Tolkien Gleanings #166.
Contains LoTR spoilers.
* A new illustrated page on the Tolkien Guide, listing what might be overlooked items of Tolkien criticism 1954 – 1973. Mostly culled from obscure titles, from the ‘little magazines’ of the period, and some science-fiction magazines.
* New in The European Conservative, the long essay “J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Cosmic Music of the Beginnings”…
“Despite reading Tolkien’s letters multiple times, I could not find any clarification about this literary motif of creation through music.”
The author thus veers off into an unconvincing look at Plato. But I seem to recall something I heard in a podcast, about a clear source for this in one of those proto-‘books of the Bible’ that never made it into the official Bible?
* In Italian, the Italian Tolkien Association surveys 2023’s Tolkien exhibitions, and has many interior pictures. Several of the exhibitions are ongoing in early 2024.
* The Pastor Theologians Podcast has a new episode “On Tolkien and Theology”, with a guest who recently edited an academic collection of essays on the topic.
* The latest edition of the open-access Spanish journal Babel–AFIAL has a long and detailed review of A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien (2022), the second expanded edition. The review is in English.
* And finally, the German open-access journal for fantasy research, ZfF, asks “Is it time to end Tolkien research?”, in favour of studying… “the incredibly diverse landscape of films, books and games in [its] aesthetic, political and social terms”. One might have thought that there are already a significant number of people doing just that in special-issues of journals, edited academic collections, and the various open-access academic journals of the fantastic and/or videogames. Tolkien, in a quantitative comparison with all that output, might appear to be something of a niche speciality. Of course if one measured such things by avid and engaged readers, rather than the simple fact of publication, then perhaps the balance would shift a little.
Also, the ZfF article says that The People’s Committee for the Suppression of Tolkien Research should make especially sure that ‘useless eater’ articles about Lobelia’s umbrella are ‘disappeared’. However I’ve always been interested in the special historical symbolism of Lobelia’s ‘release from the lockholes’, in the context of the section’s general undeniable echo of the primary-world releases from the death-camps…
Lobelia. Poor thing, she looked very old and thin when they rescued her from a dark and narrow cell. She insisted on hobbling out on her own feet; and she had such a welcome, and there was such clapping and cheering when she appeared, leaning on Frodo’s arm but still clutching her umbrella, that she was quite touched, and drove away in tears. She had never in her life been popular before. But she was crushed by the news of Lotho’s murder, and she would not return to Bag End.
…and how this could then be read as an oblique attempt to comment on (and perhaps purge) an unsavoury but seminal incident at the other end of the road to the death-camps. In which Hitler had emerged from a long talk with Nietzsche’s elderly sister, having been symbolically gifted Nietzsche’s walking stick by her…
“Taking Nietzsche’s walking stick in hand, Mr. Hitler strode through the crowd to great huzzahs.” — Times of London, 4th November 1933.
Thus, even an umbrella may have the political interpretation so yearned for by the ZfF author.