Review of The Nature of Middle-earth by JRR Tolkien ed. Carl F. Hostetter

Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, I'm the director of the Centre but I'm also an author. And today I thought I'd review the recent publication of the big tome called The Nature of Middle-Earth. This is drawn from papers left by J.R.R. Tolkien, some of which were curated to a certain degree by his son Christopher, but this particular book has been put together by Karl F. Hostetter. And it was published in 2021 by HarperCollins. I want to start though with the Beatles because I actually think there is comparison between what's happened in this book and the Peter Jackson get back documentary. So the original footage for that documentary was originally filmed by Michael Lindsay Hogg and then language for many years and then was re-edited by Peter Jackson. Now in a sense this has been the fate of these papers they have been in and filing cabinets pinned together. One of the exciting things about reading this book is the description of each section. It's often written on the back of an examination script or a letter from his publishers. You get the sense of the master at work. And these were not thought of as polished final items at all, they were his working documents. But where the comparison to the Beatles really comes in is that the Peter Jackson edit has really focused on showing how the creativity works between the members of the band, how they noodle away on a guitar or piano and come up with their tunes. There is a similar thing coming along here where you can see talking to thinking through the implications of some of his creative decisions. In a sense this book gives us a look under the bonnet of the car or the hood of the car and shows us how he thought. First of all I should say this isn't a satisfying story read. I remember my childhood disappointment when I had exhausted the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion and turned to the other collections of things like the Lost Tales that their fragments you're often left wondering what happens halfway through a story or there are multiple versions of the same story and you're not sure which is the final one that Tolkien settled on. This is exactly the same with this collection but even more so. This is much more fragmentary even than something like the unfinished tales. So don't come to it thinking it's an extension of Lord the Rings but however there is a growing fascination as you read it. The more you know about Tolkien's legendarium the more interesting it becomes. I think it actually starts off in a sense in the most the weakest place. I can see why it was chosen in terms of the logic of the collection but part one is very much focusing on Tolkien working out the maths of the Elven population. There is a lot of repetition here he's trying to work out what extent of time he needs to allow between the elves first waking up and the sort of historical events beginning to happen. I did learn things here though I learned the rough one to a hundred relevance between a human life and an Elven life so it makes things like our winds marriage to Arigorn much more age appropriate and it also get the interesting fact that the relative speed of Elven lives changes depending where they are so middle earth it goes relatively faster than in Valinor for example because of the pressure and the physicality of living in middle earth. All of that was absolutely fascinating and you can see him fine tuning and adjusting to make the generations fit. This is very much like you know changing the spark plugs or something they're tiny adjustments and you can see him pondering on a page 149 actually asking the question could Calibrian could she be younger that's the wife of Elron and you can see him just trying to work it out and what the knock-on effect would be on the rest of his writing if he did so. And there is a particularly intriguing essay on the perception of time which follows on from this idea of the generations of the elves so on a page 160 and I'm going to quote a little bit here he is thinking about the relative perceptions of time between the elves who obviously live almost they're almost immortal in many ways and men and he says as if two travelers went along the same road the one who has never journeyed there before and he is young and full of hope maybe eager to reach the end and enter upon other roads the other has traveled the same way many many times and barely notes the thing seen or passed and he is tired maybe and yet fears to reach the end having little hope of going on to further journey to which will that road seem shorter to the young halting barely at all and yet not hoarding the moments it may seem a long and memorable journey in experience and in retrospect to the older it will hold little of memory to distinguish it from other journeys like it and yet it's end will will come too soon it will seem swift at least in retrospect he's not saying there that the elves are one and the men and the other he's just saying how the same moment in time the same experience can appear differently to two people going through it maybe even together perhaps you find this true of your own life I can certainly remember that as a child a week at school at primary school felt like an age one marker of that week was that we had a spelling test every Friday and I can distinctly remember feeling that the gap between that those Fridays was just forever but as now Friday to Friday goes by in a flash of time and Tolkien is using that perception which we all experience of how time feels different to apply to how it might be to be inside the head of an elf compared to the more familiar experience of being inside the head of a man the second section of the book is entitled body, mind and spirit the material here is drawn from a wider selection of themes and for me the highlight of this particular section was the interesting chapter on something called a Sanway Kenta that is a form of telepathy you probably remember in the films that Peter Jackson made that there are some moments when Elron and Galadriel and Gandalf they're all able to communicate mind to mind and I wasn't sure where this fitted in it didn't I hadn't sort of thought about it as part of the world and there is a long explanation of how this works which is really worth reading I won't paraphrase it here but it makes it fit within the logic of Tolkien's created world and there's other things like short chapters on elven hands and how it's related to counting and whether or not they have beards and what kind of hair all that stuff it's very fascinating and just makes you think about the detail to which Tolkien went when he was considering his world and one of the most fundamental aspects here which I don't think if you've only watched the films you won't realise is that Tolkien had a possibility within his world for reincarnation of the elves the basic idea is that the elves as the sort of special firstborn created by Iluvatar or Eru the sort of god figure of Tolkien's world their fate is bound up with the world so if they die what what they are doesn't leave the world and their spirit goes back to the halls of Manui Manui is the chief amongst the valar the valar are not exactly demigods they're more like some kind of sub-creator talking cause them like Archangel or something of that nature because they are also part of creation they're part of what Eru has imagined and anyway so Manui is the sort of as you suppose but far more benign than Zeus anyway so he has some halls where the spirits of the elves go back and they have a choice then to either be reborn in the same body or to be born again as a new child and Tolkien works out that there's all sorts of problems about this that he has to work out so one part of this is what happens to the physical elements is your body the specific physical elements that made it up or is it a pattern that can be repeated and so it's like is it not exactly a clone but I suppose that's our modern usage and does that make that any less real if the spirit is inhabiting it than the original body and it's very interesting watching him grapple with that and then of course the problem about the spirit being born again in a new child is that there is the problem of what happens to the original memories and the fact that the parents of this child this new one in a sense are getting well a second-hand baby that's perhaps a flippant way of putting it but there are issues about what their relationship to that child is if they've not been part of the actual creation of the spirit of that child through the way they raise it and Tolkien can be seen grappling with the logic of all of this and a particular stumbling point for him is what happens with marriage so if as an elf you are in your marriage to your partner you die but you could come back can the other partner marry and on the whole the answer is no though there is a sort of one exception and he spends a lot of time thinking about if you then get three people involved in a marriage what that means there are echoes here of the biblical story where Jesus is asked by I think it's the Sadducees whether or not there is any sort of marriage in heaven and if so what happens to somebody who's been married more than once and I think in Tolkien is coming round to a similar answer which is those categories don't really apply in that sort of spiritual realm but anyway he is grappling with this and the idea of what happens to these unions of love in a case where you have reincarnation should just say here that this is different to the fate of men men their spirits in Tolkien's Legendarium they they do go to this place and I held but then they go beyond the realm of the world they go back to be with Eru or Iluvatar and that is what is referred to as the gift of Iluvatar by the elves the idea that you can escape the world and nobody knows what happens to those spirits the final section is called the world its lands and its inhabitants now this again is a eclectic gathering of materials each section though usually starts with an expansion from Tolkien considering something in the development of his languages and it shows very clearly that for him thinking up a word creates the history and the explanation so look at the case for example of the river Adorn on page 379 this is one of the little rivers not very important to the stories that he went on to write it's a river flowing into the ison and he realizes that that name doesn't fit the Sindharan language so he comes up with an explanation he decides it's a pre-Numonorian origin adapted to Sindharan I love this idea that he's looking at something and kind of steps back from responsibility for having made that decision it becomes a as if it already existed and then he thinks up an explanation for it and this particular essay on the rivers and the beacon hills that comes towards the end of this section is actually all in response to a letter from a member of the public in 1969 and it prompts him asking a very simple question about one tiny aspect of his the names of his rivers and it sets Tolkien into a series of connected thoughts about what each of the names of the rivers means where they don't fit what's the explanation and even in 1969 only a few years before he died he's still tinkering away at the edges and creating a fully complete tapestry for his world and you see here that he uses the gaps and what might otherwise be called the floors in his creation understanding that they aren't mistakes at all they're just something he hasn't thought through yet I think this is a message for all creative out there whatever form you're using bit some kind of stone or paint or words to look at things that you have created and if there is a bump or an oddity it's how to make that into the next launching pad for the next stage of your story or your art and there is a beyond the Tolkien material there is a final section and appendices of course that Hostetta has gathered together and there is two of them the first one is perhaps the most interesting it's the metaphysical and theological themes here he has gathered together those moments when Tolkien has talked about how he sees it as a fundamentally Catholic work and some other remarks and explains what this means I think he has an excellent theory about how Tolkien understood Lord of the Rings being a fundamental Catholic work about fundamental he's talking is if nothing if not a person of words fundamental basis so it's underpinning he's the themes are there it's in the DNA of the work shall we say and it's not an allegory not the sort of death and resurrection obvious parallel that you get in something like line and which in the wardrobe it's something that underpins the whole world so that appendice is really interesting to read through there's also an answer here to why there is no religion in the world of middle earth which I think I had gathered in fragments but it was well put together here there is obviously a faith because we've got we've got Eru and we've got the Valar so we've got a sense of a God and those sort of archangel deity type figures but there is no worship and there are no temples by the time you reach the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings so it's explained that in a way the elves in Valinor they live with the Valar with the subcreating demigods so obviously they don't need a temple to the creatures or the beings that they live among but there was a time when this world that Tolkien created did worship and this was on the island of Numenor and there was a temple on a mountain top there which was dedicated to Uluvatar but the worship there went wrong the downfall of Numenor is caught up in this idea that a sort of tower of Babel's story really where they felt the kings towards the end were jealous of the powers of God and they were sort of vying with the powers that led to the downfall of Numenor and from that time it was forbidden to the Numenorians and their descendants to worship and only evil people set up temples so you get occasional tiny traces of it like doors of Dunhara there's a suggestion there that this was the entrance to a temple of some sort that's on page 394 if you've got a copy of the book there is one religious moment that is mentioned though which I found fascinating it's the vow of Kiran who's the lord of gondor to ael who was the person who was leading Rohan at the time it's their alliance and they Kiran swears a vow and he references Eru at that time and that was such an unusual thing to do that it rippled through the history of those two people the 500 years that followed and the place where he spoke it was decided to be special the place was called Halifurian but not as a place to go and have a temple but it's just regarded as a special place so that seems to be the way it was memorialised now I have to say these are all thought experiments unfinished papers by talking so quite what he would have done with that further if it spent longer on that I don't know but I thought that it was a very helpful explanation however I would have to say there is one absolutely must read passage in this book particularly for anybody interested in writing it comes in the essay on fate and free will that's paid 230 if you're following along and it's worth quoting at a certain length this is what is talking is writing the author is not in the tale in one sense yet it all proceeds from him and what was in him so that he is present all the time now while composing the tale he may have certain general designs the plot for instance and he may have a clear conception of the character independent of the particular tale of each feigned actor but those are the limits of his foreknowledge many authors have recorded the feeling that one of their actors comes alive as it were and does things that were not foreseen at all at the outset and may modify in a small or even large way the process of the tale thereafter all such unforeseen actions or events are however taken up to become integral parts of the tale when finally concluded now when that has been done then the author's foreknowledge is complete and nothing can happen be said or done that he does not know of and will allow to be even so some of the elder in philosophers venture to say it was with Eru so here he is deciding that the explanation for free will is very much like the explanation for how a character works in an author's creation so that obviously has a theological implication but I'm thinking about it now totally as a fellow writer I as I read that I gave a big yes that's exactly what it's like I distinctly remember writing one of my books and the moment came when the character took off I've written some historical series for children and in one of them the cat royal series book two cat amongst the pigeons it has a theme of the slavery movement in the 1790s it's looking at the debate around slavery in the abolition movement and it's set in dreary lane theatre anyway the main character cat royal is sent to take some theatre tickets to a gentleman's club and in the gentleman's club is a slave owner who claims to own her best friend and I'd written a plan where things were going to go one way they were going to have a little bit of a tiff and she was going to hand over the tickets but when she actually got in the room she refused and it was though I was following on after her and she did some quite shocking things which meant she had to go on the run because her anger took over and it was so exciting as a writer to follow on behind I also had to deal with the aftermath where my lovely plan was all in pieces those moments are the best moments for a creative and I love this explanation of maybe that's how free will works so if in a sense whilst you're writing the book that's the time but when you're standing outside time the book is complete and on the shelf you're then like the god of your world and you have complete foreknowledge even though some of the events within it were down to individual characters working out their own fate to a certain degree I think there's a lot to think about in that so thanks very much Carl F. Hofstester for bringing that to me to read because I really enjoyed reading that bit so do I recommend this book absolutely to those of you who are following the my new shy of Tolkien's world it's definitely not the place to start I wouldn't give it to somebody who doesn't sort of have a genuine deep interest in Tolkien but there are plenty of us with that interest so I would recommend it I always end with where in the world or where in any fantasy world is the best place for something and in today's podcast as so much at the end of the book of the nature of middle earth is spent considering the nature of rivers I thought I would have a go where is the best place for a fantasy river now absolutely I love all the rivers in Tolkien but I think I better put that aside because that's the obvious choice and what actually came to mind was a book that I read as a teenager it was by a writer called Julian May and it forms a series called The Saga of Pleocene Exile which was published in the 1980s it's actually a science fiction work the basic idea in this book the Golden Talk is that there is a gateway which sends you back in time and all sorts of misfits and criminals and others get sent back to the Pleocene age what I remember there is the I think it's the Ron San Valley the big valley that goes through the centre of France is even bigger even more magnificent even wilder and for me this opened up vistas of what life before humans was like on earth in the era that we know as Europe been Tolkien is doing something bit similar he's sort of thinking of a pre history for middle earth but this is more in touch with archaeological evidence than Tolkien's mythology and I think they spend some of the time rafting down the river and for me this totally changed the way I relate to pre history it gave me a way of holding on to it and then when I was thinking about this I went and looked up Julian May I had quite wrongly assumed that Julian was a man so please forgive me Julian she was a writer with many many pen names so do look her up and I want to thank her for giving me this vistas when I was reading I had a stage as a teenager reading loads of science fiction and fantasy and it was definitely one of my favourites at that time it's a rough experience the rivers of the Pleocene but still powerful so I would highly recommend that if you're wanting to expand your fantasy perception of rivers that's all from myth makers today thank you very much thanks for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy visit oxfordcenterforfattery.org to join in the fun find out about our online courses in person stays in Oxford plus visit our shop for great gifts tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide