A Far-off Gleam of Evangelium

Near the end of class we talked about the idea of a Christian style of writing in which the sublime and the humble are mixed, and identified Tolkien’s style as such. The argument goes something like this: In antique, pre-Christian thought there was a very clear separation between the sermo gravis or sublimis, the sublime and elevated style, and the sermo remissus or humilis, the low or humble style, and the two could never be used together. In Christianity, however these two styles are merged, first of all in Christ’s Incarnation and Passion, which, as Auerbach says, “realize and combine sublimitas and humilitas in overwhelming sense” (page 151). This merging of styles is also seen in one of the overarching themes of the Bible: the sublime transcends and is relevant to the everyday and to everyday people. In Tolkien’s writing style there is great variety. His works have everything from the working class hobbits’ uneducated English to Elrond’s archaic style. There is prose and poetry, and in each of these varieties there is great variety. The poetry, for example, includes everything from the hobbits’ playful nursery rhymes to the lays and chants of the Elves and the psalm-like song of the Eagles. And there is the idea that simple, humble hobbits can be part of a story with elevated sublime themes. The Lord of the Rings is a story in which simple Shire-folk “arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the great” (II: II). Tolkien’s entire work can be described as a mixture of the sublime and the humble, making Tolkien’s style Christian.

This, although undeniably true, seems to me insufficient to describe Tolkien’s style. He does more than just mix high and low English, or use humble characters or language to tell sublime truths. Throughout his works, he seems to be directly imitating the Bible. There are many things in Tolkien’s writings that resound with readers familiar with the Bible. The mixture of both elevated and low style, the use of prose and verse, and the use of the humble in dealing with the sublime have already been mentioned. We can add to this the variety of languages and original authors that Tolkien says he is translating from, reminiscent of the different books of the Bible, written down at throughout history by different men in various languages, and only later recompiled and translated. Finally, there are the citations of parts of earlier poems and references to earlier stories, which are similar to the how many New Testament authors used verses and stories from the Old Testament. These elements make Tolkien’s work similar in style to the Bible, but of course they also have other uses. The variety of style and language, and the use of poems give Middle-Earth depth, history and more reality. It could be possible that the resemblance be just coincidence. However, sometimes passages from Tolkien’s writing comes so close in style that, if one were to change the names of people and places, the passages could easily be mistaken as parts of the Bible. These instances, I believe, occur more often in The Silmarillion, but there is one perfect example in The Lord of the Rings: the song of the eagles after the defeat of Sauron. This song, which calls on the people of the West to celebrate the defeat of Sauron and the return of their King, is uncomfortably close in style to psalms celebrating the coming of Christ as King. Take, for example, the third stanza:

Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West,

for your King shall come again,

and he shall dwell among you all the days of your life (VI:V)

If one were to substitute “children of Israel” or “people of the Earth” for “Children of the West”, this could perfectly well be from a Psalm or a prophecy about Christ. These instances, more than anything else, seem proof to me that the similarities between Tolkien’s writings and the Bible are not coincidence. Tolkien is not just writing in a Christian style, but in a biblical style. Which leads to the question: why? What is Tolkien trying to suggest by imitating the Bible in his works?

When I first asked myself this, two possible answers rapidly came to mind, and were even more rapidly discarded. The first though was "Tolkien is writing in the style of the Bible because he thinks his works and the Bible should be read in the same manner”. That is, the song about king Aragorn so closely resembles psalms and prophesies about Jesus because we should treat Jesus and Aragorn in the same way. This, of course, is absurd. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, would neither presume to place his work at the level of Scripture, nor say that the Bible should be read as nothing more than a fairy story (even an extremely well written and deep fairy story). The second possibility was that Tolkien wanted his writing to represent people and stories from the Bible: the song about Aragon is reminiscent of songs about Jesus because Aragon represents Jesus. This is equally absurd. Tolkien makes it abundantly clear that The Lord of the Rings “has no allegorical intentions, general, particular, or topical, moral, religious, or political” (Letter 165).

The Lord of the Rings is not an allegory. It is a fairy story, and in that, I think, can be found the answer to the question. In his essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien claims that the mark of a true fairy-story is the joy of the happy ending, and not just any happy ending, but a eucatastrophe, that is, “a sudden and miraculous grace” (page 86) that comes when there is least hope for it. This eucatastrophe is so important for Tolkien because, if done properly, it is “a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world” (page 88); it looks toward what he calls “the Great Eucatastrophe” (page 89), the Christian story. If Tolkien wanted his stories to be an echo of the Christian story, it is not surprising that he might want his writing to echo the writing of the book that tells that story. In this way, Tolkien’s entire work, and not just his happy endings, echoes the story of the Great Eucatastrophe. Looked at in this light, the song sung in honor of Aragorn should remind us of psalms sung in praise of Christ because Aragorn’s story is an imperfect reflection of the story of the Great Eucatastrophe, which never the less lets us glimpse at the joy of the evangelium.

Elaina Wood