It might conceivably interest you to see some of this [The Silmarillion] before it is properly shaped or revised, bearing in mind that it is likely to be much altered in detail & presentation and certainly in style.
Thanking you again for your encouragement.
Yours sincerely
J. R. R. Tolkien.
175 From a letter to Mrs Molly Waldron
[The Lord of the Rings was broadcast on the BBC Third Programme during 1955 and 1956. Among the large cast, the pans of Gandalf and Tom Bombadil were played by the actor Norman Shelley.]
30 November 1955 I think the book quite unsuitable for 'dramatization', and have not enjoyed the broadcasts though they have improved. I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful - but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!). Cannot people imagine things hostile to men and hobbits who prey on them without being in league with the Devil!
176 From a letter to Naomi Mitchison
8 December 1955 I had to deliver the opening lecture of the newly-founded O'Donnell Lectures in Celtic Studies already overdue: and I composed it with 'all the woe in the world', as the Gawain-poet says of the wretched fox with the hounds on his tail. All the more woe, since I am the merest amateur in such matters, and Celtic scholars are critical and litigious; and more woe since I was smitten with laryngitis.
I think poorly of the broadcast adaptations. Except for a few details I think they are not well done, even granted the script and the legitimacy of the enterprise (which I do not grant). But they took some trouble with the names. I thought that the Dwarf (Glin not Gimli, but I suppose Gimli will look like his father apparently someone's idea of a German) was not too bad, if a bit exaggerated. I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue.....
I have now got a pestilent doctorate thesis to explore, when I would rather be doing something less useful.....
I am sorry about my childish amusement with arithmetic; but there it is: the Nmenrean calendar was just a bit better than the Gregorian: the latter being on average 26 secs fast p. a., and the N[menrean] 17.2 secs slow.
177 From a letter to Rayner Unwin
[The radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings was discussed on the BBC programme 'The Critics'; and on 16 November, W. H. Auden gave a radio talk about the book in which he said: 'If someone dislikes it, I shall never trust their literary judgement about anything again.' Meanwhile Edwin Muir, reviewing The Return of the King in the Observer on 27 November, wrote: 'All the characters are boys masquerading as adult heroes .... and will never come to puberty. .... Hardly one of them knows anything about women.']
8 December 1955 I agreed with the 'critics' view of the radio adaptation; but I was annoyed that after confessing that none of them had read the book they should turn their attention to it and me - including surmises on my religion. I also thought Auden rather bad he cannot at any rate read verse, having a poor rhythmical sense; and deplored his making the book 'a test of literary taste'. You cannot do that with any work and if you could you only infuriate. I was fully prepared for Roben Robinson's rejoinder 'fair-ground barker'. But I suppose all this is good for sales. My correspondence is now increased by letters of fury against the critics and the broadcast. One elderly lady in pan the model for 'Lobelia' indeed, though she does not suspect it would I think certainly have set about Auden (and others) had they been in range of her umbrella. ....
I hope in this vacation to begin surveying the Silmarillion; though evil fate has plumped a doctorate thesis on me.....
Blast Edwin Muir and his delayed adolescence. He is old enough to know better. It might do him good to hear what women think of his 'knowing about women', especially as a test of being mentally adult. If he had an M.A. I should nominate him for the professorship of poetry a sweet revenge.
178 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
[Containing a reference to Sarehole, the hamlet where Tolkien spent pan of his childhood.]
12 December 1955 By the way, there is no need to alter 'Mr' to Professor. In proper Oxford tradition professor is not a title of address or was not, though the habit has drifted in from places where 'professors' are powerful little domestic potentates. I am sure that without 'professor' I should have heard less about my donnishness, and no one would have said 'The Shire is not far from North Oxford'. It is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee that is as far away as the Third Age from that depressing and perfectly characterless straggle of houses north of old Oxford, which has not even a postal existence.
179 From a letter to Hugh Brogan
[Brogan wrote on 4 December to say that he had 'recurrent nightmares' that he might have been stupid or tactless, or given a wrong impression of 'my real admiration for your great book'.]
14 December 1955 Dismiss the nightmare! I can stand criticism not being unduly puffed up by the success (v. unexpected) of 'The Lord of the Rings' even when stupid, or unfair, or even (as I occasionally suspect) a little malicious. Otherwise I should be in a fine taking, what with 'emasculate' and other kind adjectives. But you are welcome to let your pen run as it will (it is horrible writing letters to people with whom you have to be 'careful'), since you give me such close attention, and sensitive perception.
180 To 'Mr Thompson' [draft]
[A letter to an unidentified reader.]
14 January 1956 Merton College, Oxford Dear Mr Thompson, Thank you very much for your kind and encouraging letter. Having set myself a task, the arrogance of which I fully recognized and trembled at: being precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present them with a mythology of their own: it is a wonderful thing to be told that I have succeeded, at least with those who have still the undarkened heart and mind.
It has been a considerable labour, beginning really as soon as I was able to begin anything, but effectively beginning when I was an undergraduate and began to explore my own linguistic aesthetic in language-composition. It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. (For example, that the Greek mythology depends far more on the marvellous aesthetic of its language and so of its nomenclature of persons and places and less on its content than people realize, though of course it depends on both. And vice versa. Volapk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.) So though being a philologist by nature and trade (yet one always primarily interested in the aesthetic rather than the functional aspects of language) I began with language, I found myself involved in inventing 'legends' of the same 'taste'. The early work was mostly done in camps and hospitals between 1915 and 1918 when time allowed. But I think a lot of this kind of work goes on at other (to say lower, deeper, or higher introduces a false gradation) levels, when one is saying how-do-you-do, or even 'sleeping'. I have long ceased to invent (though even patronizing or sneering critics on the side praise my 'invention'): I wait till I seem to know what really happened. Or till it writes itself. Thus, though I knew for years that Frodo would run into a tree-adventure somewhere far down the Great River, I have no recollection of inventing Ents. I came at last to the point, and wrote the 'Treebeard' chapter without any recollection of any previous thought: just as it now is. And then I saw that, of course, it had not happened to Frodo at all.
All this is boring, I am sure, because it is apparently self-centred; but I am old enough (alas!) to take a dispassionate and scientific, properly so-called, interest in these matters, and cite myself simply because I am interested in mythological 'invention', and the mystery of literary creation (or sub-creation as I have elsewhere called it) and I am the most readily available corpus vile for experiment or observation.
My chief reason for talking so, is to say that, of course, all these things are more or less written. There is hardly any reference in The Lord of the Rings to things that do not actually exist46 on its own plane (of secondary or sub-creational reality): sc. have been written. The Silmarillion was offered for publication years ago, and turned down. Good may come of such blows. The Lord of the Rings was the result. The hobbits had been welcomed. I loved them myself, since I love the vulgar and simple as dearly as the noble, and nothing moves my heart (beyond all the passions and heartbreaks of the world) so much as 'ennoblement' (from the Ugly Duckling to Frodo). I would build on the hobbits. And I saw that I was meant to do it (as Gandalf47 would say), since without thought, in a 'blurb' I wrote for The Hobbit, I spoke of the time between the Elder Days and the Dominion of Men. Out ofthat came the 'missing link': the 'Downfall of Nmenor', releasing some hidden 'complex'. For when Faramir speaks of his private vision of the Great Wave, he speaks for me. That vision and dream has been ever with me - and has been inherited (as I only discovered recently) by one of my children.
However, such has been the success not financial: costs were enormous, and nobody nowadays buys a book that they can borrow: I have not yet received a farthing of The Lord of the Rings that the ugly duckling has become a publisher's swan, and I am being positively bullied to put The Silmarillion into form, and anything else!
[The draft is incomplete.]
181 To Michael Straight [drafts]
[Before writing a review of The Lord of the Rings, Michael Straight, the editor of New Republic, wrote to Tolkien asking a number of questions: first, whether there was a 'meaning' in Gollum's rle in the story and in Frodo's moral failure at the climax; second, whether the 'Scouring of the Shire' chapter was directed especially to contemporary England; and third, why the other voyagers should depart from the Grey Havens with Frodo at the end of the book 'Is it for the same reason that there are those who gain in the victory but cannot enjoy it?']
[Not dated; probably January or February 1956.]
Dear Mr Straight, Thank you for your letter. I hope that you have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings? Enjoyed is the key-word. For it was written to amuse (in the highest sense): to be readable. There is no 'allegory', moral, political, or contemporary in the work at all.
It is a 'fairy-story', but one written according to the belief I once expressed in an extended essay 'On Fairy-stories' that they are the proper audience for adults. Because I think that fairy story has its own mode of reflecting 'truth', different from allegory, or (sustained) satire, or 'realism', and in some ways more powerful. But first of all it must succeed just as a tale, excite, please, and even on occasion move, and within its own imagined world be accorded (literary) belief. To succeed in that was my primary object.
But, of course, if one sets out to address 'adults' (mentally adult people anyway), they will not be pleased, excited, or moved unless the whole, or the incidents, seem to be about something worth considering, more e.g. than mere danger and escape: there must be some relevance to the 'human situation' (of all periods). So something of the teller's own reflections and 'values' will inevitably get worked in. This is not the same as allegory. We all, in groups or as individuals, exemplify general principles; but we do not represent them. The Hobbits are no more an 'allegory' than are (say) the pygmies of the African forest. Gollum is to me just a 'character' an imagined person who granted the situation acted so and so under opposing strains, as it appears to he probable that he would (there is always an incalculable element in any individual real or imagined: otherwise he/she would not be an individual but a 'type'.) I will try and answer your specific questions. The final scene of the Quest was so shaped simply because having regard to the situation, and to the 'characters' of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, those events seemed to me mechanically, morally, and psychologically credible. But, of course, if you wish for more reflection, I should say that within the mode of the story the 'catastrophe' exemplifies (an aspect of) the familiar words: 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.'
'Lead us not into temptation &c' is the harder and the less often considered petition. The view, in the terms of my story, is that though every event or situation has (at least) two aspects: the history and development of the individual (it is something out of which he can get good, ultimate good, for himself, or fail to do so), and the history of the world (which depends on his action for its own sake) still there are abnormal situations in which one may be placed. 'Sacrificial' situations, I should call them: sc. positions in which the 'good' of the world depends on the behaviour of an individual in circumstances which demand of him suffering and endurance far beyond the normal even, it may happen (or seem, humanly speaking), demand a strength of body and mind which he does not possess: he is in a sense doomed to failure, doomed to fall to temptation or be broken by pressure against his 'will': that is against any choice he could make or would make unfettered, not under the duress.
Frodo was in such a position: an apparently complete trap: a person of greater native power could probably never have resisted the Ring's lure to power so long; a person of less power could not hope to resist it in the final decision. (Already Frodo had been unwilling to harm the Ring before he set out, and was incapable of surrendering it to Sam.) The Quest was bound to fail as a piece of world-plan, and also was bound to end in disaster as the story of humble Frodo's development to the 'noble', his sanctification. Fail it would and did as far as Frodo considered alone was concerned. He 'apostatized' and I have had one savage letter, crying out that he shd. have been executed as a traitor, not honoured. Believe me, it was not until I read this that I had myself any idea how 'topical' such a situation might appear. It arose naturally from my 'plot' conceived in main outline in 1936. I did not foresee that before the tale was published we should enter a dark age in which the technique of torture and disruption of personality would rival that of Mordor and the Ring and present us with the practical problem of honest men of good will broken down into apostates and traitors.
But at this point the 'salvation' of the world and Frodo's own 'salvation' is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would certainly48 betray him, and could rob him in the end. To 'pity' him, to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time. He did rob him and injure him in the end but by a 'grace', that last betrayal was at a precise juncture when the final evil deed was the most beneficial thing any one cd. have done for Frodo! By a situation created by his 'forgiveness', he was saved himself, and relieved of his burden. He was very justly accorded the highest honours since it is clear that he & Sam never concealed the precise course of events. Into the ultimate judgement upon Gollum I would not care to enquire. This would be to investigate 'Goddes privitee', as the Medievals said. Gollum was pitiable, but he ended in persistent wickedness, and the fact that this worked good was no credit to him. His marvellous courage and endurance, as great as Frodo and Sam's or greater, being devoted to evil was portentous, but not honourable. I am afraid, whatever our beliefs, we have to face the fact that there are persons who yield to temptation, reject their chances of nobility or salvation, and appear to be 'damnable'. Their 'damnability' is not measurable in the terms of the macrocosm (where it may work good). But we who are all 'in the same boat' must not usurp the Judge. The domination of the Ring was much too strong for the mean soul of Smeagol. But he would have never had to endure it if he had not become a mean son of thief before it crossed his path. Need it ever have crossed his path? Need anything dangerous ever cross any of our paths? A kind of answer cd. be found in trying to imagine Gollum overcoming temptation. The story would have been quite different! By temporizing, not fixing the still not wholly corrupt Smeagol-will towards good in the debate in the slag hole, he weakened himself for the final chance when dawning love of Frodo was too easily withered by the jealousy of Sam before Shelob's lair. After that he was lost.
There is no special reference to England in the 'Shire' except of course that as an Englishman brought up in an 'almost rural' village of Warwickshire on the edge of the prosperous bourgeoisie of Birmingham (about the time of the Diamond Jubilee!) I take my models like anyone else from such 'life' as I know. But there is no post-war reference. I am not a 'socialist' in any sense - being averse to 'planning' (as must be plain) most of all because the 'planners', when they acquire power, become so bad but I would not say that we had to suffer the malice of Sharkey and his Ruffians here. Though the spirit of 'Isengard', if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case. But our chief adversary is a member of a 'Tory' Government. But you could apply it anywhere in these days.
Yes: I think that 'victors' never can enjoy 'victory' not in the terms that they envisaged; and in so far as they fought for something to be enjoyed by themselves (whether acquisition or mere preservation) the less satisfactory will 'victory' seem. But the departure of the Ringbearers has quite another side, as far as the Three are concerned. There is, of course, a mythological structure behind this story. It was actually written first, and may now perhaps be in part published. It is, I should say, a 'monotheistic but "sub-creational" mythology'. There is no embodiment of the One, of God, who indeed remains remote, outside the World, and only directly accessible to the Valar or Rulers. These take the place of the 'gods', but are created spirits, or those of the primary creation who by their own will have entered into the world.49 But the One retains all ultimate authority, and (or so it seems as viewed in serial time) reserves the right to intrude the finger of God into the story: that is to produce realities which could not be deduced even from a complete knowledge of the previous past, but which being real become part of the effective past for all subsequent time (a possible definition of a 'miracle'). According to the fable Elves and Men were the first of these intrusions, made indeed while the 'story' was still only a story and not 'realized' ; they were not therefore in any sense conceived or made by the gods, the Valar, and were called the Eruhni or 'Children of God', and were for the Valar an incalculable element: that is they were rational creatures of free will in regard to God, of the same historical rank as the Valar, though of far smaller spiritual and intellectual power and status.
Of course, in fact exterior to my story. Elves and Men are just different aspects of the Humane, and represent the problem of Death as seen by a finite but willing and self-conscious person. In this mythological world the Elves and Men are in their incarnate forms kindred, but in the relation of their 'spirits' to the world in time represent different 'experiments', each of which has its own natural trend, and weakness. The Elves represent, as it were, the artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane nature raised to a higher level than is actually seen in Men. That is: they have a devoted love of the physical world, and a desire to observe and understand it for its own sake and as 'other' sc. as a reality derived from God in the same degree as themselves not as a material for use or as a power-platform. They also possess a 'subcreational' or artistic faculty of great excellence. They are therefore 'immortal'. Not 'eternally', but to endure with and within the created world, while its story lasts. When 'killed', by the injury or destruction of their incarnate form, they do not escape from time, but remain in the world, either discarnate, or being re-born. This becomes a great burden as the ages lengthen, especially in a world in which there is malice and destruction (I have left out the mythological form which Malice or the Fall of the Angels takes in this fable). Mere change as such is not represented as 'evil': it is the unfolding of the story and to refuse this is of course against the design of God. But the Elvish weakness is in these terms naturally to regret the past, and to become unwilling to face change: as if a man were to hate a very long book still going on, and wished to settle down in a favourite chapter. Hence they fell in a measure to Sauron's deceits: they desired some 'power' over things as they are (which is quite distinct from an), to make their particular will to preservation effective: to arrest change, and keep things always fresh and fair. The 'Three Rings' were 'unsullied', because this object was in a limited way good, it included the healing of the real damages of malice, as well as the mere arrest of change; and the Elves did not desire to dominate other wills, nor to usurp all the world to their particular pleasure. But with the downfall of 'Power' their little efforts at preserving the past fell to bits. There was nothing more in Middle-earth for them, but weariness. So Elrond and Galadriel depart. Gandalf is a special case. He was not the maker or original holder of the Ring but it was surrendered to him by Crdan, to assist him in his task. Gandalf was returning, his labour and errand finished, to his home, the land of the Valar.
The passage over Sea is not Death. The 'mythology' is Elf-centred. According to it there was at first an actual Earthly Paradise, home and realm of the Valar, as a physical part of the earth.
There is no 'embodiment' of the Creator anywhere in this story or mythology. Gandalf is a 'created' person; though possibly a spirit that existed before in the physical world. His function as a 'wizard' is an angelos or messenger from the Valar or Rulers: to assist the rational creatures of Middle-earth to resist Sauron, a power too great for them unaided. But since in the view of this tale & mythology Power when it dominates or seeks to dominate other wills and minds (except by the assent of their reason) is evil, these 'wizards' were incarnated in the life-forms of Middle-earth, and so suffered the pains both of mind and body. They were also, for the same reason, thus involved in the peril of the incarnate: the possibility of 'fall', of sin, if you will. The chief form this would take with them would be impatience, leading to the desire to force others to their own good ends, and so inevitably at last to mere desire to make their own wills effective by any means. To this evil Saruman succumbed. Gandalf did not. But the situation became so much the worse by the fall of Saruman, that the 'good' were obliged to greater effort and sacrifice. Thus Gandalf faced and suffered death; and came back or was sent back, as he says, with enhanced power. But though one may be in this reminded of the Gospels, it is not really the same thing at all. The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees. That is why I regard the tale of Arwen and Aragorn as the most important of the Appendices; it is pan of the essential story, and is only placed so, because it could not be worked into the main narrative without destroying its structure: which is planned to be 'hobbito-centric', that is, primarily a study of the ennoblement (or sanctification) of the humble.
[None of the drafts from which this text has been assembled was completed.]
182 From a letter to Anne Barrett, Houghton Mifflin Co.
[Not dated; 1956]
I shall certainly now, if I am allowed, publish the parts of the great history that was written first-and rejected. But the (to me v. surprising) success of The Lord of the Rings will probably cause that rejection to be reconsidered. Though I do not think it would have the appeal of the L. R. no hobbits ! Full of mythology, and elvishness, and all that 'heigh stile' (as Chaucer might say), which has been so little to the taste of many reviewers. But I am not allowed to get at it. I am not only submerged (sans secretary) under business of the L.R., but also under professional business one of the ways of making us professors 'go quietly' with practically no pension, is to make our last two or three years of office intolerably laborious ; while the appearance of the L.R. has landed me in the pincers. Most of my philological colleagues50 are shocked (cert. behind my back, sometimes to my face) at the fall of a philological into 'Trivial literature'; and anyway the cry is: 'now we know how you have been wasting your time for 20 years'. So the screw is on for many things of a more professional kind long overdue. Alas! I like them both, but have only one man's time. Also I am getting rather ripe, if not actually decrepit! With the retirement this summer of Sir John Beasly, and Lord Cherwell, I am left the senior professor of this ancient institution, having sat in a chair here since 1925 or 31 years, though no one seems to observe the fact. Except for one or two who cry: 'How long, O Lord, how long?', yearning for the padded seat (actually stuffed with thistle, as one of them will discover).
183 Notes on W. H. Auden's review of The Return of the King
[A comment, apparently written for Tolkien's own satisfaction and not sent or shown to anyone else, on 'At the End of the Quest, Victory', a review of The Return of the King by W. H. Auden in the New York Times Book Review, 22 January 1956. The text given here is a rewriting at some later date of an earlier version, now lost, which was in all probability written in 1956. In the review, Auden wrote: 'Life, as I experience it in my own person, is primarily a continuous succession of choices between alternatives. .... For objectifying this experience, the natural image is that of a journey with a purpose, beset by dangerous hazards and obstacles. .... But when I observe my fellow-men, such an image seems false. I can see, for example, that only the rich and those on vacation can take journeys; most men, most of the time, must work in one place. I cannot observe them making choices, only the actions they take and, if I know someone well, I can usually predict how he will act in a given situation. . . . . If, then, I try to describe what I see as if I were an impersonal camera, I shall produce, not a Quest, but a "naturalistic" document. .... Both extremes, of course, falsify life. There are medieval Quests which justify the criticism made by Erich Auerbach in his book Mimesis: "The world of knightly proving is a world of adventure. .... [The knight's] exploits . . . . are feats accomplished at random which do not fit into any politically purposive pattern." . . . . Mr Tolkien has succeeded more completely than any previous writer in this genre in using the traditional properties of the Quest.']
I am very grateful for this review. Most encouraging, as coming from a man who is both a poet and a critic of distinction. Yet not (I think) one who has much practised the telling of tales. In any case I am a little surprised by it, for in spite of its praise it seems to me a critic's way of talking rather than an author's. It is not, to my feeling, the right way of considering either Quests in general or my story in particular. I believe that it is precisely because I did not try, and have never thought of trying to 'objectify' my personal experience of life that the account of the Quest of the Ring is successful in giving pleasure to Auden (and others). Probably it is also the reason, in many cases, why it has failed to please some readers and critics. The story is not about JRRT at all, and is at no point an attempt to allegorize his experience of life for that is what the objectifying of his subjective experience in a tale must mean, if anything.
I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of midden-erd > middel-erd, an ancient name for the oikoumen, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven or Hell). The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.
Men do go, and have in history gone on journeys and quests, without any intention of acting out allegories of life. It is not true of the past or the present to say that 'only the rich or those on vacation can take journeys'. Most men make some journeys. Whether long or short, with an errand or simply to go 'there and back again', is not of primary importance. As I tried to express it in Bilbo's Walking Song, even an afternoon-to-evening walk may have important effects. When Sam had got no further than the Woody End he had already had an 'eye-opener'. For if there is anything in a journey of any length, for me it is this: a deliverance from the plantlike state of helpless passive sufferer, an exercise however small of will, and mobility and of curiosity, without which a rational mind becomes stultified. (Though of course all this is an afterthought, and misses the major point. To a story-teller a journey is a marvellous device. It provides a strong thread on which a multitude of things that he has in mind may be strung to make a new thing, various, unpredictable, and yet coherent. My chief reason for using this form was simply technical.) In any case I do not look on those of my fellow men that I have observed in the way described. I am old enough now to have observed some of them long enough to have a notion of what, I suppose, Auden would call their basic or innate character, while noting changes (often considerable) in their modes of behaviour. I do not feel that a journey in space is a useful comparison for understanding these processes. I think that comparison with a seed is more illuminating: a seed with its innate vitality and heredity, its capacity to grow and develop. A great pan of the 'changes' in a man are no doubt unfoldings of the patterns hidden in the seed; though these are of course modified by the situation (geographical or climatic) into which it is thrown, and may be damaged by terrestrial accidents. But this comparison leaves out inevitably an important point. A man is not only a seed, developing in a defined pattern, well or ill according to its situation or its defects as an example of its species; a man is both a seed and in some degree also a gardener, for good or ill. I am impressed by the degree in which the development of 'character' can be a product of conscious intention, the will to modify innate tendencies in desired directions; in some cases the change can be great and permanent. I have known one or two men and women who could be described as 'self-made' in this respect with at least as much partial truth as 'self-made' can be applied to those whose affluence or position can be said to have been achieved largely by their own will and efforts with little or no help from inherited wealth or social position.
In any case, I personally find most people incalculable in any particular situation or emergency. Perhaps because I am not a good judge of character. But even Auden says only that he can 'usually predict' how they will act; and by the insertion of 'usually' an element of incompatibility is admitted that, however small, is damaging to his point.
Some persons are, or seem to be, more calculable than others. But that is due rather to their fortune than to their nature (as individuals). The calculable people reside in relatively fixed circumstances, and it is difficult to catch and observe them in situations that are (to them) strange. That is another good reason for sending 'hobbits' a vision of a simple and calculable people in simple and long-settled circumstances on a journey far from settled home into strange lands and dangers. Especially if they are provided with some strong motive for endurance and adaptation. Though without any high motive people do change (or rather reveal the latent) on journeys: that is a fact of ordinary observation without any need of symbolical explanation. On a journey of a length sufficient to provide the untoward in any degree from discomfort to fear the change in companions well-known in 'ordinary life' (and in oneself) is often startling.
I dislike the use of 'political' in such a context; it seems to me false. It seems clear to me that Frodo's duty was 'humane' not political. He naturally thought first of the Shire, since his roots were there, but the quest had as its object not the preserving of this or that polity, such as the half republic half aristocracy of the Shire, but the liberation from an evil tyranny of all the 'humane'51 including those, such as 'easterlings' and Haradrim, that were still servants of the tyranny.
Denethor was tainted with mere politics: hence his failure, and his mistrust of Faramir. It had become for him a prime motive to preserve the polity of Gondor, as it was, against another potentate, who had made himself stronger and was to be feared and opposed for that reason rather than because he was ruthless and wicked. Denethor despised lesser men, and one may be sure did not distinguish between orcs and the allies of Mordor. If he had survived as victor, even without use of the Ring, he would have taken a long stride towards becoming himself a tyrant, and the terms and treatment he accorded to the deluded peoples of east and south would have been cruel and vengeful. He had become a 'political' leader: sc. Gondor against the rest.
But that was not the policy or duty set out by the Council of Elrond. Only after hearing the debate and realizing the nature of the quest did Frodo accept the burden of his mission. Indeed the Elves destroyed their own polity in pursuit of a 'humane' duty. This did not happen merely as an unfortunate damage of War; it was known by them to be an inevitable result of victory, which could in no way be advantageous to Elves. Elrond cannot be said to have a political duty or purpose.
Auerbach's use of 'political' may at first sight seem more justified; but it is not, I think, really admissible-not even if we acknowledge the weariness to which mere 'errantry' was reduced as the pastime reading of a class chiefly interested in feats of arms and love.52 About as amusing to us (or to me) as are stories about cricket, or yarns about a touring team, to those who (like me) find cricket (as it now is) a ridiculous bore. But the feats of arms in (say) Arthurian Romance, or romances attached to that great centre of imagination, do not need to 'fit into a politically purposive pattern'.53 So it was in the earlier Arthurian traditions. Or at least this thread of primitive but powerful imagination was an important element in them. As also in Beowulf. Auerbach should approve of Beowulf, for in it an author tried to fit a deed of 'errantry' into a complex political field: the English traditions of the international relations of Denmark, Gotland, and Sweden in ancient days. But that is not the strength of the story, rather its weakness. Beowulf's personal objects in his journey to Denmark are precisely those of a later Knight: his own renown, and above that the glory of his lord and king; but all the time we glimpse something deeper. Grendel is an enemy who has attacked the centre of the realm, and brought into the royal hall the outer darkness, so that only in daylight can the king sit upon the throne. This is something quite different and more horrible than a 'political' invasion of equals men of another similar realm, such as Ingeld's later assault upon Heorot.
The overthrow of Grendel makes a good wonder-tale, because he is too strong and dangerous for any ordinary man to defeat, but it is a victory in which all men can rejoice because he was a monster, hostile to all men and to all humane fellowship and joy. Compared with him even the long politically hostile Danes and Gears were Friends, on the same side. It is the monstrosity and fairy-tale quality of Grendel that really makes the tale important, surviving still when the politics have become dim and the healing of Danish-Geatish relations in an 'entente cordiale' between two ruling houses a minor matter of obscure history. In that political world Grendel looks silly, though he certainly is not silly, however naif may be the poet's imagination and description of him.
Of course in 'real life' causes are not clear cut - if only because human tyrants are seldom utterly corrupted into pure manifestations of evil will. As far as I can judge some seem to have been so corrupt, but even they must rule subjects only part of whom are equally corrupt, while many still need to have 'good motives', real or feigned, presented to them. As we see today. Still there are clear cases: e.g. acts of sheer cruel aggression, in which therefore right is from the beginning wholly on one side, whatever evil the resentful suffering of evil may eventually generate in members of the right side. There are also conflicts about important things or ideas. In such cases I am more impressed by the extreme importance of being on the right side, than I am disturbed by the revelation of the jungle of confused motives, private purposes, and individual actions (noble or base) in which the right and the wrong in actual human conflicts are commonly involved. If the conflict really is about things properly called right and wrong, or good and evil, then the rightness or goodness of one side is not proved or established by the claims of either side; it must depend on values and beliefs above and independent of the particular conflict. A judge must assign right and wrong according to principles which he holds valid in all cases. That being so, the right will remain an inalienable possession of the right side and Justify its cause throughout. (I speak of causes, not of individuals. Of course to a judge whose moral ideas have a religious or philosophical basis, or indeed to anyone not blinded by partisan fanaticism, the rightness of the cause will not justify the actions of its supporters, as individuals, that are morally wicked. But though 'propaganda' may seize on them as proofs that their cause was not in fact 'right', that is not valid. The aggressors are themselves primarily to blame for the evil deeds that proceed from their original violation of justice and the passions that their own wickedness must naturally (by their standards) have been expected to arouse. They at any rate have no right to demand that their victims when assaulted should not demand an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth.) Similarly, good actions by those on the wrong side will not justify their cause. There may be deeds on the wrong side of heroic courage, or some of a higher moral level: deeds of mercy and forbearance. A judge may accord them honour and rejoice to see how some men can rise above the hate and anger of a conflict; even as he may deplore the evil deeds on the right side and be grieved to see how hatred once provoked can drag them down. But this will not alter his judgement as to which side was in the right, nor his assignment of the primary blame for all the evil that followed to the other side.