Check out Lithium’s link above–it seems much more likely to me that Tolkien drew on the Nieblungenlied, which was also Wagner’s source. The dragon, the ring, and the re-forging of the shattered sword are in the text, they weren’t invented by Wagner. I suppose because the operas are more famous, people tend to think he pulled the plot out of thin air, instead of re-working something that had already existed for centuries.
I’ve also always thought, personally, that if there were any parallels to be drawn between LOTR and a real historical war, it would have been WWI, in which Tolkien served. This was my first thought at the end of the last episode of “Manor House” (I know, very scholarly cite) when they mentioned that the young gentlemen who went to war often took their valets with them, and returned with a very different relationship than they had left with. I thought immediately of Frodo and Sam.
As for not believing Tolkien–well, why not? He wrote the darn thing. He’s the only person who’s able to accurately answer the question of what he meant and why he wrote it. Just because you personally don’t understand how his stated reasons can possibly be so doesn’t mean they aren’t. It may mean you need a better understanding of Tolkien, and the time and place he lived. Frankly, it’s a good deal more likely he was imitating the Niebelungenlied than Wagner. As for racism, his treatment of the Men who fight for Sauron is very little different from any other fantasy or adventure epic where the bad guys are undifferentiated and Bad. Except, of course, for being more compassionate, as Priam points out.
And LOTR is definitely not an allegory. It’s crammed with symbolism, but that’s not the same thing as allegory. And just because you can make some construct fit doesn’t mean that’s what Tolkien meant–heck, you can come up with an allegorical meaning for just about anything, witness the whole Wizard of Oz thing.
Frankly, unless you can show that Tolkien said one thing in public interviews and another thing in private letters, or something similar, you have no reason beyond your own cultural prejudices to think he wasn’t telling the truth as well as he knew it.
Well, I saw her about 10 years ago at McCarter Theater in Princeton (she lived across the Delaware) and she was fine. I have a video of her doing yet another farewell concert in NY, and she was a bit shaky. I haven’t seen her die in the NY times, so she must still be around.
At McCarter she did a great job on the opera Nabucco. I have three of her CDs, but that one isn’t on any of them.
We read the entire Ring in 10th grade English, so when I discovered Anna I could really appreciate her.
I’d like someone see someone make a serious, detailed argument that LOTR is an allegory of WWII. I suspect it would collapse under its own weight in a page or two. (Stalin was good until he was corrupted by Hitler? And he was brought down…by the forces of Nature no less…before Hitler? Or is Hitler Saruman? And who’s Gollum, Robert Oppenheimer? )
Mind you, I imagine that many people out there misunderstand Tolkien when he says that LOTR is “neither allegorical nor topical” and that “the real war does not resemble the legendary one in its process or its conclusion.” They think that Tolkien is claiming that LOTR was totally uninfluenced by the events of the 30s and 40s.
But that’s not what he’s saying at all. There is, after all, a vast chasm between saying A was in some way influenced by B and saying that A is an allegory of B. It’s the difference between saying I’ve been influenced by Tolkien and saying I am Tolkien, just cleverly diguised.
Here’s one of Tolkien’s letters (#34) that the allegory fans should consider. Tolkien is trying to pitch LOTR to his publisher, and he comes right out and says:
“The darkness of the present days has had some effect on it.”
Now the allegory proponents are saying, “Aha! He admits it!” Yet the next sentence is:
“Though it is not an ‘allegory.’ (I have already had one letter from America asking for an authoritative exposition of the allegory in The Hobbt.)”
But here’s the real kicker: the letter is from 1938, before WWII had even started. How could LOTR be a proper allegory of the war before the war had even begun?
Was Tolkien influenced by WWI and WWII? Of course, and he admits it. Is LOTR an allegory of those events? Of course not. As Tolkien says in another letter (#121), “the better and more closely woven a story, the more those so minded can find allegory in it… You can make the Ring into an allegory … of all those that attempt to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power … does so work. You canot write a story about an apparently simple magical ring without that bursting in, if you really take the ring seriously…”
FWIW, my wife is a professor of music history at UCLA. Her specialty is medieval music and she’s teaching a course this spring on “medievalism” – the way that people over the centuries have interpreted and used the middle ages – that will include large sections on both Wagner and Tolkien. (As well as Walt Disney, Enya, and Monty Python … but that’s for another post … .)
She’s read the article in the New Yorker and her opinion is that it’s largely bunk. The similarities between Wagner’s and Tolkien’s Rings are primarily the result of them relying on the same body of folklore as their source material. (A body of folklore, that she points out, Tolkien knew far better than Wagner did.) While Tolkien certainly was familiar with Wagner’s Ring, there’s a large step between awareness and outright theft.
It’s a bit like a Star Trek geek raging that George Lucas stole the idea of battling space ships from Gene Roddenberry … . Star Wars isn’t intended to be a rip-off of Star Trek, or a rebuttal of it. They both are outgrowths of the same space opera tradition. The same is true of Wagner and Tolkien.
Somehow this reminds me of the guy who said he hated Hamlet because all Shakespeare did was paste together famous quotes!
Tolkien was a world-renowned scholar of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English literature long before he ever decided to write The Hobbit. In addition, he was the leader of a movement to promote study of the Old Icelandic literature – the two Eddas and the sagas – at Oxford.
To suggest that he was influenced by Wagner’s Ring Cycle is very much like suggesting that Zefirelli’s movie Romeo and Juliet must have been a direct steal from West Side Story.
Both drew on the same cycle of Old Germanic myth, treating it in quite different ways, and adapting it to their own artistic vision – in Tolkien’s case, the culmination of the series of events that started when Feanor created the Great Jewels in his own private mythology. The marriage of Aragorn and Arwen, for example, has nothing to do with Wagner’s stories, but ties off the story that began with The Get of Beren and Luthien
Was he influenced by Wagner? Probably a little – he was a cultured man familiar with classical music, after all. But it has as much to do with what he did with the story as did the Italian-Ethiopian war of his childhood, part of which was fought in Gondar. (And he freely admitted that he had never had that in mind – but when he was coining names, he might well have had that stuck in his subconscious from news reports dimly heard in childhood.)
I posted this in another thread, but I figured I might as well link it on this one as well. This link has some great information, going further into detail about what Polycarp said.
Oddly enough, I didn’t know he was close to C.S Lewis.
Quick note regarding allegations that Tolkien’s work was racist:
I can’t absolve a man I never met of racism, and I can’t say with any certainty that Tolkien didn’t share in some of the racist attitudes of his day.
However, it’s worth noting that, in correspondence with his son, Tolkien called Adolf Hitler “A ruddy little ignoramus” who had cheapened everything Tolkien loved about Nordic/Teutonic literature and mythology.
Moreover, in 1938, before England and Germany were at war, a German publisher hoping to translate “The Hobbit” asked Tolkien for proof of his “Aryan” background. Tolkien’s reply to this request was “If I am to understand that you are inquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.”
I won’t try to portray Tolkien as a saint, or even as a literary genius (I’m only a tepid fan of his work, and of the fantasy genre in general). I merely note that it won’t do to dismiss him as an unmitigated racist.
In addition to the already established fact that Tolkein and Wagner were both drawing off the same Norse/Germanic folklore I’d like to make another point that is very important.
A couple three decades ago a man named Campbell wrote a book called “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” in which he proposed that ALL hero myths share numerous common points. Not just European myths but native American myths, Chinese myths, Jewish myths and Australian Aboriginal myths. And not just ancient myths, but modern myths like ‘Casablanca’. I don’t imagine he was 100% correct, but it’s almost spooky how correct he was.
There really are almost universal traits of all great hero myths, and LOTR and Wagner’s Ring cycle are great hero myths. And so far most the examples I’ve seen of similarities can be more credibly explained by Campbell’s universal hero than by Tolkein plagiarising Wagner.
Some examples:
Campbell produced what he called that ‘failed hero’ archetype. These were characters in almost all myths that are the counterpoint for the hero. In almost all respects they are identical to the hero, except that they give into temptation and fail on their quest. 9 times out of 10 failure leads to corruption and servitude or decadence. In ‘LOTR’ this archetype is filled by Gollum for the main hero and Boromir for Aragorn. In the ‘Grapes of Wrath’ it is Connie, in the Mahabarata it Duryodhana. That Wagner also had a hero that started the quest and failed due to temptation is not particularly surprising. It doesn’t mean that Tolkein was influenced by Wagner any more than he was influenced by Steinbeck or Hindu religion.
The restoration of the hero’s home and the inability of the hero to rejoin that home due to a the wounds suffered in affecting that restoration is also a near universal trait of tragic hero myths. You see it in everything from the Christian Gospels to the Hamlet. Given that Tolkein wanted LOTR to be a Christian work I suspect that Christ played more of a part than Wagner.
The idea that the cause/goal of a quest is also a corrupting temptation not to finish that quest is universal as far as I can tell. I can’t think of a single hero myth without that feature. The Israelites, so long faithful in captivity, were constantly under threat of corruption due to the very freedom they were seeking. The Joads were forever being tempted to stop acting as a coherent family while working hard to find a place where they could be. The only truly common factor is once again, the round ring.
Again an almost universal symbol. Quests usually have two goals: a physical and a spiritual. The remade object will aid the physical if the hero personally has the ability to carry out the spiritual and it will be spiritual if the hero has the ability to carry out the physical. In medieval myths the sword is usually used because they invariably involve combat and the hero is typically pure of heart but overwhelmed by enemies. In myths that are not combat oriented the all conquering, remade object reflects something else that will aid the hero on his journey. In the Exodus it was the all conquering Law which was broken and remade because Moses could already physically reach the Promised land. In Grapes of Wrath it was the all car which was broken and remade because the car conquered all distances while the spiritual quest of family unity was already within the hero’s reach.
What Campbell called Meeting with the Goddess. Again it is near universal in hero myths. Not really appropriate to a montheistic male-oriented religion so it fails to show up in Exodus except as God’s infinitely loving nature. However this does show up in The Illiad as Circe, in Arthurian Legend as The Lady Of the Lake and so on. In later stories the Goddess is replaced by more mundane but equally perfect romantic figures.
Again this is almost universal. Sometimes it is the hero’s bloodline, sometimes it is the hero himself who hides in the wilderness and husbands his strength, but the concept is widespread if not universal. Jesus and Moses were both hidden as children so they could evade their enemies until they were powerful enough. Tom and Preacher both hid in the wilderness to avoid the sheriff.
The wise old man is Campbell’s mentor archetype. That is truly universal, from Moses’ Aaron to Jesus’ John the Baptist to Tom Joad’s Preacher, all heroes have an elderly spiritual mentor who comes and goes at will.
The staff as symbol of power is not mentioned by Campbell AFAIK, but it is ancient. Aaron had a staff that was more than a staff too, as did the Egyptian magicians. All the biblical prophets carried staves.
Sorry for such a longwinded post, but I am trying to highlight a simple solution. The unique similarities between Tolkein and Wagner really can be summed up as “the Rings were both round”. Any other similarities were similarities that are common to all or most heroic epics. Many movies, including ‘Star Wars’ and ‘X-men 2’ have been deliberately written according to Campbell’s ‘formula. All the similarities pointed out so far are also found in those two movies. The only difference is that they don’t involve rings.
In short I believe people are seeing similarities between Wagner and Tolken only because they are ignoring those similarities within almost every other work of heroic fiction. If someone can show me a similarity that doesn’t also appear in Star Wars or X2 and that doesn’t hinge on ubiquitous medieval icons like goblins and knights then I might believe Tolkein borrowed form Wagner. So far all I’m seeing is that Tolkein borrowed form 10, 000 years of literary tradition, probably subconsciously
I think you are mistaken. Listen to the audio file I provided in my first link above. Tolkien was christian (Anglican I believe), but he decidedly left much of the religious stuff out of LOTR. Two biographers of Tolkeins discuss this in depth on that audio file.
As for the points you are trying to debunk in my other post… You keep saying they are universal, care to provide some evidence of those claims?
Personally I believe Wagner had as much influence on following works as Tolkien had, and that he indeed had some influence on Tolkien.
Of course, if I had a career in writing established, and one of my major works was similar to, say Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles, which has influenced me, somebody in the future, analyzing my works could very well give a detailed (with no supporting links or examples of univeral use) accound of how I got my influences not from Zelazny, but from the same sources. Just because it sounds nice, doesn’t make it true.
Why, round rings are universal, therefore they are not similar. At least according to your logic above. By george, if a ring being cursed cannot be a similarity because it is used in other works, then them being round cannot be a similarity because other works have round rings too.
I mean, Wagner obviously got his influence from these universal sources, and Tolkien never read, nor watched a Wanger opera and never was influenced, inspired, or in any way whatsoever borrowed any ideas from Wagner. They were never Wagners ideas anyhow, right? They were in universal use.
Except if you had a long, previous career of studying those same sources, and had said several times that Zelazny wasn’t an influence, there would be no reason to disbelieve you.
It’s not just that it sounds nice to say Tolkien got things from the same sources–it’s that the man’s whole career involved reading and analyzing those common sources. As a previous poster pointed out, he not only was aware of Wagner’s sources, but in fact there’s very little doubt he knew them a good deal better than Wagner did. On the other hand, what evidence is there that he knew Wagner by more than what most educated people do?
You’d only have the evidence on your side if you could produce, say, a statement from a family member that Tolkien owned recordings of the operas and listened to them a lot, or that he’d gone to Bayreuth, or whatever. Just being aware of it doesn’t work, especially when you know that he was intimately acquainted with other sources. Given his academic career, those other sources are a lot more likely.
I never at any point said “a ring being cursed cannot be a similarity because it is used in other works”. Not even close, so please don’t put words in my mouth.
You miss the whole point, which I kind of hoped I had made. The point is not that various objects are universal in reality and so can be discounted. The point is that various devices are universal in all hero myths. While round rings, flying birds and flowing rivers are universal in the real world they are not universal in hero myths. Many hero myths do not feature birds, rings or rivers. Therefore we can rightly say that the presence of a ring, or a bird or a river is a unique common feature between two stories. More specifically in this case the ring as the cause of a quest is the unique common feature.
Once we remove that one unique common feature however all the rest vanish. The cursed part is not unique. Corrupting quest causes is universal. We have “a ring being cursed" as a unique similarity only because of the presence of the round ring as quest origin in both stories. If we replace ‘a ring’ with the identifier “quest origin’ then the similarities cease to be unique and become ubiquitous. A ‘quest origin’ being cursed cannot be a unique similarity because it is used in other works. If we back-translate and replace ‘quest origin’ with “The Force” or “Mutant Powers” or “freedom to worship” then all those similarities become common to ‘X2’, ‘Exodus’ and ‘Star Wars’ as well as all other hero myths and therefore cannot be unique. The use of Mutant Powers corrupts Pyro as surely as The Force corrupts Anakin, as surely as freedom to worship corrupts the Israelites and as surely as the Ring corrupts Loki or Gollum.
So no, I don’t believe those were Wagner’s ideas, with the possible exception of the round ring as the cause of the quest. I believe that for the simple reason that the ideas show up in ‘The Exodus’ and in ‘The Mahabarata’ so they cannot be Wagner’s ideas. If you wish to argue that Tolkein was influenced by Wagner because he utilised the corrupting quest-source or the re-forged talisman then you are going to have to explain why he couldn’t have been influenced by ‘The Exodus’ or Steinbeck and taken those ideas from there.
In reality we know that those ideas are universal to human myth. Aborigines used those ideas, as did Iroquois. They didn’t borrow off each other as far as anthropologists can tell. Those seem to be deep-rooted psychological motifs. You have given us no reason to believe that Tolkein was doing anything other utilising the same motifs that all humans recognise right around the world.
With the exception of the round ring as the quest origin there are no similarities unique to Wagner and Tolkein’s myths. That was my point. Not that there are no similarities unique to Tolkein and Wagner that don’t occur in the real world. The point is that there are no similarities unique to those stories that aren’t found in most other stories. The similarities are universal story devices.
Of course Tolkein left a lot of religious stuff out of LOTR. That doesn’t in any way detract from the fact that he intended it to be a Christian work with Christian influence. His letters make this quite clear.
Since Tolkein himself admits Christian influence on the work it would take a lot of moxie to deny that the hero who saves the kingdom at the cost of his own life is not the result of Christian influence and is instead due to the influence of Wagner or Shakespeare.
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