The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

  I will try and answer your specific questions. The final scene of the Quest was so shaped simply because having regard to the situation, and to the ‘characters’ of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, those events seemed to me mechanically, morally, and psychologically credible. But, of course, if you wish for more reflection, I should say that within the mode of the story the ‘catastrophe’ exemplifies (an aspect of) the familiar words: ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’

  ‘Lead us not into temptation &c’ is the harder and the less often considered petition. The view, in the terms of my story, is that though every event or situation has (at least) two aspects: the history and development of the individual (it is something out of which he can get good, ultimate good, for himself, or fail to do so), and the history of the world (which depends on his action for its own sake) – still there are abnormal situations in which one may be placed. ‘Sacrificial’ situations, I should call them: sc. positions in which the ‘good’ of the world depends on the behaviour of an individual in circumstances which demand of him suffering and endurance far beyond the normal – even, it may happen (or seem, humanly speaking), demand a strength of body and mind which he does not possess: he is in a sense doomed to failure, doomed to fall to temptation or be broken by pressure against his ‘will’: that is against any choice he could make or would make unfettered, not under the duress.

  Frodo was in such a position: an apparently complete trap: a person of greater native power could probably never have resisted the Ring’s lure to power so long; a person of less power could not hope to resist it in the final decision. (Already Frodo had been unwilling to harm the Ring before he set out, and was incapable of surrendering it to Sam.)

  The Quest was bound to fail as a piece of world-plan, and also was bound to end in disaster as the story of humble Frodo’s development to the ‘noble’, his sanctification. Fail it would and did as far as Frodo considered alone was concerned. He ‘apostatized’ – and I have had one savage letter, crying out that he shd. have been executed as a traitor, not honoured. Believe me, it was not until I read this that I had myself any idea how ‘topical’ such a situation might appear. It arose naturally from my ‘plot’ conceived in main outline in 1936.1 I did not foresee that before the tale was published we should enter a dark age in which the technique of torture and disruption of personality would rival that of Mordor and the Ring and present us with the practical problem of honest men of good will broken down into apostates and traitors.

  But at this point the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’ is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would certainlyfn48 betray him, and could rob him in the end. To ‘pity’ him, to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time. He did rob him and injure him in the end – but by a ‘grace’, that last betrayal was at a precise juncture when the final evil deed was the most beneficial thing any one cd. have done for Frodo! By a situation created by his ‘forgiveness’, he was saved himself, and relieved of his burden. He was very justly accorded the highest honours – since it is clear that he & Sam never concealed the precise course of events. Into the ultimate judgement upon Gollum I would not care to enquire. This would be to investigate ‘Goddes privitee’, as the Medievals said. Gollum was pitiable, but he ended in persistent wickedness, and the fact that this worked good was no credit to him. His marvellous courage and endurance, as great as Frodo and Sam’s or greater, being devoted to evil was portentous, but not honourable. I am afraid, whatever our beliefs, we have to face the fact that there are persons who yield to temptation, reject their chances of nobility or salvation, and appear to be ‘damnable’. Their ‘damnability’ is not measurable in the terms of the macrocosm (where it may work good). But we who are all ‘in the same boat’ must not usurp the Judge. The domination of the Ring was much too strong for the mean soul of Sméagol. But he would have never had to endure it if he had not become a mean sort of thief before it crossed his path. Need it ever have crossed his path? Need anything dangerous ever cross any of our paths? A kind of answer cd. be found in trying to imagine Gollum overcoming temptation. The story would have been quite different! By temporizing, not fixing the still not wholly corrupt Sméagol-will towards good in the debate in the slag hole, he weakened himself for the final chance when dawning love of Frodo was too easily withered by the jealousy of Sam before Shelob’s lair. After that he was lost.

  There is no special reference to England in the ‘Shire’ – except of course that as an Englishman brought up in an ‘almost rural’ village of Warwickshire on the edge of the prosperous bourgeoisie of Birmingham (about the time of the Diamond Jubilee!) I take my models like anyone else – from such ‘life’ as I know. But there is no post-war reference. I am not a ‘socialist’ in any sense – being averse to ‘planning’ (as must be plain) most of all because the ‘planners’, when they acquire power, become so bad – but I would not say that we had to suffer the malice of Sharkey and his Ruffians here. Though the spirit of ‘Isengard’, if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case.2 But our chief adversary is a member of a ‘Tory’ Government. But you could apply it anywhere in these days.

  Yes: I think that ‘victors’ never can enjoy ‘victory’ – not in the terms that they envisaged; and in so far as they fought for something to be enjoyed by themselves (whether acquisition or mere preservation) the less satisfactory will ‘victory’ seem. But the departure of the Ringbearers has quite another side, as far as the Three are concerned. There is, of course, a mythological structure behind this story. It was actually written first, and may now perhaps be in part published. It is, I should say, a ‘monotheistic but “sub-creational” mythology’. There is no embodiment of the One, of God, who indeed remains remote, outside the World, and only directly accessible to the Valar or Rulers. These take the place of the ‘gods’, but are created spirits, or those of the primary creation who by their own will have entered into the world.fn49 But the One retains all ultimate authority, and (or so it seems as viewed in serial time) reserves the right to intrude the finger of God into the story: that is to produce realities which could not be deduced even from a complete knowledge of the previous past, but which being real become part of the effective past for all subsequent time (a possible definition of a ‘miracle’). According to the fable Elves and Men were the first of these intrusions, made indeed while the ‘story’ was still only a story and not ‘realized’; they were not therefore in any sense conceived or made by the gods, the Valar, and were called the Eruhíni or ‘Children of God’, and were for the Valar an incalculable element: that is they were rational creatures of free will in regard to God, of the same historical rank as the Valar, though of far smaller spiritual and intellectual power and status.

  Of course, in fact exterior to my story, Elves and Men are just different aspects of the Humane, and represent the problem of Death as seen by a finite but willing and self-conscious person. In this mythological world the Elves and Men are in their incarnate forms kindred, but in the relation of their ‘spirits’ to the world in time represent different ‘experiments’, each of which has its own natural trend, and weakness. The Elves represent, as it were, the artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane nature raised to a higher level than is actually seen in Men. That is: they have a devoted love of the physical world, and a desire to observe and understand it for its own sake and as ‘other’ – sc. as a reality derived from God in the same degree as themselves – not as a material for use or as a power-platform. They also possess a ‘subcreational’ or artistic faculty of great excellence. They are therefore ‘immortal’. Not ‘eternally’, but to endure with and within the created wo
rld, while its story lasts. When ‘killed’, by the injury or destruction of their incarnate form, they do not escape from time, but remain in the world, either discarnate, or being re-born. This becomes a great burden as the ages lengthen, especially in a world in which there is malice and destruction (I have left out the mythological form which Malice or the Fall of the Angels takes in this fable). Mere change as such is not represented as ‘evil’: it is the unfolding of the story and to refuse this is of course against the design of God. But the Elvish weakness is in these terms naturally to regret the past, and to become unwilling to face change: as if a man were to hate a very long book still going on, and wished to settle down in a favourite chapter. Hence they fell in a measure to Sauron’s deceits: they desired some ‘power’ over things as they are (which is quite distinct from art), to make their particular will to preservation effective: to arrest change, and keep things always fresh and fair. The ‘Three Rings’ were ‘unsullied’, because this object was in a limited way good, it included the healing of the real damages of malice, as well as the mere arrest of change; and the Elves did not desire to dominate other wills, nor to usurp all the world to their particular pleasure. But with the downfall of ‘Power’ their little efforts at preserving the past fell to bits. There was nothing more in Middle-earth for them, but weariness. So Elrond and Galadriel depart. Gandalf is a special case. He was not the maker or original holder of the Ring – but it was surrendered to him by Círdan, to assist him in his task. Gandalf was returning, his labour and errand finished, to his home, the land of the Valar.

  The passage over Sea is not Death. The ‘mythology’ is Elf-centred. According to it there was at first an actual Earthly Paradise, home and realm of the Valar, as a physical part of the earth.

  There is no ‘embodiment’ of the Creator anywhere in this story or mythology. Gandalf is a ‘created’ person; though possibly a spirit that existed before in the physical world. His function as a ‘wizard’ is an angelos or messenger from the Valar or Rulers: to assist the rational creatures of Middle-earth to resist Sauron, a power too great for them unaided. But since in the view of this tale & mythology Power – when it dominates or seeks to dominate other wills and minds (except by the assent of their reason) – is evil, these ‘wizards’ were incarnated in the life-forms of Middle-earth, and so suffered the pains both of mind and body. They were also, for the same reason, thus involved in the peril of the incarnate: the possibility of ‘fall’, of sin, if you will. The chief form this would take with them would be impatience, leading to the desire to force others to their own good ends, and so inevitably at last to mere desire to make their own wills effective by any means. To this evil Saruman succumbed. Gandalf did not. But the situation became so much the worse by the fall of Saruman, that the ‘good’ were obliged to greater effort and sacrifice. Thus Gandalf faced and suffered death; and came back or was sent back, as he says, with enhanced power. But though one may be in this reminded of the Gospels, it is not really the same thing at all. The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees. That is why I regard the tale of Arwen and Aragorn as the most important of the Appendices; it is part of the essential story, and is only placed so, because it could not be worked into the main narrative without destroying its structure: which is planned to be ‘hobbito-centric’, that is, primarily a study of the ennoblement (or sanctification) of the humble.

  [None of the drafts from which this text has been assembled was completed.]

  182 From a letter to Anne Barrett, Houghton Mifflin Co.

  [Not dated; 1956]

  I shall certainly now, if I am allowed, publish the parts of the great history that was written first – and rejected. But the (to me v. surprising) success of The Lord of the Rings will probably cause that rejection to be reconsidered. Though I do not think it would have the appeal of the L.R. – no hobbits! Full of mythology, and elvishness, and all that ‘heigh stile’ (as Chaucer might say), which has been so little to the taste of many reviewers. But I am not allowed to get at it. I am not only submerged (sans secretary) under business of the L.R., but also under professional business – one of the ways of making us professors ‘go quietly’ with practically no pension, is to make our last two or three years of office intolerably laborious – ; while the appearance of the L.R. has landed me in the pincers. Most of my philological colleaguesfn50 are shocked (cert. behind my back, sometimes to my face) at the fall of a philological into ‘Trivial literature’; and anyway the cry is: ‘now we know how you have been wasting your time for 20 years’. So the screw is on for many things of a more professional kind long overdue. Alas! I like them both, but have only one man’s time. Also I am getting rather ripe, if not actually decrepit! With the retirement this summer of Sir John Beasly, and Lord Cherwell, I am left the senior professor of this ancient institution, having sat in a chair here since 1925 – or 31 years, though no one seems to observe the fact. Except for one or two who cry: ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’, yearning for the padded seat (actually stuffed with thistle, as one of them will discover).

  183 Notes on W. H. Auden’s review of The Return of the King

  [A comment, apparently written for Tolkien’s own satisfaction and not sent or shown to anyone else, on ‘At the End of the Quest, Victory’, a review of The Return of the King by W. H. Auden in the New York Times Book Review, 22 January 1956. The text given here is a rewriting at some later date of an earlier version, now lost, which was in all probability written in 1956. In the review, Auden wrote: ‘Life, as I experience it in my own person, is primarily a continuous succession of choices between alternatives. . . . . For objectifying this experience, the natural image is that of a journey with a purpose, beset by dangerous hazards and obstacles. . . . . But when I observe my fellow-men, such an image seems false. I can see, for example, that only the rich and those on vacation can take journeys; most men, most of the time, must work in one place. I cannot observe them making choices, only the actions they take and, if I know someone well, I can usually predict how he will act in a given situation. . . . . If, then, I try to describe what I see as if I were an impersonal camera, I shall produce, not a Quest, but a “naturalistic” document. . . . . Both extremes, of course, falsify life. There are medieval Quests which justify the criticism made by Erich Auerbach in his book Mimesis: “The world of knightly proving is a world of adventure. . . . . [The knight’s] exploits. . . . are feats accomplished at random which do not fit into any politically purposive pattern.”. . . . Mr Tolkien has succeeded more completely than any previous writer in this genre in using the traditional properties of the Quest.’]

  I am very grateful for this review. Most encouraging, as coming from a man who is both a poet and a critic of distinction. Yet not (I think) one who has much practised the telling of tales. In any case I am a little surprised by it, for in spite of its praise it seems to me a critic’s way of talking rather than an author’s. It is not, to my feeling, the right way of considering either Quests in general or my story in particular. I believe that it is precisely because I did not try, and have never thought of trying to ‘objectify’ my personal experience of life that the account of the Quest of the Ring is successful in giving pleasure to Auden (and others). Probably it is also the reason, in many cases, why it has failed to please some readers and critics. The story is not about JRRT at all, and is at no point an attempt to allegorize his experience of life – for that is what the objectifying of his subjective experience in a tale must mean, if anything.

  I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of midden-erd > middel-erd, an ancient name for the oikoumenē, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven or Hell). The theatre of my tale is this ea
rth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.

  Men do go, and have in history gone on journeys and quests, without any intention of acting out allegories of life. It is not true of the past or the present to say that ‘only the rich or those on vacation can take journeys’. Most men make some journeys. Whether long or short, with an errand or simply to go ‘there and back again’, is not of primary importance. As I tried to express it in Bilbo’s Walking Song, even an afternoon-to-evening walk may have important effects. When Sam had got no further than the Woody End he had already had an ‘eye-opener’. For if there is anything in a journey of any length, for me it is this: a deliverance from the plantlike state of helpless passive sufferer, an exercise however small of will, and mobility – and of curiosity, without which a rational mind becomes stultified. (Though of course all this is an afterthought, and misses the major point. To a story-teller a journey is a marvellous device. It provides a strong thread on which a multitude of things that he has in mind may be strung to make a new thing, various, unpredictable, and yet coherent. My chief reason for using this form was simply technical.)

  In any case I do not look on those of my fellow men that I have observed in the way described. I am old enough now to have observed some of them long enough to have a notion of what, I suppose, Auden would call their basic or innate character, while noting changes (often considerable) in their modes of behaviour. I do not feel that a journey in space is a useful comparison for understanding these processes. I think that comparison with a seed is more illuminating: a seed with its innate vitality and heredity, its capacity to grow and develop. A great part of the ‘changes’ in a man are no doubt unfoldings of the patterns hidden in the seed; though these are of course modified by the situation (geographical or climatic) into which it is thrown, and may be damaged by terrestrial accidents. But this comparison leaves out inevitably an important point. A man is not only a seed, developing in a defined pattern, well or ill according to its situation or its defects as an example of its species; a man is both a seed and in some degree also a gardener, for good or ill. I am impressed by the degree in which the development of ‘character’ can be a product of conscious intention, the will to modify innate tendencies in desired directions; in some cases the change can be great and permanent. I have known one or two men and women who could be described as ‘self-made’ in this respect with at least as much partial truth as ‘self-made’ can be applied to those whose affluence or position can be said to have been achieved largely by their own will and efforts with little or no help from inherited wealth or social position.