Leaf by Niggle

Tree by Niggle

Has anyone ever read Tree by Niggle? Do you think that the world Niggle created in his painting and later went to was really the afterlife? I think that whole journey that he knew was coming but never really was prepared for was really his death. And when he was held in that place with the voices he was in a kind of a limbo, kind of like the Greek underworld where they decide whether to put you into the Alesian Fields or Tartarus.

The story is “Leaf by Niggle’'.

Considering Tolkien’s own religious beliefs, the afterlife realms are to be considered versions of purgatory and heaven (for the mountains).

This tale seems rather allegorical for a story by someone who claimed to dislike allegory.

However, in Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, letter 98, we find:

I woke up one morning (more than 2 years ago) with that odd thing virtually complete in my head. It took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out. I am not aware of ever ‘thinking’ of the story or composing it in the ordinary sense.

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Apparently part of his mind had no problems with allegories.

But indeed, the allegory in this tale is so transparent that it is more a parable than an allegory.

It obviously expresses Tolkien’s fears that his vision, as expressed in his legendarium, and in The Lord of the Rings, will indeed never be completed, never be appreciated, and it is party his fault as he niggles at things too much, is not good a making organized use of his time.

In fact, however, Niggle in the story has it far worse than did Tolkien.

Tolkien’s The Hobbit had achieved great critical and popular success (which meant a sequel ought to be publishable) and his Farmer Giles of Ham was reasonably successful, while Niggle has aparently achieved no success at all with his paintings.

But then the tale, though derived from his own experience, need not exactly parallel to his own experience.

I just saw it in a store today.

It seems it is indeed back in print again.

I just read Leaf By Niggle the other day.
It was a part of a book called "Tales from the Perilous Realm" which also contains Smith of Wootton Major, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Farmer Giles of Ham.

LBN was by far the most confusing out of the four. Before I read this thread I had no idea what Tolkien was going on about when he wrote it.

I loved FGOH though.

*wonders why this isn't in the other 'Leaf By Niggle' thread...*

I just read Leaf by Niggle yesterday, and I really loved it! After the first page I realized this was al about Tolkien himself; he was very anxious to get all his mythological works finished, but because he had too may other duties he could never get anything done. Read his Letters; how older JRRT gets, the more desperate he is that he will get it finished. I really hope he is satisfied by what Chris Tolkien did.

Niniel, did you buy the book, "Tales From the Perilous Realm"?

Yes- was it that obvious?

Well, I just put two and two together....

I bought it a month ago, and since you started threads about LBN and FGOH I just took a guess.

What did you think of Smith of Wootton Major and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil?

Smith of Wootton Major was beautiful, I think I liked it even better than Farmer Giles. Tom Bombadil was strange; he (or trolls for that matter) never interseted me very much in LOTR; and besides many of the poems were not about Bombadil at all. But there were some poems in it that I did like, e.g. The Hoard and The Sea-Bell, though I never have been a great fan of poetry.

Yes, I loved SOWM and FGOH. I rated them up with The Hobbit
TAOTB was rather confusing for me, as I am not a great fan of poetry. And LBN was very strange until I was told that it was based on Tolkien's life, and it all made sense suddenly.

Hey, my mother brought me Tales From the Perilous Realm from England only a week or two ago! I read the contents: and wow. Farmer Giles is very humorous and entertaining (see my signature ) and has some hints towards the larger worlds Tolkien was creating; but I really found the medieval English setting, with the Latin names, very refreshing and unexpected when you look at everything else Tolkien has written. (But I don't like how he kicks Dog around)
Leaf by Niggle seems to be mostly symbolic, and especially the end gave me a very odd feeling, in a good way.. "They laughed." Wonderful stuff.
And AoTB was marvelous! I didn't realize Tollers had written so much poetry.. And the Middle-earth red thread was eminent in most of the poems, with ELf-maidens and the like. And he sails up to the Hedge at one point, I think!
But it's a wonderful collection; I recommend it to anybody who doesn't have it, and who hasn't (or has) read the stories inside.

I realised I had to read this story when I found out that Tolkien received it as a more or less complete download which he then copied out onto paper. Clearly it was inspired.

I finally got round to reading Leaf by Niggle today (I read it out loud to my daughter who wasn't feeling well). I immediately thought the large canvas was, as others have guessed, the middle earth story, continued in spite of constant interruptions - the wants and needs of others (including Parish = Academia). I see the picture as the Middle Earth stories in published order, not in the order Tolkien created ME. Hence, the leaf = The Hobbit; the tree = Lord of the Rings, then the background - forests, distant mountains - The Cosmogony and history that always seemed to need more work and never quite got finished.

The workhouse fits in with Tolkien's Catholicism as purgatory - the place where faults are purged. His guilt at never getting all those odd jobs finished or offering quite the amount of support he thought he owed to others (look at the number of apologies in his letters).

Finally, Niggle meets up with Parish in a more pleasant purgatorial resting place (Niggle's canvas realised, with Parish's cottage in it). There they apply what they learned in the workhouse and learn to appreciate one another properly (I suspect Tolkien was a little hurt by the dismissive attitude of some of his peers to his commercial success, the same way Parish never looked at the canvas).

After Niggle journeyed on to meet the guide who took him on to the farthest moutains (the blessed realm?), First and Second Voice discuss the merits of Niggle's canvas and how it turned out to be of benefit to so many others sent there. This is, to me, a picture of how Tolkien's writings, especially on Middle Earth, have helped and inspired others to gain a spiritual and ecological (I use that word for economy - I wish I could think of a better) perspective in their own lives.

And how lovely that Niggle and Parish should laugh when they are told.

If “Leaf by Niggle” is to be taken as partly allegorical, then the original leaf would more likely be something like Tolkien’s early Eärendel poem.

The Hobbit fits better as one of the things of which it is said of Niggle that:

... he took them and tacked them on to the edges of his great picture.

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Remember, at the time Tolkien wrote “Leaf by Niggle” he was only starting The Lord of the Rings and still felt it and The Hobbit to be peripheral addendums to his main legendarium.

Tolkien received Leaf by Niggle as a complete story. I believe it was a prophetic picture of Tolkien's own life. The reason I say the leaf is 'the Hobbit' is because it is 'home' (or the home square on a game board). Bilbo's surroundings were, by Tolkien's admission, village Warwickshire before it got spoiled.

Journeying on, we take in the whole tree - Middle Earth as at the Third Age. Bilbo (then Frodo) journeyed out from 'the leaf' and their knowledge spread out to the rest of the tree. From the tree, gaps between the branches showed the far trees of the wider forest and, glimpsed at a distance, the mountains. This speaks to me of Beleriand, and access to Valinor - which looked even more likely when he was met by the 'guide'.

This is just the impression I received as I was reading the book. I'm sure if I 'analysed' everything, I could arrive at a cleverer conclusion, but first impressions are lasting impressions, as the song goes...

Yet “Leaf by Niggle”, though obviously echoing concerns that Tolkien had about his own artistic endeavors and his inability to complete them, is not especially an exact copy of Tolkien’s life.

If it were, Niggle would have had commerical success with a print made from one of the side-pictures attached to the canvas, would have painted another such side picture intended originally to be of the same type, but which grew almost of its own accord into a picture almost as large as the incompleted originally to which it was connected, and the prints of that new picture would have been even more successful, phenominally successful, making Niggle a wealthy man, free to concentrate almost entirely on his original main picture.

Niggle would then have discovered that he still could not complete it to his satisfaction.

But when Niggle did go on his journey, he would have left behind a stupendously successful body of work and an enormous reputation.

In any case, though the “mountains” in the pictures are certainly Valinor, Tolkien wrote about Valinor and Beleriand and such long before he ever conceived such a thing as a hobbit.

If you are searching for the influence of Tolkien’s Warwickshire upbringing in his work, then recall that the Lonely Isle in his earliest writings is the island of Great Britain and that the Elvish heart of that island is Mindon Gwar, Warwick.

Tolkien later painted over this English identification, but by the time he wrote The Hobbit, the structure of Tolkien ’s legendarium was strongly established and much of it never changed.

The Hobbit was not square one, but a late tale which Tolkien only somewhat frivolously related to his main legendarium which proved useful in providing background. At the time that “Tree and Leaf” came to Tolkien, he had little inkling of what would become of the sequel to The Hobbit, and was seemingly resigned to his Elvish legendarium remaining unpublished, mostly unknown, except for such parts as might be used as background to more commercial work.

From letter 19 (December 1937):

I did not think any of the stuff I dropped on you filled the bill. But I did want to know whether any of the stuff had any exterior non-personal value. I think it is plain that quite apart from it, a sequel or successor to The Hobbit is called for. I promise to give this thought and attention. But I am sure you will sympathize when I say that the construction of elaborate and consistent mythology (and two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the Silmarils are in my heart. So that goodness knows what will happen. Mr Baggins began as a comic tale among conventional and inconsistent Grimm’s fairy-tale dwarves, and got drawn into the edge of it – so that even Sauron the terrible peeped over the edge. And what more can hobbits do? They can be comic, but their comedy is suburban unless it is set against things more elemental. But the real fun about orcs and dragons (to my mind) was before their time. Perhaps a new (if similar) line? Do you think Tom Bombadil, the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside, could be made into the hero of a story? Or is he, as I suspect, fully enshrined in the enclosed verses? Still I could enlarge the portrait.

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Letter 257 gives a far more detailed statement by Tolkien of the genesis of his legendarium, in part:

The germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala. It remains a major matter in the legends of the First Age (which I hope to publish as The Silmarillion), though as ‘The Children of ’ it is entirely changed except in the tragic ending. The second point was the writing, ‘out of my head’, of the ‘Fall of Gondolin’, the story of Idril and Earendel (III 314), during sickleave from the army in 1917; and by the original version of the ‘Tale of Lúthien Tinúviel and Beren’ later in the same year. That was founded on a small wood with a great undergrowth of ‘hemlock’ (no doubt many other related plants were also there) near Roos in Holderness, where I was for a while on the Humber Garrison.
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    I returned to Oxford in Jan 1926, and by the time The Hobbit appeared (1937) this ‘matter of the Elder Days’ was in coherent form. The Hobbit was not intended to have anything to do with it. I had the habit while my children were still young of inventing and telling orally, sometimes of writing down, ‘children’s stories’ for their private amusement – according to the notions I then had, and many still have, of what these should be like in style and attitude. None of these have been published. The Hobbit was intended to be one of them. It had no necessary connexion with the ‘mythology’, but naturally became attracted towards this dominant construction in my mind, causing the tale to become larger and more heroic as it proceeded. Even so it could really stand quite apart, except for the references (unnecessary, though they give an impression of historical depth) to the Fall of Gondolin, Puffin 57 (hardback 63); the branches of the Elfkin, P. 161 (hardback 173 or 178), and the quarrel of King Thingol, Lúthien's father, with the Dwarves, P. 162.

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Whatever Tolkien was thinking about in respect to Niggle’s original “leaf caught in the wind”, it far predates anything connected with The Hobbit.

Of course, The Hobbit itself sprang unexpectedly from an original statement that came to Tolkien:

In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.

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But The Hobbit became a finished work, unlike Niggle’s great picture.

The original “leaf caught in the wind” may have been something as simple, perhaps a particular etymology in Tolkien’s invented languages that seemed to call for full story to explain it.

(But when and why did these languages themselves emerge as Elvish?)

Yes, true, jallan, other works well pre-date The Hobbit. Middle Earth was first mooted in discussions between the TCBS in Sarehole, and if we're going to look for the true 'first leaf' in time, we can even go back to the "green great dragon".

However, my impression was not based on the first seeds in time but in the first fruits of publication. Your above post is well considered and valid, and I wholeheartedly agree with it. What I'm posting is the impression I gained while reading the story, and it was of the published history, not the chronology of the birth of Tolkien's stories - a personal interpretation, but I readily admit that it is not the only valid one.

The published success began with The Hobbit, then LotR. Other publications were of minor public interest, and would never have made much money (I would class these works as the small canvases, tacked on to the edge, being not of Middle Earth).

Tolkien said the Hobbit was never meant to fit, but he also admitted that it did, and became, in fact, a major cog in the story (making him ever regret the 'childish' language used in its writing). I call it the first leaf not because it was written first, but because it was published first - and thus became the appetiser for LotR - the clamoured-for sequel. These two books are the ones that became the world that spoke into the hearts of millions of people and (in the words of Voice one and Voice two) made their purgatorial experience so purging of life's negative influences. Tolkien's other writings had less effect, except for those who took the further walk into the Silmarillion (the distant mountains in LbN).

It is true that LotR was Tolkien's bread and butter after his retirement (though Merton took over after Edith died), but he never really had the leisure that a successful author might have hoped for. Before he retired, University work was ever snapping at his heels and poor health (his own or Ediths) was ever a problem.

After retirement Tolkien still found life intruding on art - writing ever shorter letters to unknown correspondents so he could get on with the Silmarillion (the distant lands), with health and home problems ever present and, even then, never finishing it to his satisfaction.

In Leaf by Niggle, the success of the canvas was in its true realisation after Niggle's 'journey'. Tolkien's work, far from being ignored, has had pre-purgatorial success in this world. I think it was tacked to Parish's roof (in particular) because he represents those people who ignore faerie and dismiss it as irrelevant. In LbN, this prevented the work from being appreciated by anyone else, but in real life, of course, Tolkien's works were published, but the Parishes of this world still exist, and still ignore faerie to their spiritual poverty.

In the end, only the leaf remained, and even that passed, as all things must. We cannot envisage a time when Tolkien's work is not available, but we cannot see all things. The tales of destruction in ME's history show Tolkien's thinking on those things that appear to be permanent. The leaf may yet pass into forgotten history, along with Niggle.

I am viewing this story from a different viewpoint from you, jallan; and I hope I've finally managed to convey what I'm getting at (a gift that often evades me).

I understand what you are getting at, I think Eledhwen. I think when I first read “Leaf by Niggle” I also thought of The Hobbit in reference to the original leaf, in those days before it became clear how much writing preceded The Hobbit and how central that writing was to Tolkien and the actual psychological state Tolkien was in when he wrote “Leaf by Niggle”.

Indeed, The Lord of the Rings, which he was just beginning, was to him almost another of those interruptions that kept him from working on what he then saw as the central track of his legendarium.

Of course authors often don’t know where they are going and are too undisinterested to be able to look at their work objectively, if there is such a thing as objectivity in such matters.

Another minor motif in “Leaf by Niggle”, not stressed, is that even what Niggle has accomplished is lost in the real world, even the single spray of leaves preserved by Atkins.

How little Old English literature has survived, or how little even of Greek and Roman literature (and how few at all care!)

I thought about Leaf by Niggle when I saw all those ancient manuscripts in Iraq, lying in smouldering ashes, and all the people who care were deeply shocked and said what a tragic loss it all was. There were mountains of the stuff - it must have been like the records in Minas Tirith - it took Gandalf nine years to find the piece of paper he was looking for, and it is probable that only two people other than Isildur ever read it.

It also touches on reading 1 and 2 Kings in the Bible, where at the end of every king's life it says something like "...and all the other great deeds of his life, are they not written in the annals of the kings?" I think Tolkien enjoyed putting Niggle's imagination - the picture as he imagined it - in a permanent home away from the destructive ignorance of the fallen world.