"The History of The Lord of the Rings": 2020 Discussion Group

[Extollager]

A rare instance -- maybe; I haven't checked the final text -- of Tolkien's visual imagination not quite being up to the job appears on Treason of Isengard p. 246, where, after the Elves' rope ladder is let down and Haldir ascends, Frodo climbs. It would seem that a hobbit -- 3 /12 feet tall or so -- would have serious difficulties climbing a rope made for the use of Elves, who, I take it, are at least, on average, as tall as a well-grown human male.

(The only consistency thing in Tolkien that has really bugged me, and which I might have mentioned before, is: where did all the waste from the Dwarves' digging in the Mines of Moria go? We don't read of great heaps of such stony waste anywhere around the two entrances of Moria that we do read about, and nor would I necessarily expect the Dwarves to just leave the rubbish in their doorsteps, but where did it all go?)

 

[Extollager]

Would anyone here get the small joke, that many years ago a fellow collector of Marvel comics and I might speak of a dealer therein as Balrogofsky?

 

[Hugh]

I've heard of the person concerned but only by name, not by reputation, so the implications of the nickname pass me by.

 

[Extollager]

Oh, it was just that Howard Rogofsky offered the complete Marvel line, which captivated our imaginations, but at what were then relatively high prices.

High prices.... oh yeah, like Fantastic Four #1 for $22! First appearance of Spider-Man $12! X-Men #1 -- $6!

Ripoffsky! Soggy Roggy! Balrogofsky!

(Prices are quoted from my first catalog from him, dated Nov. 1968, a priceless artifact of the period before comic book collecting as a serious investment/speculation niche took off in, I suppose, the early to mid-1970s.)

Now (so far as I'm concerned) back to the thread topic... Balrogs or whatever.

 

[Extollager]

261/ Interesting that Christopher had helped with the typing of material about Galadriel &c. as of 4 August 1942 -- an indication, it seems, that as the date approached that would mark five years' work on LotR, Tolkien was only nearing the end of the first of the three volumes. To write this is, of course, not to reproach him. He was a busy man in regard to other affairs, and his great book was not to be rushed. But already he had spent more time on "the new Hobbit" than, I'm sure, he'd expected to spend at the outset. What a good thing that he didn't, at some point, say to himself, "I'm spending far too much time on this book I never intended to write; I'm going to wrap it up and get back to the Silmarillion stories that have such deep roots in my heart," etc. Rather he let the roots of LotR grow ever deeper in his heart and mind as the telling proceeded.

Thank you, CJRT! ---

 

[Extollager]

275/ The green gem. It was interesting to me that "the Elfstone" thus first appeared in Tolkien's thinking, apparently, as a gift Galadriel would give to Gimli. There was a time when I thought the king-in-exile-with-a-green-gem element in Rider Haggard's Heart of the World had found a place in Tolkien's writing, but if there is an influence at all it was a less straightforward one than I'd proposed.

286-287/ A glimpse of roads mostly not taken as the book was worked out.

Our discussion is on track. We have September to focus on The Treason of Isengard and October and November for The War of the Ring if the proposed schedule is followed.

 

[Pyan]

The only consistency thing in Tolkien that has really bugged me, and which I might have mentioned before, is: where did all the waste from the Dwarves' digging in the Mines of Moria go? We don't read of great heaps of such stony waste anywhere around the two entrances of Moria that we do read about, and nor would I necessarily expect the Dwarves to just leave the rubbish in their doorsteps, but where did it all go?

They tipped it down the bottomless chasm that is spanned by the Bridge of Khazad-dûm , of course - it's now only half as bottomless as it was before...

 

[Hugh]

Pages 294 to 388 (This leaves less than 100 pages remaining)
I've noted particular points in the evolution of the story that interested me/caught my eye. It's just so interesting to see the steps by which the saga develops.

Pages 294 - 323 discusses the evolution of the maps. Although interesting, I have little to say about this chapter. However I note on p 299: All parts of the First Map were made with great care and delicacy until a late stage of correction, and it has an exceedingly 'Elvish' and archaic air.

p329 early planning re the Breaking of the Fellowship: Legolas and Gimli have no further heart for the Quest, and feel that already too many leagues are between them and their homes. They go north again: Legolas meaning to join the Elves of Lothlorien for awhile, Gimli hoping to get back to the Mountain.
p330 Same section of planning: Merry and Pippin get lost, end up in Fangorn, meet Treebeard who takes them to Minas Tirith.

p331 Gollum leads Frodo and Sam into Kirith Ungol (Spider Glen) where giant spiders weave their nets over Frodo while Sam sleeps.
p332 Gollum guides orcs to the scene who are delighted to have got hold of "The Ringbearer" (they know about the ring, but Sam has taken it before they got there).
p334 Sam was ringbearer for two days.

p353 Use of the term goblin: Each one expected at any minute to feel the sting of a blackfeathered orc-arrow. But it was now grown very dark, dark even for the keen night-eyes of goblins; goblins were on the bank, they did not doubt.
p354 before the Breaking of the Fellowship, on the river Legolas shoots down a winged shape from the sky, leading to lamenting on the eastern shore. Gimli says "Yet I liked that shape as little as the shadow of the Balrog in Moria".

p363 and earlier, also note on page 367: discussion of time as experienced in Lothlorien

p380 Trotter reaches the Seat on Amon-Hen while searching for Frodo and has a brief vision of a bent old man, grey and ragged, but with a gleam of white beneath the rags.

p385 (further planning) The remainder of the Fellowship meet an old man coming up the hill to meet them. There's something familiar about him. Suspect he is Saruman?

 

[Extollager]

Here's the first Middle-earth map, reproduced (& slightly enhanced) from the Scull-Hammond Art of LotR.

 

[Extollager]

353/ I'm glad the astronomical mistake didn't persist into the published book (the new slender crescent moon rising in the east). Astronomical interest was there in the Tolkien family, by the way. I wrote up something about Ellison Hawks's Starry Heavens for Beyond Bree eight years ago:

 

[Extollager]

 

[Pyan]

There are numerous examples, all through HoMe, of minor re-writes to make the moon's phases fit with the elapsed time of the narrative. As I recall, JRRT had major problems with the 'slow time' encountered by the Fellowship in Lórien throwing out the correlation.

 

[Hugh]

There are numerous examples, all through HoMe, of minor re-writes to make the moon's phases fit with the elapsed time of the narrative. As I recall, JRRT had major problems with the 'slow time' encountered by the Fellowship in Lórien throwing out the correlation.

Are you saying then that the "slow time"in Lothlorien was needed in order to get everything to fit together?

or that he wanted to have "slow time" in Lothlorien as part of the story and this threw everything else out?

 

[Pyan]

The latter. He wanted the 'slow time' there to emphasis the timeless quality of an Elven kingdom like Lorien and, to a lesser extent, Thranduil's Woodland Realm:

'Five hundred times have the red leaves fallen in Mirkwood my home since then, ...and but a little while does that seem to us.'¹

but had difficulty reconciling the passage of days inside and outside the enclave. This is why we have that bit of retcon (though I doubt whether thought of it like that, or indeed, had ever heard the term) in the camp at Sarn Gebir:

Sam sat tapping the hilt of his sword as if he were counting on his fingers, and looking up at the sky. `It's very strange,' he murmured. `The Moon's the same in the Shire and in Wilderland, or it ought to be. But either it's out of its running, or I'm all wrong in my reckoning. You'll remember, Mr. Frodo, the Moon was waning as we lay on the flet up in that tree: a week from the full, I reckon. And we'd been a week on the way last night, when up pops a New Moon as thin as a nail-paring, as if we had never stayed no time in the Elvish country.
`Well, I can remember three nights there for certain, and I seem to remember several more, but I would take my oath it was never a whole month. Anyone would think that time did not count in there! '
`And perhaps that was the way of it,' said Frodo. `In that land, maybe, we were in a time that has elsewhere long gone by. It was not, I think, until Silverlode bore us back to Anduin that we returned to the time that flows through mortal lands to the Great Sea. And I don't remember any moon, either new or old, in Caras Galadhon: only stars by night and sun by day.'
Legolas stirred in his boat. `Nay, time does not tarry ever,' he said; `but change and growth is not in all things and places alike. For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream. Yet beneath the Sun all things must wear to an end at last.'
`But the wearing is slow in Lórien,' said Frodo. `The power of the Lady is on it. Rich are the hours, though short they seem, in Caras Galadhon, where Galadriel wields the Elven-ring.'
'That should not have been said outside Lórien, not even to me,' said Aragorn. `Speak no more of it! But so it is, Sam: in that land you lost your count. There time flowed swiftly by us, as for the Elves. The old moon passed, and a new moon waxed and waned in the world outside, while we tarried there. And yestereve a new moon came again...²

¹ TT, Bk III, Ch6: The King of the Golden Hall
² FotR, Bk II, Ch9: The Great River

 

[Stephen Palmer]

There are numerous examples, all through HoMe, of minor re-writes to make the moon's phases fit with the elapsed time of the narrative. As I recall, JRRT had major problems with the 'slow time' encountered by the Fellowship in Lórien throwing out the correlation.

Barbara Strachey's Journeys Of Frodo is well worth investigating when it comes to issues of lunar, distance, and time consistency.

 

[Extollager]

JRRT had major problems with the 'slow time' encountered by the Fellowship in Lórien throwing out the correlation.

That's right.

 

[Extollager]

As we finish The Treason of Isengard, I'm struck by how, for a while, the book was taking a bit of effort to stick with (e.g. the dithering about Aragorn's ancestry or the name Sarn Gebir) -- but towards the end, what a series of glimpses of roads not taken. For example:

451/ "Nazgûl razed Lórien" -- whew. That was kind of a shocking scenario. Tolkien promptly decided not to take that path.

Other examples:

376/ "evil doings of Boromir in {G]Ondor"

411/ "trolls -- stone inhabited by goblin-spirit"?

412/ Sam could have gone to Minas Tirith with Gandalf.

422/ Was the "Balrog" Saruman?

Other goodies:

403, 425, 428 / The matter of what the apparition among the horses was -- Gandalf? Saruman? a psychic projection of Saruman emanating from Gandfalf? was really interesting. 431/ Gandalf sets his teeth in the Balrog's heel -- wow!

379/ That habit of JRRT, of writing names or phrases from newspapers in his "careful or even elaborate script," was (so far as I remember) new to me. It occurred to me that there's a small Tolkien book (that is, it would perhaps be under a hundred pages, but not necessarily of small dimensions) that could be published of The Calligraphy of J. R. R. Tolkien. Well, I'd buy it!

407? I wouldn't have guessed that "Trotter" would persist as late as 1944 -- when Tolkien had been working on the great book for seven years.

413/ Tolkien's way of writing in which a speech or, as here, image comes to mind and is more or less retained but reassigned; his way of starting with a name or word ("Ents") and then "finding out" about it

415/ A reminder of the Inklings -- Charles Williams's disapproval of Treebeard's "Crack my timbers"
432-433/ Another reminder of the Inklings appeared here, in that the account of Gandalf's battle in the underworld with the Balrog made me think of Ransom's battle with the corpse of Weston, "inhabited" by satan, in Perelandra. CSL wrote Perelandra Dec. 1941-May 1943 (see Hooper's C. S. Lewis: Companion and Guide, pp. 224-225). It's not clear to me just when it was that the Gandalf-Balrog underworld combat emerged in Tolkien's work. It seems one author may have influenced the other, but who whom?

424/ Origin of "Nobottle" in the Shire -- so it means "New Building"?

432/ Gandalf "'was sent back'" from death -- not by the gods (Valar). The passive allows Tolkien to avoid specifying the agent that sent Gandalf back; it seems it could only be God. The matter of "religious knowledge" in the Third Age of Middle-earth is an interesting one. I have been working on a paper on typology as the key to this topic.

436/ Tolkien was wise not to have Saruman allude to "'spheres of influence'" -- entirely too much sounding like modern European history.

 

[Extollager]

438/ "Tolkien discussing with himself "Where put parley" etc. Here we see him working out the more exciting way to write. He did want to write a story that was just plain gripping -- a really long and exciting work of storytelling.

439/ "that large part of ancient English language and lore which has now vanished beyond recall, swa hit no waere" [as if it had never been]" -- a poignant phrase from a JRRT scholarly article.

441 and elsewhere/ CJRT mentioning his father's habit of writing in ink on top of erased pencil

447/ Looks like a path not taken: Love at first sight between Aragorn and Eowyn -- no Arwen so far.

 

[Hugh]

I've only reached page 434, but here are some brief comments so far, though I may not have much to add to @Extollager .

As @Extollager said above, a main interest for me has been the roads not taken in the plot. My knowledge base is not that great, so I'm less interested in the evolution of place-names and such.

page 411 use of the C.S. Lewis word hnau

422 I also was intrigued by the possibility that the Balrog might be Saruman.

422 "Wizards = Angels....the first appearance in written record of this conception, i.e. that the Ishtari or Wizards were angeloi, 'messengers', emissaries from the Lords of the West."
The links to the Silmarillion develop.

428 Discussion of the Saruman/Gandalf first encounter with Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli. "it seems more likely perhaps that through his (Gandalf's) deep concentration on Saruman he had 'projected' an image of Saruman which the three companions could momentarily see."
Interesting new light (for me) on the old chestnut.

One further thought in the reading...
I'd always thought that JRRT read his work to the Inklings as he went along, but I had no idea that there were so many changing drafts, and presumably many of these evolving drafts were read to the Inklings in their different versions as a work-in-progress. I wonder if this contributed to Hugo Dyson's dislike of the LOTR and the subsequent agreement that he could have the power of veto if it was read when he attended. (p.212 The Inklings). I know it's more complicated than that as Dyson much preferred conversation to listening to readings.

 

[Extollager]

Never thought of that possibility re Dyson, so far as I remember!