Imagine
a
bright winter’s afternoon
in the heart of the Gloucestershire Cotswolds, with low sunlight
slanting in and a sharp breeze in your face. You are standing on the
grassy ramparts of Painswick Beacon, an iron-age hill fort occupied
somewhere between 400BC and 40AD, looking out over the Forest of Dean
and the Welsh hills. In the far distance you can see range after
range of blue-grey hills, separated by pale strips of misty lowland.
What writers would spring to your mind? I suppose there could be many
– Thomas Hardy, of course, as this is a quintessentially
English
scene (even if the far horizon is in Wales). In my case, though
–
possibly due to the associations conjured up by the prehistoric
setting – I thought of J. R. R. Tolkien.
Given
that his
work has been so much in
the public eye over the last few years, it may seem rather odd to ask
whether we have lost sight of the strengths of Tolkien’s
writing.
But the publicity given to Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation
of his
work in recent years, has possibly focused attention too narrowly on
his plot lines at the expense of other aspects of his writing.
Those
who have
read his books, and I am
thinking now particularly of The Lord of the Rings, will know that he
has his weaknesses, mainly to do with characterisation: you
don’t
read Tolkien to find complex psychological dramas involving
realistic characters. He would have argued, of course, that he was
aiming for something different – the creation of a heroic
saga
written in the form of a modern novel, set in a landscape that is
utterly fantastic and yet having sufficient underpinning to make it
rigorously self-consistent and therefore curiously believable. With
other fantasy writers over the years have managed to achieve this to
varying degrees, and we can admire the bravura with which the more
successful ones have presented their concoctions. Strangely though,
when reading Tolkien it is generally the complete absence of the
author’s presence which is most striking: lose yourself in
the
pages of The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s world becomes a
given
– it establishes itself in your head, accepted without
question,
and you read on eagerly to find out what is going to happen next.
There
are a
number of things that make
Tolkien stand out from other fantasy writers: first and foremost is
his professional standing in the field of early English literature,
and his interest in Celtic and Nordic languages and their associated
myths and sagas. It gave him an immense amount of source material,
and he spent a huge amount of time building it into his own body of
work. Tolkien’s imaginary world never feels arbitrary, and
there is
no sense of the author introducing elements simply for effect. It is
not just that it is seamlessly blended from both ancient and modern
components, but that it is done so by an acknowledged master. With
that sort of background it is perhaps not altogether surprising that
The Lord of the Rings has become the definitive work of the genre:
when we read it, we sense the ghosts of long dead story-tellers
peering over our shoulders.
But
I believe
there is more to
Tolkien’s enduring appeal, and it is exemplified by the
thoughts
that struck me as I stood looking out from the top of Painswick
Beacon. He had the uncanny ability to conjure up pastoral scenes
which grip the reader with what can only be described as poetic
intensity. There are plenty of actual poems, of course, in The Lord
of the Rings, acting as a sort of occasional chorus interspersed
within the narrative-bearing prose, and they are often very vivid in
their own way. But Tolkien’s great genius, it seems to me, is
that
he could write prose passages which present the reader with
extraordinarily powerful images whilst simultaneously moving forward
the narrative.
It
is not hard
to pad out the text of a
story with long descriptive passages, the trick is to do it without
boring the reader or drowning the narrative in indigestible textual
stodge. Tolkien was a master of this art, perhaps because he
approached the task with an appreciation of narrative poetry, both
from historical sources and of his own creation. It takes genius to
write great literature, but a lifelong passion which encourages
experimentation and the honing of one’s craft certainly
doesn’t
do any harm.
And
so, as I
felt the wind on my face
on the ramparts of the hill fort and looked out over the hazy
landscape, it was Tolkien’s misty mountains which sprang to
mind,
and it was the recreation of some scene from the book –
perhaps
Frodo and his companions caught by fog on the Barrow Downs –
which
proved stronger than any of my own first-hand experiences. Perhaps it
is an example of what psychologists insist is true – that
fictional
episodes can acquire the solidity of actual events in our memories.
In my case, a book read first in childhood has clearly become so
indelibly imprinted that it takes only the slightest trigger to bring
back the full power of the original sensations.
All
of which
leads me to consider the
recent film adaptation of the book. Peter Jackson certainly scored a
popular triumph with the three movies, and it is a monumental
achievement to have distilled the storyline into a coherent
screenplay, albeit some nine hours long. The plot line which
describes the overthrow of Sauron, from the discovery of the ring to
its final destruction, is vividly brought to life; the characters are
believable in terms of the story, the settings are inspired, and the
costumes and props are entirely sympathetic to the book. It was a
huge gamble to risk so much money on the project, and in the end it
paid off: the movies were a popular triumph.
However,
if we
ask the question of
whether they were a successful adaptation of the book, I think we
need to consider more deeply. The lack of any of the original poetry
is perhaps a warning sign, because Tolkien used it for various
purposes in the novel. For instance, he sketched in much of the
background history of the story via tantalising glimpses of ancient
events, recounted in numerous poems. The films occasionally use
flashbacks for this purpose, most notably at the beginning of the
first one, but they cannot match the way Tolkien is able to weave his
history lessons into the narrative. He also used poetry to give us a
richer impression of the Hobbits and their customs, and of their
homeland – the Shire. It is here, I believe, that the
failings of
the films begin become most apparent: Peter Jackson could not afford
to dwell on the early scene-setting long enough to establish the
world of Middle Earth in the way that Tolkien does, or at least not
without adding an extra film to the existing three. The movies,
therefore, are never able to draw in the viewer in the way the books
do the reader.
Not
that The
Lord of the Rings is an
easy book to get into: children can find the opening chapters too
slow and long-winded, and anyone who approaches it in adulthood may
find themselves put off by the very notion of Hobbits and Elves. For
those who do persevere, though, the rewards are immense: stick with
the story into the depths of the Old Forest, or the misty expanse of
the Barrow Downs, and you are presented with an overwhelming
evocation of what is, in effect, the English countryside. This is
where Tolkien excels, because he not only makes it so real that you
sense the rich, woodland scents rising from the page, but he also
mixes in a poignant nostalgia for a rural England fast slipping away.
It is on this foundation that his later, more fantastic imaginings
rest: we believe in Rivendell and Moria and Minas Tirith because they
are simply the next stops on a journey that began in a place we know
– the familiar fields and lanes of our home country. And when
we
find ourselves in these other fantastic places we accept them without
question, because we arrived there simply by stepping off the usual
paths, and moving further into a world we had not realised was there.
Or perhaps, more accurately, into a world that we were in fact
vaguely aware of, because it is one that has come down to us in
fragments of old legends and nursery rhymes. And who better to lead
us than Tolkien, whose whole life – professional and private
–
was dedicated to studying that world.
So
I should not
have been surprised
when his work sprang to mind as I stood on top of that hill fort in
the middle of rural Gloucestershire. For one brief moment my gaze
strayed away from the familiar components of our world, and looked
through instead to its ancient foundations. In the single instant
that my eyes were freed from the distractions of the modern world,
the bones of the landscape were revealed. For that moment I felt
their ancient pull as strongly as the ancient builders of that place
must have done, standing on their newly cut ramparts and staring out
into the dark, purple-grey distance. It is the feelings stirred in
them at such moments, recorded in their songs and poems, that are
reflected back to us in Tolkien’s books.