Posted on 09/16/2009 9:46:22 PM PDT by nickcarraway
LORD of the Rings author JRR Tolkien trained as a spy in the years leading up to World War II, it has emerged.
The Oxford University professor - who also wrote The Hobbit - was one of 50 intellectuals chosen by the British Government singled out to crack Nazi codes as it appeared increasingly likely Germany was preparing to declare war.
Tolkien was reknown as one of his generation's most respected linguists, and according to The Sun, was believed to have passed the training course “with flying colours”. Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
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He was offered the job at the famous Bletchley Park code-breaking centre, but for reasons unknown, turned it and its £50,000 ($94,000) salary down. The staff at Bletchley Park would later achieve fame worldwide by cracking the Enigma code and saving Britain by helping its navy intercept and destroy Hitler's U-boats.
The Daily Telegraph reports Tolkien - a professor of Anglo Saxon at Oxford University from 1925 to 1945 - visited the base for three consecutive days in March 1939.
A record of his training carries the word ''keen'' beside his name, but he refused the job and went on to complete his Lord of the Rings trilogy.
"We simply don't know why he didn't join,” a spokesman for the UK Government's spy base said.
As Tolkien says in the introduction to the Hobbit, dwarves and dwarvish are used only to refer to "the ancient people to whom Thorin Oakensheild and his companions belonged." That spelling is part of the story. It's there to give a somewhat antique look to the place. It's part of the fiction. It helps to create the mood for receiving the story.
Oh, I dunno...Haldir kinda did it for me...
Not ironic. Deliberate.
This is alluded to in the introduction to The Hobbit and fully explained in the Appendix to The Return of the King: Tolkien despised the Disneyesque rendition of dwarfs as much as he hated Shakespeare's interpretation of fairies. He took a number of small rebellious linguistic steps to separate his characters from the silly notions then in fashion.
Yes, I agree that the spelling was deliberate. If he took small steps in spelling, he made a gigantic leap in the imagination. I think I read some place that the copy editor at his publisher was always correcting his spelling, which irritated him immensely.
And everyone thinks Aragorn is the one who wins all the lady’s hearts...
I have to agree. $94k in 1940 would be worth over $1 Million in today's dollars. FDR as president only made $75,000 a year then.
FTA “We simply don’t know why he didn’t join,” a spokesman for the UK Government’s spy base said.”
I do, he had a bigger purpose and calling for his life.
Beren and Luthien wouldn’t have been able to penetrate the fastness of the Great Enemy without JRR Tolkien’s undercover work.
When did Disney come out with Snow White? 1937.
When did Tolkien write “The Hobbit”? 1932, though it was published in 1937, back then there would have been no time to rewrite it in reaction to a movie.
Rather odd sense of History you have. As a professor he made a mistake, and covered it up in his later writings. A comfortingly human reaction from a curiously human author.
OK, so what?
When did Tolkien write “The Hobbit”? 1932, though it was published in 1937, back then there would have been no time to rewrite it in reaction to a movie.
I never mentioned anything about Tolkien reacting to a movie. That was a different poster. What I did was quote from his introduction to the Hobbit. Since I didn't quote the entire passage, let me do that now:
In English the only correct plural of dwarf is dwarfs, and the adjective is dwarfish. In this story dwarves and dwarvish are used, but only when speaking of the ancient people to whom Thorin Oakenshield and his companions belonged.That spelling is essential to the story. And as for the word dwarf, my American Heritage Dictionary lists both dwarfs and dwarves as alternative plurals.
Rather odd sense of History you have. As a professor he made a mistake, and covered it up in his later writings. A comfortingly human reaction from a curiously human author.
Again, I never said anything about Tolkien reacting to a movie. But he didn't like modern fairy tales, the sort of stuff that was written in the 19th century. In those books, the authors made a change in their depiction of imaginary creatures. Elves became sweet diminutive creatures. Well, Tolkien didn't like that modern (19th century) depiction. He knew from his reading of old Anglo-Saxon and Germanic literature that elves were tall, elegant creatures, capable of goodness, possessing great power, but at the same time very dangerous to encounter. So in his tales he went back to the older sort of elves--tall, elegant, but also dangerous. It's the dwarves who are short in stature, but also stocky, and equally dangerous to encounter. And of course elves and dwarves hate each other.
Have you ever Spencer's Faerie Queene? Please don't let anyone spell it "Fairy Queen". That will spoil the poetry. C.S. Lewis recommends getting an old copy in a heavy leather binding with blackletter (gothic) type. At the very least read it in an edition with the old spellings. Those old spellings are essential to the meaning of the poem. It will help you as a reader to enter into the atmosphere of the story.
Tolkien's odd spellings are essential to the story. He would not let his editor change them for good reason. Those spellings help to create the atmosphere of an ancient past.
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