Топик: Корни персонажей Д.Р.Р.Толкиена
1916 - Tolkien marries Edith, continues war, and gets to know soldiers [Tolkien is an officer]. All of Tolkien's friends die [except C.S. Lewis]
Tolkien after World War II
Continuing the last wishes of the T.B.C.S (the society he had founded with his friends at St. Edwards), Tolkien decides to create a whole society.
[Founding precepts of the LOTR] " 'I [Tolkien] had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic to the level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendor from the vast backcloths - which I could dedicate simply: to England; to my country. It could possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe; not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long steeped in poetry, I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama" [Carpenter 90] [Researching, not inventing] "When he wrote The Silmarillion Tolkien believed that in one sense he was writing the truth. He did not suppose that precisely such peoples as he described, 'elves', 'dwarves', and malevolent 'orcs', had walked the earth and done the deeds that he recorded. But he did feel, or hope, that his stories were in some sense an embodiment of a profound truth . . . Tolkien believed that he was doing more than inventing a story. He wrote of the tales that make up the book: 'They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew . . . yet always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'." [Carpenter 91-2]
Influences from language: "As to the names of persons and places in 'The Fall of Gondolin' and the other stories in The Silmarillion, they were constructed from Tolkien's invented languages. Since the existence of these languages was a raison d'être for the whole mythology, it is not surprising that he devoted a good deal of attention to the business of making up names from them"
Tolkien creates Sindarin, precursor to Quentya
[Development of 'what is real?'] "As the years went by he came more and more to regard his own invented languages and stories as 'real' languages and historical chronicles that needed to be elucidated. In other words, when in this mood he did not say of an apparent contradiction in the narrative or an unsatisfactory name: 'This is not as I wish it to be; I must change it.' Instead he would approach the problem with the attitude: 'What does this mean? I must find about." [Carpenter 94]
On the 16 of November 1917 Tolkien gets a son and writes story of Luthien & Beren
1918 - Tolkien gets job in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
1920 - Tolkien gets a professorship at Leeds University
In October of 1920 Tolkien gets second son.
Tolkien writes poems: "Another, 'The Dragon's Visits', describes the ravages of a dragon who arrives at Bimble Bay and encounters 'Miss Biggins'. A third, 'Glip', tells of a strange slimy creature who lives beneath the floor of a cave and has pale luminous eyes" [Carpenter 106] : Dragon ~ Smaug, Miss Biggins ~ Bilbo Baggins, Glip ~ Gollum
1924 - Tolkien gets a third son Christopher.
1925 - Tolkien becomes a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford
1929 - Tolkien gets a daughter
Tolkien now
[Tolkien's Workplace] "The shelves are crammed with dictionaries, works on etymology and philology, and editions of texts in many languages, predominant among which are Old and Middle English and Old Norse; but there is also a section devoted to translations of The Lord of the Rings into Polish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Japanese; and the map of his invented 'Middle-Earth' is pinned to the window - ledge." (Carpenter 4) [Tolkien's view of The Lord of the Rings] "He explains it all in great detail, talking about his book not as a work of fiction but as a chronicle of actual events; he seems to see himself not as an author who has made a slight error that must now be corrected or explained away, but as a historian who must cast light on an obscurity in an historical document." [Tolkien's Voice] "He has a strange voice, deep but without resonance, entirely English but with some quality in it I cannot define, as if he had come from another age or civilization" (Carpenter 5)
The roots of some Tolkien characters
Gandalf
While reading “The Hobbit” and “The Lord Of The Rings” you will meat such character as Gandalf. He is a magician (or Istary in the “The Silmarillion”). And like all magicians he wears a long, thick, grey (or white) beard, a big cone-shaped hat with wide fields and a wide grey raincoat. This character owes with his existence to Tolkien’s trip to Switzerland, where in the shop among the mountans he bought a postcard. It was a reproduction of a picture of a german painter Madlenner, which was called “Der Berggeist” (it could be translated as “The spirit of the mountans”). There was an old man with white long beard and cone-shaped hat with wide fields, who was seating under the tree. Many years later Tolkien wrote on the other side of this postcard the following: “The prototype of Gandalf” …
Sam Gamgee
Sam Gamgee is a hobbit (It tells us many things). He is the best friend of Frodo and besides that, he is Frodo’s gardener. He is very brave, bonhomous, kind, but careless and light-hearted, and, as all hobbits, he likes to eat very much. It is very interesting, that the word “gamgee” can be translated from one of the English dialects as cotton wool and besides that, it was a surname of a doctor, who had invented 'gamgee-tissue', a surgical dressing made from cotton wool. But the real character of Sam was copied from the character of the mere english soldier of the war of 1914. You already now from the biographical sketch that Tolkien took part in that war. He battled on the front line in France. And he knows, what the war is. Later in one of his letters he wrote: “My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself”.
Hobbits
Hobbits is a people of Halflings. They live in holes. They are very short, practical, strait-laced and they like tasty food most of all things in the world. These creatures were created by J.R.R.Tolkien. He was the first, who used them in his books. There are two versions about the origin of the word “hobbit”. V.A. Muravjov keeps one of them. He wrote in his entrance to “The Lord Of The Rings”, that the world “hobbit” is a mixture of latin word “homo”, which means “human” and english word “rabbit”. But Humphrey Carpenter explained the origin of this word in a different way. In his “The biography of J.R.R.Tolkien” he wrote, that in his youth Tolkien read the book “Babbit” by Sincler Luis and it influensed him very much. Carpenter shows us the resemblance of the personality of Babbit and Bilbo Baggins, the main character of Tolkien’s book “The hobbit or there and back again”. Tolkien himself told in one of his interview, that his hobbits have no even a hint on rabbits. That is why I can say, that the second version about the origin of the word “hobbit” is more correct.
The Shire
The Shire is a country of hobbits. But it also has its roots. From the biographical sketch we know, that four best years of his childhood Tolkien spent in the village of Sarehole. And wile reading Tolkien’s description of the Shire I realized, that it is very close to the Carpenter’s description of Sarehole. The same water-mill, the same pretty flower-beds, the roads paved with stones of different colors. We can see the festive tree, which was decorated by hobbits every holiday. And we know, that in Sarehole there was a tree, that Tolkien remembered all his life. The first his wise tree. In hobbits-halflings we can see the same efficient, plain and stiff english peasants so much loved by Tolkien.
Trees and ents
All his life Tolkien loved trees. In his childhood he dreamed, they could have mind, speak to each other and even move. And his dream came true as we can see it in his works (mostly in “The Silmarillion” and “The Lord Of The Rings”). When professor created reasonable trees, he desided to creat someone, who will look after them. That is how ents appeared. Ents look like trees, but they more reasonable, more movable and of course they are immortal. They are not fidgety, but very wise. Their speech is very slow and calm. Its manner (“ Hrum, Hoom” ) was copied with the deep bass of Luis, the best friend of J.R.R.Tolkien.