Defending Middle-earth: Tolkien: Myth and Modernity. Patrick Curry

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СКАЧАТЬ whose ‘schmaltz-Götterdämmerung’ (he wrote) is such that ‘for once it makes sense to use that much-abused adjective, and call Tolkien a Fascist.’ He later retracted this outrageous slur only to claim the same thing of The Lord of the Rings: ‘instead of Nuremberg, Frodo’s farewell.’

      So let us consider the politics (in the narrow sense) of both Tolkien and Middle-earth. Before doing so, however, I would like to point out that there is simply no Wagnerian ‘Götterdämmerung’ in The Lord of the Rings; ‘Victory neither restores an earthly Paradise nor ushers in New Jerusalem.’ In addition, Tolkien disliked Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, with which his work has often been bracketed – ‘Both rings were round,’ he once snapped, ‘and there the resemblance ceases’ – and all the more so for drawing directly on some of the same mythological material that Wagner only knew second-hand, and used to such very different ends. (Interestingly, Ragnarok was a relatively late aspect of Germano-Scandinavian mythology that never caught on in the pagan Anglo-Saxon England that so influenced Tolkien. Even then, it was, apparently, un-English in its melodrama.)

Politics in Middle-earth

      Tolkien noted in 1943 that ‘My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control, not whiskered men with bombs) – or to “unconstitutional” Monarchy.’ I have already mentioned his hostility to the state. Actually, whiskered or not, Tolkien arguably anticipated the eco-sabotage of the group Earth First!; his approval stretched to the war-time ‘dynamiting [of] factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as “patriotism,” may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.’

      Some years later, Tolkien wrote:

      

      I am not a ‘socialist’ in any sense – being averse to ‘planning’ (as must be plain) most of all because the ‘planners,’ when they acquire power, become so bad – but I would not say that we had to suffer the malice of Sharkey and his Ruffians here. Though the spirit of ‘Isengard,’ if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case. But our chief adversary is a member of a ‘Tory’ Government.

      (He was referring to a narrowly-defeated proposal in 1956 to put a ‘relief road’ through Christ Church Meadow – something with a distinctly contemporary ring.)

      So Tolkien himself can be classed as an anarchist, libertarian, and/or conservative – not at all in the contemporary sense of the last (which has been almost entirely taken over by neo-liberalism), but in the sense of striving to conserve what is worth saving. None of these categories can easily be assimilated to either Left or Right, which is itself usually sufficient cause to be dismissed by those who like to have these things cut and dried. In a consistently pre-modern way, Tolkien was neither liberal nor socialist, nor even necessarily democrat; but neither is there even a whiff of ‘blood and soil’ fascism. In this, he contrasts strongly with modernists such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence and Wyndham Lewis: writers to whose work that of Tolkien is frequently unfavourably compared. But this is no surprise; Tolkien was trying to do something completely different. Consider too that besides imperialistic nationalism, of which Tolkien was very suspicious, something common to all strands of fascism (but especially Nazism) is the worship of technological modernism, which he positively hated.

      That antipathy is obvious throughout his works, down to the background detail of, say, the fall of Númenor (Tolkien’s Atlantis) through hubris, which consisted of both domestic political autocracy, including the suppression of dissent, and a foreign policy based on technological and military supremacy. Actually, German Nazism was a particular tragedy for Tolkien. In 1941, he wrote to his son Michael that ‘I have in this War a burning private grudge’ against Hitler, for ‘ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.’

      It is also noteworthy that when the German publishers of The Hobbit wrote to Tolkien in 1938 asking if he was of ‘arisch’ (aryan) origins, and could prove it, he refused to do so, indignantly replying that ‘if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.’ He consequently advised Allen & Unwin that he was inclined to ‘let a German translation go hang.’

      Nor is Middle-earth fascist, let alone Nazi. The Shire, for example, functions by a sort of municipal (not representative) democracy, which Tolkien himself accurately described as ‘half republic half aristocracy.’ The former half has, typically, been ignored by Tolkien’s critics in their eagerness to assail the latter; but even here, their case is mixed at best. On the one hand, there is undeniably a certain amount of quasi-feudal paternalism and deference in the Shire, which is particularly evident, and sometimes annoying, as in the case of Sam. To me (and I doubt I am alone in this), it reads like a relic, and is far too hard to take seriously to offer any kind of model whatsoever. Similarly, of the three positions of authority in the Shire, two are hereditary and only one elected. But these officers’ powers, and duties, are minimal. True, by the end of The Lord of the Rings there is again a King; and one whose kingly qualities Tolkien goes out of his way to establish. But Aragorn merely grants to the Shire, and other areas, the kind of effective independence they already had. Note too that his accession was only with the approval of the people of the City. In other words, local self-government or ‘subsidiarity’ obtains: most decisions are taken at the lowest possible level, closest to those who are most affected by them.

      The Shire as a yeoman-republic thus has strong links to the tradition of civic republicanism, with its emphasis on a self-governing citizenry and its fear of corruption by clique and commerce. As Donald Davie noticed, the implication of The Lord of the Rings points firmly ‘towards the conviction that authority in public matters’ – as distinct from self-government – ‘… can be and ought to be resisted and refused by anyone who wants to live humanely.’ This tradition has pre-modern roots, in Aristotle, Cicero and Machiavelli, but its contemporary relevance is none the less for that; and it reminds us that modern parliamentary liberalism has no franchise on democracy and community, or on solutions to our problems – particularly when it has withered to casting a ballot every four or five years for one of two largely overlapping parties. (I once asked Gregory Bateson which political system he thought was best and most humane; he replied, at least half-seriously, ‘An inefficient monarchy.’)

      The Shire also has clear resonances with other postmodern and ecological values that are returning to the fore as modernity turns sour. In sharp contrast to our possessive individualism, the hobbits are intensely communal – The Lord of the Rings rarely follows the story of less than two together – and live in a relatively simple and frugal way. Rediscovering the difference between quality of life and standard of living, something hobbits have never forgotten, is becoming urgent. СКАЧАТЬ