The Hall of Fire

How well versed in music was Tolkien? Is it possible he didn't have a specific tune in mind? I get the impression Tolkien enjoyed music and probably wished he could have been a musician, but seems not to have quite had what it takes and left it to Edith, who was a very good pianist by all accounts....

I just reread this thread in its entirety for the first time in a long time. Wow, a lot to think about! Me too. Very interesting. But I think we could explore further into how Tolkien's own Christian beliefs influenced what he considered "fit to publish", you might say, and how much if an...

Nice thought, Voronwë. And also: And as they watched, upon the mound there came forth two slender shoots; and silence was over all the world in that hour, nor was there any other sound save the chanting of Yavanna. Under her song the saplings grew and became fair and tail, and came to flower; and th...

I have to say that the fire-giant Surtr mentioned by Jude makes a lot of sense given Tolkien's own interests and studies, but the Balrog has always felt to me like some sort of demon that would have appeared in the Old Testament. I don't have any evidence for this, but the fiery whip struck me as th...

I was thinking about the Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm the other day (as you do) and it occurred to me that I've never seen or heard anything about any influences or sources that might have led to JRRT's creation of the character. So many of Tolkien's characters have mythological or folk tale r...

Thanks everybody! Likewise. Now, head down reading Voronwë’s paper.

Hi Voronwë, hope you're well. Could I have a copy please - to the email in my profile. Thanks.

I am 99.9% sure I read it in his letters. Does anyone know which one? It's definitely not in Letters (not even in the extended version of Letter 131 to Milton Waldman that was only recently published in Hammond and Scull's "LOTR Reader's Companion".) As someone has already replied to you ...

The smooth talking salesman at the hobbit "stock" market would always be spinning you a line about how the cow you were about to buy was as hardy and reliable as the Kine of Araw and how her horns would be fit for a king's music.

Given that the Shire was rather based on rural English villages of the time, I think it almost certain that not only was he paid, but that it seems to have been a sort of a generational job - Sam would have some day taken over for "his old Gaffer" and continued the service. ;) Based on En...

I rather suspect that Tolkien, having described an Ent, was quietly grateful that he was under no obligation to draw one. That could have been an invitation to ridicule.

Even the movie portrayal is not so much a willing suspension of disbelief as much as hanging it by the neck until it is dead.

I also had the same impression, but I think that any lack of affinity with Latin was at a professional, philological level. I'm sure I recall hints that the introduction of Latin into England had influences (negative in Tolkien's view) on the development of English itself. (There are influences on B...

I am not a student of Latin, but is there any similarity to the "common tongue" used in LOTR and Latin in the medieval west? Phonetically, there's no evidence of it. If there was, you would expect things like having lots of words ending in -ius and -ium. No sign of them, either in the lim...

And I just remembered that in the book, instead of reverently keeping the shards on the plinth, Aragorn the Drama King was apparently doing his Ranger thing with the broken sword. And later on DELIBERATELY ignoring the storage instructions ("you shall not be sheathed until the last battle is f...

Just stopping by to add my 2c. What a debt we owe this man and what a mare's nest of knitting he had to unpick. Back in the days of full on Tolkien nerdery on TORC I posted a detailed description of how JRRT created no less than four versions of what Eluréd and Elurín (the twin sons of Dior) were (t...

Come now, scirocco, you don't really believe that, do you? No, not really. :) But a robust discussion explores all sides of the argument. :D But Galadriel was speaking fairly generically of the end of the world. A remaking and healing of the lands, even perhaps the recovery of the Silmarils is cons...

Galadriel's comment certainly does seem at odds with Tolkien's own words: The Elves expected the End of Arda to be catastrophic . They thought that it would be brought about by the dissolution of the structure of Imbar at least, if not of the whole system. The End of Arda is not, of course, the same...

I've read it now, and put a brief review up at TORC, here. If I sound a bit lukewarm, that's probably a bit harsh; it's just that the book is pretty much what you would expect, that's all.

I think much of Tolkien's altering intent for the Prophecy can be seen from the change of speaker he uses to voice it. In the Quenta Silmarillion of the 1930's it is very clearly the Second Prophecy of Mandos. (This is the infallible and all-knowing Mandos; when he makes Prophecies, they come true.)...

Thanks for bumping the thread, Voronwë , but I was referring more to a discussion of Tom's origins in the light of the textual evidence (as posted on TORC ad nauseam over the last few years) rather than the style of this thread which is more the "interpretative", "what Tom means to me...