Scientific formulas are all well and good. I don't understand them but I appreciate the time to type them all out. I don't think it makes or breaks the fantasy to deviate from such comparatively small details. And I prefer the four-limbed
dragon from both an aesthetic and physiological standpoint. If you prefer the other way, I won't contest it. It comes down to a matter of preference.
But the issue
isn’t a “matter of preference,” as
Tolkien makes clear in the references I provided on “What
IS and
IS NOT the
Middle-earth he created.”
If I had a Dragon from Middle-earth to X-Ray, it would be, as Tolkien states in Letter #153 to Peter Hastings in September of 1954, a matter of just x-raying the thing to begin studying it. Or, as a direct quote on a subject of Biology:
“This is a biological dictum in my imaginary world. It is only (as yet) an incompletely imagined world, a rudimentary ‘secondary’; but if it pleased the Creator to give it (in a corrected form) Reality on any plane, then you would just have to enter it and begin studying its different biology, that is all.” (p. 189)
As Tolkien makes clear,
all through the letters of #200 to roughly #215, what
is and
is not Middle-earth isn’t “open to preference.”
Different arguments can be make for different points, whether stylistic or other “preferences” in terms of what meets the ”dictums” of Middle-earth as Tolkien’s “Imaginary World,” which are constrained by the:
”… analytic speculation of the underlying postulates [of Eä, and thus Arda and Middle-earth within Eä] [that] satisfy the requirements of a coherent theological and metaphysical system.” — CJR and JRR Tolkien,
The History of Middle-earth, Vol. X: Morgoth’s Ring. Harper Collins, 1993; p. x.
There are a
huge number of things open to question. Nearly every one of them stylistic, with a few hinging upon the variations of Catholic Or Christian Theology and Metaphysics (and by some instances in which options can be argued concerning things such as the apparent, and heretical by most interpretation, the Manichaean Dualist examples of Light/Dark, Good/
Evil whereby Tolkien presents these as things you could pick-up and put in your pocket, or bake a cake with. That and other examples of Theological and Metaphysical options can be argued based upon differences of opinion in the theological foundations).
But, Tolkien presents us with a world that conforms to
specific things,
without which it cannot be Tolkien’s Middle-earth, and, as Tolkien continues, the introduction of other things causes any presentation to
Cease to BE Tolkien’s Middle-earth:
In the late-1950s, as someone first attempted to adapt
The Lord of the Rings to film, Tolkien was send a synopsis (Story-Line) for the proposed film (to be an animation) to Tolkien for criticisms and comments (Tolkien eventually vetoed the endeavor).
Tolkien begins by noting:
“He has cut the parts of the story upon which its characteristic and peculiar tone principally depends, showing a preference for fights; and he has made no serious attempt to represent the heart of the tale adequately: the journey of the Ringbearers. The last and most important part of this has, and it is not too strong a word, simply been murdered.” — Letter #210 to Forest Ackerman, June of 1958.
Letters. p. 270
“The Lord of the Rings may be a ‘fairy-story’, but it takes place in the Northern hemisphere of this earth[1]: miles are miles, days are days, and weather is weather.” — Ibid. p. 271/72
”I am sorry, but I think the manner of the introduction of
Goldberry is silly, and on a par with ‘old scamp’. It also has no warrant in my tale. We are not in ‘fairy-land’, but in real river-lands in autumn. Goldberry represents the actual seasonal changes in such lands. Personally I think she had far better disappear than make a meaningless appearance.” — Ibid. p. 272 [Note: Tolkien would rather see an obliteration of his work that to see it reduced to meaninglessness, or worse: mockery, misrepresentation, or violation of the work itself — see “murdered” above]
”If details are to be added to an already crowded picture, they should at least fit the world described.” — Ibid [
The World Described. I.e. There is an “Objective World” that
is Middle-earth as Tolkien describes it. We can
never “perfectly describe“ that world (which is no different than this world, as Catholic Theology dating back to Origen, St. Augustine, Boethius, and others make clear about our Universe as the Catholics, like Tolkien, perceive it), there
are versions or accounts of that world that can become asymptotically closer to it, and there are versions that veer away from it on a continuum, like that of a white field that transitions to black, where eventually you get to a point where “It is no longer anything to do with the original “White Field” of the work itself.”]
”I can see no pictorial or story-making gain in needlessly contracting the geography.” — Ibid [Again: Contradicting the Actual World he imagined — or, if we apply the term he rejects: The world he
created.]
”Why has my account been entirely rewritten here, with disregard for the rest of the tale? … I have spent some time on this passage, as an example of what I find too frequent to give me ‘pleasure or satisfaction’: deliberate alteration of the story, in fact and significance, without any practical or artistic object (that I can see); and of the flattening effect that assimilation of one incident to another must have.” — Ibid. p. 273 [Tolkien makes clear here that any “changes”/deliberate alterations of the story much meet a criteria that preserves the
Identity of the original. Thus some things preserve or contain that Identity, while others depart from it, with that departure eventually reaching the point of no longer
being that of the original]
“At the bottom of the page, the
Eagles are again introduced.
I feel this to be a wholly unacceptable tampering with the tale. ‘Nine Walkers’ and they immediately go up in the air! The intrusion achieves nothing but incredibility, and the staling of the device of the Eagles when at last they are really needed. It is well within the powers of pictures to suggest, relatively briefly, a long and arduous journey, in secrecy, on foot, with the three ominous
mountains getting nearer. … It would be far better to cut the Snow-storm and the
Wolves than to make a farce of the arduous journey.” [emphasis Tolkien’s in the original] — Ibid. [again… There are changes that are “acceptable” and those that are not. Omission is preferable to commission of an unacceptable alteration, as the original quote above presents.]
”Z may think that he knows more about
Balrogs than I do, but he cannot expect me to agree with him.” — Ibid. p. 274 [Again: There is
What is and
What is not regarding the contents of Middle-earth]
”I think this deplorable in itself, and in
places impertinent.
Will Z please pay my text some respect, at least in descriptions that are obviously central to the general tone and style of the book!
I will in no circumstances accept this treatment of
Lórien, even if Z personally prefers ‘tiny’ fairies and the gimcrack of conventional modern fairy-tales. … Practically everything having moral import has vanished from the synopsis.” [Emphasis mine] — Ibid [Tolkien from this point forward is more emphatic about
What is and
What is not Middle-earth]
”Both modes are alien to my story.” — Ibid
“I do earnestly hope that in the assignment of actual speeches to the characters they will be represented as I have presented them: in style and sentiment. I should resent perversion of the characters (and do resent it, so far as it appears in this sketch) even more than the spoiling of the plot and scenery.” — Ibid [Again, Tolkien makes clear these changes are not just “changes,” they are
perversions. Go explore what a Catholic raised on 19th Century Catholic Theology understands that word to mean, and you’ll understand the gravity of Tolkien using it]
”But he and they have really only to follow what is said, and not alter it to suit their fancy (out of place).” — Ibid. p. 275
”Actually I myself should be inclined to cut it right out, if it cannot be made more coherent and a more significant part of the story. . . . .” — Ibid. p.276
”I do not see how any author could be expected to be ‘pleased’ by such silly alterations. … Z is altogether too fond of the words hypnosis and hypnotic. Neither genuine hypnosis, nor scientifictitious variants, occur in my tale. … Z has cut out the end of the book, including
Saruman’s proper death. In that case I can see no good reason for making him die. Saruman would never have committed suicide: to cling to life to its basest dregs is the way of the sort of person he had become. … (I cannot see why, where so many threads are left loose)” — Ibid. p. 276
”Part III. . . . is totally unacceptable to me, as a whole and in detail. If it is meant as notes only for a section of something like the pictorial length of I and II, then in the filling out it must be brought into relation with the book, and its gross alterations of that corrected. If it is meant to represent represent only a kind of short finale, then all I can say is: The Lord of the Rings cannot be garbled like that.” — Ibid. pp. 276, 277.
Here he leaves behind the attempt to adapt LotR to an animated adaptation to be contained in a single film[2], and he makes a comment on the
Visual Style of Middle-earth to the Illustrator Pauline (née Baynes) Gasch:
“I have not much doubt, however, that you would avoid the Scylla of Blyton and the Charybdis of Rackham – though to go to wreck on the latter would be the less evil fate.” — JRR & CJR Tolkien.
The Letters of JRR Tolkien. Letter #235; Dec 6, 1961. p. 312.
Tolkien here illustrates that there are things that are closer to Middle-earth than not, and especially two things to be
especially avoided, particularly the
Scylla or Enid Blyton’s juvenile illustrations that Tolkien considered to have the “ugly taint of Disney.” He considers the
Charybdis of Arthur Rackham to be a preferable style on which to “wreck” than Enid Blyton. But he considered Rackham’s work to be too “messy” and to present a “Frenchified version of Faerie,” where
elves were too diminutive, and the Humans presented to be either “too barbarous,” or “too Bertie Wooster” (P.G. Woodhouse, who was generally reviled by every English/British person alive after WWII, and by more than a few prior to WWII. Tolkien especially saw Woodhouse as “butchering the English Language,” and his liking of Gilbert & Sullivan Comedic Operas was offensive to Tolkien).
But I have to question the idea that Middle-earth physics differs markedly from real-world physics, especially since Tolkien has stated that his stories are his own version of our earth's mythical past. And there are not many indications that it's all that evident, either. Tolkien was rather reserved and understated with his use of magic, at least with what came later in the fantasy genre.
All that said, the artist who drew many of the
dragons for the D&D
Monster Manual did these brilliant gifs, of a red and a gold dragon in flight.
Still, I can't help but wonder how they attach. What does the x-ray of such an animal look like?
Middle-earth isn’t Dungeons and Dragons.
I got into an actual physical fight with Michael Moorcock in the 1980s at a couple of
events in the USA and then in England (where the owner of a gaming company introduced us when I was in the process of buying a miniature gaming company in the USA, which eventually fell-through because of an idiot who got too greedy and full of himself) over this issue.
Michael was drunk. I was young and extremely belligerent. Michael knew Tolkien. I was hostile to any suggestion that Tolkien’s religious faith played the least part in his work (I had not yet read Letters or the first Volume of
The History of Middle-earth, which had come out in teh first year we met, and six more volumes would come-out before the second [violent] encounter — we technically met a few times between that, at which we did not become violent due to the conversation being solely about his own work, and how it related to the work of Greg Stafford, who created Glorantha, and the Law/Chaos distinction between the Good/Evil of Middle-earth, and that
Sword & Sorcery was principally about the Law/Chaos and not Good/Evil dichotomy).
Dungeons and Dragons is a
Sword and Sorcery Genre, more given to worlds like Hyboria, Lankmahr, Glorantha, or the Multiverse of Moorcock’s
Eternal Champion.
Middle-earth is a
High-Fantasy setting.
It is also
Mythology, and
NOT JUST “Fiction” as the first comments above regarding Tolkien’s refusal to allow Zimmerman to produce an animated
Lord of the Rings demonstrates.
Thus, it is no more open to interpretation than are the Myths of Olympian and Roman Gods; the Ancient Egyptian Myths; The Mythology of the Yamato People of Japan (Amaterasu, Susanōu, Izanagi, etc.); The Mythology of the Navaho Nation; and so on.
We find variations of these myths, as Joseph Campbell (one of my professors the first time I went through a University) points out in his canon of works (specifically in
The Masks of God, Vols 1 – 4: Primitive, Oriental, Occidental, and Creative Mythology, respectively).
But Tolkien left us no shortage of statements to the effect that Middle-earth was an attempt to “create a Mythology for England and the English.” I.e. the Ancient Saxons, and then later the Anglo-Saxons of Anglalondë (alternatively: Angela-londë, Engala-Londë, Angala-Landë, Angla-Londë, Engla-landë, and so on… “England as the Anglo-Saxons” of the Venerable St. Bede). It is an irony that this mythology was destroyed by the very Religion he used as a foundation for the Pagan Saxons’ former/lost Mythology of which only scraps remain.
While people are free to imagine whatever they wish, they need to realize:
As Tolkien points out above in the quotes from Letter #210: “It’s no longer
Tolkien’s Middle-earth“ at that point. It is “something else” that has only borrowed or plagiarized Tolkien’s names and places (nouns) from his work as a “Fan-Fiction” like Jackson’s movies.
Dungeons and Dragons might provide fodder for the imagination, but that is only relevant to Middle-earth is a justification allowed by Tolkien exists to make it relevant.
As alluded to previously… Tolkien produced a collection of
Mythology based upon a collection of Classical and Catholic Theology and Metaphysics leading to something that isn’t as “Open to Opinion” as many confusingly assert. While there are a few stylistic points open to “taste,” there is a great deal that is firmly fixed by Tolkien’s frameworks, templates, and “Structural Foundations“ (see
HoM-e, vol X, p. x quoted above) that greatly constrain what can and cannot
BE within Eä (and thus within Middle-earth).
MB
1. Tolkien describes Middle-earth as
This Earth, but he does warn that his comparison is analogous, and not literalist. Meaning: Middle-earth is a
possible past for our Earth that did not come to pass (the first quote I make is preceded by a comment that illustrates this by pointing out that “Only if God chooses to give it reality“ would it become “an actual thing outside of a sub-creative Imagination).
Sub-creation is another thing that I’ve not met a single person outside either academia or a very small population of theologians who know the first thing about what it actually is and means. They have a rough idea given Tolkien’s comparison of the process to
Aulë’s “making” of the
Dwarves as a Sub-Creative Act that
Eru gives reality to. To Tolkien, his work
might thus be “given reality” by the Catholic/Christian God. He gives us no shortage of statements to that effect, and many signs that this might have weighed too heavily on him as he became older, resulting in his never completing the Mythology.
Our Earth is thus a “template,” as referenced by the equations I referenced earlier. They apply to Middle-earth as much as they apply to our World, but in Middle-earth, Fëar/Soul/Will, Light/Darkness, Good/Evil have an influence on the
Physical Reality of Middle-earth (Eä) that must be accounted-for where that Fëa/Soul/Will of a conscious being, or a natural force affected by one of the latter (Light/Dark, Good/Evil — As “Morgoth’s Ring”
IS the “Evil” that pervades
Arda, and thus Middle-earth). The equations are just examples to illustrate that “our opinions” are irrelevant to a great many things in Middle-earth, no different from our Earth.
2. If Tolkien had anyone who knew the least about making film, or had the sort of personality that would have allowed him to contact one, he would have learned that any attempt to adapt even
The Hobbit as a single film, animated or not, could not be accomplished in less than two, and at that leaving out a great deal of the work. By the
Rules of Thumb used in Hollywood for the adaptation of Novel to Film, you get a standard of:
1 Page of Novel === 1 page of Screenplay/Script (and associated Set and Direction Notes)
1 Page of Screenplay/Script === 1 minute of Screen Time.
That puts
The Hobbit at between 200 and 420 minutes (3 hrs and 20 minutes to 7 hrs), depending upon which publication is used. And it puts
The Lord of the Rings into the
realm of 1000 to 1200 minutes, or 16hrs-40min and 20hrs. The inclusion of the songs as written would tend to add about 3 to 5 minutes per song (again, rule of thumb for Hollywood Productions with Musical Numbers of any kind. Songs tend to add time for musical accompaniment, or for segue when unaccompanied).
What am I missing here❓
