Khuzdul Influences

Discussions in Middle-earth lore, language and books.
Post Reply
Loremaster of the Herd
Points: 1 555 
Posts: 955
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2020 4:18 am
Hey y'all

I don't know if I've talked about this on the Plaza directly (though I'm pretty sure I've brought it up in the discord) but I'm wrapping up my degree in Religious Studies this Spring and, after a long conversation with my advisor about religion in SFF fiction more broadly, I was wondering if anyone could help me track down a quote that I'm 80% sure exists (though if it does not, let me know!)

The gist of it is that I feel like I read at some point (in the Letters, maybe?) a passage written by Tolkien, speaking as himself, about the moment in which (sometime between publishing The Hobbit and LoTR?) he realized that there were similarities between his dwarves (scattered across the world after their mansions have one by one fallen) and the real-world Jewish diaspora. I want to say that he goes on to remark that it was in recognizing this that he began to intentionally draw inspiration from Hebrew for the structure of Khuzdul, and that link (Hebrew -> Khuzdul) is really what I'm most interested in learning more about, so if anyone has any quotes on that which aren't the thing I'm describing, also please let me know.

Thanks a ton.
Andro
In the deeps of Time, amidst the Innumerable Stars

Loremaster of the Herd
Points: 1 555 
Posts: 955
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2020 4:18 am
Also... No idea why I formatted this post like an email. Guess the habit of academia swallows us all in the end :lol:
In the deeps of Time, amidst the Innumerable Stars

Khazad Elder
Points: 3 025 
Posts: 2109
Joined: Wed Aug 05, 2020 3:32 pm
Firstly, congratulations on obtaining (in the Spring) your degree! Wonderful!

I have found this so far:

176 From a letter to Naomi Mitchison 8 December 1955
...I think poorly of the broadcast adaptations. Except for a few details I think they are not well
done, even granted the script and the legitimacy of the enterprise (which I do not grant). But they
took some trouble with the names. I thought that the Dwarf (Glóin not Gimli, but I suppose Gimli
will look like his father – apparently someone's idea of a German) was not too bad, if a bit
exaggerated. I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations,
speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue.
....
The Letters Of J.R.R. Tolkien, Page 228-229, Houghton Mifflin paperback edition 2000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khuzdul#cite_note-1
The world was fair in Durin's Day

Councillor of Imladris
Points: 455 
Posts: 97
Joined: Sun May 17, 2020 11:57 am
@Androthelm, I imagine that you're thinking of this bit from the 1964 BBC radio interview with Denys Gueroult:
Tolkien wrote:The dwarves of course are quite obviously, couldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic. Hobbits are just 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 or latent power.
Source: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Denys_Gueroult

There is another place, where Tolkien speaks about this. In a letter to Naomi Mitchison from December 1955, he says:
Tolkien wrote:I do think of the ‘Dwarves’ like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue.
Carpenter, Humphrey; Tolkien, Christopher. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (p. 229 – letter #176). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

There is an article by Renée Vink in the 2010 edition of Tolkien Studies, ““Jewish” Dwarves: Tolkien and Anti-Semitic Stereotyping”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/513824/pdf

I don't agree entirely with Renée (or other commenters on this), as I think commenters tend to forget the origin of Tolkien's Dwarves in the Old Norse mythology, where Dwarves are portrayed as greedy and avaricious. These qualities are, notably, not mentioned by Tolkien in the interview, and I think that the relation, in Tolkien's mind, was entirely and exclusively linguistic.
“The love of Faery is the love of love” J.R.R. Tolkien

Loremaster of the Herd
Points: 1 555 
Posts: 955
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2020 4:18 am
Thank you for your kind words @Drifa! It's a strange time to be finishing up but I'm glad to have gotten here.

And thanks to both you and @Troelsfo, for both tracking down the quote I think I was thinking of -- the one from Letter 176 where he almost seems to touch on diasporas.

As for the other source Troelsfo that is actually very helpful. I'm taking a course with the professor in question currently which examines several great works of Science Fiction and Fantasy in relation to biopolitics etc. to tease out the implications about humanness and semi-humanness, so the issue Vink seems to be addressing (and responding to? I'll have to track down the article mentioned in the introduction) of unconscious stereotyping / relying on traits or tropes which one might not even be fully aware of is certainly of relevance.
In the deeps of Time, amidst the Innumerable Stars

Post Reply