On Fairy-Stories

Further Thoughts on Gandalf’s “Fountain of Mirth”. Gandalf and The Shire.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.741-743

This is the third post in a short series of reflections that I am writing about Gandalf based upon the observations that Pippin makes of him both in the scene that takes place in the throne room of Gondor at the beginning of The Return of the King, the final volume of The Lord of the Rings and the scene that follows immediately after. As we saw in the last piece Pippin’s thoughts about Gandalf are inspired by the comparison that he begins to draw with Denethor, realising that Denethor’s impressive demeanour does not go anywhere near as deep as the reality of Gandalf, even though this does not seem so at first glance.

Two weeks ago I wrote about Gandalf’s joy for the first time, a joy that Pippin sees as “a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth”, and in this post I want to think more about this.

The hobbits of the Shire know Gandalf as a strange figure who comes and goes among them from time to time. In many ways their main impression of him is as a kind of travelling showman. They know him best for his spectacular firework shows, such as he offered them at Bilbo’s farewell party. When in Lothlórien Frodo and Sam composed poetry by which to remember him after his fall in Moria it was this that Sam recalled most vividly. 

The finest rockets ever seen:
they burst in stars of blue and green, 
or after thunder golden showers 
came falling like a rain of flowers.

And if it were not Gandalf’s fireworks for which he was best known in the Shire it might have been his pleasure in pipe-smoking, something to which the hobbits had first introduced him. Indeed we might say that it was play and pleasure that regularly brought Gandalf to the Shire. Gandalf says as much in his telling of the story that we know as The Hobbit to Frodo and other members of the Fellowship in Minas Tirith after Aragorn’s coronation.

“I was tired, and I was going to the Shire for a short rest, after being away from it for more than twenty years. I thought that if I put them [dark thoughts about the return of Sauron and the potential threat of Smaug the dragon] out of my mind for a while I might perhaps find some way of dealing with these troubles.” (Unfinished Tales p. 416)

Gandalf associated the Shire and hobbits with much needed rest. But was it merely coincidental that it was on his way to the Shire that Gandalf met with Thorin Oakenshield and learned of Thorin’s desire to lead an expedition to recover the Lonely Mountain from the terrible dragon that lived there? It was in his meeting with Thorin that the thought of Bilbo Baggins first came into Gandalf’s mind.

“Suddenly in my mind these three things came together: the great Dragon with his lust, and his keen hearing and scent; the heavy-booted Dwarves with their old burning grudge; and the quick soft-footed Hobbit, sick at heart (I guessed) for a sight of the wide world.” (Unfinished Tales p. 417)

What Gandalf does is to play with the images that come into his mind, allowing them to take shape there and, in a sense, take on a life of their own. In many ways Gandalf does exactly what Tolkien the storyteller does. Both he and Tolkien journey into the imaginal realm and they play amidst the images that they find there.

It is essential here to emphasise that neither Tolkien’s play or Gandalf’s is a mere passing away the time between more serious tasks. Or maybe I should say that Tolkien was not just passing time when he journeyed into Faerie, the perilous realm, the imaginal realm. It was in that realm that both discovered and then sub-created his legendarium from what he saw.

In his telling of his story to Frodo and his companions Gandalf tells us a little more of his own journey into the imaginal realm, the journey that takes him to a place in which Smaug, Thorin Oakenshield and his companions, and Bilbo Baggins, somehow find themselves together. It is a journey that no-one else takes and it leads to consequences that no-one could have anticipated. For on his journey Bilbo finds the Ring of Power. Even at the time of that discovery no-one, Gandalf included, had any idea of the significance of Bilbo’s magic ring. Gandalf describes his own actions as no more than following “the lead of ‘chance'”, a journey on which he made many mistakes by his own admission.

We will come back to that journey in the next piece. In the meantime I invite you to think further about the relationship between play in Gandalf’s story and the events that ultimately lead to the discovery and then the destruction of the Ring and the fall of Sauron. I believe that they are intimately bound together.

I am grateful for the work of Dr Becca Tarnas for introducing me to the idea of Tolkien’s journey into the imaginal realm. I hope that her doctoral thesis comparing the Red Books of J.R.R Tolkien and Carl Jung will be published soon. In the meantime can I recommend her reader’s guide to The Lord of the Rings, “Journey to the Imaginal Realm”, published by Revelore Press in 2019.

“Tales By The Fireside.” Théoden Touches The Perilous Realm.

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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.

“The Songs Have Come Down Among Us Out of Strange Places.” Théoden Thinks About The Nature of Fairy-stories.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.716,717

I promised last week that we would return from the doors of Isengard and their unexpectedly merry wardens in order to return to a conversation in the Deeping-coomb between Théoden and Gandalf.

The conversation takes place when Théoden’s company are about to begin their journey, with some reluctance, to Isengard. Legolas has seen eyes amidst the strange wood that has come from Fangorn such as he has never seen before and then three strange shapes come forward from the trees.

“As tall as trolls they were, twelve feet or more in height; their strong bodies, stout as young trees, seemed to be clad with raiment or with hide of close-fitting grey and brown. Their limbs were long, and their hands had many fingers; their hair was stiff, and their beards grey-green as moss.”

Tolkien describes Ents here as if we had never met them before although we spent some time among them in the company of Merry and Pippin. But now we see them through different eyes. We see them with wonder through the eyes of Legolas and with fear through the eyes of Gimli and the Riders of Rohan.

Gandalf speaks to Théoden. “They are the shepherds of the trees,” he says to him. “Is it so long since you listened to tales by the fireside? There are children in your land who, out of the twisted threads of story, could pick out the answer to your question. You have seen Ents, O King, Ents out of Fangorn Forest, which in your name you call the Entwood. Did you think that the name was given only in idle fancy?”

This is one of the moments in The Lord of the Rings when Tolkien speaks of the themes that he explored in his essay, On Fairy-Stories. As we noted last week this reflection takes place only in scenes involving the Rohirrim. Aragorn and Éomer speak of this when they first meet on the plains of Rohan and now Théoden and Gandalf speak of it together. They speak of “tales by the fireside”, stories told to children. I remember the pleasure of telling stories to my children when they were young. I remember how we would enter the worlds that these tales would evoke as real places. It was one of my favourite moments of the day when all my troubles would be forgotten for a little while. I did not want these moments to end and my wife would have to remind me that the children needed to sleep!

In his essay Tolkien tries to answer the question, “What is a fairy-story?” and as he skilfully dismantle dismantles various attempts to answer the question, offered by scholars or in anthologies of stories such as the collection published by Andrew and Leonora Lang, he draws us ever deeper, and disturbingly, into a realm that he describes as Perilous. He illustrates his point with reference to Walter Scott’s fine poem, Thomas the Rhymer. In it, Thomas, who himself is a poet, meets a beautiful lady who at first he addresses as “The Queen of Heaven”. She replies that this name does not belong to her and that “I am but the queen of fair Elfland, that am hither come to visit thee”. The Queen of Elfland takes Thomas with her to the Perilous Land and he spends seven years there in her company. She describes the road that they will travel together as being neither “the path of Righteousness”, nor “the path of Wickedness” but “the road to fair Elfland”.

Tolkien describes this realm as “wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; scoreless shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.” In Tolkien’s own tale it is Lothlórien that is most Perilous. Faramir understands this well and in his meeting with Frodo and Sam says, “If Men have dealings with the Mistress of Magic who dwells in the Golden Wood, then they may look for strange things to follow. For it is perilous for mortal men to walk out of the world of this Sun, and few of old came thence unchanged, ’tis said”.

This is the world of which Théoden and Gandalf now speak and one that I will return to with you next week if you will. At least to think about it if not to go there in truth, for as I have been writing this piece I have been filled with longing to take “the road to fair Elfland” myself.

“Gandalf! Beyond all Hope You Return to Us in Our Need!”

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 640-645

This is a wonderful piece to write on Tolkien Reading Day, the day on which the Tolkien Society encourage us to read favourite passages from his work. This is one of my favourite passages and I would love to hear from you in the Comments below about the passages that you choose to read this day. Of course, Tolkien would have marked this day in his own life by going to Mass to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, the news from the angel to Mary that she would conceive and bear a child who would be the Saviour of the World. He meant us to weave together in our minds the downfall of Sauron and this good news.

As Aragorn and his companions enter the Forest of Fangorn in search of Merry and Pippin, following the same stream that the young hobbits had two days before, Gimli becomes aware that their task is practically impossible. They have insufficient supplies to do more than starve with the young hobbits even if they find them.

“If that is indeed all that we can do, then we must do that,” said Aragorn. “Let us go on.”

Aragorn has been aware of the impossibility of their task since its beginning. It was Éomer who commented that Aragorn must know little of orcs if he hunted them in the fashion that he did. Aragorn knew that it was unlikely that he would catch up with the orc band and if they did they would likely perish in the attempt to rescue their friends. And even before this he had little hope. “We must do without hope,” he said to the Fellowship immediately after the fall of Gandalf at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and ever since that moment Aragorn has gone on in a state of grim despair until this moment when he knows that it is likely that he has come to Fangorn to die.

The three companions climb the same rock shelf upon which Merry and Pippin met Treebeard two days before and it is from there that they see an old man moving through the woods below them. At first they are convinced that this must be Saruman until the wonderful moment of revelation and of recognition comes.

“”Mithrandir!” Legolas cries out in joy, firing an arrow into the air that bursts into flames as it flies. “Gandalf!” cries Aragorn “Beyond all hope you return to us in our need!”

This moment of revelation, of a renewing of hope, is one of many that come through the story, each one enabling the members of the Fellowship to take the next steps towards the completion, the fulfilment of their journey, until Gollum takes the Ring to the Fire and Sauron falls at last on March 25th in the year 3018 of the Third Age of Arda.

This moment is, as Gandalf says to the three hunters, a turning of the tide. “The great storm is coming,” he says, “but the tide has turned.” And from this point onwards, although Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli will face many dangers they will face each one with a flame of hope burning in their hearts. The return of Gandalf is one of the great moments of eucatastrophe, “when the sudden ‘turn’ comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and hearts desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rents indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.”

These thoughts came from a lecture that Tolkien gave in Oxford in 1938 that he entitled, On Fairy-Stories. In the lecture Tolkien explicitly linked the “sudden ‘turn'” with the Christian Story, the story that he convinced C.S Lewis is “the true myth”, the story that means that all the glimpses of joy that we experience in the reading of fairy-stories and the great myths are not mere wishful thinking but true. All point to the birth of Christ, the moment about which the angel spoke to Mary, as the eucatastrophe of the history of humankind.

Tolkien never wrote explicitly about this in his own stories. He allowed the glimpse of joy as in this moment of joyful revelation when Gandalf is restored to his friends to do its own work in the hearts of his readers, leading all of them towards the true myth to which all myth bears witness.

The Battle Before the Black Gate. Do the Best Stories have Happy Endings?

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I had intended to return to Frodo and Sam at the Tower of Cirith Ungol this week but I felt that I needed to offer one last meditation on the “hopeless” battle before the Black Gate of Mordor before I leave it for a while. At the very least I felt that I owe it to Pippin who is lying under the body of a Troll chieftain that he has just valiantly slain in defence of Beregond of the Guard, his friend. I can’t just leave him there without hope!

When I first read The Return of the King as a teenager it was a volume that I had borrowed from my school library. After eating my evening meal I disappeared to my room and read and read and read…

I wonder how long it took me to read the section from the end of Book 5 and the battle before the Black Gate to the moment when Gandalf calls upon the armies of the West to “stand and wait!” I was reading as fast as I could but even so it must have been a good hour or so before I got there. Tolkien’s happy ending, his eucatastrophe, as he termed it, was something for which I was made to wait. I had to endure the endless journey through the horror of Mordor that Frodo and Sam had to make in order to reach Mount Doom and once there I had to watch helplessly with Sam as Frodo failed in his mission and all was saved only by the unlooked for intervention of Gollum.

But still the happy ending came. Did it come because of the courage of the Armies of the West and their brave captains? Did it come because of the faithful witness to the Good that Gandalf had born through the long centuries of his sojourn in Middle-earth? Did it come because of the friendship of the nine companions who set out from Rivendell just three months before? Did it come because Frodo staggered, step by weary step, supported and, at the last, carried by Sam up the slopes of Mount Doom?

After we have given due praise to all of the characters that we have come to know and love in Tolkien’s great work, and each of them deserves great praise, we have to say that none of these things actually brings about the happy ending. That comes through grace alone, from something that lies beyond the endless repetition of cause and effect.

This is one of Tolkien’s greatest contributions to the culture of our time and one which has brought the greatest anger from literary critics. Most of all Tolkien has been accused of being an escapist. Life, real life, the critics say, is not like that. Tolkien is treating us as if we are children. This is mere fairy tale and it is time for us to grow up and embrace reality.

Tolkien faced this criticism head on in an essay first printed in 1947 entitled, On Fairy-Stories. In it he wrote, “I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears  (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back”.

It is this “sudden glimpse of Truth” that is so subversive to the “chain of death” that is held to be the only reality by the so-called modernists. And it is precisely from that prison, surrounded by the chain of death, from which Tolkien calls us to escape. Is it a coward who cannot face up to reality who tries to escape from this prison? Surely it is the ones who tell us that the prison is the only reality and that there is no freedom beyond it who lack courage. The courageous life is the one that refuses to submit to the tyranny of the “chain of death” as do Tolkien’s heroes.