nitwit Tolkienists

[calimac]

I'm not going to name this book, because I haven't finished reading it yet, but it's not the only recent book on Tolkien to begin by rudely and inaccurately denouncing all previous Tolkien studies for failing to fit the standards of the author's own perfect and unimpeachable work.

Once it gets past that, it does have some interesting and original things to say, but I was stopped cold by this sentence:

Merry ... finally contributes to the fighting in a decisive way, using his magic sword to slay the Black Rider, thus saving Éowyn's life.

There are about three things wrong with this sentence.

First and least importantly, "Black Rider" is rather an obsolete term to use for the Nazgûl at this point. The horses which originally earned them that description from the hobbits disappeared long ago at the Ford of Bruinen. True, the Nazgûl still has a steed in the form of that monstrous flying creature, but even though Tolkien still uses the term "Black Rider" for him, more often he's the Ringwraith or the Lord of the Nazgûl, better choices for describing the scene.

Secondly, "magic sword." That's a clumsy and inappropriate term. The blacksmith whose country's enemy was the Witch-king of Angmar did not cast a spell when forging this sword. Its particular virtue and appropriateness for this deed is subtler than that. Read Tolkien's description:

So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dúnedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.

"Magic sword," with its implications of cheap hack fantasy, doesn't do it justice. Sam and Galadriel's conversation about "Elf-magic" should have taught you that, if nothing else.

Thirdly and most importantly, Merry doesn't slay the Nazgûl! Merry, who's been crawling on all fours, sick with horror, manages to stab the Nazgûl in the leg from behind. The Nazgûl topples forward, and Éowyn, struggling up from her knees, raises her sword - which has no particular animus against the Witch-king - and drives it into what passes as his face. Éowyn kills him; Merry provides essential assistance. It's all very clear on the page. Read the fricking book before you try writing detailed analysis of the author's prose, why don't you?

Comments

[cmcmck]

And of course we can't have a woman warrior dealing the death blow, can we?

[calimac]

good lord, I didn't catch that implication. But ... male author: you could be right.

[sturgeonslawyer]

H'mmm. I have always read that passage to suggest that the person who "wrought it slowly" was, at the very least, near Elvish levels of craft. And while I would not use the word "magic," I have to say that a blade specifically wrought to "[break] the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will" is more than an ordinary sword. My reading is that, if not for Merry's blow, Eowyn's -- even had she managed to rise and stab him inna face -- would have been in vain. (Or vein. Hers, most likely.)

[calimac]

Oh yes, it's clear that Eowyn could not have killed the Witch-king without Merry wounding him first. In fact, having already knocked her down, he was about to crush her with his mace, so she never would have gotten the chance.

On the other hand, first, "near Elvish levels of craft" do not make for a "magic sword" in the manner of fantasies that would use a term like "magic sword." Galadriel's description of what Sam foolishly calls "Elf-magic" make that clear.

And second, the sword was not specifically wrought to stab the Witch-king personally. How could the smith have known what any given sword would do? The text says he would have been glad to know its fate, because the Witch-king was their greatest enemy, and his animosity towards that enemy clearly went into the making of his swords. But it's not more specific than that. A sword could be used against some other member of the Angmar army, or against some other enemy who were numerous. This sword's fate was a bonus.

[sturgeonslawyer]

I want to be clear that I am not suggesting that Merry's sword was "magical" in the sense used by writers of generic extruded fantasy product or tabletop roleplaying games.

I also agree that the sword did not have the Witch-king's name writ on it or any nonsense like that.

But it is clear that there was something unique about this particular sword. I imagine that any smith in such a dire war would have made more than one sword. There were, then, other blades by that smith around (possibly being chucked at would-be kings by aquatic bints). But:

No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.

This implies that no other blade made by the same smith, though wrought with the same "animosity towards that enemy" which "clearly went into the making of his swords." In short, there is something quite unique about this sword, which I suggest arises from a smith, however briefly, rising to something akin to what the Elves know is not "magic" but craft. Perhaps, in a lesser way, it is that smith's equivalent to the Silmarils, a work that can only be made once; perhaps he somehow imbued it with his hatred for Angmar. I don't know, and don't claim to know; I only know that that sword, and no other, could have "unknit" the Witch-king's spells of protection.

[calimac]

I don't take "no other sword" quite so literally. Why would no other sword, wrought by the same smith with the same animosity, have had the same effect? Unless he did have some sort of premonition that this was the sword that would do it, but if he did have that, it spoils the entire effect of the "glad would he have been to know" passage, because in that case he would have known.

Or Glorfindel walked into his smithery and uttered a prophecy. Or maybe he just made the one sword.

Nah. I take "no other sword" as meaning "no sword of other origin." I justify this reading on the grounds that it makes sense, and a more literal reading doesn't. Not every statement in Tolkien can be taken with absolute literalness. Who is eldest, Bombadil or Treebeard? Authoritative statements point to each.

[sturgeonslawyer]

Bah. The claims that Bombadil and Treebeard are eldest come from their respective mouths; "no other sword" comes from the narrator. I refuse to believe that Tolkien used the unreliable narrator trope.

[calimac]

On the contrary. It's Gandalf who says that Treebeard is the oldest of all living things, and the Elves, not just Bombadil himself, call him oldest and fatherless. And Gandalf and the Elves are certainly depicted as reliable.

There is nothing unreliable about a narrator who says "no other sword" meaning "no sword of other origin." It's a rhetorical filip, not an unreliability. I invoke it to save the text from an inappropriate and inaccurate blinkered literalism. Look a few paragraphs earlier where we see this:

"a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world."

That age was the Third Age, which had about two years to run. Does this magnificent passage mean that the Nazgul could have been silenced for possibly as little as two years? What a damp squib that would be. Well, of course not. "That age of this world" is a rhetorical filip, meaning "a very long time indeed." But blinkered literalism would insist otherwise.

Besides, Tolkien's narrator can be unreliable, when it wants to be. The narrator calls Eowyn "Dernhelm". That's both false and deliberately misleading.

[sturgeonslawyer]

H'mmm. I confess to misremembering who said that Treebeard was oldest. The Elves I chose not to mention: the point of view is that it is always in the mouth of characters, who may be wrong -- at least one of them certainly is (unless someone wants to try to make a case that Treebeard is Bombadil in Ent-drag).

This is important, because Tolkien uses (at least) two types of narrative voice, or perhaps mood is the better word:

1. The limited PoV, in which he narrates what one (usually) character sees/hears/feels/knows/etc. This is the mood he mostly uses in The Hobbit and, if I am not mistaken, in LotR -- I could be mistaken about the latter; it's been nearly a quarter-century since I last reread it, mostly, I suspect, from fear of "colonization."
   
2. The omniscient narrator directly addressing the reader to give some "facts" about the world or situation that may not even be known to anyone actually in the scene; a good example of this mood is the "What is a Hobbit?" passage at the beginning of "An Unexpected Party;" perhaps a better one is the passage that introduces Gollum, up until Bilbo shows up. This is, of course, also the main mood of The Silmarillion.)

What characters say, of course, is not the narrator's voice at all -- that would be more in Heinlein's bag of tricks -- though, obviously, the narrator reports what they say: but always reliably.

The way Tolkien handles these voices is (to me) one of his most impressive overall stylistic achievements. I don't believe that there is any place where the reader can't tell in which of these voices the narrator is speaking.

I will now suggest that the omniscient narrative voice is never unreliable. It may be playful, as in the "...that age of the world" fillip you note, but even that bit of rhetoric, while an immense understatement, is completely true.

In the omniscient voice, "no other blade" is an absolute statement that allows of no exception, as is "was never heard again." To take either of them as less than literal is to diminish the magnificence of that admittedly magnificent passage.

As for Dernhelm: Limited point of view. The omnisicent narrator never says that Dernhelm is a unique individual; all we get is what Merry sees and hears and whatevers.

Here's an interesting challenge: can you name any other place in LotR where the omnisicent voice of the narrator says something that, whatever rhetorical devices it may use, is not literally true?

[calimac]

Of course the Dernhelm scenes are from Merry's point of view; that's why the narrator doesn't tell us who Dernhelm is. But not all of it is limited to what Merry actually knows and observes, as shown by the places where it is so limited: "now Merry noticed that Dernhelm had left his place ..." Most of it isn't like that, and drips of the omniscient narrator keep dropping in; "glad would he have been to know" is an example, and look at the last few paragraphs of Bk 5 Ch 3: how much of that would Merry know at the time?

Actually, the omniscient narrator drops in at any point. Here's a paragraph that starts out entirely and specifically limited to Pippin's personal awareness, and then suddenly jumps to something neither he nor Gandalf (who's with him) could possibly know at that point:

"'You do not comfort me,' said Pippin, but nonetheless sleep crept over him. The last thing that he remembered before he fell into deep dream was a glimpse of high white peaks, glimmering like floating isles above the clouds as they caught the light of the westering moon. He wondered where Frodo was, and if he was already in Mordor, or if he was dead; and he did not know that Frodo from far away looked on that same moon as it set beyond Gondor ere the coming of the day."

So however distinct the narrative voices may be, they're not separated and they interweave one with another. So if the narrator doesn't tell us that Dernhelm is Eowyn, this is because it's made the choice not to do it. It wants the readers to be fooled the same way that Merry is fooled. Wise plotting choice it may be, but it is deliberately telling a falsehood by omission, by leaving the omniscient narrator silent where it could easily have spoken. So much for the omniscient voice never being unreliable: unreliable is exactly the word for what it is here.

I'm not going to go searching for other places where the omniscient narrator is not literally true, just for you to dismiss by saying that it is. If you can say that of these passages, with the absurd postulates you propose, you could say anything.

[sturgeonslawyer]

>shrugs< I stand by my statement. Yes, I agree; the om.nar. drops in any time it feels we should know something the character doesn't. But "the omn.narr. says nothing that isn't true," does not mean or imply that it must say everything that is true; if it did, we should never have gotten to the end of Bilbo's party. Either of them.

I did not really expect you to "go searching for other places," etc. I was making a point: that I do not believe that there are any such places.

And precisely what postulates that I have proposed are absurd -- sticking only to things I have said, and not any you may have read between the lines; I am not responsible for those -- and what is absurd about them?

[calimac]

"does not mean or imply that it must say everything that is true" is so disingenuous that it marks the second point in this colloquy that you're arguing dishonestly. Considering that you once terminated an exchange because I used more than one exclamation point, you shouldn't complain that I choose to terminate this one.