Issue 54 • Spring 2013 MallornThe Journal of the Tolkien Society Mallorn The Journal of the Tolkien Society Issue 54 • Spring 2013 Editor: Henry Gee editorial Production & 4 Henry Gee discusses the nature of authorship design: Colin Sullivan Cover art: The Riddle Game letters by Ted Nasmith 8 Richard Gonsowski expresses admiration for Eowyn Inside: Soni Alcorn-Hender: 8 Adrian Tucker searches for Meriadoc Sam and Frodo Fishing (p. 2), 8 Jim Allen engages in a Merry dance Rosie (p. 7), Rivendell (p. 52); 13 David Doughan replies Jef Murray: Healing Waters (p. 10), Troll (p. 12), Hunting reviews for Burglars (sketch) (p. 33), 14 Chad Chisholm, Ruth Lewis, Britta Siemen, Becky Dillon, Marcel Buelles, Gollum (sketch) (p. 50); Ted Simona Rosetti, Shaun Gunner, Victoria Lee, César Rojas, Henry Gee & Nasmith: Entering Mirkwood Charles Noad on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (p. 15), (p. 27), Bilbo and the 26 Troels Forchhammer on The Science of Middle-earth Eagles (p. 41); Rick J. Ritchie: 28 Kusumita P Pedersen on Narnia and the Fields of Arbol Mighty Strike (p. 36); Daniel Wilson: Fury (p. 44); John commentary Gilbey: Fallbow, Yosemite 31 Lawrence Vaughan Krikorian Realism in fantasy: The Lord of the Rings Valley (p. 51); 34 Colin Duriez The poetic C. S. Lewis Mallorn © The Tolkien 38 Kristine Larsen ‘That sickle of the heavenly field’: celestial motifs in The Lay of Society. Printed and Leithian distributed by The Printed 40 Daniel Helen & Morgan Thomsen A recollection of Tolkien: Canon Gerard Word, 7–9 Newhouse Hanlon Business Centre, Old 43 Jim Allen A flying balrog Crawley Road, Horsham RH12 4RU, UK. fiction 45 Mark Ridge RoChelle 48 Lynn Forest-Hill The view from the dark tower: a heresy well, I’m back 50 Maureen Mann contemplates a night at the movies Mallorn is the Journal of the Tolkien Society, and appears once a year, in the Spring (copy deadline 25 December). It considers reviews, comment, scholarly articles, original poetry, artwork and fiction (excluding fan fiction). Unsolicited material is welcome, but contributors should decide prior to submission to which category their manuscript belongs, and electronic submission is strongly encouraged. Full details on the preparation and submission to Mallorn are available on request from the Editor by email ([email protected]) or by mail to 89 Connaught Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0DB, UK, on receipt of a stamped addressed envelope (if in UK) or two International Reply Coupons (if outside the UK). Mallorn © 2013 The Tolkien Society. Copyright for individual articles and artwork resides with the authors and is used here under on a nonexclusive licence. The Tolkien Society Founded in London in 1969 the Tolkien Society is an international organization registered in the UK as a charity (No. 273809) dedicated to furthering interest in the life and works of Professor J. R. R. Tolkien, CBE (1892–1973) who remains its President in perpetuo. His daughter, Miss Priscilla Tolkien, became its honorary Vice-President in 1986. As well as Mallorn, the society publishes a bimonthly bulletin, Amon Hen. In addition to local gatherings (‘Smials’) there are annual national meetings: the AGM and Dinner in the spring, Summermoot and the Seminar in the summer, and Oxonmoot, a celebratory weekend held in Oxford in late September. For further information about the society please contact Sally Kennett, 210 Prestbury Road, Cheltenham, Glos GL52 3ER or visit http://www.tolkiensociety.org. Mallorn Issue 54 Spring 2013 3 editorial Questions of authorship any years ago when the world When we approach a work, we bring to it a was young I was a graduate range of impressions and allusions that are John Gilbey student in the Natural peculiar to us. We can never read The Lord MSciences. Back then (my crest of the Rings in the way that Tolkien did, or has long since fallen) I believed that facts C. S. Lewis. Neither can we read The Lord were facts, and anything else was just waffle. of the Rings in the same way as any of our An Eng. Lit. undergraduate, however, got contemporaries. At some kind of base level, something under my skin, and that was the people either like a book or they don’t. At notion of authorship. a more refined level, different readers take Henry Gee It’s not what you think it is, she said. different messages from The Lord of the You might think (she continued) that Rings — some philosophical, some moral, when you read a book — The Lord of some devotional. You never know, they the Rings, say — and when the words ‘by might even just enjoy it as a ripping yarn. J. R. R. Tolkien’ are printed on the flyleaf all Perhaps more startling, the same readers plain and square and flat for all to see, with will derive different pleasures from the no ambiguity and no contradictions, then work at different stages of their lives. it’s a fair assumption — a certainty, even — When I was younger, I found Frodo, Sam that The Lord of the Rings was written by and Gollum’s long three-handed slog to J. R. R. Tolkien. It stands to reason. Mount Doom the most boring part of the Except, of course, that it doesn’t. book, as dull as a game of billiards; as I got First, just who is this ‘J. R. R. Tolkien’? He older, it became its moving and dramatic was a human being who, proximately, wrote highlight. Where the Council of Elrond was The Lord of the Rings. But the act of writing incomprehensible to the infant Gee, it is was not isolated. Tolkien was influenced by now a delight of different voices and styles. his milieu, the things he read, the people When, having read The Lord of the Rings with whom he conversed, the news on the times beyond count, I read it aloud for radio, the feeling of flannel trousers riding the first time, to one of my children (then up over his knees as he stood up to give a aged 10), it took on an entirely different lecture, what he had for breakfast on 12 July flavour. It felt as if I were reading a wholly 1939, the way that a visiting scholar from new book, afresh. That same child (aged the United States pronounced the word 14) is reading it for herself for the first time, diphthong, the taste of the guest beers in bringing a new set of impressions to the the Eagle and Child, the sight of a long- book, including (I suspect) Peter Jackson’s barrow emerging from fog, the rattle of film adaptations. Not that this detracts rocks cascading down a mountainside, the from her appreciation of the book as a book way a student on one of the examination — in any case, when I read The Lord Of The scripts he was marking had written the Rings, I am sure I had a few of Alan Lee’s letter ‘d’, the shape of the branches of a and John Howe’s images in mind. But in particular tree in the Oxford Botanic the act of her reading The Lord of the Rings, Garden, and no doubt an infinity of other she is bringing yet another new and unique things. His published works might seem version of the book into being. just like words on a page, but between the In his essay ‘Pierre Menard, Author lines stand an infinite regress of experiences of the Quixote’ (1939; to be found in his from the easily charted to the infinitely English-language collection Labyrinths) subtle, indefinable and ineffable. Jorge Luis Borges turns literary criticism The same might be said about any into fantasy. By learning Spanish well, reader’s attitude to The Lord of the Rings. immersing himself in the experiences 4 Mallorn Issue 54 Spring 2013 editorial Cervantes might have had, and ignoring sub-create, paintings, music, even stage any events or literature after 1602, the musicals, inspired by Tolkien’s universe, writer Menard wrote a fragment of Don they will — of course! — steer by their own Quixote identical to the original — in impressions of Tolkien’s work. What else terms of the words on the page. But lo! How can they do? The authors will exaggerate, much richer Menard’s Quixote seems to they will bowdlerize, they will belittle. They be! How deep his allusions compared with will coarsen and sentimentalize. They will the Cervantes original! Menard brings the take Tolkien’s characters and make them do impressions and associations of a reader new things. A lot of what they will produce to enliven Cervantes’ text. For a book that will be second-rate. As Tolkien knew very remains unread is no more than a sump for well — in fact, it was a central theme of the feelings of the person who wrote it. It is his mythology — the high tales that were a waste product, a dead thing, a spasm, of once so pure will become distorted in the no more value than a collection of used bus retelling, their meaning lost. All we have tickets. Books only come into being when left in the modern world are fragments, all they are read, and when that happens, they but bereft of meaning. In the simplest of are more than the digital transmission of many examples, Tolkien asked whether a words from one person to another. Partly simple nursery rhyme, — perhaps mainly — because words are a Hey diddle-diddle very imperfect means of communication The cat and the fiddle — a book becomes a conversation between The cow jumped over the Moon; the writer and the reader.