A Hobbit's Guide to Stairs

[Silky Gooseness]

You can of course email to the plaza email if you wish!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

News of the footnote (as yet unwritten, let alone unvanished) reaches the intended reader!

[Silky Gooseness]

Oh no - it must be the plaza email gremlins again. I have not received anything but will ask the other admins if they can locate anything in the depths of the email. Sorry!!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

No worries. I blame myself for suggesting the cursed road of the admin plaza email. In any case, it was all foretold in the story; here is a neutral extract from the final chapter (neutral meaning, in this case, I don't see that it leaves me open to legal action; well, at least not from yourself):

With the small talk out of the way – clearly not this creature's forte – she came to the point. 'I've just come from Discord HQ. Turns out we've made a bit of a mess with the plaza emails. lol. Lail did not know what they were and has been using them to feather her nest.' An embarrassed cough. 'But from what we could piece together from the wreckage, it seems that quite a few concerned suspicious activity in the vicinity of this high chamber. Have you by any chance noticed anything unusual of late?'

I shook my head.

The Goose looked around the balcony with a slightly dubious air, fixed me with a hard stare, and finally gave a polite smile. 'Well, if you do see anything do please let us know. The admin email should be working now.'

[Silky Gooseness]

I quite enjoy your version, but the technical explanation is that we use a forwarding service to direct plaza emails to our personal emails - as the system does not like three separate people logging in from various different IP addresses around the world and has a tendency to bounce us out. Unfortunately this forwarding system isn’t infallible so we are back to manually checking the original email for a bit until we can resolve. Thank you for your patience!! Emails should be picked up now - the manual way.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Hi @Drifa, my friend helped me tweek the TOC and layout on the version of the Guide on my website - see what you think.

@Arnyn, may I humbly request that you move this thread to the Shire? And please put 'Undertowers' on the thread title.

The Guide to Stairs was composed in Undertowers in the 4th Age, and its natural home is in Undertowers. Also, while I was happy with the Guide situated on this forum of the plaza, that is no longer the case when the forum becomes a place to discuss traditional academic work, like @Ephtariat's doctoral dissertation. While this dissertation seems to have some merits, and the discussion is not without interest, the whole point of the Guide is to escape this academic literary tradition.

Thank you!

[Ephtariat]

@Hill I'm sorry if I upset you, but I can't stand readings of Tolkien in a cynical light, not even when said cynicism is softened by the idea that elegy somehow comforts. I think that Tolkien's precious precisely because he is entirely devoid of cynicism, which of course does not mean he's naive or miraculously immune to the sorrows of life, but he always looks beyond them to an unquenchable hope.

[Arnyn]

@Hill We're going to keep your request pending while the poll plays out and then move/not move it according to the results. Sorry!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Guide to Stairs - Saturday Sequel

Last May I travelled out of Undertowers and emerged into the online world of Tolkien fandom. In my pocket was a manuscript copy of the first turn of the first staircase of the Hobbit's Guide to Stairs, my mission was to introduce the Guide to the world. First port of call was the Silmarillion Writers Guild, who told me that they did not do Hobbits. So I turned to Facebook, and the first posts of the Guide garnered many likes and even the odd inane comment. And then I thought of the plaza...

Having mistaken @Drifa's reply to my initial inquiry for official admin blessing, the Guide to Stairs entered the Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza. The Guide became one thread among many. At the heart of Tolkien's celebrated essay 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' is an idea of fusion - cultural fusion. Sounds wonderful, but try living it! The good folk of the plaza may have aspired to read a Lore post with the same mindlessness ubiquitous on Fb, but their thumbs could not locate a like button, and if they attempted a vapid tone in their comments, their actual words betrayed keen and penetrating vision. The spirit of the plaza entered the Guide to Stairs!

Let me tell you, as author/translator of the Guide, the whole experience was most uncomfortable. I was discombobulated. Flustered, even. The problem was that the Guide was intended as a social media shaggy-dog story that could be carried on forever. I had not thought that it had an end. But it did, as was innocently pointed out to me - an end in the topmost chamber of the Watchtower of Cirith Ungol high on the mountain border of Mordor, and of all the places in the world that I did not wish to go, that was top of my personal list. While the plaza folk clambered over the shell of the Guide as I was revealing it on this thread, I myself could see the yolk inside slipping out of a hole on the other side of the egg.

Evidently, further research was required. So like Goldilocks I did my porridge - weary weeks imprisoned in the high chamber of a tower, only my jailor for conversation, a Dwarf with a sense of humour. I learned for myself what some plaza folk already know deep down in their dark hearts - I learned what it means to live in prison in a high chamber!

All this while, this Guide has languished. Having reached the Barrow from the Burrow and completing the first turn of the Hobbit staircase, I let it be, resolved to return to it only once I had clear in mind the end of the Guide, the concluding post.

It will likely be a long time before the Guide starts up again and the second staircase is attempted, and longer still before it reaches its great conclusion. But just for you - the plaza folks whose minds have now been woven into the Guide - I give you the hidden final chapter.



Any resemblance between this map and a Fangorn riddle about 'down' the answer of which was 'the Shire' is 100 per cent, totally, completely intentional. I have already tried to communicate this same geographical point to you all - but it was an abject failure. So with this second attempt I have smuggled the ultimate post of the Guide into the latest post in my SWG series 'Seeing Stones'. The post is titled Crossroads and, so there can be no confusion on the matter, I have titled the relevant section 'By Phial and Invocation: A Hobbit's Guide to Stairs'.

Thank you all of you for all your comments. Even those about polls are useful, albeit ultimately obscure. Some absolutely blew my mind and revealed to me why, despite everything, I love the plaza.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Er muss sozusagen die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr hinaufgestiegen ist.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was composed in part in a prisoner of war camp during WWI. Published in English in 1922, the Tractatus consists of 7 propositions, all but the last elucidated in numbered sub-propositions. Wittgenstein traces the border between sense and nonsense, which is the limit of language. Here is how the book begins:

1. The world is everything that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.

And the Tractatus concludes:

7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The catch is that the propositions between 1 and 7, the steps by which this conclusion has been reached, have been revealed to fall beyond the limits of language - strictly speaking, the argument of the book is nonsense that cannot be said.

I have long felt that Tolkien's essay 'On Fairy-story' is a related inquiry into the limits of language, only Tolkien discovered a way to proceed on arriving at the border of sense (into fantasy by the working of metaphor). In any case, Wittgenstein's image of throwing away the ladder after climbing it captures the procedure of a Hobbit who carefully reads the instructions set out in A Hobbit's Guide to Stairs.

6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I have finally managed to look through “the road goes ever on”, sharing courtesy of Chrysophylax, who suggested we look a bit more deeply at the linguistics. The essay suggests it’s in iambs, although it felt a bit more lilting to me -

A Elbereth Gilthoniel
^ - ^ ^ ^ -^ ^

^ for unstressed - for stressed

rather than

^ - ^ - ^ - ^ -

all of which is to say, it feels more lilting, than a march

But the note in the essay also gives some guidance on stressors, which are usually on the first syllable of the word (following Old English naming conventions i guess?) At any rate, it feels less a marching chant than lullaby.

Lots of parallels drawn in the words as well: the choices are clearly very deliberate. The translation uses phrases such as “on high”… “from afar”… “sundering sea” - great distance is evoked, and no sign of how to cross it: except via this hymn. Elbereth hears this hymn. Song crosses great distances, as we already know: how do Sam and Frodo find each other in the tower of Cirith Ungol? Via song. A hymn, in fact.

So what bridges a far distance: prayer?

Silky Gooseness, I am not sure if I have any good will to draw on from you. On the slim possibility that some sliver remains I venture a request. Once you have finished with your counting, any elaboration on the above would be appreciated. I think you maybe assume too much from your audience, or at least me. I have never studied Classics, nor English Lit., and I am a bit tone deaf (as I am sure you are aware). I have read this post a few times over the months, but never know what to do with what I read. Lilting lullaby? Most of the lullabies that I sing to my children are old punk songs.

May I observe without intending any offence that your memory on the last bit is slightly off? Sam and Frodo find each other with a song, but not a hymn - a Hobbit song of the Shire. But I think your intuition was right on prayer - that is what I take Sam's invocations to Elbereth to be. It seems that here in the tunnel and on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, Sam experiences (as it were) unmediated communication with Elbereth (unmediated by Stone, as with the Elves in Elostirion). His words appear to be given to him by her.

What I wished to point you to when I put the scans into your hands was that Gildor Inglorion and his company of Elves, who sing this hymn (or a version of it), are apparently returning from Elostirion where, Tolkien spells out in The Road Goes Ever On, they may have gazed upon a vision of Elbereth. I had an intuition back then that the subsequent adventures of Frodo Baggins, after hearing the hymn and receiving the blessing of Elbereth from Gildor, are a strange reflection of this vision of Elbereth in the western Elf-tower, a vision that is hidden by the author just beyond the margin of his story - from the dreams and visions of the next three nights all the way to the staircase of Cirith Ungol. Now you can read all this in the SWG posts that I penned between January and May. I turned my intuition into prose, and consequently see more clearly the image of Elbereth beyond the margin. And I get that song gives vision, and that we are stepping inside a song after the crossroads where the Ringwraith flees the sound of the Elves. But I still have a very hard time with the very idea of song. (See also this thread on Ekphrasis).

Mind. I don't presume good will. Just asking on the offchance because I would much appreciate reading you on this. Thank you.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Er muss sozusagen die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr hinaufgestiegen ist.

On reflection, this conclusion was possibly a tad hasty. Metaphors are not to be cast aside lightly, especially not this one. And what if we wish to climb down again?

[Silky Gooseness]

When you say you have a hard time with the very idea of song, what do you mean? You’re quite right about the song not being a hymn, apologies; but if a hymn is a song of praise to a greater being, perhaps it has some of the same spirit as they evoke their homeland, although it’s not reaching out to the otherworldly and divine

[Chrysophylax Dives]

When you say you have a hard time with the very idea of song, what do you mean? You’re quite right about the song not being a hymn, apologies; but if a hymn is a song of praise to a greater being, perhaps it has some of the same spirit as they evoke their homeland, although it’s not reaching out to the otherworldly and divine

Sam sings In Western Lands. I don't doubt it is all you suggest, and more. We would need to have the text of the story before us to tease out what is going on, although it obviously has to do with whatever literary magic is required for two Hobbits to (almost) hear Elbereth.

What such hearing might be like I have trouble imagining for myself, even a semblance - not even an echo of an echo. I have read your quoted post a few times, and the sum result after many months is that I now picture the hymn of the Elves with a row of witches' hats. I sense that whatever it is that I am not hearing, you can hear. One part of the problem, in addition to my lack of a musical ear, is that I resist hearing hymns because I am superstitious about some things. This is the nub. I seek a guide.

Here is a performance of Panis Angelicus in a building with a ceiling that is awesome. I can point you to visions from hidden windows in this chapel. Architecture is but a picture in 3 dimensions, and I don't have a problem with the visual dimension of what Tolkien is doing. But I have a hard time comprehending what a song like this is. I do hope you understand, Goose. It would be so nice to have a conversation.

Postscript. I came back to edit this post. Where it had got me to was a line from the Song: 'Teach me to hear mermaids singing.' And it seemed possibly this was to attempt to dance before we can run. Over the last year we appear to have tripped over each other's feet more often than not, you and I. Maybe we should practice walking first? Soon you will no longer be counting the votes all day, every day. Were you going to enter into one of those emeritus honoury plaza roles? I do hope so, and hope too that it is not a 98% asleep retirement position. And of course, I hardly need say that any such role in Lore would be a wonderful thing for everyone, my dear Goose.

PPS. I can do civility. I can do courtesy. I can do butter. Here was a little honey.

[Silky Gooseness]

I suppose I perceive of song as a reaching out - a bridging. It’s the old adage, if a tree falls unseen and unheard does it fall unheard; if a song is sung but nobody hears it, is it sung at all? I venture to say yes, because a song is sung for the singer as much as for the hearer, but a hymn is specifically sung for someone else to hear: much like prayer. Hence the likening of hymns to stairs or bridges. Does that make sense in your head as it does in mine? And yes, I do hope to remain present on plaza and continue to engage in interesting conversations :)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Thank you for that, Sil. What you say makes sense. I have a problem, I think, with singing a song of praise to an angel. This is my superstition. I am not saying it is wrong. I think I face a taboo in my head. Which is odd, given I was not brought up with any such superstitions. But that is only one side of things. I don't get all sorts of music, it is not only hymns. May I say that, despite our formal relations, which I take to be professional feud, I am happy to hear that you will soon be posting again.

Some hours later...

I suppose I perceive of song as a reaching out - a bridging. It’s the old adage, if a tree falls unseen and unheard does it fall unheard; if a song is sung but nobody hears it, is it sung at all? I venture to say yes, because a song is sung for the singer as much as for the hearer, but a hymn is specifically sung for someone else to hear: much like prayer. Hence the likening of hymns to stairs or bridges. Does that make sense in your head as it does in mine?

The thing is, it does make sense in my head, until I think about it. Then it makes less sense while seeming more interesting. I mean this in the nicest possible way, but this is not an uncommon experience on reading your posts. I suppose this is why I enjoy reading them so much.

A song is a reaching out, a bridging. And that certainly makes sense with a hymn, or any song sung to another. But the song sung for the singer that nobody else hears is not obviously a bridge. When Sam sings 'In Western Lands' he is singing to himself and not intending a bridge to another, though because Frodo hears the song becomes one. My intuition, for what it is worth, is that a song sung to nobody else is still a bridge, only an internal bridge by means of which one passes from one state to another. But this only opens up the problems in my head, because that makes song a kind of magic. That I am OK with. But if the song is already magic then singing a hymn seems like double magic, or something. I am totally at sea.

There is something bugging me in the story that I cannot put my finger on. It is to do with the fact that the image of Elbereth on the mountain in Valinor is hidden in the story and seen in the world of the story only by High Elves. But not even the Elves hear Elbereth - the Stone may serve to communicate, but only through images. However, in the story song is a bridge from Elves to Hobbits; it seems as if something of Gildor's vision in the Stone in the Elf-tower is passed on to Frodo when he hears the hymn. Possibly this 'magic' that passes something to Frodo is bound up with the fact that what Frodo hears is a hymn, which makes a bridge between themselves and Elbereth, and so a bridge between her and Frodo is made by him hearing the Elvish song? (Not at all sure about this!)

[Silky Gooseness]

Yes, perhaps a bridge isn’t quite the right companion, since song travels but one way? I shall think on it a bit more.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

No. The bridge is just the right metaphor. What is around it needs to be shifted a bit. I am very tired and not thinking clear, but that may be the right state of mind to engage on this. What I was trying to say last night about the assymetry of sound and vision is this: within Middle-earth, only the Elves can see Elbereth in Valinor - such sights are not for the likes of Hobbits. But Sam's invocations do seem to reach her and something seems to return, just below the level of hearing, like a whisper from Valinor.

The thing about the 'bridge' metaphor is that it is used by Christopher Tolkien to describe the One Ring (when it first appears in the early drafts of the story - on Weathertop). He means that the Ring is a bridge between two realms - the visible and the invisible, where the latter is the hidden realm of myth (which has its light and its dark sides). As such, the Ring as bridge perfectly complements the tower with the view. The basic idea is that to climb the tower and look on myth is OK, but try and reach out and touch it... well, while you may think you are on the way to joining the Elves you are actually on the road to wraithood (or to splatting on the ground).

I hope the above makes some sense. If it does then you may see why a bridge is the right metaphor when we are talking about hymns and prayers to Elbereth. I think the point is that this is an OK bridge, a good bridge, the only kind of bridge between the visible and the invisible that is acceptable. Something like that. As such, the hymns and invocations provide a very subtle contrast to the One Ring.

That leaves the question of what is a song sung alone. Reflecting on that one, I sense an unbridgeable chasm of disagreement.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I’d love a map, yes!

This is all wild conjecture as usual, but I do have fun drawing parallels even if only for our own amusement.

Hello Silky Gooseness, I hope you are well. I live in hope of reading your posts again on the plaza. I miss your sparkle. Here is the map. It took me a while to draw because I got caught up in time-consuming litigation. The map is a golden egg.

Reading the map requires a key, available on the plaza via Fangorn, and in the autumn in my Seeing Stones series.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

My dear Hobbits, Chubbs, Grubbs, readers and tourists all.

Here endeth Volume I of A Hobbit's Guide to Stairs. Thank you for all your contributions. We apologize for any false advertising in the early days of this thread. No, the Guide does not offer Hobbits a cheap holiday in the sun. Yes, you will slip on the treacherous stairs if you do not read between the lines. Our aim is to make Volume II, scheduled to appear next year, tourist-friendly.

In the meanwhile, the first staircase of the Guide may be read in published form here, and a few words about the aims and methods of the Guide here.

Chrysophylax Dives