The Story of Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien;Verlyn Flieger;

Author:J.R.R. Tolkien;Verlyn Flieger;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Published: 2015-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Notes and Commentary

67 not originally written for this society. See Introduction to the Essays. Tolkien first delivered this talk to the Sundial Society of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 22 November 1914. He gave it again to the Essay Club of Exeter College in February of 1915.

the sudden collapse of the intended reader. I have been unable to find any further information on the identity of the reader or the nature of the collapse.

litterature. Tolkien uses this spelling throughout, chiefly in abbreviations, as ‘litt’.

68 the original which is vastly different to any translation. While at Exeter College, Tolkien checked out C.N.E. Eliot’s A Finnish Grammar from the library in order to try to read Kalevala in its original language. He was already, it would seem, working on the theory expressed in Manuscript A of ‘On Fairy-stories’ that ‘Mythology is language and language is mythology’ (Tolkien On Fairy-stories, p. 181).

Stead’s Books for the Bairns. A series of books for young people published by W.T. Stead, an English journalist, philanthropist and politician. Books for the Bairns repackaged classics, fairy tales, fables, nursery rhymes, Great Events in British History, and the Gospels, giving them all a moral and Christian perspective aimed at reforming the world. Books for the Bairns, First Series 1806–1920, were well-known to young people of Tolkien’s generation.

Indo-European languages. The Indo-European language theory, derived from nineteenth-century comparative philology and mythology, reconstructed by phonological correspondences and principles of sound-change a hypothetical pre-historic language called Proto-Indo-European from which the modern Indo-European language families have descended. Finnish, related to Hungarian and (distantly) to Turkish is not Indo-European but Finno-Ugric.

the above beloved pink covers. While there are no pink covers mentioned ‘above’, Tolkien’s later typewritten essay notes that Stead’s Books for the Bairns had pink covers.

Thorfinn in Vinland the good. Thorfinn Karlsefni was an eleventh-century Icelander who tried to establish a colony in ‘Vinland’, previously so named by Leif Eríksson and thought to be somewhere on the north-east coast of North America. His expedition is mentioned in two fourteenth-century Icelandic manuscripts, the Hauksbók (Book of Haukr), and the Flateyjarbók (Flat-island Book).

69 when I first read the Kalevala. According to both Humphrey Carpenter and John Garth, Tolkien first read Kirby’s translation some time in 1911, his last year at King Edward’s School. He went up to Oxford in the autumn of that year, and checked out Charles Eliot’s Finnish Grammar from the Exeter College Library.

the clumsiness of a translation. Not only did Tolkien dislike Kirby’s translation, his stated principle that ‘Mythology is language and language is mythology’ (see entry for ‘original translation’ above) would invalidate any translation of a work as faithfully representing the original.

H. Mods. Classical Honour Moderations, a first round of examinations at Oxford University, in which the student can get a First (highly desirable), a Second (good but not great), and a Third (a weak pass). Tolkien got a Second.

70 Troilus to need a Pandarus. Tolkien could be thinking of the story as told in Chaucer’s poem Troilus and Criseyde or in Shakespeare’s play Troilus and Cressida.

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