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131 To Milton Waldman
[After Allen & Unwin, under pressure
from Tolkien to make up their minds, had reluctantly declined to
publish The Lord of the Rings together with The Silmarillion, Tolkien
was confident that Milton Waldman of Collins would shortly issue both
books under his firm's imprint. In the spring of 1950, Waldman told
Tolkien that he hoped to begin typesetting the following autumn. But
there were delays, largely caused by Waldman's frequent absences in
Italy and his ill-health. By the latter part of 1951 no definite arrangements
for publication had yet been made, and Collins were becoming anxious
about the combined length of both books. It was apparently at Waldman's
suggestion that Tolkien wrote the following letter - of which the full
text is some ten thousand words long - with the intention of demonstrating
that The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion were interdependent
and indivisible. The letter, which interested Waldman so much that he
had a typed copy made (see the end of no. 137), is not dated, but was
probably written late in 1951.]
My dear Milton,
You asked for a brief sketch of my stuff that is connected with my
imaginary world. It is difficult to say anything without saying too
much: the attempt to say a few words opens a floodgate of excitement,
the egoist and artist at once desires to say how the stuff has grown,
what it is like, and what (he thinks) he means or is trying to represent
by it all. I shall inflict some of this on you; but I will append a
mere resume of its contents: which is (may be) all that you want or
will have use or time for.
In order of time, growth and composition, this stuff began with
me - though I do not suppose that that is of much interest to anyone
but myself. I mean, I do not remember a time when I was not building
it. Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages.
I have been at it since I could write. But I have never stopped, and
of course, as a professional philologist (especially interested in linguistic
aesthetics), I have changed in taste, improved in theory, and probably
in craft. Behind my stories is now a nexus of languages (mostly only
structurally sketched). But to those creatures which in English I call
misleadingly Elves* are assigned two related languages more nearly completed,
whose history is written, and whose forms (representing two different
sides of my own linguistic taste) are deduced scientifically from a
common origin. Out of these languages are made nearly all the names
that appear in my legends. This gives a certain character (a cohesion,
a consistency of linguistic style, and an illusion of historicity) to
the nomenclature, or so I believe, that is markedly lacking in other
*Intending the word to be understood in its ancient meanings, which continued as late as Spenser - a murrain on Will Shakespeare and his damned cobwebs.
For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal.
Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution
elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit,
not in the known form of the primary 'real' world. (I am speaking, of
course, of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian
days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my essay, which you
read.)
Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen)
I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging
from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story
- the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser
drawing splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could dedicate
simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and
quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our
'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the
hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East),
and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty
that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient
Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for
the more adult mind of a land long now
steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness,
and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should
be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and
hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.
Of course, such an overweening purpose did not develop all at once.
The mere stories were the thing. They arose in my mind as 'given' things,
and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorb- ing,
though continually interrupted labour (especially since, even apart
from the necessities of life, the mind would wing to the other pole
and spend itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of
recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'.
Of course, I made up and even wrote lots of other things (especially
for my children). Some escaped from the grasp of this branching acquisitive
theme, being ultimately and radically unrelated: Leafhy Niggle and Farmer
Giles, for instance, the only two that have been printed. The Hobbit,
which has much more essential life in it, was quite indepen- dently
conceived: I did not know as I began it that it belonged. But it proved
to be the discovery of the completion of the whole, its mode of descent
to earth, and merging into ‘history’. As the high Legends
of the beginning are supposed to look at things through Elvish minds,
so the middle tale of the Hobbit takes a virtually human point of view-and
the last tale blends them.
I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet
any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical
language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a
story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations:
while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will
it be acceptable just as a story.) Anyway all this stuff* is mainly
concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably,
and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially
as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative)
desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from
the satisfactions of plain ordinary bio- logical life, with which, in
our world, it is indeed usually at strife. This desire is at once wedded
to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with
the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. It has various opportunities
of 'Fall'. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as
'its own', the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private
creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator - especially
against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the
desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, - and
so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use
*It is, I suppose, fundamentally concerned with the problem of the
relation of Art (and Sub-creation) and Primary Reality.
I have not used 'magic' consistently, and indeed the Elven-queen
Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate with the Hobbits on their confused
use of the word both for the devices and operations of the Enemy, and
for those of the Elves. I have not, because there is not a word for
the latter (since all human stories have suffered the same confusion).
But the Elves are there (in my tales) to demonstrate the difference.
Their 'magic' is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations:
more effortless, more quick, more complete (product, and vision in unflawed
correspondence). And its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination
and tyrannous re-forming of Creation. The 'Elves' are 'immortal', at
least as far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with
the griefs and burdens of deathlessness in time and change, than with
death. The Enemy in successive forms is always 'naturally' concerned
with sheer Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines; but the
problem: that this frightful evil can and does arise from an apparently
good root, the desire to benefit the world and others* - speedily and
according to the benefactor's own plans - is a recurrent motive.
The cycles begin with a cosmogonical myth: the Music of the Ainur.
God and the Valar (or powers: Englished as gods) are revealed. These
latter are as we should say angelic powers, whose function is to exercise
delegated authority in their spheres (of rule and government, not creation,
making or re-making). They are 'divine', that is, were originally ‘outside’
and existed 'before' the making of the world. Their power and wisdom
is derived from their Knowledge of the cosmogonical drama, which they
perceived first as a drama (that is as in a fashion we perceive a story
composed by some-one else), and later as a 'reality'. On the side of
mere narrative device, this is, of course, meant to provide beings of
the same order of beauty, power, and majesty as the 'gods' of higher
mythology, which can yet be accepted - well, shall we say baldly, by
a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity.
It moves then swiftly to the History of the Elves, or the Silmarillion
proper; to the world as we perceive it, but of course transfigured in
a still half-mythical mode: that is it deals with rational incarnate
creatures of
*Not in the Beginner of Evil: his was a sub-creative Fall, and hence the Elves (the representatives of sub-creation par excellence) were peculiarly his enemies, and the special object of his desire and hate - and open to his deceits. Their Fall is into possessiveness and (to a less degree) into perversion of their art to power.
more or less comparable stature with
our own. The Knowledge of the Creation Drama was incomplete: incomplete
in each individual ‘god’, and incomplete if all the knowledge
of the pantheon were pooled. For (partly to redress the evil of the
rebel Melkor, partly for the completion of all in an ultimate finesse
of detail) the Creator had not revealed all. The making, and nature,
of the Children of God, were the two chief secrets. All that the gods
knew was that they would come, at appointed times. The Children of God
are thus primevally related and akin, and primevally different. Since
also they are something wholly ‘other’ to the gods, in the
making of which the gods played no part, they are the object of the
special desire and love of the gods. These are the First-born, the Elves;
and the Followers Men. The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love
the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts
of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it
even when ‘slain’, but returning - and yet, when the Followers
come, to teach them, and make way for them, to ‘fade’ as the
Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed. ‘Me
Doom (or the Gift) of Men is mortality, freedom from the circles of
the world. Since the point of view of the whole cycle is the Elvish,
mortality is not explained mythically: it is a mystery of God of which
no more is known than that ‘what God has purposed for Men is hidden’:
a grief and an envy to the immortal Elves.
As I say, the legendary Silmarillion is peculiar, and differs from
all similar things that I know in not being anthropocentric. Its centre
of view and interest is not Men but 'Elves'. Men came in inevitably:
after all the author is a man, and if he has an audience they will be
Men and Men must come in to our tales, as such, and not merely transfigured
or partially represented as Elves, Dwarfs, Hobbits, etc. But they remain
peripheral - late comers, and however growingly important, not principals.
In the cosmogony there is a fall: a fall of Angels we should say.
Though quite different in form, of course, to that of Christian myth.
These tales are ‘new’, they are not directly derived from
other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure
of ancient wide-spread motives or elements. After all, I believe that
legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth’, and indeed
present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long
ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always
reappear. There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall - all
stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds
as we know them and have them.
So, proceeding, the Elves have a fall, before their ‘history’
can become storial. (The first fall of Man, for reasons explained, nowhere
appears - Men do not come on the stage until all that is long past,
and there is only a rumour that for a while they fell under the domination
of the Enemy and that some repented.) The main body of the tale, the
Silmarillion proper, is about the fall of the most gifted kindred of
the Elves, their exile from Valinor (a kind of Paradise, the home of
the Gods) in the furthest West, their re-entry into Middle-earth, the
land of their birth but long under the rule of the Enemy, and their
strife with him, the power of Evil still visibly incarnate. It receives
its name because the events are all threaded upon the fate and significance
of the Silmarilli (‘radiance of pure light’) or Primeval Jewels.
By the making of gems the sub-creative function of the Elves is chiefly
symbolized, but the Silmarilli were more than just beautiful things
as such. There was Light. There was the Light of Valinor made visible
in the Two Trees of Silver and Gold. * These were slain by the Enemy
out of malice, and Valinor was darkened, though from them, ere they
died utterly, were derived the lights of Sun and Moon. (A marked difference
here between these legends and most others is that the Sun is not a
divine symbol, but a second-best thing, and the ‘light of the Sun’
(the world under the sun) become terms for a fallen world, and a dislocated
imperfect vision).
But the chief artificer of the Elves (Feanor) had imprisoned the
Light of Valinor in the three supreme jewels, the Silmarilli, before
the Trees were sullied or slain. This Light thus lived thereafter only
in these gems. The fall of the Elves comes about through the possessive
attitude of Feanor and his seven sons to these gems. They are captured
by the Enemy, set in his Iron Crown, and guarded in his impenetrable
strong- hold. The sons of Feanor take a terrible and blasphemous oath
of enmity and vengeance against all or any, even of the gods, who dares
to claim any part or right in the Silmarilli. They pervert the greater
part of their kindred, who rebel against the gods, and depart from paradise,
and go to make hopeless war upon the Enemy. ‘Me first fruit of
their fall is war in Paradise, the slaying of Elves by Elves, and this
and their evil oath dogs all their later heroism, generating treacheries
and undoing all victories. The Silmarillion is the history of the War
of the Exiled Elves against the Enemy, which all takes place in the
North-west of the world (Middle- earth). Several tales of victory and
tragedy are caught up in it; but it ends with catastrophe, and the passing
of the Ancient World, the world of the long First Age. The jewels are
recovered (by the final intervention of the gods) only to be lost for
ever to the Elves, one in the sea, one in the deeps
of earth, and one as a star of heaven.
This legendarium, ends with a vision of the end of the world, its breaking
and remaking, and the recovery of the Silmarilli and the ‘light
before the Sun’ - after a final battle which owes, I suppose, more
to the Norse vision of Ragnarok than to anything else, though it is
not much like it.
As the stories become less mythical, and more like stories and romances,
Men are interwoven. For the most part these are ‘good Men’
- families and their chiefs who rejecting the service of Evil, and hearing
rumours of the Gods of the West and the High Elves, flee westward and
come into contact with the Exiled Elves in the midst of their war. The
Men who appear are mainly those of the Three Houses of the Fathers of
them, whose chieftains become allies of the Elflords. ‘Me contact
of Men and Elves already foreshadows the history of the later Ages,
and a recurrent theme is the idea that in Men (as they now are) there
is a strand of ‘blood’ and inheritance, derived from the Elves,
and that the art and poetry of Men is largely dependent on it, or modified
by it. * There are thus two marriages of mortal and elf - both later
coalescing in the kindred of Earendil, represented by Elrond the Half-elven
who appears in all the stories, even The Hobbit. The chief of the stories
of the Silmarillion, and the one most fully treated is the Story of
Beren and Luthien the Elfmaiden. + Here we meet, among other things,
the first example of the motive (to become dominant in Hobbits) that
the great policies of world history, the wheels of the world', are often
turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly
unknown and weak - owing to the secret life in creation, and the part
unknowable to all wisdom but One, that resides in the intrusions of
the Children of God into the Drama. It is Beren the outlawed mortal
who succeeds (with the help of Luthien, a mere maiden even if an elf
of royalty) where all the armies and warriors have failed: he penetrates
the stronghold of the Enemy and wrests one of the Silmarilli from the
Iron Crown. Thus he wins the hand of Uthien and the first marriage of
mortal and immortal is achieved.
As such the story is (I think a beautiful and powerful) heroic-fairy-
romance, receivable in itself with only a very general vague knowledge
of the background. But it is also a fundamental link in the cycle, deprived
of its full significance out of its place therein. For the capture of
the Silmaril, a supreme victory, leads to disaster. 'Me oath of the
sons of Ranor becomes operative, and lust for the Silmaril brings A
the kingdoms of the Elves to ruin.
+ It exists indeed as a poem of considerable length, of which the
prose version in The Silmarillion is only a reduced version.1
There are other stories almost equally full in treatment, and equally
independent and yet linked to the general history. There is the Children
of Huirin, the tragic tale of Turin Turambar and his sister Niniel -
of which Turin is the hero: a figure that might be said (by people who
like that sort of thing, though it is not very useful) to be derived
from elements in Sigurd the Volsung, Oedipus, and the Finnish Kullervo.
There is the Fall of Gondolin: the chief Elvish stronghold. And the
tale, or tales, of Earendil the Wanderer.* He is important as the person
who brings the Silmarillion to its end, and as providing in his offspring
the main links to and persons in the tales of later Ages. His function,
as a representative of both Kindreds, Elves and Men, is to find a sea-passage
back to the Land of the Gods, and as ambassador persuade them to take
thought again for the Exiles, to pity them, and rescue them from the
Enemy. His wife Elwing descends from Luthien and still possesses the
Silmaril. But the curse still works, and Earendil's home is destroyed
by the sons of Feanor. But this provides the solution: Elwing casting
herself into the Sea to save the jewel comes to Earendil, and with the
power of the great Gem they pass at last to Valinor, and accomplish
their errand - at the cost of never being allowed to return or dwell
again with Elves or Men. The gods then move again, and great power comes
out of the West, and the Stronghold of the Enemy is destroyed; and he
himself [is] thrust out of the World into the Void, never to reappear
there in incarnate form again. The remaining two Silmarils are regained
from the Iron Crown - only to be lost. The last two sons of Feanor,
compelled by their oath, steal them, and are destroyed by them, casting
themselves into the sea, and the pits of the earth. The ship of Earendil
adorned with the last Silmaril is set in heaven as the brightest star.
So ends The Silmarillion and the tales of the First Age.
The next cycle deals (or would deal) with the Second Age. But it
is on Earth a dark age, and not very much of its history is (or need
be) told. In the great battles against the First Enemy the lands were
broken and ruined, and the West of Middle-earth became desolate. We
team that the Exiled Elves were, if not commanded, at least sternly
counselled to return into the West, and there be at peace. They were
not to dwell permanently in Valinor again, but in the Lonely Isle of
Eress Ea within sight of the Blessed Realm. The Men of the Three Houses
were rewarded for their valour and faithful alliance, by being allowed
to dwell 'western-
*His name is in actual origin Anglo-Saxon: earendel ‘ray’ of light' applied sometimes to the morning-star, a name of ramified mythological connections (now largely obscure). But that is a mere 'learned note'. In fact his name is Elvish signifying the Great Mariner or Sea-lover.
most of all mortals’, in the great ‘Atlantis’ isle of
Númenóre.* The doom or gift of God, of mortality, the gods of course
cannot abrogate, but the Ndmen6reans have a great span of life. They
set sail and leave Middle-earth, and establish a great kingdom of mariners
just within furthest sight of Eressea (but not of Valinor). Most of
the High Elves depart also back into the West. Not all. Some Men akin
to the Numenoreans remain in the land not far from the shores of the
Sea. Some of the Exiles will not return, or delay their return (for
the way west is ever open to the immortals and in the Grey Havens ships
are ever ready to sail away for ever). Also the Orcs (goblins) and other
monsters bred by the First Enemy are not wholly destroyed. And there
is Sauron. In the Silmarillion and Tales of the First Age Sauron was
a being of Valinor perverted to the service of the Enemy and becoming
his chief captain and servant. He repents in fear when the First Enemy
is utterly defeated, but in the end does not do as was commanded, return
to the judgement of the gods. He lingers in Middle-earth. Very slowly,
beginning with fair motives: the reorganising and rehabilitation of
the ruin of Middle- earth, ‘neglected by the gods’, he becomes
a reincarnation of Evil, and a thing lusting for Complete Power- and
so consumed ever more fiercely with hate (especially of gods and Elves).
All through the twilight of the Second Age the Shadow is growing in
the East of Middle-earth, spreading its sway more and more over Men
- who multiply as the Elves begin to fade. The three main themes are
thus The Delaying Elves that lingered in Middle-earth; Sauron’s
growth to a new Dark Lord, master and god of Men; and Numenor-Atlantis.
They are dealt with annalistically, and in two Tales or Accounts, The
Rings of Power and the Downfall of Numenor. Both are the essential background
to The Hobbit and its sequel.
In the first we see a sort of second fall or at least ‘error’
of the Elves. There was nothing wrong essentially in their lingering
against counsel, still sadly with the mortal lands of their old heroic
deeds. But they wanted to have their cake without eating it. They wanted
the peace and bliss and perfect memory of ‘The West’, and
yet to remain on the ordinary earth where their prestige as the highest
people, above wild Elves, dwarves, and Men, was greater than at the
bottom of the hierarchy of Valinor. They thus became obsessed with ‘fading’,
the mode in which the changes of time (the law of the world under the
sun) was perceived by them. They became sad, and their art (shall we
say) antiquarian, and their efforts all really a kind of embalming -
even though they also retained the old motive of their kind, the adornment
of earth, and the
*A name that Lewis derives from me and cannot be restrained from
using, and mis-spelling as Numinor. Numenóre means in 'Elvish' simply
Westemesse or Land in the West, and is not related to numen numinous,
or nonmenon.2
healing of its hurts- We hear of a lingering kingdom, in the extreme
North-west more or less in what was left in the old lands of The Silmarillion,
under Gilgalad; and of other settlements, such as Imladris (Rivendell)
near Elrond; and a great one at Eregion at the Western feet of the Misty
Mountains, adjacent to the Mines of Moria, the major realm of the Dwarves
in the Second Age. There arose a friendship between the usually hostile
folk (of Elves and Dwarves) for the first and only time, and smithcraft
reached its highest development. But many of the Elves listened to Sauron.
He was still fair in that early time, and his motives and those of the
Elves seemed to go partly together: the healing of the desolate lands.
Sauron found their weak point in suggesting that, helping one another,
they could make Western Middle-earth as beautiful as Valinor. It was
really a veiled attack on the gods, an incitement to try and make a
separate independent paradise. Gilgalad repulsed all such overtures,
as also did Elrond. But at Eregion great work began - and the Elves
came their nearest to failing to ‘magic’ and machinery. With
the aid of Sauron’s lore they made Rings of Power (‘power’
is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales, except as applied
to the gods).
The chief power (of all the rings alike) was the prevention or slowing
of decay (i.e. ‘change’ viewed as a regrettable thing), the
preservation of what is desired or loved, or its semblance - this is
more or less an Elvish motive. But also they enhanced the natural powers
of a possessor - thus approaching ‘magic’, a motive easily
corruptible into evil, a lust for domination. And finally they had other
powers, more directly derived from Sauron (‘the Necromancer’:
so he is called as he casts a fleeting shadow and presage on the pages
of The Hobbit): such as rendering invisible the material body, and making
things of the invisible world visible.
The Elves of Eregion made Three supremely beautiful and powerful
rings, almost solely of their own imagination, and directed to the preservation
of beauty: they did not confer invisibility. But secretly in the subterranean
Fire, in his own Black Land, Sauron made One Ring, the Ruling Ring that
contained the powers of all the others, and controlled them, so that
its wearer could see the thoughts of all those that used the lesser
rings, could govern all that they did, and in the end could utterly
enslave them. He reckoned, however, without the wisdom and subtle perceptions
of the Elves. The moment he assumed the One, they were aware of it,
and of his secret purpose, and were afraid. They hid the Three Rings,
so that not even Sauron ever discovered where they were and they remained
unsullied. The others they tried to destroy.
In the resulting war between Sauron and the Elves Middle-earth,
especially in the west, was further ruined. Eregion was captured and
destroyed, and Sauron seized many Rings of Power. These he gave, for
ultimate corruption and enslavement, to those who would accept n (out
of ambition or greed). Hence the ‘ancient rhyme’ that appears
he leit-motif of The Lord of the Rings,
Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords
in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed
to die,
One for the Dark Lord on
his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where
the shadows lie.
Sauron became thus almost supreme in Middle-earth. The Elves held out
in secret places (not yet revealed). The last Elf-Kingdom of Gilgalad
maintained precariously on the extreme west-shores, where are the havens
of the Ships. Elrond the Half-elven, son of Eirendil, maintains a id
of enchanted sanctuary at Imiadris (in English Rivendelo on the extreme
eastern margin of the western lands.* But Sauron dominates all the multiplying
hordes of Men that have had no contact with the Elves and so indirectly
with the true and unfallen Valar and gods. He rules growing empire from
the great dark tower of Barad-dfir in Mordor, near the Mountain of Fire,
wielding the One Ring.
But to achieve this he had been obliged to let a great part of his
own inherent power (a frequent and very significant motive in myth and
fairy-story) pass into the One Ring. While he wore it, his power on
earth was actually enhanced. But even if he did not wear it, that power
existed and was in ‘rapport’ with himself: he was not ‘diminished’.
Unless some other seized it and became possessed of it. If that happened,
the new possessor could (if sufficiently strong and heroic by nature)
challenge Sauron, become master of all that he had learned or done since
the making of the One Ring, and so overthrow him and usurp his place.
This was the essential weakness he had introduced into his situation
in his effort (largely unsuccessful) to enslave the Elves, and in his
desire to establish a control over the minds and wills of his servants.
There was another weakness: if the One Ring was actually unmade, annihilated,
then its power would be dissolved, Sauron’s own being would be
diminished to vanishing point, and he would be reduced to a shadow,
a mere memory of malicious will. But that he never contemplated nor
feared. The Ring was unbreakable by any smithcraft less than his own.
t was indissoluble in any fire, save the undying subterranean fire where
*Elrond symbolises throughout the ancient wisdom, and his House represents
Lore - je preservation in reverent memory of all tradition concerning
the good, wise, and beautiful. It is not a scene of action but of reflection.
"Thus it is a place visited on the way to 11 deeds, or 'adventures'.
It may prove to be on the direct road (as in The Hobbit); but it my
be necessary to go from there in a totally unexpected course. So necessarily
in The Lord of the Rings, having escaped to Elrond from the imminent
pursuit of present evil, the hero departs in a wholly new direction:
to go and face it at its source,
it was made - and that was unapproachable,
in Mordor. Also so great was the Ring's power of lust, that anyone who
used it became mastered by it; it was beyond the strength of any will
(even his own) to injure it, cast it away, or neglect it. So he thought.
It was in any case on his finger.
Thus, as the Second Age draws on, we have a great Kingdom and evil
theocracy (for Sauron is also the god of his slaves) growing up in Middle-earth.
In the West - actually the North-West is the only part clearly envisaged
in these tales - lie the precarious refuges of the Elves, while Men
in those parts remain more or less uncorrupted if ignorant. The better
and nobler sort of Men are in fact the kin of those that had departed
to Numenor, but remain in a simple ‘Homeric’ state of patriarchal
and tribal life.
Meanwhile Numenor has grown in wealth, wisdom, and glory, under
its line of great kings of long life, directly descended from Elros,
Earendil's son, brother of Elrond. ‘Me Downfall of Númenor, the
Second Fall of Man (or Man rehabilitated but still mortal), brings on
the catastrophic end, not only of the Second Age, but of the Old World,
the primeval world of legend (envisaged as flat and bounded). After
which the Third Age began, a Twilight Age, a Medium Aevum, the first
of the broken and changed world; the last of the lingering dominion
of visible fully incarnate Elves, and the last also in which Evil assumes
a single dominant incarnate shape.
The Downfall is partly the result of an inner weakness in Men - consequent,
if you will, upon the first Fall (unrecorded in these tales), repented
but not finally healed. Reward on earth is more dangerous for men than
punishment! The Fall is achieved by the cunning of Sauron in exploiting
this weakness. Its central theme is (inevitably, I think, in a story
of Men) a Ban, or Prohibition. The Numenoreans dwell within far sight
of the easternmost ‘immortal’ land, Eressea; and as the only
men to speak an Elvish tongue (learned in the days of their Alliance)
they are in constant communication with their ancient friends and allies,
either in the bliss of Eressea, or in the kingdom of Gilgalad on the
shores of Middle-earth. They became thus in appearance, and even in
powers of mind, hardly distinguishable from the Elves - but they remained
mortal, even though rewarded by a triple, or more than a triple, span
of years. Their reward is their undoing - or the means of their temptation.
Their long life aids their achievements in art and wisdom, but breeds
a possessive attitude to these things, and desire awakes for more time
for their enjoyment. Foreseeing this in part, the gods laid a Ban on
the Númenóreans from the beginning: they must never sail to Eressea,
nor westward out of sight of their own land. In all other directions
they could go as they would. They must not set foot on ‘immortal’
lands, and so become enamoured of an immortality (within
the world), which was against their law, the special doom or gift of
Iluvatar (God), and which their nature could not in fact endure.*
There are three phases in their fall from grace. First acquiescence,
obedience that is free and willing, though without complete understanding.
Then for long they obey unwillingly, murmuring more and more openly.
Finally they rebel - and a rift appears between the King’s men
and rebels, and the small minority of persecuted Faithful.
In the first stage, being men of peace, their courage is devoted
to sea-voyages. As descendants of Earendil, they became the supreme
mariners, and being barred from the West, they sail to the uttermost
north, and south, and east. Mostly they come to the west-shores of Middle-earth,
where they aid the Elves and Men against Sauron, and incur his undying
hatred. In those days they would come amongst Wild Men as almost divine
benefactors, bringing gifts of arts and knowledge, and passing away
again - leaving many legends behind of kings and gods out of the sunset.
In the second stage, the days of Pride and Glory and grudging of
the Ban, they begin to seek wealth rather than bliss. The desire to
escape death produced a cult of the dead, and they lavished wealth and
art on tombs and memorials. They now made settlements on the west-shores,
but these became rather strongholds and ‘factories’ of lords
seeking wealth, and the Numenoreans became tax-gatherers carrying off
over the sea ever more and more goods in their great ships. The Numenoreans
began the forging of arms and engines.
This phase ended and the last began with the ascent of the throne
by the thirteenth4 king of the line of Elros, Tar-Calion
the Golden, the most powerful and proud of all kings. When he learned
that Sauron had taken the title of King of Kings and Lord of the World,
he resolved to put down the ‘pretender’. He goes in strength
and majesty to Middle- earth, and so vast is his armament, and so terrible
are the N6men6reans in the day of their glory that Sauron’s servants
will not face them. Sauron humbles himself, does homage to Tar-Calion,
and is carried off to Numenor as hostage and prisoner. But there he
swiftly rises by his cunning and knowledge from servant to chief counsellor
of the king, and seduces the king and most of the lords and people with
his lies. He denies the existence of God, saying that the One is a mere
invention of the jealous Valar of the West, the oracle of their own
wishes. The chief of the gods is he that dwells in the Void, who will
conquer in the end,
*The view is taken (as clearly reappears later in the case of the Hobbits that have the Ring for a while) that each ‘Kind’ has a natural span, integral to its biological and spiritual nature. This cannot really be increased qualitatively or quantitatively; so that prolongation in time is like stretching a wire out ever tauter, or ‘spreading butter ever thinner’ - it becomes an intolerable torment.
and in the void make endless realms for his servants. The Ban is only
a lying device of fear to restrain the Kings of Men from seizing everlasting
life and rivalling the Valar.
A new religion, and worship of the Dark, with its temple under
Sauron arises. The Faithful are persecuted and sacrificed. The Numenoreans
carry their evil also to Middle-earth and there become cruel and wicked
lords of necromancy, slaying and tormenting men; and the old legends
are overlaid with dark tales of horror. This does not happen, however,
in the North West; for thither, because of the Elves, only the Faithful
who remain Elf-friends will come. The chief haven of the good Númenóreans
is near the mouth of the great river Anduin. Thence the still beneficent
influence of Númenor spreads up the River and along the coasts as far
north as the realm of Gilgalad, as a Common Speech grows up.
But at last Sauron’s plot comes to fulfilment. Tar-Calion
feels old age and death approaching, and he listens to the last prompting
of Sauron, and building the greatest of all armadas, he sets sail into
the West, breaking the Ban, and going up with war to wrest from the
gods ‘everlasting life within the circles of the world’. Faced
by this rebellion, of appalling folly and blasphemy, and also real peril
(since the Numenoreans directed by Sauron could have wrought ruin in
Valinor itself) the Valar lay down their delegated power and appeal
to God, and receive the power and permission to deal with the situation;
the old world is broken and changed. A chasm is opened in the sea and
Tar-Calion and his armada is engulfed. Númenor itself on the edge of
the rift topples and vanishes for ever with all its glory in the abyss.
Thereafter there is no visible dwelling of the divine or immortal on
earth. Valinor (or Paradise) and even Eressea are removed, remaining
only in the memory of the earth. Men may sail now West, if they will,
as far as they may, and come no nearer to Valinor or the Blessed Realm,
but return only into the east and so back again; for the world is round,
and finite, and a circle inescapable - save by death. Only the ‘immortals’,
the lingering Elves, may still if they will, wearying of the circle
of the world, take ship and find the ‘straight way’, and come
to the ancient or True West, and be at peace.
So the end of the Second Age draws on in a major catastrophe; but
it is not yet quite concluded. From the cataclysm there are survivors:
Elendil the Fair, chief of the Faithful (his name means Elf-friend),
and his sons Isildur and Anarion. Elendil, a Noachian figure, who has
held off from the rebellion, and kept ships manned and furnished off
the east coast of Númenor, flees before the overwhelming storm of the
wrath of the West, and is home high upon the towering waves that bring
ruin to the west of the Middle-earth. He and his folk are cast away
as exiles upon the shores. There they establish the Númenórean kingdoms
of Arnor in the north close to the realm of Gilgalad, and Gondor about
the mouths of Anduin further south. Sauron, being an immortal, hardly
escapes the ruin of Nilmenor and returns to Mordor, where after a while
he is strong enough to challenge the exiles of Numenor.
The Second Age ends with the Last Alliance (of Elves and Men),
and the great siege of Mordor. It ends with the overthrow of Sauron
and destruction of the second visible incarnation of evil. But at a
cost, and with one disastrous mistake. Gilgalad and Elendil are slain
in the act of slaying Sauron. Isildur, Elendil’s son, cuts the
ring from Sauron’s hand, and his power departs, and his spirit
flees into the shadows. But the evil begins to work. Isildur claims
the Ring as his own, as ‘the Weregild of his father’, and
refuses to cast it into the Fire nearby. He marches away, but is drowned
in the Great River, and the Ring is lost, passing out of all knowledge.
But it is not unmade, and the Dark Tower built with its aid still stands,
empty but not destroyed. So ends the Second Age with the coming of the
Numenorean realms and the passing of the last kingship of the High Elves.
The Third Age is concerned mainly with the Ring. The Dark Lord is
no longer on his throne, but his monsters are not wholly destroyed,
and his dreadful servants, slaves of the Ring, endure as shadows among
the shadows. Mordor is empty and the Dark Tower void, and a watch is
kept upon the borders of the evil land. The Elves still have hidden
refuges: at the Grey Havens of their ships, in the House of Elrond,
and elsewhere. In the North is the Kingdom of Arnor ruled by the descendants
of Isildur. Southward athwart the Great River Anduin are the cities
and forts of the Numenorean realm of Gondor, with kings of the line
of Anirion. Away in the (to these tales) uncharted East and South are
the countries and realms of wild or evil men, alike only in their hatred
of the West, derived from their master Sauron; but Gondor and its power
bars the way. The Ring is lost, for ever it is hoped; and the Three
Rings of the Elves, wielded by secret guardians, are operative in preserving
the memory of the beauty of old, maintaining enchanted enclaves of peace
where Time seems to stand still and decay is restrained, a semblance
of the bliss of the True West.
But in the north Arnor dwindles, is broken into petty princedoms,
and finally vanishes. The remnant of the Numenoreans becomes a hidden
wandering Folk, and though their true line of Kings of Isildur’s
heirs never fails this is known only in the House of Elrond. In the
south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Numenor, and
then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable,
but increasingly impotent Byzantium. The watch upon Mordor is relaxed.
The pressure of the Easterlings and Southrons increases. The
line of Kings fails, and the last city of Gondor, Minas Tirith (‘Tower
of Vigilance’), is ruled by hereditary Stewards. The Horsemen of
the North, the Rohirrim or Riders of Rohan, taken into perpetual alliance,
settle in the now unpeopled green plains that were once the northern
part of the realm of Gondor. On the great primeval forest, Greenwood
the Great, east of the upper waters of the Great River, a shadow falls,
and grows, and it becomes Mirkwood. The Wise discover that it proceeds
from a Sorcerer (‘The Necromancer’ of The Hobbit) who has
a secret castle in the south of the Great Wood.*
In the middle of this Age the Hobbits appear. Their origin is unknown
(even to themselves)+ for they escaped the notice of the great, or the
civilised peoples with records, and kept none themselves, save vague
oral traditions, until they had migrated from the borders of Mirkwood,
fleeing from the Shadow, and wandered westward, coming into contact
with the last remnants of the Kingdom of Arnor. Their chief settlement,
where all the inhabitants are hobbits, and where an ordered, civilised,
if simple and rural life is maintained, is the Shire, originally the
farmlands and forests of the royal demesne of Arnor, granted as a fief:
but the ‘King’, author of laws, has long vanished save in
memory before we hear much of the Shire. It is in the year 1341 of the
Shire (or 2941 of the Third Age: that is in its last century) that Bilbo
- The Hobbit and hero of that tale - starts on his ‘adventure’.
In that story, which need not be resumed, hobbitry and the hobbit-
situation are not explained, but taken for granted, and what little
is told of their history is in the form of casual allusion as to something
known. The whole of the ‘world-politics’, outlined above,
is of course there in mind, and also alluded to occasionally as to things
elsewhere recorded in full. Elrond is an important character, though
his reverence, high powers, and lineage are toned down and not revealed
in full. There are allusions to the history of the Elves, and to the
fall of Gondolin and so on. The shadows and evil of Mirkwood provide,
in diminished ‘fairy- story’ mode, one of the major parts
of the adventure. Only in one point
*It is only in the time between The Hobbit and its sequel that it
is discovered that the Necromancer is Sauron Redivivus, growing swiftly
to visible shape and power again. He escapes the vigilance and re-enters
Mordor and the Dark Tower.
+The Hobbits are, of course, really meant to be a branch of the
specifically human race (not Elves or Dwarves) - hence the two kinds
can dwell together (as at Bree), and are called just the Big Folk and
Little Folk. They are entirely without non-human powers, but are represented
as being more in touch with 'nature' (the soil and other living things,
plants and animals), and abnormally, for humans, free from ambition
or greed of wealth. They are made small (little more than half human
stature, but dwindling as the years pass) partly to exhibit the pettiness
of man, plain unimaginative parochial man - though not with either the
smallness or the savageness of Swift, and mostly to show up, in creatures
of very small physical power, the amazing and unexpected heroism of
ordinary men ‘at a pinch’.
do these ‘world-politics’ act as part of the mechanism of
the story. Gandalf the Wizard* is called away on high business, an attempt
to deal with the menace of the Necromancer, and so leaves the Hobbit
without help or advice in the midst of his ‘adventure’, forcing
him to stand on his own legs, and become in his mode heroic. (Many readers
have observed this point and guessed that the Necromancer must figure
largely in any sequel or further tales of this time.)
The generally different tone and style of The Hobbit is due, in
point of genesis, to it being taken by me as a matter from the great
cycle susceptible of treatment as a ‘fairy-story’, for children.
Some of the details of tone and treatment are, I now think, even on
that basis, mistaken. But I should not wish to change much. For in effect
this is a study of simple ordinary man, neither artistic nor noble and
heroic (but not without the undeveloped seeds of these things) against
a high setting - and in fact (as a critic has perceived) the tone and
style change with the Hobbit’s development, passing from fairy-tale
to the noble and high and relapsing with the return.
The Quest of the Dragon-gold, the main theme of the actual tale
of The Hobbit, is to the general cycle quite peripheral and incidental
- connected with it mainly through Dwarf-history, which is nowhere central
to these tales, though often important.+ But in the course of the Quest,
the Hobbit becomes possessed by seeming ‘accident’ of a ‘magic
ring’, the chief and only immediately obvious power of which is
to make its wearer invisible. Though for this tale an accident, unforeseen
and having no place in any plan for the quest, it proves an essential
to success. On return the Hobbit, enlarged in vision and wisdom, if
unchanged in idiom, retains the ring as a personal secret.
The sequel, The Lord of the Rings, much the largest, and I hope
also in proportion the best, of the entire cycle, concludes the whole
business - an attempt is made to include in it, and wind up, all the
elements and motives of what has preceded: elves, dwarves, the Kings
of Men, heroic ‘Homeric’ horsemen, orcs and demons, the terrors
of the Ring-servants and Necromancy, and the vast horror of the Dark
Throne, even in style
*Nowhere is the place or nature of 'the Wizards' made fully explicit.
Their name, as related to Wise, is an Englishing of their Elvish name,
and is used throughout as utterly distinct from Sorcerer or Magician.
It appears finally that they were as one might say the near equivalent
in the mode of these tales of Angels, guardian Angels. Their powers
are directed primarily to the encouragement of the enemies of evil,
to cause them to use their own wits and valour, to unite and endure.
They appear always as old men and sages, and though (sent by the powers
of the True West) in the world they suffer themselves, their age and
grey hairs increase only slowly. Gandalf whose function is especially
to watch human affairs (Men and Hobbits) goes on through all the tales.
+ The hostility of (even good) Dwarves and Elves, a motive that
often appears, derives from the legends of the First Age; the Mines
of Moria, the wars of Dwarves and Orcs (goblins, soldiery of the Dark
Lord) refer to the Second Age and early Third.
it is to include the colloquialism and vulgarity of Hobbits, poetry
and the highest style of
prose. We are to see the overthrow of the last incarnation of Evil,
the unmaking of the Ring, the final departure of the Elves, and the
return in majesty of the true King, to take over the Dominion of Men,
inheriting all that can be transmitted of Elfdom in his high marriage
with Arwen daughter of Elrond, as well as the lineal royalty of Numenor.
But as the earliest Tales are seen through Elvish eyes, as it were,
this last great Tale, coming down from myth and legend to the earth,
is seen mainly though the eyes of Hobbits: it thus becomes in fact anthropocentric.
But through Hobbits, not Men so-called, because the last Tale is to
exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in ‘world politics’
of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue
of the apparently small, ungreat, forgotten in the places of the Wise
and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary
symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself
objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by
lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple
and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the
noble and heroic is meaningless.
It is not possible even at great length to ‘pot’ The
Lord of the Rings in a paragraph or two..... It was begun in 1936,5
and every part has been written many times. Hardly a word in its 600,000
or more has been unconsidered. And the placing, size, style, and contribution
to the whole of all the features, incidents, and chapters has been laboriously
pondered ‘I do not say this in recommendation. It is, I feel,
only too likely that I am deluded, lost in a web of vain imaginings
of not much value to others - in spite of the fact that a few readers
have found it good, on the whole.* What I intend to say is this: I cannot
substantially alter the thing. I have finished it, it is ‘off my
mind’: the labour has been colossal; and it must stand or fall,
practically as it is.
[The letter continues with a summary (without comments) of the story of The Lord of the Rings, after which Tolkien writes:]
That is a long and yet bald resume. Many characters important
to the tale are not even mentioned. Even some whole inventions like
the remarkable Ents, oldest of living rational creatures, Shepherds
of the Trees, are omitted. Since we now try to deal with ‘ordinary
life’, springing up ever unquenched under the trample of world
policies and events, there are love-stories touched in, or love in different
modes, wholly absent from The Hobbit. But the highest love-story, that
of
*But as each has disliked this or that, I should (if I took all
the criticisms together and obeyed them) find little left, and am forced
to the conclusion that so great a work (in size) cannot be perfect,
nor even if perfect, be liked entirely by any one reader.
Aragorn and Arwen Eirond’s daughter is only alluded to as a known
thing. It is told elsewhere in a short tale, Of Aragorn and Arwen Undómiel.
I think the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosic (nowhere
laborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s)
character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing,
eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the ‘longing
for Elves’, and sheer beauty. But I will say no more, nor defend
the theme of mistaken love seen in Eowyn and her first love for Aragom.
I do not feel much can now be done to heal the faults of this large
and much-embracing tale - or to make it ‘publishable’, if
it is not so now. A light revision (now accomplished) of a crucial point
in The Hobbit, clarifying the character of Gollum and his relation to
the Ring, will enable me to reduce Book I chapter II ‘The Shadow
of the Past’, simplify it, and quicken it - and also simplify the
debatable opening of Book II a little. If the other material, ‘The
Silmarillion’ and some other tales or links such as The Downfall
of Númenor are published or in process of this, then much explanation
of background, and especially that found in the Council of Elrond (Bk
II) could be dispensed with. But altogether it would hardly amount to
the excision of a single long chapter (out of about 72).
I wonder if (even if legible) you will ever read this??