{"id":351,"date":"2004-01-18T15:49:52","date_gmt":"2004-01-18T20:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=351"},"modified":"2010-07-01T06:17:43","modified_gmt":"2010-07-01T10:17:43","slug":"of-course-the-lord-of-the-rings-does-not-belong-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=351","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOf course, The Lord of the Rings does not belong to me\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

I post this excerpt from one of Tolkien’s letters for all my Tolkien-fan readers, and also specifically to annoy Patrick Prescott <\/a>(who moved off Blogspot – Yeah!) Patrick has finally come to the conclusion that he is an “unwashed heathen”, <\/a>in terms of the Trilogy. It’s okay, Patrick, I’m sure you and I could work something out.<\/p>\n

This is a draft of a letter to one of the many many fans who wrote to him with questions. Many of these letters were never sent. He would have carbon copies made, and continue to work on the drafts of the letters. Especially as he got older.<\/p>\n

This woman wrote to him, and here is his response.<\/p>\n

I love it because it illuminates (without him knowing it, of course) his genius. He didn’t ultimately see himself as a writer, or a creator of worlds – he saw himself as a historian. Fantastic. He saw Middle-Earth as a revealed place, he himself explored the landscape, unsure of what he would find.<\/p>\n

To get a bit uber here, the story works itself way out into our world, using him as the vehicle, the voice.<\/p>\n

Phenomenal.<\/p>\n


\nAutumn 1971 Draft of letter to Carole Batten-Phelps<\/i>
\nI am very grateful for your remarks on the critics and for your account of your personal delight in Lord of the Rings<\/i>. You write in terms of such high praise that [to] accept it with just a ‘thank you’ might seem complacently conceited, though actually it only makes me wonder how this has been achieved – by me! Of course the book was written to please myself (at different levels), and as an experiment in the arts of long narrative, and of inducing ‘Secondary Belief’. It was written slowly and with great care for detail & finally emerged as a Frameless Picture: a searchlight, as it were, on a brief episode in History, and on a small part of our Middle-earth, surrounded by the glimmer of limitless extensions in time and space. Very well: that may explain to some extent why it ‘feels’ like history; why it was accepted for publication; and why it has proved readable for a large number of very different kinds of people.<\/p>\n

But it does not fully explain what has actually happened. Looking back on the wholly unexpected things that have followed its publication – beginning at once with the appearance of Vol. I – I feel as if an ever darkening sky over our present world had been suddenly pierced, the clouds rolled back, and an almost forgotten sunlight had poured down again. As if indeed the horns of Hope had been heard again, as Pippin heard them suddenly at the absolute nadir of the fortunes of the West. But How?<\/i> and Why?<\/i><\/p>\n

I think I can now guess what Gandalf would reply. A few years ago I was visited in Oxford by a man whose name I have fogotten (though I believe he was well-known). He had been much struck by the curious way in which old pictures seemed to him to have been designed to illustrate The Lord of the Rings long before its time. He brought one or two reproductions. I think he wanted at first simply to discover whether my imagination had fed on pictures, as it clearly had been by certain kinds of literature and languages. When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I had never seen the pictures before and was not well acquainted with pictorial Art, he fell silent. I became aware that he was looking fixedly at me. Suddenly he said, “Of course you don’t suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?”<\/p>\n

Pure Gandalf! I was too well acquainted with Gandalf to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said: “No, I don’t suppose so any longer.” I have never since been able to suppose so. An alarming conclusion for an old philologist to draw concerning his private amusement. But not one that should puff any one up who considers the imperfections of “chosen instruments”, and indeed what sometimes seems their lamentable unfitness for the purpose.<\/p>\n

You speak of “a sanity and sanctity” in the L.R. “which is a power in itself.” I was deeply moved. Nothing of the kind had been said to me before. But by a strange chance, just as I was beginning this letter, I had one from a man, who classified himself as “an unbeliever, or at best a man of belatedly and dimly dawning religious feeling … but you”, he said, “create a world in which some sort of faith seems to be everywhere without a viable source, like light from an invisible lamp.” I can only answer: “Of his own sanity no man can securely judge. If sanctity inhabits his work or as a pervading light illumines it then it does not come from him but through him. And neither of you would perceive it in these terms unless it was with you also. Otherwise you would see and feel nothing, or (if some other spirit was present) you would be filled with contempt, nausea, hatred. “Leaves out of the elf-country, gah!” “Lembas – dust and ashes, we don’t eat that!”<\/p>\n

Of course The L.R.<\/i> does not belong to me. It has been brought forth and must now go its appointed way in the world, though naturally I take a deep interest in its fortunes, as a parent would of a child. I am comforted to know that it has good friends to defend it against the malice of its enemies. (But all the fools are not in the other camp.) With best wishes to one of its best friends. I am<\/p>\n

Yours sincerely
\nJRR Tolkien<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I post this excerpt from one of Tolkien’s letters for all my Tolkien-fan readers, and also specifically to annoy Patrick Prescott (who moved off Blogspot – Yeah!) Patrick has finally come to the conclusion that he is an “unwashed heathen”, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[262,1095],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13919,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions\/13919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}