Tolkien's Letters

 It seems that the collection of letters written by Tolkien to various family members, friends and Lord of the Rings enthusiasts that was published in 1981 was only the tip of his correspondence iceberg. Like many of his generation he was a prolific letter writer, and an expanded edition which includes hundreds of previously unseen letters is due out this month. See here. I would expect the cream of the crop to have appeared already but I don't doubt there will be treasures of wisdom in the new batch. Even in the few extracts in the linked article there are some tellings insights. For example, he talks of birthdays and says that "Very few men, but practically all women set great store by dates and anniversaries". This after one of his sons had forgotten his mother's birthday. So true!

Then, very pertinently for the present time, he writes in 1956 about the reaction in the country to the Suez crisis. He says "I am really alarmed at the hysteria in this country. It may well be a prelude to mob-rule! Half Oxford is in a kind of screaming frenzy" and then talks of "Armed “pacifism”, destroying the vehicles of innocent citizens" and "Dons yelling “fascist”, at high table, at colleagues who in mild voices venture to disagree with them". It seems the academic world was already well on the way to its present state of spiritual corruption. He sums it all up by writing the profound truth that "What a rot and stink is left by liberalism devoid of religion". This is our modern world in a nutshell though, of course, we are much more advanced than was the case in Tolkien's day. Further on in this same letter he comments that "All leftists are anti-philology" which is an interesting observation.

In 1961 he writes that "Oxford continues to suffer from the ravages of the machine-worshippers. I remember it as a little old university town nestling in the country – and it had about 55,000 inhabitants. It now has nearly 100,000 more, sprawls in every direction, and is jammed with noise and smell; and every now & again the most ­hideous buildings go up." He does praise the removal of slum dwellings on the edge of town but there is no doubt that in his mind the cons are worse than the pros.

Later on he tells us that "Orc I derived from Anglo-Saxon, a word meaning a demon, usually supposed to be derived from the Latin Orcus – Hell. But I doubt this, though the ­matter is too involved to set out here. Warg is simple. It is an old word for wolf, which also had the sense of an outlaw or hunted criminal." I have alway thought these words and many others in Tolkien's creation actually speak of what they are. His genius extended into many fields but perhaps manifested most strongly in that of language which is not surprising since language was his business. Anyway, every word and every name too in Tolkien just seems right. No other author comes close to him in this respect.