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#j. r. r. tolkien – @gellavonhamster on Tumblr

I am all in a sea of wonders

@gellavonhamster / gellavonhamster.tumblr.com

natalia, 30s | currently: mostly classic literature, arthuriana, & one piece
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faustandfurious
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swordfright

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

#j. r. r. tolkien
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uupiic
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haxyr3

Happy International Translation Day!

The work of translators is usually noticed only when it is done badly, because when it is done well, no one even notices that they are dealing with a translation... This is very unfair.

To all translators and interpreters: you are one of the most important pillars supporting our civilization. It may sound too pompous, but it's true.

Now on a lighter note. What is your favourite lost in translation example?

I'll start! My "found in translation" favorite moment is from the Lord of the Rings:

Original: "Boromir smiled." (Боромир улыбнулся)

Russian translations:

  • "И Боромир, превозмогая смерть, улыбнулся." (And Boromir, transcending death, smiled) - by V.Muravyov, A. Kistyakovsky
  • "Тень улыбки промелькнула на бледном, без кровинки, лице Боромира." (The shadow of a smile flashed across Boromir's pale, bloodless face.) - By N. Grigoryeva, V. Grushetsky
  • "Уста Боромира тронула слабая улыбка." (Boromir's lips touched with a faint smile.) - by M. Kamenkovich, V. Karrik
#translation#boromir#lord of the rings#j. r. r. tolkien#russian tag#now i want to check how this sentence was translated in the translation the edition of which i have lol#i don't think it's listed here
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faustandfurious
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astronicht
thefollow-spot asked:

Hi I hope this isn't presumptuous, but so, that post you made about Tolkien making the lads leave their weapons outside the hall and CS Lewis thinking the hall was gonna get burned down by a lady who also wanted to kill herself... what's the historical precedent for that? Is there a trope in medieval lit where people like... do that? I ask because uh. I am obsessed with Children of Hurin and there's a scene where that like, happens. And I'm obsessed with that scene, and would love to know if there's like, cultural/mythic context that would enrich my knowledge!

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OH BOY, sorry I'm getting to this late, it's been uhhh a summer, but one, this is a very good question!! And two, yes there is absolutely precedent, particularly in early medieval literature, and high medieval literature set in the early medieval (circa 500-1100 AD) past. I'll let someone else debate how often people actually historically locked their enemies into a hall and burned them, but especially in Old Norse literature (and if Fellowship felt like it leaned a little more on Old English literature, Two Towers, where Eowyn appears, felt a little more Old Norse) this is common. Off the top of my head, you've got many Icelandic family feuds ending in burning the whole family in their hall, like Njal's Saga (Old Norse), Attila the Hun dramas (yeah he's a big guy in the burning halls circuit, but actually not in the way you might expect) like his cameos in Volsung Saga (Old Norse) and Nibelungelied (Middle High German), and my vague recollection of a few Irish and Welsh versions that no search engine is giving up for me right now.

This, predictably, got long and slightly off topic.

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cycas

Tolkien wrote two long poems in the 1930's which feature Gudrun, Attila (and burning halls). They were eventually published as The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.

I think the burning hall from the Welsh tradition might be the Hall of Cyndylan, which appears in the Song of Heledd (translation here) ? The Song of Heledd* is preserved in the real Red Book of Hergest which is clearly inspiration for the LOTR Red Book of Westmarch.

Heledd, like Eowyn, is a princess of a great family, but Heledd's story is a different version of the fate that might have befallen Eowyn, and it's probably also a version of what the Rohirrim did earlier to the Dunlanders too. If the Rohirrim are Saxon-is, Dunland is Welsh-ish. Heledd doesn't fire the hall herself: the Saxons did that. She is the survivor who lives on in poverty and exile to lament her home and family.

*pronounced Heleth with a soft th, and I've just realised for the first time making this post how much that sounds like 'Haleth'.

#eowyn#lord of the rings#j. r. r. tolkien
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