Gueroult: Professor Tolkien The Lord of the Rings is one of the most remarkable works of fiction of the century. and i'm going to start with one or two questions,
about possible source material. For example um i thought that, conceivably Midgard might be Middle-earth or have some connection? Tolkien: Oh yes they're the same word. Most people have made this mistake thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of earth or is another planet and you know in the science fiction sort. But it's simply an old-fashioned word for this world we live in, as imagined surrounded by the ocean. Gueroult: It seemed to me that Middle-earth was in a sense, as you say, ''this world we live in'' but um this world we live in at a different era. Tolkien: No … at a different stage of imagination … yes. Gueroult: Because this is interesting, because in The Lord of the Rings um particularly in appendices, you go to great trouble to get your chronology exactly correct, with respect to the four ages that you write about, but you make no attempt at all to tie this up with time as we know it today, why is this? Tolkien: Because it had been impossible. Because you would completely interfered with and trammelled one in a free invention of history and an incident of one story. Gueroult: Nevertheless, despite what you've just said, it seems to me that one could place most of the action if not all of the action within a fairly definite sort of time. Tolkien: It won't really work out, you know, either paleontologically or archaeologically at all, actually, I mean... and you can't really
relate the landmasses as I described them satisfactorily to the landmasses we know now, nor of course can you uh really have such a sort of mixed culture as I described which includes tobacco, umbrellas and other things to what little is known of the archaeological history. I wanted people simply to get inside this story and take it in a sense of actual history. It seemed to me that to be cut off by a big abyss of ages you had exactly the same effect you get in a scientific story when you go into some remote part of the galaxy. They don't really explain how but you get the sense of being far away that's all, in a possible world but far away. This is the same sort of thing in time isn't it? Gueroult: Oh yes but in uh what one might call science fiction the authors seldom go to the trouble anything like the trouble you've done in tying this imagined world so closely to the world as we know it. Because so much of this is very close to what we know i won't say today but in the recent historical past. Tolkien: Oh yes it really resembles some of the history of Greece and Rome as against the perpetual infiltration people out of the east isn't it? Gueroult: Yes. Tolkien: Yes, it certainly does that but, then of course a poor man, who building a story, has to build it out of some of the things he himself knows. He doesn't rush around doing Roman history and go and see what that happened. But that mean if he's been brought up as I was on ordinary history and on reading, that would be the material out of which he constructs. Gueroult: I've been interested in the fact that many of the names, of which you have created thousands in in the book i mean literally thousands, are very close to Norse legend names for example Gimli is the name of the hall of gold. Tolkien: Ah that's another point, yeah, this particular lot of Dwarves, as I call them came from the extreme north of my geography, and therefore in translating, as I explained in the section on translation, the kind of language they came up against there would be other northern kind. The Dwarves, you remember are represented as extremely secretive people, and have private names in their own secret language, and public names like like gypsies. Therefore i gave the north actual Norse names which are in Norse books. That's quite different, not that the my Dwarves really are at all like the Dwarves of Norse imagination but there's a whole list of rather attractive Dwarf names in one of the older Eddaic poems i'm afraid i simply bag them. Gueroult: But not only in the Dwarves there but among the descendants of the Elves, the race of Númenor, it seems to me that one or two of the names relates to other things, you speak of the two trees of Valinor Laurelin and the Telperion if my pronunciation is anything like that... Tolkien: Laurelin, Laurelin and Telperion yes the golden the golden song and the the white silver... Gueroult: have these... are these in any way reflections in your world of the the great world tree the Norse world tree? Tolkien: No, no they're not like, it they're much more like the trees the sun and the moon, it was covered in the far east in the... in the great Alexander stories. Gueroult: Trees play a very important part... Tolkien: Oh yes, indeed. Gueroult: ...throughout the the Lord of the Rings for example... well the the mallorn trees in Lothlórien and the white tree of the citadel of Minas Tirith. Tolkien: Oh yes they're all descendants yeah. Gueroult: These are trees that are more than trees because they are symbols of great importance um is there something in your own life in your own background... Tolkien: They're not symbols to me at all, I don't work in symbols at all, other people can find that they are symbolic they may be symbols in my mind but they're not symbols to me in my conscious mind at all. I'm entirely strictly minded. Gueroult: Well this is true perhaps, but nevertheless you use um the white tree of Minas Tirith as a symbol of lordship of kingship do you not? Tolkien: Oh well yes yes an emblem certainly yes... Gueroult: But not symbolic of anything more than... Tolkien: Well what are the leopards of England symbolic of? Gueroult: I state i take your point. Now, the rangers they protect Men and Hobbits from Sauron's servants. But particularly they seem to have a fondness for the Shire. Have you a particular fondness for these comfortable homely things of life that the Shire embodies?
The... you know home and pipe and fire and bed, the homely virtues? Tolkien: Haven't you? (laughs) Gueroult: Haven't you've professor? Tolkien: Of course, yes yes. Gueroult: You have a particular fondness then of the Hobbits. Tolkien: Yeah that's where I feel at home look the Shire is very like the kind of world which I first became aware of things, very like. Which was perhaps more poignant to me because i wasn't born in it. I was born in Bloemfontein South Africa. I was very young when i got back, but the same time, it bites into your memory and imagination even if you don't think it has. If your first Christmas tree is a wilting eucalyptus and if you're normally troubled by heat and sand then to have, just at the age of imagination is opening up. Suddenly find yourself in a quiet Warwickshire village. I think it engenders a particular love of what you might call Central Midland English countryside, based on good wall stones and elm trees and small quiet rivers and so on, and of course, sort of rustic people about. Gueroult: At what age did you come to England? Tolkien: I suppose... when i first landed about three and a half. Pretty poignant of course because you see one of the things why people say they don't remember is because, it's like constantly photographing the same thing on the same plate. Slight changes simply make a blur, but if a child's had a sudden break like that, uh it's conscious. What it tries to do is to um fit the new memories onto the old. I've got a perfectly clear vivid picture of a house, but i now know that it is in fact a beautifully worked out pastiche of my own home in Bloemfontein and mine grandmother's house in Birmingham.
Because I can still remember going down the road in Birmingham wondering what has happened to the gallery, what had happened to the balcony.
So constantly I do remember things extremely early I remember bathing in the Indian ocean. and I was not quite two and I remember it very clearly. Gueroult: I'm going to return again also to this
this business of memory and and looking back a great distance let me turn to another subject for a moment. Frodo accepts the burden of the Ring and he embodies, as a character the virtues of long suffering and perseverance and by his actions one might almost say
in the Buddhist sense he ''acquires merit''. He becomes, in fact, almost a Christ figure. Why did you choose a halfling a Hobbit for this role? Tolkien: I didn't. I didn't do much choosing, I wrote the Hobbit you see... all I was trying to do was carry on from the point where The Hobbit left off. There I'd got hobbits on my hands hadn't I? Gueroult: Indeed, but there's nothing particularly "Christ like” about Bilbo. Tolkien: Oh no... no no. Gueroult: It seemed to me strange that this small Hobbit from a small... Tolkien: I should say he was Christ-like i think there is a... personally... but because he has several... some of the features I guess accepting of a... Gueroult: Perhaps I've exaggerated. Tolkien: accepting a burden but... Gueroult: But in the face of the most appalling danger, he struggles on and continues, and wins through. Tolkien: But that seems, well I suppose, more like an allegory to the human race. I've always been impressed that we're here surviving because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds: jungles, volcanoes, wild beasts... they struggle on, almost blindly in a way. Frodo had very little idea really,
because he by the time he come to end of a quest he was beginning to understand things very much more. I thought the wisest remark in the whole book was that where Elrond says that the um... The wheels of the world are turned by the small hands, while the great are looking elsewhere and they turn because they have to, because it's their daily job. Gueroult: Did you intend in the Lord of the Rings that certain races should embody certain principles: the Elves wisdom, the Dwarves craftsmanship, men husbandry and battle and so forth? Tolkien: Didn't intend it, but when you got these people on your hands you've got to make them different haven't you?
Well of course as we all know ultimately we've only got... I only got humanity to work with. It's the only clay we've got and of course any races you make, if they're speaking and thinking, are what taken from certain parts of humanity as one knows it,
with slight alterations of emphasis. It's all you can do isn't it, really, ultimately. Because the Elves are simply uh in this sense of expression certain not really only legitimate desires human race has about itself. We should all, at least, large part of human race, would like to uh have greater power of mind, greater power of art, by which i mean, that the gap between the conception and the power of execution should be shortened, we should like that and we should like of course a longer time if not indefinite time which to to go on knowing more and making more.
Well therefore we make the Elves uh immortal in a sense I had to use immortal but I didn't mean that they were eternally immortal, merely that they are very longeval their longevity probably lasts as long as the inhabitability of the Earth.
The Dwarves of course quite obviously, couldn't you say in many ways they remind you of the Jews? All their words are Semitic, obviously constructed to be Semitic. This is a tremendous love of the of the artifact and of course the immense um warlike capacity of the Jews to which we tend to forget now and then. Hobbits are just rustic English people made small in size because it reflects the general small reach of their imagination. But it's not the small reach of their courage or latent power. Gueroult: Um you're obviously intensely interested in age for its own sake I mean Fangorn for example and the Ents are the eldest, they have been in existence longer. Tom Bombadil is described in fact is he not as the eldest. Tolkien: He's of course a very odd character but we won't interfere with you now you've asking about age...? Gueroult: Age as such you're very into... antiquity or greatly interested in long life in longevity. The Eldar's descendants all have this gift of longer life. Could you expand on that? Tolkien: That's different longer life that's that's purely that's what's... that's oneself that's because it's a... it's an added power this world. Also if you are intelligent an artistic person it gives you more time, both either to perfect your work or to get or to do more. That's rather different to the to the appeal of antiquity as so. I love history and i always feel, you... even when you walk into a room you really want to you want to know the history but not only the room but people. We walk in, with all this tremendous history behind us. But if you're writing a story, which you know you're going to come to the end of that history.
The history is always backwards isn't it? Gueroult: Did you evolve a system for naming these races and therefore the histories and alphabets literature and so on? Tolkien: I didn't evolve it i mainly used what I knew. but yeah that is rather difficult question, really, but uh every human being, at least
every human being has gifted at all in that way, has a what you might call, his own native language. That's quite distinct from the the first learnt what we call a native language of first learned. But every human being has an individual linguistic character, as he has an individual face, coloring, body. And i think therefore you'll find that people have what I should call linguistic pre-elections, but of course like one's physical characteristics that shifts a bit as you as you grow and also as you have more experience. Well the language I've entered tried to fit my actual personal linguistic pre-electional pleasure. Well now obviously from history those two languages have got to be uh related. They're quite different all you do is you have to posit a purely invented original form, original sound scheme, and then you have to make language ''A'', develop certain sound laws and come to ''B'' and... certain other ones produce ''B'' they will then be relation however little related they seem but it will have that sort of feeling. Gueroult: So therefore if you have for the purposes of the plot or purpose of some part of the book to invent a new name for a new character if you consciously say to yourself: in Quenya this name will be so and so, but in Sindarin his name will be this? Tolkien: Yes you do... In the first test it has to sound a nice name to me even if I don't know what it means, but then you of course come across this unfortunate fact that if it very doesn't always happen, that if you uh then work that those same elements with the same meaning into the into a name it doesn't always come out as a nice name in spite of that. So then you have to have to have to give him another name or do something about. Yes it's a minor technical craft actually. Gueroult: But it's an interesting technical craft because you do it with equal success when you name unpleasant characters like orcs because all your unpleasant characters are instantly identifiable as unpleasant characters the minute one reads their names. Tolkien: Yes i suppose they would, you wouldn't like, think much of a chap called Uglúk, could you now? Gueroult: Yet Dwarves, although they have names composed of similarly uncomfortable consonants to to the English ear, don't... the names are not unattractive immediately they're attractive. And this seems to me one of the great strengths of the book, amid this enormous conglomeration of names, one doesn't get lost. At least after the first reading after the second reading of the book one doesn't get lost. Tolkien: Cause he does need an extra, I'm very glad you told me because I gave a great deal of trouble, well you must you see my thing is I didn't try to use the languages which i did understand, which is off to all the primary most important of all cultural... ...humanize, you try to use them for that purpose, to characterize. Also because gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in the writing, always start with the name, give me a name and it produces a story not the other way back normally. Gueroult: Of the languages you know, which were the greatest help to you in writing the Lord of the Rings? Tolkien: I don't know... well because i started trying to invent languages almost at once because uh same way that my reading... of myth has been disturbed because I've never hardly got through any fairy stories without wanting to write one myself. Gueroult: It it's perhaps an added discipline to trace back anyway to sources in a work of the sort, but do you trace in the languages you invented more to Scandinavia or more... or later things like middle English or? Tolkien: I don't know no either out of these sort of modern languages or... I used to said that uh Welsh always attracted me, by its style and sound more than any other even though I first only saw it on coal trucks, I always wanted to know what it was about. Gueroult: It seems to me certainly that the music of Welsh comes through in the names, you've chosen for mountains and for places in general yeah do you acknowledge this? Tolkien: Yes very much, but a much rarer but very potent... in it for myself has been Finnish. Gueroult: Now women play very little part indeed in the Lord of the Rings, Éowyn is... is almost the only woman in the book who shows any sign of sexual awareness at all, did you deliberately exclude sex from the book? Tolkien: No, but after all these are wars and uh and a terrible expedition to the north pole so to speak. Gueroult: But um other writers have occasionally allowed their characters to digress if it be digression in this way. Tolkien: Surely there's no lack of interest as I... Gueroult: Oh it's not a case of lack of interest at all. Tolkien: Wouldn't you thought that uh that Galadriel... every character is tempted at some point. Wouldn't you call Galadriel's temptation and what she says about herself is significant? Gueroult: Yes i think so, but um there is always it's always at once removed. Tolkien: I don't know how to explain it I know that, how one reviewer explained it, he said: written by a man who's never reached puberty and knows nothing about women except for a school boy, and all his all his characters... all the good guys come home, like happy boys safe from the war. I thought it was very rude from a man as far as i know he's childish, (laughs) writing about a man surrounded with children, wife's daughter, grandchildren, still it isn't that that's not the reason because it's equally untrue isn't it? That uh that it's a happy story. One friend of mine said, he only read it in Lent because it was so hard and bitter. Gueroult: To turn to a practical point, how did the Lord of the Rings develop from the Hobbit because clearly it developed? Tolkien: Oh yeah, because um Hobbit was successful, naturally I was pressed for sequel, I looked for the only point in it that showed signs of development.
I thought we'd choose a Ring as the key to the next story that's well that's the mere ''germ'' of course, yeah. Then when I saw of course that if you're going to make a... I wanted to make a big story i felt... got to be ''the Ring'' that's not ''a magic ring''. I invented that little rhyme in my bath one day. Gueroult: Now this this ''germ'' actually of course is is also present isn't it in in many mythologies I mean in Scandinavian mythology there are the rings of power, are there not? Tolkien: Yes, yes there are... Gueroult: It's guarded by dragons is it not in Germanic legend? I suppose Smaug could might be interpreted as being a sort of Fáfnir. Tolkien: Oh yes very much so, except no the Fáfnir was a was a human being you see or a being uh humanoids with a being... took this form, whereas Smaug is... just he's pure intelligent lizard. Gueroult: You have a fondness for intelligent lizards? Tolkien: Dragons always attracted me as a... mythological element. They seem to be able to comprise human malice and bestiality together... and sort of malicious wisdom and shrewdness... a terrifying creature. Gueroult: Asking how the Lord of the Rings began leads onto this question... Tolkien: Then it grew... then it grew without control. Gueroult: Without control this is the point you did not have a scheme (Tolkien: No, no) no outline at all? Tolkien: Well except there was a major one, that the ring got to be... Gueroult: I mean did you know the ring had to be destroyed from the beginning? Tolkien: Oh yes, yes, you see because Gandalf says so quite early. Therefore at some point where a Hobbit... he's got to make his way to the um to cracks of doom obviously isn't it. That's the only thing, and several times I tried to write that last scene ahead of time it never... it didn't come out, it never worked. All I had to wait for it to come through. Gueroult: Did you decide right at the beginning that Gollum was to play such a part, or did you go back to the book after and write in the various linking parts of Gollum? Tolkien: Couldn't get Gollum out could you? If you think the Gollum's relation to the Ring. If the Ring is going to be important then the Gollum business must be important. I liked him better than all the other characters and (I'm) much more sorry for him. Gueroult: But you see this is interesting because, he's practically the only gray character, with a possible exception of Boromir right to the book Tolkien: And Denethor. Gueroult: And Denethor yes, the others are almost completely black and white. Tolkien: They all have their temptations actually Gueroult: They all have their temptations, but nevertheless, the moment you've established your character um your reader knows what is his own personal character is, he's going to be a goodie or a baddie. Tolkien: Yes yes well of course yes, one knows that isn't generally true I have to simplify a little bit. Gueroult: That's why Gollum is so interesting because one you know he he almost repents one point doesn't he where he sees Frodo... Tolkien: That's to me the most poignant the whole story the most poignant moment of all, because it's it's so terribly true, it's the good people that do the damage so often. It was fair Sam's suspicious faith for this was very much justified, which ruin Gollum. You see that if you go a long long way in wickedness, then comes your chance which you can't therefore demand that you made nice and easy at that point, it's going to be probably very sticky the last chance and he was too sticky for gold. Because i printed a lot of thought about it because he grew on me I mean i almost could see gover... Where I've been most criticized by certain people, and what I think are the most right is making point of fact, though I do praise them for seeing it, is Frodo actually failed.
The thing that people some people have said about it so strongly, there is a thought in this age when we are now faced with a... with the absolute certainty of pressures which can't be resisted. People do good people who realize more clearly than ever did before that the motives which would go into such a situation are so important. It's very rash to put yourself in a position to know to be too powerful for you, that's presumption. If you're going with a good emotion and then land in a position which you can't face up to, then that's up to the government isn't it? Some people have been very angry about it. Sold people... the private management systems we came back after being brainwashed in that ratchet, or giving them something away I suppose. A design of mind that steal advances, hmm... Gueroult: That's true yes yes, but you find that your correspondence in fact, complain a great deal about certain incidents in the story, or have complained? Tolkien: I one said nothing is roughly true the devotion listen to my correspondence every part of the Lord of the Rings is a failure or or it's only weakness.
On the other hand there's another list which every part which is its particular strength. Gueroult: At what point, i'd like to know if you can judge at all did the book take control of you? Tolkien: Long before i wrote the Hobbit and long before I wrote this there I ahead constructed this world mythology it was already in existence it was offered to the... publish book before the... (and..) This mythology and the Eldar and the Valar the western paradise and the Elves and the Dwarves and so on, they don't uh... they don't arise the first time in this book, they'd already been constructed. There's nothing in the... in the appendices referred to, that hasn't already been written. Gueroult: So you had some sort of scheme on which it was possible to work? Tolkien: Well, immense sagas, yes... I rather simply think, I got sucked into it as the Hobbit did itself, you see, The Hobbit was originally about his job, but as soon he got moving out into the world it got moved and slipped into it. Gueroult: So your characters and your story really took charge? I say took charge, i don't mean that you were completely under their spell or anything of the sort. Tolkien: Oh no no, I don't walk about dreaming at all no no (laughs) it isn't an obsession any way. Another people have had written large things they were the same sensation that... um you have some days, maybe a purely psychological delusion, you have a sensation, that... um at this point A, B, C, D only A or one of them is right and you've got to wait until you see. Of course there's no doubt subconscious because i'm working on these thing. Anyway there's no good trying to uh to anticipate, because all the things I've tried to write ahead of times, just to direct myself, all proved to be no good when you got there. It was story I guess written backwards as well as forwards. Gueroult: This is i thought probably yes. Tolkien: Well you see Boromir, well he had to be put back, it became important at a certain point, because he had to be put right back
into the... into book one. Because i had maps of course. If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map, otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards. The moons, I think, finally the moons and the suns have worked out according to what they were in this part of the world in 1942 actually. They must have something where they... I mean one... I couldn't i'm not a good enough mathematician or astronomer, to work out where they might have been seven thousand eight thousand years ago.
But as long as they correspond to some real configuration i thought it was good enough. Moons are much more tricky to deal with than the suns of course but on the whole, I don't think the moon is full or rise in the wrong place. Gueroult: You began in '42 did you, to write it? Tolkien: Oh no, I began as soon as The Hobbit was out - in the '30s. Gueroult: And when did you... it was finally finished just before it was published in '54 Tolkien: I wrote the last thing about 1949 I think. I remember I actually wept at the field of Cormallen, where of course the tears come easier I think and there would do no more thing on it. But then, of course, tremendous... revision. I typed that whole work out twice and lots of it, many times, on a bed in an attic. But then couldn't afford the um course of the typing. There was some mistakes too and also what I... amusing me to say, because I suppose, I'm in a position which it doesn't matter what people think of me now. There's some frightful mistakes in grammar, from a professor of English language literally shocking isn't it? Gueroult: I haven't noticed any. Tolkien: There's one where I used bestrode as a past participle of bestride (laughs). Well there's a lot of things like that yeah. Gueroult: Will you ever correct them at another edition or... ? Tolkien: I have sent in some corrections but they're always into the new ones cropping up. Yes there are some... and of course 'Dwarves', really mistaking grammar of course I've tried to cover it up, but it's just purely the fact that uh... I have a tendency to uh to increase the number of these vestigial approvals, which is a change of concept like: leaf/leaves. My tendency is to make more of them than now is standard. And I'm afraid I really thought dwarf/Dwarves, wolf/wolves, why not? Gueroult: Did you evolve the languages before you wrote the book? Tolkien: Oh yes, yes... . Well, yes I've ordered them a little I mean. Did long before, in fact they began the folly for my mythology. Gueroult: For what purpose just for fun? Tolkien: Expressing one's tastes, after all isn't that what artists do? Gueroult: Of course but you see an artist paints a picture presumably for himself but occasionally with communication in mind. Had you invented these languages with any sense of communication with other people? Tolkien: No but I hope to find when I founded the book. Yes yes of course it's not an uncommon you know, as most of my boys is frowned on because they get a guilt complex about it because it's taking off their time for something else. And enormously a greater number of children have that, what you might call a creative element in them there's usually, I suppose. And it doesn't necessarily limit it to certain thing. They may not want to paint or draw and not have much music, but they nonetheless want to create something. And if the the main mass of education takes linguistic form, it'll take... the creation will take linguistic form even if it's in one of their talents, won't it? it's so strongly common i once did to think that it's an awful bit... ought to be some organized research and i think be very fascinating not only from the point of view of of art education and impact of education on that part which would be fascinating from that point of view it is extraordinary interesting in getting a large body of uh of records of the linguistic pre-elections of children at certain ages. Gueroult: Do you feel any sense of guilt at all that as a philologist as a professor of English language, with which you were concerned with the factual sources of language you devoted a large part of your life to a fictional thing? Tolkien: No actually it done language a lot of good (laugh). No... no there's quite a lot of linguistic wisdom in it. I don't feel any guilt complex about the Lord of the Rings, because many people have said: Now we know what you wasted... wasted the last 14 years upon, you can now get on and complete some of the professional tasks which you neglected. Usually I tried it out I was more busy working at my proper things, I mean... yes. Gueroult: Is the book to be considered as an allegory? Tolkien: No, no. I dislike category whenever I smell it. Gueroult: Do you consider the world declining as the third age declines in your book? And do you see a fourth age for the world at the moment, our world? Tolkien: Well the person of my age, you see, he's exactly the kind of person who's lived through one of the most quickly changing periods known to history. That the world is a totally different place now. At a speed everybody feels that, anybody who lives over 70 begins to feel that uh all through history will see that they do but surely never been in 70 years so much change. Gueroult: Oh surely never no this... I mean one doesn't have to be 70 years old to appreciate this fact... Tolkien: This is the world which I brought up as a small child was indefinitely closer to the world of Shakespeare... Gueroult: There's an autumnal quality throughout the whole of the Lord of the Rings, there's a sense of continuos change each character feels himself to be part of a story that's forever continuing you in one case... um a character says: the story is continue but I seem to have dropped out of it, (yes) however everything is declining and it's fading at least towards the end of the third age. Every choice tends to be upsetting of some tradition, now this seems to me to be somewhat like Tennyson's “The old order changeth yielding place to new and God fulfills himself in many ways...”
Where is God in the Lord of the Rings? Tolkien: Mentioned once or twice. Gueroult: Is he the one above the... Tolkien:The One... yes. Gueroult: Despite the continuous war between evil personified in Sauron and good you never personalize or personify goodness. Good is there but it's totally abstract, you don't attempt to ascribe any um Godship to it particularly. Tolkien: No, no there's isn't a dualistic mythology it's based on, no. No certainly not. Gueroult: But I mean the whole book is nevertheless nothing but the battle between good and evil. Tolkien: Well that's, I suppose actually conscious reaction from the war from these stuff that I was brought up in a "War to end all wars" I couldn't... Which I didn't believe in at the time and I believe in less now. Gueroult: If I can take this a bit further you I may make my point clearer. In battle Frodo and Sam call on Galadriel or their native country, Gimli calls on his ancestor's axe if I read your appendices correctly and the Men call only on their swords by name or on their kings or lords.
I would expect them to call on their gods and yet amid thousands of names
you don't name the deities of any of the races you've invented why?
Have they no gods as such? Tolkien: There aren't any. Gueroult: I would've thought a story of this sort was almost dependent upon an intense believe in some theocratic division, some hierarchy. Tolkien: There is is indeed that's where the theocratic hierarchy comes in. The man of the 20th century must of course see that you must have, whether he believes in them or not, you must have gods in the story of this kind. But he can't make himself believe in god's like Thor, Odin, Aphrodite, Zeus and that kind of thing. Gueroult: You can't believe that the Men in your story would have called on Odin? Tolkien: I couldn't possibly construct a mythology which had uh Olympus or Asgard in it, on the terms in which uh the people who'd worshiped those gods believed in. God is the supreme the creator, outside
the transcendent. But the the place of the uh the ''gods'' is taken. So well taken I think it really makes no
difference to the ordinary reader... is taken by the angelic spirits created by God, created before the particular time sequence which we
call the World which is called in their language ''Eä'' - ''That which is''
that which now exists. Those are the Valar the powers...
it's a construction of geo-mythology in which a large part of the demiurgic
of things has been handed over to powers that are creating there under The One. it's something like but much more elaborate and more thought out that uh C.S. Lewis's business in his ''Out of the silent planet'' where you have a... we have a demiurgus who's electing command of the of the planet Mars. And the idea there was that Lucifer was originally the one in command of the world but he fell. So it was a silent planet because it fallen out left was the idea. Well this is not the same with me. Gueroult: Yes yes... so then you have in your theocracy you have an ultimate one whom you call Tolkien: He's called The One only. Gueroult: The One only, and then the Valar who are considered as living in Valinor. Tolkien: This particular little group of them who... who were removed from other paths of universe to do this part because they became interested in it. Gueroult: In the book I get the impression you always see power as being physically in a high place. You have high seat as Orthanc, Meduseld, Barad Dur the towers of Minas Tirith and Morgul and Cirith Ungol they are always high physically up. Is power for you always, so to speak, at the top of a mountain or top... Tolkien: Well that's just a symbol isn't it or no, matter of fact, it's just a storytelling long towers and so on. You could have them down in the dungeon or underneath it, there are, matter of fact, Morgoth the prime mover of evil whom Sauron was only a petty lieutenant..., lives in a dungeon... there's been a fortress of some kind... not that the Valinor has any high towers just... Gueroult: Well that is almost without the world you describe isn't it? Tolkien: It's in the physical world according to the myth. (Ahh) Until the downfall of Atlantis.
I have an Atlantis complex in addition to all these other things. and quite independent of that I... a permanent uh dream that I had, you know let's say that uh the ineluctable wave has been one of my nightmares sometimes coming in over the open country. It always ends by one surrendering themselves and wakes up. It comes in all kinds of points like whenever i used to doodle and draw nearly always a lone figuratively, vast oceanic wave coming in. So of course I had to write quite in appendices these Atlantis stories which I call Númenor which means the land
of the extreme west, Westernesse. Well this is the fable, you see, since the whole question of the human fall is left off the stage actually. It occurred but they're not learned these since the regress of these people. They were given this great island the fairest of all West, not in the... in the divine world, not in the immortal world, to live on. And then of course will always come a seemingly meaningless ban, like the fruit of the tree of evil, C.S. Lewis used the same thing in his 'Perelandra'. Their ban was they mustn't sail west... they did... Gueroult: Hence the ultimate downfall. Tolkien: Then became an intellectual people lived there only in memory it lived in time but not present time. And of course the Númenor was drowned and the earthly paradise was removed so then... you could then get to Central America. Told you that the world became round because it always had been a vast globe but they... but people could now sail around discovered it's round. And that's my solution of the... I also want to give the fall of Atlantis some universal application. Because the point is really, I've written this as story language, as they get to that... you suddenly see the real coverage of the world going down like a bridge. You're on a line which leads to what was, of course I don't (know) what your theory of time is but what was, what is... or it never had an existence must... still has that same existence but that's just so... we won't go... you can't go too deeply in those things but they really are sailing back to a world of memory. Gueroult: In this world which you might have created had you been given the power to do so, had you been one of the Valar had you been say the Morgoth um would you have created a world which is so solidly feudal as the Lord of the Rings? Tolkien: Oh yes very much so yeah i think the Feudal... you mean Feudal... Gueroult: in the wider sense. Tolkien: ...in the French sense. Not in the strict way (Gueroult: Oh no no no, in the wider sense.) for land owning..? Tolkien: Hierarchical, rather. Gueroult: Hierarchical, exactly, yes. I mean that that power should descend by a line of kings to their sons... Tolkien: The heredity yes yes... I don't know about that no it's... it's a very potent uh story making and a motive thing but um How far would you say did it really worked better than any other system in looking at the history of the world one doubt it's very much. it's never been worse to generate that the... the struggle for power to always ensues when you haven't got some line of descent which can't be questioned. Gueroult: You're... you're wedded to the feudal system in a sense? Not... I don't mean the medieval feudal system but the idea of of... of power descending through through um blood through marriage or... Tolkien: Yes, I am already to those kind of loyalties because uh I think contrary to most people, I think that... touching your cap to the Squire may be damn bad for the Squire but it's damn good for you. Gueroult: Do you find a continuing interest in the Lord of the Rings by people? Do people still write you, despite the fact that the book's been out for 10 years? Tolkien: Dozens of letters a week, yeah. All I've been keeping a secretary to answer them, yeah. Gueroult: Were you surprised at its success? Tolkien: Nobody'd been more staggered... unless it's possibly Stanley Unwin. I was up at the Stanley Unwin's birthday celebration and a
bookseller came up to me I don't usually get greeted with such fair but he said that while he got a copy it sold so well he practically kept him going (laughs). Well he gets his Guinea off the set you see? Gueroult: Almost the last question um, do you in fact, believe, yourself, not in the context of this book, believe in the sense of straightforward strict belief, in the Eldar or in some form of governing spirits? Tolkien: Well the Eldar must be distinguished from the Valar, Eldar only... Gueroult: The Valar I mean... I'm sorry. Tolkien: Yeah... um... Gueroult: Are in fact a theist? Tolkien: Oh, I'm a Roman Catholic... a devout Roman Catholic yes but uh, I don't know about angelology, yes I should've thought almost certainly i mean... yes certainly. Gueroult: Well they seem to me to be the saints or the equivalent of the saints Tolkien: Well they are in some ways take the place in this book of the uh things which in many of the legends you have the gods and the invocation of the saints which are lesser angels and so, yes they do. Oh well obviously many people have noticed that the appealing to the lady the queen of the stars like Roman Catholic of implications of our Lady. Gueroult: Do you wish to be remembered chiefly by your writings on philology on other matters or by the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit? Tolkien: I shouldn't thought that I could have much choice in it but if I'm remembered at all, it'l be by the Lord of the Rings i'd take it. I wouldn't mind the other being remembered but i have a conscious that they're... small and not very important. Won't it be rather like the case of Longfellow, won't it? People remember the Longfellow wrote Hiawatha, and perhaps they quite forget he was professor of modern languages.
Awesome! Gonna unwind from a long day with some longbottom leaf tonight while listening to this. Just what I needed
Ok, so, humanity, here's the plan: first person to invent a time machine goes back and has Tolkien do an audiobook of LOTR.
He sounds like Professor Slughorn from the Harry Potter movies
Watched the first 10 minutes. It's really fascinating. Can't wait to finish the rest. I don't know why I've never thought of looking up interviews with him before.
I haven’t listened to this. I am going to the store, on an adventure to get some things now. After I get things, I daresay I shall enjoy an autumn toke and listen to this in entirety. Fascinating, thank you good person 🙏☮️❤️🎶
Wow. This is priceless. I have the special edition eBook of the Hobbit, which has some fragments of narration by Tolkien. But hearing the man himself answer questions about middle earth is brilliant.
He sounds like a wonderful, impish man.
I can’t help but hear Bilbo’s dialogue in the professor’s voice now. This seems exactly how Bilbo would speak to me. Gandalf I imagine sounding something like Lewis
Quote from Tolkien himself:
Q:... did you deliberately exclude sex from the book?
Tolkien: No, but after all these are wars and a terrible expedition to the North Pole so to speak...