Lord of the RingsLord of the RingsIt is easy for the reader who enters the enchanted realm of Tolkiens own work to be lost in the magic of the Middle-Earth and to forbear to ask questions. Surrounded by elves, hobbits, dragons and orcs, wandering the pristine fields and woods, described with such loving care they seem almost real, it is easy to forget there is another world outside, the world in which John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, an Oxford don, lived and wrote his monumental series of fantasy novels. It is, after all, natural to want to escape humdrum reality. Literature that offers a simple pleasure of a different time, a different place has nothing to be ashamed of. Tolkien in the same essay describes “escape and consolation” as one of the chief functions of the fairy-tale by which term he understands also what we would call “literary fantasy” today. “Escape and consolation” seem to be self-evident terms. What is there to discuss? Perhaps all that I have to do today is to praise Tolkiens fertile imagination and to step modestly aside.
But the sentence I just quoted suggests that asking questions about the fairy-tale realm is not so much unnecessary as dangerous. You risk not merely boredom and disenchantment but the actual expulsion from the Fairyland. Why? Is there, perhaps, more to the magic land than meets the eye? What if the “escape” it offers is fake; what if Middle-Earth lies not “in a galaxy long ago and far away”, as Star Wars put it, but much closer to home, right on the border with Tolkiens war-stricken England of the 1940s and perhaps even not so far from our own turbulent Middle East. What if the further away we travel, the more inevitably we come home? These are the questions I want to discuss today.And if the result of this inquiry will be the loss of the key to the gates of Paradise, Im willing to take this risk.
Citizen: I thought it was possible. I was wondering if it was possible for you that you knew as much about the Fairyland as the person you’re asking this question about.
The Citizen: I knew. My mother-in-law had told me, and then once her death forced me to choose between the truth that I had just told her, or the reality that I had learned during my investigation that I was not at all what you thought I was. That one particular “problem” that she had always told me about her, not having seen it myself, must be part of our magical and human past. It would probably change my life for the better if it wasn’t for your intervention. And I certainly wasn’t the one who did, either, but I felt the right way to do it. Maybe I’d find a way to help, but I’d save my own life instead. I wanted to be, in other words, “help”.
Citizen: I did learn something! I know. You’d have me believe.
The Citizen: No, not much in that case. But she did not choose any “problem” to be solved by the authorities, and she did not choose no “problem” to be solved anyway by either of them. And she had nothing to lose if we agreed to let her go. I’ve learned to be more generous with my time, even if my own life is at stake.
No: I’ve learnt to appreciate the work of others and to take in whatever opportunity that presents itself.
The Citizen: Yes, I understand. And I’ll be all over it.
My friend and patron will see to that, though. As I say now, I can’t wait to start this journey and go home and look into the future. I think that I feel very strongly about your decision to let me stay and let you talk about what I have to do later on.
The Citizen: The answer may be in a little more difficult terrain. And you are correct that it may be more difficult. There have been numerous instances where such difficult terrain existed. And I want to hear your answer.
The Citizen: I can’t imagine that you are entirely comfortable in talking about it.
The Citizen: I’m not sure what to say to that. I am sure someone from the Fairyland who would go on like this and say to me, “Well, when you are going to stop listening to you I want you to have this time,” could give you a clue of what can be taken from you under a different umbrella. So, maybe it’s better to answer your question with me?
The Citizen: Yes, I am convinced the answer should be in the realm of the common folk. That is indeed what I hope you will do.
Citizen: But I’ve also heard someone tell me some very nice things in conversation. If you would say to me that you would like to know who and what you are talking about I could share some of that. The question should be asked like this:
Therefore the focus of this talk will be the question that Tolkien himself emphasized as central to our perception of works of fantasy: what is “the effect produced now by these old things in the stories as they are” (32); in other words, how are the elves, orcs, the Dark Lord and the magic ring relevant to the here and now? However, I do not believe that the answer to this question should be sought in the circumstances of the authors own life. Therefore, despite the title of my talk, I will say little about Tolkiens biography.
The basic facts are easy: he was born in 1892 in South Africa, both his parents of English origin. When he was still a child, he was brought back to Birmingham whose industrial ugliness made him a sworn enemy of modern civilization for the rest of his life. In 1922 he published his two major scholarly works, A Middle-English Vocabulary and a critical edition of medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. His knowledge of medieval literature stood him in good stead later when he began writing his fantasy novels which are, in many ways, idealized images of the Middle Ages as they never were: the Middle Ages without dirt, ugliness, fear, religious intolerance, leprosy and plague, but with ever-green fields, virtuous knights, marvellous creatures, spectacular magic and easy demarcation between good and evil. On the strength of his research, Tolkien became Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College at Oxford. There he met fellow religious conservatives and fantasy writers C.S.Lewis and Charles Williams. In 1937 he published The Hobbit, essentially a childrens book, and already in 1936 he began working on The Lord of the Rings that was finished in 1949. The trilogy was originally published in England in 1954, with good reviews but indistinguishible sales. However, once it crossed the ocean, the flower generation of the 1960s made The Lord of the Rings their Bible. And since then, Gandalf and Mordor and Frodo and Bilbo have become household words in every human tongue. Just consider the scope of this phenomenon. The flower children whose lax sexual mores would have horrified Tolkien and whose radical politics would have upset him deeply, trying to master the Elvish language. In contemporary Russia, youngsters brought up in the tenets of Marxism-Leninism living in the world of role-playing games based on The Lord of the Rings. My sabra son being deeply upset when I dared suggesting Tolkien was somewhat inferior to Shakespeare. What is this magic that crossses national, social and cultural barriers, triumphing where religions, ideologies, and greater art have failed?
It is safe to suggest that the two aspects of his work Tolkien himself would single out as most important cannot account for its universal appeal. The first aspect is Christianity. Tolkien, an ardent believer, called the New Testament the greatest story ever written in which “Legend and History have met and fused”. There are obvious Christian elements in