Inversions in the Wilderness - The Hobbit, Ch. VI

Tolkien may be more widely appreciated as a storyteller than as a stylist, but his combination of simplicity and sophistication continues to amaze me.  Consider the following passage, as the group escapes from the goblins: “at times they were marching along quiet as quiet over a floor of pine-needles; and all the while the forest-gloom got heavier and the forest-silence deeper.”  Aside from the obvious, but delicate and effective, instances of repetition, we have a subtle but effective inversion.  It seems to me that gloom would normally get “deeper” while silence would be likely characterized as “heavy.”  Yet here the darkness has weight and the silence has dimension.  Perhaps I’m making too much of this, but the linking of the two menaces to the word “forest” at the least encourages the reader to move back and forth between the concepts, making it easier to imagine their substitution for one another.

Let’s consider a clearer instance of inversion – and one that is utilized for comic rather than rhetorical effect.  When the dwarves take refuge up some trees, the narrator notes, “You would have laughed… if you had seen the dwarves sitting up in the trees with their beards dangling down, like old gentlemen gone cracked and playing at being boys.”  Here, expectations are wildly inverted – old men, after all, don’t belong in trees.

As a third example, we might focus on what I’ll call “cosmological” inversion – the flipping of the natural order of things, the transformation of the biological and spiritual rubric by which humans orient themselves.  Simply put, we’re introduced to talking animals.  The wolves provide a dramatic scene: “hundreds and hundreds, it seemed” “went and sat in a great circle in the glade; and in the middle of the circle was a great grey wolf.  He spoke to them in the dreadful language of the Wargs.”  By inverting animal and human behavior (the dwarves like birds in trees, wolves talking below) Tolkien stretches and twists our sense of reality on a number of levels.

Image: Princeton University

The Realm of Slimy Things - The Hobbit, Ch. V

If one thinks of nature in the abstract, it is easy to conceptualize it as hostile – the heat of the desert, the wrath of the hurricane.  If we bother to think about the complexity of nature, we may be more likely to consider it as a benevolent matrix of life.  Yet it is intriguing to think of a nature that is both complex and yet hostile to humanity, an old and hidden web of life that waits to capture people (or hobbits), rather than to support or nurture them.

 

We find something like this beneath the Misty Mountains: “There are strange things living in pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains… things more slimy than fish…. Some of these caves, too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins… and the original owners are still there in odd corners, slinking and nosing about.”  It is in such a space, of course, that we encounter Gollum.

Leaving aside what we learn in The Lord of the Rings, we might wonder whether Gollum is just an avatar for ancient intricacies of power that spawn and slumber in the uttermost depths of the world.  Are there ooze-encrusted nexuses of consciousness posing riddles through the croaking flesh of demented hobbits?  And, if we let them be, will we find some measure of benevolent complexity among the rivers, trees, and starlit sanctuaries above the realm of slimy things?

Image: American Museum of Natural History

Sympathy for the Goblins - The Hobbit, Ch. IV-V

We learn that goblins “are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted.”  Yet, if goblins are that way by nature, can we really blame them for being true to themselves?  After all, these little fellows even have a natural aversion to sunlight: “it makes their legs wobble and their heads giddy.”

One of the goblins calls Thorin a liar – and in this, it is the goblin that is telling the truth, not the dwarf.  In the battle that follows, Gandalf’s elven sword “burned with a rage” and “was bright as blue flame for delight in the killing of the great lord of the cave.”  The blade sounds a bit bloodthirsty – even if we are dealing with nasty goblins carrying pointed armaments.

And, like the aliens in the film Mars Attacks, the sheer effusiveness of goblin malice is almost charming, as when they fill the caverns with “yells and yammering, croaking, jabbering and jabbing; howls, growls and curses.”  Aww, they’re angry and cute and ineffectually evil.

Image: Nakajima Kaho, Oni Senbei

Dreaming of Rivendell - The Hobbit, Chapter III

I want to step back a few pages and consider the arrival of the group at Rivendell and the house of Elrond.  It is a dream-like place, especially in The Hobbit.  Bilbo even starts falling asleep while he's still entering the valley as they "slithered and slipped in the dusk down the steep zig-zag path."  From there story time passes like dream time and their stay of fourteen days is mentioned even before Elrond is properly introduced.  The house itself is not described, and Tolkien remarks on how good times are "not much to listen to" but that bad events "may make a good tale."  Such unpleasant moments are described, evocatively, as "uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome."  It's not such a bad description of nightmares, actually, and a good representational counterpoint to the the pleasant dream of Rivendell.

We learn something else interesting in this chapter, that "Elves know a lot and are wondrous folk for news, and know what is going on among the peoples of the land, as quick as water flows, or quicker."  This seems a far cry from the melancholy, brooding image of the Elves that sometimes appears in The Lord of the Rings.  Are these Elves just gossipy?  Are they, to some great extent, politically and socially aware?  Are they some kind of fairy internet, a circuit of spirit and song that circulates through the ley lines of Middle-Earth?

Myriad Meetings -- The Hobbit, Chapter III-IV

Rivendell is a place for meetings - we see that even more in The Lord of the Rings, but some of that appears in The Hobbit as well.  In fact, the "meetings" in and around Rivendell take a variety of forms, even beyond social encounters.

Meetings can mean physical alignments, like those involving celestial bodies: "We still call it Durin's Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together."  Then there are the meetings of characteristics that determine psychology and fate - constellations of identity and converging contingencies.  In the persons of Gandalf and Elrond, goodness and wisdom are continually meeting one another, even if they travel a difficult road:  "Even the good plans of wise wizards like Gandalf and of good friends like Elrond go astray sometimes when you are off on dangerous adventures... and Gandalf was a wise enough wizard to know it."

Finally, there are more turbulent meetings - clashes and contentions.  We see this when the narrator notes "times when two great thunderstorms meet and clash.  More terrible still are thunder and lightning in the mountains at night, when storms come up from East and West and make war."

People, too, meet in all these ways - harmonious alignments, interwoven personalities, titanic collisions.  And perhaps all of them, in their own fashion, are rather magnificent.

Image: Arthur Rackham

A Key and a Conspiracy -- The Hobbit, Chapter I (Part 2)

"We are met to discuss our plans, our ways, means, policy and devices."

Upon reading the second half of the first chapter, I'm struck by the dark and dreamlike quality of conspiracy that pervades Bag End.  The dwarves that have gathered there are plotting revenge, of course, against the dragon - "We mean... to bring our curses home to Smaug," says Thorin, in his fascinating way with words.  Yet this conspiracy is also a plot of restoration, an attempt to reestablish the prosperous Kingdom under the Mountain, a conspiracy of hearth and memory and - perhaps - even justice.  Even so, they are challenging an enemy that is not only powerful, but virtually immortal - dragons live "practically for ever."  It's a daunting prospect, to say the least.

The whole idea of Mr. Baggins being a burglar is, of course,  a running joke in the chapter, but there is something curious and poetic about stealing something that already belongs to you, as with the dwarves and their "enchanted gold."  And to complete such a theft, they will use a key that unlocks a mountain (essentially).  As with hobbits, little things can be paths to great ones.  And Gandalf reminds us that myths and legends may well be real enough, if one travels far enough to find them.

Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Breaking Politeness and Finding Adventure -- The Hobbit, Chapter I

I've explored The Hobbit before, over at my "Nightly Noises" blog, but I'm going to give it a fresh look here at Dark Lanterns.

The adventure begins with the deconstruction of politeness -- and the simple phrase "good morning."  Bilbo Baggins is so enamored by the beautiful day that he blithely wishes the wizard "Good morning!"  Gandalf cracks apart the pleasantry, asking whether "you wish me a good morning, or mean it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"  His questions are pedantic but precise.  Bilbo isn't bothered and replies "All of them at once," thus embracing a cloud of meanings, as vague and shifting as the smoke-rings from his pipe.  Gandalf, by contrast, demands a sword-shaped consciousness -- a sharp and ready focus.

He makes his inevitable offer of adventure, but Bilbo isn't interested.  The hobbit makes a few more statements (including good morning, again!), and "By this he meant that the conversation was at an end."  Yet Gandalf had yet to reveal his identity and does so now, reminding Bilbo "And you do know my name, though you don't remember that I belong to it.  I am Gandalf, and Gandalf means me!"  The language is terse and haughty, but effective.  And as is so often the case with Tolkien, there is a dynamic and mysterious tension between the name and the thing -- between the rune and the magic, as it were, between the letters and the language and the tale that they tell.  In any case, the wizard well knows that the residual memory of excitement and adventure has not quite departed from the boring, respectable, bourgeois hobbit.

Bilbo recites the mythology of Gandalf, such as he knows it, referencing a history of heroic tales and magical fireworks and invoking the lure of "the Blue" and "mad adventures."  The madness to which he refers may seem rather humble and innocuous, activities like climbing trees and sailing in ships.  Yet, to the eyes of children and the unjaded imaginations of sensitive souls, such things will always constitute a vital part of life's magic and adventures.

Towards the end of the conversation, Gandalf tentatively reestablishes the presence of politeness and formality, playfully granting Bilbo his "pardon."  Perhaps it's just a trap, since Bilbo panics and invites Gandalf to tea, doubtlessly the default activity of any respectable hobbit.  Gandalf finds the thought of Bilbo going on an adventure "amusing" -- and it should serve as a reminder that, though often linked to the epic grandeur of The Lord of the Rings, this book, The Hobbit, is a rather curious and often quite a comic tale.

With one more desperate "good morning!" from Bilbo, the stage is set for the meetings and quests to come.