[davem]

My immediate thoughts on the first forword - If I cross post with anyone, or repeat points already made, sorry. this has come to me as I write

The thing that strikes me most strongly in reading the first forword is that I want it to be TRUE. I want LotR to be a translation of the Red Book. I want it all to have happened - Frodo & Sam, Aragorn & Arwen, Gandalf, & even Gollum! When I allow myself that fantasy it all becomes much more powerful, more affecting, more beautiful & precious - & is this Tolkien’s intention in presenting us with this forword? But if it is, then why change it ten years on? Why change role from translator to composer, from teller of an old story to writer of a new one?

Why, in the first forword does he point out that:

‘ it is not yet universally recognized as an important branch of study.’

(implying that it will be, & perhaps also that it should be).

But then go on to say:

‘It has indeed no obvious practical use, and those who go in for it can hardly expect to be assisted.’

(attempting to have it both ways again?)


Those two ‘contradictory’ statements are reflected in the second forward, & in other statements & letters. He seems to be saying on the one hand ‘this is important stuff, you should take note of this, you need to know it’ & then, almost immediately, telling us it’s meaningless - unless we can apply it to something in our own experience (well, if he’ll let us apply it in that way, & not show us we’re wrong & that it can’t be applied to that particular situation!)

That’s what I find odd - why put in all that work if the goal is merely to produce an entertaining story, why struggle so hard to get it published, as it was, even if possible with the Silmarillion, if he really believed it didn’t mean anything? He strikes me rather as a man who knew he had something very important to say, something which he believed needed to be ‘universally recognised as an important branch of study’.

He seems to want us to take it all as seriously as he does, place the same value on it as he does - but I don’t think his motive is vanity. He comes across as if he has something vital to say to us, something that we need to hear, but as soon as he catches our attention, has us believing he’s going to reveal the secrets of the Universe & the meaning of life to us, has our full attention, he immediately laughs & says ‘of course, you shouldn’t believe any of it, or take it seriously!”

And our response? Well, we laugh at the ‘joke’, repeat the ‘applicability not allegory’ statement as a kind of Paternoster for ‘protection’ & plunge in, taking it all absolutely seriously, as though its the most important branch of study there is. And when we emerge from Middle Earth, transformed, different, hopefully better, human beings, we repeat ‘applicability not allegory’ & laugh again.

Yet, he has actully said it has no ‘obvious’ practical use - implying that it does have practical use, but that use is not obvious - not obvious to whom? I think it was obvious to him, & that he wanted it to be obvious to us. So, the stories of Middle Earth are ‘practically’ useful. They are useful ‘in practice’ - practice of what? Jesus said those who are well don’t need a doctor, only those who are sick. I think Tolkien was offering us a cure for an illness that most of us had forgotten we had, because we’d had it for so long. But to trick us he ‘sweetened the medicine’ with sugar, & told us its just candy. Yet, he drops hints for those ‘with ears to hear’, that its much more than that, but that it will work if we trust it. We just have to let it do its work on us, & one day we’ll wake up, cured.

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Just wondering if anyone thinks we should have the original text of the Riddles in the Dark section posted for next week, to help with understanding that part of the Prologue? I have it in Annotated Hobbit & could post it, unless anyone else wants to - or unless someone knows of a site where its available?