“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
So begins J.R.R. Tolkien’s great myth of quest and redemption. Jack’s October 30 show featured Tolkien’s reading of part of “Riddles in the Dark,” the great fifth chapter of The Hobbit, first published in 1937. As Tolkien worked on The Lord of the Rings he realized that he needed to revise this crucial chapter to make it work within the structure of the larger book. In the revised text of The Hobbit, published in 1951, Tolkien writes, “More important is the matter of Chapter Five. There the true story of the ending of the Riddle Game, as it was eventually revealed (under pressure) by Bilbo to Gandalf, is now given according to the Red Book, in place of the version Bilbo first gave to his friends, and actually set down in his diary. This departure from truth on the part of a most honest hobbit was a portent of great significance…Its explanation lies in the history of the Ring, as it is set out in the chronicles of the Red Book of Westmarch, and it must await their publication.”
The version of Chapter V that Tolkien recorded in 1952 was neither the version published in 1937 nor the version published in 1951 but something in between. It begins,
“Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum—as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes. He had a boat, and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold. He paddled it with large feet dangling over the side, but never a ripple did he make. Not he. He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking. He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it; but he took care they never found him out. He just throttled them from behind, if they ever came down alone anywhere near the edge of the water, while he was prowling about.”
Note that there is nothing here about Gollum being invisible when he makes his attack: “He just throttled them from behind.” Tolkien is still working out his conception. “I don’t where he came from, nor who or what he was.” Later, the author asks, as if he himself does not yet know, “What was Gollum talking about? What useful thing could he keep out on the dark lake?” It is only then that “one very beautiful thing, very beautiful, very wonderful” enters the story: “He had a ring, a golden ring, a precious ring.”
On today’s show we’ll hear the conclusion of the story along with other readings by Tolkien. Wikipedia: “The impact of Tolkien’s works is such that the use of the words ‘Tolkienian’ and ‘Tolkienesque’ has been recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary.”
Jack writes,
LEGENDARIUM
Fondness for forests, sadness at tree felling…
At last a war that he could order and control
And poems that he could write
In old, outmoded forms
For a world entirely his own
In languages he had conceived
He is everyone in the book, Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Legolas, Strider
Gollum is a portion of his mind
My precioussssss
And the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.
All of it colored by the Roman Faith (“Hmmmm, I’m devout”…
Answered in Latin when everyone else spoke English)
And a longing for a past that was not a past
Old tales made new…
Beren, son of Barahir:
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.
Concluding lines quoted from J.R.R. Tolkien’s poem, “Bilbo’s Last Song.”
Part Two of Two.