LotR re-read: FotR I.7, "In the House of Tom Bombadil"

[kate_nepveu]

Look, I haven't abandoned this!

What Happens: The hobbits spend one night with Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, being fed and sharing stories. At the end of the chapter, they resolve to set out the next day, armed with a rhyme to call Tom in need.

Comments

Relatively short domestic interlude, with hints of danger to come.

* * *

I did spot the rhythms of Tom's speech this time, so that's an improvement.

I will have to look whether Goldberry speaks in a manner similar to Galadriel, who I think she prefigures.

Is anyone able to picture Tom and Goldberry as a married couple in any psychologically realistic kind of way? Because I tried and I can't.

(I did notice, this time, that for all that Goldberry's barely present, she was the one to successfully reassure the hobbits that they were safe over the night.)

* * *

Have I remarked on Frodo's dreams yet? This time, he gets a direct hotline into plot elsewhere, seeing Gandalf escape Orthanc. Even though he doesn't recognize Gandalf, I still don't like it.

* * *

This is really a remarkable paragraph:

Suddenly Tom's talk left the woods and went leaping up the young stream, over bubbling waterfalls, over pebbles and worn rocks, and among small flowers in close grass and wet crannies, wandering at last up on to the Downs. They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all. Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. A shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight.

That shift of voice starting with "Sheep were bleating" is very effective.

This reminds me that if I didn't know the underlying myth, I'd be trying to catalog what we've been told to date and what one could get out of it. I remember skipping a lot of the long poetry when I was a kid, and I don't know if I ever understood about Earendil until I read The Silmarillion, or whether I could have if I tried.

* * *

Tom's description of himself:

"Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless — before the Dark Lord came from Outside."

If he fits into the cosmology established by The Silmarillion, I think this would make him a minor Maia.

* * *

I like the psychological realism in Frodo's reaction to Tom's handling of the Ring.

* * *

Action next chapter, which Le Guin has already analyzed, saving me some effort, so I hope it won't take me so long to get around to it.

[ more LotR re-read posts ]

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I think you're being unfair to Tolkien here.

The letter from which I quoted was not a public pronouncement. It was a private letter to a friend who'd asked some specific questions about the invented world. Some authors in that case do say, "The work must speak for itself," but there are other reasonaable attitudes. In Tolkien's case, the invented world was much more extensive than the book, so if he feels like explaining further, why shouldn't he? Indeed, one of his impulses for writing The Lord of the Rings in the first place was to answer the questions he'd received from readers of The Hobbit. LOTR is, among other things, a huge gloss of the Hobbit backstory. An author who believed the works must stand on their own would never have written it, certainly not that way.

As far as criticism goes, it would require superhuman restraint of an author not to speak up when critics get the totally wrong end of the stick, e.g. the ones who thought the Ring was an allegory for the Bomb. What price "the work must speak for itself" then?

I think you slightly misread Tolkien's final assertion. He had decided, as an author, not to try to come up with an explanation of Bombadil. Bombadil is Bombadil. He doesn't "fit" some larger scheme.

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm unfair, perhaps not. On the one hand, I don't begrudge the man the right to answer questions to a fan. On the other hand, I have an awfully hard time taking seriously such extra-textual comments when, as you've pointed out yourself, the man's conceptions of his own work and background changed considerably-- Gandalf and Saruman became Istari which were Maia exactly when, after all?

So while I may not begrudge the right to speak, as such, I can certainly begrudge the requirement to take such comments seriously... and in fact, I do. I have grown to respect much more the stance of an Umberto Eco or a Northrop Frye, in that regard... and most especially as regards interpretation. There, I particularly reject authorial commentary-- if a work reminds me of something or causes me to draw comparisons to a topic, then nothing an author says after the fact is going to change that.

Which, looping us back around to Bombadil again, leaves me with this position: If Tolkien isn't going to come up with an explanation for Bombadil, and is going to deny having done so, that is within his authority. It is not within his authority-- nor certainly yours-- to tell me not to. By refusing to provide an explanation, he cedes the authority to tell me I am wrong in mine.