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Author: Fletcher Vredenburgh

Half A Century of Reading Tolkien: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by JRR Tolkien

Half A Century of Reading Tolkien: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by JRR Tolkien

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From beside the queen Gawain
to the king did then incline:
‘I implore with prayer plain
that this match should now be mine.’

Somehow, I’ve never read Prof. Tolkien’s, let alone anyone’s, translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 14th cent.), an English poem written by an unknown poet. Thinking on it, I  know there’s a cheesy looking movie, Sword of the Valiant, from the eighties starring Miles O’Keeffe and Sean Connery, but it was only David Lowery’s 2021 The Green Knight and its critical acclaim that made me think it was maybe time to read the poem. Now I have. Additionally, and most valuable to me wrestling with my understanding of the poem, I’ve also read the professor’s 1953 WP Ker lecture on work.

The poem recounts the temptations of Sir Gawain, youngest member of King Arthur’s Round Table, as he attempts to meet the suicidal obligation he accepted when he entered a contest with a mysterious green knight. More precisely, as told, it’s about the conflict between chivalrous virtues  of honor and courtesy and, specifically religious, morality.

Gawain was written in Middle English, the evolution of the language used between the Conquest in 1066 and the late 15th century. Gawain, son of Morgause, one of King Arthur’s half-sisters, is a major figure in many of the assorted Arthur tales. His roots descend back into older Welsh tales, where he was known as Gwalchmei. Pre-Christian elements, including the Beheading Game and the Wild Hunt, are integral parts of the story, despite the tale’s overt Christianity. The Beheading Game is a recurrent motif that tracks back to at least the Irish tale Fled Bricrenn featuring the hero Cú Chulainn and the Wild Hunt occurs across various Northern European myth cycles.

The poem begins with a recounting of Britain’s founding by Brutus of Troy. Noble as he was, young King Arthur of Camelot was nobler still. One Christmas season, as Arthur’s knights were celebrating with a games and contests, a strange figure entered the hall.

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Intrigue, Betrayals, and Plenty of Swordplay: Eda Blessed III by Milton Davis

Intrigue, Betrayals, and Plenty of Swordplay: Eda Blessed III by Milton Davis

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“I’ve been away from Sati-Baa for ten years,” Omari said. “I’ve walked every inch of Ki Khanga and never truly felt at home. Now I have the means not only to return but establish something of my own. The closer I get, the more eager I am to see it done.”

I first encountered Milton Davis way back in 2012 when I bought Griots (2011), a collection of sword and soul tales he co-edited with Charles Saunders. I bought it on the combined strengths of Saunders’ name and the cover. As a quick side note, if you don’t own it, you can buy an e-book for $3.99, so you have no excuses. It and its companion volume, Sisters of the Spear (2013), are fantastic collections and deserve way more recognition than they’ve received.

I enjoyed Davis’ own story in the book so much, I immediately bought the first Changa book. Changa Diop is a noble adventurer and merchant in 15th century Africa who travels to the Far East and back, ever intent on regaining his father’s kingdom from an usurper. At the heart of the sword and soul explosion of the last two decades, these are great additions to the catalog of heroic fantasy.

Davis’ other major character, Omari Ket, is a very different sort of adventurer. He is a rake, a gambler, a mercenary, but, most importantly, blessed by the goddess Eda. She is the wife of the god Daarila, and with him, co-creator of the heavens and the earth. This has protected him in many instances as well as altered his plans as Eda has used him for her own greater plans.

Omari’s adventures take place in the African-inspired world of Ki Khanga. The setting was created by Davis and Balogun Ojetade for a RPG. To christen it, they released an anthology of stories places, Ki Khanga (2013), in the setting and one of my favorites was “Simple Math” featuring Omari. It’s a fun book, filled with warriors and sorcerers, talking gorillas and elephants with guns, and I reviewed it over at my site. …

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Catching My Breath & Some Things to Recommend

Catching My Breath & Some Things to Recommend

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Blessed are the legend-makers with their  rhyme of things not found within  recorded  time.

from ‘Mythopoeia‘ (1931) by JRR Tolkien

The impetus to write my Tolkien series came from rewatching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and realizing just how much I dislike them. That realization drove me back to the actual books. Diving once more into Middle-earth inspired me to begin a deeper exploration of Prof. Tolkien’s works, creation, and their influences.

My original motivation, largely of drafting a retort to the films, was quickly supplanted as soon as I picked up The Fellowship of the Ring and once again read that opening line:

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

I found myself immediately being pulled into the great vortex of Tolkien’s art and ideas. As my previous entries into this series describe, my attention was sometimes drawn to different elements that it had been on previous reading and my appreciation for certain things had grown over the years. What I’m not sure I brought up much was how much enjoyment I get from actually reading Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

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The Stories Before the Story – Half a Century of Reading Tolkien, Part Eight: The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien (mostly)

The Stories Before the Story – Half a Century of Reading Tolkien, Part Eight: The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien (mostly)

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First edition, UK

Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass. The Dispossessed they be for ever.

from Chapter 9 The Flight of the Noldor

I took The Silmarillion to camp with me the summer of 1978. I’d gotten it for Christmas the previous year, but I was put off by its Biblical diction. Still, I was determined to make my way through it. I mean, Tolkien was my favorite author, and I’d already read The Hobbit twice and Lord of the Rings, including the appendices.

I did read it that summer in the woods of Upper Delaware Valley. For all the activities, there was always free time to read, and read I did. Beside Tolkien’s book, I read Cajus Bekker’s A War Diary of the German Luftwaffe. Bekker’s book was a relatively easy undertaking, Tolkien’s was not.

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Half a Century of Reading Tolkien, Part Seven: The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien, Part Seven: The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks

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Ten years ago to the month (I started this in October), I wrote about Terry Brooks’ groundbreaking The Sword of Shannara (1977), and declared that the joy I got reading the book the first time around was something I couldn’t recapture. Time had opened a gap between the book and what I could take away that seemed uncrossable. Revisiting the book, yet again, I no longer think that’s completely true, but it’s not entirely false.

When I set out earlier this year on my journey through Tolkien’s writing, I decided to mix it up with several works clearly inspired by Tolkien, and particularly the Lord of the Rings. Bored of the Rings (reviewed here), was my first choice because it’s an explicit parody of the trilogy (and a brilliant one!).

Sword was an easy choice, as well, even if its origin story is complex and was touched by divers hands (well, six, to be precise, between Brooks and the Del Reys). I’m not sure Brooks set out to write a story that tracks so closely to the LotR in so many places, but that was result. It kicked off the mass-market success of quest trilogies featuring secret heirs in search of the foozle needed to bring down the Dark Lord in his isolated redoubt.

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Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Six Bored of the Rings by Henry N. Beard & Douglas C. Kenney

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Six Bored of the Rings by Henry N. Beard & Douglas C. Kenney

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This book is predominantly concerned with making money, and from its pages a reader may learn much about the character and the literary integrity of the authors. Of boggies, however, he will discover next to nothing, since anyone in the possession of a mere moiety of his marbles will readily concede that such creatures could exist only in the minds of children of the sort whose childhoods are spent in wicker baskets and who grow up to be muggers, dog thieves, and insurance salesmen. Nonetheless, judging from the sales of Prof. Tolkien’s interesting books, this is a rather sizable group, sporting the kind of scorch marks on their pockets that only the spontaneous combustion of heavy wads of crumpled money can produce. For such readers we have collected here a few bits of racial slander concerning boggies, culled by placing Prof. Tolkien’s books on the floor in a neat pile and going over them countless times in a series of skips and short hops. For them we also include a brief description of the soon-to-be-published-if-this-incredible-dog-sells account of Dildo Bugger’s earlier adventures, called by him Travels with Goddam in Search of Lower Middle Earth, but wisely renamed by the publisher Valley of the Trolls.

from the Prologue — Concerning Boggies from Bored of the Rings

My introduction to Bored of the Rings (1969, a scatalogical, offensive, and dated, but hilarious, parody of The Lord of the Rings), came at the hands of a friend of mine, Karl H., during a Boy Scout camping trip in the late seventies. My first memory of Karl is him at 8 years old being carried kicking and yelling over the school custodian’s shoulder after he’d been caught trying to scale the back fence. Two years older than me, we stayed friends until he graduated high school in 1982. I saw him once more after that before he disappeared into the wilds of the West Coast. When first his sister, and then his mother passed away, I didn’t find out until weeks after the fact and missed both funerals and him.

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Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Five: From the Beginning — The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Five: From the Beginning — The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

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The Hobbit first edition dust jacket (1937). Cover by JRR Tolkien

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Chapter 1, An Unexpected Party – The Hobbit

Fifty years ago, when I first read this book, I didn’t imagine I’d still be reading it so many years later. Heck, I doubt I could have even imagined being as old as I am now. But I do reread it every few years. When I revisit The Hobbit, my journey is bathed in nostalgia as much as with the simple enjoyment caused by reading a charming book that I happen to know inside out, from the opening line above on through to the very end.

In my initial article on half a century of reading Tolkien back in January, I described my dad trying to get our first color tv in time to watch the Rankin & Bass The Hobbit. Remembering that again last week left me thinking more of my dad, now gone nearly 24 years, than the book. He was ten years younger than I am now when the movie first aired, which makes me feel incredibly old at the moment. For such a conservative man,  he was excited to see it — admittedly, in a restrained way. I think we liked it well enough, but leaving out Beorn irked us both. Beyond Tolkien’s books, our fantasy tastes rarely coincided (I’ve got a shelf full of David Eddings books he bought, if anyone’s interested), but with The Hobbit and LOTR, we were in complete agreement.

What’s there to say about The Hobbit here on Black Gate? Nothing, really. I imagine most visitors here have read it, many more than once, and have their own ideas on it. It’s one of the most widely read books in the world. Instead, I’m going to discuss some adaptations of the book. But first, a summary.

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Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Four – The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Four – The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

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A wild light came into Frodo’s eyes. ‘Stand away! Don’t touch me!’ he cried. ‘It is mine, I say. Be off!’ His hand strayed to his sword-hilt. But then quickly his voice changed. ‘No, no, Sam,’ he said sadly. ‘But you must understand. It is my burden, and no one else can bear it. It is too late now, Sam dear. You can’t help me in that way again. I am almost in its power now. I could not give it up, and if you tried to take it I should go mad.’

Frodo to Sam in Mount Doom from The Return of the King

And so we come to the end of the first part of my return to JRR Tolkien’s work. For those not following along with my earlier essays (links at the bottom), inspired by a hate watch of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, I picked up The Fellowship of the Ring and quickly succumbed to a complete reread of the trilogy. As I set out to write an article about Fellowship, I instead, found myself realizing I’ve been reading the professor’s books for fifty years and how much they’d meant to me.

Last time, I wrote that when I was young, I tended to struggle through bits of The Two Towers. That was never the case with The Return of the King, something that I found to remain so on this reading. It’s got wilder and bigger battles than the previous book, incredible scenes (including one of the greatest in all three books and that Jackson insanely cut omitted from the theatrical release!), and Frodo’s and Sam’s journey becomes more desperate and its evocation of Christ-like self-sacrifice more potent. The penultimate chapter, The Scouring of the Shire, portrays the transformation wrought on the four hobbits by their undertakings. Finally, the book ends with one of my favorite closing lines of any book.

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Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Three – The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Three – The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

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Gollum sat up again and looked at him under his eyelids. ‘He’s over there,’ he cackled. ‘Always there. Orcs will take you all the way. Easy to find Orcs east of the River. Don’t ask Sméagol. Poor, poor Sméagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he’s lost now.’

‘Perhaps we’ll find him again, if you come with us,’ said Frodo.

‘No, no, never! He’s lost his Precious,’ said Gollum.

Sméagol from The Taming of Sméagol of  The Two Towers

When I was younger, The Two Towers (1954) seemed to suffer from middle-book syndrome: the bits after the start of series that had to be trudged through in order to reach the exciting end. Not all of it — it does feature a big battle complete with magic and explosives — but Frodo, Sam, and Smeagol’s trek to Mordor sometimes felt as arduous for me to read as it was for them to cross the swamp and slag heaps. Now, I believe The Two Towers, and the second half, The Ring Goes East, is the heart of the whole series. Nowhere does Prof. Tolkien speak more clearly on the weight of war, the burden and necessity of standing against evil, and the eroding effects of that duty.

The Two Towers has some of the most powerful writing in all the trilogy. There are several passages that have never failed to move me. That one of the most powerful of these lines was taken away from Sam  carelessly given to Bad Faramir (more on that atrocity later), is one of the greatest crimes among the many I hold against Peter Jackson.

It’s the book of the trilogy that contains the most obvious references to Tolkien’s own service at the Somme in 1916. In the comments on my first article in this series, Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part One, K. Jespersen wrote that the books tasted of ashes, a flavor he linked directly to the First World War. I don’t tastes ashes in the books myself, but there are chapters redolent  of them.

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Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Two – The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Two – The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien

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‘I will take the Ring,’ he said, ‘though I do not know the way.’

Frodo from The Council of Elrond from The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)

I never saw it, but once upon a time, some hippies and ancillary types were given to emblazoning FRODO LIVES on bedroom walls and the backs of denim jackets. The Lord of the Rings, the literary creation of a conservative Oxford University professor of English Literature and Language, had somehow hit a chord with the nascent counterculture after its publication in 1954/1955. I imagine, in fact, I know, there are all sorts of popular and academic works purporting to explain why this was. I’ve never been interested in them, preferring the books themselves to present the professor’s ideas.

I have my own, if not particularly original, theories. First, it’s a great adventure story featuring a small, ineffectual-seeming hero who stands up to his world’s greatest force of evil. Second, it came to be seen as a sort of rallying cry against the dark powers of the modern world. I don’t know Prof. Tolkien’s politics, though I suspect he was a small-c conservative. It’s clear he viewed the loss of tradition and the dark Satanic mills blotting out the green and pleasant England of his youth were a terrible assault on civilization (this anti-modernist attitude is an important element of Michael Moorcock’s disdain for him). Third, the counterculture’s love for anything pastoral and ante-technological was probably the most important reason for its breakout into the mainstream’s consciousness.

I never discussed it with him, but I feel confident when writing that my father liked The Lord of the Rings primarily for the first reason and somewhat for the second (he was very much a BIG-C conservative) a bit. He most definitely did not like it for the last. When I first read it all that mattered to me was that first reason. With every revisit over the ensuing decades, I’ve discovered something new. That has carried on with my most recent reread.
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