An Interview
First broadcast in January 1971 on the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Now Read On...'. The interviewer was David Gerrolt.
T: ...long before I wrote The Hobbit and long before I wrote this I had constructed this world mythology.
G: So you had some sort of scheme on which it was possible to work?
T: Immense sagas, yes ... it got sucked in as The Hobbit did itself.
[realistic BBC match striking sound effect]
G: So your story really took charge.
T: [lights pipe]
G: I say took charge, I don't mean that you were completely under their spell or anything of that sort...
T: Oh no no, I don't wander about dreaming at all, it isn't an obsession in any way. You have this sensation
that at this point of A, B, C, D only A or one of them is right and you've got to wait until you see. I had maps of
course. If you're going to have a complicated story you must work to a map otherwise you can never make a map of it
afterwards. The moons I think finally were the moons and sunset worked out as they were in this part of the world
in 1942.
G: You began in '42 did you, to write it?
T: Oh no, I began as soon as The Hobbit was out - in the '30s.
G: It was finally finished just before it was published...
T: I wrote the last ... in about 1949 - I remember I actually wept at Dwimmermore. But then of course there was a
tremendous lot of revision. I typed the whole of that work out twice and lots of it many times, on a bed in an
attic. I couldn't afford the typing of course. There's some mistakes too and also it amuses me to say, as I suppose
I'm in a position where it doesn't matter what people think of me - there were some frightful mistakes in grammar,
which from a Professor of English Language and Lit are rather shocking.
G: I hadn't noticed any.
T: There was one where I used bestrode as the past participle of bestride! [laughs]
G: Do you feel any sense of guilt at all that as a philologist, as a Professor of English Language with which you
were concerned with the factual sources of language, you devoted a large part of your life to a fictional thing?
T: No. I'm sure its done the language a lot of good! There's quite a lot of linguistic wisdom in it. I don't feel
any guilt complex about The Lord of the Rings.
G: Have you a particular fondness for these comfortable homely things of life that the Shire embodies: the home
and pipe and fire and bed - the homely virtues?
T: Haven't you?
G: Haven't you Professor Tolkien?
T: Of course, yes.
G: You have a particular fondness then for Hobbits?
T: The Shire is very like the kind of world in which I first became aware
of things, which was perhaps more poignant to me as I wasn't born here, I
was born in Bloomsdale in South Africa. I was very young when I got back
but at the same time it bites into your imagination even if you don't think
it has. If your first Christmas tree is a wilting eucalyptus and if you're
normally troubled by heat and sand - then, to have just at the age when
imagination is opening out, suddenly find yourself in a quiet Warwickshire
village, I think it engenders a particular love of what you might call
central Midlands English countryside, based on good water, stones and elm
trees and small quiet rivers and so on, and of course rustic people about.
G: At what age did you come to England?
T: I was about three and a half. Pretty poignant of course because one of
the things why they say they don't remember is - it's like constantly
photographing the same thing on the same plate. Slight changes simply make
a blur. But if a child had a sudden break like that, it's conscious. What
it tries to do is fit the new memories onto the old. I've got a perfectly
clear vivid picture of a house that I now know is in fact a beautifully
worked out pastiche of my own home in Bloomsdale and my grandmother's house
in Birmingham. I can still remember going down the road in Birmingham and
wondering what had happened to the big gallery, what happened to the
balcony. Consequently I do remember things extremely well, I can remember
bathing in the Indian Ocean when I was not quite two and I remember it very
clearly.
G: Frodo accepts the burden of the Ring and he embodies as a character the
virtues of long suffering and perseverance and by his actions one might
almost say in the Buddhist sense he 'aquires merit'. He becomes in fact
almost a Christ figure. Why did you choose a halfling, a hobbit for this
role?
T: I didn't. I didn't do much choosing you see ... all I was trying to do
was carry on where The Hobbit left off. I'd got hobbits on my hands hadn't
I.
G: Indeed, but there's nothing particularly Christ-like about Bilbo.
T: No.
G: But in the face of the most appalling danger he struggles on and
continues.
T: But that seems more like an allegory of the human race. I've always been
impressed that we're here surviving because of the indomitable courage of
quite small people against impossible odds: jungles, volcanoes, wild
beasts... they struggle on, almost blindly in a way.
G: I thought conceivably Midgard might be Middle-earth or have some
connection?
T: Oh yes, they're the same word. Most people have made this mistake of
thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of Earth or is another planet of
the science fiction sort but it's just an old fashioned word for this world
we live in, as imagined surrounded by the Ocean.
G: It seemed to me that Middle-earth in a sense as you say this world we
live in but at a different era.
T: No ... at a different stage of imagination, yes.
G: Did you intend that certain races should embody certain principles: the
elves wisdom, the dwarves craftsmanship, men husbandry and battle and so
forth?
T: I didn't intend it but when you've got these people on your hands you've
got to make them different. Well of course as we all know ultimately we've
only got humanity to work with, it's only clay we've got. We should all -
or at least a great part of the human race - would like to have greater
power of mind, greater power of art by which I mean the gap between the
conception and the power of execution should be shortened, and we should
like a longer if not indefinite time in which to go on knowing more and
making more.
Therefore the Elves are immortal in a sense. I had to use immortal, I
didn't mean that they were eternally immortal, merely that they are very
longeval and their longevity probably lasts as long as the inhabitability
of the Earth.
The dwarves of course are quite obviously - wouldn't you say that in many
ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously,
constructed to be Semitic. Hobbits are just rustic English people, small in
size because it reflects (in general) the small reach of their imagination
- not the small reach of their courage or latent power.
G: This seems to be one of the great strengths of the book, this enormous
conglomeration of names - one doesn't get lost, at least after the second
reading.
T: I'm very glad you told me that because I took a great deal of trouble.
Also it gives me great pleasure. I always in writing start with a name.
Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.
G: Of the languages you know which were the greatest help to you in writing
The Lord of the Rings?
T: Oh lor ... of modern languages I should say Welsh has always attracted
me in sight and sound more than any other, ever since the first time I saw
it on coal trucks, I always wanted to know what it was about.
G: It seems to me that Welsh comes through in the names you've chosen for
mountains and places in general.
T: Very much. But a much rarer, very potent influence on myself has been
Finnish.
G: Is the book to be considered as an allegory?
T: No. I dislike allegory whenever I smell it.
G: Do you consider the world declining as the Third Age declines in your
book and do you see a Fourth Age for the world at the moment?
T: At my age I'm exactly the kind of person who has lived through one of
the most quickly changing periods known to history, surely there could
never be in seventy years so much change.
G: There's an autumnal quality throughout the whole of The Lord of the
Rings, in one case a character says the story continues but I seem to have
dropped out of it ... however everything is declining, fading, at least
towards the end of the Third Age every choice tends to the upsetting of
some tradition. Now this seems to be somewhat like Tennyson's "the old
order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfills himself in many
ways". Where is God in The Lord of the Rings?
T: He's mentioned once or twice.
G: Is he the One?...
T: The One, yes.
G: Are you atheist?
T: Oh, I'm a Roman Catholic. Devout Roman Catholic.
G: Do you wish to be remembered chiefly for your writings on philology and
other matters or by The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit?
T: I shouldn't have thought there was much choice in the matter - if I'm
remembered at all it will be by The Lord of the Rings I take it. Won't it
be rather like the case of Longfellow, people remember Longfellow wrote
Hiawatha, quite forget he was a Professor of Modern Languages!
Notes
Tolkien was actually born in Bloemfontein, South Africa in 1892.
The Hobbit was first published in 1937.
We now know from Christopher Tolkien's editing of his father's manuscripts
that for The Lord of the Rings he made up the map as he went along!
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