The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1. Christina Scull

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СКАЧАТЬ and Frodo the special grace is granted to go with the Elves they loved – an Arthurian ending, in which it is, of course, not made explicit whether this is an “allegory” of death, or a mode of healing and restoration leading to a return’ (*Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 365–6). A few years later, in a letter to *Naomi Mitchison, Tolkien was sure that there was no return for Frodo to Middle-earth as a mortal, ‘since their “kind” cannot be changed for ever, this is strictly only a temporary reward: a healing and redress of suffering. They cannot abide for ever, and though they cannot return to mortal earth, they can and will “die” – of free will, and leave the world. (In this setting the return of Arthur would be quite impossible, a vain imagining)’ (25 September 1954, Letters, pp. 198–9).

      Various other parallels to or influences of Arthurian legend have been suggested, but many of these, such as the Quest motif, are not unique to the Matter of Britain. In a series of articles in Beyond Bree Todd Jensen considered both similarities and differences between Tolkien’s writings and Arthurian legend, noting that many of them may have been unintentional or are derived from a common source: see ‘Hobbits at the Round Table: A Comparison of Frodo Baggins to King Arthur’ (Beyond Bree, September 1988); ‘Tolkien and Arthurian Legend’ (November 1988); ‘The Sons of Fëanor and the Sons of Lot’ (July 1992); ‘Mordred and Maeglin’ (September 1992); ‘Merlin and Gandalf’ (November 1992); ‘Aragorn and Arthur’ (January 1993); ‘The Historical Arthur’ (March 1993); and ‘Arthurian Britain and Middle-earth’ (April 1993). See also Verlyn Flieger, ‘J.R.R. Tolkien and the Matter of Britain’, Mythlore 23, no. 1, whole no. 87 (Summer/Fall 2000).

      Other writers have commented on parallels between the Arthurian wizard Merlin and Tolkien’s Gandalf, and have come to different conclusions. Nikolai Tolstoy has said that

      there can be no doubt that the wizard Gandalf of The Hobbit (1937) and the trilogy [The Lord of the Rings] which follows, is drawn from the Merlin of early legend.

      Like Merlin, Gandalf is a magician of infinite wisdom and power; like Merlin, he has a sense of humour by turns impish and sarcastic; and, like Merlin, he reappears at intervals, seemingly from nowhere, intervening to rescue an imperilled cosmos. Even minor aptitudes are openly appropriated, such as Merlin’s propensity for appearing in the incongruous guise of a beggar, and his capacity for launching splendid displays of pyrotechnics. [The Quest for Merlin (1985; 1986 edn. cited), p. 40]

      Miriam Youngerman Miller, however, concludes ‘that Tolkien did not so much employ the model of any one wizard, be it Merlin or Odin, in his invention of Gandalf, but rather patterned his mage according to the characteristics which underlie the archetype of the magician as it developed in ancient Persia (and no doubt before) and as it persists to this day’ (‘J.R.R. Tolkien’s Merlin: An Old Man with a Staff: Gandalf and the Magus Tradition’, The Figure of Merlin in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1989), p. 138). See further, comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), especially ch. 5. For a lengthy discussion of Gandalf in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings relative to Merlin in Arthurian tales, see Frank P. Riga, ‘Gandalf and Merlin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Adoption and Transformation of a Literary Tradition’, Mythlore 27, nos. 1/2, whole nos. 103/104 (Fall/Winter 2008).

      In ‘An Ethnically Cleansed Faery? Tolkien and the Matter of Britain’, Mallorn 32 (September 1995), David Doughan notes that although Tolkien may have tried to avoid introducing an Arthurian element in his poetry and fiction, nevertheless it ‘keeps breaking through’, particularly in the influence of Welsh on names, though not necessarily on their meaning. Doughan cites (pp. 23–4) the use in the *Lay of Leithian of ‘Broseliande’ (later ‘Beleriand’), ‘originally “Bro Celiddon” – the land of Caledonia, and the supposed place of one of Arthur’s battles’; and, in *The Fall of Númenor, ‘Avallon’ as a name for Tol Eressëa (in later versions ‘Avallónë’, a haven in that island), similar to Arthurian ‘Avalon’, though Avallon is so called because ‘it is hard by Valinor’ (*The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 24), and Arthurian Avalon is related to Welsh afal ‘apple’.

      Alex Lewis and Elizabeth Currie explore Arthurian sources for Tolkien’s story of ‘Beren and Lúthien’ in The Epic Realm of Tolkien, Part One (2009). As Carl Phelpstead has remarked, however, although ‘Lewis and Currie demonstrate a wide knowledge’ of relevant texts, ‘some – not all – of the many connections they make with medieval Arthurian texts are less convincing [than the ‘incontrovertible’ argument that Tolkien made use of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’ in The Mabinogion] and there is too ready an assumption that if a particular medieval text is in some way (more or less) similar to Tolkien’s and could have been known by him it must be a source: as a consequence they leave little to Tolkien’s own imagination’ (Tolkien and Wales, p. 73). Tom Shippey says much the same in ‘A Question of Source’, Mallorn 49 (Spring 2010), but finds plausible ‘the early Welsh demon cat, Cath Palug, as a model for Tevildo’ (the feline precursor of Sauron in The Book of Lost Tales) and ‘the hunting of the great boar Twrch Trwyth as a model for the hunt of the wolf Karkaras’ (p. 11).

Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth. The ‘converse of Finrod and Andreth’, published in *Morgoth’s Ring (1993), pp. 303–66.

      SYNOPSIS

      An introductory section preceding the actual converse states that, although the Elves learned little from Men about their past, they discovered that some Men believed that they were not naturally short-lived, ‘but had been made so by the malice of Melkor’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 304). The Elves were not certain whether Men meant by this a general result of the Marring of Arda or a deliberate change in their nature.

      Then follows a philosophical debate between the Noldorin Elf Finrod of Nargothrond and Andreth, a Wise-woman of the House of Bëor. A record of this debate, which took place in the First Age during the long Siege of Angband (c. 409), was supposedly preserved in the lore of the Eldar and called in Sindarin (*Languages, Invented) Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth. In this Andreth rejects the belief of the Elves that it was through Eru’s design, or as a result of the general marring of Arda, that Men are short-lived. She says that some of the Wise among her people preserve a tradition that Men ‘“were not made for death, nor born ever to die. Death was imposed on us.” And behold! the fear of it is with us always …’ (p. 309). According to their lore, ‘we knew that in our beginning we had been born never to die. And by that … we meant: born to life everlasting, without any shadow of any end’ (p. 314). Finrod suggests that it is not death, but the fear of it, which comes from Melkor, and says that Elves too have died. Andreth points out that Elves do not die unless slain, and may return to life, while all Men die ‘and we go out to no return. Death is an uttermost end, a loss irremediable’ (p. 311). Finrod replies that although the Elves may endure as long as Arda, they do not know their fate beyond its end; and if Melkor has been able to change the very nature of Men, and ‘that in Eru’s despite’ (p. 312), then he is far more powerful than the Elves believed. Finrod suggests that only Eru would be able to do such a thing, and asks what Men did to anger him. Andreth is unwilling to reply.

      Finrod and Andreth discuss the manner in which the hröar (bodies, singular hröa) and fëar (spirits, singular fëa) of Elves and Men differ. This leads Finrod to speculate that Eru’s original design for Man was that when his fëa departed from Arda it should ‘have the power to uplift the hröa, as its eternal spouse and companion, into an endurance everlasting beyond Eä, and beyond Time’; and from this he propounds that Men, as ‘heirs and fulfillers of all’, were intended ‘to heal the Marring of Arda, already foreshadowed before their devising; and to do more, as agents of the magnificence of Eru: to enlarge the Music and surpass the Vision of the World’ (p. 318). When Finrod asks Andreth if Men have no hope, she says that some believe that ‘the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the СКАЧАТЬ