Recently wrote a short text for the French edition of Meditations on Middle-Earth.
Mercifully, the editor was willing to accept my ramblings in English and translate them, thus I survived the ordeal with the certitude that some talented translator would make sense of it all.
As the English version will certainly never be published as is, here, thought I, is the ideal opportunity to get some extra mileage out of the thing and adroitly dodge the duty of writing a News installment.
MEDITATIONS ON MIDDLE-EARTH
Middle-Earth is an intensely visual world.
The urge to provide imagery for such a world is so strong that it even placed pen and brush in Tolkien’s hands, he who himself regarded any attempt to fix the imagery with great skepticism.
The images contained within his words are exceptional for their clarity. This is not to say that Tolkien provides a wealth of reference and detail, he provides much more than that. Far from being derivative, his imagery is outside our experience. Any references, whether historical or personal, archeological or oniric, fall short of those hinted at in his stories. His descriptions, sparse and partial as they may be, are archetypal and demand to be illustrated as such.
“There came afresh a hundred thousand Orcs and a thousand Balrogs, and in the forefront came Glomund the Dragon, and Elves and Men withered before him.”
The Shaping of Middle-Earth, The Earliest Annals of Beleriand – Year 172
A THOUSAND Balrogs, a HUNDRED THOUSAND orcs, led by the greatest of dragons… One short sentence, but written with words as big as castles, as powerful as tempests. What kind of dragon ? No need for details ; « men withered before him », therefore he is the sum of our revulsion and horror, the paragon of all dragons, the archetype of the great worms of myth and myth history. Typical Tolkien, where every word is worth a thousand pictures.
Besides, it is not just fiction. All libraries should possess two copies of every book by Tolkien, one for the « Fantasy and Science Fiction : Alphabetical by Author » section and another to place on the same shelf as Beowulf, the Odyssey or the Mabinogion. I am sure illustrators would instinctively borrow the latter, as illustrating Tolkien requires that it be treated with the same respect we are taught to accord to history and mythology.
It is tempting to try to investigate, to ask enthusiasts and avid readers what it is they actually see. Alas, the images readers form in their minds are more oftne than not substractive images, more often defined by what they are not. How many times have I heard « Oh that’s not Tolkien ! » from the very people who cannot say what is. As if the mind cannot seize an image from Middle-Earth any more than we can transcribe our dreams, but can brush aside with certainty whatever does not match. Therefore illustrating such a book is a solitary journey, with none of the companionship such a trip might offer to those not burdened with brushes and paints.
The landscapes themselves are even farther beyond our experience ; their symbolical nature has refined them, stripped them of the haphazardous elements that intrude even on the most sublime of the landscapes we can hope to experience first-hand. There are no deserts on our Earth that can approach Mordor, no more than we can hope to stroll among groves of Mallorn trees. The Shire no longer exists, if indeed it ever existed, beyond the Paradise Lost of the rural paintings of the 19th century. Barad-dur is higher than stone can stand on stone. Yet, these landscapes are so much a part of our cultural heritage that we can insert our personal experiences in them seamlessly until they become one and the same, intensely personal and shared by millions.
« Illustration », though, is an apt term to describe the painting of Middle-Earth. Providing light, the act of making lustrous or clear. To shed a little clarity here and there. To not be obliged to show too much, to avoid the urge to count commas, but to choose where the light and the shadow goes. To allow the intuitive to take precedence over the encyclopaedic.
But, when it’s all said and done, it is a world beyond images. All images fall short. I should know… I’ve been doing them for 20 years.
http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2914370539
Speaking of Middle-Earth…
The Maps of Middle-Earth boxed set has appeared on amazon.co.uk
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007169701/qid=1059389964/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3_3/202-6535560-6879055
Brian Sibley, who had written the texts for al lthe other maps, has done a lovely text for the Map of Numenor, which of course you won’t be able to buy separately, thus obliging you to buy the first three maps yet again… Happily, however, the set is closer to how I would one day love to see them published: with fewer folds. (I already have enough trouble with road maps, though admittedly I do not take my Middle-Earth maps with me in the car…)
Gandalf again:
More pictures from sunny Sweden:
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Women are from Venus…
Spending a couple of weeks Home Alone, I am appalled and delighted by the ease in which I have slipped into the familiar realm of solitary male slovenliness. No, I don’t leave beer bottles and pizza boxes all over and invite drinking buddies (I’m not that fond of beer, the take-away pizza industry in Neuchâtel is not exactly a paragon of the genre, and I don’t have many friends, so my regression rather less spectacular.) First: chuck out all the exotic jams in favour of strawberry, tried and true (sorry, they got all moldy, I swear!), retrieve all my favourite t-shirts that were relegated to the cleaning rag box in the basement under threat of divorce, lawsuit and public scandal (I mean, when you’re cleaning a sword and suddenly need an extra rag, you can actually use the one you’re wearing), deciding to strip and repaint the bedroom closets at 3 in the morning (been meaning to do it for ages, and there’s nothing wrong with a “faint” odour of paint, is there?) and blundering about in the house without turning the lights on to save 0.000005 pennies on the light bill…
Women may come from Venus, Men are from Dogpatch.
Alas, my much-anticipated male chauvinist regression was short-lived when and eight-member film crew practically moved in for a week… not much time for meditations.
See you next week!
