“Hringbogan” — it has a nice ring to it ...

About a month ago, I got an interesting comment about the concepts underlying my “wraith” posts from my friend Merlin:

In your third blog post on “wraith”, you write: “From wraiths to bent roads, from rings to dragons (and perhaps orcs and goblins) — we’ve gone there and back again purely by digging into the roots of words.” I’ve just been reading John Holmes’ article on “Art and Illustrations by Tolkien” [in the Tolkien Encyclopedia] and noticed his comments on Hringaboga [sic] Heorte Gefysed, Tolkien’s 1927 painting of a dragon, whose title comes from Beowulf and whose first word Holmes translates as “bent into a ring”.

I replied to Merlin privately, but I wanted to take a little time to assemble some comments for my readers here. One thing led to another, and here it is a month later already! So, at long last, here’s what I thought about Merlin’s very good find.

First, regarding Holmes’s rendering of Old English hringbogan as “bent into a ring”. The word hring is, of course, “ring”, and boga gives us the Modern English word “bow”, as in “arch, angle, corner, anything curved”. Related is bogen “bowed, bent, gave way”, past participle of búgan “to bow (down), bend, swerve”. And here, there definitely could be a connection to the writhen / bent notion I’ve been blogging off and on over the last several months. But Tolkien’s word is a noun + a noun, the common formula for a kenning, so I think I would rather have translated it “ring-bow(ed)” or something of that sort than to introduce the English participial form, but Holmes’s version is close, and more poetic. Its only problem — and a very slight one at that — is that by using the (passive-sounding) participial form, the phrase seems to be begging for an actor, a bender, if you will, rather than simply reflecting the form of a bend, arch, curve, etc. That idea might indeed inhere in Tolkien’s image (as in, looking for the active hand of Morgoth or Sauron in shaping Dragons and Rings, respectively), but perhaps it’s presuming too much, philologically. If Tolkien had meant “bent into a ring”, wouldn’t he have opted for something like hringbogen?

Returning to the title, as Holmes noted, it’s directly from Beowulf, lines 2561-2 — ða wæs hringbogan heorte gefysed / saecce tó séceanne. Several of the editions I consulted translate hringbogan as “coiled (one)” or something similar; however, Harrison and Sharp (roughly contemporary to Tolkien’s early studies of Old English) give “hring-boga, w.m., one who bends himself into a ring: gen. sg. hring-bogan (of the drake, bending himself into a circle)” [1], which accords very well with Holmes’s ‘extraordinary rendition’. :)

Hammond and Scull tell us that Tolkien himself rendered as: “Now was the heart of the coiling beast stirred to come out to fight” [2]. Christopher Tolkien reports a slightly different translation made by his father for the quotation he used as the painting’s title: “the heart of the coiling beast was stirred” [3]. Tolkien, I expect, would certainly have been aware of the idea of a ring hidden in the line, but the fact that he opted for a simpler, more colloquial translation could be taken to mitigate its importance.

[1] Béowulf and The Fight at Finnsburh. Eds. James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp. 4th rev. ed. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1904, p. 256.

[2] From Tolkien’s unpublished translation of Beowulf at the Bodleian, quoted in Hammond, Wayne G. and Christina Scull. J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995, p. 53.

[3] Tolkien, J.R.R. Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Chistopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979, plate 40 [n.p.].

Walk to Rivendell ... or beyond

Thanks to my friend Gary for forwarding me an interesting item yesterday: an exercise challenge expressed in Middle-earth distances. As the item says, “Out-of-shape? Middle Earth [sic] geek? Why not walk to Rivendell[?]” Now that sounds like an interesting motivation — to bring a new appreciation to the adventure we’ve all read so often.

What really struck me, reading some of the proposed walking challenges, is just how far those Hobbits really walked — and barefoot, no less! According to the post (and I’m too lazy to verify this myself!), it’s “397 miles from Rivendell to Bag End.” Thinking about my own walking routine, which is something approaching ten miles a week (in a good week), it would have taken me three quarters of a year to get to Rivendell! Though I would surely pick up the pace if I had Black Riders behind me all the way! ;)

Cracking the top 10,000

It may not sound like much, but my Amazon reviewer rank just went below 10,000 — to 9,793, in fact (as of the time of this writing). If that doesn’t sound too impressive, just bear in mind that when I started, less than a year ago, my initial rank after one review was 667,811! Give me more time, and I hope to eventually crack the top 1,000, at which point, I’ll get a badge of recognition for my trouble.

If you want to help me do this, feel free to visit my reviews and vote them helpful (if you do find them helpful, that is). I only wish you could do it right from that link, but you’ll actually have to visit the product page, find the review and vote for it there. Several of them are right on the product page, under the “Most Helpful Customer Reviews” section (e.g., most of the Tolkien reviews), but others are buried on a deeper page. I’m probably kidding myself that anyone will take the time, eh? ;)

New Tom Shippey review in TLS

A nice segue from my post yesterday about Jacob Grimm ...

The Times Literary Supplement has just published its review of a new book by Joep Leerssen, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History. The book looks interesting, but even better, the review is by Tom Shippey, a man who may be even better qualified to write on the subject than Mr. Leerssen himself! As usual, Shippey’s writing is lively and entertaining, and he even manages to work in a reference to Tolkien right near the beginning.

Enjoy the review. :)

“New Learning and New Ignorance”

You know what I love? When you’ve made an academic argument based on the best evidence you were aware of at the time, and then you find new evidence, long afterward, which backs up your theory! It also points out just how much “evidence” there is out there — both for and against any given proposition. Finding it, sifting through it, and evaluating its merit, that’s the great challenge.

A little over a year ago, I presented a paper at Mythcon 37 in which I attempted to trace the most likely sources for Tolkien’s well-known, but usually overlooked, literary collocation “Circles of the World.” The three I discussed were the Old Norse Heimskringla, the Biblia Vulgata, and the famous mappa mundi at Hereford Cathedral in the West Midlands. The two philological analogues here are the Old Norse kringla heimsins “circle of the world” and the Latin orbis terrarum “circle of the worlds”, and though I think I was successful in plausibly connecting both to Tolkien, I didn’t have a good transition from the one to the other — apart from the rather obvious fact that they mean the same thing. Well, thanks to serendipity — and to a diet of abstruse reading :) — I’ve now discovered a single source, one that Tolkien definitely knew, that connects these two precedents (as well as other conspicuously Tolkienian concepts) in the space of just a few pages. Curious?

I found it in Volume II of Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie (1883–1888). This is in the James Steven Stallybrass translation, which he retitled Teutonic Mythology. I was reading Chapter XXV Time and World, when I came across this (with apologies for the choppy editing):

The ON. heimr is mundus, domus, and akin to himinn, himil (p. 698), as mundus also is applied to world and sky; heimskrîngla, orbis terrarum. Ulphilas renders οικουμένη [...] by [Gothic] midjungards; to this correspond the AS. middangeard [...]; the OHG. mittingart [...]; the OS. middilgard; the ON. miðgarðr [...]; and even a Swed. folksong [...] has retained medjegård. [1]

This is quite something, to see my two philological sources separated by no more than a comma! And compellingly followed by a laundry list of precursors for “Middle-earth”, one of which (the Greek οικουμένη) Tolkien mentioned explicitly in a letter [2].

As Grimm continues, more tantalizingly Tolkienian references appear. These include linking orbis terrarum to the idea of the “sea-girt world,” with cognates and sources aplenty, most notably the Old Norse miðgarðs ormr, the “serpent [...] coiled round the earth’s circumference, [...] evidently the ocean.” This, too, finds a point of connection with my paper, in an argument suggesting that the Hereford mappa mundi, also depicted as girded round by water, may find an echo in Tolkien’s Ekkaia, the Encircling Sea in his fictive geography.

Then, at the bottom of the page, Grimm surprisingly produces the Finnish ilma “air, sky”, which many of you will recognize for Tolkien’s use of the same word in Quenya, with an obviously related meaning (“starlight”); as well as in Ilmarin (“Mansion of the High Airs”), the palace of Manwë and Varda atop Taniquetil; and even Ilmarë, the handmaid to Varda. Tolkien, we’re pretty sure, would have gotten this word from the Finnish Kalevala, but he evidently saw it here too.

And even more, as Grimm continues over the next two pages, we see mention of the Völuspá, a self-acknowledged source for Tolkien; Yggdrasil, the World Ash, connected by many scholars to Tolkien’s own metaphoric and mythopoeic use of the Tree imago; and specific mention of the Old Norse dwarves “Dâinn [sic] and Dvalinn,” both names memorably recycled by Tolkien. All of this, from start to finish, in just three consecutive pages of a text Tolkien knew — and knew well. It’s therefore no great stretch to see Deutsche Mythologie as having gone into the same leaf-mould that produced Tolkien’s “Circles of the World.”

I love that! Now, to incorporate this into a revision of my paper!

[1] Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology, Volume II. Trans. James Steven Stallybrass. Dover Phoenix Edition. Mineola (NY): Dover, 2004, p. 794.

[2] Tolkien, J.R.R. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981, p.239 (#183).

My review copies of The History of The Hobbit have arrived!

I just got a package in the mail today from Houghton Mifflin — and inside were volumes 1 and 2 of John Rateliff’s The History of The Hobbit, which I will be reviewing for the Spring issue of Mythlore. These have been out for a few months in the U.K. (from HarperCollins), but they don’t hit American bookstores for a little over a month yet — so the rest of you will sadly have to wait. (I will try to suppress a very trollish grin as I begin reading. ;)

I can’t wait to dive into these! I’ve flipped through them a little already, enough to form a few first impressions. First, they’re very handsomely made books. Second, there’s a lot of material here. The pair add up to about 900 pages, no doubt full of all sorts of surprises. And third, there’s a good deal of accompanying art. Both volumes have a frontispiece as well as an insert of full-color reproductions of Tolkien’s sketches, watercolors, and rough drafts — even Thorin’s letter to Bilbo, in runes! Some of these are previously unpublished. Those of you who were at Marquette in 2004 saw many of the illustrations up close, but there were still one or two even I didn’t recognize. For those familiar with The History of Middle-earth, Rateliff’s two volumes are constructed on that model and will look familiar to anyone already immersed in textual studies of Tolkien.

How exciting to have these at last! After years and years (quite literally), the wait is finally over! I have a feeling Mr. Rateliff may have the best shot going for next year’s Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies.

Two new beers to recommend

Those who know me know that I like to try potables and comestibles from all over the world — the more exotic, the better. And those who know me also know I’ll sieze any excuse to use a word like “comestibles”, hahae. I mean, this post isn’t even about food! ;) This week, two new countries join my list of beers from around the world. My normal preferences lean toward dark beers, bocks, stouts, porters, and the like, but today I have a couple of lagers to recommend.

Toña — Nicaragua
Toña is a wonderfully mild lager out of Managua. I was going to call it “light”, but I worry that could be confused with so-called light beer, which I never drink — mainly because it isn’t beer :) Toña only made it to American beer aficionados in January of this year, and it’s very welcome as far as I’m concerned. One thing I found interesting is that the malt and hops are American and European; only the well-water (and the brewing process itself, I suppose) is Nicaraguan. It carries a 4.6% alcohol content, and it’s not overcarbonated, so it’s very smooth. It has a little bit of a floral note, too, I think. I’m not sure whether they’ve added any flowers or herbs (e.g., coriander) to the mix, as some brewers will do, but it’s a very nice beer. It compares favorably with other lagers of the region. One thing I found amusing was that, according to the bottle, Toña comes to Texas supermarkets by way of Washington state. That’s a little out of the way, isn’t it?

Czechvar — Czech Republic
Considering that I’m one quarter Czech myself, it may be surprising that I haven’t tried any Czech beer until now. Well, actually, in a way, I have, since Shiner and other Texas beers still use techniques brought to Texas by Czech immigrants (of which there are still many small communities — e.g., Shiner, TX, itself). There’s even a Czech Heritage Society of Texas. In any case, Czechvar is a very nice, very drinkable lager, with a 5% alcohol content. I could almost believe it’s the pivo červený (“red beer”) of which my grandmother used to sing as a girl — to judge by their folksongs, the Czechs have their priorities right! — except that it’s pale gold in color. They brew it in České Budějovice in the Southern Bohemian region of the country, and I believe this may be my first beer from Eastern Europe.

Other countries whose beer(s) I’ve tried include:

• Australia
• Austria
• Argentina
• Belgium
• Belize
• Brazil
• Canada
• Chile
• China
• Czech Republic
• Costa Rica
• Denmark
• El Salvador
• England
• France
• Germany
• Guatemala
• Honduras
• India
• Ireland
• Italy
• Jamaica
• Japan
• Lithuania
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Nicaragua
• Peru
• Poland
• Phillipines
• Russia
• Scotland
• Singapore
• Spain
• Sri Lanka
• Tasmania
• Thailand
• Tibet
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Turkey
• Vietnam
• Zimbabwe

Counting the United States, that puts me up to 44 countries.

Am I forgetting some? Probably. I feel like I’ve had one or two others from Central and South America, but I’m blanking. And if you count things that are beer-like, but not actually beer, then I could add Nigeria and Ethiopia to the list. I should keep a real list, I suppose (I mean, a list that’s on the outside of my brain :). Are there any international beers that any of you can recommend? I also look for microbrews inside the U.S., but that’s a post for another day.

Hemingway short stories — Part 3

Read Part 1, Part 2. Once again: these posts will contain SPOILERS. You have been warned. :)

“The Three-Day Blow”
Picking up in the aftermath of Nick’s breakup with Marjorie, he visits Bill (who makes a brief appearance at the conclusion of “The End of Something”) at his father’s homestead. They talk about the weather, literally, about baseball, about literature (with high praise for G.K. Chesterton, of all people). But when Bill brings up Marjorie, it’s clear that Nick really regrets the breakup. He “holds it in reserve” that he might get back together with her, but once they go outside, the gale blows all Nick’s worries and “feelings” out of his head (or heart). It’s a classic Hemingway situation where men aren’t supposed to have real feelings — or aren’t supposed to voice them, anyway. Are Nick’s regrets really gone, or will they be back as soon as the “three-day blow” is over? (The accompanying chapterlet is also set in the rain.)

“The Battler”
Nick is train-hopping across the country in this story, asserting a growing independence, it would seem. After getting thrown off a train, he meets Ad Francis, a famous (but now washed-up) prizefighter: the battler of the story’s title. Nick and Ad chat around a camp fire, and a little later, Nick meets Bugs, the “negro” who takes care of Ad, now that Ad can’t quite take care of himself. They met in jail, and Bugs took a liking to him. They eat a sort of “hobo feast” around the fire, after which Ad gets a bit riled up at Nick (earlier, Ad admits of himself that he’s gone a little crazy), and Bugs has to club him over the head with a blackjack to calm him down! He explains Ad’s situation: too many fights and a tragic, failed marriage to his “sister” (the story leaves ambiguous the question of whether it’s really his literal sister). Bugs is really a very kind caretaker, reminding me a little of Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (and there the similiarity ends, as Ad is nothing like Huck).

“Chapter VI”
In this chapterlet, it seems to be revealed that these may all be Nick’s war reflections. At least, this one appears to be.

“A Very Short Story”
Short indeed! About the wishful, ephemeral connections made during war time and what follows in their wake after they’ve come apart.

“Chapter VII”
A nice ironic statement about the promises we make (to God, in this case) when face to face with our own mortality, and how we almost never make good on them when come through the experience alive.

“Solder’s Home”
A remarkable story. This one doesn’t revolve around Nick Adams. Rather, the protagonist is one Harold Krebs. The image of the photograph at the beginning — what a great detail, the kind that a successful short story can be built on! It shows just how impossible it is to capture a moment the way we feel it, and how likely we are to mythologize or romanticize it in our memory. And it prefigures how everything will be different when Krebs comes home from the war. The history books he reads about the war fascinate him, as if he weren’t there himself! As if he learned nothing first-hand — and he probably didn’t, because he was “badly, sickeningly frightened all the time.” His mother worries about what he’ll do with his life now that he’s come home — alive, at least, but not unchanged. She even convinces Kreb’s father to let him take out the car at night, hoping he might start to date, maybe resume a normal life. Kreb’s is emotionally regressing back toward a fumbling adolescence, aborted when he went to war. And now that he is back, he’s in the grips of an ennui so pervasive that he does nothing all day but watch the girls go by. Just watch them; he won’t ask one out. He just alternates between watching the girls go by and reading history books about the war. It’s very sad to see how emotionally devastated Krebs is. We want to hope he can recover, but we know that he probably won’t.

“Chapter VIII”
This is the first of the chapterlets that isn’t a picture of war. Rather, this one centers on an image of urban violence, crime, and racism. It’s still not completely clear (yet) what readers are to make of these interludes.

Other books for Potterphiles

So now that J.K. Rowling has brought the Harry Potter series to a close (notwithstanding the possibility of future add-ons, such as the Potter Encyclopedia she has hinted at), what else are Potterphiles to turn to? I thought I would take a moment to recommend some of the books and series I have read and enjoyed myself — mainly in the domain of YA Fantasy. These are all books I’ve read myself, so it is this more than anything else which accounts for obvious omissions (e.g., the Xanth series of Piers Anthony, the Pern books of Anne McCaffrey, or Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series — they may all be great, but I wouldn’t know, never having read them myself). The list is also, by necessity, selective. I read a lot, but I obviously can’t put down everything here in a single post. So, take this for what it’s worth: it’s just one man’s opinion, and only part of it.

Lloyd Alexander
Alexander (who passed away very recently) is best known for his Prydain Cycle, five novels (plus a couple of add-ons) that take as their rough inspiration the Wales of the Mabinogion. These are wonderful, of course, but Alexander has dozens of other books to offer famished readers as well. There are the Vesper Holly and Westmark series, as well as many individual books worth reading, such as The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian, The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha, and Time Cat — and the posthumous Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio, published only last month. I’ve read almost everything Alexander wrote and can recommend all of it without reservation.

Isaac Asimov
The Foundation Trilogy. This is only the “science-fiction” on an otherwise exclusively fantasy-centered list, but I include it for two reasons: a) it’s not really conventional science-fiction, in the sense of, say, Stanisław Lem or Arthur C. Clarke), and b) the sheer scope of the imagination involved is enough to earn it a place here. Asimov did publish a lot of mainstream sci-fi, and there are also a number of add-on books in the Foundation series (which I haven’t read). These three, however, are remarkable, and will give you a whole new appreciation for the idea of “hacking history”. In fact, the science of psychohistory, as propounded in the novel, may make you think of Stanisław Lem — or Aldous Huxley perhaps.

Neil Gaiman
I’m thinking of three books in particular: Stardust, American Gods, and Anansi Boys. The latter two are related through a minor character, the African Spider-god, Anansi. Immensely imaginative, entertaining, and actually quite funny in places, all three are rewarding in their own ways. Plus, reading Gaiman makes you “cool”. ;)

Alan Garner
Garner wrote two Alderley Edge novels, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath (of which, the first is definitely the better), as well a number of wonderful individual novels — The Owl Service (like Alexander, with a nod to the Mabinogion), Elidor, Red Shift, and the more difficult Strandloper. Like Tolkien, Garner drew on a combination of local (Cheshire) history and Germanic and Celtic mythologies for his fiction. Almost forgotten today, though I don’t really know why, Garner is well worth discovering.

Madeleine L’Engle
L’Engle passed away only a week ago, and it’s another devastating loss, following right on the heels of Alexander’s passing. I haven’t read a lot of her work, but I did read three of the four books in the Time Quartet (the fourth book came too long after). They were incredibly eye-opening for me — they’re the reason I could throw around words like “mitochondria” and “tesseract” at the tender age of ten or so. I also have fond memories of watching the Wrinkle in Time filmstrip (yes, filmstrip — remember those? :) in elementary school.

Ursula K. Le Guin
The Earthsea Trilogy was a special favorite of mine, growing up, and I reread it earlier this year. Read it — you won’t be sorry! Like Tolkien, Le Guin shows a special appreciation for the power of words, names, and language. Le Guin eventually wrote several add-on books (of which I didn’t especially enjoy Tehanu; though The Other Wind was excellent). Le Guin is also a master (err, mistress?) of the fantasy / science-fiction short story. Her collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters is definitely worth making time for.

C.S. Lewis
I only read The Chronicles of Narnia at the embarrassing late date of, err, earlier this year. And while they do have their defects, they were incredibly influential (they still are), and they really are great fun to read. I could include the Space Trilogy here, but for the fact that I haven’t read it yet. Also, I don’t think it’s quite meant for the YA audience (just as Lewis’s superb novel, Till We Have Faces, is not).

Byron Preiss / Michael Reeves
Dragonworld was a great discovery for me in the early 1980’s. In some ways, it owes a large debt to Tolkien — e.g., its main character, Amsel, is a small person, very much like a Hobbit; however, it’s a world away from the rip-off work of Terry Brooks. Plus, it’s long and copiously illustrated; it’s the kind of book that you can luxuriate it. And it has some quite original ideas, too. Look for it. Sadly, Preiss was killed a couple of years ago in a car crash, a year or two after filing bankruptcy. :(

Philip Pullman
Owing an enormous debt to Milton, Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (with the add-on, Lyra’s Oxford, and the forthcoming Book of Dust) is one of the most imaginative series of recent years. The books aren’t without their faults, but they’re probably the most inventively mythopoeic works since Tolkien and Lewis — despite Pullman’s vociferous dislike of those two. I’m looking forward to the film version of The Golden Compass.

J.R.R. Tolkien
What do I really need to say? If you haven’t read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, isn’t it about time? :)

Walter Wangerin, Jr.
Wangerin is, like Lewis, a Christian apologist, but one who brooks no apologies for the disturbing nature of some aspects of the mythology. I’m thinking here of the duology of The Book of the Dun Cow and The Book of Sorrows. Owing a good deal to Celtic and Germanic mythology, Chaucer, Milton, and of course, The Bible, these books are Christian allegories told from the point of view of animals (before the arrival of Man on Earth). They are, for Christianity, what Orwell’s Animal Farm was for political ideology. The relationship between Chaunticleer and Mundo Cani is one of the more original in YA literature, and it forms the bridge to the sequel, which is (I must warn you) one of the single most depressing books you will ever read. But what did you expect from something called The Book of Sorrows?

John White
Okay, I should preface this recommendation with a caveat lector: John White’s Archives of Anthropos series is a very obvious Christian allegory and borrows pretty transparently from The Chronicles of Narnia, only published a couple of decades before. I really enjoyed the two I read as a kid — The Tower of Geburah and The Iron Scepter (which also borrows Dante’s conception of Hell from Inferno) — but I haven’t read them since. Having now read their inspiration in Lewis, I can see the obvious connections. The stories involve a group of children who get sucked into an alternate world, not through a wardrobe but through some strange old televisions in an abandoned attic (not unlike the method of ingress into Narnia in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). Character and place-names owe a lot to New Testament Greek: The World of Anthropos (ανθρωπος), Castle Authentio (αυθεντικός), King Kardia (καρδιά) — and a koine rubric of “love” that is straight from Lewis’s The Four Loves. But they were fun books to read.

What can any of you recommend?