Week 6: Three Tolkien short stories (extra credit: 3)

Leaf by Niggle:

Fascinating that the narrator addresses themselves in the story of the painter, Niggle. He seems to be some sort of entity beyond life and beyond death, and it is very obviously Tolkien’s voice. The trees rather give it away. This story somehow manages to talk about several very important ideas very neatly, and that wouldn’t have been possible without Tolkien’s own eloquence and experience. What is the value of art? Unless you’ve ever been by the need to make something and actually done it, your answer is likely Tompkins’s equivocation of “Of course, painting has uses.” Not everything that has value is useful, and subjective emotional responses are not ubiquitous. The world people like Tompkins imagine sounds stifling - they aren’t able to extrapolate. Appreciate. Understand the leaf is the tree is the forest is the foothills is the mountains. And even when a creator manages to explain themselves, non-creators are quick to brush it off. Sometimes they come around, but most don’t. It is like living in a whole other world, just like the one Niggle and Parish find themselves in.


Farmer Giles of Ham:

For the story of Giles of Ham, there is a noticeable trend between this story and Leaf by Niggle, wherein Tolkien separates the quixotic ‘wild’ from perfectly mundane civilization. And he injects a certain quality into even that ‘mundane’ civilization, an almost queerness that is normal within the lives of the people living it, but totally outside our acceptable limits of reality. He can accomplish this so effortlessly, because the grounding elements are shared between our world and this one. This story also has a very English sense of humor. I don’t know how to explain it besides a very deadpan and pompous handling of story elements, and a general dry satirical take on community and incompetent monarchy, but it’s hilarious.


The Adventures of Tom Bombadil:

Tolkien really does like nature, and I am starting to see that this is a very culturally British and European thing. This sort of stuck-on each-other attitude between Tom and the various inhabitants (and personifications) of the woodlands is surreal and contradictory, and this might just be the cadence of the writing of this piece in particular, but there is a certain rhyme and rhythm to it. And this reminds me that for most of history, mythos and narrative were primarily oral records - it’s why the best writing all sounds good spoken aloud. What’s more, once you have the rhythm, it's very easy for near anyone who speaks the language fluently to add onto the narrative, meaning just about anyone’s life could sound fantastical to me.


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