Birthday and Funeral

The nineteenth of November is my birthday; this year, I will keep it by driving to Hobart for the funeral and burial of my old friend Ben.  Having heard that he truly had that which we pray for, a "good death", I am glad to go and mourn in hope, praying that his soul may rest in peace.

Of your charity, please spare a prayer for Ben, an Ave or a Salve or a Requiem; please pray too for Jane his widow, and for their family.  Ben I met late in his life, a long, a good life: as it is, I have known him and Jane for the better part of twenty years, and what a privilege it has been.

The parting of friends is a painful thing.  I think oft of Tolkien's portrayal of this, and of "Bilbo's Last Song", surely J.R.R.'s parting song ere he left this world to pass over to the Father.

Donald Swann's setting of Bilbo's Last Song.

My family and I celebrated my birthday a day early, on Sunday.  Every year passes more quickly; my father lived to 84, my friend Ben to 88; as for myself, today I reach the number of (to misquote the Apostle) forty stripes minus two.  It is strange but sobering to reflect that more than half my life is already over, and with little or nothing to shew for it.

St Philip Neri used to lament his hitherto slack life (!) after recovering from illness, and would say, Now I purpose to set my life in order, now I purpose to make a new start, now, a sinner, to strive for holiness – may I be granted grace to do the same, so numbering my days as to gain true wisdom.

Tempus fugit! All things pass, and all too quickly: let us redeem the time, for we know not how short the time is that may remain.  Remember, O Christian, the Four Last Things: death, judgement, hell, and heaven.  Remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin. 

Ave atque Vale, Tolkien

Here are my posts about Tolkien:

• Tolkieniana (my collection of books by and about him and his work);
  
  
• The Realm of Sauron is Ended Forever (my reflection on how Tolkien's tale of the defeat of Sauron profoundly echoes the true myth of Christ's defeat of Satan);

• Subcreation (my brief explanation of Tolkien's insight that, when we write stories, we are are in humble yet real sense reflecting the creative power of the Creator);

• Day is Ended (my eulogy of Tolkien, from his first inspiration for Middle-earth, a line from an Old English poem, to a late work, "Bilbo's Last Song" - picturing that elderly hobbit's farewell to Middle-Earth, which may be read as Tolkien's own farewell to this world ere he passed over to the Undying Lands).

I commend these to readers' attention - and particularly the last, in remembrance of his passing. Ora pro eo.

Tolkieniana

Having been enjoying reading over things elvish and otherwise at Singulare Ingenium, and being only able to potter around to-day while I slowly get over a nasty cold, I thought I'd make a little catalogue of my books by and about the late great J.R.R. Tolkien, whose anniversary of death was yesterday (he died in 1973 - God rest his soul evermore).

The very first book of Tolkien's that I read must have been The Hobbit, which I surely read whilst at primary school; but strangely I never owned a copy until recently, when I picked one up secondhand: I had aways just borrowed one from whatever library was handy. I bought a second copy while in W.A., since most of my books were back in Tasmania.

Next, my well-beloved, terribly worn-out boxed set of The Lord of the Rings, given me as a birthday present when I was in Grade 3 (and devoured over the long Christmas holidays that year, while I was laid up with a severe dog bite to my right leg), and which I've read over cover-to-cover (especially the Appendices - what does that say about me?!) three or four times at least as I grew older, until their increasingly fragile condition made me buy a new set for reading from (especially as I was in W.A. at the time, without most of my books).

Finally, after reading LOTR, while still a young 'un, the family doctor lent me his hardback copy of The Silmarillion, but I found this rather different from what I expected, and only came to appreciate it much later, once I was all grown up. Again, I only bought a secondhand copy of it in 2001, and a second copy while over in Western Australia.

Here is my little list of Tolkien's books:

• J.R.R. Tolkien; Pauline Baynes, illus. Bilbo's Last Song (hardback), London: Random House, 2002.
• J.R.R. Tolkien; Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond, edd. Farmer Giles of Ham (paperback), London: Harper Collins, 1999.
• J.R.R. Tolkien, trans.; Christopher Tolkien, ed. Sir Gawain and the Green Night, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (paperback), London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983. [secondhand]
• J.R.R. Tolkien, trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Night, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (paperback), New York: Ballantine, 1980. [secondhand - acquired while I was in W.A.]
• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (paperback), London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978. [2 copies, both secondhand]
• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (3 volume paperback boxed set), London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982.
• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (3 volumes, paperback), London: Harper Collins, 2001. [Two of these I bought secondhand.]
• J.R.R. Tolkien; music by Donald Swann, The Road Goes Ever On (hardback, with CD), London: Harper Collins, 2002. [Includes "Lúthien Tinúviel" and "Bilbo's Last Song".]
• J.R.R. Tolkien; Christopher Tolkien, ed. The Silmarillion (paperback), London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979 [1st copy] & 1984 [2nd copy]. [both secondhand]
• J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, including Mythopoeia and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth (paperback), London: Harper Collins, 2001. [Contains On Fairy Stories and Leaf by Niggle.]
• J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales (paperback), London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985.

And here is my list of Tolkieniana, books about Tolkien and his œuvre:

• Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (paperback), London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978. [secondhand]
• Patrick Curry, Defending Middle Earth: Tolkien: Myth & Modernity (paperback), London: Harper Collins, 1998.
• David Day, The Hobbit Companion (hardback), Milsons Point: Random House Australia, 2002.
• Colin Duriez, The Tolkien and Middle-Earth Handbook (paperback), Pymble, Harper Collins, 1992. [secondhand]
• Jude Fisher, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Visual Companion (hardback), London: Harper Collins, 2003. [A present from a Dominican friend.]
• Daniel Grotta, The* Biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, Architect of Middle-Earth (paperback), Philadelphia: Running Press, 1978. [secondhand] [*How immodest!]
• Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (paperback), London: Harper Collins, 2005.
• Randel Helms, Tolkien and the Silmarils (hardback), London: Thames and Hudson, 1981. [secondhand]
• Paul Kocher, Master of Middle-Earth: The Achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien (paperback), London: Pimlico, 2002.
• Joseph Pearce, Tolkien: Man and Myth (hardback), London: Harper Collins, 1999.
• Joseph Pearce, ed. Tolkien: A Celebration: Collected Writings on a Literary Legacy (paperback), London: Harper Collins, 1998.
• Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (paperback), London: Harper Collins, 2001.
• Michael N. Stanton, Hobbits, Elves and Wizards: Exploring the Wonders and Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (paperback), New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Some of these books are at the embarrassing hippie-devotee end of the spectrum, but most others are solid, sympathetic and Catholic.

(I also have the DVD's of the recent films made of LOTR.)

I really must get a copy of Tolkien's letters, as edited by Humphrey Carpenter, which I've read through before but ought read again; I am surprised to find I don't have a copy of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil nor of Smith of Wootton Major (both of which I first eagerly read long years past, while at primary school); and I wouldn't mind some of the History of Middle Earth series that Christopher Tolkien has brought out, particularly the parts detailing his philosophical speculations.

[UPDATE: I've just bought these desiderata online, except for the last-named!]

And finally there is my own signal contribution to Tolkien studies - a cassette tape of my lecture to the Newman Society of the University of Tasmania, given 28th July 2002! I may one day get around to transcribing this brilliant jewel of erudite exposition...

The Realm of Sauron is Ended Forever

It was on the 25th of March, Tolkien tells us, that the One Ring, that evil machination of Sauron and distillation of his fell power, was destroyed, delivering Middle Earth from the spectre of unending, unbreakable demonic thrall: "'The realm of Sauron is ended!'"

Quite evident is the allusion that J.R.R. wished to impart.

Let us therefore call to mind the exultant song of the Eagle bearing this imagined foreshadowing of Good News to Minas Tirith (The Lord of the Rings, Book VI, Chapter V):

And before the Sun had fallen far from the noon out of the East there came a great Eagle flying, and he bore tidings beyond hope from the Lords of the West, crying:

Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anor,

for the realm of Sauron is ended for ever,

and the Dark Tower is thrown down.

Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard,

for your watch hath not been in vain,

and the Black Gate is broken,

and your King hath passed through,

and he is victorious.

Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West,

for your King shall come again,

and he shall dwell among you

all the days of your life.

And the Tree that was withered shall be renewed,

and he shall plant it in the high places,

and the City shall be blessed.

Sing all ye people!

And the people sang in all the ways of the City.

Is not the mastercraftsmanship of Tolkien evident in this passage, which to a Catholic Christian is so redolent of our holy religion?  Is not every word evidently pregnant with Christian and Catholic truth?  Our Champion, Christ, taking upon Himself our human nature, was seen on earth and appeared among men, and by the whole economy of His Incarnation, smashed the gates and broken the bars of hell, crushing Satan and winning for us victory beyond hope, He the Victor, for us, who pray we be numbered among the faithful, the true Israel of God and the New Jerusalem, here on earth in hope of what one day shall be consummated in heaven evermore, since Christ shall reign until He put all His enemies beneath His feet.  Sing all ye people!

Subcreation

Tolkien, in his seminal Essay on Fairy Stories, I recall, writes of how one aspect man's part in Creation is to be a sub-creator, composing works of fiction that are not "lies breathed through silver" as his not-always-like-minded friend Clive Staples Lewis opined ere J.R.R. corrected him, but true works of imagination, rich myths that uplift the human spirit; what more wonderful than thus in our small fashion to reflect the creative act of God, Who in His own secret counsel prepared that all-surpassing mystery whereby the Son of God became the Son of Man, and gave to the world a myth marvellous, marvellous because it is the myth that is true: as we sing at Christmastime, "O little town of Bethlehem... the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight".  

This is the true myth, with its ultimate eucatastrophe, Tolkien's choice of name for the proverbial happy ending of fairy stories (a term too often used in a pejorative or patronizing way, belittling a genre whose fading into childish beguilements betrays a sad loss in our culture of the capacity for wonder and awe, for looking beyond the prosaic) - but in this case, the happy ending is true, and promises no lies or dreams, but a reality greater than what we are pleased to call the real world.

Subcreation!  That's what I was reminded of, when I found for it to-day at Matins its locus classicus, its proof-text in the revealed Scriptures - Genesis ii, 19-20a:

Formatis igitur, Dominus Deus, de humo cunctis animantibus terræ, et universis volatilibus cæli, adduxit ea ad Adam, ut videret quid vocaret ea: omne enim quod vocavit Adam animæ viventis, ipsum est nomen ejus.  Appellavitque Adam nominibus suis cuncta animantia, et universa volatilia cæli, et omnes bestias terræ...

The Lord God having formed, therefore, from the dust of the earth all the animals, and all the birds of the sky, He brought them to Adam ["the man"], that He should see what he should call them: for that which Adam called every one of the living animals, the very same is its name.  And Adam named with their names all the animals, and all the birds of the sky, and all the beasts of the earth...

How utterly amazing, that God should wait upon man to learn from him what the names of all His creatures should be!  Talk about Divine condescension.  Note that this is before the Fall, of course; man walked in friendship with God, and God delighted in man.  But it seems to me, taking Tolkein's part in this, that whatsoever of good that we may make, nay, sub-create in works of poetry or prose, of imagination and invention, is blessed by God Who deigns "to stoop from on high from His throne to gaze down" (cf. Ps 101:20) and is pleased to find our own endeavours, though poor reflections of His own all-Creative Word they be, yet like His Creation, we pray, in His sight "very good" (Genesis i, 31).

Day is Ended

Having plunged back into Tolkien, I've been remembering how the late J.R.R. (1892-1973) was first spurred on to constructing his marvellous sub-creation by the arresting phrase in the Anglo-Saxon poem Crist:

éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended

("Hail Earendel, brightest of angels, sent over Middle-earth to men.")

As early as 1914, he was writing inspired by this name, originally referring to Venus, the Morning Star. In his mythology, this name, become Eärendil, was that of a mariner, eventually sent aloft bearing the light of one of the silmarils, as a sign of hope for the oppressed peoples of Middle-earth (Tolkien also having adopted this name from the couplet). In The Lord of the Rings (Book II, Chapter I), appears the poem 'Eärendil was a mariner", retelling some of the tale - much expanded upon in the posthumous Silmarillion - as sung by Bilbo, hero of The Hobbit; at its end is said:

A ship then new they built for him
of mithril and of elven-glass
with shining prow; no shaven oar
nor sail she bore on silver mast:
the Silmaril as lantern light
and banner bright with living flame...

and burning as an island star
on high above the mists he came,
a distant flame before the Sun...

And over middle-earth he passed...
for ever still a herald on
an errand that should never rest
to bear his shining lamp afar,
the Flammifer of Westernesse.

Later still, after the great success of The Lord of the Rings, the now-aged retired Professor penned an elegaic piece in his seventies, "Bilbo's Last Song at the Grey Havens", set to music, after Tolkien's death in 1973, by Donald Swann (I have the haunting music of the singing of this song in my head, although the CD is back in Tasmania now), and also published in a handsome illustrated edition, which likewise resides in my library (as pictured):

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the havens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast!

To me, this brings the mythic cycle full circle: the Star, in the Old English symbolizing John Baptist as harbinger of Christ, at once stands: in context as referring to Eärendil, as a star, lighting the way to the Undying Lands for aged Bilbo, still pained by his contact with the Ring, on his voyage to attain healing, which entailed leaving behind Middle-earth for ever; and also to John Ronald Reuel himself, as he prepared for and eventually did pass from this mortal world, hoping as a faithful Catholic to be brought unto his Saviour, firstly being healed of whatever still afflicted his soul.

The underlying philosophy of the legendarium that Tolkien made has long fascinated me, especially his central positing of the Elves as beings immortal in this world, having a purely natural final end (how pleased would Garrigou-Lagrange have been, how annoyed de Lubac!), fated to see all that they love fade, corrupt and decay, and alone able to appreciate the Gift of the One to Men - death, which alone permits Men to pass out of this physical universe which in the end will pass away, but which also requires of Men to hope against hope that beyond the circles of the world lies more than memory, in technical terms hoping for a supernatural final end, unrevealed in Tolkien's cosmos, before the Revelation of God and His Christ that occurs in the "far future", so far as the fictitous history of Middle-earth is concerned.

In one of his unrelated, minor works, Leaf by Niggle, Tolkien wrote of the procrastinating artist Niggle, surely an ironic self-portrait, who aspires to paint a great tree in a huge landscape, but in the event completes only a leaf, displayed in afteryears as a half-forgotten and very minor curio (perhaps his own too-modest view of how the little of his unfinished œuvre he had published would fare after his demise); Niggle himself is taken off to The Workhouse - Purgatory - after peremptory summons to the long-feared train journey (symbol of our transitus), but after a long internment is sent on to a new paradise, where all he only half-imagined and never achieved in painting is found to be real and far fuller of beauty and detail than in his mortal life he could have dreamt. This, for the Professor, was his charming depiction of one aspect of heaven.

Fratres Oratorii Sessio III

Rather like the on-again, off-again Council of Trent, the Brothers of the Oratory gathered on Tuesday evening just past to resume for the new year of grace, 2008.


Having had to attend an evening function instead, I at least caught up with the fratres afterwards, who by that stage were gathered having conversation, food and drink, in approximately that order of quantities!


I ended up driving one of them home, and getting back myself after midnight. It wasn't till nearly 2am that I turned the light out, having reread a bit more of The Lord of the Rings - just arrived at Bree!