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Anna Smol

~ Department of English, Mount Saint Vincent University

Anna Smol

Tag Archives: Tolkien Ensemble

Tolkien Reading Day: the hope of hobbits

25 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by Anna Smol in Tolkien

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Downfall of Sauron, Home and Hearth, In western lands, March 25, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien Ensemble, Tolkien Reading Day, Tolkien Society

March 25, the downfall of Sauron, is the date chosen by the Tolkien Society to celebrate Tolkien Reading Day.  This year’s theme is “Home and Hearth: the many ways of being a Hobbit.”  Around the world different groups will be holding events celebrating Tolkien’s work — see the Tolkien Society page for reports from some of them — or individuals will simply be reading their favorite passages at home. Check out the #TolkienReadingDay hashtag on Twitter or Instagram to see what people are reading today.

One of the ways of being a hobbit is to love songs, often songs celebrating simple homely pleasures:  “Sing hey! for the bath at close of day,” “Ho! Ho! Ho! to the bottle I go,” “Upon the hearth the fire is red,” or songs that are just meant to be fun, such as the “ridiculous song” Frodo sings at the Prancing Pony, “There is an inn,” or that Sam recites as “just a bit of nonsense,” his song about trolls.

There is one song that Sam sings, however, that is much more serious and that shows another side of being a hobbit:  the ability to find hope in the face of overwhelming odds. That song is “In western lands.” I’ve always loved this poem and especially one beautiful image in it.

The song occurs in The Return of the King in “The Tower of Cirith Ungol” chapter. Frodo has been captured by orcs, and Sam is feeling defeated, unable to find him. Suddenly, he starts singing, and gradually his voice rises and the words of the poem come to him “unbidden.” The song calls forth a response from Frodo, allowing Sam to locate him in the Tower.

In the song, the speaker situates himself in the farthest reaches of despair: “Though here at journey’s end I lie/ in darkness buried deep,/ beyond all towers strong and high,/ beyond all mountains steep” — and yet, he can imagine that this is not the entire world. “In western lands, beneath the Sun/ the flowers may rise in Spring…” He imagines a blooming world that “may” be alive, and by the end of the poem, he is certain that there is an eternal world elsewhere that is not affected by his seemingly hopeless situation: “above all shadows rides the Sun/ and Stars for ever dwell….” The final lines express his resolve: “I will not say the Day is done, / nor bid the Stars farewell.”

Elvenking's gate from across the river (detail) by Tolkien

Detail from Tolkien’s “The Elvenking’s gate from across the river,” fig. 50,  The Art of The Hobbit

My favorite lines come in the first stanza: “Or there maybe ’tis cloudless night / and swaying beeches bear / the Elven-stars as jewels white / amid their branching hair.”  Tolkien’s landscapes are usually alive and active; here, the trees and stars, two recurring and significant images for Tolkien, are connected in one image of softly dancing trees whose branches seem to be wearing the jewellery of starlight as if in their hair. By the end of that first stanza, the poet’s gaze is already moving from the flowers rising from the ground up to the stars in the sky, as if getting ready for the ideas that conclude the second stanza. I remember one summer night sitting outside, looking up through tree branches at a few stars, when these lines came immediately to mind as the perfect expression of that sight.

Donald Swann set this poem to music, although I think I prefer the Tolkien Ensemble version of it. You can listen to it here:

The hope of hobbits — little people who did not think they could change the world — is a valuable thought to hold on to.

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Talks on Tolkien: Tom Shippey & the love of trees

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by Anna Smol in Medievalisms, Talks on Tolkien, Tolkien

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Black pine, Botanic Garden Oxford, Donald Swann, Hymn to Elbereth Gilthoniel, Jill Walker, paradise, Pearl poem, pinus nigra, The Book of John Mandeville, The Road Goes Ever On Song Cycle, Tolkien Ensemble, Tolkien Society, Tolkien's tree, Tom Shippey, Trees

Tolkien in the Botanic Garden, Oxford

Tolkien in the Botanic Garden, Oxford

Was Tolkien a “tree-hugger”? That’s a loaded term, but Tolkien readers know that he was concerned about our natural environment and that, yes, he loved trees. The above picture shows Tolkien in the Botanic Garden in Oxford in 1973 with one of his favorite trees, a black pine (Pinus nigra). Sadly, that tree suffered damage last summer and had to be cut down a few months ago for safety reasons. You can watch a video by Jill Walker, “Tolkien’s Tree,” to see how spectacular the tree was at its best and how it was taken down. Plans are being made to commemorate the tree and its significance for Tolkien and for the many visitors who came to see it; you can follow the Tolkien Society for updates on this matter.

In this week’s “Talk on Tolkien,” I’ve turned to Tom Shippey, who offers some thoughts on Tolkien’s views of this “tree-tangled Middle-earth.” This video records Shippey’s presentation, “Trees, Chainsaws, and the Visions of Paradise in J.R.R. Tolkien,” at Arizona State University in 2002. Shippey starts off with some reflections on Tolkien as a “tree-hugger,” and then goes on to show us some ambiguities in that love of trees and to suggest its mythic significance.

Shippey is well known as a Tolkien scholar and medievalist through his many publications, particularly The Road to Middle-earth and J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. As usual, his talk is lively, opinionated, informed, and interesting. As with last week’s talk by Verlyn Flieger, Shippey offers an approach to thinking about Tolkien’s fiction in general.

“Trees, Chainsaws, and the Visions of Paradise in J.R.R. Tolkien” by Tom Shippey from ASU English on Vimeo. 11/2/2002

In this talk, Shippey refers to two Middle English texts. Tolkien’s translation of the poem Pearl is included in the posthumous publication Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. If you’re interested in the Middle English text of the poem, you can read an edition of Pearl by Sarah Stanbury on the TEAMS: Middle English Texts Series website. You can also find out more about The Book of John Mandeville and read the Middle English text on that site in an edition by Tamara Kohanski and C. David Benson.

Shippey also talks about various poems in The Lord of the Rings, including the Elves’ hymn to Elbereth Gilthoniel. As mentioned in the video, Tolkien translated most of this poem for Donald Swann, who set some of Tolkien’s poems to music in The Road Goes Ever On (you can still buy the book and CD). One of my favourite musical versions of the hymn to Elbereth is by the Tolkien Ensemble. You can listen to one of their renditions of the Elven Hymn to Elbereth Gilthoniel. (And if you like it, buy their CDs!). I especially love the Tolkien Ensemble’s version of Galadriel’s Song of Eldamar — in my view, the perfect evocation of not only the love of this “tree-tangled Middle-earth” but also, as Tom Shippey points out, the longing for an earthly paradise.

As always, comments are welcome.

On a trip to Oxford Botanic Garden

On a visit to Oxford, around 10 years ago

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Dr. Anna Smol

This site includes my blog, "A Single Leaf," and webpages about my research and teaching in Tolkien studies, medievalism, Old English, and higher education pedagogy. Creative Commons License: <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.

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