Thoughts on J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún”

 
This is the kind of book that most people will likely not enjoy unless they have a prior investment in it - and a love for Tolkien’s popular works will not necessarily be enough.
It does not continue the saga of his own Middle Earth mythology, nor delve into the background and writing process of that saga. The ‘essay’ that is found within it is not exactly ‘cutting edge’ criticism (which the editor, Christopher Tolkien, seems at times in the introduction to bend ov
er backwards to emphasize), and the poetry itself may lack the certain 'sparks’ that modern poetry readers are used to being engaged by. But it definitely has enough ‘sparks’ of its own, and, as Tolkien suggests,  “To hit you  in the eye was the deliberate intention of the Norse poet” (18).

But what will draw readers to appreciate and enjoy this publication? What drew me? Firstly, the introductory essay, or more accurately put, lecture (for it is based on notes from a lecture delivered by Tolkien on the Norse texts) is interesting to read quite simply because it represents Tolkien’s thoughts, criticism and even teaching style at a particular moment, now passed. Christopher Tolkien does a good job of including as much of Tolkien’s own writings as he can, even if they were quickly scrawled notes in pencil.

Secondly, the poetry itself is engaging, even if you are unfamiliar with the Norse and Southern Germanic mythologies and histories underlying it, as I largely am. Its sharp immediacy draws you into the action (and emotion) of the moment, and its strife-ridden characters demand empathy even as they incite both frustration and at times, awe. In addition to Tolkien's apparent desire to create a unified version of the legends (which have varying and contradictory accounts in the manuscript record), one of the other motives behind his own verse is also to explore and imitate the poetic structures, particularly in meter and rhythm, of this branch of Norse poetry. And for this reason, the poetry itself is to me engaging, in that it taught me to read in a different way, be guided by a different style, see a story through a different textual lens, so to speak – it felt a little choppy at first, but after about the first twenty stanzas came to feel natural, and rather than having the style be a barrier to enjoyment, it came to be one of the contributors. One other thing I found interesting was the gesturing towards Christian hope which was Tolkien’s own addition, of course. Tying the whole tragedy together is this repeated identification of Sigurd as “Odin’s hope,” the one who “deathless stands, who death hath tasted and dies no more, the serpent-slayer, seed of Odin” (63). This is purely Tolkien's invention since it isn't in the sources. It doesn’t seem to interfere with the mythology and factors more into the frame (although it is repeated in the text), and is subtle, in much the same way as Tolkien’s own Middle Earth mythology gestures in places towards a hope for mankind, but never names the Christ, exploring instead the tragedy and beauty of a world populated by gods and powers both strong and terrible, and, in the end, simultaneously subject to futility and persistent in hope.

For the reader of Tolkien’s other works, it is fascinating to see the connections between the Sigurd and Gudrún legends, and his own creative writings and the mythology he developed, to see the accidental growth of a story like the Hobbit (which really does draw on this Norse world), and to see the themes that Tolkien was clearly interested and developed further in the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings. Anyone who has read The Cihldren of Hurin or knows the tale of Turin will see definite threads tying Tolkien’s creativity with the Norse legends. Thus, this book fills out my understanding of the world of the Silmarillion, even as engages my interest in the writing process undergone in creating his mythology.

Finally, the cover is enticing (and for me, a good cover is, well, a good thing) with its wood-carvings. And each section of the text is preceding with an imprint from a series of wood-carvings detailing the Sigurd legend, from a twelfth century door from Hylestad, Norway.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book from cover to cover, including introductions, a lengthy commentary on the poems (sometimes needed to make sense of the plot!), the poetry itself, and a couple of appendices covering the origins of the legends historically and two supplementary poems written by Tolkien. Of course, I was predisposed to enjoy it.

Now that the book is done and back up on my shelf however, I must warn: it was sad.

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Thoughts on C. S. Lewis' "The Four Loves"

My long absence from this blog has been – in addition to my lack of time due to school – the result of the general purposelessness of its existence. I’m not working through a cookbook, following particular world events or assigning letter grades to animals like the panda or the musk ox. So there is nothing to drive me every week to sit down and write. I also undergo a slight existential crisis every time I push “publish.” What are the ramifications of this dispersion of my thoughts to the cyber world? What if someone reads them? Worse yet, what if no one reads them? Or, what if someone reads them but doesn’t care. Or, worse yet, what if I write them and don’t care? That, and my general perfectionism seems to surface every time I do write – I am content to chip away at a single written project rather than every week produce a neat four paragraph progression of profundity. I imagine that my writing reflects the sanctification process under which I’m going: never nearly complete, but moving in that direction. But I am determined to attempt what for me is very nearly impossible, that is, keeping a regularly updated blog; and this is partly inspired by the faithful (and interesting) blogging of my dear friend, and also by the fact that I am now done my studies and thus have the time and energy and hopefully the need for a creative outlet.

All this to say, one of the things I hope to do over the course of this summer is to read a number of books that have been sitting on my bookshelf for the past few years, and to write down a few (hopefully brief) comments about them here. And I am excited have finished the first book today, C. S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. It’s a little scary how good it felt to read through an entire book, albeit only 128 pages, in a few days, and not to have to turn around and write a term paper on it. How I enjoyed it! And for me, Lewis is always a good one to get back into since he is a good balance of readability and challenge, comfortable familiarity and thoughtful provocation.

The Four Loves

Although I have read most of Lewis’ writings, this little book had thus far eluded me. I found it at a used-bookstore a while ago and added it to my collection, but had to wait to actually pull it down from the shelf (half of it devoted to Lewis). As I mentioned above, the book is a good balance of enjoyment and intellectual provocation. You won’t find any dryads or lions bounding through the pages, but Lewis can’t escape his tendency towards story-telling, and in his elaboration on the four loves (which he divides Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity) he explores the nuances and ramifications of these loves by many a hypothetical scene or situation. Also, he is constantly referring to works of literature and quoting briefs snippets or aphorisms from these texts (but he is obviously from a different intellectual climate since references and even the speakers are rarely appended to these quotes; this is a little infuriating, although it goes the other way when the text proves familiar to me and I feel a little flattered to be on the “in” with Lewis by recognizing his reference to Julian of Norwich and the world as a hazelnut). 
His general pattern in his chapters on the first three loves is to define what he means by them, clarify what he does not mean by them including countering certain ideas about them, highlight their goodness and beauty, and explore their perversion and insufficiency. This latter part reminds me a lot of his methods in The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters, even though these are both two completely different genres; what he does is to paint the subtleties of these loves corrupted (since it is in the subtle rather than the overt evils that much of the danger lies), and allow the reader to compare them with him or herself and recognize any of our own similar tendencies. He also spends two chapters on useful preliminary stuff, including “nearness to God” and the difference between “nearness by likeness” and “nearness by approach.” This makes it a highly practical little book, because it isn’t content to point out simply the potential for human similarity with our Maker, but also the deep need to approach God, that relational and experiential and doctrinal crux. The final chapter, on Charity, could do with a bit more elaboration, which Lewis both acknowledges and dismisses by saying “And with this, where a better book would begin, mine must end” (128).  I think he could have written a bit more, and wish he had, but there are other places to glean from his insights on Charity, such as Till We Have Faces or That Hideous Strength, and of course there are other authors. The only other negative that I might mention, Lewis can hardly be faulted for. His book shows the marks of his time, and although I am by no means a feminist, there are moments where the tone (rather than the content) of his vignettes is a little uncomfortable in its depiction of women, or at least, the female stereotype. But maybe the men will feel the same way about the male stereo-typing. Still, I love Lewis and certainly cannot let that keep me from the very good, very insightful, very edifying content of his book. It is good, I think, to hold most cultural things in loose hands, while holding onto the truth doubly tightly.

One quote I appreciated for its bluntness, as it proves both funny and convicting at once, and with it I will push “publish” on my first post in a long time. But let yourself ask the question as to whether you ever approach God in the way caricatured at the end of the paragraph.

(On Christian love towards God, largely as Need-love. Lewis here points out the absurdity of trying to hide our need of God in how we relate to Him.)

But man’s love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love…. I do not say that man can never bring to God anything at all but sheer Need-love. Exalted souls may tell us of a reach beyond that. But they would also, I think, be the first to tell us that those heights would cease to be true Graces, would become Neo-Platonic or finally diabolical illusions, the moment a man dared to think that he could live on them and henceforth drop out the element of need…. It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast, “I’m no beggar. I love you disinterestedly” (Lewis 9, emphasis mine).

Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves. Great Britain: Fount Paperbacks, 1982.

The book which I have since taken off my bookshelf must, of course, belong to one of my other favourite authors. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun is up next on the reading list!

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Mutilated Frogs

There is this incredible moment in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra in which the horror of sin and evil nearly causes me to stop reading. I cringe at any rate, scrunch up my nose and close one eye so that it's harder to read the words on the page. The moment? Ransom is on Perelandra (the planet Venus), a pre-fall world, and has recently been joined by Weston, a man who we soon discover has been possessed by a demon or the devil himself with the intent of deceiving and felling the Green Lady. Not yet convinced that Weston isn't merely a mad meglomaniac, Ransom awakes, and here follows:

"Neither Weston nor the Lady was in sight, and he bagan walking in a leisruely fashion beside the sea. His bare feet sank a little into a carpet of saffron-coloured vegetation, which covered them with an aromatic dust. As he was looking down at this he suddenly noticed something else. At first he thought it was a creature of more fantastic shape than he had yet seen on Perelandra. Its shape was not only fantastic but hideous. Then he dropped on one knee to examine it. Finally he touched it, with reluctance. A moment later he drew bvack his hands like a man who has touched a snake.
It was a damaged animal. It was, or had been, one of the brightly coloured frogs. But some accident had happened to it. The whole back had been ripped open in a sort of V-shaped gash, the point of the V being a little behind the head. Something had torn a widening wound backward - as we do in opening an envelope - along the trunk and pulled it out so far behind the animal that the hoppers or hind legs had almost torn off with it. They were so damaged that the frog could not leap. On earth it would have been merely a nasty sight, but up to this moment Ransom had as yet seen nothing dead or spoiled in Perelandra, and it was like a blow in the face. It was like the first spasm of well-remembered pain warning a man who had thought he was cured that his family have deceived him and he is dying after all. It was like the first lie from the mouth of a friend on whose truth one was willing to stake a thousand pounds. It was irrevocable. The milk-wamr wind blowing over the golden sea, the blues and silvers and greens of the floating garden, the sky itself - all these had become, in one instant, merely the illuminated margin of a book whose text was the struggling little horror at his feet, and he himself, in that same instant, had passed into a state of emotion which he could neither control nor understand. He told himself that a creature of that kind probably had very little sensation. But it did not much mend matters. It was not merely pity for pain that had suddenly changed the rhythm of his heart-beats. The thing was an intolerable obscenity which afflicted him with shame. It would have been better, or so he thought at that moment, for the whole universe never to have existed than for this one thing to have happened.
Then he decided, in spite of this theoretical belief that it was an organism too low for much pain, that it had better be killed. He had neither boots nor stone nor stick. The frog proved remarkably hard to kill. When it was far too late to desist he saw clearly that he had been a fool to make the attempt. Whatever its sufferings might be he had certainly increased and not diminished them. But he had to go through with it. The job seemed to take nearly an hour. And when at last the mangle result was quite still and he went down to the water's edge to wash, he was sick and shaken. It seems odd to say this of man who had been on the Somme; but the architects tell us that nothing is great or small save by position.
At last he got up and resumed his walk. Next moment he started and looked at the ground again. He quickened his pace, and then once more stopped and looked. He stood stock-still and covered his face. He called aloud upon heaven to break the nightmare or to let him understand what was happening. A trail of mutilated frogs lay along the edge of the island. Picking his footsteps with care, he followed it. He counted ten, fifteen, twenty: and the twenty-first brought him to a place where the wood came down to the water's edge. He went into the wood and came out on the other side. There he stopped dead and stared. Weston, still clothed but without his pith helmet, was standing about thirty feet away: and as Ransom watched he was tearing a frog - quietly and almost surgically inserting his forefinger, with its long sharp nail, under the skin behind the creature's head and ripping it open. Ransom had not noticed before that Weston had such remarkable nails. Then he finished the operation, threw the bleeding ruin away, and looked up. Their eyes met."

(Lewis, C.S. Perelandra. Scribner Paperback Fiction. New York: 1996. p108 - 110)

Two brief points I would make in regards to this.

The first is the sense of sheer horror at the sight of an initially small mutilation. An abberation. A point of destruction in an as of yet, wholesom, whole and perfect line. Lewis is so skilled at writing, that the reader becomes absorbed in the world - it almost feels for those first few chapters on Perelandra that evil has been subdued even for the reader. That is, meditating upon such a surprisingly delightful and joy-filled world causes me to almost forget the injustice and sadness of ours. And this is exactly where the punch comes in. I stand shocked and horrified with Ransom when he sees that first mutilated frog. It even takes him a few minutes to decipher what it is - so accustomed has he grown to the lack of death's presence. It is a foreign thing.

And this is where for a brief instant I am able to recover the horror of evil, the ugliness of sin, the disgustingness of death. It is so easy to be de-sensitized when it is all around us. Our own sin becomes less important and offensive. "It's just a lie. Just a bad attitude. Just a grumpy word first thing in the morning." Ransom shouts at me: NO! It is a mutilation, an act of destruction that is far uglier and serious than you can ever fathom. It is as if I have taken my sharp fingernail and gouged at the soul's skin of the person I have hurt. It is as if I have arrived on the beautiful and perfect planet, expertly and lovingly crafted by the Living God, and stomped around on His frogs, twisting them into a wreck so far removed from their created form that they are barely recognizable. For a brief instant I can actually rise about the pity I feel when the reality of injustice hits me, and feel with Ransom the actual existential travesty that all evil is - from the 'smallest' cutting word to the grossest act of violence. "It was not merely pity for pain that had suddenly changed the rhythm of his heart-beats. The thing was an intolerable obscenity which afflicted him with shame. It would have been better, or so he thought at that moment, for the whole universe never to have existed than for this one thing to have happened" (109).

Taking this to a slight but still related side-note, experiencing this moment of realization of the ugliness and horror of sin (my own sin!) saves me from a pit I often fall into when thinking of injustice in the world. I can so easily start to blame God for the pain. I cry out to Him, "You can stop this! Why don't you? How dare you not? Don't you have any pity and mercy?!" If only I could see that the sheer awfulness of sin, death and mutilation is not only in the pain (thus invoking pity), but in its existence as everything in opposition to the good, holy Living God? Pity and mercy and compassion are gifts from God - unfoldings of His character! But how often I turn them against Him, as if I had more pity and compassion than He. How often I forget that even more than this pain offends the one being hurt, or myself watching, it violates the very person of God, it stomps around on His good, it claws with its fingernail at His holiness. It utterly rejects and pits itself against Him and all the joy in Him we were ever designed to experience. O may I not forget these things!

The second point I want to take from Lewis' passage is yet another feeling or sensation: that of being overwhelmed at the mutilation. Ransom goes to great lengths to kill the first mutilated frog and put it out of its misery (perhaps a foolish action), only to find - oh the sinking feeling - that a trail of mutilated frogs awaits him! This too relates. How often does the sheer thought of exposing oneself to the reality of pain, death and injustice in the world stop me from doing so. As quoted from Ever After, "I used to think that if I was to care about anything, I would have to care about everything." How can anyone of us bear that weight? How are we to expose ourself to injustice in order to engage with it, against it? Wont the extravagent weight of it all boll us over like a huge wave and crush us into tiny particles of sand?

Perhaps that is a question that cannot be answered on paper. There is good possibility that yes, the weight of it all will crush us and we will be crushed. Not ultimately, but here, on earth. Or maybe there is just as good possibility that we will share Ransom's later sentiment: "It surprised him that he could experience so extreme a terror and yet be walking and thinking - as men in war or sickness are surprised to find how much can be borne: 'it will drive us mad', 'it will kill us outright' we say; and then it happens and we find ourselves neither mad nor dead, still held to the task" (112). Maybe we will be crushed; maybe we will be sustained.

I take great hope in the fact that Lewis, the author of Ransom's world, does not leave his character alone. From the very beginning, Ransom was sent by Maleldil (...He has a different name here on earth), and in the end, he carries out what he was sent to do. How much more compassionate and gracious is the Living God: He has sent us and He will sustain us right through to the moment that He decides to bring us home. And again, how much more good and holy is the Living God: He will not let evil triumph forever, and injustice will not stomp around on His purpose for goodness and holiness to thrive - He will be seen and known. He will be glorified.

And we know that if He is glorified, all injustice will be rendered nothing.

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