must change it.' Instead he would approach the problem with the attitude:
'What does this mean? I must find about." [Carpenter 94]
On the 16 of November 1917 Tolkien gets a son and writes story of Luthien &
Beren
1918 - Tolkien gets job in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
1920 - Tolkien gets a professorship at Leeds University
In October of 1920 Tolkien gets second son.
Tolkien writes poems: "Another, 'The Dragon's Visits', describes the
ravages of a dragon who arrives at Bimble Bay and encounters 'Miss
Biggins'. A third, 'Glip', tells of a strange slimy creature who lives
beneath the floor of a cave and has pale luminous eyes" [Carpenter 106] :
Dragon ~ Smaug, Miss Biggins ~ Bilbo Baggins, Glip ~ Gollum
1924 - Tolkien gets a third son Christopher.
1925 - Tolkien becomes a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford
1929 - Tolkien gets a daughter
Tolkien now
[Tolkien's Workplace] "The shelves are crammed with dictionaries, works on
etymology and philology, and editions of texts in many languages,
predominant among which are Old and Middle English and Old Norse; but there
is also a section devoted to translations of The Lord of the Rings into
Polish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Japanese; and the map of his invented
'Middle-Earth' is pinned to the window - ledge." (Carpenter 4) [Tolkien's
view of The Lord of the Rings] "He explains it all in great detail, talking
about his book not as a work of fiction but as a chronicle of actual
events; he seems to see himself not as an author who has made a slight
error that must now be corrected or explained away, but as a historian who
must cast light on an obscurity in an historical document." [Tolkien's
Voice] "He has a strange voice, deep but without resonance, entirely
English but with some quality in it I cannot define, as if he had come from
another age or civilization" (Carpenter 5)
The roots of some Tolkien characters
Gandalf
While reading “The Hobbit” and “The Lord Of The Rings” you will meat
such character as Gandalf. He is a magician (or Istary in the “The
Silmarillion”). And like all magicians he wears a long, thick, grey (or
white) beard, a big cone-shaped hat with wide fields and a wide grey
raincoat. This character owes with his existence to Tolkien’s trip to
Switzerland, where in the shop among the mountans he bought a postcard. It
was a reproduction of a picture of a german painter Madlenner, which was
called “Der Berggeist” (it could be translated as “The spirit of the
mountans”). There was an old man with white long beard and cone-shaped hat
with wide fields, who was seating under the tree. Many years later Tolkien
wrote on the other side of this postcard the following: “The prototype of
Gandalf”…
Sam Gamgee
Sam Gamgee is a hobbit (It tells us many things). He is the best
friend of Frodo and besides that, he is Frodo’s gardener. He is very brave,
bonhomous, kind, but careless and light-hearted, and, as all hobbits, he
likes to eat very much. It is very interesting, that the word “gamgee” can
be translated from one of the English dialects as cotton wool and besides
that, it was a surname of a doctor, who had invented 'gamgee-tissue', a
surgical dressing made from cotton wool. But the real character of Sam was
copied from the character of the mere english soldier of the war of 1914.
You already now from the biographical sketch that Tolkien took part in that
war. He battled on the front line in France. And he knows, what the war
is. Later in one of his letters he wrote: “My Sam Gamgee is indeed a
reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the
1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself”.
Hobbits
Hobbits is a people of Halflings. They live in holes. They are very short,
practical, strait-laced and they like tasty food most of all things in the
world. These creatures were created by J.R.R.Tolkien. He was the first,
who used them in his books. There are two versions about the origin of the
word “hobbit”. V.A. Muravjov keeps one of them. He wrote in his entrance to
“The Lord Of The Rings”, that the world “hobbit” is a mixture of latin word
“homo”, which means “human” and english word “rabbit”. But Humphrey
Carpenter explained the origin of this word in a different way. In his “The
biography of J.R.R.Tolkien” he wrote, that in his youth Tolkien read the
book “Babbit” by Sincler Luis and it influensed him very much. Carpenter
shows us the resemblance of the personality of Babbit and Bilbo Baggins,
the main character of Tolkien’s book “The hobbit or there and back again”.
Tolkien himself told in one of his interview, that his hobbits have no even
a hint on rabbits. That is why I can say, that the second version about the
origin of the word “hobbit” is more correct.
The Shire
The Shire is a country of hobbits. But it also has its roots. From the
biographical sketch we know, that four best years of his childhood Tolkien
spent in the village of Sarehole. And wile reading Tolkien’s description of
the Shire I realized, that it is very close to the Carpenter’s description
of Sarehole. The same water-mill, the same pretty flower-beds, the roads
paved with stones of different colors. We can see the festive tree, which
was decorated by hobbits every holiday. And we know, that in Sarehole there
was a tree, that Tolkien remembered all his life. The first his wise tree.
In hobbits-halflings we can see the same efficient, plain and stiff english
peasants so much loved by Tolkien.
Trees and ents
All his life Tolkien loved trees. In his childhood he dreamed, they
could have mind, speak to each other and even move. And his dream came
true as we can see it in his works (mostly in “The Silmarillion” and “The
Lord Of The Rings”). When professor created reasonable trees, he desided to
creat someone, who will look after them. That is how ents appeared. Ents
look like trees, but they more reasonable, more movable and of course they
are immortal. They are not fidgety, but very wise. Their speech is very
slow and calm. Its manner (“Hrum, Hoom”) was copied with the deep bass of
Luis, the best friend of J.R.R.Tolkien.
The elves
The elves in their appearance, whom we can see in the books of Tolkien
were also mostly created by him. The roots of these characters are very
ramified. Professor read a lot of information about all kinds of elves and
finding something general tried to create something new. Finally he got
immortal creatures, who can be killed only with a sword or they can pine
away to death. They are tall, have perfect eyesight, bright hair and brave
harts. They are wise, because of the memory they keep in their immortal
mind. But elves themselves estimate their immortality as end-around
infinity of analogical events, which exhaust and oppress them. But they
have a dream to return to Valinor, country, where their immortality wont be
so hard and difficult.
Lutien
Lutien Tinuviel (“Tinuviel” could be translated from Quenya as
“nightingale”) is the most beautiful elven virgo in the whole Arda (The
Earth). One day she was singing the hymn to Varda in the forest:
Ir Ithil ammen Eruchin (When the Moon is for us, the
children of Eru,
Menel-vir sila diriel Like sky precious stone
shines and saves,
Si loth a galadh lasto din! Let the flower and the tree
listen in silence!
A hir Annun gilthoniel Oh, queen of the West, which
light the stars,
Le linnon im Tinuviel! I sing to you, it’s me,
Tinuviel.)
Beren, the bravest warrior herd this sounds and loved Lutirn in a
moment. But he was mortal and she was an elf. That is why they could not be
together. But their love was so strong, that Lutien managed to ask the
goddess Varda to help them. And Varda helped them, so Lutien became mortal
and shared the destiny of her sweetheart.
Lutien is a copy of Edith Bratt, the wife of Tolkien. Like Lutien
Edith had hair of the color of raven’s wing, satin skin, shining eyes. She
danced and sang very well. And like the elven virgo, she danced for him in
the forest. And there is a inscription on her tomb: “Edith Mary Tolkien
(Lutien)”
Shelob
Shelob is a brainchild of Ungoliant, a jumbo spider with a beak,
pincers and bottomless stomach. Ungoliant is the evil and concentrated
darkness. She terminated the Two Great Trees Telperion and Laurelin and
deprived the world frome the light that give life.
Shelob is smaller then her mother, but she is even more cruel and
always hungry. This creature lives in a lair on the border of Mordor (the
Dark Land). She has a poison in her stinger, using which she kills and
devours her victims.
In his early childhood, being in South Africa, Tolkien stumbled on a
tarantula. It bit him, and he ran in terror across the garden until the
nurse snatched him up and sucked out the poison. Since that time he began
to afraid spiders. Maybe this made him to create such a creature.
“She”+”lob” is a quite wide-spread model of forming words, like female
animals. For example “she-goat” or “she-wolf”. In this case words should be
written with hyphen. Tolkien took hyphen away and used the received word as
the name of his creature. It looks rather horribly, isn’t it?
Tolkiens view on some events from
The Bible and archaic history
