Fellowship & Fairydust

When I first heard that this year’s topic of the project “I read, therefore I am” is “silence”, I thought there was nothing to tell about it in relation to Tolkien. At first sight, it seems that in Tolkien’s writing silence plays no role at all, nor did it in his life. But as I started thinking about it more deeply and reflected on my previous research, I realized that silence, after all, has its place in Tolkien’s writing.

The reason why it may seem that silence had no place in his life is that Tolkien was known as a very friendly, sociable, and talkative person. He especially enjoyed talking about things he loved, such as literature and languages. By profession, he was a philologist. According to a definition, philology is a union of disciplines within the humanities—such as linguistics, literary theory and criticism, and history—all of which study the history and essence of human spiritual culture through linguistic and stylistic analysis of written texts. He was a professor of English and Anglo-Saxon, and was academically interested in and could comprehend many other living and dead languages, including Finnish, Icelandic, German, Gothic, Latin, and Greek. And you surely know that he also invented a few of his own. So basically, all his life he was concerned with words rather than silence. He was able to talk about their meaning and origin for hours. For him it was something magical, a way to rediscover the nation’s past, and his enthusiasm about languages was contagious. His students loved him because, through the analysis of words, he could help them understand the everyday life of societies in the past. One of his students, J.I.M. Stewart, remembered that he could turn the lecture room into a medieval mead hall in which he was the bard and the students were the feasting guests.

Philology also gave rise to his fiction. Tolkien said that his stories, particularly the Middle-earth Legendarium, were fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. He wrote them to provide a place where his fictional languages could be used and developed because he held the view that fictional language, in order to be believable, must be living. And just as any real language, in order to be living, there needs to be a community of people to speak it and a culture to mutually shape it. He usually came up with a word or a name and then invented a story to explain it. Such it was with the story of Earendil, the Star Voyager, which was inspired by a single line of an old, medieval poem The Christ. Or The Hobbit, the beginning sentence of which he claimed he had scribbled on a piece of blank examination paper from one of his students.

However, that may not be entirely true, because his son remembered that Tolkien used to tell his children bedtime stories about Bilbo’s adventures long before that. The Hobbit was not originally intended to be published; it was meant for telling, and later it was written down for reading aloud, just like his other stories, such as The Farmer Giles of Ham or Roverandom. Mind: Aloud! That’s another contradiction to silence. Even The Lord of the Rings is fitted for reading aloud, though maybe no longer as a children’s bedtime story. And read aloud, it was. As he was writing it, Tolkien used to read parts of it to his friends from the reading club The Inkings, including C.S. Lewis, his brother, Hugo Dyson, and few other occasional attendees. All their writings were first presented in this manner and they were each other’s first and most honest critics.

So far, everything has been speaking against the topic of silence. Middle-earth was a world built of words and for words and languages, in which words had a great, even magical power. Words could open secret gates (like that of Moria), unfulfilled oaths could bind the souls of warriors to the world after the death of their bodies (like the Oathbreakers), old curses and prophecies could kill (like the chief Nazgûl who was prophesized not to be killed by a man, and lo! he met the only woman in the battlefield). Invoking the names of the angelic beings, Valar could drive enemies away or hurt them (remember the scene at Amon Sûl when Aragorn told Frodo that the Nazgûl was more hurt by his elvish words than by his sword?). Words could heal; for example, Elrond and Aragorn had great healing power through words, and words could even give life, as you will see in the next paragraphs about the creation of the world. So sound in the form of words and languages plays a very important role in Tolkien’s stories.

Possibly, the part of Tolkien’s Legendarium where sound played the most crucial role is the story of how the world was created. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and the opening chapter of The Silmarillion is basically his artistic retelling of the Christian myth of creation. In some aspects it is similar, while in some others it, of course, differs.

One way in which Tolkien’s creation story is similar to the Biblical one is that the world was called into being by the utterance of one word: “Eä!” “Let these things be!” This exclamation resembles God’s words: “Let there be light.” In both cases the phrase “Let it happen!” was used within the creation, just with different modifications. While God has a specific order of creation, Eru meant it generally for the whole universe and all things in it. This was the only time he spoke during the whole act of creation, whereas God continued and spoke again, ordering the firmament to appear, the waters to divide, the plants to grow, stars to rise, beasts to live, and many more times, almost in every line of the first chapter of Genesis. The word “Eä” means “to be” or “let it be”. This word was later adopted by Elves as the name for the World. In this sense, its meaning is slightly altered to “It is” or “the World that Is”. Taking into account that God names Himself “HE that IS” (He identified Himself as “I AM THAT I AM” when He showed Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14) and that the whole creation, including the World, exists only because of His will and thanks to it, it can be also said that “IT IS” as He is. Because He gave a part of Himself into everything that He created, He is therefore believed to be present in everything. Metaphorically, He is within everything and everything is within Him. The same can also be said of Eä – It Is, The World that Is.

As for the differences in Tolkien’s version, the world was envisioned, its existence pre-imagined in a song started by Eru Ilúvatar, the Creator God, and complemented by the angelic beings, the Valar. This was called Ainulindalë, the Music of Ainur, hence the title of this chapter. As they sang, a vision of the world was created in their minds, and then the Valar were given the bare world (created on Eru’s command: “Eä!”) to shape according to their song and vision.

So at the beginning of the world, we have word and music and song, another element standing in opposition to silence. And it remains an important element in all of his writing. In truth, many of his stories, especially from The Silmarillion, were first composed in the form of medieval heroic poetry meant to be sung. This was the case with the stories of Túrin Turambar, or Lúthien and Beren. And you surely know that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are also interwoven with tenths of chants, songs, and poems. As for the Music of Creation, Tolkien made his Elves to believe that the echo of the Ainulindalë is still to be heard in the sound of water, and for that reason, they feel attracted and tempted by the sounds of sea and seagulls.

However, it is already here in the Ainulindalë that silence begins to play some role, even though it is not so obvious. There was Melkor, the mightiest of Valar. But unlike the others, he did not spend all his time before the creation of the world in Eru’s presence. Instead, he often wandered alone into the Void seeking the Imperishable Flame (which is an image of the Holy Spirit). Of course, the life-giving flame was not there, it was with Ilúvatar. In the Void, there was just darkness, emptiness, and silence. And in that silence, Melkor could contemplate his own power, and his jealousy and hatred grew, finally resulting in his revolt against Eru when, in the song, he started singing tunes of his own, creating disharmony. And thus he brought evil into the world.

And ever since, silence in Tolkien’s stories was associated with evil. Almost every time it occurs, it is ominous and foreshadows some peril. The silence in Mirkwood, Old Forest, and Shelob’s lair is so heavy that words seem hard to speak, as if something wanted to silence the characters. There is menacing silence after Smaug leaves the Lonely Mountain, and after the drums die away after Pippin throws a stone into the well in Mazarbul. Frodo is lost in fog and silence at the Barrow Downs, and then wakes up to find himself imprisoned in one of the barrows. The silence in Hollin and Rohan Eastemnet, which used to be alive with animal sounds, hints that there is something bad going on in the country – that it is invaded with Saruman’s spies. There are long periods of silence in the chapter “The Shadow of the Past”, which allow for reflection on the horrors of the past events and lead to the realization of the true extent of the danger. Tolkien also often employs the proverbial silence as the calmness before the storm before all the important the battles. However, there are a few occasions when silence acquires a (relatively) positive connotation.

There is a hiss when Smaug is shot and falls into the lake, then a silence that signifies the dragon’s death. Death as such is a negative thing, but since the dragon is an enemy, its death is positive for the characters and for the readers. Similarly, there is silence when the Entmoot ends, which foreshadows the Ent’s decision to destroy Isengard. The act of destroying is again in itself negative, but it is aimed at the enemy, so it is a positive act for the characters. There are also two instances when silence has a purely positive association. One is the silence that occurs between Goldberry’s songs and allows the hobbit’s mind to wander into the realm of imagination. Here the silence has a healing effect. The second positive use of silence is the Gondorian custom to stand in silence facing the West before they eat. Here the silence has the function of a prayer or a thanksgiving.

But silence becomes most apparent and plays a crucial, (relatively) positive role in Frodo’s quest. Frodo suffers terribly under the burden of the Ring. It psychically torments and tempts him. But what is remarkable is that he endures it all in silence. He doesn’t say a word about his pain; he never complains.

And here we again come to the underlying Christian inspiration of Tolkien’s work. Presumably, Tolkien fashioned his Frodo in the image of the many Christian martyrs who were willing to suffer patiently and silently for some higher good. A good example could have been Tolkien’s own mother, whom he believed to be a modern martyr. After the death of her husband, her life was hard: a widowed mother of two boys with little to no sympathy or help from her or her husband’s family, on account of her faith. They were Anglicans and Protestants who did not like her conversion to Roman Catholicism. All this, plus she also developed diabetes; but she never complained, but bore all the hardships patiently.

Frodo, too, is in fact a martyr. He suffers voluntarily for the higher good – to save Middle-Earth from evil. His silence is a sign of his contentment with his fate, the strength of his spirit, and hope that what he is doing is to the benefit of the whole world.

The power of suffering in silence is most apparent in Frodo, but he is not the only character to display heroism in this manner. Aragorn and Sam also hide their sorrows in silence, especially the ones about their lovers. Well, nearly each “good” character bears their pain in silence. The only “whiners” are Théoden, the King of Rohan, but he was soon cured by Gandalf; and Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, who lost all his hope under the influence of the Palantír.

In conclusion, two major uses of silence can be identified in Tolkien’s work: one is for foreshadowing evil events, the other one is the silent suffering which highlights a  character’s level of maturity.