Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, away shall fade!

[muckefuck]

There's a wet fog over the city today. The branches of the trees are so heavy with condensation that it's dripping like rain in the wooded areas. A few minutes outside is more than enough time for my glasses to mist over almost completely. Combine that with the overall lack of activity--even if many offices are officially open, I think quite a few people chose to give themselves a five-day weekend--and it gives everything a very eerie, deserted feel.

This meshes extremely well with the delicate melancholy I get from pondering Tolkien's works. Reading various histories of the Men of the West, I was struck with how desolate Middle-Earth is. Vast stretches of good, productive land are simply deserted. As one commentator points out, there's not a single settlement of significant size anywhere within a hundred leagues of Bree. He's being conservative. Add in the town of Dale (with the neighbouring Dwarvish settlement under Erebor) and the laughable capitol of the Rohirrim, and you've ennumerated all significant Mannish settlements north of Gondor. In direct contradiction of the laws of Malthus and the example of our own world, the population of Men and Dwarves slowly dwindles over time to mere remnants.

Clearly, a lot the inspiration for Tolkien's unusual aesthetic comes from his love affair with the rustic English countryside. But that was hollowing out in the early 20th century because farming was becoming unprofitable and people were surging into the cities. There are no cities to go to in Eriador. Curiously, the prominent exception is the Shire, which--unlike the villages it's modeled on--is vigourous and expanding. (Under Samwise's daughter, a whole new chunk of territory--the Westmarch--is added to the Shire and settled by hobbits.) Of course, the English gentry were no strangers to the romanticism of decline and decay, as their passion for Victorian follies in the form of ruined chapels and crumbling forts shows.

It's all so opposed to the American aesthetic of progress, taming the wilderness, and Manifest Destiny that it's a wonder it has any resonance at all here. But I suppose every ideology inspires a reaction. Despite lhn's description of him as a "very modern antimodernist", J.R.R.T. was a reactionary, reacting against the industrialisation and urbanisation of the Midlands by seizing the mediaeval notion that the Golden Age is behind. Often enough, I find myself falling prey to the idea that these landscapes we've shaped would be wonderful if it weren't for all the damn people. Let all the farms go out of business! That way I'd see only picturesque weathered barns and forgotten churches on my rides through the country and none of these prefab quonset huts or utility poles. (But my food has to come from somewhere.) Let the patrons stay away for good and leave the Gothic buildings in silence. (But without them, I wouldn't have a job.)

Comments

[0595.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the weather gets me thinking of Tolkien sometimes too.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Despite lhn's description of him as a "very modern antimodernist", J.R.R.T. was a reactionary, reacting against the industrialisation and urbanisation of the Midlands by seizing the mediaeval notion that the Golden Age is behind.

Absolutely. My point was just that the manner in which he reacted was itself modern. He's nostalgic for a hierarchical society, but he nonetheless has a fundamental egalitarianism and social mobility running through the work that doesn't show up in earlier stories. There isn't the open contempt for trade seen in 19th century novels, or the idea that some social gaps are fundamentally too great to cross. (The ideal is Aragorn, who can comfortably sit and drink beer in a Bree inn, not regal and imperious Denethor.) He draws from medieval roots to describe heroes and battles, but also shoots everything through with a more grounded view of war that's straight out of his Great War experience (notably in the Dead Marshes, where every corpse, no matter how evil or noble in life, is identically rotted and corrupted in death). He's anti-industrial, but his middle class hobbits manage to carry umbrellas and use silver spoons despite not having factories to produce them.

In a previous century, Sam would have been nothing but a comic foil and would probably have insisted on accompanying his master out of Middle Earth, doubtless to go on serving him in the Uttermost West-- he certainly wouldn't have become a substantial personage in his own right. The Golden Age of the past produced great songs and better artifacts than the Third Age, but the Shire is a fundamentally happier place to live than the besieged Elven cities of the First Age or proud Numenor. (Of course, the Shire itself is a Golden Age from Tolkien's mid-century perspective, but it's still an example of progress managing to occur almost despite Tolkien's intent.) Reacting against the twentieth century, Tolkien nonetheless is full of attitudes and interests that don't belong to any other time.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

My point was just that the manner in which he reacted was itself modern. He's nostalgic for a hierarchical society, but he nonetheless has a fundamental egalitarianism and social mobility running through the work that doesn't show up in earlier stories.

In some earlier stories; the acceptance of trade, the "King companionable in a taproom," and the equivalence of king and commoner in death are all fully realized in Shakespeare.

I grant you, though, that even Shakespeare's Samwise would probably have only wound up innkeeping, rather than being elevated to Mayor. "'Twould save me havin' to learn that iambic pentameter, anyhow, Mister Frodo."

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Well, Shakespeare being Shakespeare, I suspect that there are a lot of cases where we could take a page from South Park and say "Shakespeare already did it!" The manner of the portrayal still doesn't feel quite the same to me, but that's a tougher distinction to draw. (And of course there's acknowledged direct influence of Shakespeare on Tolkien. The Ents were the product of his disappointment with the way Birnam wood came to Dunsinane in Macbeth. I'm also pretty sure that the "no living man" prophecy was a retake on the whole "no man of woman born" bit.)

Though Jackson's Aragorn is actually much more like Prince Hal than Tolkien's (the debt being explicitly acknowledged by movie Aragorn's speech before the Black Gate). While presumably the King Elessar of the books doesn't get much of a chance to hang out in the Prancing Pony after his coronation, there isn't any sense that he has to firmly put his past behind him, let alone outright deny it a la "I know thee not, old man." Granted, it helps that he picked more respectable lowborn companions than Hal did. But I think the idea that, even after he's claimed the kingship, it's still appropriate for his commoner friends to greet him with "Strider! How splendid! ... How did you do it?" (to the extent that Aragorn gently rebukes the highest noble in the realm for objecting) belongs to a comparatively recent strain of thought. Especially when found in the mind of a conscious reactionary rather than some radical Leveller type.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Clearly, a lot the inspiration for Tolkien's unusual aesthetic comes from his love affair with the rustic English countryside. But that was hollowing out in the early 20th century because farming was becoming unprofitable and people were surging into the cities. There are no cities to go to in Eriador.

It's also an exaggerated version of the early Dark Ages, when settled farmland went back to wilderness and cities dwindled into villages. Europe was never as desolate as Eriador, of course, but there was a general drop in population and social organization, and the perceived level of both was probably worse than the actuality. The idea of widely-scattered settlements with long distances between them (and half-understood remnants of an old high culture dotting the landscape) fits what I know of Beowulf, for example.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

That sort of "longing for that which is no longer (and maybe never have been)" strikes me as more romantic than modernist: am I way off kilter with that?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

No, that would be the "antimodernist" part of "modern antimodernist". The modern parts would be, as lhn points out, primarily the social mobility plus the Hobbits seemingly having the benefits of industralised society without any of the costs.

His work is an interesting marriage of epic (an aristocratic literary form) and novel (the quintessentially bourgeois one). I'm not sure anyone else has handled the blend with as much finesse.