The 'Ring' and the remnants of the West

Atimes | 1.13.03 | Spengler

[FreedomPoster]

Perfect! Nice!

Warrior princess bump - see rwrf's post.

[jdege]

Nope. Influenced by WWI, some. But not WWII.

[jdege]

What does this mean "the damage that Wagner had inflicted upon Western culture"??!?!

He means the anti-rational, anti-enlightenment, and anti-Western philosophy that inspired it.

You know, the anti-individualist, anti-capitalist, collectivist evil that was responsible for the deaths of 165 million people at the hands of their own governments.

Socialism, fascism, communism, anarchism, totalitarianism, etc.
That damage.

[Grig]

Interesting, but I think it really misses the mark. People are not looking at Wagner through JRRT's eyes, they are not looking at Wager at all. They ARE looking at President Bush and the war on terror through JRRT's eyes and I think these movies are have a large but untraceable political impact.

[quebecois]

I loved the Excalibur movie. That absolutely was the best Arthurian legend movie. There were actually a lot of very philosophical scenes in it. My two favorite being:

1) As Arthur is riding out for his fateful duel with the shining knight (who turns out to be Lancelot), Merlin is struggling to catch a fish by hand in a near-by stream. As Arthur rides by, Merlin grabs the fish and then falls backwards into the water as it gets away. He looks Arthur in the eye and says, "Its funny...no matter how smart you are, you always can find something greater than yourself."

2) The other is when Merlin walks into the Hall of the Round Table and looks at Lancelot (who he knows to be having an affair with Arthur's Queen), and asks "What is the most important quality in a knight?" The knights take turns saying things like "courage" and "strength". But then Merlin says "No...a knight's most important quality is truth. For without truth, everything else is a lie."

I often thought about that second lesson during the Clinton years when I heard people making lame excuses for his dishonesty by saying "the economy is going well", etc etc

[quebecois]

While I agree with some of this analysis of LOTR, I think that there is also a strong strain of anti-industrial envirnomentalism in the movie that is not healthy. The good guys are portrayed as living in harmony with nature in pastoral settings...and even the trees themselves get in on the act when they attack the tower. The bad guys, meanwhile, are shown pillaging the environment to supply their industrial, weapon-making forges.

[Alouette]

The author of this article points out a whole slew of similarities between Tolkien's LOTR and Wagner's Ring Cycle (an opera that takes three very long nights to perform). Though familiar with both, I had never before realized how similar the two works were (I mainly listen to the music and don't pay much attention to the librettos of Wagner's operas).

I read LOTR in high school, then in college I read Das Nibelungenlied for an advanced German class, and at that point I realized that both Tolkien and Wagner based their works on the same Norse epic. Wagner was a ferocious anti-Semite, Tolkien was anything but.

[BrucefromMtVernon]

T.H. White's "Once and Future King" stands out as a shining beacon in my personal library. Awesome. I saw the film "The Two Towers" (Tolkien) on New Year's Day. Again awesome, with great vistas of New Zealand where most of the movie was made. But seriously, as a FReeper I have to say that honest American men and women must take charge of their own destiny. Destiny not dust.

[Chi-townChief]

Many years ago, I checked the libretto of "The Ring of the Nibelung" out of the library and found the similarity to LOTR remarkable. In turn, I also dug up the Icelandic sagas and found the theme hasn't changed much over the centuries.
If I correctly recall the verse from the Elder Edda,
"Gunnar, no joy shall the gold bring thee,
the ring shall soon thy slayer be."

[Gelato]

A think a stronger relation may be drawn between Tolkien's ring and the mythical ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic.

That's exactly what I always thought, yet I've never heard anyone else articulate it.

Thanks for the insight.

[JZoback]

Bump

Excellent read

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Today's Date in the Shire
22  Afteryule
T.A. 3019 - The Fellowship of the Ring tarries in Lothlorien.

[Pelham]

A think a stronger relation may be drawn between Tolkien's ring and the mythical ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic.

One of Tolkien's friend's makes this connection in the book "Tolkien: A Celebration", an excellent collection of essays by people who knew Tolkien and his work.

[GOPcapitalist]

One of Tolkien's friend's makes this connection in the book "Tolkien: A Celebration", an excellent collection of essays by people who knew Tolkien and his work.

I have not read the work, but I would not be surprised. Several of Tolkien's biographers have made note of a strong augustinian philosophy in the work, which historically derives from platonism. I heard Joseph Pierce speak briefly on that subject a few months ago when he was touring with his book. Bradley Birzer also focuses heavily on it in his book, which came out a month or two ago.

[nopardons]

Not long ago ( a few weeks back ) I saw a biography on Tolkien. He, his now elderly children, and his life long friends talked about why he had written " THE HOBBIT " and ' THE LORD OF THE RINGS ". Not a single soul, especially the author, himself, claimed what you have, as to why he wrote them. The books aren't some allegory about the West beating back the barbarians, Communists, nor even some religious thing or other. It had NOTHING to do with Wagner ( though he did use some of the same themes )and was all about two things; the first of which was something to tell his children at bedtime.

JRT was a professor. He knew mythology inside out and felt that the English people had been robbed of their early myths and legends by the invading / conquering Normans and wanted to give the Brits back some sort of mythos. OTOH, Wagner took his material from the German Medeavil " DIE NIBELUNGENLIED " ( yes, I've read it ), which in turn, heavily relies on even earlier Tutonic myths and legends.

BTW, I LIKE Wagner's music, the Ring Cycle ( which I've seen many times ) and still like Beetovhen. Your overblown prose and extrapilations are your own opinion . Please don't try to make them out to be anyone else's. Oh, and the LOTR movies aren't THE cultural highlight, or whatever else you imagine, of the last decade.

[nutmeg]

BTTT

[Gelato]

One of Tolkien's friend's makes this connection in the book "Tolkien: A Celebration", an excellent collection of essays by people who knew Tolkien and his work.

Thanks. I just looked up Tolkien: A Celebration at Amazon.com. The book by Bradley Birzer looks interesting, as well, and was co-authored by Joseph Pearce.

The Platonist/Augustinian themes of the Lord of the Rings are obvious, as GOPcapitalist said. I'm just surprised more readers don't bring that up.

[.45MAN]

Thanks for the Ping good post!