Christopher Tolkien interviewed in LE MONDE

So, a few days ago (July 6th/7th), an interview with Christopher Tolkien appeared in LE MONDE, France's major newspaper. The original piece was only available for subscribers, and though it was possible to buy a single article (for a euro or so, I think), I didn't have time to try to navigate the directions,* what with being busy babysitting a six-year-old and a year-old toddler all weekend. Thanks to links posted by some good folks on the MythSoc list,** I was able to find the original (in French), which was made available for free online after the first few days:***

http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/07/05/tolkien-l-anneau-de-la-discorde_1729858_3246.html

I've been slowly working my way through this -- my college French being such that while I'm pretty good on the nouns and adjectives I'm often uncertain on the verbs (so many variants due to tense) -- and finding it of great interest. Now, thanks to another post on the MythSoc list (thanks, Jason), a pretty good translation is available. Given that interviews with C.T. are so rare -- the last I can think of is in the 1992 film documentary on JRRT's centenary (the Landseer video), rather than comment on this one I'd just like to help draw people's attention to it; I particularly liked the bit about Christopher Tolkien having no regrets at leaving academia behind.

http://sedulia.blogs.com/sedulias_translations/2012/07/was-first-felt.html

--JDR

current reading: A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS (1919) by P. G. Wodehouse

* (thinking the potential for error was high, what with them being in French)

**thanks to Vincent F, Paul W, GHC, and Romuald L.

***although this version seems to lack the reproduction of one of Tolkien's maps that apparently accompanied the original (paper version).

THE SAGA OF KING HEIDREK THE WISE

So, I was delighted last week to learn that this fall there'll be a new, fiftieth-anniversary edition of Christopher Tolkien's edition and translation of THE SAGA OF KING HEIDREK THE WISE coming out from HarperCollins.

I found out about this through the notice in the Sept. issue of BEYOND BREE, but quick confirmation and more details came via Tolkien Library:

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/953-The_Saga_of_King_Heidrek_the_Wise.php

And it was through Tolkien Library that I learned the entire text is currently available online, thanks to the generosity of The Viking Society:

http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/The%20Saga%20Of%20King%20Heidrek%20The%20Wise.pdf

I'm particularly happy about this since HEIDREK's is my favorite saga, and the first one I read (back when I had to get special dispensation from the college library to check out books there, since I was still in high school). Though it came as a bit of a shock to discover that Heidrek himself was the 'hero' of the saga only in the sense of protagonist: a kin-slayer and wife-murderer and generally dangerous and disagreeable person to be around. The most striking character for me was (and is) not Heidrek but his mother, Hervor*, who summons her own dead father from the grave to demand the family heirloom, the cursed sword Tyrfing (made by Durin & Dvalin), which had been buried with him. This scene was one of the first bits of Old Norse lore to be translated into English** at the beginning of the revival of interest in old legends and mythologies and literatures in the mid-18th century. Tolkien fans will probably be more focused on the Riddle-game, which was surely one of Tolkien's main sources for Gollum's riddle-game (along with two lays in the ELDER EDDA): one of Gollum's riddles ("no-legs") actually appears in one of the HEIDREK manuscripts. There's also the famous battle between the Goths and the Huns that ends the saga, although this occurs after Heidrek's day and in fact is set in motion by his children.

I managed to get a copy of my own a few years back to replace the photocopy of the entire book I'd made right at the start of the MR. BAGGINS project. But that took years of searching, and the generosity of friends; now others can get it just by placing an order online. Well worth it for anyone who loves a good saga (they don't get any better than this), and for anyone interested in Tolkien's sources (e.g., the riddle-game, the name Durin, the cursed sword, &c.).

And, if you like this, make sure you track down CT's essay on THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE GOTHS AND HUNS, which originally appeared in SAGA-BOOK, the journal of The Viking Society, back in 1955. It's a tour-de-force focusing on the possibility of a real historical battle underlying the one in the saga, and attempts to establish where it took place. Now if we only had the text of CT's lecture on Attila (and how differently he is portrayed by the Romans historians vs. the Germanic sources) praised by JRRT in a Feb. 21st 1958 lecture (see LETTERS p. 264); that an endnote in LETTERS quotes from it (p. 447) suggests it still survives.

--JDR


.......................
*this being a family saga, there are two Hervors in it -- Heidrek's mother and also his daughter, the latter a probable model for Eowyn who dies heroically fighting the Huns. There are also three Angantyrs; Hervor's mother (i.e., Heidrek's grandfather), the original owner of the curse sword, and Heidrek's brother, whom he kills, and Heidrek's son (Hervor the younger's brother), who succeeds him.

**v. badly, by Thomas Grey, better known for quiet fare such as "Elegy Writ in a Country Churchyard".

Christopher is Distinguished

So, a while back I was in a Borders and thumbed through a new(ish) biography of John Mortimer,* the English writer best known as the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey. As is my wont in such cases, I turned to the index and looked to see if there were any references to J. R. R. Tolkien.

To my surprise, there weren't any entries for JRRT, but there were two for Christopher. Looking them up, I found that the first, in a passage regarding Mortimer's grudge against his parents for sending him off to The Dragon School in Oxford, gave a brief description of the school's history and noted that

"John [Mortimer]'s generation, like every other, produced alumni of distinction: the historian E. P. Thompson, the writer and publisher Richard Ollard, The Times's music critic William Mann, and J. R. R. Tolkien's son Christopher" [p.19]**

The second reference comes much later in the book, when discussing how Mortimer's son Jeremy applied to Oxford:

"He was interviewed for New College by Christopher Tolkien and John Bayley, who were eager to hear all about his co-ed schooling, and awarded him an exhibition to read English" [p. 274]

--Here we see Christopher very much the Oxford don, evaluating applicants for his college; the sort of administrative work we knew he must have done but which rarely surfaces in the public record. It's easy to forget that he was well on his way to establishing himself as a distinguished Middle English and Old Norse scholar in his own right between the late fifties and mid-seventies, when he left Oxford to devote himself to editing his father's manuscripts full-time.***

So, it's nice to see Christopher getting some of the credit he deserves independently of JRRT.

--John R.


*A VOYAGE ROUND JOHN MORTIMER, by Valerie Grove [2007]

**other, more recent, alumni include Humphrey Carpenter (whose father was after all the Bishop of Oxford) and Hugh Laurie; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_School

***His translation/edition of THE SAGA OF KING HEIDREKS THE WISE is my favorite saga. He also co-edited three Canterbury Tales in school editions with Nevill Coghill, and wrote an introduction to another edition of the same saga (this latter being one of the items I picked up in May at Kalamazoo). He also wrote a wonderful essay about the Goths and Huns for the Viking Society's SAGA-BOOK, which he was able to draw on just this year for his commentary in THE LEGEND OF SIGURD & GUDRUN.