The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

  Actually in the imagination of this story we are now living on a physically round Earth. But the whole ‘legendarium’ contains a transition from a flat world (or at least an with borders all about it) to a globe: an inevitable transition, I suppose, to a modern ‘myth-maker’ with a mind subjected to the same ‘appearances’ as ancient men, and partly fed on their myths, but taught that the Earth was round from the earliest years. So deep was the impression made by ‘astronomy’ on me that I do not think I could deal with or imaginatively conceive a flat world, though a world of static Earth with a Sun going round it seems easier (to fancy if not to reason).

  The particular ‘myth’ which lies behind this tale, and the mood both of Men and Elves at this time, is the Downfall of Númenor: a special variety of the Atlantis tradition. That seems to me so fundamental to ‘mythical history’ – whether it has any kind of basis in real history, pace Saurat and others, is not relevant – that some version of it would have to come in.

  I have written an account of the Downfall, which you might be interested to see. But the immediate point is that before the Downfall there lay beyond the sea and the west-shores of Middle-earth an earthly Elvish paradise Eressëa, and Valinor the land of the Valar (the Powers, the Lords of the Westfn35), places that could be reached physically by ordinary sailing-ships, though the Seas were perilous. But after the rebellion of the Númenóreans, the Kings of Men, who dwelt in a land most westerly of all mortal lands, and eventually in the height of their pride attempted to occupy Eressëa and Valinor by force, Númenor was destroyed, and Eressëa and Valinor removed from the physically attainable Earth: the way west was open, but led nowhere but back again – for mortals.

  Elendil and his sons were the chiefs of the small ‘faithful’ party that took no part in the attempt to seize world-power and immortality by force, and they escaped the drowning of Númenor, and were borne east on a great storm, and cast up on the west-shores of Middle-earth, where they established their realms. But there was no going back for them or any mortal men; hence their nostalgic mood.

  But the promise made to the Eldar (the High Elves – not to other varieties, they had long before made their irrevocable choice, preferring Middle-earth to paradise) for their sufferings in the struggle with the prime Dark Lord had still to be fulfilled: that they should always be able to leave Middle-earth, if they wished, and pass over Sea to the True West, by the Straight Road, and so come to Eressëa – but so pass out of time and history, never to return. The Half-elven, such as Elrond and Arwen, can choose to which kind and fate they shall belong: choose once and for all. Hence the grief at the parting of Elrond and Arwen.

  But in this story it is supposed that there may be certain rare exceptions or accommodations (legitimately supposed? there always seem to be exceptions); and so certain ‘mortals’, who have played some great part in Elvish affairs, may pass with the Elves to Elvenhome. Thus Frodo (by the express gift of Arwen) and Bilbo, and eventually Sam (as adumbrated by Frodo); and as a unique exception Gimli the Dwarf, as friend of Legolas and ‘servant’ of Galadriel.

  I have said nothing about it in this book, but the mythical idea underlying is that for mortals, since their ‘kind’ cannot be changed for ever, this is strictly only a temporary reward: a healing and redress of suffering. They cannot abide for ever, and though they cannot return to mortal earth, they can and will ‘die’ – of free will, and leave the world. (In this setting the return of Arthur would be quite impossible, a vain imagining.)

  I am sorry that the Ice-bay of Forochel4 has not (so far) been cast for any significant part. It is just ‘Elvish’ for Northern Ice; and is a mere remnant of the colds of the North, the realm of the prime Dark Lord of earlier Ages. Arvedui, the last king of Arnor, is said, indeed, to have fled thither, and attempted to escape thence by ship, but to have been destroyed in the ice; and with him perished the last of the palantíri of the North Kingdom.

  I am afraid this is a preposterously long letter; and perhaps presumptuous in its length, though your kindness and interest offer some excuse.

  Soon after your visit, as pleasant as unexpected, I had a copy made of the chronology of the Second and Third Ages, for your perusal – purely annalistic and unmotivated. If it would still interest you, I will send it.

  I was sorry to find, when it was returned, that the screed on ‘languages’ etc. had been sent uncorrected, and with lots of words and phrases unerased, so that parts were hardly intelligible.

  You may be interested to hear that a reprint of The Fellowship seems already to be needed. But I do not suppose the first printing was very large.

  Yours sincerely

  J. R. R. Tolkien.

  155 To Naomi Mitchison (draft)

  [A passage from a draft of the above letter, which was not included in the version actually sent.]

  I am afraid I have been far too casual about ‘magic’ and especially the use of the word; though Galadriel and others show by the criticism of the ‘mortal’ use of the word, that the thought about it is not altogether casual. But it is a v. large question, and difficult; and a story which, as you so rightly say, is largely about motives (choice, temptations etc.) and the intentions for using whatever is found in the world, could hardly be burdened with a pseudo-philosophic disquisition! I do not intend to involve myself in any debate whether ‘magic’ in any sense is real or really possible in the world. But I suppose that, for the purposes of the tale, some would say that there is a latent distinction such as once was called the distinction between magia and goeteia.1 Galadriel speaks of the ‘deceits of the Enemy’. Well enough, but magia could be, was, held good (per se), and goeteia bad. Neither is, in this tale, good or bad (per se), but only by motive or purpose or use. Both sides use both, but with different motives. The supremely bad motive is (for this tale, since it is specially about it) domination of other ‘free’ wills. The Enemy’s operations are by no means all goetic deceits, but ‘magic’ that produces real effects in the physical world. But his magia he uses to bulldoze both people and things, and his goeteia to terrify and subjugate. Their magia the Elves and Gandalf use (sparingly): a magia, producing real results (like fire in a wet faggot) for specific beneficent purposes. Their goetic effects are entirely artistic and not intended to deceive: they never deceive Elves (but may deceive or bewilder unaware Men) since the difference is to them as clear as the difference to us between fiction, painting, and sculpture, and ‘life’.

  Both sides live mainly by ‘ordinary’ means. The Enemy, or those who have become like him, go in for ‘machinery’ – with destructive and evil effects – because ‘magicians’, who have become chiefly concerned to use magia for their own power, would do so (do do so). The basic motive for magia – quite apart from any philosophic consideration of how it would work – is immediacy: speed, reduction of labour, and reduction also to a minimum (or vanishing point) of the gap between the idea or desire and the result or effect. But the magia may not be easy to come by, and at any rate if you have command of abundant slave-labour or machinery (often only the same thing concealed), it may be as quick or quick enough to push mountains over, wreck forests, or build pyramids by such means. Of course another factor then comes in, a moral or pathological one: the tyrants lose sight of objects, become cruel, and like smashing, hurting, and defiling as such. It would no doubt be possible to defend poor Lotho’s introduction of more efficient mills; but not of Sharkey and Sandyman’s use of them.

  Anyway, a difference in the use of ‘magic’ in this story is that it is not to be come by by ‘lore’ or spells; but is in an inherent power not possessed or attainable by Men as such. Aragorn’s ‘healing’ might be regarded as ‘magical’, or at least a blend of magic with pharmacy and ‘hypnotic’ processes. But it is (in theory) reported by hobbits who have very little notions of philosophy and science; while A. is not a pure ‘Man’, but at long remove one of the ‘children of Lúthien’.2

  156 To Robert Murray, S.J. (draft)

  [An answer t
o further comments on The Lord of the Rings.]

  4 November 1954

  76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

  My dear Rob,

  It is remarkably kind of you to write at such length amid, I fear, weariness. I am answering at once, because I am grateful, and because only letters that I do treat so ever get answered, and most of all because your parcel has arrived when having done all my ‘prep’ – ordering all the minutes and resolutions of a long and argumentative College-meeting yesterday (there being no fellow of ill-will, and only 24 persons of the usual human absurdity. I felt rather like an observer at the meeting of Hobbit-notables to advise the Mayor on the precedence and choice of dishes at a Shire-banquet) – I have half an hour to spare before going down hill for a session with the College secretary. That is the kind of sentence I naturally write. . . . .

  No, ‘Sméagol’ was not, of course, fully envisaged at first, but I believe his character was implicit, and merely needed attention. As for Gandalf: surely it is not to join P. H.1 to voice any criticism! I could be much more destructive myself. There are, I suppose, always defects in any large-scale work of art; and especially in those of literary form that are founded on an earlier matter which is put to new uses – like Homer, or Beowulf, or Virgil, or Greek or Shakespearean tragedy! In which class, as a class not as a competitor, The Lord of the Rings really falls though it is only founded on the author’s own first draft! I think the way in which Gandalf’s return is presented is a defect, and one other critic, as much under the spell as yourself, curiously used the same expression: ‘cheating’. That is partly due to the ever-present compulsions of narrative technique. He must return at that point, and such explanations of his survival as are explicitly set out must be given there – but the narrative is urgent, and must not be held up for elaborate discussions involving the whole ‘mythological’ setting. It is a little impeded even so, though I have severely cut G’s account of himself. I might perhaps have made more clear the later remarks in Vol. II (and Vol. III) which refer to or are made by Gandalf, but I have purposely kept all allusions to the highest matters down to mere hints, perceptible only by the most attentive, or kept them under unexplained symbolic forms. So God and the ‘angelic’ gods, the Lords or Powers of the West, only peep through in such places as Gandalf’s conversation with Frodo: ‘behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker’s’; or in Faramir’s Númenórean grace at dinner.

  Gandalf really ‘died’, and was changed: for that seems to me the only real cheating, to represent anything that can be called ‘death’ as making no difference. ‘I am G. the White, who has returned from death’. Probably he should rather have said to Wormtongue: ‘I have not passed through death (not ‘fire and flood’) to bandy crooked words with a serving-man’. And so on. I might say much more, but it would only be in (perhaps tedious) elucidation of the ‘mythological’ ideas in my mind; it would not, I fear, get rid of the fact that the return of G. is as presented in this book a ‘defect’, and one I was aware of, and probably did not work hard enough to mend. But G. is not, of course, a human being (Man or Hobbit). There are naturally no precise modern terms to say what he was. I wd. venture to say that he was an incarnate ‘angel’ – strictly an :2 that is, with the other Istari, wizards, ‘those who know’, an emissary from the Lords of the West, sent to Middle-earth, as the great crisis of Sauron loomed on the horizon. By ‘incarnate’ I mean they were embodied in physical bodies capable of pain, and weariness, and of afflicting the spirit with physical fear, and of being ‘killed’, though supported by the angelic spirit they might endure long, and only show slowly the wearing of care and labour.

  Why they should take such a form is bound up with the ‘mythology’ of the ‘angelic’ Powers of the world of this fable. At this point in the fabulous history the purpose was precisely to limit and hinder their exhibition of ‘power’ on the physical plane, and so that they should do what they were primarily sent for: train, advise, instruct, arouse the hearts and minds of those threatened by Sauron to a resistance with their own strengths; and not just to do the job for them. They thus appeared as ‘old’ sage figures. But in this ‘mythology’ all the ‘angelic’ powers concerned with this world were capable of many degrees of error and failing between the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron, and the fainéance of some of the other higher powers or ‘gods’. The ‘wizards’ were not exempt, indeed being incarnate were more likely to stray, or err. Gandalf alone fully passes the tests, on a moral plane anyway (he makes mistakes of judgement). For in his condition it was for him a sacrifice to perish on the Bridge in defence of his companions, less perhaps than for a mortal Man or Hobbit, since he had a far greater inner power than they; but also more, since it was a humbling and abnegation of himself in conformity to ‘the Rules’: for all he could know at that moment he was the only person who could direct the resistance to Sauron successfully, and all his mission was vain. He was handing over to the Authority that ordained the Rules, and giving up personal hope of success.

  That I should say is what the Authority wished, as a set-off to Saruman. The ‘wizards’, as such, had failed; or if you like: the crisis had become too grave and needed an enhancement of power. So Gandalf sacrificed himself, was accepted, and enhanced, and returned. ‘Yes, that was the name. I was Gandalf.’ Of course he remains similar in personality and idiosyncrasy, but both his wisdom and power are much greater. When he speaks he commands attention; the old Gandalf could not have dealt so with Théoden, nor with Saruman. He is still under the obligation of concealing his power and of teaching rather than forcing or dominating wills, but where the physical powers of the Enemy are too great for the good will of the opposers to be effective he can act in emergency as an ‘angel’ – no more violently than the release of St Peter from prison. He seldom does so, operating rather through others, but in one or two cases in the War (in Vol. III) he does reveal a sudden power: he twice rescues Faramir. He alone is left to forbid the entrance of the Lord of Nazgûl to Minas Tirith, when the City has been overthrown and its Gates destroyed – and yet so powerful is the whole train of human resistance, that he himself has kindled and organized, that in fact no battle between the two occurs: it passes to other mortal hands. In the end before he departs for ever he sums himself up: ‘I was the enemy of Sauron’. He might have added: ‘for that purpose I was sent to Middle-earth’. But by that he would at the end have meant more than at the beginning. He was sent by a mere prudent plan of the angelic Valar or governors; but Authority had taken up this plan and enlarged it, at the moment of its failure. ‘Naked I was sent back – for a brief time, until my task is done’. Sent back by whom, and whence? Not by the ‘gods’ whose business is only with this embodied world and its time; for he passed ‘out of thought and time’. Naked is alas! unclear. It was meant just literally, ‘unclothed like a child’ (not discarnate), and so ready to receive the white robes of the highest. Galadriel’s power is not divine, and his healing in Lórien is meant to be no more than physical healing and refreshment.

  But if it is ‘cheating’ to treat ‘death’ as making no difference, embodiment must not be ignored. Gandalf may be enhanced in power (that is, under the forms of this fable, in sanctity), but if still embodied he must still suffer care and anxiety, and the needs of flesh. He has no more (if no less) certitudes, or freedoms, than say a living theologian. In any case none of my ‘angelic’ persons are represented as knowing the future completely, or indeed at all where other wills are concerned. Hence their constant temptation to do, or try to do, what is for them wrong (and disastrous): to force lesser wills by power: by awe if not by actual fear, or physical constraint. But the nature of the gods’ knowledge of the history of the World, and their part in making it (before it was embodied or made ‘real’) – whence they drew their knowledge of the future, such as they had, is part of the major mythology. It is at least there represented that the intrusion of Elves and Men into t
hat story was not any part of theirs at all, but reserved: hence Elves and Men were called the Children of God; and hence the gods either loved (or hated) them specially: as having a relation to the Creator equal to their own, if of different stature. This is the mythological-theological situation at this moment in History, which has been made explicit but has not yet been published.

  Men have ‘fallen’ – any legends put in the form of supposed ancient history of this actual world of ours must accept that – but the peoples of the West, the good side are Re-formed. That is they are the descendants of Men that tried to repent and fled Westward from the domination of the Prime Dark Lord, and his false worship, and by contrast with the Elves renewed (and enlarged) their knowledge of the truth and the nature of the World. They thus escaped from ‘religion’ in a pagan sense, into a pure monotheist world, in which all things and beings and powers that might seem worshipful were not to be worshipped, not even the gods (the Valar), being only creatures of the One. And He was immensely remote.