Tolkien, Blackwood, and the Role of Nature

[The Good Hunter]

I had a thought the other day and it’s created something of an earworm in my brain. I figured I might as well bring it here to discuss as the folx here are the most intuitive in terms of the narrative analysis and figured it would be a good way to actually post in here and get to know some of you better.

Tolkien and nature. We know that he was big (I mean, very, very, very big) on nature and its conservation and preservation. A lot of obnoxious criticism or offhanded jokes about his writing is that “he takes three pages to describe the shape of leaves in a forest” and while I’m not going to comment on that more than I already have, that did get me thinking. Why does Tolkien write so much about nature and go to such great lengths to describe it? I can think of a few reasons but one particular stands out to me as the most likely. One, he wanted to make it very clear to the reader his own love of nature and the natural world and wanted to take literary snapshots if you will of the world itself around the characters; two, active worldbuilding, or as he would have likely preferred it called ‘mythopoeia’; three, Middle-earth itself was a character and he wanted to do everything to help bring that across. From the Shire to Mordor, each landscape is different and each place is described with different words and phrases, different colors and different emphases.

It was a hollow land, surrounded by mountains and great coast-cliffs higher than the plains behind, and no river flowed thence; and there was great mere in the midst of Nevrast, with no certain shores, being encircled by wide marshes. Linaewen was the name of that mere, because of the multitude of birds that dwelt there, of such as love tall reeds and shallow pools...

-Of Beleriand and Its Realms

I think it’s clear which one I prefer. While I do think he wanted to write about nature because he loved it, I don’t think that’s entirely the reason he wrote so much description and detail about it. I wholeheartedly believe that Middle-earth is a central character in Lord of the Rings and in the wider Legendarium. He goes to such lengths to describe it because the ‘where’ question of the characters’ interactions are just as important as the ‘who’ question. Where a character is influences what they say and what they do.

Many of the mythological and folkloric inspirations Tolkien took, Norse, Finnish, Welsh, etc, also see nature and the natural world as a living thing filled with spirts specific to places and types of topography.

He’s not the only writer from that time period to write about nature and be as descriptive about it as much as he does. Another of my favorite authors, perhaps my actual favorite, Algernon Blackwood was very similar in the way he wrote about the natural world around the characters and stories he wrote.

Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.

-The Willows

While Algernon Blackwood came from a very different religious and genre background (he was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and is one of the pioneers of weird fiction) I think he too saw nature and the natural world as characters in his short stories and novellas. The above example from the Willows is only part of the opening in which he goes to great lengths to describe the Danube, to give it personification and anthropomorphization. He does so, specifically in this story because the setting is of immense importance and nature is a very active participant (antagonist) to the story.

This being my first real lore post I know it’s short on examples and quotations but my hope is that it engenders enough curiosity and understand to create a decent discussion.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Sorceress that is a good question and a good topic for discussion. I grew up in England but now live in Israel and this has triggered an unexpected source of dissatisfaction with the movies which, being all filmed in New Zealand, fail to capture that subtle shift in flora as we move into the more Mediterranean South of Middle-earth.

Before them, as they turned west, gentle slopes ran down into dim hazes far below. All about them were small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress, and other kinds unknown in the Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs.

Over the years I’ve got various bees in my bonnet about this or that element of Middle-earth, but when I return to the stories I’m invariably struck by the fact that my deepest reading pleasure arises from just these nature descriptions, which I don't really reflect on - only drink them in and enjoy them.

The only place I've really thought about what Tolkien is doing with nature is the realm of Tom Bombadil, from the Old Forest to the Barrow-downs. Everyone has their own take on Bombadil, but to me what we read in FOTR is a sequel to the poem that Tolkien published in 1934 that tells how Tom escaped Old Man Willow and captured the heart of Goldberry, the River-woman's daughter. The story in FOTR sees the hobbits wander into the place where this action happened, and what they find is that Old Man Willow is still stewing in his discontent, egged on in his malice, or so I infer, by Goldberry's mother (recall how in their dreams that night the hobbits hear not only the tapping of twigs on the window but also water spreading and seeping into the house).

I think Tolkien in this 'sequel' is drawing out the 'enchantment of a place' - just one small corner of the countryside, which has its own very particular atmosphere, and which he 'explains' in terms of a story that is, so to speak, inscribed into that place – a story that one may today enter into, without knowing the story or what is going on but nevertheless 'feeling' something very specific and unique to that location.

If you look at Middle-earth as our earth in an ancient (imaginary) past, then one of the lessons of LOTR would seem to be that the great 'Fairy' that Frodo and his companions entered - I mean Lothlórien - which itself preserved the mythical wonder of the Elder Days, passed away forever when the One Ring was destroyed; but the dance of Bombadil and Goldberry remain a natural enchantment. The final passing of the elves at the end of the Third Age did not spell the complete disenchantment of our world; there remain the myriad stories inscribed into myriad little pockets of our world, which we can still feel when we enter them albeit without quite knowing what these stories are.

[Boromir88]

Great thread idea @Jorgy Underash!

Tolkien and nature. We know that he was big (I mean, very, very, very big) on nature and its conservation and preservation. A lot of obnoxious criticism or offhanded jokes about his writing is that “he takes three pages to describe the shape of leaves in a forest” and while I’m not going to comment on that more than I already have, that did get me thinking.

I won't comment much more on this either other than to say even as a 13 year old I was drawn into Tolkien's writing and descriptions of the landscape. Because I'd say the land has a "character" of it's own. Think of all the lands Tolkien takes us through, and we don't necessarily have to know the mechanisms to how places like The Old Forest or The Dead Marshes exist, other than they do...and whatever powers are at work the land has a life and character of its own.

I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolflings or The Roots of the Mountains. (Letter#226)

While Tolkien was insistent the plot of LOTR was not an allegory for the World Wars, perhaps the landscape did. I know nothing about William Morris, so I can't comment on the reference he makes to how the Dead Marshes were influenced by Morris. That would be the larger influence, but he writes that the Dead Marshes and landscape into Mordor owe something to France's landscape after the Battle of the Somme.

It doesn't matter that we don't understand the logic to how and why the Dead Marshes exist. or how they were created, or whether it was even a power of Sauron, or he simply used the Dead Marshes to his advantage. Tolkien gives the marshes a character; The Two Towers states the Marshes have been growing: "They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping," (The Passage of the Marshes)

Why? I think it's more than being big on conservation. He gives character to his world's land to echo certain themes. The Dead Marshes, Men's fear of death and pursuit of power over deathlessness. Or the way Merry describes a battle between them and The Old Forest:

'But at night things can be most alarming, or so I am told. I have only once or twice been in here after dark, and then only near the hedge. I thought all the trees were whispering to each other, passing news and plots along in an unintelligible language; and the branches swayed and grope without any wind. They do say the trees do actually move, and can surround strangers and hem them in. In fact long ago they attacked the Hedge; they came and planted themselves right by it, and leaned over it. But the hobbits came and cut down hundreds of trees, and made a great bonfire in the Forest, and burned all the ground in a long strip east of the Hedge. After that the trees gave up the attack, but they became very unfriendly. There is still a wide bare space not far inside where the bonfire was made.' (Fellowship of the Ring: The Old Forest)

They're just trees, right? But Merry says they "whisper" "pass news and plots", "grope," "move," "surround," "attacked," and "leaned." I love the imagery of what Merry is describing here, and the end the trees gave up their attack, but "became very unfriendly." This is perhaps to echo an important theme of conservation and preservation. It's natural for tree branches to grow, but to Merry, the trees attacked the Hedge "planted themselves right by it, and leaned over it." so hobbits cut them down and created a great bonfire, then the Old Forest "gave up the attack."