Hello. I thought I would take a break from corruption (another thread [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] ) and see what else was in the cupboard to nibble on. That was somewhat over an hour ago and, after following links and assorted asides, I am still chewing on what I found.
I am a late bloomer regarding Tolkien scholarship (aka, "Tolkien geek" here in the ever verbally economic U.S.) even though I've been a reader and re-reader since I was in kick pleats. This is a way of saying that I'm not as learn-ed as many of you in this thread, but I sure do like to learn.
When I first read
The Hobbit and LotR, I was alternately amused and annoyed with the poetry for the same reasons previously posted. The next few times I read Hobbit & LotR, adding
The Silmarillion, I just skipped or skimmed the poetry.
Here's a notion that approached as I travelled through everyone's posts ...
I think that appreciation of Tolkien's poetry is something akin to appreciating fine wine. It gets better with age. At first, you're guzzling and gulping because it's there. Then someone says you're supposed to stop and smell the bouquet and swirl it about a bit in a lovely glass. You do some research and learn a few phrases. The next stage comes along; time and experience have accomplished some of their work, if you've allowed it. Many veils have been lifted, several scales have fallen from your eyes and you find that, without trying, you have truly learned to savor and swirl that which you used to guzzle and gulp.
In other words, I now am floored by what and how much I overlooked making dismissive, fatuous assumptions about Tolkien's poetry.
As I started last year's re-reading, I was stunned by the very first poem in LotR--the one before the table of contents. No longer was it a rather quaint, obligatory and prefatory mood-setter. It gave me actual goosebumps because by then I understood more about evil and its operational aspects. And, I instantly recognized that Tolkien's profound grasp of evil was matched by the ability to install very basic truths deeply into our mental hard drives. Now I have an inkling of why I have gravitated most of my life to his work (didn't mean to make a pun, and don't want to go through the self-conscious flutters over finding an alternative word so I'm going to leave it stet).
I had much the same forehead-slapping gestalt experience about his prose, too.
I'm just an envious wannabe at literary criticism (oh, how I'd love to wax on and not off at pubs and parties holding forth with insights and pithy proferrings, --you can see why I don't... [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img] ) but I'd like to offer an excerpt from Ursula Le Guin on the subject. If anyone can remain among the ranks of the fashionably existential or the Tolkien's-too-trite-for-me camp after reading her piece, well ... some people are just too cool for us, aren't they? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
This is just a little tad out of her piece in
Meditations on Middle Earth called "Rhythmic Patterns." (I'm sure some of you have read the book.) I selected a section that's relevant to the more recent topics of discussion; however, it is an education unto prose and poetry in itself.
All punctuation is hers or the eds.
Quote:
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This 'trochaic' alternation of stress and relief is of course a basic device of narrative, from folk tales to War and Peace; but Tolkien's reliance on it is striking. It is one of the things that makes his narrative technique unusual for the mid-twentieth century. Unrelieved psychological or emotional stress or tension, and a narrative pace racing without a break from start to climax, characterize much of the fiction of the time. To readers with such expectations, Tolkien's plodding stress/relief pattern seemed, and seems, simplistic, primitive. To others, it may seem a remarkably simple, subtle technique of keeping the reader going on a long and ceaselessly rewarding journey.
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I recently read that LotR and
The Silmarillion are devilishly difficult to translate into other languages due to their being fashioned on the linguistical characteristics of Old Norse epic poetry (or something similar--I'm on a learning curve here [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] ).
I'm going to start to wind this up. Here's some flotsam and jetsam ...
Question: What is the background on Frodo's performance of the Man in the Moon ditty at The Prancing Pony? Did Tolkien fiddle a bit with Mother Goose or is this an Old Norse drinking song? [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img]
I feel I have been transported there and back again reading Squatter's own prose. Thank you, sir. Indeed, I have mightily enjoyed reading many posts in this thread, so I thank you all. I love having reasons to love the minds of Men.
[ February 22, 2003: Message edited by: dininziliel ]