Join us Friday, October 7th at 7:30pm as we bring back our annual NYCC gathering of fans! This time we’re teaming up with our friends at Sideshow.com and will be offering drinks, food and some amazing prizes.
Photo by Ashlee Rose Scott
Finally we can all enjoy things like parties together again; so we’re back for another party in the Big Apple! TheOneRing.net is delighted to be teaming up with the official Sideshow ‘Let Your Geek Sideshow’ group to throw a splendid party!
This year we’ll be at Joyce Public House (formerly Tir na Nog) in Times Square (W 39th St), and the party will be on FRIDAY 7th October, 7.30-11pm.
Tickets are only $25, and include your first drink, finger food, and two tickets for the raffle which will be drawn on the night. (You’ll be able to purchase more raffle tickets; check out the amazing prizes, listed below!) Plus you’ll also get your ticket cost back in SIDESHOW.COM REWARDS if you set up a Sideshow account!
The Rings of Power team are in town for New York ComicCon – and you never know, they may just come along to party with us… Grab your tickets now – see you there!
Raffle Items Include…
Mondo Rick and Morty 1:6 Figure Set
Sideshow The Dude Exclusive 1:6 Figure
The Wand Company Poke Ball Replica
Hot Toys Little Groot – GOTG
Hot Toys Knightmare Batman & Superman 1:6 Set
Hot Toys Ahsoka Tano 1:6 Clone Wars
Sideshow The Child – Life-Size Figure
Octunnumi Prologue Custodian Book
Iron Studios Archer Orc 1:10 Statue
NZ Mint Frodo Chibi 1oz Silver Coin
Asmus Toys Arwen In Death Frock 1:6 Figure Exclusive
Star Ace Morgul Lord Statue
Vanderstelt Bag End Unframed Print
Trick or Treat Studio Gollum Mask Prop Replica
Trick or Treat Studio Lurtz Mask Prop Replica
Ring of Gil-Galad by Into the Fire jewelry makers
‘Rings of Power’ Concept Art Print, signed by John Howe
Beautiful Middle-earth items from Scottish designers Oscha
And more…!
Pssst! When you order your ticket(s), check out the pins you can add to your order!
On Saturday, October 8, 2022 at 7:30PM ET, Paleyfest NY will feature a preview screening of Episode #107 of Amazon Prime’s “Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power” followed by a conversation and Q&A with cast members.
Cast members joining the conversation and Q&A include:
Cynthia Addai-Robinson, “Queen Regent Míriel” Nazanin Boniadi, “Bronwyn” Ismael Cruz Córdova, “Arondir” Charles Edwards, “Lord Celebrimbor” Leon Wadham, “Kemen” Daniel Weyman, “The Stranger” Sara Zwangobani, “Marigold Brandyfoot”
If you’ll be in New York on October 8, head on over the the Paley Center website for tickets: https://www.paleycenter.org/events/pfny-2022 Tickets are on sale to Paley Individual, Family, and Supporting Members Thursday, Sept. 29 at 12:00 noon. They will go on sale to the general public Friday, Sept. 30 at 12:00 noon.
Now that half of season 1 of The Rings of Power has been released there is more than enough thought-provoking material to inspire fascinating discussions and spur vigorous debates.
Adar (Joseph Mawle) in Prime Video’s The Rings of Power – courtesy of Prime Video
Who is Adar?
In episode 4, we are formally introduced to the great elf of mystery, Adar, superbly acted by Joseph Mawle. There has been fervent and tireless speculation regarding this figure’s identity: his armour suggests he is one of the Noldor and his casting breakdown characterized him as having an air of “fallen nobility.” Is he one of Galadriel’s brothers? Or perhaps Maglor, Fëanor’s second eldest son, an infamous figure wandering the world in remorse over his family’s oath-driven crimes and grieving his dead father and brothers? Or is he merely a composite of various “problem elves” from The Silmarillion like Eöl, Maeglin, and the Fëanorians?
Ancient grief and suffering
Whatever the case, Adar is portrayed as a tortured and complex figure full of turbulent memories and sorrow, but also ambition. When his blurred face comes into focus for the first time, it is deeply engraved with the markings of ancient grief and past physical suffering. His arrival to quickly (and surprisingly with great remorse) dispatch a slowly dying orc seems a continuation of some still hidden traumatic personal history. Perhaps his subsequent conversation with the captive Arondir is punctuated by noted silences and elliptical statements because of his own trauma.
In a second, much shorter scene, Adar watches a caged warg devour what appears to be the arm of one of Arondir’s recently fallen comrades. Disturbingly, Adar views the atrocity not with a blank, numbed stare, or perhaps even a hint of sadness, but with a glint of malignant pleasure. In spite of the phenomenal costuming, makeup, cast and acting, here enters the problem of Adar.
The “spell of bottomless dread”
Many elves of the First Age were captured and tortured by Morgoth, signs of which are physically and emotionally apparent on Adar; in earlier iterations of The Silmarillion like The Book of Lost Tales (written c. 1917-1919), numerous elves were placed under the “spell of bottomless dread” – a state of spiritual terror that all but guaranteed that any who escaped (or were intentionally released) continued to perform the will of their captor. Because of this spell, many such elves were mistrusted by their own people and forced to live as outcasts.
Maeglin
In The Fall of Gondolin (1917), the elf prince Meglin (older variant of Maeglin) is captured and put under the spell to ensure he will follow through on his commitment to aid Morgoth’s siege. When he is sent back, he lives in misery and terror until the time is ripe for the attack. In the later variant of the story published in The Silmarillion, the captive Maeglin, “no weakling or craven”, relents at the threat of what is implied to be some extreme torture. Tolkien’s surprising characterizations of Maeglin as “wise in counsel” and “hardy and valiant in need” reveal admirable qualities in an otherwise unredeemable figure. Tolkien’s moral tragedy not only endows villainous figures with psychological realism, but expresses implicit regret over the good qualities being snuffed out by their own failings and Morgoth’s corrupting influence.
Gwindor
Adar also resembles the First Age elf Gwindor, a lord of Nargothrond who fought in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears (which Tolkien biographer John Garth, in his book Tolkien and the Great War, has linked with the Battle of the Somme). A heartbreaking portrait of a war-hero turned marred captive, Gwindor witnesses the brutal, public execution of his brother in battle and wrathfully charges the gates of Angband, where he is captured and held as a labouring thrall for a long period. He later escapes and is found by Túrin Turambar’s elf friend, the hunter Beleg Cuthalion:
Grieving Beleg looked upon him; for Gwindor was now but a bent and fearful shadow of his former shape and mood, when in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad that lord of Nargothrond rode with rash courage to the very doors of Angband….
(The Silmarillion, Chapter 21: “Of Túrin Turambar”)
Over the course of the narrative, “strength and courage” return to this broken figure Gwindor, but his suffering continues as he watches the love of his life, Finduilas, turn her affections away from him to the (physically) unmarred Túrin.
Captives, POWs, and war veterans
This deeply affecting portrait echoes the many valiant young men coming home from WWI’s Battle of the Somme and other fields of war broken in body and mind, and, in many cases, greatly disfigured. Indeed, more widely, Tolkien’s portrayal of First Age elves includes their suffering as captives, P.O.W.s, and war veterans, echoing real-life soldiers returning (or not returning) from the torn battlefields of France and Belgium.
Depictions of violence against deceased elves are treated with horror and associated with the deepest darkness; Morgoth gives fallen elven heroes to his demon wolves. Sauron perpetrates similar atrocities, sending werewolves to devour the brave elven company of Finrod Felagund. But no captive or even the most morally-corrupt elf in The Silmarillion sinks to the utterly debased enjoyment of beholding post-mortem desecration. This was reserved for the dark lords themselves.
Grossly out of character for Tolkien
If we accept the proposition that Adar is a P.O.W. from the First Age, his disturbing reaction to a warg devouring the remains of a fellow elf is grossly out of character for Tolkienian portrayals of such figures. Adar’s hideous reaction in this scene is something that not even the worst fallen Elves of The Silmarillion would have exhibited, even the violent sons of Fëanor or the treacherous father and son, Eöl and Maeglin.
Written as is, it reflects a profound misunderstanding of Tolkien’s depictions of the captivity, trauma, and moral corruption of the Firstborn. Perhaps the writers attempted to “Game of Thrones-ize” this Noldorin Elf with this bit of gratuitous horror, part of a wider cycle of gruesome scenes in other episodes, by adding more prurient depictions of violence whilst just managing to stay within the TV-14 rating.
A grave disservice to Tolkien’s literary legacy
This second Adar scene not only exhibits a grave misrepresentation of traumatized First Age elves, worse still (although surely unintentionally), it does a grave disservice to Tolkien and his literary legacy. Amongst many Tolkien scholars, it is commonly believed that the valiant but doomed elves were modelled on the real young men made “perpetually youthful” due to their premature deaths in battle.
In his 1936 British Academy lecture, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien himself obliquely pointed to this connection when he said, “Even today…you may find men not ignorant of tragic legend and history, who have heard of heroes and indeed seen them.” Tolkien’s doomed elven warriors are the mythologized equivalents of the fallen youth depicted in British soldier Laurence Binyon’s “For the Fallen” (1914):
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
With this in view, portraying a depraved Adar smirking at mutilation and post-mortem desecration is not in the spirit of Tolkien’s authorship, himself a war veteran who wrote in a letter of the “animal horror” of the Somme, where he served.
Empathy and sadness
Due to his experiences, Tolkien featured noted scenes of violence in his legendarium with the empathy and sadness of one who had seen the bodies of countless wounded, mutilated, and dead youth. This, I believe, is why The Silmarillion includes such poignant episodes depicting the retrieval of bodies of noted elven heroes like Fingolfin and Glorfindel. After Fingolfin’s valiant but doomed fight with Morgoth, the dark lord “took the body of the Elven-king and broke it, and would cast it to his wolves,” but Manwë’s chief eagle, Thorondor, prevents this atrocity, returning Fingolfin to his son Turgon, who then “built a high cairn over his father” which “No orc dared ever after […] draw nigh” (The Silmarillion, Chapter 18: “Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin”).
Such incidents were likely influenced by heart-wrenching recollections of the significance of finding dead soldiers on foreign battlefields from which so many were never recovered. Tolkien’s own two closest friends, Robert Quilter Gilson (d. July 1, 1916) and Geoffrey Bache Smith (d. December 3, 1916) perished in France and had proper burials, but others Tolkien knew did not (note that the body of Fingon, Fingolfin’s son, was never recovered).
Time for deeper reflections
In their choices regarding depictions of violence, if the writers of this show would like to continue in a more Tolkienian vein, it may help to reflect more deeply on the real events and casualties behind the Somme battlefield-like images they re-created as well as Tolkien’s tradition of historically-inspired elven P.O.W.s, which are the template for Adar. Rather than succumbing to the temptation to emulate darker, more prurient fantasy series like Game of Thrones or its successor, House of the Dragon, it is my hope that in the future the showrunners will take a higher road in relation to the source material they are adapting, remembering its more poignant and tragic origins.
Postcript: Heart of Darkness (spoilers)
The piece above was written before the release of episode 5, where Adar plays a larger, and still darker, role. Even with the newest episode, critical questions remain unanswered.
In line with this episode’s title,“Partings,” Adar’s first scene is symbolically rendered as he stands at the edge of a forest gazing into the sun in a prolonged mesmerized state. His face is filled with the sun’s glow, in contrast to the orc -completely intolerant to sunlight- who stands hooded, with its back turned. Adar, commands the orc to uncover its arm, which burns and smokes in the sunlight, and says, “I wish you could feel it like I do – for soon it will be gone – and with it, the part of me that knew its warmth as well. I shall miss it.”
Adar in The Rings of Power Episode 5, mesmerized by sunlight. Courtesy Prime Video.
A twilight in Adar’s soul
This profound statement marks a twilight in Adar’s soul, as he is about to make his final descent into moral darkness, choosing to snuff out any last remnants of conscience and nobility. His pensive response to the blazing sunlight, which bathes his face in a way that recalls his once unfallen state, is so striking that it seems possible that he, as one of the Noldor, is recalling the light of the Two Trees of Valinor. This conjecture is supported by the fact that, in an earlier episode, Galadriel herself says she can still feel the warmth of the Trees on her face.
Adar’s equation of the quenching of the light with the extinguishment of his former self reveals a hint of regret; if his emotional reaction to the sun is at all laden with memory of the Trees, it is also symbolically weighted with The Silmarillion’s potent themes of exile and Fall. The destruction of the Two Trees by Morgoth marked not only the “Darkening of Valinor,” but also the moral darkening of Adar’s kin, the Noldor. Adar’s remaining scenes in this episode are notably all at night, marking his descent into deeper inner darkness. However, there is another problem which needs to be thoughtfully addressed by the writers.
Adar exhibiting his heart of darkness. Courtesy Prime Video.
And a third time
Waldreg, a Sauron loyalist, leads a group of Southlanders to Adar, mistaking him for the dark lord. Adar’s eyes burn with subdued anger as the group approaches and he turns his back when Waldreg addresses him. If the writers are hearkening back to the First Age, these men may be the descendants of those who betrayed the Noldor at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears centuries earlier, possibly explaining Adar’s reaction.
Delighting in the prospect of his people being raised out of the “muck and the filth”, Waldreg tells Adar that they can now, “… take their rightful place at your side.” At this last statement, Adar’s downcast eyes flit upwards, and when an increasingly doubtful Waldreg asks, “You are Sauron, are you not?” Adar snaps. The elf whips around and rushes at Waldreg, violently slamming him to the ground.
What Adar does next is, again, out of character for even the darkest elven villains of The Silmarillion, being more characteristic of Sauron and Morgoth. Adar grabs Theo’s young friend, Rowan, forces him to his knees in front of Waldreg, and throws a dagger at the old man, declaring, “Only blood can bind.”
Strangely, this does not involve Waldreg’s blood: instead, he must prove his fealty by enacting a blood oath using human sacrifice, just like the Southlanders’ dark past of Morgoth-allegiance, and embodied in stone relief at Ostirith of a sword piercing a prostrate victim. Adar’s requirement that Waldreg shed someone else’s blood is not attributable to any vindictive logic of revenge, as Rowan is not Waldreg’s son or relative; instead, it forces Waldreg into debased cruelty. Some would argue that this choice indicates Adar’s inner orcishness, not yet fully manifested in his physical appearance, which largely retains its elvish characteristics.
Please explain. Carefully.
However, this disturbingly Sauron-like behavior (whose very name reignites Adar’s ancient, suppressed wrath) needs to be carefully explained in future episodes. Elves, especially the Noldor, were famed for their fierce hatred of Morgoth and his servants, and were not lightly turned to the outright diabolical viciousness Adar exhibits. In Tolkien’s writings, unlike men, elves were generally only swayed to commit such deeds of orcish barbarity (here infused with malevolent spiritual darkness) by coercion-based corrupting influence, as with Maeglin.
While the show may imply that Adar seeks to take Sauron’s place and achieve the same level of god-like power, the audience needs to see why Adar is emulating the devilish cruelty of the being (likely his former tormenter) he hates so much. This necessitates more detailed exposition informed by a thoughtful engagement with Tolkien’s writings. The audience is shown the end of Adar’s character arc; it now needs to see the hidden history and undeveloped subtext unfold (perhaps in flashbacks to an uncorrupted Adar in the First Age) in order to do justice to Tolkien’s depictions of such figures in his mythology. Without that, the writers would be woefully remiss in their handling of Tolkienian moral tragedy.
Guest authorGrace Khuri is a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford writing the first Ph.D. thesis on Tolkien at that institution. Her work considers the symbiotic influences of Old Norse mythology and the First World War on the ‘Silmarillion’ corpus and how these inform and enrich its dynastic tragedies and falls of kingdoms. Her interests include Old Norse myth and sagas, First World War cultural and military history, medieval literature, medievalism, filmmaking, and film criticism. You can reach her at grace.khuri@ell.ox.ac.uk.
What is ‘The Song of the Roots of Hithaeglir’ and where does it fit into Tolkien works? Is Amazon’s The Rings Of Power making up new lore?
In this article, TORn Discord Moderator DrNosy examines the introduction of a new Elven Folklore – ‘The Song of the Roots of Hithaeglir’ – in Season One’s fifth episode as a plot device in The Rings Of Power.
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What is “The Song of the Roots of Hithaeglir”?
In the words of Elrond himself, ‘The Song of the Roots of Hithaeglir’ is “an obscure legend regarded by most to be apocryphal” [Ed note: emphasis added]. Elrond is underscoring the point that this legend is folklore.
The fantasy works of Tolkien are based in European folklore. Folklore is described as the beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, that might be passed within that community through the generations. Folklore often contains details specific to the beliefs of the community.
Now, this is what makes folklore interesting — their origins are often based in truth. Not literal truths but something akin to parables and fables that hint at a truth. After all, you may have heard it said, “the truth is [more frightening] than fiction”.
For example, in Western folklore, we are familiar with the concept of ‘werewolves’. This lore is entirely fictitious. Yet the lore itself arises from a truth, and has a purpose. That purpose was our ancestors’ way of warning us about metaphorical wolves in our midst, i.e., ‘serial killers’.
Werewolf legends derive from early Nordic folklore. Specifically, The Saga of the Volsungs tells of a tale of a father and son who discover wolf pelts with the power to turn people into wolves. Donning these pelts, the father and son duo embark on a rampage killing many. There is also have a fifteenth-century account of a vicious serial killer in Bedburg, Germany, whose actions were enshrined into local folklore as a man that turned into wolf-like creature at night before his killing spree.
Folklore and fables are essential to human survival. They function as a warning to the listener about the realities of the world without exposure to the brutality of its truths. They are a way to keep us safe.
Nobody goes off-trail and nobody walks alone
Returning to our `apocryphal` origin of mithril, ‘The Song of the Roots of Hithaeglir’ is not based in any Tolkien texts. Within The Rings of Power story, however, it functions as an Elven folklore founded on the nature of mithril and the truth of what else might lie beneath the Misty Mountains.
Note the words of Celeborn, one of the wisest of Tolkien’s Elves, who offers a pertinent reminder to not cheaply discount (their) lore.
‘Then I need say no more,’ said Celeborn. ‘But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.’
Farewell to Lórien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Making mythril
`True creation requires sacrifice`
An Elven warrior (`with a heart as pure as Manwë`) and a Balrog (`all his hatred`) poured themselves into a tree bearing the light of Silmarils. One seeking to protect it, the other seeking to destroy it. Lighting (likely from Manwë) struck the tree which resulted in the creation of the tree’s roots… veins of mithril into the mountain.
This sacrifice made by both warrior and Balrog resulted in the subcreation of mithril — a thing of unimpeachable goodness yet also of unsurpassed peril.
`The Song of the Roots of Hithaeglir` is a cautionary fable for all the peoples of Middle-earth. While mithril will bring glory to Dwarves, salvation to the Elves, and riches to Men, it will also bring inevitable Doom upon those who seek it.
In this fashion, Gil-galad’s hope in mithril (as of Episode 5) also mirrors an aspect that Tolkien described in a letter to Milton Waldman:
[But] the problem: this frightful evil can and does arise from an apparently good root, the desire to benefit the world and others.
Letter #131, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Thus, even though mithril comes from a good root a frightful evil will arise from it.
About the author:
DrNosy is a scientist (physical science), scholar, and Tolkien enthusiast. Her primary interests lie in review and analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. She is an active contributor and Moderator on TheOneRing.net Discord where she also hosts live open-forum panel discussions on The Rings of Power, The Silmarillion, and a variety of Tolkien-related topics. You can reach her on Twitter.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
The scene above is not an original idea, but is imitative of an essay on fantasy writing that is almost fifty years old.
Lord Celebrimbor, The Rings of Power
In 1973, Ursula K. Le Guin published From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, in which she argued for the importance of style in writing, and especially in the writing of high fantasy. Elfland is the name she used—following Lord Dunsany—for what Tolkien called Faerie: it is Middle-earth, Prydain, and many other locales; as for Poughkeepsie, she offered a comparison to national parks. As these became more popular tourist venues, more people would travel to these parks, fully equipped with enough modern conveniences that they never really go anywhere. They can feel at home, “just as if they were back in Poughkeepsie.”
She lamented that at the time of her writing, too many new fantasy writers were building the equivalents of trailer parks with drive-in movies. “But the point about Elfland is that you are not at home there. It’s not Poughkeepsie. It’s different.” If anything, in this post-Dungeons-and-Dragons and post-video-game world, things have not improved.
She then offered a passage from a then-recent fantasy novel—the sort with twentieth-century people wearing 14th-century clothes and doing magic—and then, by only changing a few names and locations, showed that the same passage would be just as familiar in a modern political thriller, similar to our opening scene above.
“Now, I submit that something has gone wrong. The book from which I first quoted is not fantasy, for all its equipment of heroes and wizards. If it was fantasy, I couldn’t have pulled the dirty trick on it by changing four words. You can’t clip Pegasus’ wings that easily—not if he has wings.”
From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin’s argument is that, in fantasy writing, style is not merely an ingredient of a book, something added on, but it is the book. “If you remove the style, all you have left is a synopsis of the plot.” In a cinematic drama1, of course, there is more than verbal style at play. The visual arts—sets, costumes, location photography, props, music, and so on—are very important stylistic components. Still, in another sense they are just illustrations that support, but cannot replace the style of the words. “Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative,” as Pooh-bah said.
If the script is good, it should be just as good as a radio drama, perhaps with some well-written narration to replace those illustrations. I will refer to “the reader” in this article; this may be considered shorthand for “the reader or audience.”
Tolkien himself had much to say about the craft of transporting the reader to Faerie in his important essay On Fairy-stories. He proposed that any good story (of any genre) must be capable of creating actual belief in the world it creates, not merely suspension of disbelief:
What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.
On Fairy-stories, J.R.R. Tolkien
He then discussed Fantasy, the creation of images of a world unlike ours, with things that cannot be found in our world at all. He gave an example, saying that the fantastic device of language lets us say things like, “the green sun,” but that:
To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft.
On Fairy-stories, J.R.R. Tolkien
But what is the realm of Elfland, and why does it take such extraordinary artistry to bring a reader into that world? Tolkien tells us:
The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveler who would report them.
On Fairy-stories, J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien portrayed this idea in his poem The Sea-bell and in his last book, Smith of Wootton Major; do read these. Le Guin said much the same thing but takes it a step further:
It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational but pararational; not realistic, but surrealistic, superrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud’s terminology, it employs primary, not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes, which, Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. And their guides, the writers of fantasy, should take their responsibilities seriously.
From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, Ursula K. Le Guin
Thus, if we are to avoid leaving the reader in the Primary World, the language itself, that “fantastic device”, must act as the cicerone for this dream journey. Le Guin gave examples of appropriate prose: from Eddison‘s The Worm Ouroboros with its carefully-crafted Elizabethan prose; Kenneth Morris, with his less ornate but still mannered dialogue in Book of the Three Dragons; and Tolkien.
“Who can tell?” said Aragorn, “But we will put it to the test one day.” “May the day not be too long delayed,” said Boromir. “For though I do not ask for aid, we need it. It would comfort us to know that others fought also with all the means that they have.” “Then be comforted,” said Elrond.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
It is important to notice that Tolkien does not use especially archaic speech here. Le Guin described the speech as, “a less extraordinary English; or rather an English extraordinary for its simple timelessness…it is the language of men of character.” She did not argue for archaic speech, but for speech that is appropriate to the subject matter, and indicative of the character of the speakers, who should not think like accountants and video-gamers.
Tolkien had much to say on this link between language, thought, and character. In a letter to Hugh Brogan (Letter #171, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) he responded to that reader’s criticisms of the archaic narration in The Two Towers, which Brogan had described as “tushery”.
This letter is worth reading in its entirety, but Tolkien addressed “tushery” as the “bogus ‘medieval’ stuff with … expletives, such as tush, pish, zounds, marry, and the like,” and observes that real archaic English is more concise than “our slack and often frivolous idiom”.
In doing so, he examined the specific case of Théoden’s conversation with Gandalf (“Nay, Gandalf! You do not know your own skill in healing” et seq.).
First pointing out that it is actually “moderated or watered archaism” compared to a more authentically antique diction (“Nay, thou n’wost not thine own skill in healing,”2), he then added that even though much of the speech could be translated to a modern idiom, “Not at all my dear Gandalf…” the thought that ends it , “Thus shall I sleep better,” would not translate well to the modern idiom because a king who speaks in a modern idiom would simply not think in terms of sleeping quietly in his grave.
We see a similar disconnect in the Rings of Power speech with which we began.
Lords of Elfland do not think of expanding work-forces and project deadlines, and for them to speak of such matters is a disunity of language and character. The spell has broken, and the art has failed: we are back in Poughkeepsie. There are many examples of modernisms that have crept into the dialogue: hobbits who say, “Okay,” “It means, like, what we do,” and, “That’s not who we are.” Númenoreans who say, “Nah,” and, “Míriel has her up for tea?” Elves who say “conflicted”. Dwarves who say, “Yeah.” Even grade-school grammatical errors, “Your people have no king, for you are him,” (a sentence that was walking along just fine before it fell on its face at the last word).
There are almost too many examples to count, and they pop up at random in the midst of more timeless speech. Some are more jarring than others—especially the name-calling like “Elf-lover!”—but none of them belong in a tale of the fantastic, except perhaps as Orc-talk.
Overcompensating for modernism is, of course, an equally dangerous trap. Le Guin and Tolkien both objected to “tushery” and pseudo-archaic speech. Imitating the elevated register of dialogue from Tolkien’s writing is perilous.
Le Guin noted that young fantasy writers sense that their language must distance the tale from the ordinary, but don’t know how to do it, fumbling with “thee” and “thou” and overusing words like “mayhap”. To their credit, the writers of The Rings of Power, do not fall into this trap.
Instead, however, these Elves too frequently lapse into High Aphorism. “It is said the wine of victory is sweetest for those in whose bitter trials it has fermented.” You have to read that twice to figure out what it is saying. “Most wounds to our bodies heal of their own accord, so, it is their labor instead to render hidden truths as works of beauty. For beauty has great power to heal the soul.” All right, if you say so; but it doesn’t sound helpful for a broken leg. And of course:
Do you know why a ship floats and a stone cannot? Because the stone sees only downward. The darkness of the water is vast and irresistible. The ship feels the darkness as well, striving moment by moment to master her and pull her under. But the ship has a secret. For unlike the stone, her gaze is not downward but up. Fixed upon the light that guides her, whispering of grander things than darkness ever knew.
The Rings of Power, Amazon Studios
Young Galadriel with Finrod, The Rings of Power.
Not only is this pretentious and sententious (if lovely), but it forgets that the Noldor know more about the natural world, about the forces of gravity and buoyancy and density and displacement, than we do. Their “magic” comes from this deeper understanding. Instead of knowledge (which is what the word Noldor means!) we get fortune-cookie philosophy that sounds like we just need better-trained stones.
Compare:
‘Are these magic cloaks?’ asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder.
‘I do not know what you mean by that,’ answered the leader of the Elves. ‘They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lórien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make. Yet they are garments, not armour, and they will not turn shaft or blade.’
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
There is a fine line between elegant speech and pretentiousness. The Rings of Power stumbles across that line too often; and perhaps without knowing exactly why, we are jerked back to the Primary World, because we know, somehow, that Elves don’t really talk like that.
Such considerations, of course, apply to any genre, such as real-world historical stories—at least, those taking place in a setting in which fairly modern English is spoken.
If I were writing a novel or screenplay taking place at, say, a New England boys’ prep school in 1905, I would not only have to take into account things like clothing, music, technology, or the rules for football, but I would have to give the boys speech appropriate to the time, with usages like “kick” for “complain”, “bully” for approval, or, “You make me tired!” for disapproval. And I would also have to assiduously avoid letting the boys say anachronistic things like, “epic”, “iconic”, “I’m still processing this”, “cool”, or… “That’s not who we are.”
If I were particularly careful, I would research then-new usages like, “Okay,” “Yeah,” or “Wow,” before putting them into the mouths of my characters.
It takes real work to get such things right. Without that work, even a non-specialist reader might sense that something is off-pitch, without knowing why, and will not believe in the story.
But such a story is not required to transport us to Elfland; only to (historical) Poughkeepsie. Elfland is a far more perilous realm, with deeper delights and dangers for both the reader and writer. Surely, then, a well-paid script editor can be employed to apply at least as meticulous a reading to the dialogue of a drama taking place in such a well-known and well-loved corner of Elfland as Middle-earth?
FOOTNOTES
[1]: It is not at all clear that there is any longer a useful distinction between “movies” and “television” and “streaming” in such discussions.
[2]: Incidentally, this is very similar to the writing of early fantasist William Morris.
Editor’s note:
In the above essay, Staffer Ostadan references a number of key early fantasists whose works pre-date and influenced Tolkien. Some of these works now exist freely in the Public Domain. Interested readers who might care to explore these works further can find and enjoy them as free downloads on Project Gutenburg.
Kenneth Morris’s Book of the Three Dragons was published in 1930 and is not yet available in the Public Domain. Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series was published between 1964 and 1968. Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay From Elfland to Poughkeepsie seems to be available through Amazon in limited quantities, but it is very expensive.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Those of you fortunate enough to get your “sticky paws” on the October issue of Smithsonian are in for a HUGE treat. John Garth, acclaimed author of The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-earth, Tolkien and the Great War, and others, has penned (pixelled?) a phenomenal read for the complete Tolkien newbie as well as the Tolkien-lifers of the world.
Garth’s exposition provides the reader an important contextualization to better understand and appreciate Tolkien’s writing, and more specifically, the stories behind Prime Video’s Rings of Power. Part abbreviated biography, part history of Tolkien’s writing and publication journeys, and part Númenorian exposé, this essay covers a vast amount of ground with precision, passion, and poignant prose.
The author fused his inspirations into an alloy that he could shape freely. He also generated multiple stories from a single inspiration. What he called his “feigned history” lives on its own terms.
John Garth, Smithsonian
Coupled with Garth’s authorship are Kieran Dodd’s inspiringly rich photos. Dodd’s talents underscore and punctuate Garth’s narrative with stunning images of architecture and locations frequented by Tolkien. And yes! For those of us not fortunate to get our handses on this publication, the article is also available right here. Enjoy your read!
Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, inspirational to Tolkien’s concept of a Morgothian temple. Courtesy of Smithsonian. Photo by Kieran Dodds.
