Tolkien Gleanings #277
* In Spanish, a new article from the Spanish Tolkien Society takes a long look at “The Circle of Tolkien: W.H. Auden”. Includes (in English) lines from Auden’s “Ode to a Philologist” (1962) in praise of Tolkien, and Tolkien’s poetic response.
* New from The Notion Club Papers — an Inklings blog, the first draft of Tolkien’s seminal “The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star” (1914). With some commentary, but the author seems unaware that the poem was inspired by an actual astronomical observation of an unusual event, in which the Moon appeared to ‘pursue’ Venus across the horizon (“For the Ship of the Moon from the East comes” … [Earendel] “fled from that Shipman dread”).
* An 800-page hardcover is set for release at the end of March 2025, Une lecture du Hobbit et du Seigneur des Anneaux de Tolkien: L’arborescence du cercle (‘A reading of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien: The tree and the circle’). From a medieval scholar, and to be published in French by Classiques Garnier. No further details at present, that I can find.
* The Oxford Medieval Studies event “Tolkien and the Organ”, at the Exeter College Chapel, Oxford, on 27th February 2025. Being… “a musical interpretation of the Tale of Beren and Luthien“.
* Another official batch of video lectures on YouTube, previously paywalled, from the lengthy series “The Forge of Tolkien” (2021). University of Chicago professor Rachel Fulton Brown on: The Mischief of Elves; Fear of Elves; Tolkien’s Letter 43; Splintered Light; and Gemstones of Paradise, in that order. A few are still ‘forthcoming’, scheduled for release in the coming days.
* Faith magazine on “Tolkien and fatherhood”. Plus news of a forthcoming religious retreat for men, to be centred around the topic.
* The Lamp-post Listener podcast on “Illustrating the Inklings”. Being an interview with the creator of the recent illustrated book-a-comic for young readers called Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien.
* What appears to be the unearthing of “A Lost Charles Williams Poem”… “a rendition of Psalm 146 under the title of ‘Put Not Your Trust in Human Strength'”.
* Also on the Inklings, a recent Wade Center blog post on Barfield announces…
“an upcoming conference in San Franscisco at the end of January: his grandson, Owen A. Barfield, is a keynote speaker at ‘Fahrenheit 2451: Ideas Worth Saving’ at the Internet Archive, 31st January – 1st February 2025. Owen will speak about his grandfather’s legacy, and he and I will present a workshop designed to introduce attendees to Barfield’s foundational ideas.”
The wider 2451 conference mentioned will…
“Discuss knowledge preservation and dissemination; dig into theological and literary texts, films, and works of art; be inspired by ancient, timeless truths; and explore ideas worth saving.”
The introductory workshop on Barfield’s foundational ideas sounds interesting, and hopefully it will surface on YouTube in due course. A clear 90 minute survey of his core ideas would be useful for an ongoing understanding of Tolkien.
* And finally, talking of deep delves into the archives… a new update for the excellent genuine freeware Anytxt Searcher. Useful for scholars, it quickly searches across the text inside your desktop PC’s documents, including .ePUB files. This new version now supports Linux and Mac PCs, as well as Windows. For proximity-search, turn on Regex by selecting ‘Regular Match’ in the search-type drop-down, and use…
\b(?:hobbits\W+(?:\w+\W+){1,9}?supper|supper\W+(?:\w+\W+){1,9}?hobbits)\b
This example will find all instances of ‘hobbits’ within 9 words of ‘supper’. Note there are two instances of 9, as well as the search-words.