More Tolkien and Maybe Lewis Too

Response Shared (I)

Hans-Georg Lundahl
https://www.quora.com/profile/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2/Tolkien-once-stated-that-the-only-reason-he-did-not-consider-himself-a-socialist-was-because-he-did-not-like-the-city

Studied Latin (language) at Lund University

29.IX.2024

St. Michael's Day

“Tolkien once stated that the only reason he did not consider himself a socialist was because he did not like the “city planners” that came with that school of thought.”

Did you understand the phrase “if only” …?

The idiom “if only because X” doesn’t mean “X is the ony reason” but rather “even ignoring all the other reasons I have than X” …

Tolkien clearly was against the Soviet Union and he was at least during the war 1939 to 1945 on Franco’s side. He may have been less admiring of Franco’s administration after that.

So am I, but I might be seeing too much of myself in Tolkien, since I see so much of Tolkien in me. Believing Tolkien was for the Soviet Union is ridiculous.

That said, if Lord of the Rings was an attack on anything it was more like industrial modernity with remakes of traditional morality. The Soviet examplifies both, but had monopoly on neither. Both also existed in the Prussia he fought back in 1916 and 17 (by 1918 he had been shipped back to England). Both also existed in Victorian and early post-Victorian UK and Commonwealth, especially as projects, well before the Soviet Union.

Response To

Isn't is perfectly clear, really, given the incredible fear of the British people of the USSR when J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings, that is, in fact, an extremely complex and subtle attack on Communism, and the Soviet Union?
by John Sierra
https://www.quora.com/Isnt-is-perfectly-clear-really-given-the-incredible-fear-of-the-British-people-of-the-USSR-when-J-R-R-Tolkien-wrote-the-Lord-of-the-Rings-that-is-in-fact-an-extremely-complex-and-subtle-attack-on-Communism-and-the/answer/John-Sierra-38

I

Exchange also on

29.IX.2024

St. Michael's Day

John Sierra

Funny how you go off on an unhinged rant about the phrase “if only” when i said “the only”.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The quote I recall includes the words “if only” …

I do NOT recall any quote at all saying that Tolkien’s ONLY reason to dislike the Soviet Union was city planners.

I do recall more than one stating the opposite, like the letter involving the Yalta Conference being highly ironic about Stalin, for a very different reason, namely mendacious propaganda.

2.X.2024

John Sierra

No one mentioned the Soviet Union. the quote wast he only reason that he’s doesn’t not consider himself a socialist was that he detested city planners. .

Hans-Georg Lundahl

What is the source of this quote?

What are the exact words?

II

St. Francis' Day

4.X.2024

David Parry

“That said, if Lord of the Rings was an attack on anything it was more like industrial modernity with remakes of traditional morality. “

With special reference to Birmingham, methinks. On revisiting the university (my alma mater) a few years ago, I was walking around Edgbaston and saw a building that might well have been the inspiration for the two towers.

Tolkien is very clearly against the modern industrial world, and I wonder if he overdid it a bit with the orcs, making them too one-dimensionally evil.

The hobbits are clearly inspired by Oxbridge academics, a breed that Tolkien knew well.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Except the ones that are inspired by other guys he knew well.

Family members and some female fussy ones.

People seen in Sarehole while it was green.

Response II to I

29.IX.2024

St. Michael's Day

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“There’s also the fact that Sauron never had a proletariat,”

He certainly had more proletarian than Middle Class subjects.

“never seized the means of production,”

He certainly seized means of agrarian production from whoever lived there before his conquests.

“and there’s absolutely nothing about Mordor that resembles the Soviet Union.”

High Surveillance? Over the top control?

Q II

What was the nature of the relationship between J.R.R Tolkien and CS Lewis? How would you describe their friendship?
https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-nature-of-the-relationship-between-J-R-R-Tolkien-and-CS-Lewis-How-would-you-describe-their-friendship/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied Latin (language) at Lund University

29.IX.2024

St. Michael's Day

I’d like to validate all the answers by Jeff Mathieson[1] Jason Taylor[2] and especially Manu OG[3] … only adding that they were also both veterans of The Great War.

That was however also added in a longer answer by Timothy Train.[4] On a verbally not identic but substantially not different question.

Footnotes

[1] Jeff Mathieson's answer to What was the nature of the relationship between J.R.R Tolkien and CS Lewis? How would you describe their friendship?
[2] Jason Taylor's answer to What was the nature of the relationship between J.R.R Tolkien and CS Lewis? How would you describe their friendship?
[3] Manu OG's answer to What was the nature of the relationship between J.R.R Tolkien and CS Lewis? How would you describe their friendship?
[4] Timothy Train's answer to What was the relationship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis like?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

29.IX.2024

St. Michael's Day

I can say a few things that their friendship was NOT like.

1. They were not brothers in a Masonic lodge. The Inklings were no such thing. There were no initiation rites, newcomers didn’t need to shut up, indeed, the contrary, they would specifically be invited to speak up on their literary projects.
2. They were also not a homosexual couple. Tolkien was clearly heterosexual and normal, he was married and had four children. CSL has been speculated as having been marred in his heterosexuality, and he had prior to Christianity had an interest in BDSM, but he did live a somewhat married life (though not perhaps validly married) and was devastated at the death of Joy. Tolkien for his part was not surviving the death of Edith for more than about a year.

Q III

How did J.R.R. Tolkien's personal linguistic 'aesthetic' influence the development of his Elvish languages?
https://www.quora.com/How-did-J-R-R-Tolkiens-personal-linguistic-aesthetic-influence-the-development-of-his-Elvish-languages/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

29.IX.2024

St. Michael's Day

Basically, if he loved two languages that have some traits in common, he was more than happy to invent a third one that involved the same traits.

Did he love Ancient Greek and Finnish? See Quenya.

Did he love Welsh and Spanish? See Naffarin (more to the Spanish) and Sindarin (more to the Welsh). While Naffarin is a Conlang, it is not an Elvish language, by the way.

IV

Did J.R.R. Tolkien have a specific timeline for the different periods of history in Middle-earth (LOTR, Hobbit)?
https://www.quora.com/Did-J-R-R-Tolkien-have-a-specific-timeline-for-the-different-periods-of-history-in-Middle-earth-LOTR-Hobbit/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

29.IX.2024

St. Michael's Day

I’d like to second Manu OG’s answer, which was unfairly collapsed.

I’d only like to add that The Hobbit was set some 70~80 years before the very end of the Third Age and LOTR was set in the last year and the final chapters run into the Fourth Age.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

29.IX.2024

St. Michael's Day

Here is his answer, by the way:

Manu OG's answer to Did J.R.R. Tolkien have a specific timeline for the different periods of history in Middle-earth (LOTR, Hobbit)?

Q V

Wasn't Tolkien trying to do what Homer did, to write an English version of the Iliad, and redefine English culture and religion? All Tolkien did was dress up contemporary events with some Norse legends, a kind of Norse version of the world wars!
https://www.quora.com/Wasnt-Tolkien-trying-to-do-what-Homer-did-to-write-an-English-version-of-the-Iliad-and-redefine-English-culture-and-religion-All-Tolkien-did-was-dress-up-contemporary-events-with-some-Norse-legends-a-kind-of-Norse/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

3.X.2024

St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus

No …

1. The Iliad is not fiction. It’s docufiction. It’s not like imagining how Nazism would be portrayed as (possibly) Sauron, or as (somewhat more probably) Tengil (Brothers Lionheart), it’s more on the level of how Nazism is portrayed in Cannons of Navarrone or Sound of Music or Schindler’s List. Except the Trojan war wasn’t all that much about ideology, it was more about language and resources, not totally unlike Hundred Years’ War or Seven Years War were between England and France.
2. Tolkien didn’t dress up contemporary events. When he said he “dislike[d] allegory,” he meant he disliked when Restoration poets made “allegories” about precisely contemporary events under kings and queens from Charles II to Queen Anne. The contemporary stuff that’s actually in Tolkien is more like horrors of World War I trenches, or the conflicts between Natural Law vs Reason of State, or between Industrialism and Ruralism (plus Arts and Crafts) or between often decentralised believers in freedom and the true faith (which “back then” was pretty much absence of idolatry) and very centralised, though with two or three competing factions, Satanists, Diabolists. That kind of conflict (with Bolsheviks as Satanists, I think Tolkien would have agreed with Wurmbrandt[1]) comes into contemporary events (from Spain 1931 to fall of the wall 1990, and beyond), but Tolkien’s work doesn’t quite align with Tolkiens views of The West (in the cold war), so, his fiction was not trying to depict contemporary events.
3. Unlike the Iliad, but like Robert E. Howard, Tolkien places his work into the far off past of Earth. Homer by contrast was dealing with things that happened up to 400 years earlier, like making a docufiction about the Thirty Years’ War.
4. No Norse legend as such is in The Lord of the Rings. I know them pretty well, Tolkien knew them even better. If you want an equivalent of the ring making invisible, go for Gyges in Lydia, and Herodotus considered that a true recent event. If you want to have a ring possessor cursing those who kept the ring from him, see an archaeological item. If you want a supernatural being that’s evil and that can only be killed by the destruction of an object, that’s the Russian tale of Koshchey the Deathless. If you want a quest ending with the destruction of a magic object (but of opulence, not of oppressive power), see the quest for Sampo in Kalevala, but there the destruction of Sampo is an accident, not what the heros wanted. Norse legends have contributed relatively little. Beowulf perhaps a little more, and to The Hobbit. And while certain things in Laketown may be seen as the conflict between Capitalism and Fascism (with Bard as a very idealised version of something ranging from Mussolini to d’Annunzio but just for parts of the situations at the end of WW-I and the Biennio Rosso, up to the March on Rome), the main action is very different from both most of Norse legends and most of contemporary events. One could argue important parts owe more to Rider Haggard than to either of these.

Footnotes

[1] WAS KARL MARX A SATANIST?: A Documented Study: Wurmbrand, Pastor Richard: 9798986178905: Amazon.com: Books
https://www.amazon.com/WAS-KARL-MARX-SATANIST-Documented/dp/B09YQ33N23/

Q VI

Can you describe the physical features and climate of Westeros and how they differ from our world?
https://www.quora.com/Can-you-describe-the-physical-features-and-climate-of-Westeros-and-how-they-differ-from-our-world/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

3.X.2024

St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus

No, I can’t.

Just because I love Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, that doesn’t mean I’m into George R. R. Martin.

Q VII

What education did medieval European aristocracy receive?
https://www.quora.com/What-education-did-medieval-European-aristocracy-receive/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Answer requested by

Alex Pismenny

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Was bullied in school, both as pupil and as teacher. Against school compulsion.

6 years ago

My impression is, as C. S. Lewis was a good medievalist, he fairly much nailed it in the question of education on the page where Shasta, sorry, Cor enumerates what he is going to have to learn.

Note, the intellectual standards have been different for different periods and you would also like to consult the education of Prince Caspian.

But he took from a wide range, and a Latin grammar by “Pulverulentus Siccus” was clearly a good Renaissance asset …

In the earlier Middle Ages, one reason you did not necessarily learn all that much Classic Latin was, Latin was how you wrote your own language, up to Alcuin and in certain places some longer.

At the time of Alcuin, take a look at his dialogue for prince Pépin, probably while the latter was fairly young.

Dialogo di Pipino e Alcuino (This page takes it, Pépin was 5 years old)

I

St. Francis day, 4.X.2024

Hans-Georg Lundahl

To the initial statement, from The Horse and His Boy, the chapter “How Bree became a wiser horse”:

"Buck up, Bree," said Cor. "It's far worse for me than for you. You aren't going to be educated. I shall be learning reading and writing and heraldry and dancing and history and music while you'll be galloping and rolling on the hills of Narnia to your heart's content."

II the following dialogue

is from six years ago too, soon after the answer:

Alex Pismenny

“P. Quid est libertas hominis?—A. Innocentia.”

I wish they taught that today.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

One can also enjoy “P. Quid est lingua?—A. Flagellum aeris.”

Alex Pismenny

Remarkable here is that these are questions a 5-year old is asking. We don’’t know if young Pepin can appreciate Alcuin’s wit, but can you imagine a 5-year old asking “what is liberty” or “what is language”, in any language?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Actually, I think he asked “what is the tongue?”

I have been a five year old asking about technicalities in Star Trek, because I have been a five year old watching Star Trek.

Five year olds ask about what they hear about.

One such asked “what is God?”

Not “who is God?” as he knew the answer from the Catechism, but “what is God?”

He is referred to as St Thomas Aquinas.

I wonder if it is ironic about his Summa that his last confessor said he found his conscience as pure as that of a four year old - or whether he was actually just four when he asked?

Alex Pismenny

Yes, perhaps, since he asked about other body parts.

Q VIII

What does the term "Canon" mean in the world of J.R.R. Tolkien?
https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-term-Canon-mean-in-the-world-of-J-R-R-Tolkien/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

6.X.2024

XXth LD after Pentecost

In the case of any author who has derivative works[1] , whether authorised or as fan fiction, what the author wrote himself is considered “canon” …

The word means “measuring rod, standard” in Greek, so, what the author wrote himself is “canon” in relation to all derivative works and for that matter discussions.

This is not the only way[2] in which the word is used outside the discussion whether the canon of sacred scripture is 73 or 66 books.

Footnotes

[1] Canon (fiction) - Wikipedia
[2] Canon - Wikipedia