Michael Ward on Prince Caspian

Prince Caspian is woken by his tutor, Dr. Cornelius, in the middle of the night and taken up the dark stairway of a tower. There he sees the conjunction of two planets: "Tarva, the Lord of Victory, salutes Alambil, the Lady of Peace." According to Cornelius, "Their meeting is fortunate and means some great good for the sad realm of Narnia."

For that deeply troubled world, it is a memorable moment from the second book in C.S. Lewis' best-selling series, "The Chronicles of Narnia." This scene will have a prominent place in the new film version of "Prince Caspian," to be released on Friday.

As a believer in Natural Moral Law, C.S. Lewis thought that certain things were naturally good and other things were naturally bad. It wasn't just a question of human beings deciding what was good and what was bad. The very nature of the universe tells us something about how we ought to live.

One such thing it tells us to avoid - and where necessary to engage and defeat - is tyranny. In "Prince Caspian," Narnia suffers under a cruel, murderous tyrant, Miraz. His regime is not just an awkward political fact; it is a natural outrage. The health of each citizen and the Narnian universe is threatened by his dictatorship. To overthrow Miraz is a just act, in accordance with the true nature of things, which is why the Narnian planets foretell his downfall. As surely as fever in the human body is signified by a high temperature, so abuse of power in Narnia is signified by ominous portents in the heavens.

Lewis wrote "Prince Caspian" because he believed that in the real world, too, evil behavior has a natural payback. There is a moral cosmos, as well as a physical cosmos. This sort of belief is easy to caricature. Crackpot preachers are often quick to attribute the latest disaster to that human sin that happens to be their particular bugbear.

But the caricature does not replace the real thing. Although it may be difficult to see hard-and-fast links between one particular evil and one particular disaster, most people do believe that our actions are not consequence-free. You pollute the atmosphere, and you poison yourself as well as others. You pollute the moral order, and sooner or later you will kill yourself. Chickens do indeed come home to roost. If you act tyrannically, you will suffer for it ultimately as the natural moral law plays out.

This does not mean that one kind of tyranny is replaced by another. It means that strength can be justifiably put in the service of liberty and justice to restore the natural rule of law. As a seriously wounded veteran of World War I, Lewis knew all too well the horrors and stupidities of armed conflict. And, he was most certainly no warmonger. But he also felt that war could sometimes be warranted.

War should be a last resort, declared by lawful authority and conducted according to the natural moral law: It should be defensive, not imperialistic, and there should be limits to one's war aims, a fair chance of success, no torture of prisoners, no slavery, full personal accountability for the acts of those engaged, no intentional "collateral damage," and mercy and reconciliation after the conflict ends. These constraints define, for Lewis, what chivalry was all about - that tradition of gallantry that he felt had all but been forgotten in the modern era: the noble knight in selfless defense of a just cause to protect liberty and justice for the innocent.

The world of "Prince Caspian" is not a chaos, but a cosmos, a carefully structured world, both morally and materially, in which all individuals and events have spiritual significance. The story reflects Lewis's belief that the real world, too, is ordered and coherent, all the way up to the planets and stars. "The heavens are telling the glory of God," according to the words of his favorite Biblical psalm. It is the glory of God's natural law, he believed, to pull down the overly mighty from their thrones and exalt the humble and meek. The knight saves us from a world "divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable" - so Lewis wrote in "The Necessity of Chivalry." And the lessons of chivalry, mercy, liberty and justice from "Prince Caspian" are more than ever necessary in our troubled world today.

Michael Ward ~ Los Angeles Times (14 May 2008)

Immortality and Holiness

[Image: 'Ascension' - Vitali Linitsky]

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

C.S. Lewis: The Weight of Glory

Charles Williams, the odd Inkling

(The Times Literary Supplement ~ 18 June 2008)

The Archbishop of Canterbury admires a new consideration of the critic, poet and theologian Charles Williams.

Of the three central and iconic figures of the “Inklings”, Charles Williams has always been rather the odd man out in comparison with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. This is not only to do with Tolkien’s well-documented antipathy towards Williams; there is a whiff of brimstone in the nostrils of some when they read of his involvement in hermetic or occultist groups, and of his agonized and confused sexuality. The novels are bewildering in style and content (Ashenden quotes C. S. Lewis’s acerbic comment that Williams did not always know how to hit the golden mean between Dante and Wodehouse), the late poetry famously obscure, and the critical and theological essays wildly idiosyncratic. Yet it is impossible not to feel that he inhabited a larger world than either Tolkien or Lewis (as the latter acknowledged); and someone who made so deep an impact on both T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, neither of them carelessly generous in their literary or personal estimates of others, surely deserves a second look. Geoffrey Hill has recently stressed the energy and intelligence of Williams’s work on the history of English poetry. Theologians continue to circle round the doctrinal work with nervous respect. And the late “Taliessin” poems still excite something of the same uncertain fascination in a surprising variety of readers.

In Charles Williams: Alchemy and integration, Gavin Ashenden sets himself two main tasks and performs them with elegant efficiency. The first is to investigate Williams’s involvement in the occult during the 1910s and 20s. Ashenden notes that most of Williams’s biographers and commentators have wrongly associated him with the Order of the Golden Dawn – a potent influence on twentieth-century Western occultism. In fact, Williams’s association was with the group that broke away from the Golden Dawn under the leadership of A. E. Waite, the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, and that attempted to adapt the Continental Rosicrucian tradition to British circumstances, rejecting ritual magic in the strict sense and building more consistently on Jewish and Christian sources.

It is clear that Williams’s interest in Kabbalistic vocabulary and speculation derived almost entirely from Waite (Ashenden follows Waite’s eccentric spelling, “Q’abalah” – a minor irritant in the book). Although Williams had ceased to be actively involved in the Fellowship after about 1930, there are countless traces of Waite’s characteristic ideas and terminology in the novels and the Taliesin cycles. Ashenden argues persuasively that Williams’s complex symbolism in these works of the human body as a kind of microcosmic geography is a development from the Kabbalistic schemata that Waite outlines. The Rosicrucian/Kabbalist melange of ideas was a crucial element in what was certainly Williams’ most original contribution to twentieth century Christian thought, his theological evaluation of the erotic. And what Ashenden establishes is that this was rooted less in any occult or pseudo-tantric practice than in the bridal imagery of Kabbalist literature as mediated by Waite.

This opens up the second of the questions that Ashenden sets out to clarify. Since the publication of Lois Lang-Sims’ recollections of Williams in her autobiography and the more recent publication of some of her correspondence with him, there has been much speculation about what look like elements of ritual sadism in Williams’s relationships with at least some women. Balanced assessment is difficult; but what Ashenden makes clear is that the exceptionally tormented and fantasy-ridden relation with Lang-Sims was going on during a period when Williams’s general mental balance was insecure. Ashenden has had access to Williams’s correspondence with Phyllis Jones, the Oxford University Press secretary who had engaged his affections with dangerous intensity in the 1920s; the correspondence continued for the rest of his life. Again, earlier biographers are corrected: it has been assumed and stated that the friendship had cooled on Williams’s side after Phyllis’s first marriage, but the letters suggest that his mythologically charged obsession with her changed hardly at all. The point, however, is that these letters illustrate vividly the turmoil of his mind in the early 1940s. His weaving of fantasy patterns in some of what he wrote privately at this time is on the edge of the psychotic, and he was clearly under exceptional mental strain.

What seems to have restored some balance was a kind of “renegotiation” of his marriage. The word is probably misleading; Williams was never literally unfaithful to his wife, but the various intimacies with younger women were not wholly innocent or unproblematic. Yet his correspondence with his wife between 1943 and his death two years later suggests that he had come to terms afresh both with the actual and specific responsibilities proper to marriage, and with the critical and more prosaic responses of his wife to his work and lifestyle. He writes of having been anchored again in an “ordinary” humanity, rather than a near-messianic bardic isolation. Ashenden does not quote it directly, but there is a chilling moment in Lois Lang-Sims’s recollections where Williams asks, with obvious self-reference, what kind of relationships are possible for someone who is not really human. It is the furthest point of his inhabiting of the bardic myth, and Ashenden’s discussion strongly suggests that it was a point at which he recognized extreme danger and – consciously or not – began to work in a different way at his marriage.

.
Ashenden, then, tells a story of integration. Williams’s obsessive mythologizing of personal sexuality settles privately into a strengthening of his marriage that better reflects the public refining of his theology of “romantic love”. And Ashenden’s discussions of some of the main fictional works show a parallel movement away from the fascination with spiritual power in its own right towards the developed doctrine of self-giving exchange – though that is not without its ambiguities, as the Lang-Sims correspondence shows.

Charles Williams: Alchemy and integration is altogether a very well-crafted book, using a great deal of epistolary and other documentation for the first time and opening up a good many new avenues for discussion as it lays to rest some, if not quite all, of the more lurid versions of his career. It should be the first swallow of a new summer in the study of someone who was, despite the oddities and even grotesqueries, a deeply serious critic, a poet unafraid of major risks, and a theologian of rare creativity.

Gavin Ashenden ~ CHARLES WILLIAMS Alchemy and integration

Kent State University Press.

Rowan Williams is Archbishop of Canterbury and was formerly Lady Margaret Professor Divinity at Oxford.

Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration

He was a close friend of T. S. Eliot, deeply admired by C. S. Lewis, inspirational for W. H. Auden in his journey to faith, and a literary sparring partner for J. R. R. Tolkien. Yet, half a century after his death, much of Charles Williams' life and work remains an enigma. The questions that arose from his immersion in Rosicrucian and hermetic culture and ideology - central to understanding Williams's thought and art - remain provocatively unexplored. For a decade of his early adulthood, Williams was a member of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, a form of neo-Rosicrucianism. There is widespread confusion about its nature, which is to be expected given that this was a semisecret society. Though Williams left his formal association with it behind, it enriched and informed his imaginative world with a hermetic myth that expressed itself in an underlying ideology and metaphysics. In "Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration", Gavin Ashenden explores both the history behind the myths and metaphysics Williams was to make his own and the hermetic culture that influenced him.

He examines and interprets its expressions in Williams' novels, poetry, and the development of his ideas and relates these elements to Williams' unpublished letters to his platonic lover, Celia, written toward the end of his life. Since one of the foremost ideas in Williams's work is the interdependence or coinherence of both our humanity and the creation, understanding the extent to which he lived and achieved this in his own life is important. Williams's private correspondence with Celia is of particular interest both for its own sake, since it was previously unknown, and for the insight it offers into his personality and muse.

(Review in Amazon.co.uk)

The Unmaking of All Life

[Image: Easter Springtide ~ Vitali Linitsky]

The central mystery of the Mass has been at all times the subject of dream and speculation, of theology and devotion. If it is the centre of Christian life, it is also and therefore, the centre of all life -- anyhow on this planet, and perhaps everywhere. For the mystery of the Redemption -- of which this is the sign and means -- lies close to the mystery of Creation.

The Sacrifice of the Crucifixion was the unmaking of all life that it should be remade after the great original pattern; a deliberate unmaking instead of an inevitable decay. So far as chaos could come again upon a world in which God was immanent, so far in that darkness it came; wounding and overwhelming the Sacred Body, inclosing and darkening the Sacred Spirit within. It is the nature of Omnipotence always to be able to endure more and to go farther than the utmost that can be brought against him; and perhaps this is the nature of the last Judgement, that He leaves to every man the choice of dealings with Him. If a man will shape his life upon a basis of pride and anger, then he shall find a greater pride and anger in God; if he is covetous and robs others, God shall be covetous and rob him; if he is full of love, then God shall be full of love.

The Mass is an invisible communication, not only of redemption but also of creation and judgement: it is an absorption of the communicant in his degree into eternity. It is therefore above all things the relation between his own soul and Love with which the lover is concerned; and though he passes into the mystery by the channels which Love has prepared, Love itself issues therefrom in all his terrible strength along the channels which the lover has prepared.

Charles Williams ~ Outlines of Romantic Theology
Apocryphile Press, 2005 (Berkley, California)

The man who grew up in Narnia

[Douglas Gresham on the set of Prince Caspian]

A long and interesting interview in the Church Times this week with Douglas Gresham, the introduction to the interview runs thus:

Douglas Gresham is the stepson of C. S. Lewis. He first met Lewis at the age of eight, when he came to England with his American mother, Joy Davidman, and his brother, David. Joy Davidman was already suffering from cancer when she married Lewis in 1956, and she died four years later. C. S. Lewis adopted the boys when he and Joy married, and he took care of them until his death in 1963. Management of his literary estate passed to them.

.

Must admit I do rather like his responses to some of the more dumb questions!

.

Additionally, I have just read a nice piece about Lewis and Headington Quarry church on Will Vaus' blog posted a couple of days ago... worth a read: http://willvaus.blogspot.com/

Leaf by Niggle (II)

Letter 98 (18 March 1945), to Stanley Unwin by J.R.R. Tolkien. In this letter Tolkien talks about 'Leaf by Niggle':

“...that story was the only thing I have ever done which cost me absolutely no pains at all. Usually I compose only with great difficulty and endless rewriting. I woke up one day (more the 2 years ago) with that odd thing virtually complete in my head. It took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out.”

These few hours Tolkien found the time to write down a little story which is an absolute pearl and a favourite Tolkien story. Leaf by Niggle is very much an allegory of Tolkien's own creative process, and, to an extent, of his own life. Although Tolkien did not like the idea of allegory, he admitted having been just that in Leaf by Niggle in a letter to Caroline Everett (24 June 1957):

“I should say that, in addition to my tree-love (it was originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all'. The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analyses are a complete explanation even of a short story...”

The story was originally written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1938-39 and first published in the Dublin Review in January 1945. It can be found, most notably, in Tolkien's book titled "Tree and Leaf". This is notable because the book, consisting of a seminal essay by Tolkien called "On Fairy-Stories" and "Leaf by Niggle" as example, offers the underlying philosophy (Creation and Sub-Creation) of much of Tolkien's fantastical writings.

Tolkien was of course compulsive in his writing, his rewriting, his desire for perfection in form and in the "reality" of his invented world, its languages, its chronologies, its existence and history. Like the painter Niggle, Tolkien came to being absorbed by his personal "Tree", Middle-earth. And like Niggle, Tolkien had many duties that kept him from the work he loved to complete. We owe him and his son Christopher, a debt of gratitude.

.

Here is the original article:

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/reviews/leafbyniggle.htm

Leaf by Niggle (I)

The three books of The Lord of the Rings contain over a half million words. Its manuscript, when Tolkien sold it to Marquette University in 1957, stood in a stack seven feet high. Before, around, and beyond his famous trilogy, Tolkien wove a vast imaginative world, recording its origin and history in a sprawling profusion of songs, tales, and legends. Yet his perfectionism kept him from finishing or publishing this "History of Middle-earth" in his lifetime. Even The Silmarillion, painstakingly edited and published years after Tolkien's death by his son Christopher, contains only a part of that myth.

What animates a man to create such an elaborate fictional world? Fittingly, the most revealing thing Tolkien wrote about his own creative process may come to us in the form of a story. Tolkien's friend Clyde Kilby explains:

His problem as a writer he stated with great charm and meaning at the beginning of his story "Leaf by Niggle." That story begins, "There was once a little man called Niggle, who had a long journey to make." The journey was into death and the hereafter. Niggle describes himself as a painter, not a very successful one owing not only to interruptions which usurped his time but to a tendency toward plain laziness. Niggle's real trouble was that his reach exceeded his grasp. He had various paintings that he worked on and "most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill."

Actually he preferred to paint leaves more than trees. "He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges." Yet at the same time he longed to paint a whole tree. Indeed one painting had started with "a single leaf caught in the wind" but it grew, "sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to." For me it represents both a splendid picture of his perfectionism and the increasing vision of the mythology he was creatively to inhabit.

Niggle now turned away from his other paintings "or else he took them and tacked them on to the edges of his great picture." Might this not explain the Tom Bombadil episode and the Bombadil poems that did not quite manage to get into the main story? In due course Niggle's painting got so large he needed a ladder to reach its top. What a perfect insight into the whole creative process … of a Thomas Wolfe, a Stephen Spender, or any creative mind overwhelmed by the magnitude of its subject.

The time eventually came when Niggle began to take a hard look at what was turning out to be the main activity of his life. He looked and looked and wished for someone who "would tell him what to think." He wondered if he were simply wasting time. He wondered if he should have dropped all other paintings for this single one. Was it really a painting, or was it just a chimera? Niggle concluded contradictory things about it. "Actually it seemed to him wholly unsatisfactory, and yet very lovely, the only really beautiful picture in the world." Not only do we have here the experience of many a writer or artist, but we have what seems a most faithful description of Tolkien's own creativity.

Clyde S. Kilby ~ Tolkien and The Silmarillion (Harold Shaw, 1976)

If it works for you

Lewis wrote in a time when, among the educated British public if not among their professional philosophers, there was considerably more agreement than there is now about what constitutes a valid and rational argument for a given case. Lewis might have paid more attention to Screwtape in the very first letter where Screwtape says that the time has passed in which “the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not.”

Lewis’ apologetic works, “presuppose, and rarely make any argument for, the criteria for rationality.” Almost fifty years later, ‘deconstructionism’ and ‘anti-foundationalism’ have done their wasting work. Under the tutelage of today’s academy, unbelievers are skeptical about the very notion of ‘evidence,’ and they chatter cleverly about ‘plausibility structures’ and ‘paradigm shifts,’ leading them to offer the relativistic response to the most convincing of arguments: “That’s great if it works for you.” Or as it is said in England, “You are right if you think you are.”

The Second Coming of C. S. Lewis -- First Things, November 1994
Alan Jacobs (Wheaton College)

How Screwtape came about

“Before the service was over -- one cd. wish these things came more seasonably -- I was struck by an idea for a book wh. I think might be both useful and entertaining. It wd. be called As one Devil to Another and would consist of letters from an elderly retired devil to a young devil who has just started work on his first ‘patient’.”
.
Letter to his brother Warnie, July 20th 1940
.

"I was often asked or advised to add to the original ‘Screwtape Letters’, but for many years I felt not the least inclination to do it. Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment. The ease came, no doubt, from the fact that the device of diabolical letters, once you have thought of it, exploits itself spontaneously... it was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp."

.
C.S. Lewis - Foreward to “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” -- The scene is Hell at the annual dinner of the Training College for young devils.

Music and Silence

Screwtape writes to his apprentice-devil nephew:

Music and silence -- how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since Our Father entered Hell -- though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express -- no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominal forces, but all has been occupied by Noise -- Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile -- Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress. Meanwhile, you, disgusting little -- [Here the MS breaks off and is resumed in a different hand.] In the heat of composition I find that I have inadvertantly allowed myself to assume the form of a large centipede. I am accordingly dictating the rest to my secretary. Now that the transformation is complete I recognise it as a periodical phenomenon. Some rumour of it has reached the humans and a distorted account of it appears in the poet Milton, with the ridiculous addition that such changes of shape are a 'punishment' imposed on us by the Enemy. A more modern writer -- someone with a name like Pshaw -- has, however, grasped the truth. Transformation proceeds from within and is a glorious manifestation of that Life Force which Our Father would worship if he worshipped anything but himself. In my present form I feel even more anxious to see you, to unite you to myself in an indissoluble embrace,

(signed) Toadpipe (for his Abysmal Sublimity Under Secretary Screwtape, TE, BS, etc.)

C.S. Lewis ~ The Screwtape Letters

The Books of Lore

This final section treats a number of works only passingly referred to, but which seems to have some importance.

The Book of the Kings was a record kept in Gondor. Frodo Baggins and Peregrin Took were allowed to see it, and Tolkien probably used it in his translations. The evil queen Beruthiel had the doubtful honour of being erased from its pages.

The Book of the Stewards was a record, probably similar to the Book of the Kings. Frodo Baggins and Peregrin Took were allowed to see it.

Dorgannas Iaur is an account of "the shapes of the lands of old". It was written by Torhir Ifant, and Aelfwine cites it in his translation of the Silmarillion to clarify the placing of the realms of Beleriand. The above quote is the only explanation of the title. Dor means "land" and iaur means "old", so we have to assume gannas means "shape".

Parma Kuluina, or the Golden Book, was a book of lore that was kept in the city of Kortirion in Tol Eressea. Pengolodh used it when making the Quenta Silmarillion, and Aelfwine was allowed to see it.

Quentale Ardanomion is a work that treats the Dwarves; nothing more is known about it. Aelfwine used this in his account on the Dwarves in his translation of the Silmarillion. The name of the work is strange: "Arda-norn-ion" seems to be more fitting, since in Quenya norn means Dwarf. Then Ardanornion would mean "Of the Dwarves of the World".

References:
•The Unfinished Tales Cirion and Eorl
•The Unfinished Tales The Istari
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 11 The Later Quenta Silmarillion
•The Silmarillion Index
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 5 Quenta Silmarillion
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 11 Quendi and Eldar Appendix B

The Red Book and its Authors

This part does not refer to any specific chronicler, but concerns the tradition of the Red Book which is the most important source for the history of the Third Age. The Red Book consists of several parts, for which the most important contributors were Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, and Sam Gamgee.

After Bilbo Baggins returned from the quest of Erebor, he started writing a diary about his adventures. When, at the eminent age of 111, he went to Rivendell, he took this diary with him, and continued writing. He now probably wrote a lot of poems, some which were written in the margins of the diary or on loose pages. In Rivendell he also became occupied with translating a lot of Elvish Books of Lore (1403-1418 TA). For this he used all resources available there, and they were many. Except for the many texts he also had direct access to people who spoke the old languages. The result was three thick volumes in red leather called Translations from the Elvish. This work was considered well done even by the Elves.

After the War of the Ring, Frodo Baggins brought the three volumes and the diary back to the Shire and started (1420-1 TA) adding his own account of the war, which was seen as a continuation of Bilbo's adventure. When Frodo went to the Grey Havens he had almost finished the account, and gave the book to Sam Gamgee for him to finish it. It then had 80 chapters, and the title-page was full of suggestions for a name. First, Bilbo had written:

My Diary.
My Unexpected Journey.
There and Back Again.And What Happened After.
Adventures of Five Hobbits.
The Tale of the Great Ring, compiled by Bilbo Baggins from his own observations and the account of his friends.
What we did in the War of the Ring.

But these had all been crossed out. Below, Frodo had written:

THE DOWNFALL
OF THE
LORD OF THE RINGS
AND THE
RETURN OF THE KING
(as seen by the Little People; being the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo of the Shire, supplemented by the accounts of their friends and the learning of the Wise.) Together with extracts from Books of Lore translated by Bilbo in Rivendell.

Sam Gamgee had probably finished the account when he, in the year 60 of the Fourth Age, went to the havens. He then gave the books to his daughter Elanor.

From then on the books were kept by the descendants of Elanor, the Fairbairns of the Undertowers who lived in the Westmarch, an area recently added to the Shire. The assembled books were therefore called the Red Book of Westmarch, and a fifth volume was added. It contained commentaries, genealogies, and various other things concerning the Hobbits of the Nine Walkers.

The first copy that was made of the Red Book was the so-called Thain's Book. It was a copy made at the request of King Elessar, and its importance lay in the respect that it contained much that was later later lost or omitted. Later in Gondor, this copy was much annotated and many names and quotes were corrected. Added was also (much later) The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, i.e. those parts not present in the Red Book narrative.

The second copy was made by Findegil, the King's Writer of Gondor, and was the most important one for the scribes. It was an exact copy of the Thain's Book that was kept in Gondor. These two volumes were the only ones to contain everything from the original, plus the Gondorian annotations. In addition, in the Thain's Book the Translations from the Elvish had not been included, and these were added to the second copy. The copy was ordered by Peregrin Took's greatgrandson and when finished in 172 FA in Gondor it was kept at the Great Smials.

Apart from these, many other copies were made for Sam Gamgee's descendants. To these copies was also later added many notes, commentaries and poems. The original Red Book was lost, but the copies remained. These were Professor Tolkien's main source to his accounts of the War of the Ring. However, when he published the first editions, he hadn't found all the correct accounts, or hadn't used them. For instance, in his earliest texts about Bilbo's adventure in the Misty Mountains, the story originated from a version of the Red Book where Bilbo's "lie" was printed: that he was promised a present by Gollum, but since Gollum couldn't give the Ring to Bilbo, he was shown the way out instead. In reality, Bilbo was never offered the Ring. Another example is Frodo's salute to Gildor Inglorion. Some versions of the Red Book claim that it was "Elen sila lumenn' omentielmo", and so it was printed at first. But the correct salute should end "-elvo", and this was later changed. However, it is possible Frodo actually used the erroneous phrase.

References:
•The Adventures of Tom Bombadil: Prologue
•The Lord of the Rings vol. 1 Prologue
•The Lord of the Rings vol. 3 The Grey Havens
•The Lord of the Rings vol. 3 Appendix B

Ælfwine of England

The subject on Aelfwine, the seafarer who found the Straight Road and came to Tol Eressea, is definitely the most intricate and complicated matter of all the chroniclers. He is also extraordinary in that he is the only one to belong to historical times.

Aelfwine was an Anglo-Saxon, living in Britain during the 10th century. His name is in Old English, and means "Elf-friend", not a very uncommon name at this time. He was a long way descendant of Earendil, and had, like all of Earendil's descendants, sea-longing in his blood.

There are actually two very distinct versions of the Aelfwine legend. The first sets him in 11th century Wessex, but this version of the story seems to have been very mingled with vocal tradition, since it gives the origin of Warwick as originally built by Elves (who called it Kortirion in memory of Kortirion on Tol Eressea). We hold this as almost definitely impossible for these reasons: Under the First, Second, and Third Age we hear of no city called Kortirion in Middle-earth. At the beginning of the Fourth Age the few remaining Elves were dwindling, and we find it unlikely that any Elves would build a large city at this time. But it is very possible that the story stems from the other version, because the main plot is the same.

All the same, the first version is highly detailed and is therefore worth recounting: Aelfwine lived in Warwick in Luthany (that is England) and was of the kin of "Ing". His father was the minstrel Deor and his mother Eadgifu. While Aelfwine was still very young, Warwick was attacked by Vikings from the north. Deor and Eadgifu were slain, and Aelfwine became a thrall under the Viking Orm.

After many years of service, Aelfwine escaped and managed to get to the west coast of England. There he lived with sailors for many years, until he was grown up. During this time he learned to sail, and often went far out into the ocean. On one of these journeys he saw islands far off in the west, but the wind drove him back to his home.

Knowing there were uncharted islands in the west, he went off with seven companions (of which only Aelfheah, Bior and Gelimer are named). During a stormy night the ship wrecked and the next morning Aelfwine found himself alone on a beach. He had been cast ashore on one of the Harbourless Isles.

He soon found he was alone on the island, except for an "ancient" man who had been wrecked on the island long ago and who called himself the Man of the Sea. Aelfwine spent a long time on the island and learned much from the old man. One morning they found another ship was wrecked on the island - Orm the Viking's ship. None of the Vikings had survived, and Aelfwine and the Man of the Sea set out with the ship.

After a long journey west they came to the solitaire island Eneadur, inhabited by a great seafaring people called Ythlings. On this island Aelfwine found his seven companions alive and well. The Ythlings seemed to know the Man of the Sea, who ordered them to build a new ship for Aelfwine and his companions. At the day of departure, the old man blessed the ship, and then went to a high cliff and dived into the ocean. Aelfwine was grieved of what he thought to be the old man's certain death, but the Ythlings only smiled.

Joined by an Ythling called Bior, the eight companions set out west again. After a very long and weary yourney they passed the Magic Isles, where they lost three members of their crew in a spell of sleep. On a misty day, the air felt full of a strange fragrance, and suddenly the mists drove away and they saw before them the Lonely Isle - Tol Eressea.

But then the wind turned, the mists came back and the vision disappeared. Aelfwine stood long at the rear, and then with a cry he jumped into the ocean as the ship drifted back east.

This version of the legend ends here. This may indicate that it was originally written by one of Aelfwines companions. But it must have become very corrupted through the ages, and is perhaps not at all reliable.

The other version of the story seems more reliable, partly because it has quite many historical references.

Aelfwine was a sailor and a minstrel in the service of king Eadweard's thegn Odda. He was called Widlast ("Fartravelled") and his father was Eadwine, son of Oswine. He was apparently born around 869 A.D.

When Aelfwine was nine years old (878 A.D.), his father sailed off with his ship Earendel and never returned. Because of the attacks of the Danes, Aelfwine's mother (not named) fled with him from Somerset, where they lived, to the West Wales, where she had her kindred.

Having grown up to full manhood and learned the Welsh language and much sea-craft he returned to Somerset to serve the King in the wars. In the service of Odda he sailed many seas and visited both Wales and Ireland many times. On his journeys he always sought tales of the sea, and thus came to hear the Irish legends of Maelduin and Saint Brendan, who both set out to sea, and came to "many islands in succession, where they encountered marvel upon marvel". He heard also of a great land in the west which had been cast down, and the survivors had settled on Ireland and dwindled there. And the successors of these men all had the sea-longing in their blood, so that many sailed off west and never returned. Aelfwine thought he might be one of these descendants.

Around the year 915, in autumn, the Danes attacked Porlock. They were at first driven off and Aelfwine's company managed to capture a Danish "cnearr" (a small ship) at night. Aelfwine's closest friend was Treowine of the Marches. At dawn Aelfwine told Treowine he intended to sail off, perhaps to the country of the legendary king Sheaf in the west. This he had long planned and had prepared a supply of food and water. Treowine agreed to accompany him at least as far as to Ireland. They got two other companions: Ceola of Somerset and Geraint of West Wales. Then they sailed off.

They sailed west and passed Ireland, and after many days the voyagers were exhausted. A "dreamlike death" seemed to come over them, and soon they passed out. The last that is known of the journey is that Treowine saw the world plunge down under them. They had entered the Straight Road.

It is uncertain what happened to Aelfwine's companions after they fainted. Indeed, it is uncertain how many that followed him all the way to where he now came. That Treowine was there is known, because he is mentioned. The others may have left in Ireland or (as one version says) jumped overboard when the ship rose from the surface of the sea.

In any case, when Aelfwine woke up, he found himself lying on a beach and a group of Elves pulling up his ship on the shore. He had come to Tol Eressea. He soon got aquainted with the Noldor that lived on the island, and gained the name Eriol, which means "one who dreams alone" (it has also been interpreted as "iron-cliffs"). He learned the islanders' language, Noldorin, and after a period went inland.

Soon he had come to a village called Tavrobel, where he stayed for a long time. In this village also lived Pengolodh, and Aelfwine learned much from him. Pengolodh told him the Ainulindale, and he was shown the Lhammas, the Quenta Silmarillion, the Golden Book, The Narn I Chin Hurin, and the Annals of Aman and Beleriand. Aelfwine learned much of these works by heart, and translated the Silmarillion, the Annals and the Narn into Old English (mostly after his return to Britain), giving explanations on the many names.

It is not known how long Aelfwine stayed on Tol Eressea, but it can be safely assumed he stayed there for many years. Eventually he returned to Britain, but what there befell him is not known. It is clear, though, that he continued translating the works that he had received or learned, and that Professor Tolkien used much of his works in his translations.

References:
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 9 The Notion Club Papers (part two)
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 2 The History of Eriol or Aelfwine
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 5 The Lost Road
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 1 Appendix
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 10 Ainulindale
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 5 Part two: The Lhammas
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 5 Part two: Quenta Silmarillion
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 4 The Earliest Annals of Valinor
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 11 Aelfwine and Dirhaval
•Beowulf stanza 1 - 58

Dirhavel

[Image: Alan Lee]

Dirhavel was a minstrel that only made one lay in all his life, but it became the greatest and the most remembered of all the lays made by Men in later times. It was the Narn I Chin Hurin, the "Lay of the Children of Hurin".

Dirhavel (or Dirhaval) was of the house of Hador, and had probably fled from Dor-lomin when he came to the Havens of Sirion. Because of his ancestry he was very interested in the deeds of his house and searched for information among all the refugees. Thus he met Mablung of Doriath who told him many things about Turin Turambar. By luck he also met an old man called Andvir. He was a son of Androg who had been a member of Turin's outlaw-band.

He used the information he had gathered and wrote in Sindarin a very long, in fact the longest of all from that time, lay in the verse-mode called Minlamad thent/estent. This mode was spoken verse, not unlike the Old English alliterative mode. The Narn I Chin Hurin tells of the fates of Hurin's children Turin and Nienor, with emphasis on Turin. It is a very tragic story, but the lay was highly praised by the Elves and remembered by them. It is the only full account on Turin's life, and all later writings on the subject fall back on this one.

Unfortunately, Dirhavel was killed when the sons of Feanor finally attacked the Havens of Sirion in the third and last Kinslaying.

The meaning of the name is unknown. It seems to contain the elements dir "watch", el "star", but this is too uncertain to make any guessing.

References:
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 11 Aelfwine and Dirhaval
•The Silmarillion Index

Quennar i Onotimo

[Image: Roger Garland]

Not much is known about this mysterious Elf. Though he only wrote three important works, these seem to have affected both Rumil and Pengolodh. His first work, "Of the beginning of time and its reckoning", forms the beginning of the Annals of Aman. It contains among other things some information on the reckoning of time in Valinor, which is interesting since the Annals of Aman uses so-called "Valian Years". For the Annals of Aman Rumil also used much of Quennar's second work, Yenonotie ("Counting of Years"), which also contains material of the counting of time.

Quennar's third work was the "Tale of Years". This is closely connected with the Annals of Aman and the Annals of Beleriand, and was in many parts almost identical to these. It is clear that either Quennar read Rumil's and Pengolodh's works, Rumil and Pengolodh read Quennar's, or they read each other's and tried to make them agree. But Quennar actually stopped writing it at the beginning of the First Age of the Sun, and Pengolodh continued. This seems very odd. Why should Quennar stop writing there, and why did Pengolodh continue? Maybe Quennar was killed by the Orcs in the Dagor Nuin-Giliath? Maybe Pengolodh inherited his work? We will probably never know.

No sure translation of the name Quennar Onotimo has been provided, but it seems to contain the elements quen "tell", narn "lay", i "the", onot "count", tim-o "of star"; i.e. something like "The lay-teller of the counting of the star(s)". "Counting of stars" may seem rather strange, but it might be a kenning that refers to the reckoning of time. All this is, of course, mere speculation.

References:
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 10 Annals of Aman
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 11 The Tale of Years
•The Silmarillion Index
•The Silmarillion Of the Return of the Noldor
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 5 The Etymologies

Pengolodh of Gondolin

[Image: Ted Nasmith]

Pengolodh is the greatest of the chroniclers of Middle-earth, and the most renown of all. He was born son of a Noldo and a Sinda in Turgon's old realm of Nevrast. Later he followed Turgon's folk and became his sage in Gondolin. He became the most eminent member of the Lambengolmor, "Loremasters of Tounges", a group which Feanor had founded.

The name Pengolodh is probably derived from the Sindarin words pennas "history" and Golodh "Noldo", which gives "History-Noldo", i.e. Noldorin historian. The first element might also be pen "person", so producing "Person-Noldo", but this seems less likely. The variations Pengolod and Pengoloth also occurs. He is also in one instance called Thingodhel: Noldorin "Grey Noldo", which probably refers to his mixed Noldorin and Grey-elven ancestry. Pengolodh is probably also identical with Gilfanon in an old text.

At the fall of Gondolin, Pengolodh managed to escape from Morgoth's creatures together with Tuor and Idril, and followed them to the Havens of Sirion. With him he brought a number of valuable old documents and own works. The Havens of Sirion had at this time became a gathering-place for refugees from Doriath, Hithlum and other places throughout Beleriand. Thanks to the silmaril of Earendil, a short time of peace was allowed to the refuge. Since Pengolodh had hitherto been prevented from gathering lore outside the borders of Gondolin, he suddenly became very active and made extensive researches.

Here he gathered information on the runic system used in Doriath, invented by Daeron. These runes were rarely used and would become even more so in coming ages. But Pengolodh made copies and extracts of documents using these characters, and thus made an important cultural contribution, lest the Certhas Daeron (as he called them) would have been totally forgotten.

The Sindar of Doriath had brought the Annals of Beleriand or Grey Annals to the Havens where they were extended whith the help of the other peoples. Pengolodh probably helped in this task, since his memory of the history was "prodigious". What is clear, though, is that he made additions and comments to it, perhaps in his own annotated copy. The Annals of Beleriand were later brought into the West.

From the end of the First Age of the Sun, the Noldor were allowed to return to the West. Pengolodh, however, did not go to Valinor immediately. He stayed in Middle-earth, far on into the Second Age, and gathered lore. He was permitted to dwell for awhile with the Dwarves in Khazad-dum, and thus was one of the few to get insight in the Dwarvish languages: the spoken and the sign languages.

When Sauron's dark shadow grew over Eriador, Pengolodh finally went West, to Tol Eressea in the Bay of Belegaer. There he stayed in the village of Tavrobel (also called Tathrobel), and continued extending the Annals of Beleriand. At this time he must also have seen Rumil's works on languages, among others the Equessi Rumilo, and these he used to write the text called Lammas ("Account on Tounges"), discussing the languages of Men, Elves and other races. He also wrote a short work called the Lammasethen treating the Elvish languages in especial.

Pengolodh is traditionally given the credit of writing the Quenta Silmarillion, the main work of the oldest history, but what he really did was compiling the many traditions, legends and stories into one, continuous work. His main sources were Rumil's and his own writings (the Annals, Ainulindale etc), the Grey Annals, the Narn I Chin Hurin, and the Golden Book. Rumil also made slight additions to the Silmarillion.

When Aelfwine came to Tol Eressea many millenia later, he met Pengolodh. Pengolodh told him many of the legends and showed him the texts, and thus became a necessary link between the Elder days and historical times.

References:
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 4 The Quenta
•The Silmarillion Appendix
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 4 The Earliest Annals of Beleriand
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 4 The Earliest Annals of Valinor
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 7 Appendix on Runes
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 5 The Lhammas
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 5 Quenta Silmarillion
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 10 The Later Quenta Silmarillion
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 11 Quendi and Eldar Appendix D
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 11 The Grey Annals
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 11 Quendi and Eldar Editorial Notes

Rumil of Valinor

[Image: Roger Garland]

Rumil one of the oldest known of the chroniclers, and appears already in the oldest texts. The meaning of the name is unknown, but it may be connected with the Noldorin word rum: "secret", "mystery"

Rumil was a Noldo and a sage living in Valinor in the city of Tirion. He was called the Elfsage of Valinor and the Ancient Sage of Tirion, and wrote many documents that especially concerns Valinor. Much of the Eldarin history science seems to have been based on his works. One of his most famous works is the Ainulindale that tells of the Music of the Ainur and usually forms the introductory part of the Quenta Silmarillion.

Rumil seems to have abandoned his profession as a sage later, because in the many texts he is often referred to as a long-gone loremaster. There is a work called I Equessi Rumilo ("The Sayings of Rumil") that is a collection of his thoughts from the earliest days of the Eldar in Valinor. It treats, among other things, the Valarin language. The title might imply that he reached a status similar to that of Socrates, and was surrounded with disciples that wrote down his words (like Plato's "Dialogues").

Something that signifies Rumil's greatness as a chronicler is that he in the Valian Year 1179 invented an alphabet: Rumil's Tengwar, properly called the Sarati. This is the oldest known alphabet in Middle-earth, and was the one Feanor was inspired by when he developed Feanor's Tengwar, which was later used by almost all peoples in Middle-earth.

A document of special interests for historians is the text called the Annals of Aman (or Annals of Valinor). The document retells the events of each year in Valinor up to the creation of the Sun and the Moon and may have been one of the sources to the Quenta Silmarillion. In one manuscript, Rumil is said to be the author of this work. But in another, Rumil merely began it and wrote as far as the Doom of the Noldor in the Valian Year 1496. There he stopped, and others continued. This may have one of two explanations:
1) He did not follow the house of Feanor towards Middle-earth, but heard of the adventures of the Noldor who set out from Tuna and came back, or
2) He himself went with the company of Fingolfin, and turned back with him when he heard the threatening doom.

Rumil was also interested in languages and had - according to one (unfortunately generally erroneous) source - learnt very many languages. He made some writings that concerned the languages of the Elves, probably after the Noldor had left. We base this assumption on the fact that Pengolodh the Wise read these texts and used them for one of his works, but not until he came to Valinor.

When Pengolodh came to Valinor in the middle of the Second Age, Rumil saw his Quenta Silmarillion and made slight additions to it, such as the mentioning of Mandos' and Lorien's real names, Namo and Irmo.

Rumil is not mentioned in any more narrative texts, and it is not known what befell him in later ages. He does not seem to have been on Tol Eressea, since Aelfwine, much later, didn't meet him there, but well read his documents. Pengolodh was definitely there, and told Aelfwine many stories, among them Rumil's Ainulindale. It's probable that he stayed in Tirion upon Tuna, and lives there still.

References:
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 1 Appendix
•The Silmarillion Index
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 10 The Annals of Aman
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 5 The Later Annals of Valinor
•The Silmarillion Of the Flight of the Noldor
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 1 Music of the Ainur
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 5 The Lhammas
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 10 The Later Quenta Silmarillion
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 10 Ainulindale
•The History of Midde-earth vol. 11 Quendi and Eldar Appendix D

The Chroniclers of Middle-Earth

The history of Middle-earth spans over many thousands of years of intriguing history. Through it we get to hear the fascinating tales of Beren and Luthien, Earendil the Mariner, and Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.

But who gave us these stories? Who are the great authors of the lays and annals that Professor Tolkien translated into English, recounting this time utterly lost? Throughout the First, Second and Third age, Elves, Men, and Hobbits have kept records of their history, in form of annals, lays, sagas and biographies.

Unlike in many other cultures, the names of many of these “chroniclers” have survived through the centuries. The main reason for this is perhaps that the many authors put out their names on the documents, and even gave credit to their sources. Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to pull together various discussions on what we know about the greatest chroniclers and their works.

Further Up and Further In

"So I went over much grass and many flowers and among all kinds of wholesome and delectable trees till lo! in a narrow place between two rocks there came to meet me a great Lion. The speed of him was like the ostrich, and his size was an elephant's; his hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes like gold that is liquid in the furnace. He was more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty he surpassed all that is in the world even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert. Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome.

But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?

I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."

Then he breathed upon me and took away the trembling from my limbs and caused me to stand upon my feet. And after that, he said not much, but that we should meet again, and I must go further up and further in. Then he turned him about in a storm and flurry of gold and was gone suddenly.

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, "Further Up and Further In"

By Caldron Pool

"Come and try on your beautiful new lion-skin coat," said Shift.

"Oh, bother that old skin," said Puzzle. "I'll try it on in the morning. I'm too tired tonight."

"You are unkind, Puzzle," said Shift. "If you're tired, what do you think I am? All day long, while you've been having a lovely refreshing walk down the valley, I've been working hard to make you a coat. My hands are so tired I can hardly hold these scissors. And now you won't say thank you ­ and you won't even look at the coat ­ and you don't care ­ and ­ and—"

"My dear Shift," said Puzzle, getting up at once, "I am so sorry. I've been horrid. Of course I'd love to try it on. And it looks simply splendid. Do try it on me at once. Please do."

"Well, stand still then," said the Ape. The skin was very heavy for him to lift, but in the end, with a lot of pulling and pushing and puffing and blowing, he got it on to the donkey. He tied it underneath Puzzle's body and he tied the legs to Puzzle's legs and the tail to Puzzle's tail. A good deal of Puzzle's grey nose and face could be seen through the open mouth of the lion's head. No one who had ever seen a real lion would have been taken in for a moment. But if someone who had never seen a lion looked at Puzzle in his lion-skin he just might mistake him for a lion, if he didn't come too close, and if the light was not too good, and if Puzzle didn't let out a bray and didn't make any noise with his hoofs.

"You look wonderful, wonderful," said the Ape. "If anyone saw you now, they'd think you were Aslan, the Great Lion, himself."

"That would be dreadful," said Puzzle.

"No, it wouldn't," said Shift. "Everyone would do whatever you told them."

"But I don't want to tell them anything."

"But think of the good we could do!" said Shift. "You'd have me to advise you, you know. I'd think of sensible orders for you to give. And everyone would have to obey us, even the King himself. We would set everything right in Narnia."

"But isn't everything right already?" said Puzzle.

"What!" cried Shift. "Everything right ­ when there are no oranges or bananas?"

"Well, you know," said Puzzle, "there aren't many people ­ in fact, I don't think there's anyone but yourself ­ who wants those sort of things."

"There's sugar too," said Shift.

H'm, yes," said the Ass. "It would be nice if there was more sugar."

"Well then, that's settled," said the Ape. "You will pretend to be Aslan, and I'll tell you what to say."

"No, no, no," said Puzzle. "Don't say such dreadful things. It would be wrong, Shift. I may be not very clever but I know that much. What would become of us if the real Aslan turned up?"

"I expect he'd be very pleased," said Shift. "Probably he sent us the lion-skin on purpose, so that we could set things right. Anyway, he never does turn up, you know. Not nowadays."

At that moment there came a great thunderclap right overhead and the ground trembled with a small earthquake. Both the animals lost their balance and were flung on their faces.

"There!" gasped Puzzle, as soon as he had breath to speak. "It's a sign, a warning. I knew we were doing something dreadfully wicked. Take this wretched skin off me at once."

"No, no," said the Ape (whose mind worked very quickly). "It's a sign the other way. I was just going to say that if the real Aslan, as you call him, meant us to go on with this, he would send us a thunderclap and an earth-tremor. It was just on the tip of my tongue, only the sign itself came before I could get the words out. You've got to do it now, Puzzle. And please don't let us have any more arguing. You know you don't understand these things. What could a donkey know about signs?"

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, "By Caldron Pool"

How wrong can you be (II)

Around 100 million copies of The Lord of the Rings had been sold by the end of the twentieth century, and 60 million copies of The Hobbit, with sales of around 3 million per year of the two books combined. Readers just love reading Tolkien's books. It's that simple. You can't force people to buy books or go see movies; there's isn't a magic formula (or ruling ring) to hypnotize readers and consumers (if there was, it'd be worth billions). And the Tolkien phenomenon began with readers. Back in 1937, 1954 and 1955, the publishers Allen & Unwin did their bit, of course, with reviews, blurbs, advertizing and so on, promoting The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but it was readers who first started the phenomenon that has become truly global.

Tolkien's influence on literature has been considerable, too, and not just in the realm of fantasy, sci-fi, fairy tales and related genres. As fantasy author Terry Brooks said, Tolkien 'was the premier fantasy writer of the last century, and all of us writing today owe him a huge debt.' No other writer W.H. Auden reckoned had 'created an imaginary world and a feigned history in such detail'. Colin Wilson agreed that only a few writers have concocted a total universe, and that Tolkien's was very impressive. Tolkien's mythological writings may be the 'largest body of invented mythology in the history of literature', according to David Day. Invented, that is, by one person. It's also 'certainly the most complex and detailed invented world in all literature'.

.
If you thought that there wasn't really a Tolkien industry prior to the 2001-2003 Lord of the Rings films, you were wrong. A massive Tolkien industry has been around for decades: the 2001-03 films were simply adding to that. The Tolkien industry consists of (among other things): Tolkien societies in many countries, Tolkien fan newsletters, Tolkien merchandise catalogues, Tolkien websites, Tolkien chess sets, decorative porcelain plates, fantasy posters, Middle-earth maps, Tolkien calendars, Lord of the Rings plastic figures (Mithril Miniatures, Harlequin, and movie tie-ins), music and songs based on Tolkien's writing, Tolkien's verse set to music, Middle-earth puzzles, fan fiction, Middle-earth poems, Middle-earth playing cards, Middle-earth games and activity packs, Lord of the Rings keyfobs, Tolkien diaries, a Hobbit birthday book, Frodo necklaces, Gandalf pendants, replica swords, replica jewellery (including the golden ring, of course), telephone cards, Kinder Surprise chocolate egg figures, Tolkien role-playing games (MERP, METW), Lord of the Rings stickers, Tolkien postcards, fridge magnets, and Middle-earth stationary. Tolkien fan conferences, seminars and symposia, Tolkien art exhibitions. Then there are myriad editions of Tolkien's books: limited editions, collector's editions, boxed editions, anniversary editions, pop-up books, cartoon books, etc.

.
Among the books dedicated to the world of Tolkien's fiction are: dictionaries of elvish, guides to Tolkien's invented languages, guides and atlases to Middle-earth, Tolkien bestiaries, teachers' guides to Tolkien, Middle-earth quiz books, Tolkien books of days, books of fantasy art, spin-off books, and spoofs (Bored of the Rings). BBC Radio versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (on CD, tape, etc), audio books (read by the author, or by actors), film versions (on video, DVD, etc), and stage productions.

.
The combination of music and Tolkien includes bands with Tolkienesque names (thousands of them), acts singing about Tolkienesque subjects (Led Zeppelin, Rush, Genesis), and the many singers, songwriters and acts who interpreted the verses in Tolkien's books.

.

If that isn't an industry gathered around a writer's work, I don't know what is. Also, it existed quite healthily prior to the 2001-03 films (before the 2001-03 films Tolkien's books had sold in the 100 million plus mark). And it only occurs to a very, very writers (in the U.K., the Brontës, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, etc).

.
Extract from "J.R.R. TOLKIEN" by Jeremy Mark Robinson

How wrong can you be? (I)

Philip Toynbee declared, in 1961, that Tolkien's 'childish books had passed into a merciful oblivion', a wonderful statement, just a tad inaccurate. In 1997, The Lord of the Rings was voted the top book of the 20th century by readers in a British bookstore's poll (Waterstone's). 104 out of 105 stores and 25,000 readers put The Lord of the Rings at the top (1984 was second).

.
The results of the poll angered many lit'ry critics in the UK. Howard Jacobson, Mark Lawson, Bob Inglis, Germaine Greer and Susan Jeffreys, were among those irritated by Lord of the Rings' success among readers. The Daily Telegraph readers' poll came up with the same results. The Folio Society also ran a poll (of 50,000 members), and Middle-earth was top again (Pride and Prejudice was second and David Copperfield was third).

.
It was Tolkien's incredible popularity that annoyed some critics and journos. Writers are nothing if not bitchy and envious of other people's success, and British journalists have a long tradition of knocking down anyone who's successful. So the popularity of The Lord of the Rings served to underline many of the prejudices of the literary establishment and media in the UK:
.
(1) That people who liked Tolkien were geeks, anoraks, sci-fi nuts, college students, hippies, and so on.
(2) That Tolkien's fiction was juvenile, reactionary, sexist, racist, pro-militaristic, etc.
(3) And it was badly written, simplistic, stereotypical, and so on.
(4) And it was in the fantasy genre, which was automatically deemed as lightweight, as 'escapist', as fit only for adolescent boys. And so on and on.

(to be continued)

Extract from "J.R.R. TOLKIEN" by Jeremy Mark Robinson

Love Your Neighbour (II)

It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we can do to make it easier. When you start mathematics you do not begin with the calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one’s husband or wife, or parents or children, or the nearest N.C.O, for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment. And secondly, we might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbour as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself?

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently ‘Love your neighbour’ does not mean ‘feel fond of him’ or ‘find him attractive’. I ought to have seen that before, because, of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity - Book 3: Christian Behaviour ‘Forgiveness’

Love Your Neighbour (I)

I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. It is laid down in the Christian rule, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Because in Christian morals ‘thy neighbour’ includes ‘thy enemy’, and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.

Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. ‘That sort of talk makes them sick,’ they say. And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you'd feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’

So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do — I can do precious little — I am telling you Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?

C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity - Book 3: Christian Behaviour ‘Forgiveness’

The C. S. Lewis Story

I am in the midst of writing The Professor of Narnia: The C. S. Lewis Story which will be published by Believe Books in September 2008. This will be a biography of C. S. Lewis targeted for older children and youth.

Here is a description of the book:

Have you ever wanted to meet the man behind the magical land of Narnia? Now you can meet C. S. Lewis, the Oxford tutor and Cambridge professor who wrote the seven books: The Chronicles of Narnia. Learn what made the creator of the most beloved fairy tales of the 20th century the man who he was. Along the way you will visit all the important places of Lewis’s life: from Belfast, Northern Ireland to the steps of the Parthenon in Greece and you will also meet some of Lewis’s best friends, like J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Your tour guide for this fabulous journey is Will Vaus, author of Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis, founder of three C. S. Lewis Societies, leader of a C. S. Lewis tour to England, and one of the few people in the world who actually lived in The Narnia Cottage in Ireland. Will stepped through the wardrobe door for the first time when he was 9 years old, and now that he has three sons of his own he knows how much every young person who reads the Narnia books or has seen the blockbuster Disney/Walden Media Narnia movies wants to know more about the author of these delightful stories, C. S. Lewis. So come along for the ride and you may even get to meet the great lion Aslan himself.

Will Vaus (M. Div., Princeton Theological Seminary) has served as a pastor in California, the Carolinas and Pennsylvania. He is the President of Will Vaus Ministries, an international creative communications outreach.

Literary Influences and the Critics

I don't think Tolkien influenced me, and I am certain that I didn't influence him. That is, didn't influence what he wrote. My continual encouragement, carried to the point of nagging, influenced him very much to write at all with that gravity and at that length. In other words I acted as a midwife not as a father. The similarities between his work and mine are due, I think, (a) To nature - temperament. (b) to common sources. We are both soaked in Norse mythology, George MacDonald's fairy-tales, Homer, Beowulf, and medieval romance. Also, of course, we are both Christians (he, an R.C.).

The relevance of your problem to 'Higher Criticism' is extremely important. Reviewers of his books and mine, both friendly & hostile, constantly put forward imaginary histories of their composition. I do not think any one of these has ever borne the slightest resemblance to the real history. (e.g. they think his deadly Ring is a symbol of the atom bomb. Actually his myth was developed long before the atom bomb had been heard of).

You see the moral. These critics, in dealing with us, have every advantage which modern scholars lack in dealing with Scripture. They are dealing with authors who have the same mother tongue, the same education, and inhabit the same social & political world as their own, and inherit the same literary traditions. In spite of this, when they tell us how the books were written they are all wildly wrong! After that what chance can there be that any modern scholar can determine how Isaiah or the Fourth Gospel… came into existence? I should put the odds at 10,000 to 1 against you all.

The Narnian series is not exactly allegory. I'm not saying “Let us represent in terms of märchen (Fairy Tales) the actual story of this world.” Rather, “Supposing the Narnia world, let us guess what form the activities of the Second Person or Creator, Redeemer, and Judge might take there.” This, you see, overlaps with allegory but is not quite the same.

C.S. Lewis - The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Volume III, Letter to Francis Anderson 23 Sept 1963

Lewis and Passion

The most passionate performance that night might have been Luciano Pavarotti's climactic aria from Puccini’s opera "Turandot.” Yet Puccini's magnificent music might not have stirred C. S. Lewis' heart as dramatically as did Richard Wagner's operas, especially "The Ring of the Nibelung." He was ecstatic about its mythical themes[10] and powerful music. In his book, Surprised by Joy, he described his passion:

"All this time I had still not heard a note of Wagner's music, though the very shape of the printed letters of his name had become to me a magical symbol.... I first heard a record of the Ride of the Valkyries.... To a boy already crazed with 'the Northernness' [the Norse and Germanic myths behind Wagner's work], the Ride came like a thunderbolt.... [I]t was... a new kind of pleasure, if indeed 'pleasure' is the right word, rather than trouble, ecstasy, astonishment, 'a conflict of sensations without name." [page 75]

"We are taught in the Prayer Book to 'give thanks to God for His great glory.'... I came far nearer to feeling this about the Norse gods whom I disbelieved in than I had ever done about the true God while I believed. Sometimes I can almost think that I was sent back to the false gods there to acquire some capacity for worship...." [page 77]

But God warns us, "You love evil more than good...." [Psalm 52:3] "

C.S. Lewis - Surprised by Joy

Auden on Williams

The poet W. H. Auden, who worked with Williams on a collection of Poetry he edited for Oxford University Press, had perhaps a stronger response to Williams. Many years after first meeting him, he would recall that interview in surprising terms and mark it as one of the events that led him to embrace the Christian faith:

"For the first time in my life, [I] felt myself in the presence of personal sanctity... I had met many good people before who made me feel ashamed of my own shortcomings but in the presence of this man... I did not feel ashamed. I felt transformed into a person who was incapable of doing or thinking anything base or unloving (I later discovered that he had had a similar effect on many other people.)"

How could a conversation about 'literary business' generate such an aura of 'personal sanctity'? ... Williams simply made an exceptionally powerful impression on almost all who knew him... though in more variable ways...

From The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs (HarperCollins, 2005) pages 196-198.

On the Death of Charles Williams

[Longwall Street, Oxford]

This is what John Wain, an undergrad during the war but later Professor of Poetry, wrote on hearing of Williams' death: “I was walking from Longwall Street, where I lodged, towards St. John's, and had just reached the Clarendon Building when a girl I knew by sight came peddling round the corner from New College Lane. "John", she called out, "Charles Williams is dead." She had never spoken to me before, and normally would have avoided using my Christian name. But this was a general disaster, like an air-raid, and the touch of comradliness was right. I asked her for details, but she knew nothing except that he was dead. In any case, she could not talk, she was only just not crying. I walked on towards St. John's. The war with Germany was over. Charles Williams was dead. And suddenly Oxford was a different place. There was still so much to enjoy, much to love and hate, much to get used to; but the war-time Oxford of my undergraduate days had disappeared. Its pulse had stopped with the pulse of Williams."

John Wain was also, of course, a member of the Inklings