Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien: Myth and Modernity by Patrick Curry

Author:Patrick Curry [Curry, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.

And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.

Again, after the battle, 'A great rain came out of the Sea, and it seemed that all things wept for Théoden and Éowyn, quenching the fires in the City with grey tears.' The 'as if' and 'it seemed' here are plainly a sop to modern rationalists, and when Tolkien writes, 'Tree and stone, blade and leaf were listening,' he does not mean it metaphorically.

Equally, the blasted and poisoned landscape around Mordor is as much evidence of Sauron's moral nullity as it is ecological commentary. For Tolkien, as for Ruskin, the signs of the sky and earth were literally the signs of the times: '"Blanched sun,—blighted grass,—blinded man",' together constituted 'a moral as well as meteorological phenomenon: it was a blasphemy against nature...'

Polytheism and animism are, of course, 'pagan' by definition; and the celebrations of 1420 T.A. were a veritable pagan feast (one could almost say 'orgy'). On Midsummer Eve—not just any old day in the year—'the sky was blue as sapphire and white stars opened in the East, but the West was still golden, and the air was cool and fragrant...' This is the setting for the symbolic marriage (and its subsequent consummation) of the King and his bride, Arwen Evenstar. It comes as no surprise that 1420 became famous for its weddings, and in an inverse 'Wasteland' effect the land too was restored to fertility. As Tolkien puts it, in a passage also revealing his fine light touch:

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