Beauty in Language: Tolkien's Phonology and Phonaesthetics As

žmogus ir žodis 2013 I

Beauty in Language: Tolkien’s Phonology and Phonaesthetics as a Source of Creativity and Inspiration for the Lord of the Rings Grožis kalboje: Tolkieno fonologija ir fonetinė estetika kaip „Žiedų valdovo“ kūrybiškumo ir įkvėpimo šaltinis Susan ROBBINS Klaipeda University Herkaus Manto g. 84 LT-92294 Klaipeda Lithuania Summary J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is one of the ness between their sound and their meaning, ancient most popular works of the 20th C. Its popularity is semantic unity in the words of old languages and the due in part to the linguistic depth, the artistry of mythology embedded in them, and our sensitivity or style, and the unity of worldview displayed therein. aesthetic responses to sound patterns in language. His Tolkien’s position on beauty in languages, his de- views in phonology and phonaesthetics were applied light in individual words – especially names, and directly to his invented languages, to his mythology his specialty in Old English were addressed in his of Middle-earth, and to the various prose styles of research, and also incorporated in his mythology English used in writing Lord of the Rings. and stories of Middle-earth. Elements of Tolkien’s Keywords: mythology, literary art, ancient se- linguistic aesthetics include aesthetic sensitivity and mantic unity, language, professional, scholarship, appreciation for the sounds of words, phonetic fit- aesthetics, phonetic fitness, phonaesthetics. Santrauka J. R. R. Tolkieno „Žiedų valdovas“ yra vienas mumo reikšmei pripažinimą, senųjų kalbų žodžių populiariausių XX a. literatūros kūrinių. Jo popu- pirmapradį semantinį glaudumą su į juos įrašyta liarumą iš dalies lemia lingvistinė gelmė, stiliaus mitologija, taip pat ir mūsų jautrumą arba estetinį meniškumas ir jame pateikta pasaulėvokos vieno- reagavimą į kalbos garsines struktūras. Tolkieno vė. Tolkieno požiūris į kalbų grožį, jo žavėjimasis pažiūros į fonologiją ir fonetinę estetiką buvo tie- atskirais žodžiais, ypač vardais, ir jo profesinis siogiai pritaikytos jam kuriant kalbas, Viduržemio domėjimasis senąja anglų kalba buvo pasitelkti mitologiją ir įvairius anglų prozos stilius kūrinyje tiek jo moksliniuose tyrinėjimuose, tiek įtraukti į „Žiedų valdovas“. Viduržemio pasakojimų mitologiją. Tolkieno lin- Esminiai žodžiai: mitologija, žodinis menas, gvistinės estetikos elementai apima estetinę pajautą pirmapradė semantinė vienovė, kalba, profesionalas, ir žodžių skambesio svarbą, garso fonetinio arti- estetika, fonetinis atitikimas, fonetinė estetika.

1. Introduction for fantasy and thus unwittingly having become the springboard for a new genre in popular fiction and J.R.R. Tolkien has been called the “author of for a new medium of entertainment in role-playing the century” (Shippey, 2002, xvii). This is not due and computer games. Rather, many critics and merely to the immense popularity of his works as commentators attribute Tolkien’s popularity to his demonstrated in opinion polls and sales figures. Nor ability to address many of the central questions of is it due to his having satisfied a hugely popular taste the 20th century in a way that is thoroughly modern ISSN 1392-8600

183 Beauty in Language: Tolkien’s Phonology and Phonaesthetics as a Source of Creativity and Inspiration for the Lord of the Rings Grožis kalboje: Tolkieno fonologija ir fonetinė estetika kaip „Žiedų valdovo“ kūrybiškumo ir įkvėpimo šaltinis

in idea and at the same time mythical and timeless so-called hobby and his professional work (Shippey, in style. 2002, xvi). Tolkien was born in 1892, and started learning Accordingly, my aim here is to show that the foreign languages as early as age 6, learning Latin, linguistic beauty of LOTR is not accidental, but is French, and German from his mother, who died a demonstration of Tolkien’s professional views of when he was 12 years old. He studied Anglo-Saxon language and art, and of his philological skill. First, and Gothic as a schoolboy, and first encountered philology is the main source of Tolkien’s creativity Welsh and Finnish as an undergraduate at Ox- and means of mythical invention. Second, Tolkien’s ford University. After the war he worked for two tastes in phonology and phonaesthetics as applied years on the Oxford English Dictionary, and then in LOTR give the flavour and appeal of the invented became a professor of Anglo-Saxon, teaching at ‘elvish’ languages, and all the names and other ap- Oxford University for over 30 years. Two other plications of these languages to the story. Third, relevant facts that give a significant orientation to Tolkien takes his own aesthetic taste with regard to understanding Tolkien are that he was a Roman language, inserts it into the story and gives it to some Catholic Christian, which shaped the concepts and of the characters, especially elves, and creates a cor- principles operant in his mythology and in Lord responding prose style in English such that readers of the Rings (hereafter referred to as LOTR); and of LOTR can experience this beauty for themselves. that he fought in WWI in the Battle of the Somme. Thus he was familiar with the horrors of modern 2. Philology and Literary Artistic industrialized warfare, with genocide, addiction, Invention environmental destruction, genetic engineering, the corruption following lust for power, and they I begin by presenting Tolkien’s aesthetic sensitivi- all appear in LOTR. ties, his philological expertise, and the exercise of As a professional philologist, Tolkien addressed these skills for LOTR. There are three points to be his scholarly research into Old Norse, Old English, made in this section. The first is to note is that Tolkien Gothic, and other old European languages and the thought all languages had an aesthetic flavour and literature in these old languages. (His works will be could be appreciated in their own right apart from any cited by abbreviated title, following the tradition in utilitarian purpose they might be put to. They can be Tolkienian scholarship; other sources will be given “tasted” like poetry or music and some are beautiful standard citations.) His private amusement was to and give great aesthetic pleasure. Being a philologist, invent languages, along with speakers for them, and getting a large part of any aesthetic pleasure that I am histories for the speakers, which became his my- capable of from the form of words (and especially thology of Middle-earth. The two enterprises were from the fresh association of word-form with word- intimately entangled with each other, but Tolkien’s sense), I have always best enjoyed things in a foreign philology preceded his mythology. The mythology language (English and Welsh, 191). had scholarly and philological roots. Tolkien worked It is in encountering foreign languages that this on his private languages and legends for over 60 aesthetic pleasure is best felt. Tolkien remarks that years, and The Hobbit and LOTR are something like both English and Latin (as his first-learned foreign islands in a vast sea of his legendary output. This language) “seemed so normal that pleasure or dis- output was posthumously edited and published as taste were equally inapplicable” (English and Welsh, The History of Middle-earth in twelve volumes by 191). Greek, Gothic, Welsh, and Finnish all had this his son, Christopher Tolkien. aesthetic effect on him. In his essays and letters he Tolkien himself said that the object he aimed for comments that “Gothic was the first to take me by with LOTR was to produce a work to be enjoyed as storm, to move my heart” (English and Welsh, p. such: to be read with literary pleasure. So that any 191). Elsewhere he says, “There is a purely artistic reader whom the author has (to his great satisfaction) pleasure, keen and of a high order, in studying a succeeded in ‘pleasing’ (exciting, engrossing, mov- Gothic dictionary from this point of view” (A Secret ing, etc.), should, if he wishes others to be similarly Vice, 207). Of his first encounter with Finnish he pleased, endeavor to induce them to read it with wrote in a letter to W.H. Auden, Most important, literary pleasure (Letters, 1981, 414). perhaps, after Gothic, was the discovery in Exeter Literary pleasure was, for Tolkien, tied up with College library <…> of a Finnish Grammar. It was his professional interests as a philologist. In fact like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with Tolkien consistently made no distinction between his bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour Susan ROBBINS

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never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me <…> (A Secret Vice, 210). The history and mythology of (Letters, 214). Middle-earth is referred to in LOTR nearly a thousand Tolkien later writes that Welsh “was bound to times. Since Tolkien worked nearly 60 years on the win in the end, though long baulked by sheer lack languages and their history, the worn down words, of opportunity. . . . it pierced my linguistic heart. . . . the loan words, the names and place-names together Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of give Middle-earth the consistency and feel of reality, the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful” (English foreign and familiar at the same time. and Welsh, 192, 189). This aesthetic pleasure Tolkien The third point deals with Tolkien’s demonstration felt reading grammars and dictionaries encouraged of academic philology in the use of Anglo-Saxon, him to think that the invention or construction of Old Norse, Old High German and other old northern purely made-up languages could be a valid art-form, European languages, that gives a feel of familiar as opposed to merely a game children amuse them- antiquity to many of the peoples and creatures of selves with. He had been inventing languages since Middle-earth. As Shippey has shown, Tolkien’s childhood, but after encountering Gothic, Welsh, wargs, for example, were constructed from combin- and Finnish in college, he took the development ing both the sounds and the ideas of the Old Norse and construction of them much more seriously. Two word vargr which means both ‘wolf’ and ‘outlaw’, of them, one modelled on Finnish and the other on and the Old English words wearh, which means Welsh in phonetic pattern and grammatical structure, ‘outcast’ or ‘outlaw’ but not ‘wolf’, and awyrgan, became the elvish languages that appeared in LOTR. which means ‘to condemn’, or ‘to strangle’ or ‘to The second point concerns Tolkien’s views of the bite to death’ (Shippey, 2002, 30). relation between philology and mythology. All lan- Dwarves, too, are the product of Tolkien’s profes- guages have a history. Languages grow and develop; sional discipline. Modern English ‘dwarf’, modern they also wear down. Words wear down, so does German Zwerg, and Old Norse dvergr all could have the structure of the languages. They begin by being a common source in *dvairgs, a word from which the highly inflected: Lithuanian and Latin have seven later ones might have been derived. Tolkien insisted cases. By contrast English has been worn down to that his publishers retain the archaic plural ‘dwarves’ the point of no case endings at all. Languages also even though the only correct plural in English at the borrow from one another, and words can be traced time was ‘dwarfs’ (LOTR, 1136). Old words that end from language to language, following the movement in –f that are still in use retain the –ves ending in the of the things or ideas they represent from place to plural, such as wolf/wolves, leaf/leaves, calf/calves, place (Lobdell, 1975, 30–31). The very earliest uses and wife/wives. Modern words such as proof(s) do we have of language are in the myths and poems not. So to avoid the worn down, comical concept that told in those languages. The early literature gives us we find in a tale such as Snow White and the Seven a feel for the history of the languages, as well as for Dwarfs, Tolkien retained the –ves plural to indicate the mythical consciousness of the cultures that spoke the dignity, strength and formidable character of the and wrote in these languages. Tolkien replicated this ancient concept (Shippey, 2002, xiv, xv, 15). feel in his legends of Middle-earth. Ents, orcs, hobbits, mathoms, smials, éored, It is especially in names and place-names that one woses, to mention only a few, are all actual Anglo- can see the past alive in the present. “Out of these Saxon words or modernized from Anglo-Saxon languages are made nearly all the names that appear words or Anglo-Saxon *words. Tolkien explicitly in my legends. This gives a certain character (a cohe- says these are not purely invented words. They are sion, a consistency of linguistic style, and an illusion applications of his philological scholarship; words of historicity) to the nomenclature” (Letters, 143). that might have survived to our time but unfortu- Every real language has a history; so constructed nately did not (Guide, 175). His philological method languages must have a hypothetical or feigned history was to look for gaps, errors, or contradictions in also, if the invention is not to be merely a code (A Anglo-Saxon poetry, and painstakingly reconstruct Secret Vice, 210). It is because an invented language the words, the notions they refer to, and their place in requires the illusion of historicity that Tolkien claims, the ancient poems and in the imaginative landscape “For perfect construction of an art language, it is of the authors of those ancient poems. Sometimes necessary to construct at least in outline a mythology Tolkien invented a mythical reality for old words concomitant. The making of language and mythol- whose meaning has been lost in the intervening years ogy are related functions . . . a mythology is neces- between the time when it was part of commonly sary to give your language an individual flavour” known vocabulary and our time. ISSN 1392-8600

185 Beauty in Language: Tolkien’s Phonology and Phonaesthetics as a Source of Creativity and Inspiration for the Lord of the Rings Grožis kalboje: Tolkieno fonologija ir fonetinė estetika kaip „Žiedų valdovo“ kūrybiškumo ir įkvėpimo šaltinis

Perhaps the most important example of the past Shippey notes that because so many of Tolkien’s becoming alive in the present is in the invention of the inventions come from old, lost words of northern Ringwraiths. ‘Wraith’ is a very old word, given two European languages, Tolkien didn’t think he was conflicting meanings in theOxford English Diction- entirely inventing it all out of his own imagination. ary. One is the ghost of someone who has died; the Since much of scientific etymology is based on the other is an apparition of a living person. The word process of reconstruction, Tolkien was practicing his has its origin in the Anglo-Saxon word writhan, ‘to specialty in much of his invention (Shippey, 2002, writhe’, which is also the root of our words ‘wrath’, xiv-xv). This is why Tolkien can say that LOTR is and ‘wreath’ (Shippey, 2002, 123). Tolkien combines “fundamentally linguistic in inspiration” and that it all these elements in his Ringwraiths. They are ghost- is “largely and essay in linguistic aesthetic” (Letters, ly figures, riding real horses and wearing real cloaks 219–220). and armor, but completely invisible and as intangible as smoke. They are embodiments of wrath, twisted 3. Phonetic Fitness and Ancient by cruelty and malice, and their primary weapons Semantic Depth in Tolkien’s are not their swords or maces but the terror, panic, Invented Languages and despair they inflict on their opponents. They were seduced by Sauron’s offer of power through the There are two strands of development in Tolkien’s rings, and are so ensnared to his will that they have views concerning the close connection between no individual sense of self left. words and things. The first is the counter-tradition These wraiths, Shippey point out, are completely of philosophers such as Owen Barfield and Ernst plausible, because the examples of Ohlendorf, Eich- Cassirer in the 1920s. It is called a counter-tradition mann, and the henchmen of Mao and Stalin give because it counters the prevailing views of Saussure evidence that dedication to some cause or ideology, and Chomsky, who held that the word or sound was justifying everything they do, can destroy all moral purely arbitrary and completely unrelated to any consciousness and human fellow-feeling in them. referent connected with it. Wilhelm Humboldt, Sapir “The spectacle of the person ‘eaten up inside’ by and Whorf, Otto Jesperson, Roman Jakobson and C. devotion to some abstraction has been so familiar S. Peirce, who all researched sound symbolism, were throughout the twentieth century as to make the idea part of this counter-tradition. More recently, other of the wraith, and the wraithing-process, horribly scientists such as Margaret Magnus and Vilayanur recognizable, in a way non-fantastic” (Shippey, S. Ramachandran have carried out detailed experi- 2002, 125). The dreadful believability of the Ring- ments to prove a clear relationship between sound wraiths, Shippey concludes, comes not from their and meaning (Smith, 2011, 57). medieval literary origins but from the twentieth cen- Tolkien was certainly familiar with the work of tury experience of evil displayed in them (Shippey, the early 20th century theorists in sound symbolism, 2002, 128). but was most influenced by Barfield. He commented One more example comes from the Anglo-Saxon that Barfield’s concept of ancient and original se- word smygels ‘a burrow’, and the Germanic word mantic unity had modified his whole outlook on smugan ‘to creep’ (Gilliver et al, 2006, 191). From language (Flieger, 2012, 243–244). Among other this Germanic verb came another Anglo-Saxon verb things that Tolkien and Barfield agreed upon was smeagan ‘to scrutinize or investigate’. The name of that language is at the root of human consciousness. Smeagol, the creature who came to be known as Gol- He says, “Language – and more so as expression lum, was derived from this verb, and he had the habit than as communication – is a natural product of our of living in dark caves and tunnels under the Misty humanity” (English and Welsh, 190). Tolkien also Mountains. Tolkien began his earlier book The Hob- thought that the natural environment of a people bit, with the sentence “In a hole in the ground there had a direct influence on the sounds of the ancient lived a hobbit”, and tells us that hobbits called their language spoken there. holes ‘smials’. Tolkien philologically constructed the The second source for Tolkien’s views comes word ‘smials’ as an authentic modern English form from his Christian faith. Although Middle-earth in of smygels, as if it had it survived to our time. The LOTR has no overt religious practice, no churches or dragon Smaug also acquired his name from these temples, no ceremonial worship, and only traces of roots: smaug is the past tense of the Germanic verb prayer in hymns and invocations, it still has a clearly smugan ‘to creep through an opening’, and Tolkien Christian setting and ethos. This religious element, called it “a low philological jest” (Letters, 31).

Tolkien told a friend, “is absorbed into the story and Susan ROBBINS

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the symbolism” (Letters, 172). This is a line widely each other, that the name does not merely denote but quoted and interpreted by many commentators, but I actually is the essence of its object, that the potency understand it to mean at the least that since LOTR is of the real thing is contained in the name – that is one also essentially linguistic in inspiration, that Tolkien of the fundamental assumptions of the mythmaking understood his philological investigations to shed consciousness itself” (Cassirer, 1946, 3; Smith, 2012, light on the real world, and that the real world is in 59). The original fitness between word and thing is fact the one created by God as told in Genesis and expressed in the repeated line “And God saw that it the Prologue to the Gospel of John. Furthermore, was good.” This is the original source of the unity Middle-earth is modeled on the real world in several and intimacy of beauty, truth and goodness in the ways, all of them linked to his professional views and relation between word and thing in Christianity as philological expertise. well as in Tolkien’s mythology. Another illustration This consonance between Middle-earth and the is found in the story of Adam naming the animals. real world is first of all demonstrated by the Christian He is the prototype for all linguistic invention, the doctrine of creation by the spoken word. “And God first literary artist. said, “Let there be light,’ and there was light.” The All ancient languages for Tolkien have this rich- world was not a pagan or even pre-Christian world in ness and depth because they are steeped in human B.C. year X. Christ, as the Word, the Logos of God, experience and embedded in a mythology. “The po- was involved with the world from the beginning. “In tency of the word and the wonder of the thing” (Sto- the beginning was the Word . . . Without Him was ries, 147) arise simultaneously and arise in a story. not anything made that was made” (John 1, 1–2). “The incarnate mind, the tongue and the tale are in Christ is the spoken Word that brought the world into our world coeval” (Stories, 148). He did not hold the being. Tolkien’s mythical story of the creation and reductionist view that language came first, and was ordering of Middle-earth is given in the Silmarillion, followed by mythology like a disease. “Mythology the backstory to LOTR. is not a disease at all, though it may like all human But even more than the parallels of Tolkien’s things become diseased. You might as well say that creation myth with the Biblical account, is the sig- thinking is a disease of the mind” (Stories, 121) In nificance of words and language and their intimate Barfield’s example, the Latin word spiritus, Greek and essential unity with the things they designate. pneuma and Hebrew rauch all mean wind-breath- He remarks on the “peculiar keenness of the delight spirit simultaneously (Wood, 2003, 34; Birzer, 2002, scholars have in poetry or fine prose in a foreign 30). To use such a word, for the ancients, would be language” and says “it is the contemplation of the to experience reality as nature, aliveness, and the relation between sound and notion which is the main divine together, without any separation or division source of pleasure” (A Secret Vice, 206). This rela- or shifting from one to the other. Barfield argued that tion is neither random nor arbitrary: through all the this ancient semantic depth revealed an ancient uni- vowel mutations and consonant shifts in the history fied consciousness of the world, which has separated of language, the fitness between notion and oral in modern times to separate consciousnesses, shown symbol can be perceived, in some languages more in our modern languages as separate meanings for and others less, and the connections between mother the ancient word. A Lithuanian example would be and daughter languages can be traced thereby. a word such as ‘dangus’, which means, simulta- Naming, for Tolkien is not simply assigning at neously and without division, both ‘heaven’ and random an arbitrary vocable to the thing named. To ‘sky’. Owen Barfield, a philosopher and friend of name a thing is to capture in articulated sound some- Tolkien, argued that there is no distinction between thing of its essence, some of its story. “Names both spiritual reality (heaven) and physical reality (sky) reflect and effect things in Middle-earth. . . . names for ancient speakers of such words. Accordingly, are things, and names can make things happen” poets and linguists “find language growing more (Walker, 2009, 130). “Real names tell you the story of and more poetic as they trace it back into the past” the things they belong to in my language,” Treebeard (Barfield, 1973, 83). Tolkien’s example is Thórr, the tells Merry and Pippin, and he mildly objects to the Norse god of thunder who resembles a red-bearded, word ‘hill’, saying “it is a hasty word for a thing hot-tempered farmer. Tolkien thought it was not that has stood here ever since this part of the world worthwhile to ask which came first, nature-allegories was shaped” (LOTR, 465). Tolkien demonstrated the about personalized thunder or the experience of an view expressed by Cassirer: “The notion that name irascible bellowing farmer in a rage. “It is more rea- and essence bear a necessary and internal relation to sonable to suppose that the farmer popped up at the ISSN 1392-8600

187 Beauty in Language: Tolkien’s Phonology and Phonaesthetics as a Source of Creativity and Inspiration for the Lord of the Rings Grožis kalboje: Tolkieno fonologija ir fonetinė estetika kaip „Žiedų valdovo“ kūrybiškumo ir įkvėpimo šaltinis

very moment when Thunder got a voice and a face” is part and parcel of abuse of both scholarship and (Stories, 124). In Tolkien’s own experience, the work the physical world. on the invented languages fueled the story, and the story continually prompted a return to work on the 4. Literary Pleasure and languages. Tolkien found as he went along, that one Phonaesthetics in Tolkien’s Prose cannot abstract language from a culture or a people (Letters, 216; Birzer, 2002, 32). So in inventing a Concerning phonetic pleasure, Tolkien followed language as an art form, it is necessary to invent a his own instincts and aesthetic tastes, and came very mythology concomitant to give it something of the close to the same results that scientists in neuroaes- semantic depth and richness a real language has. thetics such as Ramachandran are now uncovering. Otherwise it is nothing but a code. He claimed, “I am personally more interested perhaps Mythic experience gives way to expressing the in word-form in itself, and in word-form in relation association of words and things. Upon reaching Loth- to meaning (so-called phonetic fitness) than in any lórien “Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. . . . other department [of language construction]” (A He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white Secret Vice, 211). Phonetic fitness is inextricably and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, linked to aesthetic pleasure in his view. “Certainly, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and it is the contemplation of the relation between sound made for them names new and wonderful” (LOTR, and notion which is the main source of pleasure” (A 350). For Tolkien a major response to the perception Secret Vice, 206). of beauty is philological, making new and wonderful Tolkien’s ideas of what sounds in language are names that phonetically fit the things named. pleasurable corresponds fairly closely with some This is high art, and Tolkien gives the artistic observations of David Crystal. In an article called temperament and ability primarily to the elves. “Melodious Velvet” Crystal describes a poll of Brit- Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin that “Elves made ish readers’ favorite words by the Sunday Times in all the old words; they began it, . . . waking up the 1980. Coming in first and second place weremelody trees and teaching them to speak, . . . They always and velvet, with gossamer and crystal tying for third. wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did. . . A poem by John Kitching, “Sunday Words”, that in- . It was the Elves that cured us of dumbness long cludes most of the high-ranking words of the Sunday ago, and that was a great gift” (LOTR, 468). Elvish Times poll, is then given with Crystal’s analysis of names for natural things and things they have made the vowels and consonants in the words of the poem. are sprinkled throughout the story: athelas, mithril, Crystal concludes that there is the strongest prefer- crebain, ithildin, hithlain, lembas, and mellon, are ence for the consonants /l/ and /m/, with /s/, /k/, /r/, only a few. They show Tolkien’s ties to Welsh as the /t/, /d/, and /n/ coming in very close. Seventy-three model for this elvish language in the prevalence of percent of all the consonants in the poem consist consonants such as th, l, and n. Tolkien was highly of these eight. He shows that the most common are skilled in Welsh; he taught Medieval Welsh both at frictionless continuants, followed by plosives. There Leeds and at Oxford, and considered that the study is an analysis of the vowels also. Kitching’s poetic of Welsh was necessary for English philologists intuitions about what is pleasing to native English (Phelpstead, 2011, 13–14). speakers is about 80% accurate compared with A contrast is shown in his description of the Orcs. the poll. Crystal concludes, “This analysis perhaps They “spoke as they would, without love of words or explains why a romantic poem about London Under- things.” To love words is also to love the things they ground stations would very likely include Pimlico denote, and to love a thing means to treat its name and Colindale, which closely reflect these intuitions, with care. Without such love the Orc talk is “dreary and exclude Goodge Street and Wapping, which do and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long not” (Crystal, 2003, 414). Tolkien’s Elvish languages removed from good to retain even verbal vigour, reflect the same intuitions. A comparison of some save in the ears of those to whom only the squalid of the poems in Quenya and Sindarin, the two most sounds strong” (LOTR, 1134). For Tolkien, beauti- prominent invented languages in LOTR, with these ful language is strong; there is no “verbal vigour” findings, yield similar results. Tolkien was reluctant in squalid language. A philologist, then, is one who to explain in detail his phonetic preferences, consid- loves words; and loving words leads the philologist ering them to be idiosyncratic and purely subjective. into appreciation for the natural world, history, cul- But phonetic analysis and immense popularity among ture, and myth. Abuse of language in Tolkien’s view the reading public show this not to be the case. Susan ROBBINS

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It is shown in how Tolkien includes songs and The poetic feel to Tolkien’s prose is reinforced poems, and invocations in both Elvish languages, by his use of alliteration and assonance. Treebeard sometimes without even translating them. Upon says to Gandalf, “Wood and water, stock and stone, his arrival in Rivendell, Frodo hears an elf sing a I can master; but there is a Wizard to manage song to Elbereth, the text of which is given without here” (LOTR, 570). Since Tolkien held the view translation (LOTR, 238). Tolkien writes, “He stood that the farther back one goes, the more poetic the still enchanted, while the sweet syllables of the elv- language becomes, he put his most poetic language ish song fell like clear jewels of blended word and in the mouths of Tom Bombadil, Treebeard, and melody.” Evidently the “sweet syllables” of the song the Elves. are meant to have the same effect on the reader see- Another feature of Tolkien’s prose that contrib- ing them in print. Translation isn’t necessary for the utes to its beauty is his pacing, and the rhythm of apprehension of beauty. his sentences. Ursula LeGuin notes that LOTR is “a Legolas, being an Elf, also is sensitive to the wonderful book to read aloud. . . . Even when the nuances and connotations of a language he doesn’t sentences are long, their flow is perfectly clear, and understand. On their way to Edoras, after Aragorn follows the breath; . . . the cadences are graceful chants a poem Legolas comments, “That, I guess, is and inevitable. . . . The narrative prose . . . wants the language of the Rohirrim, for it is like to this land the living voice to speak it, to find its full beauty itself; rich and rolling in part, and else hard and stern and power, its subtle music, its rhythmic vitality” as the mountains . . . [and] laden with the sadness (LeGuin, 2004, 95). Tom Bombadil’s language is of mortal men” (LOTR, 508). Aragorn translates the “made up of free galloping dactyls and trochees, poem for them, showing that Legolas is correct in with tremendous forward impetus.” When Tolkien his assessment. prints his speech as verse, Tom is actually singing. It is not only in his invented languages that Tolkien Frodo, after being with Bombadil for a while, also displays his phonaesthetic skill and sensitivity to lapses into metered speech when it comes to saying beauty in language. Tolkien also applies his aesthetic good-bye. “My fair lady, clad all in silver green! We tastes and linguistic views to the immense variety of have never said farewell to her, not seen her since styles and registers he uses, as well as to the general the evening!” (LOTR, 135). quality of his English prose. One of the striking fea- Though Treebeard’s lament for the Entwives is tures of his prose is the semantic depth Tolkien built presented in LOTR in prose, Walker restructures it into it. In one chapter of The Power of Tolkien’s Prose as a poem to show its “rhythmic sensitivity, its con- called “The Potency of the Words,” Steve Walker ceptual integrity, and the lyric intensity of its elegiac gives a host of examples of Tolkien’s semantic depth sensuousness” (Walker, 2009, 140). He explains through the use of allusion, irony in understatement that writing the poetic passages in continuous prose and anticlimax, pun, emblem, simile, and nuance of encourages the reader to appreciate the actual poetry diction and syntax (Walker, 2009, 115). The density through the pulse and the ear, rather than the eye. is especially rich in packing double meaning into We are too used to seeing poetry, seeing it printed descriptive words. The “crafty” boats of the elves on the page in lines and stanzas, with capitalization are clever as well as seaworthy; “spells of ruin” are at the beginning of the lines, rather than hearing it. both ruinous and runic; hobbits turn a “sharp” corner Since Tolkien’s prose is meant to be heard, even where swords are actually waiting; when Pippin is if only silently in the mind as we read, he makes “curiously restless,” the restlessness is both odd and certain that it goes at a contemplative, poetic pace. inquisitive. One of the best puns concerns fading and LeGuin remarks that “Tolkien must have heard shadows. “When the Witch-king ‘passes into the what he wrote” (LeGuin, 2004, 95). In actual fact, shadows.” He literally does everything that statement LOTR was heard first, before it was read; Tolkien might intimate: he is sneaking away under cover of read it aloud, chapter by chapter, to the Inklings, an darkness; he is associating himself with the blackness informal reading group led by C. S. Lewis. Perhaps of evil; he is becoming a wraith, a literal shadow” its readability is one of the reasons so many people (Walker, 2009, 127). Both physical and spiritual now read it aloud, to their children, to their spouses meanings are realized in Tolkien’s prose; pun in or partners, with their friends. Tolkien’s prose reinforces, confirms and actualizes Middle-earth reality through multiple levels of meaning, all of which are palpable, tangible. ISSN 1392-8600

189 Beauty in Language: Tolkien’s Phonology and Phonaesthetics as a Source of Creativity and Inspiration for the Lord of the Rings Grožis kalboje: Tolkieno fonologija ir fonetinė estetika kaip „Žiedų valdovo“ kūrybiškumo ir įkvėpimo šaltinis

5. Conclusion: Beauty and the tion,” a bit like praying (Caldecott, 2003, 9). Lewis, Experience of Reading LOTR also, speaks of this quality of LOTR. “The book is too original and too opulent for any final judgment There was a great deal of controversy among on a first reading. . . . And though we must ration reviewers when LOTR was first published in 1954– ourselves in our re-readings, I have little doubt that 1955. But by the turn of the century, 45 years later, the book will soon take its place among the indispen- British readers, five different times, and by a wide sables” (Lewis, 1982, 90). Lewis also said elsewhere margin each time, voted LOTR the greatest book of that readers of the great books, the classics, will read the century. One poll garnered 26,000 responses, and the same work ten, twenty or thirty times during the another 50,000 (Shippey, 2002, xx). These showed the course of their life. LOTR invites that kind of reread- huge popularity of Tolkien’s works, even before the ing, and some of the commentators mention that they Peter Jackson films were produced. In the 1990s and have known LOTR readers of that sort. Tolkien wrote the first decade of the 21st century, a huge industry in the Foreword of LOTR, “The prime motive was of Tolkien scholarship also arose, with hundreds of the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really books and articles being written every year. Most of long story that would hold the attention of readers, them were written, as Shippey himself acknowledges, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite to attempt to “explain Tolkien’s success, and to make them or deeply move them” (LOTR, xxiii). Tolkien out the case for his importance” (Shippey, 2002, xxvi). was certainly successful in achieving this, although They do so mainly by elucidating Tolkien’s themes, not all readers appreciate him. such as evil, addiction, slavery, love of nature, friend- One need not share Tolkien’s linguistic views to ship, death and immortality, grace and providence, appreciate the validity of C. S. Lewis’ remarks about pity and mercy; or by tracing Tolkien sources in the LOTR: “here are beauties which pierce like swords myths, legends, and poetry of Old Norse, Anglo-Sax- or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break on, and other ancient Northern European languages. your heart, . . . good beyond hope” (Lewis, 1982, Very few, such as Smith, Caldecott, and Walker, deal 84). But one will have to read it oneself to discover with Tolkien’s linguistic aesthetics, and his theme of whether Lewis is right. beauty, or his prose style, but I have not found anyone I conclude that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and the who discusses them in terms of each other. whole mythology of Middle-earth would not have Perhaps this is because beauty is such an elusive been so successful had Tolkien not been a profes- thing that it defies analysis; it is not even definable. sional philologist. His linguistic knowledge and his Alexander Nehamas explains that even if we analyze acute phonaesthetic sensitivity were both necessary and thoroughly explicate all the features of a thing, its to the invention of the languages, the creation of beauty is still not captured by such analysis. To call the mythology of Middle-earth, and the writing of something beautiful is to sense that there is more to LOTR. The same kind of ancient unity between levels it than is met with in analysis, that it is more than the of meaning and consciousness that Barfield found sum of its parts. Even if we “already know the fea- in language Tolkien displayed in his own life. He tures that account for the beauty of the object before consciously refused to make any distinction between us,” he says, this knowledge “doesn’t acknowledge philological science and mythology, philological the fact that as long as we find something beauti- reconstruction and linguistic creativity, and profes- ful, we feel certain that it can still yield something sional scholarship and personal aesthetic response. of value” (Nehamas, 2003, 76). All our analytical Tolkien has demonstrated in LOTR that the modern knowledge is not enough to prove something is alienation of art and science need not prevail, that beautiful; the sad irony is that if were successful art can be scientific, and that the objects of scientific in uncovering everything the object had to offer, investigation can be beautiful and moving because it will have lost the quality that made it beautiful, the activities of both science and art are grounded the promise of more. Great and beautiful books are in our humanity. inexhaustible. We keep going back to them because they always have something new or deeper to convey. Literature Caldecott confirms this characterization of beauty, and on these grounds findsLOTR beautiful. He men- Barfield O., 1973, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning tions the “many thousands of readers who return [1928]. Middletown, CT: Weslyan University Press. again and again to the book and film for refreshment Birzer B. J., 2002, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth. of soul,” and says that the rereading “can be a medita- Wilmington: ISI Books. Susan ROBBINS

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