Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nathan Hamelberg: Tolkien's fairy tales are about opening borders and welcoming strangers

great thanks.

To what degree can words suggest the unbounded power of that edifice in words, Tolkien's imaginative universe, from The Lord of the Rings, the crown of the treasure,  to the Silmarillion and The Hobbit, to other works  released by his son Christopher after Tolkien had passed on?

"The  world is divided into two: those who have read The Lord of the Rings and those who are going to read it,'' an exaggeration but an insightful one. 

Nathan Hamelberg evokes the sense of primal wonder in encountering what will forever remain a monument in the mind of the encountering person, entry into an indelible imaginative cosmos, in this case both unique and distillatory of various strands from Western spiritual and literary traditions.

Provoked by this piece, I am moved to silent wonder by my own memory of that great body of work.

How should I respond, as a Black African, to this engagement with controversies emerging from the introduction of non-Western races into the cinematic universe derived from Tolkien's work?

My entry into the study and practice of African nature spiritualities was significantly catalyzed by Tolkien's novels, deeply sensitive as it is to the numinous in nature, a great recreation of pre-Christian European nature spirituality, profoundly blended with the mythic majestas of the Bible and pre-Christian European myth, as Tolkien brings to bear the full force of his grounding in these diverse streams as a European and scholar of ancient European cultures. 

Reading The Lord of the Rings had such a strong impact on me that I had a clear dream, at the time, of the magician and sage Gandalf, one of Tolkien's characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings,  knocking on my window in Benin-City, where I encountered Tolkien. Another friend in Benin described himself as also having a visionary experience on reading the book, an experience which he refused to divulge on account of what he described as its intimate nature. 

I went on to explore Benin nature spirituality with Tolkien as an inspirational force in those investigations, venturing into forests, interacting with compellingingly beautiful trees, experiencing first hand subtle but potent wonders similar to Tolkien's sublime nature spirituality and particularly tree centred spirituality. 

Having read some of the classics from different parts of the world, this is my favourite, most mentally and emotionally enduring work of literature. 

What do such identifications imply for the multiculturalizing of the Tolkien universe?

 Is skin colour referenced in the novels? 

To the  best of my knowledge, no.

Can the Tolkien cosmos be visually recreated without centring any race of humans? 

Yes.

 Most of the races in Tolkien's world are not even human, although most of them share human physical characteristics, the elves, hobbits, dwarves, orcs, Sauron, along with creatures between the human and the non-human, the Nazgul.

The pre-terrestrial entities represented by the Valar led by the creator of the universe, Illuvatar, are described in human terms but in the understanding that human biology cannot adequately encapsulate creatures whose being is not bounded by space and time. 

One of the most memorable characters is Treebeard the Ent, head of a group of sentient trees, and if I recall correctly, physically mobile entities,  who can communicate with humans. 

The works operate in terms of languages and texts that are unique to that literary universe. This culturally, geographically and metaphysically unified cosmos represents Tolkien engaging in what he describes as ''secondary creation,'' the bringing into existence of a unified, self referential universe constituted by its own physical and mythic geographies,  its own histories, its own complex of diverse social systems, its own varieties of mythology, its own overarching metaphysics, its own relationship between cosmogenesis and cosmological progression as these are interwoven with the individual and larger historical progression of beings and societies within its humanoid, non-humanoid terrestrial and pre-terrestrial universes, all shaped within a profoundly sensitive humanity, although The Lord of the Rings may be seen as privileging men, even though it also contains powerful female figures.

The Tolkien universe was created by an Englishman, J.R.R. Tolkien, Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon, inspired by European spiritual and literary traditions, from European folklore and mythology to the Bible and ancient European languages.

Tolkien, however,  is a writer in the grandest sense of mythic creativity. He speaks for the Earth in its ecosystemic complexity, its varied possibilities of life and sentience as including but going beyond the human, and the human as beyond localization to any race, a terrestrial complexification within the mysterious allure and undefinable scope of the cosmos, which, to some degree, is yet within the province of human imaginative reach and sensitivities.

Tolkien does not speak for any race in particular, human or non-human. He visualizes a universe already alive in world mythologies, a universe in which humanity, with its powers and limitations, is only one out of various forms of beings active on Earth, a circumscription amplified by the presence of mysterious non-terrestrial powers predating the Earth but active on the planet.

The various pre-modern human societies Tolkien creates are correlative with African, European, Asian and other similar social configurations. His work does not localize its societies in terms of any European referent, such as invoking customs unique to Europe, does not reference Christianity or any European religion even though he draws heavily from them,  in a way that is readily correlative with similar creativities in non-Western cultures.

The person who Europeanized the visualization of Tolkien's world is Peter Jackson and his films, in which the Tolkien universe is peopled by people of traditional European descent, not surprising for a producer from the same racial context developing the work of a writer from the same demographic, and working in the same countries where that demographic is numerically and culturally dominant. 

Tolkien, however, transcends that racial matrix. The race of Elves, for example, as developed by Tolkien, are his own unique adaptation of European elf folklore but his perceptions are closer to African and similar folkloristic and spiritualities'  ideas of forest powers than to the diminutive figures of traditional European elf lore. 

The wizard Gandalf may be correlated with such an iconic figure as Merlin, the most significant wizard image in Western literature. In Gandalf's  mysterious origins, his unusually long life in which he physically travels to another realm beyond human perception  rather than dying, his transmutation into a higher state of physical existence after his decisive battle with the balrog, an embodiment of undiluted evil, he represents a more otherworldly but still terrestrially grounded quality also represented by the Merlin image, one father away from those depictions of the semi-human or human, mortal Merlin in terms of  his intimate involvement with the intrigues of statecraft in Arthur's court, as demonstrated  by some examples of the pan-European Arthurian literary tradition. 

Gandalf embodies wholly the semi-human dimension and sage qualities of such a characterization, visualized in human terms but transcending the limitations of human self interest, an image correlative with such figures as the Yoruba Orisa mythic personage Obatala.

This is an orientation similar to that powerfully developed in Indian-American writer Deepak Chopra's novel The Return of Merlin, in which Merlin embodies principles of transcendence of the limitations of time and human fixations with transient political realities, superior principles represented by what may be Chopra's grounding in Hindu metaphysics.

His interpretation of Merlin is correlative with but different from US-UK author Stephen Lawhead's reworking of Merlin as both powerful and suffering, an image of suffering distilled from the older Arthurian literature, in which Merlin is painfully enmeshed in his relationship with a witch/nature spirit female power who has different names, such as Morgaine, in the Arthurian tradition. 

Such a depiction of the unity of power and suffering also emerges in the Obatala mythos, while conflictual and cooperative engagement between male and female spiritual personages, the feminine depicted in relation to spiritual powers at times associated with nature, also emerges in the Orisa tradition, as its likely to do in others, dramatizing polarities and complementarities fundamental to human thought.

thanks

toyin

On Sun, 28 Aug 2022 at 23:42, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

A delightful essay by my son Nathan Hamelberg on the Culture pages of today's Dagens Nyheter : 

https://www.dn.se/kultur/nathan-hamelberg-tolkiens-sagor-handlar-om-att-oppna-granser-och-valkomna-framlingar/

PUBLISHED AT 08:37

Elijah Wood as Frodo in Peter Jackson's film adaptation.

Elijah Wood as Frodo in Peter Jackson's film adaptation. Photo: TT

The TV series "Rings of Power" has caused anger already in advance, in part because some of the actors are non-white. But Tolkien's work is about crossing borders, about a world in change, about escape, estrangement and overcoming enmity, writes Nathan Hamelberg.

This is an opinion piece in Dagens Nyheter. The writer is responsible for the opinions in the article.

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I was eight years old the first time I was introduced to Tolkien's fairy tales. My mother read "The Hobbit" to me as a bedtime story. Already after a few evenings of reading, I started flipping through the book myself and quickly became hooked on the maps, they spurred further imagination about the world described in the text. A few years later, the same thing happened when I devoured "The Lord of the Rings", I threw myself over the maps and they set off fantasies about forests, kingdoms, mountains and foreign lands.

The maps of Middle-earth I studied with wide eyes were drastically different from the maps in the school book atlas we had in geography: there were no boundaries drawn. It was the same with the maps in "Silmarillion", "Tales from Midgård" and "Ringens värld" which I eagerly devoured a few more years later.

Some maps depicted places that had completely disappeared from the world when the events of "The Lord of the Rings" took place: the huge continent of Beleriand that grew out of Middle-earth that sank into the sea two ages ago, the island of Númenor that was created as a gift to the human tribes that came to the aid of the elves in the war against the evil prince Morgoth, but an age later sank to the bottom of the sea. Tolkien's fictional world becomes so much more real when it too contains places that no longer exist:

"But it's not your county. Others lived here before there were hobbits, and others will live here when the hobbits no longer exist. The wide world is all around you: you can shut yourself in, but you can't shut out the world," says the elf Gildor to Frodo early in "The Fellowship of the Ring" (p. 114).

"Rings of Power" premieres this week on Amazon prime.

"Rings of Power" premieres this week on Amazon prime. Photo: Alamy

The borders between the kingdoms that remain in Middle-earth are maintained through natural formations, through violence and through sorcery. The Realm was remembered through song and poem – the Middle-earth that exists at the time of the War of the Rings remembers fragments of what existed before the Ring was forged, just as ideas about ancient Greece in the Middle Ages lived on through the Iliad and the Odyssey. It's these layers of history that give the fictional world credibility, but it's also how we understand that the hobbits who set off on their adventures are completely ignorant of the wider world because their songs are about harvest, apples, ale and feasting rather than about a mythical bygone past.

Tolkien invites the reader to co-create with his texts. The layers of history, and how we as different readers come into contact with them in different ways – arriving at legends within legends on various paths and chance encounters, reading side stories about kingdoms or ancient songs – make Tolkien reading either imaginative or not at all. Whoever does not fill in the gaps themselves will put the books down.

That is precisely why I tremble and agonize before the series "Rings of Power"; will it invite me to co-create? On the one hand, it will direct attention to the enormous treasure that predates "The Lord of the Rings," the tales that are only hinted at in almost caterpillar passing in Jackson's films. On the other hand, I'm afraid that the characterization of those stories will be incredibly clumsy.

The series has already aroused anger in advance, for two reasons that are closely intertwined. Anger at portrayals that are clearly at odds with how things are presented in Tolkien's stories - such as the elven queen Galadriel being portrayed as a young warrior rather than a multi-thousand-year-old wise woman with magical skills. And anger that, completely in line with today's constant hurricane-like background noise of culture wars, is directed at the fact that some actors are black, or just non-white.

Tolkien's idea of creating a coherent saga myth because Britain lacked a counterpart to the Greek, Old Norse or German or for that matter Egyptian or Indian mythology has been capitalized on because his sagas and all their protagonists are white and other characters are some kind of abomination.

Morfydd Clark som Galadriel to "Rings of power".

Morfydd Clark som Galadriel to "Rings of power". Photo: Alamy

In Peter Jackson's acclaimed film adaptation of the books, the fifty-year-old hobbit Frodo was played by an 18-year-old Elijah Wood. In practice: the almost patrician middle-aged gentleman with his own servant was portrayed as an innocent youth. It did not cause a fraction of the outcry that black actors in the TV series caused. One can make lists of casts and characters that are incredibly far more significant in the Tolkien film adaptations than whether any actor is non-white, yet some make whiteness central to their reading of the tales.

For me, the fairy tales are about something completely different. "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", like "The Silmarillion" for the most part, deal with people (and dwarves and elves) in exile. About estrangement and past enmity. About escape, about returning to countries that no longer exist, about giving up life in a part of the world because it has become impossible, about letting go of history in order to survive. About people who lost their homes. About introducing yourself as a friend in the language that has almost stopped being spoken to enter an abandoned kingdom.

The stories are about boundaries that are crossed

The conservative label has been liberally applied to Tolkien ever since his stories were published, but in the books, you see time and time again how those who are set to guard borders break the law and welcome strangers. As leader of the Fellowship of the Ring, Aragorn negotiates so that the dwarf Gimli is allowed to move freely in the elven kingdom of Lothlorien, contrary to their thousand-year ban on dwarves staying in the land. The outlaw Éomer not only gives said Aragorn and Gimli and their friend the elf Legolas free rein in the realm of Rohan but also gives them the horses of their fallen comrades to enable them to succeed in their hunt. Faramir, son of the prince and lord of Gondor, releases the ring with Frodo, Sam and Gollum after capturing them, against the law of the realm. ersatz for Britons and Englishmen – get rid of their ancient prejudices against the Wozs.

The stories are about boundaries that are crossed. Perhaps the best example - from a Swedish horizon not as clear as from that of British class society - is how the upper-class hobbit Frodo goes from addressing his servant and gardener Sam Gamgi based on a working relationship to a love relationship, possibly platonic. Or not platonic - the parts in the books that are more than others characterized by physical intimacy are when Sam and Frodo share kisses, caresses or hugs.

It's another story of transgression hidden in plain sight in Tolkien's sagas. They all deserve re-reading to ponder: What boundaries are opened in and by Tolkien's world? Perhaps more than is ever done in a contemporary series adaptation loosely based on his books.

Read more:

Magnus Västerbro: This is how Tolkien created his distant and enchanting Midgard

Charlotte Brändström: "'The Rings of Power' is the most secret project I've ever worked on"

Judith Kiros: "I regularly wore a cloak and studied High Elvish"

TOPICS IN THE ARTICLE

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