Bubble and squeal
Christopher Booker
The SlImarlillon J. R. R. Tolkein (George Allen and Unwin £4.95) The Mythology of Middle Earth Ruth S. Noel (Thames and Hudson £4.50)
It is a curious fact that both of the most successful large-scale pseudo-mythological creations of the past hundred years or so are centred around a cursed ring; both arouse unusually extreme reactions, ranging between passionate idolatry and uncomprehending contempt; and both are inspired almost entirely by the old Norse and Teutonic myths. Nevertheless, even in such transmuted forms as Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs, and Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings, it is perhaps not surprising that, as the Christian 'myth' lost its hold over Western culture, the mythology of the old Norsemen should once again have risen above the horizon. The Norse 'world myth', from the day of creation to the worldending of Ragnarok (the Destruction or Twilight of the Gods) is one of the most powerful and psychologically subtle stories ever thrown up by the imagination of mankind. The mythological landscape it conjures up, as the scene of cosmic battles between the Gods of Asgard — Valhalla and the shadowy powers of evil (giants, dwarfs etc.), is enormously compelling. And undoubtedly the general air of gathering doom which hangs over the story strikes some deep chord in modern man.
In fact the reason why both Wagner and Tolkein inspire such detestation among , those who cannot fall under their spell is not so much due to their content as to the manner of its presentation. What antiWagnerians cannot abide is the music (although some, like Tolstoy, dress up their reaction as an objection to the 'pretentious happenings' on stage as well); while the haters of Tolkien cannot get,past the 'infantility' of all that 'tripe' about Hobbits and elves. The most celebrated attack was the essay '0o, Those Awful Ores!', in which Edmund Wilson (a mini-Hanslick to a mini-Wagner) belaboured Tolkein's intellectual admirers unmercifully: 'they bubble, they squeal/ they coo, they go on about Malory and Spenser:both of whom have a charm and distinction that Tolkien has never reached'.
Of course Malory and Spenser are quite the wrong level on which to compare Tolkien. I think there have been three main, interrelated reasons for the extraordinary popularity of The Lord of The Rings in recent years. The first is simply that, underneath the twee Hobbitry, it is a very good story, on the level of a first-class thriller. When I first read of Frodo battling across those bleak moorland wastes, beset on all sides by shadowy enemies, I was reminded vividly of John Buchan — and I was fascinated to see from the recent biography that, although Tolkien read almost no modern fiction, the one exception was his fondness for Buchan.
Secondly, the reason why The Lord of The Rings is such a good story (and despite Tolkien's disclaimers that it was little more than an exercise in 'linguistic aesthetics', and in no way allegorical) is that the story is just about as archetypally perfect as it could be. In other words, regardless of Tolkien's conscious intentions, he became inspired or possessed by a theme of the deepest and most universal symbolic significance — the world-renewing quest — which strikes pi.ecisely the same profound chord in men's imaginations today as it did when the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh set out to free the world from the shadowy power of the evil giant Humbaba in the third millenium BC.
Thirdly, the interplay between Tolkien's own fantasies and his readings in the Eddas brilliantly solved the problem (as in a different way did Watership Down) of where in the modern world to 'set' an adventure of such cosmic significance. The adventure stories of the twentieth century do not differ in their structure or motifs from the myths and legends of past ages. When James Bond puts on his rocket pack, or fits his Aston Martin with a smokescreen device, before setting out to slay such contemporary 'monsters' as Goldfinger or Dr. No, he is only equipping himself in the precise modern equivalents of Perseus's 'winged sandals' or 'Helmet of Invisibility', before he set out to slay Medusa. But in a world so tamed and explored as our own, it was a stroke of genius to conjure up a complete, wild, 'inner landscape' such as Tolkien's 'Middle Earth', where the psychic allegory could unfold on the largest possible scale, in a way that allowed the story to seem curiously 'contemporary' and yet without having to make any concessions to the 'external reality' of the modern world.
All this having been said, I must now make an admission which I have never had to make before in reviewing any book, and hope never to have to make again — which is that, not for want of trying, I have found the new Tolkien epic The Silmarillion literally unreadable. The book has been compiled as an act of piety by the professor's son‘, Christopher Tolkien, from vast piles of notes and drafts left by his father, representing no less than sixty years of literary and linguistic doodling around the theme of his pseudomythological realm. In the blurb it is described as 'the central stock of J.R.R. Tolkieres imaginative writing'. It is full of references to events and characters (Gandalf, Galadriel) familiar to readers of The Lord of the Rings. It actually begins with a 'creation myth', 'Ainulindale', which although it is based on the haunting idea of a great music leading to the creation of the world, simply lacks the awesome grandeur of the emergence of forms and opposites out of a shapeless chaos which lies behind all true cosmogonic myths (above all the separation of light from darkness, which is universal and crucial). By the time one has arrived at the Walaquenta', a list of the Gods and their qualities, one is thirsting for a return to the real thing— to Odin and Thor and Freya and Loki, who are so much more interesting. And from then on the boa degenerates into a kind of drooling parody of Tolkien's 'automatic writing' at its worst, three hundred and fifty pages of passages like this: For the war hacrgone ill with t,he sons of Feanor, and well nigh all the east marches were taken by assault. The Pass of Aglon was forced, though with great cost to the hosts of Morgoth; and Celegorm and Curufin being defeated fled south and west by the marches of Doriath and coming at last to Margothrond sought harbour with Finrod Felagund.
There is no hint of a real story, based on a real hero and a real cast of clearly defined characters:, as in The Lord of the Rings. It is just one long, self-indulgent, pseudomythical whiffle, like an unhappy conflation of Snorri Sturlsson, Joyce's Ulysses and the more boring geneaological passages of the Old Testament, and apart from the fact that it will obviously sell a hundred thousand copies to foolish and bemused Frodolators, it should never have been allowed out of the house.
Ruth S. Noel appears to be a Californian housewife who had the idea of providing a kind of dictionary of cross-references between Tolkein's pseudo-mythology and the real thing. In the right hands such a book might have provided some uplifting diversion for her fellow Frodolators, but alas, despile the assistance of 'Greg Bear, science fiction author' who lent her books, a 'graduate linguist' named Patty Knox, Dr Alfred Boc of San Diego State University who 'read the book while it was still typed on file cards' and 'explained the dream phenomenon behind subterranean descent', and Mrs Noel's brother 'Jeff Puttnam Swycaffer' who pointed out 'the similarities between Aragorn and Charlemagne', it simply will not do. Anyone who thinks that the figure of Sauron, 'the Dark Lord', is an equivalent to Odin, the wise 'Al! Father' of the Eddas, ought to have stuck to reading her 'New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology' a little longer, and even then, I suspect, should never have committed the appalling solecism of venturing into print. What a comment on the avarice of that fine old firm of Thames and Hudson that they are prepared to 'aid and abet such a crime
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