Latest / Mythmakers / Review of The Nature of Middle-earth by JRR Tolkien ed. Carl F. Hostetter

Transcript

Review of The Nature of Middle-earth by JRR Tolkien ed. Carl F. Hostetter · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:12
  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, I'm
• 0:18
  the director of the Centre but I'm also an author. And today I thought I'd review the
• 0:24
  recent publication of the big tome called The Nature of Middle-Earth. This is drawn from
• 0:30
  papers left by J.R.R. Tolkien, some of which were curated to a certain degree by his son Christopher,
• 0:37
  but this particular book has been put together by Karl F. Hostetter. And it was published in
• 0:44
  2021 by HarperCollins. I want to start though with the Beatles because I actually think there is
• 0:52
  comparison between what's happened in this book and the Peter Jackson get back documentary.
• 0:58
  So the original footage for that documentary was originally filmed by Michael Lindsay Hogg and
• 1:05
  then language for many years and then was re-edited by Peter Jackson. Now in a sense this has been
• 1:13
  the fate of these papers they have been in and filing cabinets pinned together. One of the exciting
• 1:20
  things about reading this book is the description of each section. It's often written on the back
• 1:27
  of an examination script or a letter from his publishers. You get the sense of the master at work.
• 1:33
  And these were not thought of as polished final items at all, they were his working documents.
• 1:40
  But where the comparison to the Beatles really comes in is that the Peter Jackson edit has really
• 1:46
  focused on showing how the creativity works between the members of the band, how they noodle away
• 1:52
  on a guitar or piano and come up with their tunes. There is a similar thing coming along here where
• 1:58
  you can see talking to thinking through the implications of some of his creative decisions.
• 2:04
  In a sense this book gives us a look under the bonnet of the car or the hood of the car
• 2:10
  and shows us how he thought. First of all I should say this isn't a satisfying story read.
• 2:16
  I remember my childhood disappointment when I had exhausted the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and
• 2:22
  the Silmarillion and turned to the other collections of things like the Lost Tales that their fragments
• 2:29
  you're often left wondering what happens halfway through a story or there are multiple versions
• 2:34
  of the same story and you're not sure which is the final one that Tolkien settled on.
• 2:40
  This is exactly the same with this collection but even more so. This is much more fragmentary even
• 2:46
  than something like the unfinished tales. So don't come to it thinking it's an extension of Lord
• 2:51
  the Rings but however there is a growing fascination as you read it. The more you know about Tolkien's
• 3:00
  legendarium the more interesting it becomes. I think it actually starts off in a sense in the
• 3:06
  most the weakest place. I can see why it was chosen in terms of the logic of the collection but
• 3:13
  part one is very much focusing on Tolkien working out the maths of the Elven population.
• 3:20
  There is a lot of repetition here he's trying to work out what extent of time he needs to allow
• 3:27
  between the elves first waking up and the sort of historical events beginning to happen.
• 3:32
  I did learn things here though I learned the rough one to a hundred
• 3:36
  relevance between a human life and an Elven life so it makes things like our winds marriage to
• 3:43
  Arigorn much more age appropriate and it also get the interesting fact that the relative speed
• 3:50
  of Elven lives changes depending where they are so middle earth it goes relatively faster than
• 3:57
  in Valinor for example because of the pressure and the physicality of living in middle earth.
• 4:03
  All of that was absolutely fascinating and you can see him fine tuning and adjusting to make
• 4:09
  the generations fit. This is very much like you know changing the spark plugs or something they're
• 4:15
  tiny adjustments and you can see him pondering on a page 149 actually asking the question could
• 4:21
  Calibrian could she be younger that's the wife of Elron and you can see him just trying to work
• 4:28
  it out and what the knock-on effect would be on the rest of his writing if he did so.
• 4:34
  And there is a particularly intriguing essay on the perception of time which follows on from
• 4:41
  this idea of the generations of the elves so on a page 160 and I'm going to quote a little bit
• 4:47
  here he is thinking about the relative perceptions of time between the elves who obviously live
• 4:52
  almost they're almost immortal in many ways and men and he says as if two travelers went along
• 4:58
  the same road the one who has never journeyed there before and he is young and full of hope
• 5:03
  maybe eager to reach the end and enter upon other roads the other has traveled the same way
• 5:09
  many many times and barely notes the thing seen or passed and he is tired maybe and yet fears to
• 5:15
  reach the end having little hope of going on to further journey to which will that road seem
• 5:21
  shorter to the young halting barely at all and yet not hoarding the moments it may seem a long
• 5:28
  and memorable journey in experience and in retrospect to the older it will hold little of memory
• 5:33
  to distinguish it from other journeys like it and yet it's end will will come too soon it will
• 5:39
  seem swift at least in retrospect he's not saying there that the elves are one and the men
• 5:45
  and the other he's just saying how the same moment in time the same experience can appear
• 5:50
  differently to two people going through it maybe even together perhaps you find this true of your
• 5:56
  own life I can certainly remember that as a child a week at school at primary school felt like an
• 6:01
  age one marker of that week was that we had a spelling test every Friday and I can distinctly
• 6:07
  remember feeling that the gap between that those Fridays was just forever but as now Friday to
• 6:14
  Friday goes by in a flash of time and Tolkien is using that perception which we all experience
• 6:19
  of how time feels different to apply to how it might be to be inside the head of an elf
• 6:25
  compared to the more familiar experience of being inside the head of a man the second section
• 6:31
  of the book is entitled body, mind and spirit the material here is drawn from a wider selection
• 6:39
  of themes and for me the highlight of this particular section was the interesting chapter on
• 6:45
  something called a Sanway Kenta that is a form of telepathy you probably remember in the films
• 6:53
  that Peter Jackson made that there are some moments when Elron and Galadriel and Gandalf they're all
• 7:00
  able to communicate mind to mind and I wasn't sure where this fitted in it didn't I hadn't sort of
• 7:07
  thought about it as part of the world and there is a long explanation of how this works which is
• 7:13
  really worth reading I won't paraphrase it here but it makes it fit within the logic of Tolkien's
• 7:20
  created world and there's other things like short chapters on elven hands and how it's related
• 7:28
  to counting and whether or not they have beards and what kind of hair all that stuff it's very
• 7:34
  fascinating and just makes you think about the detail to which Tolkien went when he was considering
• 7:40
  his world and one of the most fundamental aspects here which I don't think if you've only watched
• 7:47
  the films you won't realise is that Tolkien had a possibility within his world for reincarnation
• 7:55
  of the elves the basic idea is that the elves as the sort of special firstborn created by
• 8:04
  Iluvatar or Eru the sort of god figure of Tolkien's world their fate is bound up with the world so
• 8:11
  if they die what what they are doesn't leave the world and their spirit goes back to the
• 8:18
  halls of Manui Manui is the chief amongst the valar the valar are not exactly demigods they're
• 8:25
  more like some kind of sub-creator talking cause them like Archangel or something of that nature
• 8:34
  because they are also part of creation they're part of what Eru has imagined and anyway so
• 8:42
  Manui is the sort of as you suppose but far more benign than Zeus anyway so he has some halls where
• 8:51
  the spirits of the elves go back and they have a choice then to either be reborn in the same
• 8:57
  body or to be born again as a new child and Tolkien works out that there's all sorts of problems
• 9:04
  about this that he has to work out so one part of this is what happens to the physical elements
• 9:10
  is your body the specific physical elements that made it up or is it a pattern that can be repeated
• 9:19
  and so it's like is it not exactly a clone but I suppose that's our modern usage and does that
• 9:25
  make that any less real if the spirit is inhabiting it than the original body and it's very
• 9:33
  interesting watching him grapple with that and then of course the problem about the spirit being
• 9:39
  born again in a new child is that there is the problem of what happens to the original memories
• 9:46
  and the fact that the parents of this child this new one in a sense are getting
• 9:51
  well a second-hand baby that's perhaps a flippant way of putting it but there are issues about
• 9:57
  what their relationship to that child is if they've not been part of the actual creation of the spirit
• 10:02
  of that child through the way they raise it and Tolkien can be seen grappling with the logic
• 10:08
  of all of this and a particular stumbling point for him is what happens with marriage so if as
• 10:14
  an elf you are in your marriage to your partner you die but you could come back can the other partner
• 10:24
  marry and on the whole the answer is no though there is a sort of one exception and he spends a
• 10:30
  lot of time thinking about if you then get three people involved in a marriage what that means
• 10:38
  there are echoes here of the biblical story where Jesus is asked by I think it's the Sadducees
• 10:43
  whether or not there is any sort of marriage in heaven and if so what happens to somebody who's
• 10:49
  been married more than once and I think in Tolkien is coming round to a similar answer which is
• 10:55
  those categories don't really apply in that sort of spiritual realm but anyway he is grappling
• 11:00
  with this and the idea of what happens to these unions of love in a case where you have reincarnation
• 11:09
  should just say here that this is different to the fate of men men their spirits in Tolkien's
• 11:17
  Legendarium they they do go to this place and I held but then they go beyond the realm of
• 11:24
  the world they go back to be with Eru or Iluvatar and that is what is referred to as the gift of
• 11:33
  Iluvatar by the elves the idea that you can escape the world and nobody knows what happens to those
• 11:39
  spirits the final section is called the world its lands and its inhabitants now this again is a
• 11:48
  eclectic gathering of materials each section though usually starts with an expansion from Tolkien
• 11:58
  considering something in the development of his languages and it shows very clearly that for him
• 12:05
  thinking up a word creates the history and the explanation so look at the case for example of
• 12:13
  the river Adorn on page 379 this is one of the little rivers not very important to the stories
• 12:20
  that he went on to write it's a river flowing into the ison and he realizes that that name doesn't
• 12:27
  fit the Sindharan language so he comes up with an explanation he decides it's a pre-Numonorian
• 12:34
  origin adapted to Sindharan I love this idea that he's looking at something and kind of steps back
• 12:42
  from responsibility for having made that decision it becomes a as if it already existed and then he
• 12:49
  thinks up an explanation for it and this particular essay on the rivers and the beacon hills
• 12:57
  that comes towards the end of this section is actually all in response to a letter from a member
• 13:03
  of the public in 1969 and it prompts him asking a very simple question about one tiny aspect
• 13:12
  of his the names of his rivers and it sets Tolkien into a series of connected thoughts about
• 13:19
  what each of the names of the rivers means where they don't fit what's the explanation and even
• 13:24
  in 1969 only a few years before he died he's still tinkering away at the edges and creating
• 13:31
  a fully complete tapestry for his world and you see here that he uses the gaps and what might
• 13:37
  otherwise be called the floors in his creation understanding that they aren't mistakes at all
• 13:44
  they're just something he hasn't thought through yet I think this is a message for all creative
• 13:50
  out there whatever form you're using bit some kind of stone or paint or words to look at things
• 13:58
  that you have created and if there is a bump or an oddity it's how to make that into the next
• 14:06
  launching pad for the next stage of your story or your art and there is a beyond the Tolkien
• 14:14
  material there is a final section and appendices of course that Hostetta has gathered together
• 14:21
  and there is two of them the first one is perhaps the most interesting it's the metaphysical and
• 14:27
  theological themes here he has gathered together those moments when Tolkien has talked about
• 14:34
  how he sees it as a fundamentally Catholic work and some other remarks and explains what
• 14:40
  this means I think he has an excellent theory about how Tolkien understood Lord of the Rings being
• 14:46
  a fundamental Catholic work about fundamental he's talking is if nothing if not a person of words
• 14:53
  fundamental basis so it's underpinning he's the themes are there it's in the DNA of the work
• 15:02
  shall we say and it's not an allegory not the sort of death and resurrection obvious parallel
• 15:10
  that you get in something like line and which in the wardrobe it's something that underpins the whole
• 15:14
  world so that appendice is really interesting to read through there's also an answer here to why
• 15:22
  there is no religion in the world of middle earth which I think I had gathered in fragments but it
• 15:29
  was well put together here there is obviously a faith because we've got we've got Eru and we've
• 15:36
  got the Valar so we've got a sense of a God and those sort of archangel deity type figures
• 15:45
  but there is no worship and there are no temples by the time you reach the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings
• 15:53
  so it's explained that in a way the elves in Valinor they live with the Valar with the subcreating
• 16:00
  demigods so obviously they don't need a temple to the creatures or the beings that they live among
• 16:07
  but there was a time when this world that Tolkien created did worship and this was on the island
• 16:15
  of Numenor and there was a temple on a mountain top there which was dedicated to Uluvatar but the
• 16:24
  worship there went wrong the downfall of Numenor is caught up in this idea that a sort of tower of
• 16:32
  Babel's story really where they felt the kings towards the end were jealous of the powers of God
• 16:39
  and they were sort of vying with the powers that led to the downfall of Numenor and from that time
• 16:46
  it was forbidden to the Numenorians and their descendants to worship and only evil people set up
• 16:53
  temples so you get occasional tiny traces of it like doors of Dunhara there's a suggestion there
• 17:00
  that this was the entrance to a temple of some sort that's on page 394 if you've got a copy of the
• 17:09
  book there is one religious moment that is mentioned though which I found fascinating
• 17:15
  it's the vow of Kiran who's the lord of gondor to ael who was the person who was leading Rohan at
• 17:24
  the time it's their alliance and they Kiran swears a vow and he references Eru at that time and
• 17:35
  that was such an unusual thing to do that it rippled through the history of those two people the
• 17:40
  500 years that followed and the place where he spoke it was decided to be special the place was
• 17:48
  called Halifurian but not as a place to go and have a temple but it's just regarded as a special
• 17:56
  place so that seems to be the way it was memorialised now I have to say these are all thought experiments
• 18:03
  unfinished papers by talking so quite what he would have done with that further if it spent longer
• 18:10
  on that I don't know but I thought that it was a very helpful explanation however I would have to say
• 18:17
  there is one absolutely must read passage in this book particularly for anybody interested in
• 18:25
  writing it comes in the essay on fate and free will that's paid 230 if you're following along
• 18:32
  and it's worth quoting at a certain length this is what is talking is writing the author is not in
• 18:41
  the tale in one sense yet it all proceeds from him and what was in him so that he is present
• 18:48
  all the time now while composing the tale he may have certain general designs the plot for instance
• 18:56
  and he may have a clear conception of the character independent of the particular tale of each
• 19:01
  feigned actor but those are the limits of his foreknowledge many authors have recorded the feeling
• 19:08
  that one of their actors comes alive as it were and does things that were not foreseen at all at
• 19:14
  the outset and may modify in a small or even large way the process of the tale thereafter all
• 19:22
  such unforeseen actions or events are however taken up to become integral parts of the tale
• 19:27
  when finally concluded now when that has been done then the author's foreknowledge is complete
• 19:34
  and nothing can happen be said or done that he does not know of and will allow to be
• 19:40
  even so some of the elder in philosophers venture to say it was with Eru so here he is deciding that
• 19:48
  the explanation for free will is very much like the explanation for how a character works
• 19:56
  in an author's creation so that obviously has a theological implication but I'm thinking about
• 20:03
  it now totally as a fellow writer I as I read that I gave a big yes that's exactly what it's like
• 20:11
  I distinctly remember writing one of my books and the moment came when the character took off
• 20:19
  I've written some historical series for children and in one of them the cat royal series book two
• 20:26
  cat amongst the pigeons it has a theme of the slavery movement in the 1790s it's looking at
• 20:34
  the debate around slavery in the abolition movement and it's set in dreary lane theatre anyway
• 20:38
  the main character cat royal is sent to take some theatre tickets to a gentleman's club
• 20:44
  and in the gentleman's club is a slave owner who claims to own her best friend and I'd written
• 20:50
  a plan where things were going to go one way they were going to have a little bit of a tiff
• 20:55
  and she was going to hand over the tickets but when she actually got in the room she refused
• 21:02
  and it was though I was following on after her and she did some quite shocking things which meant
• 21:09
  she had to go on the run because her anger took over and it was so exciting as a writer to follow
• 21:16
  on behind I also had to deal with the aftermath where my lovely plan was all in pieces
• 21:21
  those moments are the best moments for a creative and I love this explanation of maybe that's how
• 21:28
  free will works so if in a sense whilst you're writing the book that's the time but when you're
• 21:34
  standing outside time the book is complete and on the shelf you're then like the god of your world
• 21:40
  and you have complete foreknowledge even though some of the events within it were down to individual
• 21:46
  characters working out their own fate to a certain degree I think there's a lot to think about in
• 21:52
  that so thanks very much Carl F. Hofstester for bringing that to me to read because I really enjoyed
• 22:00
  reading that bit so do I recommend this book absolutely to those of you who are following the
• 22:06
  my new shy of Tolkien's world it's definitely not the place to start I wouldn't give it to somebody
• 22:11
  who doesn't sort of have a genuine deep interest in Tolkien but there are plenty of us with that
• 22:18
  interest so I would recommend it I always end with where in the world or where in any fantasy
• 22:27
  world is the best place for something and in today's podcast as so much at the end of the book
• 22:35
  of the nature of middle earth is spent considering the nature of rivers I thought I would have a
• 22:41
  go where is the best place for a fantasy river now absolutely I love all the rivers in Tolkien but
• 22:49
  I think I better put that aside because that's the obvious choice and what actually came to mind
• 22:55
  was a book that I read as a teenager it was by a writer called Julian May and it forms a series
• 23:03
  called The Saga of Pleocene Exile which was published in the 1980s it's actually a science fiction
• 23:11
  work the basic idea in this book the Golden Talk is that there is a gateway which sends you back
• 23:21
  in time and all sorts of misfits and criminals and others get sent back to the Pleocene age what
• 23:28
  I remember there is the I think it's the Ron San Valley the big valley that goes through the
• 23:35
  centre of France is even bigger even more magnificent even wilder and for me this opened up
• 23:44
  vistas of what life before humans was like on earth in the era that we know as Europe been Tolkien
• 23:54
  is doing something bit similar he's sort of thinking of a pre history for middle earth but this
• 24:01
  is more in touch with archaeological evidence than Tolkien's mythology and I think they spend some
• 24:09
  of the time rafting down the river and for me this totally changed the way I relate to pre history
• 24:16
  it gave me a way of holding on to it and then when I was thinking about this I went and looked
• 24:21
  up Julian May I had quite wrongly assumed that Julian was a man so please forgive me Julian
• 24:28
  she was a writer with many many pen names so do look her up and I want to thank her for giving me
• 24:35
  this vistas when I was reading I had a stage as a teenager reading loads of science fiction and fantasy
• 24:42
  and it was definitely one of my favourites at that time it's a rough experience the rivers of
• 24:47
  the Pleocene but still powerful so I would highly recommend that if you're wanting to expand your
• 24:53
  fantasy perception of rivers that's all from myth makers today thank you very much
• 25:01
  thanks for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy
• 25:08
  visit oxfordcenterforfattery.org to join in the fun find out about our online courses
• 25:15
  in person stays in Oxford plus visit our shop for great gifts tell a friend and subscribe
• 25:22
  wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide