The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 716,717
“Is it so long since you have listened to tales by the fireside?”
So Gandalf asks of Théoden as the King tries to make some sense of what he has just seen as Ents emerge from the magical forest that has come from Fangorn to Helm’s Deep.
I promised last week that we would remain in this reflection on the Perilous Realm that J.R.R Tolkien spent a lifetime pondering and, in the creation of his legendarium, making something that has allowed millions of readers to touch and taste it too.
In his essay On Fairy-Stories Tolkien tells us that a fairy story is not one that is about an elf or a fairy but is about “the nature of Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country.” He goes on to say that Faërie is essentially indescribable, that it has “many ingredients, but analysis will not necessarily discover the secret of the whole.” Indeed analysis will effectively kill the thing that it seeks to describe. Perhaps it always does, reducing the thing that it has observed to its many parts and so failing to see the whole that it first experienced. Tolkien tells us that Faërie “may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic- but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific magician.”
“The vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific magician.” Have we not here been introduced to the Dark Lord himself, hidden in his fastness of Barad-dûr and his most enthusiastic imitator, Saruman? And isn’t the Ring a perfect example of such a device? Saruman was one who lived long in the Undying Land and knew its beauty and yet became seduced by a desire for power, becoming increasingly frustrated by the long, slow history of beauty that, as Gimli describes so well in speaking of the Caves of Aglarond can only be worked with, “with cautious skill, tap by tap- a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day”. Gimli’s description of the work of a true artist in the presence of beauty is light years away from the work of those “laborious, scientific magicians” Sauron and Saruman, who are endlessly frustrated by the slowness of things to be shaped by their will and who become contemptuous of those who are not willing to work as they do. Essentially they become contemptuous of Ilúvatar and the long slow pace of the music of the Ainur that is the story of Creation itself.
Sauron and Saruman live in the same world as Fangorn and Lothlórien, those expressions within Tolkien’s sub-creation of the Perilous Realm, and yet have no understanding of them or of their magic. Their vulgarity is only capable of reducing the magic of these places to their own that is laborious and scientific. But Sauron’s vulgar creation of the Ring is always a temptation to those who have worked long and patiently with the beauty of Middle-earth. When Galadriel is tempted to take the Ring that Frodo freely offers to her she imagines herself as a Dark Queen crying out that “all shall love me and despair!”
It is a misunderstanding of the true nature of evil to imagine Galadriel at this moment as something horrible as Peter Jackson does in the film version of The Lord of the Rings. What the Ring would have given to Galadriel would have been the opportunity to become endlessly and repetitively a terrible beauty that could be seen, desired but never enjoyed. The whole world would be in the thrall of an erotic desire that would endlessly grow in intensity but could never be satisfied. Gimli expresses this when he speaks of “the danger of light and joy”. Legolas rightly praises Gimli for staying faithful to his companions and for giving up the desire that has been awakened within him but Gimli is not comforted by his words.
So perhaps it is safer to keep an experience of beauty within tales by the fireside. As we hear such tales the longing that Gimli knows may perhaps be tasted, may even be a delicious pleasure for a brief moment, but the story will come to an end and it will be time to sleep. Unless, of course, there may be a path that might lead us to an enjoyment of this pleasure; one that never cloys,as the hymn writer puts it.
Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings 
Your post has prompted me to pick up Tolkien’s essay On Fairy-Stories again after many years. I still have my copy from the mid-90s, marked up with heavy marginalia. Anyway I see near the end of the essay Tolkien says that the benign/beneficial power of Faerie Stories (Enchantment, he calls it) can also be used within the stories themselves, by elves. He says that Elves have the power to create a Secondary World into which all can enter in partnership and delight, and he contrasts this with mechanical magic, which is simply concerned with altering the primary world, dominating it through power. So I agree completely with your identification of the “laborious, scientific magician” with Sauron and Saruman.
Thanks again for picking up this theme, so interesting!
My copy is on an electronic device so that I could take it with me while walking the Camino del Norte. At the moment its main impact on me is to reawaken longing.
Perhaps it is fuelled in part by a sense that the world is run by laborious, scientific magicians and their vulgar devices.
Agreed on your last sentence, I have that sense too.
Just wanted to add that your point about patience was spot-on. I had forgotten that Gimli said that: “with cautious skill, tap by tap- a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day”. That is a patience beyond most people, and wonderful coming from Gimli, whose people are thought to be little more than greedy miners.
This notion of patience is one that is becoming increasingly important to me in a world that screams out for instant solutions. Or a career that is shaped by being able to offer solutions. I must offer a solution or I have no career.
Stephen,
Thank you for your labors. I have the pleasure of teaching The Lord of the Rings to 6th graders and to 12th graders (again!) at a classical Christian school. I’ve read a few of your pieces. Is there a place to go to see all of the titles of your posts from begging to end in one location? I’d love to use your thoughts to occasionally fuel some discussion with my students, but an index of sorts would prove incredibly helpful.
Hi Jameson, it is really good to meet a fellow member of the Winter clan! My Winter ancestors are Londoners well back into the 19th century. Have you traced your family tree at all?
I was really touched by the way in which you use material that I have written in your teaching. And it is an honour to think of the young people that you teach deepening their understanding of Tolkien in this way.
I have been writing about LOTR in my current mode with references to the text (page numbers and reference to the Harper Collins edition that I am using since 2018. This began a second reading of LOTR that has now taken me to the moment when Pippin gazes into the palantír of Orthanc and is almost caught by Sauron who only lets him go because he thinks that he will soon be able to interrogate the young hobbit that he can see at his leisure in Barad-dûr. It is my intention to continue this reading until I sit down with Sam and Rosie in Bag End at the end of The Return of the King.
I am beginning to work on the material that I have written to prepare it for publication on paper but that will take me some time.
I wax chatting with my daughter at lunch time today and mentioned your encouraging comment to her. “You could offer to do a live link with his class to answer students’ questions” she said. I would be very happy to do this if you would like it. My guess is that you are somewhere in North America and your class will meet at a time that would be the evening here in the UK. Do let me know what you think about the idea.
Stephen, I have not traced our lineage back too far, but my father did. The Winter name for us spontaneously appears several generations back with no connections we can find. Upon discovering this, he remembered a story his grandmother told him as a boy, which involved her grandfather or great-grandfather moving and changing his name after becoming a criminal. He always dismissed it as a story, but perhaps there is some truth to it. She told him that our last name used to be something longer than Winter, and he simply shortened it. So alas, we are a people without a lineage, at least for that particular branch of our history.
Regarding the anthology, I actually found out how to see your posts in a more condensed form in the WordPress Reader, which is all I was really needing to sort them more effectively.
It would be enjoyable and likely very profitable for my students to connect with you at some point. We could even have a discussion with both grades if you’re up for it. At your convenience, feel free to email me at jwinter@augustineschool.com and we can think through what that might look like. You’re correct that we are in the US. Jackson, TN is on Central Standard Time.
As it would happen, we just finished Book Three and are about 50 pages or so into Book Four in both classes. I look forward to hearing from you.
Great! I will email you to continue the conversation.
I’m not too sure about the implication that Gimli’s appreciation of Galadriel was anything but Platonic. Given the transcendent and humbling effect she has on him, I think rather that he has the purest admiration for her, and that even his temptation is not to have her to himself.Rather, his temptation is to remain there, in the joy of her presence forever, like how the hobbits longed to remain in the happiness of Rivendell. Her effect can be likened to a that which the sight of a landscape, or of the night sky has on a man, or even of a fairytale. It transfixes. It is numinous.But the purity of his desire only makes his leaving more tragic. It was no fading, sordid need, but a truest love. He was not tested by his lower nature, but by his highest.
Greetings. I am so sorry to have been so aware in replying to your thoughtful comment. My wife and I have been walking the Camino Primitivo across northern Spain over the last few weeks and we only got home yesterday.
I appreciate your thoughts very much. I think that they offer an effective critique of what I wrote. I had to go back to this as I wrote it two years ago. I think I was a little too anxious to emphasise the erotic, hence my allusion to Circe. On reflection I think that your understanding of the danger of light and joy is much better than mine. I do hope that we will have other conversations in future. I greatly value insights like yours.
Thank you Mr. Winter,
I appreciate your kindness.
I have been following your work for some time, and don’t intend to stop.
Thank you. I appreciate that very much and I look forward to reading any other thoughts that you may have about my work and about The Lord of the Rings.