Dreamflower's Mathom-house

My friend dawn_felagund (who is co-mod with me on Many Paths to Tread, and is also a mod of The Silmarillion Writer's Guild) is going to be a presenting a paper at Mythmoot.

She's planning to do it on why people write fanfic specifically for Tolkien, and she is trying to get as much information as possible on that, and on whether you think the Tolkien fandom is different than most other fandoms.

Here is the link to her post: Why Do You Write Tolkien Fanfic?

Dawn says she will welcome input from people who are not on her flist! I hope some of you will share your opinions with her on this subject!

I thought today I'd share something from JRR Tolkien's personal life.

54 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien 8 January 1944

Remember your guardian angel. Not a plump lady with swan-wings! But – at least this is my notion and feeling – : as souls with free-will we are, as it were, so placed as to face (or to be able to face) God. But God is (so to speak) also behind us, supporting, nourishing us (as being creatures). The bright point of power where that life-line, that spiritual umbilical cord touches: there is our Angel, facing two ways to God behind us in the direction we cannot see, and to us. But of course do not grow weary of facing God, in your free right and strength (both provided 'from behind' as I say). If you cannot achieve inward peace, and it is given to few to do so (least of all to me) in tribulation, do not forget that the aspiration for it is not a vanity, but a concrete act. I am sorry to talk like this, and so haltingly. But I can do no more for you dearest. ....

If you don't do so already, make a habit of the 'praises'. I use them much (in Latin): the Gloria Patri, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Laudate Dominum; the Laudate Pueri Dominum (of which I am specially fond), one of the Sunday psalms; and the Magnificat; also the Litany of Loretto (with the prayer Sub tuum praesidium). If you have these by heart you never need for words of joy. It is also a good and admirable thing to know by heart the Canon of the Mass, for you can say this in your heart if ever hard circumstance keeps you from hearing Mass. So endeth Faeder lár his suna.1 With very much love.

Longað þonnet þy lǽs þe him con léoþa worn,
oþþe mid hondum con hearpan grétan;
hafaþ him his glíwes giefe,
þe him God sealde.

From the Exeter Book. Less doth yearning trouble him who knoweth many songs, or with his hands can touch the harp: his possession is his gift of 'glee' (= music and/or verse) which God gave him. How these old words smite one out of the dark antiquity! 'Longað'! All down the ages men (of our kind, most awarely) have felt it: not necessarily caused by sorrow, or the hard world, but sharpened.

Such a loving letter to a son soon off to war, and filled with advice, yet still containing meat for the mind as well as the heart!

I'm off to work--but first:




HOBBITS

How we love them!
Our small heroes:
Burglar, Ringbearers, Knights of Gondor and Rohan,
Banishing the dark with their bright spirits and brave hearts.
It doesn't bear
Thinking about a world without them,
So dear to our hearts!

Happy Birthday, Bilbo and Frodo! AND
Happy World Hobbit Day!

Thank you, Professor, for writing down these words: "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."

On that whole "Tolkien rejected for a Nobel prize" thing. Here's what the Professor himself had to say about his critics:

"Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short."

I think that about covers it. I imagine C.S. Lewis, who nominated him, was more incensed over the rejection than JRRT was.

Mark Reads is up to Chapter 10 and his take on the hobbits encounter with Strider is hilarious! Check it out!

Also, I came across the following quote in Arda Reconstructed by Charles Douglas Kane, which recounts the creation of The Silmarillion in its published form. It was taken from one of JRRT's diaries: he said Christopher "had grown into a nervy, irritable, cross-grained, self-tormenting, cheeky person. Yet there is something intensely lovable about him, to me at any rate, from the very similarity between us."

Happy Birthday, Professor!

Here's my reading for Tolkien Reading Day! It is from the chapter "Treebeard" in TT, and is set in the time Merry and Pippin spent in the house of Quickbeam (Bregalad):



HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

During WWII, JRRT wrote a series of beautiful letters to his son Christopher, who was a fighter pilot in the RAF. He covered many topics, from the mundane news of the doings of family and friends and the state of the family garden, to tidbits about LotR as he was writing it, to some really profound and heartfelt musings about faith. When you consider all he himself had gone through in the trenches of the Somme in WWI, he truly understood what peril his son was in, and what misery he must be enduring. The following is a passage from one of those letters, in which he muses on evil and faith and human courage and the ultimate victory of Good. ( Read more... )

The BBC has archived for streaming THIS DOCUMENTARY made in 1968. An interview with JRRT in Oxford, interspersed with interviews with various Oxford students about their opinions on the books. Cut for spoilers...( Read more... )

I'd love to see others' opinions on the documentary after you've seen it!

And thanks to labourslamp for cluing me in on it!

I can't begin to say just how MUCH THIS TICKLES ME!!!!!





I got it not once, not twice, but three times! I put in "A Merry Old Inn", "Roast Mutton Revisited" and "Concussion"!

Then I put in "Little Dogs Laughed" and got:





Which I must say, seems odd. I've read most of P.G. Wodehouse, and I can't say I see that.

Then I put in "Enchanted" and "Ripples of Fear" and "Go Not to Aunt Dora for Advice" and got J.R.R. Tolkien AGAIN!

Finally, I put in "Desperate Times, Desperate Measures" and "On Amon Sûl and got





This is really fun!

I had a great time last night, doing the reading at the library, and I had lots of fun last year, reading Roverandom by voice-post, and taking part in read_lotr_aloud.

So, I thought I'd do it again.

[Poll #1543566]