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Tolkien's Time Machine: When Literary Worlds Collide - Page 3

© Michael Martinez

When "The Silmarillion" was rejected by a reader at Allen & Unwin for being very "Celtic", Tolkien objected to such a description. By then he had eliminated most of the Celticisms, and Eriol himself was no longer a part of the mythology. England, too, had been dropped from the tales. The whole thing was no longer English, but there remained the "Geste of Beren and Luthien" and the "Lay of the Children of Hurin". Like Arthurian Romance, Tolkien Romance was still borrowing heavily from French roots. Which is not to say it all came from French traditions. Hurin Thalion owes something to the tragic figure of Heracles in Greek mythology, or perhaps to Samson in the Bible. All three men possessed great strength, and they were champions of their people who fought against powerful enemies. And all three experienced tragedy. Heracles and Hurin both lost their families. And Heracles and Hurin also both had brothers whose sons founded dynasties (Iolaus was the son of Hercles' brother Iphicles, and Iolaus founded a kingdom on Sardinia with the sons of Heracles; Tuor was the son of Hurin's brother Huor, and Tuor was the grandfather of Elros, first king of Numenor). And Gondolin owes something to the story of Troy (also called Ilion). Although The Hobbit was little more than a light-hearted romp through fairy-tale cliches, Tolkien blended elements from Anglo-Saxon and Norse literature which revealed his love for the northern world's old traditions. Hence, Bilbo and the dragon Smaug lift a cup-theft from "Beowulf", and Gandalf and the Dwarves peek out from the name lists of the Elder Edda. And yet, Bard the Bowman's lake-town is still influenced by a French Celtic lake village. Even while honing his ability to utilize Anglo-Saxon literature and imagery, Tolkien still found himself looking beyond England to France. But he wasn't out of the woods yet, so to speak. When the name "Rohiroth" first appeared on a sketch-map for the lands south of the Hobbit's Misty Mountains (as Tolkien worked on the narrative for The Lord of the Rings), alternative names for them included Anaxippians and Hippanaletians. Years later, in a letter to publisher Milton Waldman at Collins, Tolkien wrote "the better and nobler sort of Men are in fact the kin of those that had departed to Numenor, but remain in a simple 'Homeric' state of patriarchal and tribal life" (Letter 131). Further on he writes, "The Lord of the Rings...concludes the whole business -- an attempt is made to include in it...elves, dwarves, the Kings of Men, heroic 'homeric' horsemen,...."

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