“I succeeded at last in bringing the ‘Lord of the Rings’ to a successful conclusion…  I think there is a chance of it being published though it will be a massive book far too large to make any money for the publisher (let alone the author)…”

Houghton Mifflin used the above quote on a promotional poster for The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien upon its publication in 1981.  Even then, when the idea of a film trilogy wasn’t even a gleam in Peter Jackson’s eye, the thought that a book like The Lord of the Rings could never achieve commercial success was laughable.

I think it’s fair to say that The Lord of the Rings is nothing if not a labor of love, a story told from the heart that was filtered through a brilliant mind.  I’m fascinated by the leap of faith involved in any real artistic effort, and in what factors converge to bring success or failure.  It’s like trying to create life in a petri dish – the process can’t be reduced to a fixed formula.  But it’s a sign of hope in these trying times that something as richly substantive as The Lord of the Rings has achieved such widespread acclaim.

One of my favorite passages from The Lord of the Rings is an exchange between Legolas and Gimli that takes place as they walk through the streets of Minas Tirith early one morning during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. They meet Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth and exchange news, parting on a gracious note.

“That is a fair lord and a great captain of men,” said Legolas. “If Gondor has such men still in these days of fading, great must have been it glory in the days of its rising.”

“And doubtless the good stone-work is the older and was wrought in the first building,” said Gimli. “It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.”

“Yet seldom do they fail of their seed,” said Legolas. “And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli.”

“And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess,” said the Dwarf.

“To that the Elves know not the answer,” said Legolas.

For a multicultural society to work, there has to be a commonly shared understanding that there are many paths to the same truths. Read more…

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing the renowned artist John Howe for many years, through our mutual involvement with the world of J.R.R. Tolkien. Earlier this year, I had the honor of posting a guest newsletter on his web site. It was a delightful opportunity to contemplate famliar themes through a broader lens.

MAGICAL BORDERS

A handful of years ago I was immersed in work on the script for a musical stage version of The Lord of the Rings that was being developed in London’s West End. The underlying premise of the adaptation was that we would be telling the ancient stories of Middle-earth in a new way. Keeping the actions, motivations and relationships of the characters true to what was known of them from the books would give the creative freedom needed to tell the main story in a fashion that drew on the strengths of the musical theatre form.

We were having difficulty developing the character of Arwen; I was annoyed that her dialogue kept making her sound like a whiny doormat for Aragorn. I scoured The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s other writings for source material that might help to flesh her out, but I came up with little other than the fact that, as an Elvish woman who would bear children with a mortal man, she would become the agent through which seeds of magic would carry over into the Age of the Dominion of Men. That helped to fill in her back story, but it wasn’t enough to address the problem of her portrayal in the narrative.

Casting further afield, it occurred to me that tracing the roots of the phrase “the horns of Elfland” might yield up something useful about Elvish culture that could offer clues to her persona.Tolkien used the phrase towards the end of his essay “On Fairy-Stories”, referring to some key tenets of the realm of Faërie. It’s also a central motif in Lord Dunsany’s enchanting novel The King of Elfland’s Daughter. It originates in an 1847 poem by Tennyson called The Princess, and I was lucky enough to find a copy at the Berkeley Public Library. The book had been published in 1900 and hadn’t seen the light of day in many a year. I blew the dust off the cover and brought it along on my next trip to London, hoping I might find a treasure trove of lore on Elves, their habitat and customs.

To my surprise, the Lord of the Rings character who emerged from the pages was Éowyn, the warrior maid of Rohan, not Arwen. Read more…

“Stories we tell will cast their spell
Now and for always”

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF STORYTELLING, THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGES OF MUSIC AND VISUAL IMAGERY, OR THE MAGICAL ABILITY OF THEATRE TO SWEEP PEOPLE AWAY. AT A GATHERING IN LONDON FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO, DIRECTOR MATTHEW WARCHUS DESCRIBED HIS VISION OF HOW The Lord of the Rings COULD SUCCESSFULLY BE BROUGHT TO THE STAGE.

The answer lay not in a conventional formula, but rather in letting the story itself suggest, organically, how it might be done. The atmosphere in the books of an ancient world steeped in history and lore, with a vast breadth and depth of cultural traditions, suggested mystery and magic to be explored. J.R.R. Tolkien’s implication that the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings depict events from an era of European history lost in the mists of time, surviving only in an ancient manuscript handed down through the ages, offered a context for the creative freedom needed to translate the tale into a different form. The Mystery Plays of the medieval craft guilds—Biblical stories in a wide range of dramatic styles that were performed across Europe during the Middle Ages—provided a model for morally substantive narrative combined with theatrical pageantry that actively involved the audience in the imaginative experience. This would be a new version of the old stories of Middle-earth.

The basic idea would be to draw the audience into a fantastic sensory environment and emotionally engage them in the central tale of a dangerous quest undertaken by two ordinary little folk who set out to defeat an evil power that threatens their entire world. The story needed to be told without irony, befitting its epic scale and mode. The challenge would be to remain true to the spirit and essence of the books while crafting an accessible narrative that would succeed on its own terms as a piece of contemporary theatre.

For Composer and Musical Supervisor Christopher Nightingale, music was central to the tale, both literally and metaphorically. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s introduction to his imaginary universe, Middle-earth is called into being in song, and each new act of creation—of Elves, Men, Dwarves—is a new theme in a divine symphony. Evil is introduced into the world as a discordant theme that disrupts the harmony. Nightingale realized one couldn’t theatrically tell the story without music. The songs and musical styles would need to convey the unique spirit and flavor of Middle-earth’s various cultures—familiar and yet alien, not pegged to any real-world counterparts. What kinds of songs would Hobbits sing? They would naturally have an earthy folk feel to them, but melodic motifs, rhythm, instrumentation, etc., might take the ear in unexpected directions. How to reflect the timeless magic of the Elves, who live and breathe exquisite artistic expression? What kind of music would Dwarves make? What would Evil sound like? How would that differ from the sound of Evil that believed it was acting for Good? Read more…

My mother introduced me to The Lord of the Rings in the summer of 1966. She was a high school English teacher, and the recently published American paperback edition was all the rage. I was a bit intimidated because it looked like an adult novel (i.e., small print, no pictures), but we were setting out on a road trip around the United States that would take up most of the summer, and I needed good reading material for the long daily drives. It didn’t look like the kind of book that would tell a good magical story, but I was willing to give it a try.

My father joined us along the way (he didn’t have the full summer off for vacation), and my brother Bill traveled with us from Fort Campbell, Kentucky (where he was in jump school training to be an Army paratrooper) to Washington DC. By the time I started high school a year later, I was hooked on Tolkien and Bill was in the thick of fighting in Vietnam. Looking back, I think that terrors such as the Black Riders became entwined in my budding psyche with my fears about what the future held in store.

I puzzled over J.R.R. Tolkien’s entreaty on the back of the Ballantine edition of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and wondered what it meant. It read like an incantation, with his magical calligraphy and even the extra initial in his name lending an aura of mystery:

As it turned out, it was an early instance of foreshadowing. After graduating from  college (with a degree in music), I spent thirty years working with the licensing rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. In a sense, I grew to maturity numbering Hobbits, Wizards, Elves and Dwarves among my work colleagues. My resulting world view became at once immeasurably enriched and irrevocably altered.