The Realms of Tolkien
It is in keeping with his preoccupation with language that he should enjoy so much the making of verse. Personally, I find the verse in The Lord of the Rings and in The Hobbit particularly enjoyable. It seems to me to have a mystical bardic ring, and at its best can certainly call forth in me, and in many other readers I know, that unmistakable and exciting shiver of the skin which recognizes an absolutely right combination of imagery, rhythm, and meaning. He admits that he prefers writing verse to almost anything else. (Parenthetically, he adds, “Almost impossible to sell verse, though.”)
Though there is much verse, readers have claimed that there is not much (or not enough) romance in The Lord of the Rings.
“There’s a time and a place for everything,” he says. “Love is the background of history-not least, when least attended to.”
“In the time of a great war and high adventure, love and the carrying on with the race, and so on, are in the background. They’re not referred to the whole time, but they’re there. There’s surely enough given in flashes for an attentive reader to see, even without the Appendix (of Aragorn and Arwen) the whole tale as one aspect of the love-story of this pair, and the achievement of a high noble, and romantic love. There’s Éowyn’s love for Aragorn—a sort of calf-love, as well as the true romance. You get the scene in Rivendell, with Aragorn suddenly revealed in princely dignity to Frodo, standing by Arwen. There’s Aragorn’s vision, after he has plighted his troth to Arwen and left her; and what were his thoughts after receiving the furled standard, or when he unfurled it after achieving the paths of the dead. There is also Sam, who had other deep concerns, though he put his service first.”
I wanted to know whether he would choose any particular passages as his own favourites. After a little thought, he said that there were two places in The Lord of the Rings which stayed in his own mind more than others, and which he still found himself moved by when he thought of them. One is the point at which the cock crows in the pause before the great battle in the Pelennor fields. Gandalf, who has gained in stature as the story grows, from the smoke-ring blowing, slightly comic old wizard of The Hobbit to the Enemy of Sauron, the power for good of the Third Age of the world, confronts the King of the Nazgûl, the wraith which is all the more dreadful because it is invisible to all except the Ring-wearer. Then the cock crows, caring nothing for battle or death, welcoming the morning, and at the same moment the horns of the North, the horns of the riders of Rohan are heard echoing on the sides of the mountains.
The other passage is when Frodo and Sam lie down to sleep in the stony shadows near Cirith Ungol, on the borders of Mordor. Gollum, the dreadful little being, who has guided them so far, partly by force, partly by persuasion on their part, has crept off to make an evil bargain with Shelob (derivation for those who wish to know: she lob [spider]—those who have read The Hobbit will remember the song of Bilbo “Lazy Lob and Crazy Cob”) the unspeakable creature who has her lair in the mountain passages. She is one of the most genuine purveyors of horror and disgust you will meet with in the book.
Gollum returns, and sees the strange peace on the faces of Sam and Frodo, and for a moment the evil and malice die out of his face, and he looks only like some very old weary hobbit, a creature of the same race as Frodo and Sam, but lonely and lost and bewildered by years and events. He touches Frodo timidly, and Sam awakes, and sees him, and starts up with honest indignation and suspicion, at this creature “pawing” his master, Frodo. Gollum’s last chance of what looks like repentance is gone. In this passage, in particular, Professor Tolkien achieves an identification of the reader with a totally alien kind of being, such as many sf writers hope to, and can seldom accomplish. It is one thing to create alien beings. It is quite another to give them such actions and reactions that they remain consistently in accord with their alien life and surroundings, and yet can reach through to, and touch the relative chords in the mind of human beings. Professor Tolkien says, “It seems that Gollum is about to repent, and that Sam waking up suddenly like that, and naturally feeling full of righteous resentment, has spoilt the chance. But there wasn’t the chance for Gollum. He’d been evil for too long. There’s a point of no return in these things, and Gollum had passed it.” However, he still manages to make one feel there a genuine pang of pity for the (it seems) not absolutely irredeemable Gollum, loathsome as he is.
