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An expert endorses the Christian dimension of Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings'

Medieval History professor Alejandro Rodriguez de la Peña notes that the legendary English writer wrote to her pastor and said he was "a novel in its production Catholic unconsciously and consciously Catholic in its final review"

Professor of Medieval History and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Communication Sciences, Universidad San Pablo-CEU, Alejandro Rodríguez de la Peña, supports the Catholic dimension of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the legendary English writer author of The Lord of the Rings and great reference world of fantasy literature. According to a report

VERITAS by the agency this Wednesday, May 18, in an interview with Rodriguez de la Peña, coordinator of the day Catholic Tolkien and the mists of England, held at San Pablo-CEU, Tolkien himself wrote to his priest and said The Lord of the Rings was a "Catholic novel in its preparation unconsciously and consciously Catholic in its final review." The respondent also claims that the author "believed that mythology was a way to explain certain transcendental truths that are almost inexplicable within the confines of the novel 'realistic'."

For your interest, we reproduce VERITAS published interview, in which Rodriguez de la Peña speaks in turn of the issues which refer to a Christian dimension of the generation of English Catholic writers and the common ground between Tolkien and Chesterton.

- Experts do not agree on whether Tolkien wanted to do a work based on Catholicism or if you wanted to make a narrative work in which, whatever their intention, let us see their beliefs as a Catholic. What is your opinion?

- Alejandro Rodriguez (AR): It is a matter of opinion, is a matter of proven facts. Tolkien himself gave the definitive answer to this debate when he said that most significant event in his life and his work was his being a Christian, specifically Catholic faith.

addition, on another occasion he wrote to his priest that The Lord of the Rings was a novel development in Catholic unconsciously and consciously Catholic in its final review.

- What are the themes of The Lord of the Rings which refer to a Christian dimension?

- AR: As demonstrated by Joseph Pearce, these issues are numerous. The One Ring forged by Sauron (Morgoth-servant of Satan) to "bring them all and in the darkness bind them" is an allegory of Original Sin.

the day Frodo destroys the Ring is the 25th of March (as we read in the appendices of the work). March 25 is the day that marked the Middle Ages the crucifixion of Christ and is currently celebrating the Annunciation to the Virgin, the two key dates in the Redemption of Original Sin, that is, the destruction of the Ring. In fact, Frodo's character is in some sense an allegory of Christ, like Gandalf (who dies for his friends in Moria and rises in a body of glory) and Aragorn (image of Christ the King).

Elvish songs found in the Marian hymns, the "Elbereth Gilthoniel" is a "Hail Mary" in Quenya language and "Namárië" Galadriel is singing "Salve Regina." If we look, in addition to the Silmarillion, the works in which condenses all the "background" mythological Middle Earth, see how the creation of the world by Eru Iluvatar (God) is inspired by the Genesis or the figure of Morgoth, the archangel (Ainur) dropped, is clearly equivalent to that of Satan.

In any case, issues like the struggle of the humble servant (Frodo-Christ) against the supposedly invincible Original Sin (Single Ring) or the power of grace over that of the Nietzschean will to power are unmistakably Christian.

- Why a work as "Nordic" as "The Lord of the Rings" has been so successful in public?

- AR: One might wonder why a devout Catholic like Tolkien used as the main source of inspiration for his imaginary world the mythological heritage of Germanic and Celtic paganism the Middle Ages and late antiquity. A first answer is obviously refers to its status as a medievalist.

But a second further reflection: Tolkien believed that mythology was a way to explain certain transcendental truths that are almost inexplicable within the confines of the novel "realistic."

These great metaphysical truths, such as fight against good and evil and the triumph of humility over power always attract readers. And, although their stories were based on the creation and description of a fantasy world supported Celtic and Germanic mythology, are therefore no less full of metaphysical truths. The power of a legend is to be true (metaphysical truths) and not be based on facts and concrete.

- Where does this generation of English Catholic writers and how important was the time?

- AR: This generation comes from the momentum that had Catholicism in England after the Oxford Movement and, above all, the conversion of its leader, John Henry Newman, a Catholic.

Many writers and intellectuals felt drawn to Catholicism, then we can say that it became attractive for "high spirits" of England, beginning with the son of the Anglican Primate, RH Benson. Even decadent as noticeable as the repentant homosexual Oscar Wilde ended his days within the Catholic Church (in France had happened to Baudalaire and Verlaine).

Then came the two great writers converts Hillaire Belloc and GK Chesterton, who led this generation to the early twentieth century. Follow this trail Tolkien, Graham Greene (with his doubts) Evelyn Waugh, TS Eliot and CS Lewis (these two converts to Christianity but within the Anglican Church). This generation is without doubt, the leading literary contemporary England, well above the Bloomsbury group (the Virginia Woolf) or Fabian George Bernard Shaw.

- What points in common were two writers as different as Chesterton and Tolkien?

- AR: They shared their Catholic faith, his patriotic love for medieval England, the true Catholic England before the Reformation, his traditionalism that made them against the Industrial Revolution and the French, his love for the small, by rural (reflected in the Shire of the hobbits), his horror of the twentieth century and its ironic contempt for the demagogues of Modernity relativistic.


Author: Solidaridad.net-Date: 2005-05-18

Root Beer Extract Concentrate

Robert Murray, SJ

Father Robert Murray, grandson of Sir James Murray (founder of Inglés Oxford Dictionary) and close family friend Tolkien, had read part of The Lord of the Rings in the proofs and typed copies and, at the instigation of Tolkien, had sent comments and criticisms. He wrote that the book had produced a strong feeling "of a positive support to the order of grace" and comparing Galadriel's image with that of the Virgin Mary. He doubted that many critics could find a great meaning to the work: "Do not have a box to place it before."

76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

2 December 1953

Dear Rob:

was wonderful to receive your long letter this morning .... I regret that some random words of mine said they were busy because of you to criticize my work. But to confess the truth, although the praise (or, which is not exactly the same and better yet, the expressions of pleasure) is welcome, encouraged me especially what you said, this time and before, because you're more perception, especially in certain directions than others, and even I have revealed more clearly certain aspects of my work. I think I know exactly what you mean with the order of grace; and, of course, with your references to Our Lady, which is based on my limited perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity. The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but then I became aware of it in the review. That is the reason why I did not include, or have removed any reference to anything resembling a "religion", whether cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the history and symbolism. But all this is said awkwardly, and it sounds like I gave more importance than sorry. Because, to tell Indeed, I have consciously planned very little, and should be grateful for having been brought up (from eight) in a faith that has nurtured me and taught me what little I know, and I owe to my mother, who stuck to his conversion and died young, largely by the hardships of poverty, which were the consequences.

Incidentally, I have nurtured English literature, I do not think you know more than you, for the simple reason that I never found much in it which could stand on my heart (or heart and head together.) I was trained in the classics and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer. Also to be a philologist, and having obtained much of the aesthetic pleasure that I am capable of form of words (and especially the association new form of the word with its meaning), I have always enjoyed the work more in a foreign language or a language so remote that it seems (as the Anglo-Saxon). But enough about me.

I'm afraid that what you say about critics and the public is highly unlikely as to make it real. The publication is scaring me because it will be impossible to ignore what is said. I have set my heart to shoot it. I think the editors are also anxious; and are keen to have as many people as possible read advance copies and form a kind of opinion before the critics mediocrity Drive the tooth ....

sorry to hear that now you have after moving cello somewhat (I'm told) in the art of this beautiful and difficult instrument. Anyone who can play a stringed instrument like a witch me worthy of greater respect. I love music, but I have no capacity for it, and efforts to teach me to play the violin in my youth I have left only a feeling of veneration to the violinists. Slavic languages \u200b\u200bare to me almost in the same category. In my time I tried to learn several languages, but I'm not "linguist" in the ordinary sense, and once spent time trying to learn Serbian or Russian has been instrumental not only a strong impression of the structure and verbal beauty ....

Please forgive the apparent enmity of my typing! My capacity for it does not improve. Except for speed. I am now much faster than my laborious hand, which should stand as fatigue and pain quickly. I have no doubt that you'll soon have news of Edith.

Sincerely,

Ronald Tolkien.

(Carta 142)

Tucked Or Untucked Interview

In Dreams

When the cold of winter comes
Starless night will cover day
In the veiling of the sun
We will walk in bitter rain

But in dreams... I can hear your name
And in dreams... We will meet again

When the seas and mountains fall
And we come, to end of days
In the dark I hear a call
Calling me there, I will go there
And back again

Traducción:

Cuando llegue el frío Winter
A starless night will cover day
When the veil falls upon the sun
walk in freezing rain

But in dreams ...
I can hear your name And in dreams ... we meet again

When the seas and mountains fall
And we get to the end of days
In the dark I hear a call asking me to go
, go up there and back again

Romantic Love Making Vedios

Tolkien an interview in January 1971 for program 'Now Read On ...' (Now continue reading) program 4 of the BBC. The interviewer Dennis was Gerrolt.

T: ... Before he wrote The Hobbit and much before he wrote this, I had already built the mythology of this world.

G: So you had some sort of scheme on which it was possible to work?

T: Sagas immense, if ... self absorbed and did The Hobbit himself, The Hobbit was not originally part of it all, but as soon as it began to move within this world became part of it.

G: So your characters and the story really took charge.

T: (Light Pipe)

G: I say took the lead, I'm not saying you were completely under his spell or anything like that ...

T: Oh no, no, no dream I was wrong about everything, not an obsession at all. You have this feeling that at this point A, B, C, D only A or one of them is right and you had to wait to see it for yourself. I have maps, of course. If you are going to have a complicated history, one must work with a map, otherwise it could never to map it later. The moons, I think were finally moons and sunset worked out according to what they were in this part of the world in 1942 really.

(Turns off the pipe)

G: You started in '42 is not true, to write it?

T: Oh no, I started as soon as the Hobbit was finished, in the '30s.

G: It was completed just prior to publishing ...

T: I wrote the latest ... in 1949 - I remember actually cried in Dwimmwemore. But then of course there was a tremendous amount of revision. I typed all the work twice and many parts of the re wrote many times, in bed in the attic. Could not afford, of course, that type told me, as I suppose, I'm not in a position where no matter what people think of me now, there were some frightening errors in grammar, which from a professor of English and literature are almost shocking.

G: I have not noticed any.

T: There was one once, past participle used as a ride to ride! (Laughter)

G: Do you feel some sort of guilt at all as philologists, Professor of English Language with which you dummy language sources concerned with the fact that you spent much of his life to something fictitious?

T: No. I'm sure the language was much better!. A lot of linguistic wisdom in it. I feel no guilt complex about The Lord of the Rings.

G: Do you feel a particular infatuation for these comfortable homely things holds the Hobbiton, the home and pipe and fire and bed - the virtues of home?

T: Do not you?

G: Do not you Professor Tolkien?

T: Sure. .

G: So how has a particular crush on the Hobbits?

T: You should feel at home ... Hobbiton looks a lot like the kind of world in which I first noticed things, which was perhaps more poignant to me by the fact that I I was not born here but in Bloomsdale, South Africa. I was very young when I came back, but also bites into your memory and imagination, even if they do not think it has. If your first Christmas tree was a eucalyptus usually withered and if you were bothered by the heat and sand. Then, suddenly find themselves in a quiet Warwickshire village, the age at which sparks the imagination, I think it engenders a particular love for what you might call the midlands of England, with plenty of water, rocks, and small elms quiet rivers, etc., and of course the native people of those places.

G: At what age did you come to England?

T: I guess when I was three and a half. Very pregnante of course, is one of those things people say they do not remember, it's like constantly photographing the same thing at the same stage. Smooth shifts merely create a blurred image. But if a child has a sudden change like this is conscious. What it does is try to fit the new experiences with old ones. I have a clear and vivid picture of a house I know. It is a beautiful replica of my home in Bloomfontein and my grandmother's house in Birmingham. I still remember going on the road to Birmingham and wondering what had happened to the great gallery, what would have happened to the balcony. Consequently remember these things extremely well, I remember taking baths in the Indian sea, where not already had two years and I remember it clearly.

G: Frodo accepts the burden of the ring, and as a character takes the long suffering and perseverance, and their actions one could, almost in the Buddhist sense that "takes on merit." He actually becomes a Christ-like figure. Why chose a most persistent Hobbit for this role?

T: I did not. Did no such thing as choice. You see, I wrote The Hobbit ... everything I was trying to do was to continue from where it was The Hobbit. Hobbits had in my hands. Is not it true?

G: By the way, but there is nothing particularly Christ in Bilbo.

T: No.

G: But to face the most terrible dangers, and still he fought and triumphed.

T: But that, I think more like an allegory of the human race. I've always been impressed by the fact that we're here surviving because of the indomitable courage of small people against impossible odds: jungles, volcanoes, wild beasts ... they are fighting, almost blindly along the road.

G: I think Midgard would like Middle Earth Or have some connection?

T: Oh! Yes, both are the same world. Many people have made the mistake of thinking that Middle Earth is a special kind of earth or another planet is the kind of science fiction, but it's just an old word to call this land where we live, surrounded as I imagined by the ocean.

G: I think that Middle Earth was in a sense, as you say this world we live in, but in a different era.

T: No. .. in a different state of mind itself.

G: Have you tried in The Lord of the Rings that certain races should have certain principles, the Elves, the wisdom, the dwarves, the gift of craft and men plowing and battle, and so forth?

T: No I tried, but when you have these people in your hands, you have to make them different, is not it?. Well, of course as we all know we have only lately humanity to work with it, is only clay we've had. To all - or at least a large part of the human race - we would have great mental powers, great powers of art, by which the gap between designing and implementing the power should be shortened, and would like a long, if not indefinite period of time to learn more and do more. So the Elves are immortal in a sense, I had to use immortal, I did not say they were eternally immortal, merely that they are very long lived and likely longevity lasts as long as the habitability of the earth. The dwarves of course are quite obvious - Would not you say that in a sense reminding the Jews?. Their words are Semitic obvious, constructed to be Semitic. The Hobbits are like the rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects (In general) the small reach of their imagination - not the small reach of their courage and latent power.

G: This seems to be a major force in the book, this enormous conglomeration of names - one not lost, at least until the second reading.

T: I am delighted that I say that, because that I think a big problem. It also gives me great pleasure, a good name. Whenever I write starts with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story. Not the other way about normal.

G: Of the languages \u200b\u200byou know, what was the one he helped writing The Lord of the Rings?

T: Oh Dio ... of modern languages \u200b\u200bshould say that I have always attracted the Welsh for their style and sound more than any other, although I think the first time I saw her was in the trucks of coal, I always wanted to know what it was.

G: I think the Welsh music comes through many names you've chosen for mountains and places in general.

T: A lot. But more unusual, a potent influence on myself has been Finnish.

G: Should the book be considered an allegory?

T: No. I dislike allegory, although the smell.

G: Do you consider the decline of the world and in his book assumes the Elderly? and, Do you see a Fourth Age for the world at the moment, our world?

T: At my age, I am a class of people who have lived through one of the changing periods of history. Surely there could not be much change in seventy years.

G: There is an autumnal quality throughout The Lord of the Rings, in one case a character says the story continues, but I seem to have been thrown out of it ... however, everything is declining, fading, at least towards the end of the Third Age, each election tends to alienate some tradition. Now I think it's something like "the old order changing, producing a new place, and God keeps them in many ways" by Tennyson. Where is God in The Lord of the Rings?

T: He is mentioned once or twice.

G: Is He?

T: He, yes.

G: Are you an atheist?

T: Oh, I'm Catholic Roman! Devout Roman Catholic!

G: Do you want to be remembered through the years for his writings on philology and other matters or by The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit?

T: I do not have much choice in regard to this issue - if I am remembered at all, will be by The Lord of the Rings and accept it. It will not be as in the case of Longfellow, people will remember because he wrote Hiawatha, forgetting that he was a Professor of Modern Languages!.

Red And Black Wedding Vest

Tolkien and a phrase which leaves more than clear their Catholic faith.

"I should be grateful mainly because have been trained since he was eight years in a faith that has nurtured me and taught me all I know, and I owe this to my mother, who was always faithful to the Catholic Church and who died young due in large part to discomforts and hardships of poverty resulting from conversion. "

JRR Tolkien (Extract from letter No. 142)