The Song of Middle-earth: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Themes, Symbols and Myths

The final stage of the hero’s development is his Apotheosis, his reception into Heaven or the confirmation of his universal and immortal nature. Christ, Mithras, Dionysius, Elijah and Galahad are received into Heaven. Arthur, Charlemagne and Barbarossa are not dead but sleeping, awaiting a time to return. Their departure from the realms of reality is but temporary and death for them is not absolute. Immortalisation may take a number of forms. The hero may vanish, so that none may confirm his death. He may be received into Heaven or taken to a sacred isle or mountain. He may undergo some change at physical death that makes his passing so unique that it is not a natural death. And in the tales of the returning King the eternal hope and security of the renewal of the natural order of things is assured, such return being the re-establishment of the absolute archetypal and prototype natural order – the Golden Age.

Thus the hero is called to adventure and is set aside as one who is unique. That he may resist the call is evidence of the folly of flight from an omnipotent deity. His adventure involves the supernatural both in the form of aid and hindrance. By undertaking the Quest he crosses the threshold to put on trial himself and, as Everyman, all Mankind. His challenges may involve the eternal opposites – the meeting with the male side and a form of atonement with the father, and the confrontation with the female side; the woman as temptress Death, the Underworld and Resurrection represents a denial of the World, a confrontation with the Ultimate Question and the crossing of the return threshold to the real World. The hero is the master of the two Worlds, spiritual and temporal. He is Universal, Everyman, man in Nature, fulfilled and aware. He is the epitome of existence and achievement.2

It has been said by Northrop Frye and subsequently by other literary critics that the Quest myth has been the central myth of literature and the source of all literary genres. T. S. Eliot praised James Joyce for having invented a ‘mythical method’ or ‘continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity’3 which enables a modern writer to give ‘a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history’.4

Yet the Quest myth in literature is nothing new. Myth telling originally commenced as an oral tradition and, as society developed, the tradition and mythic tales were incorporated into the literature of the society. Ovid’s Metamorphoses are quaint tales and part of the Latin literary heritage. Yet they are myths of origins – of how things came to be. That myth telling was an oral tradition is confirmed in the Norse word saga which means ‘things said’. Saga, and its close relation epic which is an extension of saga, deal not so much with ‘true’ myth but with the ancestors or heroes of a society. Both rely heavily on ‘true’ myth for a background, and presuppose a knowledge of myth among the listeners. It is wrong to assume that the Eddas, the sagas of the North, and the Kalevala are representative of a written literary tradition for they are not. The Kalevala was not recorded in writing until as late as the 1830s and even though the tales have been written down there is a heavy oral tradition whose function is to stir the spirit of warriors to heroic action by praising the exploits of ancestors in the mead hall or before battle. The Chansons de Geste not only tell of deeds, but are also a genealogy. The themes of the epics were heroic and followed the pattern which has already been outlined.

Those who recounted the myths and legends, the priests, shamans or bards and poets, were the keepers of the sacred tradition and the sacred stories. The initiation for shamans and priests was long and complex and, like the Irish ‘seauchan’ or ‘master poet’, required passage through various stages of wisdom. Poets, like shamans, were believed to be a medium between man and the gods and were considered seers or soothsayers, yet, as in the case of Homer, Tiresias or the Delphic Sybil, may have had to contend with some physical disability or disorder. By being so disabled they were not totally of the world. The disability set them apart and allowed an acceptable link with the supernatural.

So the poet is not merely an artist, but an inspired artist and a keeper of the sacred tradition. It is therefore no accident that myth, legend and literature were, in early days, so closely linked. Even the use of verse forms is part of the ritual tradition. The Iliad and Odyssey were written in a dactylic hexameter, a form inappropriate to both Greek and English. But it was the metre of prophecy and religious narrative. In using this form, Homer’s work invokes a quality that makes it transcend a mere tale and takes it to the point of religious myth. Of course, an oral tradition results in modifications with the passage of time, although poetic forms would contain mnemonic tricks of metre or rhyme form. An example of the former is the Kalevala with its distinctive metre adopted by H. W. Longfellow in The Song of Hiawatha. But despite such aids the tales changed, not necessarily in theme but in detail. Much would depend upon the audience for whom the tale was written or created. According to Eliade, Homer created his work for a military and semi-feudal aristocracy. Thus Homer may have avoided some of the themes which would not be of interest to his audience, and rather glorified certain aspects.

Despite such critics as Pindar and Thucydides who rejected the incredible myths and fabulous tales, the Greek myths represent a literary work which documents a religious belief. None of them have come to us in their cult context and, were it not for the work of Graves, it is doubtful that the religious or ritual explanation of them would be available to any but a few scholars. Any myth that has been documented or has been the subject of a literary work is primarily literary in nature. Thus we see the Eddas and sagas not as religious documents but as linguistic records and part of the literary history of society.

Myth has appeared throughout the history of literature even down to the present time. Mythical archetypes survive in the modern novel in the symbolic sense. Hemingway’s Old Man is Everyman, adrift on the Primordial Waters undertaking his Quest for the Monster of the deep. Dickens returns to the folktale idiom. Nickleby searches for his real background kept hidden by his wicked uncle, Ralph. Dickens’ characters may be wicked witches or people or institutions and his heroes are often aided by the guileless fool who leads them to salvation.

The writer, in creating his own myth, will accept the supernatural as operating within nature. Within the world of nature exist inexplicable forces which are fickle and can turn at will. The use of mythic forms and archetypes by the writer is an aesthetic device for bringing the imaginary but powerful world of preternatural forces into a manageable collaboration with objective and experience facts of life in such a way as to stimulate unconscious passions and the conscious mind. It can bring together the real experience and the submerged impulses of life. The use of myth in the creative sense is the province of the poet or bard; the artist not the historian. The poet may feign a history for his artistic purpose and pattern, using an imagined history or an historical form within which to cast his fictional or symbolic action. Thus the poet’s or artist’s world is a ‘middle-earth’ situated between the lower present day historical world and an unexperienced but nevertheless mythically real Heaven.

Fiction, imagination and myth all occupy the same level for the artist. Fiction may be a deviation from reality or an approximation of it. With fiction, the artist can explain the inexplicable. There has been a tendency in modern literature to dispense with the mythic forms and the successful achievement of the Quest or the ‘happy ending’. Such literature is literature without hope and says little for Man’s ability to transcend or overcome his universal tragedy. But by the same token it is important to consider the element of tragedy in myth. So far we have looked at the hero and his Quest from a positive or ‘eucatastrophic’ point of view. Tragedy can provide us with a positive point of view, but with anything but happiness for the protagonist. The tragic hero carries within him the well-being of people and the welfare of the State. He engages in a conflict with the representative of darkness and Evil. He suffers a temporary defeat or setback. After a period of shame and suffering he emerges triumphant as the symbol of the victory of light and good over darkness and evil, a victory sanctified by the covenant of the settling of destinies which reaffirms the well-being of the people and the welfare of the State. In the course of the conflict comes a point where the protagonist and antagonist merge into a single challenge against the order of God. The protagonist commits an evil he would not normally do, and fails to do good when he should. At this moment we become aware that the real protagonist of the tragedy is the order of God against which the hero has rebelled. The pride and presumption which is within us all as a result of our mixed state is symbolised and revealed, and it is this hubris which is purged from us by the suffering of the tragic hero.

It is the function of the artist, the writer, the creative myth-maker to highlight and focus the symbols in his creative effort. As Blake says in ‘Jerusalem’, ‘I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.’

The end product of such creativity may be an eclectic synopticon such as W. B. Yeats’ A Vision or Graves’ The White Goddess, or a creation-like myth such as that of Wordsworth’s personal cosmos in The Prelude. Furthermore, it is difficult to achieve a totally clean break with the allegedly extinct mythologies and source studies have been devoted to Blake and Yeats. No matter how hard a creator may try, inevitably he draws upon extant mythology, and the mythopoeic impulse in imaginations as powerful as Joyce and Mann may be impeded by a reluctance to let go of the traditional mythologies. The invented mythology rarely contains the resonances of an inherited one and must always remain private except to the happy few who take the trouble to work it out. Those who advocate that myths are collective in nature consider it impossible for any one person to be credited with the creation or invention of a myth. What Melville and Kafka create is not myth, but an individual fantasy expressing a symbolic action equivalent to and related to the myth’s expression of a public rite. Yet initially the myth must have a source in the form of ballad, narrative or saga. Someone has to supply the raw material to which others may add or may alter. Thus, anyone can contribute his ‘bit’ to a myth but is obliged to respect the original integrity of the raw material. In literature myths are moulded and shaped. Imported materials are adapted to fit local custom, landscape or belief and usually suffer slightly. In the continued retelling of a traditional tale, accidental or intentional dislocations are inevitable.

Tolkien created a setting for his mythology. His world was Arda, the realm of mortals, Middle-earth. The themes of his mythology are universal. Many of the themes have been borrowed and reworked to fit the artist’s structure. Tolkien’s mythology is, however, rare. It is a private mythology but it is available to all. Although it began as a shared experience with a small group, it carries within it elements of universal acceptability. Tolkien’s themes, archetypes and symbolism can appeal to us all in that they are universal. It is the use to which they are put, the tailoring within the created mythological world, that makes Tolkien’s work one of the most significant of the created mythologies of English literature.

CHAPTER 3

The Music of Ilúvatar: Tolkien and the Major Mythic Themes

Also … I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English.1

Tolkien wanted to create a Mythology for England and his Middle-earth tales are just that. They are a mythic history of the Elves and Men, and how the latter attained dominance of the World. In a way, the whole myth is a myth of origin. Saruman could see what was happening; ‘The Elder Days are gone. The Middle Days are passing. The Younger Days are beginning. The time of the Elves is over, but our time is at hand: the world of Men, which we must rule.’2 Galadriel saw the end of the era dominated by the Elves, Sauron and the physical symbol of evil in the Ring; ‘Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten.’3 Gandalf reveals to Aragorn on the slopes of Mindolluin the ending of the old and the beginning of the new, and the New Age of Men.

This is your realm, and the heart of the greater realm that shall be. The Third Age of the world is ended, and the new age is begun; and it is your task to order its beginning and to preserve what may be preserved. For though much has been saved, much must now pass away; and the power of the Three Rings also is ended. And all the lands that you see, and those that lie round about them, shall be dwellings of Men. For the time comes of the Dominion of Men, and the Elder Kindred shall fade or depart.4

That is the final point and Tolkien’s myth finishes as the new Golden Age of Men begins. He leaves it to other myths to explain the Fall from this new time of bliss that commences with the reign of Aragorn and continues with his son, Eldarion.

The myth ends with hope and a new beginning, but how did it all start? Tolkien does not throw us into a completed world and let us speculate how it all began. He has his own cosmogonic creation myth which tells of the beginning of the cosmos within which Arda is situated.

Naturally enough, there is a Creator, and His existence is presupposed. He is Eru, or Ilúvatar, as he was known to the Elves. He is in being at the very beginning, always was and always will be. He exists in a Void, the Chaos, which is formless and in disorder. Into this disorder are brought the Ainur, the Holy Ones, who are the ‘offspring of his [Ilúvatar’s] thought’.5 The fourteen greatest of the Ainur became the Valar. But although the Ainur were powerful and creative, they are subservient to Ilúvatar. The One propounds to them themes of music which are developed. Then Ilúvatar makes a great revelation. He had kindled in the Ainur the Flame Imperishable so that each one could show forth his powers in adoring the theme. At this stage the Ainur are not present in any sort of physical form. They are of the thought of Ilúvatar, and are creatures of His imagination. In the spiritual world of Ilúvatar, they exist as beings of the spirit and the Flame Imperishable is that spark which exists within all sentient beings – the flame of creativity. The essence of creativity remains with the Creator because it is not independent or isolated. Melkor, in seeking the Flame Imperishable, sought the power of absolute creativity. His search was doomed to fail, for the power remained with the Creator – ‘Yet he found not the Fire, for it is with Ilúvatar’.6 What Melkor couldn’t understand was that the Flame was abstract and did not exist in a physical form. Indeed at that point, everything was abstract. Melkor was yielding to the materialistic side of his nature which developed even more within the Circles of the World at a later stage in the mythology.

In the void the Theme of Ilúvatar and the Music of the Ainur became a vision in which ‘they saw a new World made visible before them, and it was globed amid the Void’.7 This was a vision of a World that would be, but at that stage of its development remained in the spirit of creative fire. Although the Ainur have the power to make and shape, only Ilúvatar can give them the materials and realise the Creation.

They shared in its ‘making’ – but only on the same terms as we ‘make’ a work of art or story. The realization of it, the gift to it of a created reality of the same grade as their own, was the act of the One God.8

The realisation in its most absolute sense takes place when Ilúvatar transforms the vision into a reality.

Eä! Let these things Be! And I will send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall Be.9

Eä is the World that Is. It is a reality and not an abstract vision. It was seen by the Ainur as a fact and ‘as they looked and wondered this World began to unfold its history, and it seemed to them that it lived and grew’.10

The importance of the Flame Imperishable, the Secret Fire which is sent to the Heart of the World, is that creation carries with it the essential essence of creativity. It is the symbol of that categorical imperative, that transformation of a work of art or creation from a vision to an actual reality.11

At this point in the creation cycle, Ilúvatar’s function fades and the Valar assume more importance. But who or what are the Valar? Why are they so important? The Ainur were the spirits created by Ilúvatar. They were at one with the Creator and with the Music of Ilúvatar. Some of these Ainur later became the Valar and others remained as Ainur in a spiritual or disembodied form. The Valar were those Ainur who descended to Eä and walked upon it in a physical form. They looked like the Children of Ilúvatar – the Elves – whom they had seen in the Vision of Ilúvatar. There were fourteen great Ainur who became Valar – seven male and seven female. There were others also, but they were of a lesser degree, and these were the Maiar, who were the servants of the Valar. The difficulties that some readers may have experienced in understanding these various powerful beings lies in the fact that Tolkien did not say how many Ainur there were in the first place, nor does he tell us how many Maiar came to Eä. We can conclude that Sauron, Olórin (Gandalf), Curumo (Saruman) and the other Istari were Maiar, as were the Valaraukar or Balrogs.12 The Balrogs were perverted by Morgoth and became the shock troops in his war of fear that he later waged in Middle-earth. It has also been suggested that Tom Bombadil was a Maia because of his power and knowledge, and what he himself says:

Eldest, that’s what I am … Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from the Outside.13

Elrond described him as ‘older than the old’, ‘oldest and fatherless’ and ‘Last as he was First’.14

The Valar were demi-god, Titan-like beings. They were charged with the fulfilment of the Vision and the completion of Arda (the Earth). They each had individual knowledge of portions of the Vision, but of all the Valar, only Manwë understood most clearly the Will of Ilúvatar. Manwë’s special province was the air, wind and clouds. His companion was Varda (or Elbereth Gilthoniel), the Lady of the Stars. Ulmo was the Lord of the Waters, the Poseidon of Arda. Aulë the Smith is Hephaestos or Vulcan, dealing with matters of the Earth, stone and jewels. His companion is Yavanna, the Earth Mother – Demeter or Ceres. Mandos is the Keeper of the Houses of the Dead, forgets nothing and knows all things that shall be. He pronounces his dooms and judgements only at the bidding of Manwë. He is inflexible and dispassionate and is rather like a recording device. He knows what is going to happen, but unlike Manwë, he does not understand the significance or relevance of it in the greater plan of Ilúvatar. For that reason he can only reveal his knowledge when Manwë lets him. Nienna the Weeper represents pity and suffering, but not despair. Those who hear her learn pity and endurance in hope. She brings strength to the spirit and turns sorrow to wisdom. Oromë is the Huntsman of the Valar, and the only Vala to have come to Middle-earth. He is Lord of animals and beasts. These eight are the Aratar or the Holy Ones of Arda. ‘In majesty they are peers, surpassing beyond compare all others.’15

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.