Not many people are under the impression that Tolkien’s
Legendarium is a factual account of the past. On some level, it’s safe to say
that some part of Tolkien’s psyche would be at least a little bummed out about
this. The preponderance of evidence makes it clear that the sub-creator’s
intent was to fashion a world where the line between primary and secondary
reality was almost invisible. From the very first page of The Lord of the Rings, with runic inscriptions that read, “The Lord
of the Rings translated from the Red Book of Westmarch by John Ronald Reuel
Tolkien,” we see that we are meant to at the very least believe that the
following tale is historic in nature. As was discussed previously, Tolkien
furthered the historical viability of the Legendarium by inserting so-called
“fragments” and “fossils,” snippets of cultural material that exist in the
modern world that he then expanded upon so as to establish a historical basis
for their existence within his creation. Being a philologist, Tolkien was also
obsessed with how he could utilize language to further realize the reality of
his sub-creation. In fact, it was the languages he created that gave rise to
the world of Middle Earth and its mythology.
Tolkien
once wrote, “I daresay such linguistic tastes are…as good or better a test of
ancestry as blood-groups.” Clearly, he believed that languages have a highly
historical tint to their nature. Through analysis of words from modern form to
their original, Tolkien aimed to determine the historical context of that words
initial meaning and usage. Similarly, in The
Lost Road, he creates a study of Elf Friend’s through history; all of the
main characters in this tale inhabit different moments in history but share a
common name (albeit versions of that name modified to be historically
appropriate for their time). The linguistic characteristics of the names given
to the characters of The Lost Road
shows a historical commonality and linkage between the disparate epochs
contained within that work. How does this play into the reality of Middle
Earth? Beginning in a time contemporary to Tolkien, The Lost Road is in many ways grounded in modern times. However, by
ending up in Numenor of old by way of ancient Europe, it must be admitted that
Numenor inhabited the same world as our own, making it a piece of historical
reality. The Elf Friends of The Lost Road
are somehow of a genealogy (linked overtly through linguistics) that connects
the supposedly mythical Numenor to our own primary reality. It seems that this
linguistic linkage, while interesting, doesn’t serve a practical purpose beyond
showing the history of a common language. In fact, the material connection
between the various epochs of The Lost
Road is exceedingly immaterial by the very nature that it is the minds of the
Elf Friends that links them all.
Tolkien and
his friends had read the work of J.W. Dunne, a thinker who proposed the ability
to use ones mind to escape the traditional linear experience of time and enter
into a state of conscience in which one could view moments at any moment on the
traditional time line (or something like that). Through this mechanic, the Elf
Friends of The Lost Road are, in
their dreams when their mind is freed, able to experience past times and future
times. This “time travel” also appears in The
Lord of the Rings in the form of dreams Frodo has. In the house of Tom
Bombadil, Frodo dreams of Gandalf’s escape, an example of the time-space travel
exhibited in The Lost Road. Perhaps
more importantly, around this point in the story Frodo has another dream that
almost exactly mirrors the “far green country under a swift sunrise” that he
sees as he enters into the West at the end of the trilogy. That Frodo has such
a premonition at this point of the story is most notable indeed as on the homeward
portion of their journey, right around this geographical location, Frodo says
that he “feels more like [he’s] falling asleep again.” This begs the question
of the reality of the Shire versus the wider world from Frodo’s perspective. What’s
the dream and what’s Frodo’s waking experience? It has been said that Tom
Bombadil is in many ways the gate-keeper to Faerie and that upon leaving his
house, the Hobbits enter a wider world of enchantment; Frodo’s feeling
questions whether this enchanted world is somehow more real than the old world
that the hobbits came from. That within Tolkien’s creation there can be
questions as to what is real and what is somehow unreal leads to the
questioning of whether or not the Legandarium as a whole can truly be considered
unreality.
Accepting
the Dunneian position that dreams allow for the mind to experience different
times and places, the lines between what is and what is not becomes very hazy.
As dreams are essentially the creation of mental images accompanied by
emotional responses, imagination of all sorts is in some way a form of time
travel within this context. In fact, under the Dunne’s framework, which is to
say the one that Tolkien is operating under, imagination is tantamount to time
travel itself. Therefore, it can be said that Middle Earth is as real as a
dream, which is in itself a manifestation of true reality. By littering this
world with fragments of our own times, Tolkien furthers the claim that Middle
Earth really once was. Furthermore, the usage of a fully realized linguistic
tradition serves not only to flesh out the secondary creation of Middle Earth,
it also creates a lineage connecting the supposed mythological past to the
present. The culmination of all of this is a sub-creation that is not
distinctly separate from our primary reality. In his usage of cultural
fragments, linguistic genealogy, and the blurring of the real and the unreal
within his stories, Tolkien obscures the line between our reality and the
Faerie to the point of near-invisibility. By doing this all in an historical
context, Tolkien achieves his goal of creating a uniquely English mythology. And
by laying out his tales as part of an ongoing chronology, the reader becomes a
part of the created annals. As Sam says, “we’re in the same tale still!” - Brendan McGuire
1 comment:
I think you offer a nice distillation of the material we covered in class here, and you point towards a lot of different and interesting avenues, but I worry that in pointing out so many different ares of interest, you don't give any of them the depth of consideration they deserve. For instance, the idea of unreality within the Tolkien legendarium, a fictional creation which strives towards the reflection of deeper truths about the nature of reality itself, is absolutely fascinating. And as you note, Tom Bombadil seems to be a key to this whole question, but how? You say that this leads to questions about how we consider the legendarium as a whole, but what are these questions? Once we figure this out we can get to the truly interesting bit, answering them.
Post a Comment