Master of Middle Earth

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by Paul H. Kocher


  Her slaying of the Nazgûl chief brings her the one and would have brought her the other also had not Aragorn's powers of healing called her back to life. Standing with Éomer at his sister's bedside in the House of Healing, Aragorn tries delicately to diagnose for Éomer the origins of her malady without mentioning her passionate love for himself. But Éomer has been present when the two first met and has had eyes to see what happened. "I hold you blameless in this matter, as in all else," he says forthrightly. Gandalf adds the other element of the diagnosis, which Éomer has not noticed, the frenzied beating of the wings of Éowyn's spirit against the walls of Edoras, wanting freedom. Aragorn then takes the occasion to unburden his heart to his friend about the suffering he felt in having to act as he did: "Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned." Sorrow and pity for her rode with him all through the days of his summoning the faithless dead, and he feared for what she might do in her despair. Yet, says Aragorn, she did not love him as she loves her brother Éomer. To her Aragorn was only "a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds and lands far from the fields of Rohan"—in short, a method of escape from home. The truth of this insight is borne out by her sure and swift turning to Faramir as she comes to know his manliness and love for her during their long convalescence together. Her public troth-plighting to him closes the chapter between her and Aragorn. She looks at Aragorn, now King, and asks, "Wish me joy, my liege-lord and healer!" And he answers, "I have wished thee joy ever since first I saw thee. It heals my heart to see thee now in bliss." It is symptomatic of his ease that he now dares to use to her the familiar thee with which she addressed him in her wooing but which he avoided in addressing her. Never has Tolkien looked into the human heart to better purpose than in this inset tale of Éowyn and Aragorn.

  But before all this can happen Aragorn must show the stuff of which he is made by winning Gondor. He grows in strength and sureness of touch with each passing test. His companions are drawn after him along the grim underground Paths of the Dead not only by the strength of his will but by their love for him, says Legolas. "For all who come to know him come to love him after their own fashion . . ." He is the heir of Isildur in action as well as name when he holds the unresting spirits of the oath-breakers to their pledge, and leads them on the wild ride that sends the Haradrim and the pirates of Umbar reeling in terror from Pelargir. There, and on the plains of Pelennor, he overcomes the enemies of Gondor by arms. But Gondor itself he overcomes by love. Éomer is already his loyal friend and supporter. Prince Imrahil and the city's other leaders in the field he wins as much by forbearing to press his title to the throne lest it rouse untimely divisions in the city as by its inherent validity and his own increasingly obvious ability to rule better than anyone else. He camps outside the walls on the night after the victory only as lord of the northern Rangers, and when called in by Gandalf to heal the sick enters heavily cloaked. His power over sickness, resembling that of medieval kings to cure the "king's evil," is taken by all as a divine gift, which can belong only to a sovereign. Under its virtue Faramir, recalled from the shadows, looks up at Aragorn with "a light of knowledge and love" and asks, "What does the king command?" His fealty is instant, complete, and lasting. And he occupies the crucial post of ruling Steward by reason of Denethor's death. The hearts of the citizens likewise turn to Aragorn while he labors all night among the wounded. They are looking for leadership anyway, and Aragorn comes to them with all the authentic marks of monarch and savior.

  Much has been written, and justly, about the self-sacrificial courage of Frodo and Sam in the last stages of their journey through Mordor. But few or none have remarked on the equal if less solitary unselfish daring displayed by the mere seven thousand men whom Aragorn and his peers lead up to the Black Gate to challenge the ten times ten thousands inside. They come as a decoy knowing they are bound to be overwhelmed unless Frodo and Sam are still alive (they have not been heard from in weeks) and can first throw the Ring into Mount Doom. Destroying it even an hour too late will not save the little army outside. But meantime they are there to give the Ring-bearer his maximum opportunity by distracting Sauron's attention for the longest possible time. So desperate are the odds that some of the boldest have quailed along the way and have been sent back by Aragorn to posts of lesser terror where they can still be useful. Characteristically, he has done it with pity for weakness but without giving up the principle that duty requires those to go on who can: "But keep what honour you may and do not run!" he tells those he dismisses. The rest march on to face despair in the final parley, when the Mouth of Sauron produces Frodo's mithril coat and Sam's sword as proof that the two are taken and that the seven thousand have acted as bait in vain. Without hope they stand firm against Sauron's onsets until suddenly the sounds of ruin inside Mordor tell them that their gamble has actually worked. Frodo, or rather Gollum, has saved them at the last breath, but they no less have saved the hobbits and so the West.

  The ceremonies by which Aragorn ascends the throne are just what they should be. Magnificent in themselves, they reenact and refer back to the historical events from which he derives his title, and they unite all the elements of the kingdom in a common consent which will assure its future political stability. On the morning of the coronation Aragorn, accompanied by Gandalf, Éomer, Imrahil, and the four hobbits, steps out from the ranks of the returning army and walks up to the city walls, where he is met by Faramir as Steward. Faramir, calling himself "the last Steward of Gondor," holds out in surrender the white rod of his office. Aragorn returns it with the command to carry out his function. This proves to be a full, stately recital of all the titles that identify Aragorn as the rightful King returned, ending with a question called out to the assembled citizens of Gondor: "Shall he be king and enter into the City and dwell there?" In answer "all the host and all the people cried yea with one voice." If this is not democracy by secret ballot it is certainly enthusiastic popular consent. The people as well as the chief have been consulted. Sauron would have done everything opposite.

  Now comes the coronation itself. Faramir produces from the house of tombs the crown worn by Eanur, the last king before the line of Stewards began. It bears the seabird wings and the seven gems surmounted by the great jewel star of Eärendil, worn by Elendil when he founded Gondor. Holding up the crown, Aragorn repeats in Elvish Elendil's promise when he landed from Númenor: "Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this plaice will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world." Aragorn is making the promise his own. But he does not crown himself. He asks that the circlet be carried by the Ring-bearer to Gandalf, who is to set it on Aragorn's head. This is his modest and deeply felt recognition that "by the labour and valour of many I have come into my inheritance" and that Gandalf "has been the mover of all that has been accomplished, and this is his victory." Gandalf invokes religion as he crowns the kneeling Aragorn: "Now come the days of the King, and may they be blessed while the thrones of the Valar endure!" And with this, King Elessar enters the Citadel and unfurls the banner Arwen sewed for him.

  Aragorn the man recedes from us into Aragorn the King. But there are still times when the regal robes are off. One such moment is the morning when Gandalf and he climb together on the slopes of Mount Min-dolluin behind the city. Oppressed by the long prospects of responsibility stretching ahead and aware of Gandalf's imminent departure, Aragorn feels his loneliness: "I would still have your counsel," he confesses. It does not comfort him to know that Gandalf's work is done and his own only begun. He looks ahead, too, to the time of his own death and wonders who will rule after him if he has no children. Symbolically, the Tree in the courtyard at Minas Tirith still stands withered and barren. Gandalf then finds for him near the snowline the sapling of the White Tree, which, transplanted to the courtyard, will grow and bloom and bear other saplings in other years. As if to seal this promise of continu
ance, Arwen comes to be Aragorn's Queen, the future mother of sons and daughters.

  Aragorn's first public acts justify confidence that he will be a strong, just, and far-sighted ruler. His foreign policy is designed to make friends of the Easterlings and Southrons, who have been traditional enemies of the West. He spares those captured in the War and sends them home free men. With their countries he signs equitable treaties of amity and commerce. Sauron's slaves he manumits and settles on fertile land of which he makes them owners. To the primitive woses he gives in perpetuity the Druadan Forest in which they live. Ithilien is to be resettled by Faramir as Prince, and restored to loveliness. Mordor is razed. The ents are to reforest the rubble of Isengard. Aragorn himself will rebuild the former capital of the North Kingdom at Fornost. Roads will be cleared, communications restored, and the societies of hobbits, dwarves, men, ents, and other beings, which Sauron's policy estranged from one another, will be knit together again as they should be. In token of this reunion elves, dwarves, and men join to refurbish and expand the capital city of Minas Tirith. All is not joyful in the new dispensation, for the elves are going. Other Saurons, other wars, he somewhere ahead. But Aragorn's friendship for all races of good will fit him well to inaugurate the Age of Men in a world still populous with many species of intelligent life.

  Chapter VII : Seven Leaves

  It is easy for the student to feel that with all his labour he is collecting only a few leaves, many of them now torn or decayed, from the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted. It seems vain to add to the litter . . . But that is not true . . . Each leaf, of oak and ash and thorn, is a unique embodiment of the pattern, and for some this very year may be the embodiment, the first ever seen and recognized, though oaks have put forth leaves for countless generations of men.

  "On Fairy-stories," p. 56

  1. "Leaf by Niggle"

  This short tale (written about 1939, published in 1945)1 is an apparently simple but actually quite intricate vision of the struggles of an artist to create a fantasy world and of what happens to him and his work after death. The artist, in this case a painter named Niggle (he might equally well have been a writer), is racing against the summons of death to complete his one great canvas, a picture of a Tree with a background of forest and distant mountains. Because of outside distractions and his own weaknesses he dies leaving it unfinished. After death he goes through a period of discipline in Purgatory and thereafter finds himself inside the landscape depicted by his painting, which he is now able to complete with the aid of a neighbor, Parish, who was a prime hindrance to his work during life. He is then free to travel toward the mountains, which represent the next highest stage in his spiritual growth.

  This little plot, so bald in summary, is in fact crowded with allegories, which give literary form to views about fantasy writing expounded by Tolkien in his lecture, "On Fairy-stories," delivered at the University of St. Andrews only a year before. The close connections between the tale and the lecture were pointed out by Tolkien himself when he printed them together under the newly devised joint title Tree and Leaf in 1964. "Though one is an 'essay' and the other a 'story,'" he wrote in the Introductory Note, "they are related: by the symbols of Tree and Leaf, and by both touching in different ways on what is called in the essay 'subcreation.' "2

  First as to the symbols. "Leaf" of course refers literally to any leaf in the foliage of Niggle's Tree, and also more specifically to the particular painted Leaf rescued from the destruction of the picture as a whole and hung in the Museum under the caption "Leaf: by Niggle." Figuratively, it stands for any single story taken out of a greater connected body of narratives; and also for this one story of Tolkien's, "Leaf by Niggle," seen in detachment from the whole body of his writing. The other symbol, "Tree," stands sometimes for that same whole body of Tolkien writing, but more often for the living, growing tradition of fairy stories in general, which the essay "On Fairy-stories" calls the "Tree of Tales." In the essay the collective literary productions of human wonder are centrally visualized as a tree with many branches having an "intricately knotted and ramified history." Some pages farther on Tolkien develops the image in great detail.

  The student of history, he writes, may feel that "he is collecting only a few leaves, many of them torn or decayed, from the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted." It may seem impossible for anyone now to contribute a new Leaf, a new individual story, to this ancient marvel. But "the seed of the tree can be replanted in any soil," even that polluted by modern industrialism, and "each leaf, of oak and ash and thorn, is a unique embodiment of the pattern." In that final phrase, particularly, lies one germ of the story concerning Niggle's Tree, which Tolkien praises as "quite unique in its way," and of his Leaf, about which the Second Voice says, "a Leaf by Niggle has a charm of its own."

  Another germ of the story was a large poplar free outside Tolkien's window, which he often watched while lying in bed before, it was first mutilated and later chopped down. He confides as much in the Introductory Note to Tree and Leaf.3 But this is not the only, or the most significant, piece of autobiography he reveals in the Note. Both the essay and the story, he writes there, were composed during the same period (1938-1939) when he was writing the first nine chapters of The Lord of the Rings, which brought Frodo and his hobbit friends as far as the inn at Bree. There Tolkien's invention failed him: "I had then no more notion than they of what had become of Gandalf or who Strider was; and I had begun to despair of surviving to find out." The latter part of the sentence is eloquent of his state of mind at the time. Having barely survived the First World War, he feared that he would not survive the Second, which then loomed more and more ominously. He felt a sense of urgency and despair at the prospect of not living to complete not only The Lord of the Rings but the still vaster history of the early Ages of Middle-earth, which lay in fragments in his workshop. When we find Niggle in the same situation it is only natural to see a good dead of Tolkien in his story. In fact, allowing for artistic differences, the story may well be looked at as an effort on Tolkien's part to find some underlying meaning for all his labors, if not in this life then in the next.

  Along this line of interpretation we notice that Nig-gle's world, like Tolkien's, is unmistakably Christian. It is governed by very strict laws (moral and religious in nature) requiring each man to help his needy neighbor, even at painful cost to himself and even in the absence of both gratitude and desert. These laws are enforced externally by an inspector. Internally their sanction lies in Niggle's own conscience and his imperfectly generous heart. He was "kind-hearted in a way. You know the sort of kind heart: it made him uncomfortable more often than it made him do anything; and even when he did anything it did not prevent him from grumbling, losing his temper, and swearing . . . All the same it did land him in a good many odd jobs for his neighbor, Mr. Parish, a man with a lame leg." Other interruptions to Niggle's painting, however, come from his own idleness, failure of concentration, and lack of firmness. Meantime he neglects to prepare for the long journey he has been told is imminent, and he is taken unawares by the coming of the Black Driver to take him through the dark tunnel. This situation inevitably recalls that in the medieval drama Everyman, to which Tolkien is giving a modern adaptation.

  In the workhouse on the other side (an updated version of Dante's Purgatorio) Niggle is assigned hard labors aimed at correcting his sins and weaknesses. He learns to work at set intervals, to be prompt, to finish every task, to plan, to think in orderly fashion, to serve without grumbling. He is then ready to hear a dialogue between two voices, discussing what is to be done with him, one voice insisting on justice, the other pleading for mercy. Here the resemblance is to the debate between the four daughters of God—Righteousness and Truth against Mercy and Peace—at the judging of souls, a favorite theme in medieval drama and poetry. One prominent instance of it con-eludes the famous Castle of Perseverance. That Tolkien should employ tech
niques and ideas drawn from the literature of a period he knew so well is not surprising.4 But his success in acclimatizing them to our times is remarkable. Again we are justified in stressing that they were, and still are, Catholic.

  The other half of the connection between Niggle's story and the essay, mentioned in the Introductory Note to Tree and Leaf, is that they both touch "in different ways on what is called in the essay 'sub-creation.' " What different ways, and what is this thing called subcreation? The essay defines and analyzes subcreation as the process by which human imagination invents secondary worlds strange to the everyday primary world in which we live and move, but nevertheless possessed of an internal consistency of their own. Furthermore, and most-significant for the Niggle story, the best of these imagined worlds reflect dimly a higher reality lying behind the appearances of the primary world: "Probably every writer making a secondary world . . . hopes that the peculiar qualities of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from reality or are flowing into it . . . The peculiar quality of the 'joy' in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth."3

  Tolkien means Niggle's fate to be a literary embodiment of this doctrine. For, when the Voice of mercy wins its traditionally required victory he finds himself standing in the middle of the very landscape in his painting, left unfinished at his death, and looking right at the Tree, which was its main feature. The Tree is now finished, he sees. But its leaves are "as he imagined them rather than as he made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had time." In short, Niggle is now seeing clearly the reality of which he had only a partial vision while on earth. That this is Tolkien's meaning is made plain by a dialogue between a shepherd and Niggle's neighbor Parish, who joins him in the same landscape and is amazed that it should have been represented by the despised painting: "But it did not look like this then, not real," he exclaims in wonder. He is rebuked by the shepherd: "No, it was only a glimpse then . . . but you might have caught the glimpse, if ever you had thought it worth while to try." This key word glimpse, here twice written, is used several times in the essay in the same context to characterize the brief clouded insight into permanence which is all that a writer of tales can hope to catch.8

 

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