terça-feira, 29 de setembro de 2009

Túrin Turambar e o Livre-Arbítrio.



São frequentes pela Internet afora discussões envolvendo o Livre-Arbítrio de Túrin Turambar. Inclusive, recentemente, o tema do Livre-Arbítrio em Tolkien , o ponto cardinal nessa discussão, foi o fulcro de um acalorado debate entre Verlyn Flieger e Carl Hostetter que assumiram duas posições distintas com relação ao livre-arbítrio dos elfos, ambos, todavia concordando totalmente com relação ao livre-arbítrio humano, reconhecendo sua coexistência com a Divina Providência de Ilúvatar e, portanto, com a Predestinação que isso gera.

Não conscientes dessas recentes evoluções da discussão , nessa matéria, como em tudo que envolve Teologia e Filosofia, as pessoas daqui do Brasil costumam se engajar em conversas de surdos usando terminologias inapropriadas e discrepantes e , frequentemente, sendo despistados por noções preconcebidas sobre o que é Predestinação e sobre o que consiste, realmente, a Free Will. Esse é o aproveitamento de um sumário feito pra reduzir esses problemas.

O dilema todo parte do fato de que no Silmarillion, Melkor "amaldiçoou Húrin , Morwen e seus descendentes, mas Tolkien enfatizou que os Homens não estavam presos à Canção dos Ainur e tinham Livre-Arbítrio.Então algumas pessoas extrapolam a conclusão pra dizer que o que houve com Túrin teria sido somente um uso de livre-arbítrio mal "arbitrado" e que a maldição de Morgoth teria efeito apenas como forma de "sugestão" psicológica e não como um poder sobrenatural pairando sobre a vida do personagem. A análise dos textos que acompanham Children of Húrin e das Cartas de Tolkien desmente essa conclusão.Mas vamos por partes.

Em primeiro lugar, as pessoas têm um problema meio sério quando vão analisar essa questão.Muitas acham que Predestinação não pode coexistir com Livre-arbítrio e, portanto, não conseguem compreender muito bem como é que a existência de “previsões” ou visões proféticas no Tolkien pode se harmonizar com a dádiva da “free-will”.




O que acontece aí é que o Tolkien está usando como referencial a concepção teológica tomista católica( de São Tomás de Aquino) sobre a matéria. Ela está explicada nas suas linhas gerais nesse texto aí:

Estudos da Bíblia

Uma análise mais detalhada e profunda pode ser achada aí:

Livre Arbítrio e Presciência Divina -A Solução dos medievais

Excelente texto sobre o tema em inglês.

Fate and Free Will in Tolkien's Middle-earth

Reparem na similaridade da terminologia empregada por Tolkien qdo vai explicar diversas coisas no Osanwë Kenta. em sua nota número 6.


Para São Tomás e para os católicos ( e Tolkien era católico), o conhecimento pleno do Espaço e do Tempo é uma conseqüência necessária da Onisciência de Deus e, portanto EXISTE PREDESTINAÇÃO mas SEM que isso implique em perda de Livre-Arbítrio. Eru e Jeová vivem “fora” do tempo e vêem o presente, o passado e o futuro SIMULTANEAMENTE ).Em Tolkien, a mesma coisa acontece e os Ainur foram instrumentos de Deus em criar essa Predestinação que é a Música dos Ainur como foi cantada. Melkor e todos os Ainur em Tolkien foram os ajudantes em criar a “planta”, o projeto arquitetônico do Espaço-Tempo.
Assim, do mesmo jeito que ninguém “vê” o futuro enquanto dentro do Espaço-Tempo , de Eä salvo por graça de Eru, ninguém abaixo de Ilúvatar tem o poder de determinar ou influenciar o destino de um ser ( ou seja de mudar a Música)a menos que isso tenha sido permitido por Eru. E é aí que está: ISSO ACONTECEU na Canção dos Ainur!



Morgoth não precisa “mudar o destino” de Húrin e sua família por meios sobrenaturais dentro de Eä e nem tem esse poder mas ele NÃO PRECISA TÊ-LO porque, por Graça de Eru, ele foi co-partícipe no processo de criação do “projeto” do Tempo-Espaço e sua discórdia tornou-se parte do Terceiro Tema que introduziu os Elfos e os Homens. Essa “Predestinação” maligna, que já é parte da Canção,( eis o porquê de “coincidências” como o reencontro dos dois irmãos) é uma “Maldição” sobre o Húrin e sua família mas isso não implica em perda do Livre-Arbítrio de nenhum deles porque a Predestinação não tem esse efeito. Húrin e sua família poderiam ter mudado o Destino O problema é que Morgoth, estando dentro de Eä, como personagem da história que ele ajudou a escrever, faz de tudo ao seu alcance pra impedir que isso aconteça.Ele é como um mestre de RPG que tenta obrigar os jogadores a se comportarem de acordo com o script. O script ele co-roteirizou junto com Eru Ilúvatar e os outros Ainur




Assim, parte desse conhecimento prévio do Contínuo Espaço-Tempo que é de Eru somente, é partilhado com os Valar porque eles foram auxiliares no processo de criação do “Conto de Arda” ao entoarem ( e distorcerem ) a Música . Por isso eles não só prevêem ( já que "pré-viram" na Visão e se lembram do que cantaram)) o que vai acontecer mas “criaram” também o destino de Eä enquanto cantavam. A discórdia semeada por Melkor no momento em que a Ainulindalë foi feita se manifesta como uma “predestinação” maligna sobre tudo que existe em Eä e, especialmente, nos aspectos ou elementos da “História”onde ele mais se concentrou como no destino dos Filhos de Húrin e no dos Noldor. É daí que viria a tendência para a Entropia na Criação de Ilúvatar, já que Melkor era tangido pelo seu desejo niilista.

Mas o fato deles estarem “predestinados”, desse destino ser ruim e, portanto, uma maldição, não impede que eles usem o livre-arbítrio pra mudar o destino. O conhecimento prévio da escolha a ser feita e de suas consequências eventuais por Eru ou, parcialmente, pelos Valar ou Morgoth, não impõe essa escolha aos Filhos de Ilúvatar.os Homens não estão presos ao que foi cantado e os Elfos ,por graça de Eru, podem ter o seu livre-arbítrio acolhido por Ilúvatar como uma mudança no "destino" do Mundo como ficou implícito ter acontecido no caso de Lúthien Tinúviel que entreteceu seu fado com o do mortal Beren.

Considerar as palavras de Húrin ditas no capítulo "Das palavras de Húrin e Morgoth", como verdades absolutas é incorreto. Húrin achava que o que Melkor dizia era jactância sem sentido que ele não poderia "comandar" seus filhos e Morwen à distância para que eles cumprissem a "profecia" ominosa do Vala "enquanto ele quisesse conservar seu corpo e ser um Rei visível na Terra" e muitos leitores o interpretam ao pé da letra. O texto inteiro da introdução que o Christopher Tolkien fez ao Children of Húrin destaca um fato importante: que , embora o que Húrin tenha dito a Morgoth contivesse muitas verdades, várias das crenças dele partiam de uma perspectiva limitada que subestimava tremendamente a verdadeira extensão dos poderes de Morgoth.




É por isso que Christopher Tolkien diz na introdução que a maldição de Melkor é mais do que uma imprecação pra que um poder superior intervenha, mas sim "uma "malediction" de vasto e misterioso poder". Não há nada de misterioso na mera manipulação de poder temporal ou no uso de servos como Glaurung pra fazer a vontade de Morgoth. É, pois, em outro aspecto que a Maldição realmente se manifesta.


But the tragedy of his life is by no means compre¬hended solely in the portrayal of character, for he was condemned to live trapped in a malediction of huge and mysterious power, the curse of hatred set by Morgoth upon Húrin and Morwen and their children, because Húrin defied him, and refused his will.(...) The curse of such a being, who can claim that ‘the shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda [the Earth], and all that is in it bends slowly and surely to my will’, is unlike the curses or imprecations of beings of far less power. Morgoth is not ‘invoking’ evil or calamity on Húrin and his children, he is not ‘calling on’ a higher power to be the agent: for he, ‘Master of the fates of Arda’ as he named himself to Húrin, intends to bring about the ruin of his enemy by the force of his own gigantic will. Thus he ‘designs’ the future of those whom he hates, and so he says to Húrin: ‘Upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of Doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair.’


Melkor, como já dito, é como um Mestre de RPG que tenta fazer com que os jogadores sigam o roteiro da campanha definido por ele sendo ele próprio, além do Gamemaster, um NPC influente no cenário. Melkor foi co-roteirista da "aventura" que é o Conto de Arda. Assim como acontece com os players no RPG, a família de Húrin tem o poder de fugir do roteiro preexistente mas Melkor manipula, já como personagem da peça que ele mesmo escreveu, os eventos pra que isso não aconteça, para que eles não usem a dádiva do Livre-arbítrio de maneira sábia.

Comentário de Tolkien recentemente editado por Verlyn Flieger em Tolkien Studies 6.É óbvia a inferência de que ele pensava em Édipo Rei de Sófocles e, por via de consequência, em Túrin quando escreveu essa passagem, já que ELE MESMO comparou ambos.

:They [i.e. Elves] would not have denied that (say) a man was
(may have been) “fated” to meet an enemy of his at a certain
time and place, but they would have denied that he was
“fated” then to speak to him in terms of hatred, or to slay
him.
“Will” at a certain grade must enter into many of the
complex motions leading to a meeting of persons; but the
Eldar held that only those efforts of “will” were “free” which
were directed to a fully aware purpose.

E uma vez que foi cantado, o Mal disseminado na Ainulindalë fará com que o "Universo conspire" para tornar a Predestinação realidade. Assim é que , por exemplo, Nienor e Túrin se encontram por "acaso" com ela, justamente, sob um feitiço conjurado por Glaurung pra provocar amnésia nela, precisamente em cima do túmulo de Finduilas. Isso não é, simplesmente, uma obra do "acaso", mas de um "Acaso" qualificado , sendo, precisamente, onde a Maldição atua com mais força: eventos aleatórios se moldam ao desígnio de Morgoth, " vergam-se lenta e firmemente à sua vontade". A "estória" cantada na Música dos Ainur se torna ou tende a se tornar "história" como Tolkien explicou em uma de suas cartas.

Carta nº212

Isso lhes foi proposto primeiramente em forma musical ou abstrata e depois em uma “visão histórica”. Na primeira interpretação, a vasta Música dos Ainur, Melkor introduziu alterações, não interpretações da mente do Único, e surgiu uma grande dissonância. O Único então apresentou essa “Música”, incluindo as aparentes dissonâncias, como uma “história” visível.

Neste estágio ela ainda possuía apenas uma validade, a qual a validade de uma “história” ( "story" )entre nós mesmos pode ser comparada: ela “existe” na mente do contador e derivativamente nas mentes dos ouvintes, mas não no mesmo plano como o contador ou os ouvintes. Quando o Único (o Contador) disse Que Exista *, o Conto então se tornou História, no mesmo plano que os ouvintes; e estes poderiam, caso desejassem, entrar nela. Muitos dos Ainur entraram nela e nela devem residir até o Fim, sendo envolvidos no Tempo, a série de eventos que a completa. Esses eram os Valar e seus servidores menores. São aqueles que se “enamoraram” pela visão e sem dúvida foram aqueles que desempenharam a parte mais “subcriativa” (ou, como poderíamos dizer, “artística”) na Música.


É por isso que Glaurung já sabia que Nienor estava grávida quando pôs os olhos nela no fim da história. Ele e Melkor já haviam planejado pra que acontecesse exatamente o que houve : o incesto entre os dois irmãos.



Assim, esse tipo de onisciência ou clarividência limitadas de Morgoth é um corolário da própria Providência de Eru Ilúvatar e é o metodo segundo o qual sua Curse produz efeitos, explorando e cooptando o livre-arbítrio dos indivíduos amaldiçoados e manipulando eventos "casuais" e "coincindências" para que elas auxiliem em produzir o efeito final.



Mas Tolkien desde muito tempo antes já esboçava na sua leitura da Volsunga Saga o fato de que ele não havia, de fato, terminado com Túrin quando a história dele finalizou

Tolkien makes this renewal contingent on Sigurd, whose death is required so that he can lead Odin's host of warriors in the final battle: “If in day of Doom / one deathless stands / who death hath tasted/ and dies no more, / the serpent-slayer,/ seed of Odin,/ then all shall not end, / nor Earth perish.

quarta-feira, 16 de setembro de 2009

The Swedish Controversy


INTRODUCTION

Who was J. R. R. Tolkien? Was he a linguistic genius and the creator of one of the most widely read fantasy epics of the western world? Or was he only a linguistic genius and otherwise a conceited old professor who, with a lot of borrowing and help from others, wrote a singularly indifferent and exceedingly lengthy novel for children? Over the years, critics of Tolkien and his work have largely been of two opposing kinds: one overly enthusiastic and complimentary and the other uncompromisingly negative. The Swedish translator of The Lord of the Rings*, Åke Ohlmarks, belonged to the latter camp.
When published, The Lord of the Rings received its share of immediate criticism, both good and bad. Since then, much has been said about it, and the amount of work put into books and essays on the subject has been enormous. For obvious reasons only a minor part of the existing material can be used within the limits of an essay like this. In addition, the majority of these works are mainly concerned with various aspects of Tolkien's sub-creation, Middle-Earth, and not the quality of the material.
This essay will take a look at the criticism, mainly that expressed by Ohlmarks. In the first chapter there is a brief account of Tolkien's academic career, various facts which were to influence his later work and circumstances regarding the writing and publishing of his books. Åke Ohlmarks is given a chapter of his own and finally two specific problems are discussed.
The essay will deal only with criticism of the works published under J. R. R. Tolkien's personal supervision, i.e. while he still was alive. The Silmarillion and other such works and compilations published after his death are thus disqualified from scrutiny1. Even though the texts of course are based on Tolkien's original manuscripts, complete certainty over the shape and manner in which they were supposed to be published (if at all - Tolkien was a minute perfectionist) cannot be achieved, which in my opinion makes any criticism misplaced. Throughout the essay The Lord of The Rings is abbreviated as LOTR.
________________________________________
*Please note that within this essay underlining does not mark an internet link, but a title. At the top and the bottom, though, are located conventional internet navigation toolbars.
1Except in 'The Nature of Evil' where The Silmarillion is used to discuss the origin of evil.
Copyright (c) 1995 Ludvig Grahn

A RING IS BORN
Childhood


J. R. R. Tolkien was born in 1892 in South Africa. His father was from Birmingham and had previously taken up a position at a bank in Bloemfontein. His mother, from Suffield, took care of the children. However, little John Ronald, with his mother and brother, soon had to go back to England because of ill health and while they were away, his father died. As a result of this the family came to stay in Birmingham.
Tolkien was early on very interested in languages. At the age of four he could read and write and before long his mother had taught him the basics of Latin and French. He was soon discovered to be extremely gifted in the sphere of languages and later in school, at King Edward's in Birmingham, he learned German and Greek.
After the death of his beloved mother in 1904, he became interested in the language of Chaucer (he did not like Shakespeare) and his teacher happily gave him a beginner's book in Old English. He soon finished the book and went on to - and was fascinated by - Beowulf. He returned to Middle English and the stories of King Arthur, then moved on to Icelandic and read about Sigmund and the dragon Fafner. His love of languages and words now made him save money so that he could buy old German books on philology.
From this love of words he began constructing languages of his own which, although mostly invented for fun, were complete, with working grammars and logical vocabularies. In a television interview in 1968 he says:
I first began seriously to invent languages when I was 13 or 14 - I never stopped really... Languages have a flavour to me... a new language is like a new wine.2
One of the first languages constructed in this way had Spanish as a model. However, he was soon to stumble across his greatest linguistic passion of all - Gothic. He was excited by the dead language and invented new words to replace missing ones. At the same time he was working on artificial alphabets.
An important element of Tolkien's life was his male friends and the clubs they founded. In his last year in Birmingham, the Tea Club was formed, which soon changed into the Barrovian Society and then simply to T. C. B. S. The club's activities consisted of meetings, where matters of science and literature were discussed. The summer vacation of that year was spent walking in the Alps.
Oxford
In 1911 Tolkien was granted a scholarship to study Classical Languages at Oxford. He loved the life in the ancient academic city. In the first year he also learned a little Welsh, another of his childhood passions. He had earlier enjoyed an English translation of Kalevala and now he also had an opportunity to learn some Finnish. Although he was not very successful at this, he was filled with inspiration to construct yet another language, the one which was to become Quenya, or High Elvish.
For various reasons, Tolkien was not able to obtain a First Class degree. This was, to say the least, a little disappointing and as a result he was talked into changing his subject to English. Obviously, this was where his main interest lay.
The Honours School of English Language and Literature was divided in two, with one linguistic and one literary department. Naturally Tolkien belonged to the linguists. The following terms proved to be hard work, and he came across many works in Old English which were new to him. In one of them he found two lines which were to bring about a drastic change to his life.
Eala Earendel engla beorhtast
ofer middangeard monnum sended.3
The words meant: "Hail, Earendel, brightest of angels/above the middle-earth sent unto men" and they moved Tolkien deeply. He studied Old Icelandic, and read both Eddas - the prose and the poem - and was greatly influenced by Völuspa.
In spring 1914 he received the Skeat award in English of 5 pounds. In the summer in Cornwall, he wrote the first poem of Eärendil.
The War

Tolkien's participation in World War I was brief but substantial. After some training he was sent to France in 1915. At the beginning of 1916 he became a signaller because then he would be able to work with words and messages. He learned the Morse alphabet and a number of different modes of signalling and in the summer he took part in trench combat a couple of times. In October, however, he caught a mysterious fever and one month later he was sent back to England. The war had left many marks. Professor Tom Shippey, who now has the same position at Leeds University that Tolkien once had, has made this observation:
When he was 22 he had many friends, when he was 26 they were nearly all dead. Obviously an experience like this does affect anybody and from a very early period, Tolkien obviously continues to think about death and part of his mythology is to construct a race of creatures who are deathless and who wish to escape from deathlessness in a way that human beings wish to escape from death. But the centre of all that, is the thought of death.4
Back in England, as a convalescent, Tolkien began constructing his mythology. According to Carpenter, there were three main motives for doing this: first, the languages that he had created had made such a strong impression on him that he wanted to create stories and legends to go with them. Thus, the names of his characters and creatures were always important. In the TV interview he says:
I always in the writing - always - start with the name. Give me a name and it just produces the story, not the other way around, normally.5
Secondly, he had an urge to express his innermost feelings by means of poetry and thirdly, he wanted to create a mythology for England.
He wrote 'The Fall of Gondolin', 'Húrin's Children' and 'Beren and Lúthien' which later were to appear in The Silmarillion. He also made the time to learn a little Russian. Tolkien was officially granted leave from the army in November 1918.
Back in Oxford, Tolkien worked for a while on the New English Dictionary and extended his knowledge of philology. In 1920 he was offered a position as Reader at Leeds University and four years later, aged 32, he became Professor of English. One year later, in 1925, a chair became vacant at Oxford and Tolkien was by a small margin elected Professor of Anglo-Saxon.
The following years were to be comparatively uneventful. Tolkien instructed students and gave lectures during the day and during most of the night he worked on his legends. His life was filled with the things he loved the most. However, one important part was missing: the clubs. In the war many of his friends had died and the clubs with them. This Tolkien could not stand and he became instrumental in the founding of several new clubs, among them The Inklings.
The Inklings began as a literary club in 1931, and during its meetings unpublished material was read aloud and criticised. There was no fixed membership but among the more frequent attenders were people like J. R. R. and Christopher Tolkien, C. S. and Warren Lewis, R. E. Havard, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson and Charles Williams. In this environment Tolkien began to read parts of the work which was later to become...
The Hobbit
To establish exactly when Tolkien began to write The Hobbit has proved to be rather difficult. There are no dated original manuscripts left and when asked, Tolkien could not remember. However, according to Carpenter, it must have been in 1930-31 6.
At this point, The Hobbit had no explicit connection with his other myths. It was simply a bed-time story he had made up for his children and that he now had expanded and put into writing. It was published in September 1937 and the reviews were brilliant.
Tolkien later regretted the patronizing style he had used in the book. In later editions he also made some changes in order for it to fit better with the forthcoming LOTR.
The Lord of the Rings
Primarily because of the good reviews, LOTR began in 1936 as a sequel to The Hobbit. He soon put it away, however, in order to continue with his mythologies which were much more dear to his heart. People close to him made him realise though, that if he wanted to publish any more books, they had to be about hobbits, not elves.
As Tolkien was writing the first chapter of the new book, he had really no idea what it was going to be about. He simply wrote about a couple of hobbits who were related to Bilbo and who had his ring, with which they were going to do something. The work proceeded slowly and sporadically and characters such as the Black Rider and Strider were as new and mysterious to Tolkien when they suddenly appeared, as they would be to any new reader today.
In August 1938 the hobbits had reached the house of Tom Bombadill but it was not until they were in Rivendell that Tolkien suddenly knew the name and the course of the new book - The Lord of the Rings. In March 1939 he gave a lecture on fairy-stories in which he explained what he believed was the working principle behind a good story and the important role of the narrator - or subcreator. Then World War II broke out and Tolkien was for a long time stuck at Balin's tomb in Moria.
After having written the short story 'Leaf by Niggle' Tolkien was inspired to move on with LOTR. In April 1944 the group of travellers had been dissolved and Frodo and Sam had met Gollum. In May Tolkien was wondering whether 'Shelob' was a good name for a giant spider or not.
By the end of 1947 he had finally reached the end. However, his sense of perfection meant that he had a lot of revision and rewriting to do and it was not until the autumn of 1949 that the entire manuscript was finished and neatly typed.
The reason for its then taking five whole years to become published can only be ascribed to Tolkien himself. As mentioned earlier, his mythologies meant more to him and the following years were primarily filled with the publishers trying to explain to Tolkien that they were not going to publish The Silmarillion (which was not even finished at the time) but only LOTR.
Eventually, Tolkien gave in, but it was not easy to 'go public' like this. Tolkien was not just writing another novel like any other author: this was his life's work. In a letter to his dear friend, Father Robert Murray, he said:
I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.7
In the TV-programme Tolkien quotes Simone de Beauvoir:
"There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural... All men must die. And for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it, he can sense to it an unjustifiable violation"
- You may agree with the words or not, but those are the keyspring of the Lord of the Rings. 8
Tom Shippey sees that "LOTR is not a completely isolated work". He notices that it has something in common with its contemporaries, such as 1984, Animal Farm and somewhat later Lord of the Flies, apart from their all being post-war books:
... they want to say something about human nature, they want to talk... about the nature of evil and the nature of death and it seems that the writers cannot do that inside a realistic tradition... they must therefore say it in some way through the medium of fantasy.9
The Critics
The thick book with its unusual content attracted a great deal of attention. Many reviewers were singularly impressed and praised Tolkien to the skies. Among these were W. H. Auden in America and of course his dear friend C. S. Lewis. However, negative criticism was just around the corner. In January 1956, Mark Roberts wrote that LOTR is "clearly an unusual sort of narrative for a modern writer to attempt"10.
With Tolkien's essay on fairy-stories in mind he tries to analyse LOTR in Tolkien's own terms. These are Fantasy, Recovery, Escape and Consolation and here he rates it very highly. However, there is a missing piece in the total picture of the novel, namely the 'value'.
One cannot very well talk about the style of the book, for the style changes so constantly and so radically... The trouble is, however, that these changes of style, though well-intentioned, are managed in a way that is hopelessly mechanical.
In his conclusion he sums up:
Perhaps the word 'contrive' will serve to pinpoint what is ultimately wrong with this book: at bottom it is all a matter of contrivance. It doesn't issue from an understanding of reality which is not to be denied; it is not moulded by some controlling vision of things which is at the same time its raison d'être. ... Lacking a serious controlling principle, the work sprawls.
In April the same year in The Nation, Edmund Wilson decides to straighten things out as far as LOTR is concerned. He begins by mentioning that LOTR, as opposed to the children's book The Hobbit, is intended for adult readers. This he cannot understand and is perplexed by all the recognised reviewers giving it so many compliments.
There are... some details that are a little unpleasant for a children's book, but except when he is being pedantic and also boring the adult reader, there is little in The Lord of the Rings over the head of a seven-year-old child. It is essentially a children's book... which has somehow grown out of hand...11

Wilson is on no level impressed with Dr. Tolkien. He notes that
Prose and verse are on the same level of professorial amateurishness.
There are streaks of imagination: the ancient tree-spirits, the Ents, with their deep eyes, twiggy beards, rumbly voices; the Elves, whose nobility and beauty is elusive and not quite human. But even these are rather clumsily handled.
He thinks the Black Riders are nothing but spectres, the Orcs never do anything really bad and that the winged steeds of the Nazgûls and the giant spider Shelob are actually quite harmless.
What one misses in all these terrors is any trace of concrete reality.
Wilson admits that the basic idea of having an innocent creature carrying an evil, gradually influential artefact to its evil homeland for its destruction is interesting, although Tolkien fails to make anything out of it.
Wilson concludes with the observation that those who appreciate LOTR are people who "have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash".
Many years later, Tolkien is still topical. In 1977 Peter Conrad's12 view is that:
Tolkien is, as Cliff Richard said of Elvis, 'a phenomena'. He is interesting not as an artist but as a serendipitous success.
Para-scholarship... camouflages Tolkien's imaginative deficiencies, for although he can invent languages at will... he can't actually write.
Conrad also fails to understand why Tolkien has achieved so much success. He suggests therefore that Tolkien might fulfil a certain need for escapism. However, this is exactly what Tolkien is not doing:
... the context is epic, but the spirit is bureaucratic.
...
Tolkien pleases not because he is arcane and outlandish but because he is an unadventurous defender of mediocrity. Middle-Earth is a suburb; its hobbits are Babbits, homespun, humdrum shopkeepers, lineal descendants of Christina Rossetti's mercantile goblins and Beatrix Potter's tweedy bunnies. ... He is, in a word, kitsch.
The field of literary criticism had so far proved to be male-dominated. Therefore it is interesting to see that Robert M. Adams brings up a subject not mentioned so far:
Bilbo and Frodo are lifelong bachelors... there's only one female hobbit in the books... Apart from this necessary exception, hobbitry is a boy's club.
... Indeed, Tolkien's avoidance of sex is striking; given the mode of romance, it's a perfectly legitimate avoidance, but can't fail to heighten the sense of infantilism in the fantasy.13
The Legend Grows
When LOTR came out in the mid-50s it thus had a mixed reception from the critics. However, in the 60s it was discovered by a completely different audience - young American students. This younger generation was not interested in literary criticism. They accepted the tale completely and a kind of fanaticism developed - paving the way for the Tolkien Societies.
In his last book on Tolkien, Ohlmarks gives an example of this unquestioning readiness to accept everything written in the books. When asking a young man why The Silmarillion is such a great book he is perplexed by the answer: "Because one gets to know so much in it."14
The Tolkien Societies are a world-wide phenomenon, of course biggest in the USA with thousands of societies. Their activities consist mainly of meetings and banquets where the members dress up and take names from the books. They eat, drink, engage in fake swordplay, read poetry, sing and act. In Sweden the "Annual of Arda-research" is published on a yearly basis by the Arda Society. It includes articles such as 'Beowulf - a Work of Art', 'Tolkien's Conception of Evil: An Anthropological Approach', 'Mordor: Empire of Evil or Decline of a Model' and 'The Hero Stereotype and its Modifications in The Lord of the Rings'15
In addition, there are many other things that have been influenced by LOTR: the entire genre of Fantasy which includes books, cartoons, films, role-playing games, etc. Even pop-groups, like Marillion, have borrowed their names from Tolkien.
The impact Tolkien has had on the sub-culture of role playing games cannot be exaggerated. Here, all his races and characters appear, either as they were or in slightly altered forms: hobbits (or halflings), dwarves, elves, ents, orcs and goblins. Names are also adopted from the books and the nine members of the fellowship of the ring stand as a model for adventurous parties - at least one representative from each race. Middle-Earth Role Play is actually based on the very books, and games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy Role Play all copy different aspects of Tolkien's subcreation.
________________________________________
2 Tolkien till minne
3 Lines 104-5 from Crist by Cynewulf, here quoted from Carpenter (1978), p. 72
4 Tolkien till minne
5 Tolkien till minne
6 Carpenter (1978) p. 181
7 Tolkien till minne
8 Tolkien till minne, emphasis added
9 Tolkien till minne
10 Roberts (1956)
11 Wilson (1956)
12 Conrad (1977)
13 Adams (1977)
14 Ohlmarks (1982), p 86, my translation.
15 ARDA 1988-1991
15 'Role play' is a narrative story-telling activity, which takes place indoors round a table. Paper, pen and dice are vital ingredients, as well as good imagination. Game sessions usually last 3-6 hours, often much longer. The game involves about 4-6 players, one being the Gamemaster who is the main narrator and controller of everything in the imaginary world; the other players have one role each to play, as warrior, rogue, ranger, magician, etc.
Copyright (c) 1995 Ludvig Grahn
THE SWEDISH INTERPRETER
Twenty Years with Tolkien
In the late 50s the Swedish publishing company AWE Gebers bought the rights toLOTR, and Åke Ohlmarks was suggested as translator. He was already a well-known author and translator of the Eddaic myths, Shakespeare and the Koran, among other works, and was considered an expert on religious history.
When asked, Ohlmarks immediately read the first fifty pages of LOTR but was disappointed. He found it to be a children's story, much like the previous The Hobbit.
...from the first fifty-sixty pages "The Fellowship of the Ring" seemed to be written in the same spirit [i.e. of The Hobbit]: a pure nonsense-fairy-tale to suit the little ones, with an endlessly long account of a boring birthday party... I gave up even before the end of the long-drawn-out chapter about "A Long-expected Party"...17
However, he was talked into reading some more and suddenly he was struck - this was indeed great literature!
His goal was to reproduce the novel in Swedish with not the slightest suggestion of its English origin. Putting all his skill and knowledge into it, he had finished it in 1959. The book was published, the reviews were very flattering and some years later Ohlmarks received an award of 10,000 crowns (approx. 850 pounds) from The Swedish Authors' Foundation.
From now on, Ohlmarks' life was more or less dedicated to Tolkien and LOTR. He began to give lectures on Tolkien and Middle-Earth and was later involved in founding some of the Tolkien Societies in Sweden (e.g. the one in Umeå).
Over the years Ohlmarks has written three books connected with Tolkien. The first came in 1972 and was called Sagan om Tolkien ('The Tolkien Saga'18), which he claimed was the first biography of Tolkien, although it was never officially recognised as such. Six years later, in 1978, came Tolkiens arv ('The Tolkien Inheritance') and in 1982 Tolkien och den svarta magin ('Tolkien and Black Magic').
Sagan om Tolkien consists roughly of half biographical facts on Tolkien and half literary analysis of LOTR. The analysis deals mainly with Tolkien's possible sources for the books, which are indeed, according to Ohlmarks, innumerable.
The elves, for example, are taken from the stories about King Arthur, mainly the Irish tradition. Tolkien's Westernesse is the Avalon of the Arthur myths. Aragorn is a character inspired by Arthur and the name of Aragorn's father, Arathorn, is clearly influenced by the old Germanic form of the word Arthur, Ara-Thorin. Furthermore, Gandalf is of course Merlin, but not only in the role of magician. The elven name of Gandalf is Mithrandir and Ohlmarks sees a resemblance here with Merlin's origin in the Welsh prophet Myddrin. And when it comes to names in general, Ohlmarks provides a long list of names that look alike in LOTR and in the Arthur myths. Here are some examples19:
Balin the dwarf Balin the knight
Dagorlad the battlefield Dagornet the knight
Galadriel Galahad, Galachim
Gildor Gildas
Isildur Isolde
Lorien Lorraine
Mablung Mabon the wizard
Mark Rohan King Mark
Olorin Oleroun
Pelennor King Pellinore
Rohan Rohant the knight
Further, Ohlmarks notes that some of Tolkien's names come from Latin (Númenor, Legolas, Incanus), some from French medieval history (Pippin, Folco, Fredegar, Odo, Lotho), some from Spanish (Drogo, Bilbo, Marcho, Blanco), and some from Greek (Sauron, Erebor, Imladris, Echthelion, Denethor)
Next, he finds similarities between the style of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and the easygoing jovial style of the hobbits.
One of the major influences, Ohlmarks maintains, is the Beowulf saga. He finds that the monster Grendel in Beowulf in many aspects is Tolkien's Balrog, and that the ways in which the two episodes are narrated are quite similar. Also, the fight between Sam and Shelob resembles the fight with Grendel's mother.
As far as the hero's fights against Balrog and Shelob, and Grendel and his mother respectively are concerned, the similarities between Beowulf's and Tolkien's stories are so great that the accounts of them in The Lord of the Rings are hardly conceivable without regarding the Anglo-Saxon poem as a worthy source of inspiration.20
The dealings Bilbo has with Smaug in The Hobbit resemble another passage inBeowulf.
With references to the work of John Tinker, Ohlmarks shows that the language spoken in Rohan is nothing but pure Old English (Anglo-Saxon). For example, Éo, which often appears in names (Éomer, Éowyn, Éothéod, Éomund, etc.), comes from Anglo-Saxon éoh which means 'horse'. The second elements of the names in the example are also Anglo-Saxon.
From Gothic come the name of the orc Snaga and the ford Tharbads. Other words which might have Gothic influences are balrog, wose, Tauremorna, Rhosgobel. Words beginning with Ga- also have a Gothic sound (Galadriel, Galadrim, Gil-Galad).
Extensive resemblances are also found in the various Eddaic and Old Germanic myths, such as Sigmund the dragonslayer, Völsungarna in the Sämundar-Edda, and Nibelungenlied. Ohlmarks shows point by point how Tolkien must have been inspired by these legends when he wrote LOTR. Also, there is an account of how the events and characters in LOTR correspond with those in Genesis.
However, one must not be misled into thinking that Ohlmarks at this point does not like LOTR. On the contrary, he believes Tolkien to be at times the equal of authors such as Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson and Kipling.21
One year after Ohlmarks' book was published, J. R. R. Tolkien died.
Tolkiens arv (The Tolkien Inheritance) is a collection of bits and pieces related to Ohlmarks' work with LOTR. The book, he says, is an attempt to make the long waiting period for The Silmarillion endurable. In it he tells how he came to translateLOTR, his dealings with Tolkien and his visits to Christopher Tolkien and Rayner Unwin.
Then Ohlmarks gives an account of possible reasons why Christopher Tolkien suddenly felt the need to send Ohlmarks a letter containing threats and insults. Ohlmarks had earlier sent Christopher a copy of a preliminary manuscript in Swedish for a new book - probably the forerunner to this one. However, Christopher did not regard the manuscript as anything but an impertinent attack on himself and his family. As a result of this, Ohlmarks was later completely out of the question when it came to translating The Silmarillion.
In another chapter he is saddened and surprised at Humphrey Carpenter's attack in his biography. Carpenter writes:
...[Tolkien] was much less pleased with a Swedish translation of the book... Not only did he disapprove of much of the actual translation (he had a working knowledge of Swedish) but he was also angered by a foreword to the book inserted by the translator. Tolkien called this foreword 'five pages of impertinent nonsense'... After Tolkien had registered a strong protest, this foreword was withdrawn by the Swedish publishers...22
Ohlmarks was devastated and could not for his life understand the reason for printing this. Firstly, Ohlmarks claimed that he had not interpreted anything, merely pointed out a few obvious facts, such as World War II giving Tolkien inspiration to move on with his story. Secondly, Tolkien had not had 'a working knowledge of Swedish' - at least not 'working' in the sense that he would have been able to pass such judgements on a work in Swedish as he did. Thirdly, the fact that the Swedish publishers, when asked, could not remember having received any protest of that kind from Tolkien, raises the suspicion that this last point is a fabrication on the part of Carpenter, or at least Christopher Tolkien.
What is the real purpose of Christopher Tolkien, via Carpenter's typewriter, emptying a bucket of slops over my head? Is this happening only because I sent him a small well-meant manuscript, or part of it, in a photostat copy in order for him to give his opinion about it, to send word whether he thought I could print it or not? Is it really possible to show greater respect? Had I sent him a finished copy I could probably sympathize with him. But now?23
Curiously, the passage about the Swedish translation was omitted in the Swedish version of Carpenter's biography.
Among many other things, Ohlmarks provides an extensive account of how Tolkien's books and mythology are influenced by or perhaps allegorical about modern and historical Europe. This subject is further examined below.
In Tolkien och den svarta magin (Tolkien and Black Magic), which is dedicated to Edmund Wilson, one of the fiercest anti-Tolkien critics, Ohlmarks begins with the words "Pater peccavi..." (Father, I have sinned...). And truly, Ohlmarks is by now deeply regretful for having spent decades promoting Tolkien in Sweden. He continues with phrases such as "Tolkien's trash", "the damned thing" and "the only too lately deceased old man Ronald Reul..."24. Ohlmarks' new attitude to the books is evident:
The first book [Book 1 of LOTR] is poor rubbish for children and tells almost exclusively of a lengthy, tiresome birthday party among the 'creatures' called hobbits... These hobbits... make pretty boring reading... Tolkien invented his hobbits in a miserably bad fairy-story as early as 1937 ... [LOTR] is the naive folk-tale, painted in black and white, at its worst... 25
The correct usage of the Swedish language was naturally a delicate matter to Ohlmarks.
The old man John Reul was in many respects an odd character and by no means without faults. He believed he had mastered practically every language in the world, including... Swedish.
Sure enough, with the help of dictionaries he could passably spell his way though a Swedish text... But he lacked every sense of the nuances of Swedish words, which did not stop him from tyrannically dictating what everything was going to be called in Swedish...
However, he regarded my independence as an insolent criticism of his omniscience and never forgave me. The fact that I have given nearly forty lectures about him and his work and ... that for twenty years I have done more than anyone else to spread Tolkienism in the whole of the Nordic area did not bother him at all.26
But mostly, Ohlmarks is angry and upset with the Tolkien Societies and a small number of the Swedish ones in particular - the ones whose members had fallen into alchohol abuse and acts of terrorism. What usually began as a pleasant invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Ohlmarks to a happy event only too often ended in nonsensical disputes and general harrassment - the most serious being when Ohlmarks' own house nearly burnt down and his wife had to go to hospital.
In his capacity as Tolkien's representative in Sweden, Ohlmarks also received a number of letters from more or less deranged people, some of them with multiple personality disorders (e. g. being Aragorn, Gandalf and Frodo at the same time).
However, the most grave accusation is the claim that LOTR is essentially the work of another mind than Tolkien's. Ohlmarks still believes that books 2-6 are very good indeed, though not Tolkien's work but probably C. S. Lewis'. This subject will be more closely examined below.
(continued)
________________________________________
17 Ohlmarks (1978), p 5-6, my translation.
18 The book titles are my translations.
19 Ohlmarks (1972), p 54
20 Ohlmarks (1972), p 85, my translation (the Swedish is not absolutely clear here)
21 Ohlmarks (1972), p. 216
22 Carpenter (1978), p. 227-228
23 Ohlmarks (1978), p. 148, my translation
24 Ohlmarks (1982) p. 9, my translation.
25 Ohlmarks (1982), p. 22-24, my translation
26 Ohlmarks (1982), p. 29, my translation
Copyright (c) 1995 Ludvig Grahn
THE SWEDISH INTERPRETER (continued)
Two Incompatible Spirits
How can a man devote twenty years of his life to a cause, and then suddenly change his mind and wish that the source of his work had met with an earlier death? The change came gradually, though. Ohlmarks first expressed a slight irritation in Sagan om Tolkien, then open contempt towards Christopher Tolkien in the next book and, finally, plain rage in the last.
Ohlmarks was infuriated because of the moral breakdown of some of the Swedish Tolkien societies. Some weeks before Tolkien och den svarta magin was released, he commented on it in an interview for a newspaper.
Had I not written it, I could never have looked at myself in a mirror again.
- I was writing in a rage... I felt so terribly disappointed that I had introduced this insanity into Sweden.27
Although he as late as in Tolkiens arv says things like -
I am grateful for having had the opportunity of spreading the word about one of the greatest authors and most creative minds of our time.28
- he says in the interview that he always considered Tolkien to be an incompetent writer.
The books are on a cartoon-level... just like the Phantom and Guran and the Pygmies.
In his outburst in Tolkien och den svarta magin Ohlmarks confirms:
... the cartoon is the only adequate form for children's stories of such low literary quality. I once spoke about JRRT in connection with the Nobel Prize. Forgive me honoured members of the Academy... I was as stupid as the poor serving-hands of the Tolkien societies...29
He was not afraid to speak up, and said he never had been. As to the Tolkien societies he claims in the interview:
Tolkien himself admired Hitler deeply. The societies devote their time to warlike exercises, it is just like the SS-system29
And sure enough, Ohlmarks finds a clue in the name Saruman: SA-rhum-an30 (SA : the German military unit, 'rhum': 'honor' in German).
However, there seems to be no evidence whatsoever for ascribing this position to Tolkien. As a matter of fact, the German translation of The Hobbit was delayed till after the war because German publishers wanted Tolkien to confirm that he was not of Jewish origin. Apparently, this entire notion was appalling to Tolkien and the Germans were rejected.31
From the first contact with Tolkien, Ohlmarks was feeling offended. Tolkien was not entirely satisfied with his translation and most of all, he did not like Ohlmarks' invention of calling hobbits for 'hober' in Swedish. Ohlmarks explains that he patiently answered Tolkien with a letter of seven pages32 in which he listed all the undesirable associations that 'hobbit' and other terms could have in Swedish. Tolkien was forced to yield but wrote to his publisher:
The enclosure... from Almqvist &c. was both puzzling and irritating. A letter in Swedish from fil. dr Åke Ohlmarks, and a huge list (9 pages foolscap) of names in the L. R. which he had altered. I hope that my inadequate knowledge of Swedish... tends to exaggerate the impression I received. The impression remains, nonetheless, that Dr Ohlmarks is a conceited person... [Ohlmarks] lectures me on... the Swedish language and its antipathy to borrowing foreign words (a matter which seems beside the point), a procedure made all the more ridiculous by the language of the letter... thriller-genre being a good specimen of good old pure Swedish.33
Here, Tolkien gives the impression of being overly pedantic. He may be right about the letter containing many loan-words, but this, however, "seems beside the point" as well. It must have been quite clear that Ohlmarks was referring to the translation of LOTR, and not Swedish in general.
A few years later the Swedish version of LOTR appeared. In it, Ohlmarks had included an introduction with biographical notes on Tolkien. Tolkien wrote to his publisher:
Ohlmarks is a very vain man... preferring his own fancy to facts, and very ready to pretend to knowledge which he does not possess. He does not hesitate to attribute to me sentiments and beliefs which I repudiate. Among them a dislike of the University of Leeds... This is impertinent and entirely untrue. If it should come to the knowledge of Leeds... I should make him apologize.34
There seemed to be altogether a lack of chemistry between Tolkien and Ohlmarks. They were at the same time very much alike and yet very different from each other. They were both incredibly learned scholars who were fascinated by the old Norse and Germanic myths and they were both proud, even though neither one of them would have admitted it. Tolkien was known to be offended whenever his work was criticised and C.S. Lewis' remark is quite revealing:
He has only two reactions to criticism. Either he begins the whole work over again from the beginning or else takes no notice at all.35
Ohlmarks' reaction to Christopher and later to the Swedish Tolkien Societies gave evidence of a strong sense of pride, at least as far as his work was concerned.
On the differing side are their personalities. Tolkien was known to be almost timid and shy, talking in a low and grumbling voice. As opposed to this, Ohlmarks was big and noisy (and happily joked about his weight).
Considering this, Ohlmarks' thorough analysis in Sagan om Tolkien must have been far too imprudent and aggressive to suit English, or at least J. R. R. Tolkien's, modesty. For example, Ohlmarks has a theory about the circumstances regarding the invention of the name of one of the hobbit tribes - the Fallohides. Ohlmarks draws a parallel with South Africa and the bushmen who lived in the jungle outside Bloemfontein. Like the hobbits they were of short height and, as the name would later give evidence of, they wore a cloth to hide their genitals - hence phallo-hides36. There is no recorded reaction to this interpretation from Tolkien, but the chances are that it would not have been approving.
Ohlmarks noticed that unfavourable criticism of Tolkien often seems to be based on jealousy - something that he perhaps falls victim to himself. Ohlmarks' rather sour remarks regarding Carpenter (Tolkien's biographer), in Tolkiens arv ochTolkien och den svarta magin reveal at least some degree of jealousy.
By the way, who is this Mr Humphrey Carpenter? ... he is not in Who's Who, not in any literary dictionary whatsoever... He does not seem to have written anything prior to this biography. He has arbitrarily been appointed by Christopher Tolkien ignoring all the more authorative literary biographers and down to the smallest detail he is dependent on his benefactor and employer. To him Christopher has been able to dictate anything at whim and Carpenter has completely accepted it all...37
Further, Ohlmarks' visit to the younger Tolkien, of which an account is given in Tolkiens arv in 197838, resembles Carpenter's visit to the older, described in 197739. Could this be a way of expressing - visualising - the wish of having met Tolkien? In order to use Ohlmarks' own way of finding similes a comparison of the two events is given in the following.
Carpenter is after a short and nervous anticipation greeted at the front door and the first thing he notices is that, to his surprise, Tolkien is under average height. On entering Christopher Tolkien's house Ohlmarks understands that, despite his precautions he is a little early, because he is let in by a moody housekeeper and is left to wait for quite some time. Then, Ohlmarks finds Christopher to be almost two metres tall - height seems to be of some significance here. Both father and son have a steady handshake.
Carpenter is soon led out to the garage which serves as an office. The room is filled with books and sheets of paper and letters. Tolkien is very busy revising LOTR for the next edition. Ohlmarks is soon led into Christopher's study, which is in a total mess, and then after a while into an old rebuilt stable in the backyard in which the material for The Silmarillion is currently under compilation.
Both Ohlmarks and Carpenter sit and listen in awe, taking notes, as their respective Tolkien is talking. However, after a while Ohlmarks realises that Christopher has only limited knowledge of philology, linguistics and phonology whereas Carpenter remains in complete fascination throughout the entire visit. Both visits end in a happy manner: Carpenter is invited back and Ohlmarks is both complimented for his translation and granted a privilege - a preview of the forthcoming The Silmarillion.
Ohlmarks' great misfortune was probably the fact that he never met Tolkien in person. Considering himself to be of an equal kind, not having met Tolkien naturally diminished Ohlmarks' own authority. The 'biography', written one year before Tolkien died, did not include one single exclusive piece of information from Tolkien. In consequence, Ohlmarks' book suffers from a few errors and it was not recognised as the first biography of Tolkien either.
Ohlmarks began as a devoted Tolkien-fan, but over the years he changed and became one of his fiercest critics. The reason for this was not, however, LOTRitself or even Tolkien. It must be ascribed to external causes.
The Accusation of Forgery
The most serious accusation put forward by Ohlmarks is that of forgery. However, he does not believe that this diminishes the standard of LOTR:
the story itself is fascinating and narrated in a way which makes cold shivers go down one's back... 40
Ohlmarks claims that there is a major discrepancy in the narrative style when comparing The Hobbit and Book 1 of LOTR with Books 2-6. He says that, together with a colleague whose name he thinks it best not to reveal, he has found substantial evidence to support this. Consequently, he suspects the major part ofLOTR to be the work of another author.
... because it could definitely not be him [Tolkien]. If it were, the entire academic exercise of "philological determinance of authorship" would be worthless. ... there are fundamental discrepancies in style, vocabulary, syntax, narrative technique, story-telling, visionary power - everything.41
To answer the obvious question of who then is the real author of the major part ofLOTR, Ohlmarks chooses to mention Tolkien's dearest friend at the time, C.S. Lewis. How could Lewis otherwise have been able to give a review of LOTR at such short notice if he was not in fact the actual author?
However, the notion of there being a discrepancy in style between The Hobbit and the different parts of LOTR is not a new one. Robert M. Adams says for example that
... they are very uneven books [The Hobbit and LOTR], both when compared to one another, and in their different parts as well.
The Hobbit, for example, stands well apart from the trilogy.
...
Altogether different is the tone of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. At issue is not a gold-hoard but the survival of "civilisation as we know it,"... 42
Paul H. Kocher43 also clearly sees a difference between the books, even though he refuses to term either one of them as better than the other. He maintains that they are entirely separate types of stories, the one a children's/adult fairy-tale and the other an adult epic saga, and that as such they have very different qualities indeed.
No one seems to dispute that there are differences between The Hobbit andLOTR, and no one seems to question whether Tolkien wrote The Hobbit or not. The real question then, seems to be whether Tolkien wrote all of LOTR or not.
Any evidence to support Ohlmarks' claim has so far failed to see the light and as Åke Ohlmarks passed away a few years ago there seems to be little hope of sharing such knowledge.
One of Ohlmarks' arguments is that while The Hobbit and other such works written before LOTR are of the same poor standard as The Silmarillion, which was published after LOTR, it would be practically impossible to produce a work in between of such a high standard. What seems to escape Ohlmarks here is the fact that The Silmarillion was largely written before even The Hobbit. In this light,LOTR could perhaps be seen as the crowning of a slowly developed literary style.
LOTR was written over a long period of time - about 13 years. Tolkien himself did not know how it was going to end as he wrote it and before it was published he rewrote many parts. The world was at war for five years and authors do change and develop. It is not very complimentary to suggest that an author has no ability whatsoever to vary his style - although complimenting Tolkien was perhaps the least of Ohlmarks' concerns at the end.
It is true that LOTR was not a work unfamiliar to Lewis. Parts of it were on a regular basis read during the Inkling sessions and he was frequently asked by Tolkien to comment on the progress of the story. Tolkien's daughter Priscilla recalls:
Tolkien admitted that without C. S. Lewis the Lord of the Rings would not have been completed.44
To suggest that Lewis would have 'shadow-written' LOTR seems strange, however. The progress of the book is the subject of an enormous amount of correspondence, primarily with Tolkien's sons and publisher, and the idea that each and every one of these letters would hide an elaborate and cunningly devised lie, seems far-fetched, to say the least.
Allegory or Not?
Tolkien repeatedly claimed that there was no such thing as allegory in his work. In a letter to his publisher in 1938, concerning the progress of LOTR, Tolkien says that:
The darkness of the present days has had some effect on it. Though it is not an 'allegory'.45
In another letter, after the publication of LOTR, he writes:
There is no 'symbolism' or conscious allegory in my story. Allegory of the sort 'five wizards=five senses' is wholly foreign to my way of thinking.46
Mark Roberts also dismissed ideas such as that the Ring should represent Atomic Power, or that Sauron would advocate National Socialism or that the real enemy should be industrialism.
It follows that The Lord of the Rings cannot be read as a connected allegory, with a clear message for the modern world.47
However, Ohlmarks counters by producing an extensive amount of work with the aim of proving the opposite. In all three of his books, Ohlmarks touches upon the subject of allegory, becoming more intense in the last one.
According to Ohlmarks, Morgoth is Marx, and among other things he uses theories of sound change to support his claim. He uses the word London as an illustration48. The early pronunciation of London was probably something like /'lo:ndon/, which has later developed to modern /'landn/. In the same manner,Morgoth was pronounced /'mo:goth/ and consequently changed into /'magth/, now spelt Marx. After a long account of how the suffix -we could properly be changed to -in, Ohlmarks points out that the elven lord Lenwe is in fact Lenin! To complete the picture, Sauron is of course Stalin and Mordor is Russia.
Ohlmarks continues: Saruman is Hitler, the Black Riders/Nazgûls are the Gestapo, Isengaard is Berlin (both were destroyed during war), Ortanc is Hitler's Reichskanzlei (also destroyed/bombed). Theoden is marshal Pétain, Rohan is France, Frodo/Aragorn is Churchill, the Shire is Great Britain, Westernesse is USA and Radagast is the environmentalists49.
Ohlmarks often accused Tolkien of having "a bee in his bonnet" about languages and linguistic matters. The same could be said of Ohlmarks and his allegories. He was convinced that if he could spot any allegory in a story, the allegory had to be intentional on the part of the author. Tolkien maintained that there was no intentional allegory, but - of course - applicability.
________________________________________
27 Bielf (1982), my translation.
28 Ohlmarks (1978), p. 14, my translation
29 Ohlmarks (1982), p. 137, my translation
30 Ohlmarks (1982), p. 30
31 Carpenter (1990), p. 37-38
32 Ohlmarks (1978), p. 23. However in Ohlmarks (1982), p 29, the letter is said to be of almost 20 pages.
33 Carpenter (1990), p. 263
34 Carpenter (1990), p. 305
35 Carpenter (1978), p. 149
36 Ohlmarks (1972), p. 14
37 Ohlmarks (1978), p. 144-145, my translation
38 Ohlmarks (1978), p. 51-75
39 Carpenter (1978), p. 11-14
40 Ohlmarks (1982), p. 24, my translation.
41 Ohlmarks (1982), p. 25, my translation.
42 Adams (1977)
43 Kocher (1972), p. 25
44 Tolkien till minne
45 Carpenter (1990), p. 41
46 Carpenter (1990), p. 262
47 Roberts (1956)
48 Ohlmarks (1978), p. 182
49 Ohlmarks (1982), p. 30
Copyright (c) 1995 Ludvig Grahn

OTHER PROBLEMS
Stereotypes and Dualism

The characters of LOTR are said to be perfect stereotypes with little or insignificant psychological depth, and the world divided in two major powers, the good side and the evil.
Mark Roberts writes in his preliminary review of LOTR:
The Lord of Evil is black and ugly, and his followers are bad-mannered and quarrelsome creatures who in general give off a bad smell; they torture their prisoners, and take pleasure in destroying pleasant woodlands and fair buildings. But save for their cruelty in war (...) we are never told exactly in what their wickedness consists. 50
And likewise
The Good are beautiful, intelligent and artistic. They are all craftsmen who make lovely objects, or industrious farmers. ... and their domestic lives, when they are not fighting Evil, are entirely delightful. But save for the chivalrous courage and devotion to duty which they all display (...) there seems to be nothing outstandingly virtuous in their behaviour.
A major problem for Edmund Wilson is the characters, or lack of characters
For the most part such characterisations as Dr. Tolkien is able to contrive are perfectly stereotyped: Frodo the good little Englishman; Samwise, his dog-like servant, who talks lowerclass and respectful, and never deserts his master. These characters... are no characters... .51
He cannot identify himself with, for example, Gandalf
At the end of this long romance, I had still no conception of the wizard Gandalph, who is made to play a cardinal role. I had never been able to visualise him at all.
So, he does not get to know Gandalf, and he does not get to know Sauron either:
... the build-up for him [Sauron] goes on through three volumes. He makes his first, rather promising, appearance as a terrible fire-rimmed yellow eye seen in a water-mirror. But this is as far as we ever get. Once Sauron's realm is invaded, we think we are going to meet him; but he still remains nothing but a burning eye scrutinising all that occurs from the window of a remote dark tower. This might, of course, be made effective; but actually it is not: we never feel Sauron's power.

Not surprisingly, one finds Ohlmarks later also expressing this opinion.
One side was the white, so good and pure and noble that anything better cannot be conceived - while the other side was blacker than the blackest coal, evil personified, cruelty in its every appalling shape, Satan and his devils, the whole blasphemous menagerie. 52
Noreen Hayes and Robert Renshaw maintain however that LOTR does have characters with psychological depth and that there are no dualistic black and white aspects of the conflicts.
... the struggle between Sauron et al. and the Fellowship of the Nine takes place in a pluralistic context, i.e. there are evils instead of "evil" and goods instead of "good".
Neither those forces characterized as good nor those characterized as evil are monolithic or unmixed in nature. Within the fellowship itself Boromir attempts to seize the ring of power.
...
... the dualistic interpretation ignores the careful differentiation of characteristics among the individual good and bad characters. ...
Both Gollum and Sauron are described as evil, yet they are essentially different.53
There are several instances in LOTR which show how terms like 'good' and 'evil' may be altered according to context. Elves and Dwarfs are inherently antagonistic, each regarding the other as the enemy. The Ents regard everyone in possession of an axe (primarily Orcs and Dwarfs) as evil. Saruman illustrates the fact that even the purest can become evil.
Wilson is disappointed that he never meets Sauron. He seems to forget though, that lack of knowledge about evil beings often makes them even more frightening. Avoidance of details might thus be intentional on the part of the author.

The Nature of Evil
Shortly after LOTR was published, Tolkien put down on paper, for personal reasons, some thoughts concerning the book.
In my story I do not deal in Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is Zero. I do not think that at any rate any 'rational being' is wholly evil... In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible... In The Lord of the Rings the conflict is not basically about 'freedom'... It is about God, and His sole right to divine honour. 54
The greatest problem of all regarding Tolkien's fabulous sub-creation seems to lie with the view of evil. Robert M. Adams is not satisfied with Tolkien's morality:
The exotic visual effects and rich linguistic textures absorb the reader's attention and prevent him from feeling the simplistic poverty of Tolkien's moralism 55
In Tolkien's Middle-Earth we feel that evil exists: pure, raw, unadulterated evil. Apparently, the Dark side is evil simply because it is evil.
However, in the world today not everyone would agree with this notion. Many people do not believe that such a thing as pure evil does exist. On the contrary, the maintenance of such an idea can cause harmful and unexpected things to continue to happen, because the real source is never exposed.
The Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller56 has come up with a new understanding of supposed 'evil' human beings. She describes how children are shaped into mass murderers and rapists by society in general and parents or guardians in particular. The principle in this shaping is called Black Education. Ola Lindgren57 shows that vital events concerning the shaping of moral values in The Silmarillion are based on this principle, namely the original notion of evil. As mentioned in the introduction, this essay will not deal with works published after Tolkien's death, but it is in all cases interesting to see that Tolkien's basic view of evil, as presented in the work which he himself regarded as the most important, is influenced by Black Education.
Lindgren highlights two episodes in The Silmarillion. The first has to do with Aulë and his longing for the arrival of Elves and Humans to the world. He cannot contain himself, and thus secretly forestalls Eru's plans and creates his own creatures, the Dwarves, an act which of course does not escape Eru, who is omniscient.
According to Lindgren an example of Black Education is thus becoming visible. Eru is not content with watching Aulë from a distance. He suddenly reveals himself, faces Aulë with the facts and says:
Why hast thou done this? Why dost thou attempt a thing which thou knowest is beyond thy power and thy authority? For thou hast from me as a gift thy own being only, and no more; and therefore the creatures of thy hand and mind can live only by that being, moving when thou thinkest to move them, and if thy thought be elsewhere, standing idle. Is that thy desire? 58
What is Aulë's answer supposed to be? He has been caught red-handed with something forbidden, and he has no means of responding to Eru, since he is completely at the mercy of Eru's power and good will - exactly the way in which a real child is dependent of its parents. He now realises that he has to reject everything that implies that he has a will of his own, since this more than anything else threatens the inner equilibrium of the great father. Aulë, just like the child who has not yet been properly raised, has to pay a high price for the spontaneity and the closeness to his own feelings that has not yet been suppressed. A price that will be paid with a growing lack of self confidence and low amount of self esteem.
Now, Aulë is prepared to kill his Dwarves in order to please his father but Eru, moved by compassion, stops him just in time. Lindgren observes:
It is interesting to see that Aulë's willingness to kill his own beloved creatures corresponds with a fact that Alice Miller and other psychoanalysts have known for a long time, that the child will do anything in order not to lose the love of its parents. The child would rather kill its own feelings than risk losing the love of the parents. 59
This is the core of the work of Alice Miller. As the child expresses feelings of its own, which are in conflict with the parent, the child is accused of wilfulness. This wilfulness is the cause of all evil. It has to be annihilated, at all costs. In the following process, the damage done to the child is irreparable.
Returning to The Silmarillion the Lord of Evil to be, Melkor, is at an early stage found to have this wilfulness60. In a most obstinate manner, he refuses to play the same tune as the other Ainur and he persists in wandering off to the desolate areas of the universe, against Eru's will. As a result of this Melkor is expelled from the 'family' of Eru and Ainur and is doomed to walk the path of loneliness. Melkor's emotional response to this is anger and jealousy; he broods in the darkness of existence and becomes Morgoth, which in our world would be the socially handicapped mass murderer.
Lindgren realises that the use of these moral values may very well be unintentional on the part of Tolkien. This was simply the way things were being done at the time of his own upbringing. To have the moral base of one of the century's greatest epic novels rest on this principle is, however, worrying and deeply regrettable.
Ohlmarks of course, being a religious expert, has something to say about evil too:
According to Tolkien it is thus envy and lust for power that has caused everything evil in the world. The fact that God let Satan thrive and did not nip [evil] in the bud, is one of many inexplicable things about Tolkienism...61
Thus, when attempting to explain the origin of evil Tolkien fails in credibility much in the same way as the Bible does, i. e. with the problem of theodicy. If God/Eru was the only original being and everything else in one way or another came from him, the 'evil' things must also have come from him. Therefore God/Eru cannot be altogether good. If, on the other hand, God/Eru is altogether good, then he could not be all-powerful nor the first original being since evil things co-exist with him and not being all-powerful nor the original being does not make a very impressive god.
________________________________________
50 Roberts (1955), emphasis added.
51 Wilson (1956)
52 Ohlmarks (1982), p. 23-24, my translation.
53 Hays and Renshaw (1967)
54 Carpenter (1990), p. 243
55 Adams (1977)
56 Miller (1991)
57 Lindgren (1991)
58 Tolkien (1994), p. 49
59 Lindgren (1991). My translation, emphasis added.
60 Tolkien (1994), p. 15-24
61 Ohlmarks (1982), p. 33, my translation
Copyright (c) 1995 Ludvig Grahn


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit London: HarperCollinsPublishers(1993)
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings London, BCA (1991)
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Silmarillion London: HarperCollinsPublishers (1994)
Secondary Sources
ARDA 1988-1991, The Arda-Society/Forodrim (1994)
Carpenter, Humphrey J. R. R. Tolkien A Biography London: Unwin Paperbacks (1978)
Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien London: Unwin Paperbacks (1990)
Kocher, Paul H. TOLKIENS SAGOVÄRLD En vägledning Stockholm: Norstedts Förlag (1989)
Miller, Alice I begynnelsen var uppfostran Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand (1991)
Ohlmarks, Åke Sagan om Tolkien Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell Förlag AB (1972)
Ohlmarks, Åke Tolkiens arv Bokförlaget PLUS (1978)
Ohlmarks, Åke Tolkien och den svarta magin Sjöstrands Förlag AB (1982)
Transcripts from a television programme on Tolkien, Tolkien till minne (prod.nr. 10-92/2700, broadcast 29 Jan 1993, Kanal 1, 20.00)
Essays and articles
A big help in selecting international articles was Richard West's Tolkien Criticism: An Annotated Checklist (The Kent State University Press, 1981)
Adams, R.M. 'The Hobbit Habit' New York Review of Books, 24: 22-24 (1977)
Allen, Bruce 'At the Creation' Saturday Review/World, 6/15/74: 25-27 (1974)
Bielf, Lars 'Tolkien var en usel författare' Aftonbladet 20 Mars 1982 (1982)
Conrad, Peter 'The Babbit' New Statesman, Sep 23: 408-409 (1977)
Hayes, Noreen and Robert Renshaw 'Of Hobbits: The Lord of the Rings' Critique, 9: 58-66(1967)
Lindberg, Ola 'Tolkien och den svarta pedagogiken' Fenix 3,9,91/92 p. 142-159 (1991?)
Roberts, Mark 'Adventure in English' Essays in Criticism, 6: 450-459 (1956)
Roberts, Mark 'The Saga of Middle Earth' The Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 25: 704 (1955)
Wilson, Edmund 'Oo, Those Awful Orcs!' The Bit between My Teeth London: W. H. Allen & Co, p. 326-332 (1956)
Copyright (c) 1995 Ludvig Grahn
[FÖREGÅENDE] [INNEHÅLL]


The Ohlmarks's case coda

The Swedish translation of the Lord of the Rings is very bad. If is full of errors. Some are very large. Tolkien did not like the translation (or Ohlmarks) and I and many others in Sweden hope that a new translation will be made.

Example of an error: Instead of Eowyn, Merry kills the Which-King with the sword between the crown and the body! He wrote he instead of she.

Here are wome examples of what Tolkien thought about the Swedish translator and his translation of the Lord of the Rings:

Tolkien wrote: "Ohlmarks is a very vain man (as I discovered in our correspondence), preferring his own fancy to facts, and very ready to pretend to knowledge which he does not possess."
Tolkien about Ohlmarks and the translation:

"Sweden. The enclosure that you brought from Almqvist &c. was both puzzling and irritating. A letter in Swedish from fil. dr. Åke Ohlmarks, and a huge list (9 pages foolscap) of names in the L.R. which he had altered. I hope that my inadequate knowledge of Swedish - no better than my kn. of Dutch, but I possess a v. much better Dutch dictionary! - tends to exaggerate the impression I received. The impression remains, nonetheless, that Dr Ohlmarks is a conceited person, less competent than charming Max Schuchart, though he thinks much better of himself. In the course of his letter he lectures me on the character of the Swedish language and its antipathy to borrowing foreign words (a matter which seems beside the point), a procedure made all the more ridiculous by the language of his letter, more than 1/3 of which consists of 'loan-words' from German, French and Latin: thriller-genre being a good specimen of good old pure Swedish.
I find this procedure puzzling, because the letter and the list seem totally pointless unless my opinion and criticism is invited. But if this is its object, then surely the timing is both unpractical and impolite, presented together with a pistol: 'we are going to start the composition now'. Neither is my convenience consulted: the communication comes out of the blue in the second most busy academic week of the year. I have had to sit up far into the night even to survey the list. Conceding the legitimacy or necessity of translation (which I do not, except in a limited degree), the translation does not seem to me to exhibit much skill, and contains a fair number of positive errors.* Even if excusable, in view of the difficulty of the material, I think this regrettable, & they could have been avoided by earlier consultation. It seems to me fairly evident that Dr. O. has stumbled along dealing with things as he came to them, without much care for the future or co-ordination, and that he has not read the Appendices at all, in watch he would have found many answers .....
I do hope that it can be arranged, if and when any further translations are negotiated, that I should be consulted at an early stage - without frightening a shy bird off the eggs. After all, I charge nothing, and can save a translator a good deal of time and puzzling; and if consulted at an early stage my remarks will appear far less in the light of peevish criticisms.

*For example: Ford of Bruinen = Björnavad! Archet = Gamleby (Old Village) (a mere guess, I suppose, from 'archaic'?) Mountains of Lune (Ered Luin) = Månbergen (Moon-mountains); Gladden Fields (in spite of descr. in 1. 62) = Ljusa slätterna (Bright plains), & so on."

Tolkien about another part of the translation:

"In translating vol. i p.12, 'they seldom wore shoes, since their feet had though leathery soles and were clad in a thick curling hair, much like the hair of their heads', he read the text as'. . . their feet had thick feathery soles, and they were clad in a thick curling hair. . .'and so produces in his Introduction a picture of hobbits whose outdoor garb was of matted hair, while under their feet they had solid feather-cushion treads! This is made doubly absurd, since it occurs in a passage where he is suggesting that the hobbits are modelled on the inhabitants of the idyllic suburb of Headington."

In addition, Ohlmarks also created his own stories about tolkien's life. He also thought that he knew the meaning of things that he had no sufficent knowledge about.

Ohlmarks about Tolkien: "There are reminiscences of journeys on foot in his own youth up into the Welsh border-region."

Tolkien answered: "As Bilbo said to the dwarves, he seems to know as much of my private pantries as I do myself. Or pretends to. I never walked in Wales or the marches in my youth. Why should I be made an object of fiction while still alive?"

Ohlmarks: "The professor began by telling tales about it [Middle-earth] to his children, then to his grandchildren; and they were fascinated and clamoured for more and still more. One can clearly see before one the fireside evenings in the peaceful villa out at Sandfield Road in Headington near Oxford .... with the Barrowdowns or Headington Hills in the rear and the Misty Mountains or the 560 feet high Shotover in the background."

Tolkien answered: "!!This is such outrageous nonsense that I should suspect mockery, if I did not observe that O. is ever ready to assume intimate knowledge that he has not got. I have only two grandchildren. One 18 who first heard of the books 5 years ago. The other is 2. The book was written before I moved to Headington, which has no hills, but is on a shoulder (as it were) of Shotover."

Ohlmarks: "One of his most important writings, published in 1953, also treats of another famous homecoming, 'The Homecoming of Beorhtnot, [sic] Beorthhelm's son.'"

Tolkien: "Coming home dead without a head (as Beorhtnoth did) is not very delightful. But this is spoof. O. knows nothing about Beorhtnoth, or his homecoming (never mentioned till I wrote a poem about it) and he has not seen the poem. I do not blame him, except for writing as if he knew."

My favourite:

Ohlmarks: "The Ring is in a certain way 'der Nibelungen Ring'. . . . "
Tolkien: "Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases."

sábado, 12 de setembro de 2009

O prisioneiro de Beleriand/Brocéliande-Melian e Merlin



Thingol e Melian perdidos "somewhere in time"

Gwendolyn e Merlin encantados pelo amor

Internet é uma coisa traiçoeira e volátil. Certas coisas eu já guardo pensando que podem ser úteis mais tarde já que podem sumir. Esse poema encontrado num blog já extinto (http://www.morbihan.blogger.com.br)tinha uma estranha ressonância com o sentido oculto de um episódio da mitologia de Tolkien.

O prisioneiro de Brocéliande
Idílio


Na Floresta de Brocéliande,
Nem muito perto do mar,
Nem muito perto das montanhas,
Num estranho círculo mágico
Estão Merlin, o mago,
E a fada Viviana

Há muitos anos aí vivem,
Serenos, calmos e impassíveis,
A seu refúgio nunca chegam,
Clamores de guerra
Ou canções de paz

Todo o mundo está fora desse maravilhoso círculo,
Nada por ele passa,
E quem está dentro não quer sair.

Dentro dele não há trigo,
Carne, vinho ou pão,
A água também não abunda,

E um eterno sono ali reina

Como pôde Merlin, o mago, aí ficar?
Que misterioso poder o prende a esse círculo impenetrável?
Que poderosas barreiras se erguem entre as árvores da floresta?

Prisioneiro está, de Viviana, a bela,
Embora muito mais poderoso seja.
Estaria ele embriagado?

Sim, embriagado de amor.

Nem sede,
Nem fome,
Nem dor,
Nem cansaço
O atingem...

Pois seus olhos se alimentam de Viviana,
Sua sede se aplaca com sua doce voz,
Suas dores se curam sob suas delicadas mãos,
E seu cansaço se esvai no tépido calor de seu corpo...

Nada mais existe, além de Viviana

As horas passam em doce idílio,
Os dias, os meses e os anos,
Sem que se perceba a diferença

Pode o mundo lá fora desmoronar pedra a pedra,
Tempestades sem fim varrerem Camelot,
Para eles nada importa
Ingenuamente, têm um ao outro

Existe um feitiço, sim,
O doce filtro que escorre dos lábios de Viviana,
O doce olhar que se evola de seu rosto,
E a doce voz que, penetrando os ouvidos de Merlin, vai direto ao seu coração

17 de fevereiro de 2005


Na legenda arthuriana, Merlin foi , afinal, confinado em uma "prisão sem muros",devido ao seu amor por uma fada que pode receber diversos nomes: Viviane, Niniane, Nimue, Nyneve e Gwendolyn , são alguns deles.



GUENDOLOENA GWENDOLENA

The wife of Merlin in VITA MERLINI. She may be identical with Chwimleian, mentioned in AFOLLONAU, one of the Welsh Myrddin (Merlin) poems. She married Rhydderch Hael after Merlin ran mad. # 156 - 242 - 632


Meaning of Gwendolyn


Acontece que Gwendelin, era o nome original de Melian, a maia, no início, uma "fada", fay, nos Book of Lost Tales. Ela, como sua contraparte arturiana, teria encantado o elfo Thingol, então chamado Tinwelint, ficando ambos em "transe" por cerca de 220 anos do Sol, na cronologia idealizada por Tolkien(1130-1152) na Era das Árvores, com cada ano correspondendo a próximo de dez anos do sol), perdidos para o mundo , numa "prisão sem muros", no centro de uma clareira, sob as estrelas do céu.

Iluvatar had set a seed of music in the hearts of all that kindred, or so Vaire saith, and she is of them,and it blossomed after very wondrously, but now the song of
Gwendeling's nightingales was the most beautiful music that
Tinwelint had ever heard, and he strayed aside for a moment, as
he thought, from the host, seeking in the dark trees whence it
might come.

And it is said that it was not a moment he hearkened, but many
years, and vainly his people sought him, until at length they
followed Orome and were borne upon Tol Eressea far away, and
he saw them never again. Yet after a while as it seemed to
him he came upon Gwendeling lying in a bed of leaves gazing
at the stars above her and hearkening also to her birds. Now
Tinwelint stepping softly stooped and looked upon her, thinking
"Lo, here is a fairer being even than the most beautiful of my own
folk" -- for indeed Gwendeling was not elf or woman but of the
children of the Gods; and bending further to touch a tress of her
hair he snapped a twig with his foot. Then Gwendeling was up
and away laughing softly, sometimes singing distantly or dancing
ever just before him, till a swoon of fragrant slumbers fell upon
him and he fell face downward neath the trees and slept a very
great while.


Essa clareira ficava na terra de Beleriand que, originalmente, Tolkien também batizou como Broceliand , o nome da floresta da Bretanha (França) onde Merlin e sua companheira estariam presos até hoje.

Vejam a parte pertinente do Silmarillion na tradução da Martins Fontes:

Melian não disse uma palavra; mas, dominado pelo amor, Elwë aproximou-se e segurou sua mão. Imediatamente um encantamento caiu sobre ele, de tal modo que os dois ficaram na mesma posição enquanto longos anos eram contados pelas estrelas que giravam acima de suas cabeças; e as árvores de Nan Elmoth cresceram e se tornaram escuras antes que eles dissessem alguma palavra.

Esse isolamento do Espaço-Tempo normal refletia o nome da própria Gwendelin, que, em galês, significa "círculo branco", ou "círculo abençoado" ou "deusa lua" (gwen- dolyn), o que, também, remete ao feitiço que a maia teceu em volta de seu reino com Thingol, depois que ambos saíram da clareira em Nan Elmoth, a "cerca" ou "cinturão" de Melian(que é também um "círculo" de encantamento). Isso,provavelmente, explica a estranha similaridade entre os nomes Melian e Merlin que eu, pessoalmente, sempre achei meio suspeita.

Inclusive "Melian" era em sua origem um nome masculino, como o do cavaleiro Melian de Lis encontrado em algumas narrativas do Percival ou da busca do Graal.

vide aí embaixo

Merlin and the Grail

Mais uma referência ao cavaleiro

Conjunctures: medieval studies in honor of Douglas Kelly

O nome significa forte ou refúgio nas línguas célticas e é traduzido como "querida dádiva " em sindarin. Podemos inferir que a "dádiva querida" é justamente essa: o "refúgio", shelter do nome celta, já que foi essa uma das principais coisas que Melian deu a Thingol e aos Sindar, um abrigo por detrás da inexpugnável Girdle of Melian.

A Cerca de Melian também é um paralelo próximo com a "Cerca de Merlin" (Clas Myrddin=Merlin's enclosure )que protegia a Grã Bretanha, transformando-a numa "fortaleza do mar" ( significado do nome Merlin) e num refúgio para os povos celtas vindos do continente.



Significado do nome Melian

Origin: Melian is a celtic surname probably from French Celtic "Meillan" meaning fort or refuge (shelter). There is the town of Montmelian of celtic origin in the French Alps near Italy. It exists the variation Melean that is more common in Scotland. In Ireland "Melian" is more common. In South America you can find both "Melian" and "Melean" but all come from Melian ancestors of Canary Islands (from French invaders after Spain conquered the Canary Islands few years before Columbus's voyages). In Canada predominates Melean (from Scotland). There are both Melian and Melean in the USA, but I think Melian predominates (from Ireland).
Melian is also used as a female name in English speaking countries (not very common, though after Tolkien's books it is more popular).
Surnames: Melean, Melian


Acho que não é coincidência o fato de que Merlin tem uma etimologia popular que significa Fortaleza marítima( Mer-lin)e que, portanto, os nomes tenham um sentido aproximado: forte e fortaleza, fort e sea fortress.

Confiram etimologia de Merlin. A versão original era, na verdade, Mirdin mas os compiladores franceses das lendas modificaram o nome pra dessassociá-lo com as implicações de "merde". Embaixo tem a parte mais relevante sobre a etimologia que é meio obscura e polêmica.


Part of the problem comes with the nature of 'Myrddin' comes from the origin of the name itself. It seems quite clear that the original from was Llallawg, from which the Latinized forms of Laleocen and Lailoken were derived. It was only when the tales became re-localized in the lands of the Cymry, as happens with a number of other heroes of the Old North, that Llallawg becomes known as Myrddin. The majority of academic opinion considers this to have occured under the influence of a false etymology concerning the place-name Caerfyrddin which came to be considered as meaning 'The Fortress of Myrddin' indicating the presence of an historical figure known as Myrddin who was grafted onto the Lailoken mythos. In reality, the Myrddin of Caerfyrddin is derived from the Brythonic Moridunum (Sea Fortress), a name which is attested from Roman sources. Thus it has seemed that the name of Myrddin is derived from a false etymology and has no independent existence in Old Cymric and Brythonic mythos.

This has rested on the problem that no convincing etymology for Myrddin has been derived apart from that of the truncated form of Moridunum. However, as I indicate in the next paragraph this may not necessarily be the case.
One of the main reasons that Myrddin has been dismissed as a genuine sixth century character is that no etymology for the name Myrddin/Mirdyn has been found, safe for the false derivation from Moridunon. However, based on the reconstructed proto-Celtic lexicon the name can be derived from the components *merV- (insane) or *mero- (crazy) and *godonyo- (human, person [which gives the Cymric dyn (man)]). Thus Myrddin literally means 'crazy man' and could be considered an epithet, thus Myrddin Llallawg may originally have been Llallawg Fyrddin or 'Llallawg the Madman' which fits-in well with the tale of Lailoken. The association of the Old Cymric wordMirdin with the false etymology derived from Caerfyrddin led to the Llallawgcomponent of the name being dropped by Geoffrey of Monmouth so that the madman of Celyddon became known as Myrddin. The situation may therefore be far more complex that originally thought and the epithet of 'Myrddin' may actually represnet a true description applied to the northern Llallawg/Llallogan.








Essa história dos amantes encantados na clareira já chamaria a atenção de todo mundo pra influência arturiana se não fosse o fato de Tolkien, como acontecia com toda a mitologia celta, ter negado o material como fonte de inspiração , uma coisa que, hoje está mais do que comprovado, é tão verdadeiro quanto Mark Rein Hagen dizendo que não havia se inspirado em Anne Rice quando fez Vampiro A Máscara...

Vamos dar uma conferida nas palavras do próprio JRRT extraídas de uma de suas cartas:



Sinto muito que os nomes embaralhem sua vista — pessoalmente, acredito (e aqui creio que sou um bom juiz) que eles são bons e são boa parte do efeito. São coerentes e consistentes, e criados a partir de duas fórmulas lingüísticas relacionadas, de maneira que eles alcançam uma realidade não totalmente alcançada ao meu gosto por outros inventores de nomes (digamos, Swift ou Dunsany!). Desnecessário dizer que eles não são celtas! Nem o são os contos. Conheço coisas célticas (muitas delas em seus idiomas originais, irlandês e galês), e sinto por elas uma certa aversão: em grande parte por sua irracionalidade fundamental. Elas tem cores vivas, mas são como uma janela de vitrais quebrada cujos pedaços são reunidos mais uma vez sem forma. Elas de fato são “loucas” como seu leitor disse — mas, não creio que eu o seja. Ainda assim sou muito grato pelas palavras dele, e sinto-me particularmente encorajado pelo fato do estilo ser bom para o objetivo e até mesmo sobressair-me à nomenclatura.


Não são celtas né? Para começar, que o idioma Sindarin foi baseado no galês que, como ele mesmo tinha lembrado, é uma língua celta...

E deixa ver: Melian,Nessa/Nessa , e outros nomes do Quenta Silmarillion e do Senhor dos Anéis como Arwen( musa em galês) são nomes celtas; Teleri(Teleri) , Dorath (Doriath), Daron(Daeron) Finn (Finarfin,Fingolfin) são alguns outros nomes gaélicos e galeses que Tolkien pareceu "ecoar" na sua obra. Quanto mais nos aprofundarmos na pesquisa, maior será o número de paralelos encontrados.



Claro que os famosos truques de despistamento e fusão/amálgama de Tolkien aí, também, exercem um papel. Se Thingol fosse um mago humano barbudo e não um elfo eternamente jovem como o Endimion grego, que dorme sob os olhos protetores da deusa Selene (a deusa da Lua), em uma caverna( lembrando que a lua também é um "círculo branco" e que o "dolyn" de Gwendolyn também pode significar "lua" e o nome completo "deusa lunar" ),todo mundo já teria associado esse episódio do sumiço de Elwë Singollo com o desaparecimento de Merlin.



Daí é possível ver como Tolkien, ao mesmo tempo em que escrevia ficção, também fazia mitologia comparada sem reducionismos ou sobrecarga/aglutinação de informação, o que é, tantas vezes,criticado no trabalho de Joseph Campbell, James Frazer e outros.

Ele, provavelmente, viu que as histórias de Merlin/Viviane/Gwendolyn, do sumiço/exílio numa floresta por encantamento ou "aluamento",já que, em uma versão, Merlin teria ficado "lunático", e o mito grego de Endimion/Selene estavam relacionados e combinou os dois, dentro do seu Legendarium, em uma história só.

A história de Merlin parece ser uma evemerização de uma história relativa a um deus celta paralelo ao Endimion grego, que adquiriu a imortalidade mas passou a dormir velado pela Deusa Lua.


Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance de Lucy Allen Paton - 2009

Na versão do "aluamento", Merlin vira ermitão na floresta e sua esposa, Gwendolyn, quase casa com outra pessoa. Ele volta na hora "h" e o que acontece vale a pena ver na íntegra nessas páginas do comic Arthur, Uma Odisséia Celta da Ediouro, volume 1, Merlin o louco.





Mas ele também deu um aviso:





Dito e feito conforme o aviso:



Amor que transcende o tempo é meio temporamental às vezes.

A irmã de Merlin, Gwendydd, depois que enviuvou, resolveu acompanhar Merlin em seu exílio na floresta após esse desastroso episódio. A similaridade de nomes e a ocasional confusão de papéis entre ela e Gwendolyn sugere que são variantes do mesmo conto em que uma "mulher-fada" protege e dá "abrigo" a Merlin mas também o mantém "cativo" de algum modo.





Na versão do comic, Merlin só se curou desse "aluamento" quando o bardo Taliesin encontrou uma fonte mágica cuja água ele encantou através de sua música, atraindo-a pra que pudesse ser usada pra sanar a loucura do amigo. Similar ao episódio em que o elfo Gwindor de Nargothrond levou Túrin até o lago encantado de Ivrin para curá-lo da loucura resultante do assassinato acidental de Beleg.Ele que se autodenominou o Homem Selvagem das Florestas , exatamente o que Merlin foi enquanto estava louco.Curiosamente, o nome original de Taliesin era Gwion Bach. Mais uma coincidência/influência? Mas aí já é uma outra história...

A history of Anglo-Latin literature, 1066-1422

O nome "Melian" usado por Tolkien parece ter sido um trocadilho triplo, aludindo ao mesmo tempo ao seu significado bretão sendo "refúgio" e, portanto, ao cavaleiro arturiano Melian de Lis como foi escolhido devido à similaridade com "Merlin". Há, como veremos, um terceiro nível de associação trabalhando aí.

Tolkien era meio chegado em fazer fusões e cruzamentos desse tipo pois Melian era também um nome masculino de um cavaleiro arturiano obscuro mas tb alude, com quase toda a certeza, ao significado de Meliai ( que são referidas pelo adjetivo "melian" em inglês) que são as ninfas que resultaram da castração de Urano, vinculadas à árvore freixo (que chama melia em grego).

Elas são consideradas as progenitoras da raça da Era de Bronze da mitologia grega que eram belicosos e acabaram destruidos no Dilúvio.

O paralelo interessante aqui é que a casa dos governantes de Númenor eram descendentes de Elros Tar Minyatur que descendia de Melian, a maia.

E, como os filhos das Melíades,os Numenorëanos, que também eram "gigantes", ou superhomens em relação às suas contrapartes da Terra Média, se perverteram , foram julgados pelos deuses e destruídos em um "dilúvio".

Daí a noção do Tolkien ter chamado Elendil de análogo de Noé é ainda mais relevante porque acaba dando um fecho nessa fusão de significados. Devemos lembrar também que Melian era uma maia do séquito de Yavanna, que era a vala que regia as plantas e que o nome dela reflete a etimologia do nome Meliai de uma forma interessante.

Vejam aí:


Melian in Sindarin means Dear gift. Her Quenya name was Melyanna. (From "mel," "love" and "anna," "gift")She was also called Tóril meaning "Queen".

Reparem que Tolkien parece que combinou os elementos do alimento ambrosíaco que as Meliai davam para seus filhos, o manna, uma seiva doce como mel para o qual os gregos davam o mesmo nome (meli) mas que é chamado manna e maná em português e em inglês, combinado com mel das abelhas formando o nome dela completo em quenya, Melyanna. Tolkien parecia ter um senso de humor criativo em fazer essas coisas. Acho que ele se divertia vendo se os colegas Inklings pegavam esse tipo de associação cruzada.

Suponho que foi por isso que optaram por essa palavra para traduzir o alimento bíblico que caía dos céus já que a Bíblia foi traduzida pela primeira vez pro grego. O maná da Bíblia, pensa-se, era a seiva do tamarisco por isso usaram a palavra pra criar outro nome para o "meli" grego e distingui-lo de mel de abelha.


The manna (meli) of the ash and the honey (meli) of bees were believed to be related, both being regarded as an ambrosial food fallen from heaven.
http://pt.fantasia.wikia.com/wiki/Mel%C3%ADades


As conotações militares do freixo, a suposta origem violenta dessas entidades e o fato de terem as Erínias como irmãs associam as melíades a um aspecto belicoso e marcial, estranho a todas as outras ninfas.
Entretanto, elas também têm um aspecto doce. Muitas espécies de freixos segregam uma seiva açucarada que os gregos chamavam de méli, "mel", assim como ao mel de abelhas. Ambos os tipos de mel eram considerados pelos gregos como manifestação da ambrosia dos deuses, caída dos céus.


E qual é a outra piadinha que Tolkien parece ter feito? Merlin também é chamado Prisioneiro da árvore em algumas versões. Sendo uma das origens do nome Melian o nome tirado do grego Meliai que é "freixo" então, simbolicamente,Thingol era "prisioneiro" de uma "árvore"



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Merlin , o Prisioneiro da Árvore de Alan Lee

Outra representação do aprisionamento na árvore, normalmente um carvalho.



Colleen Doran abordando o tema:


Lendo esse ensaio acho que dá para vocês saberem de onde veio a minha referência à prisão sem muros e a inspiração dos roteiristas de Caverna do Dragão...