essays has upon me. The humor, the plain hobbit sense, the sublime discernment ...

That quote also, in my neophyte type opinion, is another way of saying we should take care not to presume upon our assumptions--"We're better 'cause we be modern and cool", or because we ascribe to some new flavor of the month school of critical thought. Perhaps it is because the hour is late, and I am suffering the consequences of overstimulation, but I would stretch the context of that quote to include Tolkien's disdain for the presumption that we know better than the original creators--as he illustrated in the Elves and Men courting with the doom of trying to create like Eru.

Okay, having jumped off that cliff, I am going to bed a wee bit contenteder [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] than when I started.

And sometimes, a "wee" is as good as a mile.

Peace.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

That last post has been waiting far too long for a response. How sad that the best I can offer is a simple "I don't know". Seamus Heaney certainly respects Tolkien's place among Beowulf scholars, but his approach to the translation is very different: Heaney asked himself "...how I wanted Beowulf to sound in my version", but I doubt that Tolkien would have asked such a question of himself. I'm sure that he would have wanted it to capture as fully as possible the tone and content of the Old English original, and he was better placed than Seamus Heaney to achieve this aim because he was that much more deeply immersed in Old English language, thought and literature than the Irish poet, who has specialised in different areas.

On the other hand, Heaney never falls foul of Tolkien's insistence that

Words should not be used merely because they are 'old' or obsolete. The words chosen, however remote they may be from colloquial speech or ephemeral suggestions, must be words that remain in literary use, especially in the use of verse, among educated people. (To such Beowulf was addressed, into whatever hands it may since have fallen.) They must need no gloss. The fact that a word was still used by Chaucer, or by Shakespeare, or even later, gives it no claim if it has in our time perished from literary use.

I suspect that Tolkien would not have been overly critical of the later translation, but we shall see very soon how the two handlings differ when his own verse translation is published. Perhaps then we will be given a clearer idea of Tolkien's own opinions on translation as briefly explored in 'On Translating Beowulf', but I can't comment any further without an understanding of Old English that I simply don't possess.

Here's Tolkien on Beowulf again; demonstrating as usual his own deep appreciation of the work and of Anglo-Saxon poetic culture in general:

He who in those days said and who heard flæschama 'flesh-raiment', ban-hus 'bone-house', hreðer-loca 'heart-prison', thought of the soul shut in the body, as the frail body itself is trammelled in armour, or as a bird in a narrow cage, or steam pent in a cauldron. There it seethed and struggled in the wylmas, the boiling surges beloved of the old poets, until its passion was released and it fled away on ellor-sið, a journey to other places 'which none can report with truth, not lords in their halls nor mighty men beneath the sky' (50-52). The poet who spoke these words saw in his thought the brave men of old walking under the vault of heaven upon the island earth beleaguered by the Shoreless Seas and the outer darkness, enduring with stern courage the brief days of life , until the hour of fate when all things should perish, leoht and lif samod. But he did not say all this fully or explicitly. And therein lies the unrecapturable magic of ancient English verse for those who have ears to hear: profound feeling, and poignant vision, filled with the beauty and mortality of the world, are aroused by brief phrases, light touches, short words resounding like harp-strings sharply plucked.

[Iarwain]

Now I am truly humbled. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Such incredible quotations, and I'd only read one of them before! What a wonderful thread. I'd just like to thank you all for sharing them. Somehow I feel lost right now. Perhaps someday I'll find myself...

quietly beneath,
Iarwain

[The X Phial]

I cannot add anything to the wonderful discussion about Beowulf and translation, though I am eagerly awaiting the publication of Tolkien's version. I finally got the chance to read "On Fairy Stories" start to finish today, however, instead of in the snippets I usually get. I was very struck by the poetic response Tolkien gives to man calling fairy tales and stories lies:

'Dear Sir'...Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seeds of dragons - 'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.

To me, this is justification for and a call to create the stories that speak to us. The real lie is to deny that our minds and hearts are moved by fantasy and creativity.

[ May 13, 2003: Message edited by: The X Phial ]

[Dininziliel]

As Life Situations have allowed me to come to the surface for a brief while, I wanted to check and see if this thread was dead or alive. I wanted to know if Tolkien's Beowulf has come out. (I gave up looking for it about two months ago.)

Has anyone read it, yet? I am still interested in the comparison to Heany's in light of this thread's discussion and quotes.

I hear the coach approach. I must away before all becomes pumpkinish and I sink back into the quagmire of Life Sitches.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

The thread yet lives, although its movement is becoming slow. Perhaps soon others will join in and speed things up a little.

The compiler of Tolkien's work on Beowulf (Michael Drout, Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College, Massachusetts) freely admits that its release is not imminent. However, since the world has been waiting a good forty years and more for its release, it will still be 'soon', relatively speaking. The latest information I've been able to find suggests that the first volume will be published next year and the second in 2005, and more information is available here and at Professor Drout's web-page here.

Drout's compilation of Tolkien's notes for The Monsters and the Critics is already available, and the details can be found at the sites I've linked to above.

Now it's time, I think, to hear again from Tolkien himself. His comments below, taken from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture at the University of Glasgow, 1953) are yet another example of his sensitive approach to criticism. He always appreciated literature for what it was rather than what he thought it should be, which is one of the many reasons why I feel that he deserves to be offered the same courtesy by his successors.

There is a strength and life about this poem which is almost universally admitted. This is more likely to be due to the greater seriousness of the author than to have survived in spite of it. But much depends on what you want, or think that you want. Do you demand that the author should have the same objects that you would expect him to have, or the views that you would prefer him to hold? That he should, for instance, be an anthropological antiquarian? Or that he should simply devote himself to telling an exciting fairy-story well, in such a way as to produce literary credibility sufficient for entertainment? And how will he do that, in terms of his own time and thought? Surely, if that simple object was his only object (unlikely enough in the complex and didactic fourteenth century), he would in the process of giving life to old legends inevitably slide into the consideration of contemporary, or permanent, problems of conduct? It is by that consideration that he has vivefied his characters, and by that has given new life to old tales - totally different to their former significance (about which he probably knew, and certainly cared, much less than some men of this day). It is a case of pouring new wine into old bottles, no doubt, and there are some inevitable cracks and leaks. But I at any rate find this question of ethics both more vivid for its curious and bizarre setting, and in itself more interesting than all the guesses about more primitive times. But then I think the fourteenth century superior to barbarism, and theology and ethics above folklore.

It seems to me that a lot of what Tolkien says in the passage above could be applied to his own work (save that he clearly knew and cared a great deal about the old bottles into which he poured his own new wine). Much of the criticism levelled against him appears to be based around others' idea of what a story ought to be about, and how it ought to be told, rather than on what is actually written on the paper. It seems to me that he has ironically suffered a similar fate to two of his own favourite writers: the anonymous authors of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I'm resurrecting this thread in the hope that I can generate some fresh interest in Tolkien's scholarly writing, but also to share a more widely available piece of his Beowulf criticism. This passage concerns the origins of Hrothgar's ancestors, the Scyldings. It is taken from Christopher Tolkien's commentary on King Sheave, a poem connected with the unfinished time-travel story The Lost Road; and it may be found in The History of Middle-earth, volume V.

Why then did [the poet] make Scyld the child in the boat? - plainly his own device: it occurs nowhere else. Here are some probable reasons: (a) He was concentrating all the glamour on Scyld and the Scylding name.
(b) A departure over sea - a sea burial - was already associated with northern chieftains in old poems and lore, possibly already with the name of Scyld. This gains much in power and suggestiveness , if the same hero arrives and departs in a boat. The great heights to which Scyld climbed is also emphasized (explicitly) by the contrast thus made with his forlorn arrival.
(c) Older and even more mysterious traditions may well still have been current concerning Danish origins: the legend of Ing who came and went back over the waves. Our poet's Scyld has (as it were) replaced Ing.
Sheaf and Barley [Sceaf and Beow] were after all in origin only rustic legends of no great splendour. But their legend here catches echoes of heroic traditions of the North going back into a remote past, into what philologists would call Primitive Germanic times, and are at the same time touched with the martial glories of the House of the Shield. In this way the poet contrives to clothe the lords of the golden hall of Hart [Heorot] with a glory and mystery, more archaic and simple but hardly less magnificent than that which adorns the king of Camelot, Arthur son of Uther. This is our poet's way throughout, seen especially in the exaltation among the great heroes that he has achieved for the Bear-boy of the old fairy-tale, who becomes in his poem Beowulf last king of the Geatas

A later passage from the same lecture describes a sense that Tolkien derived from the text of

the suggestion - it is hardly more; the poet is not explicit and the idea was probably not fully formed in his mind - that Scyld went back to some mysterious land whence he had come. He came out of the Unknown beyond the Great Sea, and returned into It: a miraculous intrusion into history, which nonetheless left real historical effects: a new Denmark, and the heirs of Scyld in Scedeland. Such must have been his feeling.
In the last lines 'Men can give no certain account of the havens where that ship was unladed' we catch an echo of the 'mood' of pagan times in which ship-burial was practised. A mood in which the symbolism (what we would call the ritual) of a departure over the sea whose further shore was unknown; and an actual belief in a magical land or otherworld located 'over the sea', can hardly be distinguished - and for neither of these elements or motives is conscious symbolism, or real belief, a true description. It was a murnende mōd, filled with doubt and darkness.

As he so often did when talking about Beowulf, here Tolkien slips quite naturally into a more general discourse on the atmosphere and beliefs of the pagan Germanic age. His deep appreciation for this world (or at least his understanding of it) not only gives us a fascinating insight into his own creative writing but also opens up to us the legendary past of the real North. It also demonstrates how closely related were his private writing and his professional concerns. To Tolkien, medieval literature was not something to be pinned down in cases like an entomologist's collection, but to be read, appreciated and enjoyed, giving in the process an appreciation and understanding of the people who produced it and their world. If this world seems familiar to us already, we again have Tolkien to thank.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I sincerely hope that a gap of just over three years prevents this from counting as a double posting, although it probably doesn't. In my defence, this bumping was not prompted solely by the desire to revive my own thread. It seemed the easiest way of reviving three threads at once (one of which happens to be one that I wanted to be more successful than it was); and I have always been fond of multiple avicide with a single stone.

Tolkien's introduction to his weighty article on Chaucer's northernisms [1] is typical of him: learned, playful and to the point. It is also typical in that it begins with an apology for its lateness, which was caused (again typically) by his trying to do more than the occasion strictly demanded of him. I have footnoted the Chaucerian references for the benefit of those who know his works less intimately than did Tolkien's original audience.

One may suspect that Chaucer, surveying from the Galaxye our literary and philological antics upon the litel erthe that heer us . . . so ful of torment and of harde grace [2], would prefer the Philological Society to the Royal Society of Literature, and an editor of the English Dictionary to a poet laureate. Not that Chaucer redivivus would be a phonologist or lexicographer rather than a popular writer - the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne![3] But certainly as far as treatment of himself goes (and he had a well-formed opinion of the value of his own work), of all the words and ink posterity has spent or spilt over his entertaining writings, he would chiefly esteem the efforts to recover the detail of what he wrote, even (indeed particularly), down to forms and spellings, to recapture an idea of what it sounded like, to make certain what it meant. Let the source-hunter have his swink to him reserved[4]. For Chaucer was interested in "language", and in the forms of his own tongue.

[1] 'Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale'. Transactions of the Philological Society 1934, 9-70.

[2] The Parliament of Fowls, ll. 57-65.

[3] Ibid. l. 1

[4] "Upon a book in cloistre alwey to poure,
Or swinken with his handes, and laboure,
As Austin bit? How shal the world be served?
Lat Austin have his swink to him reserved."

The Canterbury Tales, prologue, ll. 185-8.

[Bêthberry]

Fascinating quotation, Squatter old chap.

It tickles the funny bone to see Tolkien imagining Chaucer in his--Tolkien's--own image. Tolkopomorphism anyone?

On the other hand, it is equally a good tickle to know that The Wife of Bath shares more than a few characteristics with the well-known stock character figure in medieval literature: the cockwold.

(To say nothing about the hilarious irony of using the blundering narrator's agreement with the worldly monk who perverts his monastic ideal--and whose tale is a poor version of Boccacio's "De Casibus Virorum Illustrium." Chaucer had so much fun making his character the worst story teller. Oh, by gosh and by golly, I am taking a witty salvo too seriously. )


Some writers will do anything for a private giggle.