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

We come to the end of The Return of the Shadow and, though Tolkien has wondered if Trotter should be a Man (see, e.g., p. 393), he remains a hobbit. This probably tends to pull against Frodo's being the protagonist. Frodo is the Ring-bearer, but most readers would be finding Trotter/Peregrin a much more interesting character. Tolkien needed to un-hobbit Trotter (Strider); but two years into the writing of LotR, he hadn't done that.

396, 402/ Sauron spoken of as being now "fully awake." I was reminded of Lovecraft's Cthulhu, which I hardly think Tolkien ever heard of.

397/ From the notes here one can see why Tolkien might have thought that he'd already written by far the greater portion of LotR. In fact, he hadn't yet reached the end of what became The Fellowship of the Ring -- he wasn't even close to that.

398/ The language of Sauron's shadow reaching as far as the Blessed Realm (if he succeeds) suggests a partial answer to the question "What did Sauron want?"

402/ At the Council, as in the final version it seems there's no thought of an appeal being made to the Valar -- which isn't something that would have occurred to the reader of "the new Hobbit" anyway.
 
431/ Trotter "potentially Aragorn" -- my thesis has been that Tolkien's conception of Aragorn in FotR might owe a lot to Rider Haggard's Heart of the World. Was a (re)reading of Haggard's romance perhaps the catalyst that helped Tolkien at last to make Trotter into Aragorn?

443, 452ff./ Another speculation I'm fond of is that the monster in the lake got there by wandering over from H. G. Wells's sf horror story "The Sear-Raiders." The story may be read here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42989/pg42989.txt

Does anyone want to discuss this possibility? That "tentacled" creature in the lake seems strikingly unlike the monsters in Tolkien's Middle-earth: the "goblins," the dragon, the Barrow-wights, the trolls, etc.; it's a science fictiony creature.

Finally, p. 462 -- the narrow underground land-bridge will certainly recall a great scene in Rider Haggard's She, which Tolkien is known to have read and liked.

So any comments on particular passages or on The Return of the Shadow as a whole?
 
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434/ I forgot to mention -- not that it matters -- that the names Thanador, Ulthanador, Orothan/Orthothanador sounded rather Barsoomian to me. Tolkien had read some of ERB's Martian fiction, but I don't suppose this is a case of influence.
 
What was going on with the Inklings at the end of 1939? Well, Lewis wrote to his brother on 3 Dec. that there was no Thursday meeting because "Williams & Hopkins were both away"; so he visited Tolkien at his home and they drank gin and limejuice and read to one another from works in progress: CSL from The Problem of Pain and Tolkien from "the new Hobbit."

It was a "very pleasant evening," and evidently Lewis walked both ways. "I was struck by the black-out in the town proper and in even such a very faint approach to country as North Oxford. In Longwall and Holywell I had to walk almost as one does in a dark room: but when I had got as far as Keble and houses began to be further apart and trees became visible against the grey sky (no stars, or moon) I strode along nearly as well as in an ordinary country walk after nightfall." Perhaps some of that visibility was due to Lewis's eyes gradually adjusting as he walked to Tolkien's residence on Northmoor Road.
 
Many thanks for your commentary @Extollager

Here are some thoughts from my read through. Obviously I'm not looking just to repeat your observations..

p.355 "Odo vanished last night". I'm very curious about what happened to Odo. How could Gandalf have let him vanish? Wasn't he Gandalf's responsibility? How did he get taken taken by the Black Riders? I may have missed something here, but I don't think this was ever clarified.
Tracking back to page 299: Tolkien wrote "Christopher wants Odo kept." As ever, there is the question of to what extent Tolkien was writing to entertain Christopher (born November 1924, so just fifteen in early 1940, and able to have an increasingly mature voice in these discussions).

p.363 Yes, I was very surprised by this early version of Treebeard capturing Gandalf and later in p.384

p.379 mention of Radagast

p 380 I found this early vision of the final stages of the LOTR remarkable, and likewise p.381

In fact I'm finding this whole process of writing and re-writing incredible. It's no wonder the LOTR ended up as such a fantastic work, given the process of writing, discussion, fermentation, further thought and writing over a period of years. Many authors would been content to stick with an early version, and it would almost certainly have been published toute suite as a successor to The Hobbit, but fortunately JRRT was such an unusually persistent perfectionist, and had the intensity of those Inkling discussions to assist in the fermentation. I think it's also true that he had limited writing time and so had to put it away for significant periods of time. In fact, as others have said, it's amazing, given his track record for uncompleted manuscripts, that he ever finished it.

I don't have any further comments on the text, but I have very much appreciated reading your thoughts, and the possible links to Haggard and H.G.Wells.

I remain very interested in the evolution of Trotter into Aragorn as this seems so central to the book evolving into something very different from a simple follow-up to The Hobbit.
 
In fact, as others have said, it's amazing, given his track record for uncompleted manuscripts, that he ever finished it.

It is. If not for the Inklings and especially for C. S. Lewis, Tolkien might well have given up. His own children were growing and perhaps not clamoring for a "new Hobbit" -- I don't recall ever reading that demand for more of Bilbo's adventures or more hobbit stories came from his kids and was a major impetus for writing.

Looks like it was a near thing.
 
Extollager said:
386/ the fascination for Tolkien of hobbit genealogies

I think that JRRT just liked compiling genealogies, full stop. We don't just get the hobbit family trees, but those of Gimli, Aragorn, Elrond, Arwen and Eärendil, as well as the succession lines of the rulers of most of the countries...
 
Pyan, somewhere Tolkien said he was a hobbit himself -- and hobbits like books of information that they already know, set out fair and square with no contradictions.

But also, the genealogical habit may reflect the way Tolkien was steeped in the Icelandic sagas, which notoriously begin with the ancestors of the principal character(s); their view is that "who you are" includes "who your people were" -- very far from a common modern extreme, wherein your ancestry doesn't count, you don't even "discover" who you are, you construct who you are and you may tinker with that as much as you like and have buy the consumer goods appertaining thereto! Very convenient for businesses that produce those things. But not a traditional idea, such as Tolkien worked with.
 
I think it's also true that he had limited writing time and so had to put it away for significant periods of time.

For sure! That stood out to me when I read through the complete Scull-Hammond Chronology of Tolkien's life. Here was this man who was quite meticulous about details and who had constant academic responsibilities, scholarly obligations, teaching duties, &c.

I'm just now getting into The Treason of Isengard and it seems there may have been quite a hiatus in his writing between Dec. 1939 and August 1940.

There was a lot going on in the world at that time!
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Before I started reading up on Tolkien two or three years ago, I'd thought of him as having a life of leisure in a job that was pretty much a sinecure with ample time to pursue his own interests. Hah!
 
There are some things from earlier in The Treason of Isengard worth commenting on, but one thing that jumped out was the first appearance of Saruman on pp. 72 and 74.

He's called Saramond and Saramund, and this looks like Sæmund (with the suffix attached to names, Sæmundur) of Icelandic legend -- a famous wizard. Jacqueline Simpson translated and edited Legends of Icelandic Magicians (Folklore Society, 1975), which has several pages of stories told about Sæmund of the outwitting-the-devil variety. Tolkien's Saruman thought to outwit Sauron, using the Ring for his own ends and extending his rule over Middle-earth.

Sæmund studied at the Black School on the European continent, where the rule was that, of each graduating class, the devil got the last one to leave. With the help of a friendly bishop, though, Sæmund escaped and the devil got no one (that time). Thus you have the idea of Sæmund as one of a fellowship of magicians (at that point in his life).

He became a priest. There was an historical Sæmundur Sigfússon the Wise (1056-1133), described as a "priest-prince" in my late correspondent Benedikt Benedikz's introduction to the Simpson book.

Anyway, I think it very likely that Tolkien would have known of Sæmund -- both the historical man and the figure of legend. It seems probable that his Saramund, Saramond, Saruman owe their names in part to this impressive figure.

Church at Oddi, where Sæmundur Sigfússon had his living, with modern statue of him:

1593883537648.png
 
Btw, let me recommend a few books by Jacqueline Simpson -- Scandinavian Folktales (Penguin, 1988) and Icelandic Folktales and Legends (University of California, 1979, is the paperback I have, but I think there's a later edition); and Where Are the Bones? and Other Stories: The Complete Supernatural Fiction of Jacqueline Simpson (available from Lulu.com, published by Haunted Library/Supernatural Tales, 2019). I've read the two folktale collections and they are very much to my taste -- keepers for sure. The ghost story collection I'm reading now & enjoying. Simpson's stories reflect her liking of M. R. James -- in fact he is a supporting character in more than one -- and her professional background in folklore. There's "Three Padlocks," etc.

I'll say a little more about Ben Benedikz later, I trust.
 
Taking up now The Treason of Isengard, we find a note written by JRRT that "Trotter is not a hobbit but a real ranger," and the dropping of the wooden shoes detail (p. 8). It took Tolkien a long time to work this out.

18/Two years' work has Tolkien getting The Fellowship of the Ring to Rivendell. That is, he's written about 60% of the first of the three books of The Lord of the Rings. This seems slow, but stop and think: if he had maintained that rate of productivity, Tolkien would have finished LotR roughly by 1946 (I'm making a rough estimate indeed). As it was, he didn't finish it till 1949, as I recall.
 
22/ Gandalf tells Bilbo that "'wizards have much to learn as long as they live,'" which raises questions about what they did know when they arrived in Middle-earth from Valinor.

25/ Here again the idea of providence as a mysterious factor in the history of the world: "'It was lucky for Bilbo that things were arranged otherwise,'" etc. Tom Shippey is good on this matter in The Road to Middle-earth. In this far-distant time prior to the Incarnation of Christ, indeed to the revelation to Moses, etc., the activity of God may be sensed by the agents whose actions are most aligned with His, but without their complete understanding. "'I can put it no plainer than by saying Bilbo was meant to find the Ring,'" etc. (p. 25, Tolkien's italics).

49/ The Black Riders, Gandalf says, are Frodo's "'worst enemies (save one): they are Ringwraiths.'" It seems to me that Tolkien came to realize the Ringwraiths needed to be more dreadful than these galloping riders who kidnap Hamilcar Bolger, who recovers from ther experience just fine (p. 68), and who stab mattresses at Bree. Even in the final version of LotR, they are less ghastly at first than they become. Happily, Tolkien deleted the bit (p. 69) about Gandalf "'bowl[ing] the Rider that was carrying [a kidnapped hobbit] clean over'"!

The remarkable thing is that this works. It wouldn't do to unleash so terrifying a threat upon the hobbits right from the beginning; from the point of view of literary art, it's much more satisfactory for the reader that, as the Ring-bearer's quest grows more desperate and the War of the Ring intensifies, the Black Riders "become" the Nazgul. At the same time, it might be objected that Tolkien didn't quite adequately account for their change. But I think he gives us enough to go by, in the final version; that they were indwelt by more of the power and malice of Sauron himself, etc. To pin it all down rationalistically could have been a blunder. But for all his copiousness, Tolkien seems to have known when it was better just to leave something unexplained or not fully explained. ALSO, the reader can suppose that one reason the Riders are less frightening than they later become is that the hobbits are naïve at first.
 
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67/ Interesting indeed about an apparent or at least possible hiatus in the writing between end of 1939 and August 1940! I didn't take time to check the Scull-Hammond Chronology, but I should do so to see what was going on in JRRT's life at the time.

70-72/ See comment #132 above on Saemund the Wise from Icelandic legend.
 
I always feel that the writing from the Shire to Rivendell is considerably denser than most of the rest of LotR - due mainly to the fact he was setting up the characters, and getting them all to the Council of Elrond in one piece. After Rivendell, it seems much more linear, in spite of the splitting of the books between Frodo and Sam on one hand, and the rest of the Fellowship on the other.

This is, I think borne out by HoMe - never again will we have the wholesale abandonment of false starts and rewrites that characterise The Return of the Shadow. There will be steps down abandoned byways, agreed, but after the sorting out of the appearance, characters and (above all) names of the main protagonists, it all seems to flow much more easily. Yes, it took JRRT two years to get to Rivendell, but I get the impression that the delays and hiatuses from the Council of Elrond are more to do with outside demands on JRRT's time rather than 'stickiness' in the writing.
 
22/ Gandalf tells Bilbo that "'wizards have much to learn as long as they live,'" which raises questions about what they did know when they arrived in Middle-earth from Valinor.
25/ Here again the idea of providence as a mysterious factor in the history of the world: "'It was lucky for Bilbo that things were arranged otherwise,'" etc. Tom Shippey is good on this matter in The Road to Middle-earth. In this far-distant time prior to the Incarnation of Christ, indeed to the revelation to Moses, etc., the activity of God may be sensed by the agents whose actions are most aligned with His, but without their complete understanding. "'I can put it no plainer than by saying Bilbo was meant to find the Ring,'" etc. (p. 25, Tolkien's italics).
I always find Tolkien's Catholicism difficult to get my head around, even though it was so central to him. At one time I did read extensively about this in search of the essential nugget of understanding, but any conclusions I reached have slipped beyond the reach of my hippocampus.

49/ The Black Riders, Gandalf says, are Frodo's "'worst enemies (save one): they are Ringwraiths.'" It seems to me that Tolkien came to realize the Ringwraiths needed to be more dreadful than these galloping riders who kidnap Hamilcar Bolger, who recovers from ther experience just fine (p. 68), and who stab mattresses at Bree. Even in the final version of LotR, they are less ghastly at first than they become. Happily, Tolkien deleted the bit (p. 69) about Gandalf "'bowl[ing] the Rider that was carrying [a kidnapped hobbit] clean over'"!
The remarkable thing is that this works. It wouldn't do to unleash so terrifying a threat upon the hobbits right from the beginning; from the point of view of literary art, it's much more satisfactory for the reader that, as the Ring-bearer's quest grows more desperate and the War of the Ring intensifies, the Black Riders "become" the Nazgul. At the same time, it might be objected that Tolkien didn't quite adequately account for their change. But I think he gives us enough to go by, in the final version; that they were indwelt by more of the power and malice of Sauron himself, etc. To pin it all down rationalistically could have been a blunder. But for all his copiousness, Tolkien seems to have known when it was better just to leave something unexplained or not fully explained. ALSO, the reader can suppose that one reason the Riders are less frightening than they later become is that the hobbits are naïve at first.

and

I always feel that the writing from the Shire to Rivendell is considerably denser than most of the rest of LotR - due mainly to the fact he was setting up the characters, and getting them all to the Council of Elrond in one piece. After Rivendell, it seems much more linear, in spite of the splitting of the books between Frodo and Sam on one hand, and the rest of the Fellowship on the other.

This is, I think borne out by HoMe - never again will we have the wholesale abandonment of false starts and rewrites that characterise The Return of the Shadow. There will be steps down abandoned byways, agreed, but after the sorting out of the appearance, characters and (above all) names of the main protagonists, it all seems to flow much more easily. Yes, it took JRRT two years to get to Rivendell, but I get the impression that the delays and hiatuses from the Council of Elrond are more to do with outside demands on JRRT's time rather than 'stickiness' in the writing.

I just assume (very basically) that Tolkien started out writing a different book and so the early stages were set out, padded out even, and meandered along, in a way that was very different from the momentum of the later stages. The Black Riders pre-Rivendell were part of those early stages and it would not have worked to re-write them.
 
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Page 75: "The 'Odo-Hamilcar' adventure was finally abandoned"
Very curious the whole business. With the hindsight of having read the LOTR, it's difficult to see how this could have worked. However I guess it's linked to the evolution of both the story and the Black Riders.

Page 71 and 74: "the Black Riders attack the Shire, coming up the Greenway and driving a crowd of fugitives among which are one or two evil men, Sauronites".
I prefer the earlier version in which a Dragon attacks the Shire. I'd like to have read that.

Incidentally I have no idea where Tolkien got the idea of Black Riders from, and their sense of smell. Even in the Shire they're seriously frightening. Any ideas anyone?

Page 71: I see that it was Bill Ferny and the Southerner who "burgle" the Inn rather than the Black Riders. Not as scary.

Page 77: finally we have Aragorn!
 
Hugh asked, "I have no idea where Tolkien got the idea of Black Riders from, and their sense of smell. Even in the Shire they're seriously frightening. Any ideas anyone?"

I don't know. It must be there's more than one "source" -- to the extent that the Riders are in some way derived from some source(s). The Riders as dreadful, supernatural agents that gallop around in the dark seem folkloric. The thing about their sense of smell is another matter. It seems to ally them more to the world of animals than of people.
 

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