A while back my uncle, a retired professor of English and frustrated writer, made the comment that whenever he was feeling a bit down about the situation in the world today, he would pick up The Lord of the Ringsand read a bit of it. Invariably, his mood would improve.
There is something indescribably lovely about Tolkien's great masterpiece, something that goes far beyond the sum of its parts (and those parts by themselves are certainly nothing to sneeze at). It is a balm to us in these latter days with the slow death of our once great culture and creeping nihilism that attends it. Though Peter Jackson's film adaption has its share of serious faults, to be sure, I think this scene in particular did a fine job capturing a bit of that feeling of hope in times of woe.
The fact that LOTRis such a source of hope to people is one of the reasons I, and others I know, have such a visceral dislike of George "Rape Rape" Martin's Song of Ice and Fireseries, the television series it has spawned, and the fact he has been given the name "The American Tolkien." A fairly good video essay on this subject was put out by a pagan YouTuber by the handle "Apollonian Germ" a few months back.
Martin himself has talked openly about how his series is meant to subvert the tropes of a genre which arguably reached its zenith in Tolkien's works, and has directly criticized Tolkien a number of times. One of his most well-known criticisms being:
Of course, such George Lucas-tier commentary misses the point entirely. Tolkien was writing in the tradition of epic poetry, of Beowulfand the Nibelungenlied. He wasn't any more interested in exploring tax policy in his stories than the average reader is today.
The second part of this quote, the part about genocide, is, of course, closer to what Martin is really interested in, and points to his real feelings on Tolkien's oeuvre and Western civilization as a whole. That it is a fraud, and an evil fraud at that. “There can be no poetry after Auschwitz,” etc, etc.
As to why Martin feels this way is another question, and one I've been rather interested in of late. Of course, Martin grew up during the 60s and 70s. That inestimable golden period when the entire Western world was engulfed in a tsunami of rhetoric, decrying as false every value and creed it supposedly stood for.
A valuable lesson I have learned from Dr. E. Michael Jones, however, is that the political is more often than not personal in ways people don't expect.
This was proven from an unlikely source - namely the kitschy television program Finding Your Rootshosted by White House Beer Summit-attender and noble black scholar Henry Lewis Gates Jr. On that episode in which Martin appears, it was revealed that his grandmother apparently cuckolded his Italian grandfather with a member of the Learned Elders of Wye. Perhaps this might account for some of therevolutionary spiritevident in Martin's writing.
An interesting side note for those who are familiar with the Song of Ice and Fire series, is how this situation in his family history oddly parallels the background of the character of Joffrey Baratheon, the evil little mad king of the series. At one point in the episode ofFinding Your Roots, Dr. Gates shows Martin a photograph of his grandfather as a child sitting next to his great aunt. "Do you notice anything now that you know the truth?" asks Gates. While his great aunt has the dark complexion, hair and eyes typical of a southern Italian, Martin's half-gem father is obviously lighter skinned with blond hair. Life imitates art indeed.
But fie on that nasty little troll Martin. Back to my original point:The Lord of the Ringsis a blessing in our day and age.
In fact, I have started to think it goes beyond being a mere blessing and almost seems to approach the realm of being divinely inspired, so closely does it parallel issues we face in the modern, unenviable state of our civilization.
This first came to my attention when pondering the often negative effect the feedback loop of the internet has on morale within the Dissident Right. I've often wondered whether the negativity of the situation isn't deliberately exaggerated by our enemies in a way that parallels the experience of the character of Denethor with the magic black stones - the Palantiri.
In a way similar to the internet, the Palantiri allows the possessor to see vast distances and know otherwise unknowable things. At the same time, however, what you see can be influenced by anyone else who also has one of the magical stones.Ultimately, this leads to Denethor's downfall, as Sauron is able to manipulate Denethor's view of the situation using his own Palantir. Sauron makes it seem all is hopeless, causing Denethor to ultimately despair and commits suicide, burning himself on his son's funeral pyre.
A similar warning of a sort can be seen in the experiences of good characters with the evil, manipulative wizard Saruman. That character's ability to speak in a voice that seems fair and reasonable, while actually sowing discord and undermining their resolve, is eerily similar to the behavior and abilities of the charlatan Jordan Peterson. Vox Day has a good bit of commentary on this here.
The last example I have is another of Tolkien's hopeful inspirations that exist throughout his works. In one of my favorite parts of The Two Towers (the second part of The Lord of the Rings), Sam and Frodo are passing through the land of Ithilien on the way to the dread land of Mordor to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. Ithilien is a fair land, and was once part of the kingdom of Gondor, but has been conquered and corrupted by the forces of evil. As they are passing near to the once great and now fallen Gondorian capital city of Osgiliath, they come to a crossroads:
Standing there for a moment filled with dread Frodo became aware that a light was shining; he saw it glowing on Sam's face beside him. Turning towards it, he saw, beyond an arch of boughs, the road to Osgiliath running almost as straight, as a stretched ribbon down, down, into the West. There, far away, beyond sad Gondor now overwhelmed in shade, the Sun was sinking, finding at last the hem of the great slow-rolling pall of cloud, and falling in an ominous fire towards the yet unsullied Sea. The brief glow fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great kings of Argonath. The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it. It's head was gone, and it its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead. Upon its knees and mighty chair, and all about the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot-folk of Mordor used. Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king's head; it was lying rolled away by the roadside. 'Look, Sam!' he cried, startled into speech. 'Look! The king has got a crown again!'
The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.
'They cannot conquer forever!' said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell.
Whether it comes to their decapitation of our culture, or our Church, mark those words well: They cannot conquer forever.
