Meditations on "The Monsters and the Critics" by J. R. R. Tolkien

I've just read Tolkien's famous lecture/essay on Beowulf, "The Monsters and the Critics." In it he takes certain literary critics to task for their assertions that Beowulf's author eschewed the lofty in favor of the trivial by placing the monsters – Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon – at the center of the poem.

It is a beautiful, beautiful essay that, apart from scoring an absolute bull's eye (and applying the zinger: I have, of course read The Beowulf, as have most [but not all] of those who have criticized it), also weighs in on the power of myth and the importance of looking at art as art. It also demonstrates how we can gain perspective through a thoughtful examination of historical context.

Near and dear to my heart, and at the heart of his argument, Tolkien staunchly defends the northern
mythological imagination. This is a balm to my soul! I show great restraint by not simply retyping the whole thing right here!

Though scarcely a child of the internet age, I wanted so much, as I read the essay, to send Dr. Tolkien an email, or tweet to him in sincere appreciation and in solidarity; but Tolkien, of course, was, as he himself said of Beowulf, a man, and that…is sufficient tragedy: man falls prey to death and then he is lost…! How fortunate that his words may live on, so that one may meditate upon them, as below.

A person alive and a person dead exist at the same time 

Like Tolkien, I believe strongly in the significance of myth.

Myth does not unfold in an "historical" time, but rather in an imagined time. However, as Tolkien says, it is at its best when it is presented…as incarnate in the world of history and geography…

I would add that, in myth, meanings bleed to the surface of the ordinary, so that this bloodiness, this
contact with the juice that (normally) flows invisibly within, becomes ordinary.

In my novel The Bear Wife, bones - skeletal remains emptied of a person's soul - are inhabited,
pregnant, in a sense, with significance. (He who in those days said and who heard…[the kenning] ban-hus 'bone-house'…thought of the soul shut in the body, as the frail body itself is trammelled in armour, or as a bird in a narrow cage, or steam pent in a cauldron. There it seethed and struggled in the wylmas, the boiling surges beloved of the old poets, until its passion was released and it fled away on ellor-si∂, a journey to other places 'which none can report with truth, not lords in their halls nor mighty men beneath the sky.')

In this mythological way of thinking, a thing is both what it is, and what it is not. Or maybe what it is, and what it once was, both at the same imagined time.

In this way of thinking, a person alive and a person dead exist at the same time, in balance, as Tolkien describes the two halves of the Anglo-Saxon line of verse, halves that balance and build upon each other, "more like masonry than music."

In this way of thinking there is the sense of a building, a structure, "a tough builder's work of true stone," rather than a sense of moving forward, or of narrative. But I don't think – and I don't think Tolkien thought either – that this 'structure' represented a state of repose. Far from it; the balance,
in fact, was an uneasy one.

In The Well and the Tree Paul Bauschatz discusses the lack of a future tense in Germanic languages. There are only the past and the present, two conditions, and the future is called necessity.

Some say the future is now. Perhaps, essentially, necessity is the now, the only weapon we may wield against the monster, a stonemason's tool in the delicate balance between life and death.


Quotes are from "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" and "On Translating Beowulf", both from The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984.

I also refer to The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture by Paul C.
Bauschatz. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1982.

Please, gex youz acx xogexhez, Bew Yozk Ximes!

What
if I wrote an article about The New York
Times and decided to leave out the letters n, r and t and substitute some other letters in their places? It might
become the Few Yolk Limes. Or the Bew Yozk Ximes. Ix would be absuzd,
righx?

I
just read "Pommes de Terroir," a short article about the specialty potato industry in Sweden, in Sunday's New
York Times travel magazine. And would you believe it? The writer and
editors completely disregarded three letters of the Swedish alphabet!

They
just weren't there at all.

 

It's Spelled That Way for a
Reason

The
travel writer, Abby Aguirre, went to Skåne, one of Sweden's southern provinces,
and visited the municipality of Båstad. Båstad, because of the å in the first syllable, is pronounced almost like "BOO-stah." It's not spelled Bastad, as the Times would have it; Bastad
sounds more like a snooty British rendering of bastard.

According
to Båstad's website, there are different theories for how the town got its name.
Like many place names, it could derive from an early resident's name. Båstad
could be a shortened version Bootho's-sted (the place where Bootho lives). Or
perhaps Bodo's-sted. Both are
regional names going back at least to the ninth century; we know of them
because they appeared in a French chronicle identifying Norman/Viking men with
origins in Skåne. Another possibility is that the name is a shortened version
of båtställe (båt being the word for boat),
probably meaning some sort of boat passage or landing.

But in either case you can see how keeping the å rather
than an a in the first syllable of Båstad is absolutely key; spelled with
an a it has a completely different
pronunciation, one that would not link it to either of its possible origins. Thus,
one could say that changing the å to a not only sounds like a nasty insult,
but also robs the town of a bit of its meaning and history.

 

A rose by any other name...would be something else entirely

Continuing
on through the Times piece, the sjö in Rammsjö is a word that means sea
or lake. Sjo is meaningless and I'm
pretty sure it's unpronounceable as well.  

Also, a trädgård is a garden. It is composed of
the elements träd (tree) and gård (yard).  Tradgard means nothing in Swedish. (In English it might be
the name of some product advertised on late-night television, designed to
protect your trad, whatever that is.)

Väderö is an island, indicated by
the final element ö, the word for island. The first element, väder, means weather. Vader means
nothing (unless we're talking about Darth).

Moreover, the
name of the Cape on which the potatoes in question grow is, as it says on the sign
pictured on page 107 of the magazine, Bjäre,
not Bjare. Also, I believe the vodka
is named after Börje Karlsson, not Borje, and the potato dealer's name is Göran not Goran. (Not only does ö
sound completely different than o,
but it also renders the g soft and
thus is essential for intelligibility. I ask you: would Jennifer want you to call her Gonnifer?)

Finally,
there's no such thing as farsk
potatoes. They are färsk: fresh.

 

A language resonates with
the history, the logic and the character of its people

I mention
all of this not to be picky, and not to try to seem cooler-than-thou because I
know a little Swedish. I bring it up because I think it really matters.  

I mean, come on! Man up, people!

They
may inconvenience your typesetter, but the three letters å, ä and ö comprise nearly 10% of the Swedish
alphabet. Ignoring them demonstrates a profound lack of respect for the Swedish
language and for language in general. I mean, did the folks who standardized
Swedish just go on a drinking binge one day and randomly decide to place dots
over some of their vowels just for the heck of it? Well...maybe.

But seriously, however it happened, the fact is that Swedish has 29 letters. They are all
necessary to differentiate the sounds of the language. A is different than å or ä. O
is different than ö.  They look different, they sound
different and they have different effects on the consonants that surround them.
And the spelling of a word speaks to the word's composition, its meaning
and its origin.

 

What is a travel magazine
for, anyway?

Is
it ignorance, laziness, or does the New
York Times just not care about getting it right? Maybe it's just taking advantage of the good-naturedness of Swedes, of their willingness to extend themselves to understand us, even when we don't reciprocate. But in this global age, no one
– certainly not a publication that considers itself to be relevant to
people traveling overseas - can afford to display this sort of ignorance and disrespect.

Getting
the names right is an important part of showing respect and highlighting the
beauty and uniqueness of a place and a people. That, after all, is what a
travel magazine should be for.

What this fan wants to see...

 

I want to see smiles from these guys!

What does this fan want to see from her dear but beleaguered team, the Washington Capitals? Well, of course, I'd like to see them bring the Stanley Cup home to DC. (Yes, HOME!)

But the Cup is, for all its mystical pull, one of those rewards that we work for but whose actual meaning is in the hurdles we must clear to win it: we must constantly hone our skills, practice, prepare, and endure physical and mental sacrifice and hardship. The Cup is what it is because of what it demands: dogged, persistent play on every shift, tons of courage and spirit, plus a grand dose of favor from the hockey gods. You can strive your entire life for a reward such as this, and never win it. Many never do. But they can hold their heads high because of the striving. 

I want to see the Caps play hard, give up nothing easy, and, if they do, come back immediately, with a vengeance.

Last spring, swept by Tampa Bay, they looked like deer in the headlights. This season, it seems, they have been in the process of transitioning into the kind of team that won't go down easily. Who knows whether they've accomplished the full transition? No one. But the playoffs - a heightened version of hockey reality - will surely hold the answer. Maybe, just maybe, the playoffs will be the anvil on which the new Caps are finally, fully, forged. 

That's what this fan wants to see.

Painting by letters, or writing through an artist's lens

One of my current projects is to find an agent to represent The Bear Wife, and to represent me as a writer.  Out of the seemingly kajillions of literary agents out there I must find someone who represents books that are in some way similar to mine, and who, therefore, might know where to go to sell it.  

To this end I've been spending hours on agents', authors' and book-selling websites reading about novels. The upside of this is that I've discovered some books that I otherwise wouldn't have (given that my recent reading has revolved around hockey and western Canadian native history).

Two of these books, The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight by Gina Ochsner and The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni, have become special favorites of mine. As it turns out they are represented by the same agent. So she must really like them both, too. The interesting thing is how very different they are from each other.

I was wondering to myself, how can I describe how they differ? It's true that their settings and characters have nothing in common, but that doesn't really explain it. Ochsner and Bognanni could quite possibly swap out setting and character, so that each writes a story using the other's characters and setting, and still come up with completely different results. As if you asked Rembrandt and Kandinsky to draw pictures of the same horse.

If I wanted to liken their styles to visual artists, it's an easy call for Ochsner: Chagall, no doubt. The title Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight doesn't lie, folks. It is Chagall, through and through. Brilliant color. Floating clouds, bottles of liquor, worn-in work-boots and souls. Dreams and passions and all the music of life are unmoored from the bleak, painful realities of post-Soviet Russia which, quite literally, sink away. Ochsner's lens is perfect because it adds another layer of authenticity to her story.

The House of Tomorrow is more difficult to pin down. It is not particularly "painterly"; the "brushstrokes" are invisible compared to Ochsner's in the Russian Dreambook. Bognanni's characters, filtered through the consciousness of his protagonist, Sebastian, are necessarily drawn with some distortion, but subtly so,lovingly, and with great respect, even as they are dishing out lines like, "you sound like a big limp wang every time you open your mouth." Lines that (from my perspective as a nowadays mother-of-two who once did her time with a high-school rock band) sound simultaneously hilarious,obnoxious and poignant. Lines that function as comic relief even as they sing with meaning. Lines that, rather than a painting, evoke a graphic novel, where utterances vibrate into images, the expressionist hatches from the shell of adolescent cool.

I'm thrilled by how differently these two authors perceive the realities of their fictional landscapes and people-scapes, what they choose to emphasize or exaggerate or ignore, each within an aesthetic of operatic intensity. And as I think about it now, I wonder if each author's choice of lens wasn't inevitable, given the story they were trying to tell.

 

I may be a hockey fan but my son's really into basketball. The NBA lockout was a real hardship for him, but ultimately, of course, he got the best Christmas present ever:  the beginning of a brand new NBA season. My first reaction was incredulous. The season starts with a bunch of games on Christmas?  Those poor guys! Shouldn't they be home celebrating or relaxing with their families?  Not to mention the NFL guys who have to play on the holiday!  And all those college bowl games on New Year's Day!  Those guys don't even get paid!

But as part of my research for my next book, I was just reading a couple of articles that made me revisit and perhaps revise my outrage.  They are from a collection titled "Winter Sports in the West."  (The west of Canada, that is.)  

The first, "Sports and Leisure in the Nineteenth Century Fur Trade," by Greg Thomas, reminds us that holidays, and in particular, Christmas and New Years and the week in between, were perfect for games and sports, mainly because so many people (read: men) didn't have to work on those days.

On Hudson Bay Company fur trade posts in the 18th and 19th centuries, the game of choice was "football," which at the time was probably some combination of what we now know as rugby and  non-American (un-American?) football, i.e. soccer.  Thomas says that "mention is made of playing football as early as New Year's Day 1734 at a Prince of Wales Fort at Churchill, and the games remained a frequent part of the Christmas-New Year's holiday season at the Hudson Bay Company bayside posts throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries." From there the tradition spread to other HBC posts. Competition was keen, because the winners were often awarded with large quantities of liquor.  ("Here we go!")

A Christmas Day game at York Factory in 1823 was apparently "not kept up with much spirit probably from the severity of the weather [gee, at York Factory - on the balmy shores of Hudson Bay! - on December 25th?  ya think?] combined with a previous too free use of the bottle."

Thomas states that "the contests also may have acted as a useful safety-valve for social tensions" between the "gentlemen" who ran the posts and the company servants. In other words, the games, like other holiday traditions such as wassailing, were one of the only times when those of a lower station could gain the upper hand.

 

Watch night for the Caps

Twenty-four hours ago I had no idea that Bruce Boudreau, Washington Capitals head coach, had been fired. It had been an unusual morning for me; I hadn't checked email or twitter or even listened to the radio.

I arrived at Kettler Capitals Iceplex just before 11:00 for the public skate. I hadn't been on the ice for a week and was really looking forward to a good workout, in spite of a sore foot. To my dismay the parking lot at the top of the garage was very crowded. The Caps' cars were there, of course - they would start a homestand Tuesday after a couple of humiliating losses over the weekend - but their assorted sports cars and SUVs don't fill the lot. As I circulated looking for a spot I imagined that the rink would be, as it was last week, full of children on school holiday, streaking around recklessly and impulsively, adding a dash of je ne sais quoi to my morning.

Anyhow, I had to drive partway back down into the garage to get a spot, which is pretty unusual. When I walked into the building there was a definite buzz, but I averted my eyes from the Caps' rink. All I wanted was to skate; after a long holiday weekend of distractions (albeit pleasant ones), I wouldn't be deterred.

I exchanged pleasantries with the skate guard, but my regular rink buddies weren't there, so I didn't talk with anyone else. I just got onto the ice as quickly as I could. About 15 or so minutes in, a large group of very nice looking young men in suit jackets came in through the mall entrance and circled around to the locker room area. Turns out they were the St. Louis Blues, in town early for their game tomorrow against the Caps, and scheduled to practice in the public rink at 1:00. Maybe they were the cause of that extra buzz?  

The rink became more crowded and my sore foot got tired. I decided to pack it in, but since I'd only been on the ice for about 35 minutes I thought I'd go across the lobby and check on my boys. Immediately I realized that something was up. The bleachers and the balcony and the standing room all around the Caps' rink were totally jammed with people. (The Post this morning said that there were "more than 100" - yup, way more than 100, I would say.) Normally there are quite a few folks at Caps practices, but never this many, except when the schools are closed  - and then it's a majority-kid crowd. Today was different. The spectators were adults, intense and expectant. They sat in pairs or small groups, greeting friends as they came in, talking about how they found out, or what plans they had changed in order to attend this impromptu gathering. There was a real community feeling, almost like a town meeting, and a feeling of expectation. A camera man was making his way up the bleachers, filming interviews with some of the fans. Overhearing one of these interviews - of which the main topic was Dale Hunter - I finally realized what had happened.

The oddest thing was that, even though it should have been the middle of their practice session, there were no players on the ice, only piles of pucks.  Clearly the thing to do was to join the wait, and so I did.

Finally Alex Ovechkin led his team onto the ice, and the crowd broke into cheers. Even louder, more sustained cheering and applause, though, were reserved for the entrance of Dale Hunter, a very popular player and captain of the Capitals in the late '80s and '90s, named to the be new head coach. 

Practice commenced. It actually looked fun. I saw a tweet by a Baltimore news outlet saying that it was intense, that guys were trying to impress the new coach, and I'd be worried if that wasn't true. But I saw some smiles on the ice, and that gave me heart.

As a fan, you want to see your team work hard, but you want them to have some fun with it. Otherwise, how can you have fun? All of these guys worked to get where they are today, and they know they have to work now, to pull themselves out of this latest round of misery. Under these circumstances, it should feel good to get to work; they should be smiling. That is the hockey credo so oft repeated: work hard and you'll be rewarded. And if somehow a renewed joy in work - brought in by a former player who was known for his hard work - can bring some lightheartedness to what was once a thrilling team full of swagger, but has lately been a lost, dazed-looking group, there should be a snowball effect.  Let's hope.

When I left the building I stopped to take off my jacket - even on a late November day it was much warmer outside than in. As I dropped my skate bag on a concrete planter and fished around for my car keys, I became aware of a man standing to my right, speaking loudly into a cellphone. Joe Beninati! Caps commentator extraordinaire! I didn't want to eavesdrop, but I couldn't help but overhear. He said something to this effect: (and I apologize for quasi-quoting without permission this verbal gem from a man who is known for them) ...When I came here this morning, part of me felt like I was going to a funeral, and part of me felt like I was going to a birthday.  For Dale Hunter, it's a birthday...  

I'm sure that Bruce Boudreau tried his best, and no one can deny that the Caps had a lot of success during his tenure, but it's time to bring in the new. As the fans at Kettler demonstrated yesterday, holding a sort of vigil for their team at what was effectively a "watch night" - a time of great vulnerability but also of promise and renewal - the Team is bigger than any one person. Though owned by Ted Leonsis, it is really a collective property, fed by the endless stream of words and ideas, blogs and tweets, agony and ecstasy and (we can't forget) cash of its fans. In the heart of each one of them there shines a vision of the Stanley Cup held aloft by a player in a Caps jersey. Time to get back to work!

Let's hope for not just a birthday, but a re-birth day for the Caps. 

Excerpt from "The Bear-Wife"

Ragnar came upon Fardan near his hut, where the priest had just concluded the mid-afternoon prayer. Ragnar clapped his shoulder joyously, and the priest nearly buckled with the force of the blow. "Fardan, you must congratulate me. My grandson is born. He is strong like his father and already his eyes are bright and clear as he looks upon the world."

"Ah, Ragnar, that is wonderful news. Accept my sincere best wishes for you and for your grandson."

"I thank you, Fardan." replied Ragnar.

"And might I add, my friend, how pleased I am to see a smile upon your face." said the priest. "I can tell you something that will cause it to broaden even more."

"What could that be, Fardan?" asked Ragnar.

"Well, Ragnar, it is with great gratitude to the Lord God and the blessed Saint Bede that I am able to report to you that, like yourself, the child's mother has received the sign of the cross and, in so doing, has taken the first step along the path that leads to salvation."

"The child's mother?"

"Yes, your grandchild's mother. She who dwelt among the beasts of the dark forest. She who some called the Bear-wife. Under my humble guidance she has accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.

"And there is further cause for rejoicing, Ragnar, because your grandson shall be baptized and his soul, although stained with sin, shall be granted salvation, and when the Day of Doom comes, he shall sit with you at the right hand of the Lord God, in Eternal Bliss.

"And so it remains only to bestow this blessing upon your son and upon the others of your family, and the task shall be complete. Your household shall assume its place in Christendom and you shall see what glory awaits."

It seemed to Ragnar that his mind was spinning, that all the world around him was spinning. How had it come to this? Must he endure now, at this moment of joy, the gloating of this wearisome priest, Sven's cast-off, who, he suddenly realized, had convinced him of nothing aside from his own fears? How easy it must have been for Fardan to accomplish this in the heart of the poor orphan girl. Yet even she had shown courage and deserved better.

"The beasts of the dark forest indeed," sputtered Ragnar. "You are the beast. Yes, you, priest! Stalking – terrorizing – here, on my own land - preying upon the fears and the uncertainty of your victims. You are a blight upon us! You are a pestilence! Be gone and let us be!" Ragnar waved him aside and strode off, out of the infield and up the path to the open pasture.

That high land was empty now of men and beasts, for Ragnar's rams had long since rejoined the rest of the herd for the breeding season. Ragnar came to the stones of the grave-field by the Mirror Tarn and he stood among them, staking his claim, as they did, to all of the windy plateau and the rolling land below.

There lies the valley. There the flat lands stretch toward the sea. There lie the meadows, there runs the river, there stand rock and oak. There lie the stones of Thorbjorn's ship and there the sturdy timbers of Svanhild's altar are planted. There, beside the Old Road, scratched along the ridge-top, dwell Gunnar and his kin. And beyond lies the lake – see it sparkle against the green velvet forest.

This is it. This, to me, is everything there is.

Ragnar sat down upon the damp earth. He leaned on one of the rough, lichen-covered boulders that rested there, one of a ring of stones. Golden grass-strands with their heads of perfect seeds, thick bunches of dark green heather clothed in purple, blueberry shrubs tinged with scarlet, all blended and bowed before his eyes. When was the last time he had looked at these small things, each gleaming like the rarest jewel? They had been here, always, through seasons of plenty and seasons of want, growing from the bones of the earth, and from the bones of his parents and grandparents, their parents and theirs. He delighted in them now, in this still, silent moment. For though he knew in his heart that the turning point of his world had already come and gone, here, in this landscape of cairns and mounds and standing stones; here, at the threshold between this world and the next, was an opening to taste the sweetness of that late-summer blossoming of life, that moment of knowing that the long days are irretrievably gone. It was as if, having climbed for a lifetime, he had at last come up over the crest of the hill and just as he was taking in the panoramic view, he found himself beginning to roll down the other side, wheel upon wheel, faster and faster – and what waits at the bottom?

Around him now Ragnar sensed many voices, many gestures: gentle, harsh, demanding, judgmental - sympathetic. They were gathering behind him now, his forebears: Aelfrid the hero, his great brass-studded shield shattered; Old Ragnar, who had built the hall in which the household still lived, and also Red Thorbjorn, Ragnar's grandfather, drinking and toasting at his return from the lands of the Franks. Although their lives, like Ragnar’s own, had doubtless hurtled from birth to death with barely a pause to reflect, to him they had always seemed as fixed and eternal as the mountain of which they were now a part. But during their lives they, too, must have faced choices. Had they wavered? Had they been afraid? Had they chosen well? Or poorly? He lived with the consequences of their choices, as his grandson would live with his. They had left him here, at their lives' end, but he must go on, with or without their understanding or their approval. It would be for later generations to look back upon him and judge.

As he sat there, resting among the stones, nearly hidden by the tall meadow grasses, two young girls came up the path, walking together towards the Mirror Tarn. They seemed to float across the meadow, golden hair blowing and long, white arms. He couldn’t see what they had in their hands but whatever it was they deposited it there, at the spring, in a manner at once solemn and conspiratorial.

Ragnar waited for them to be done with their small offering, and to turn back toward the settlement. How lightly they tread upon the earth. How simple their desires. A handsome young groom? A new set of ribbons for their hair? He smiled to himself, and felt his heart lighten. Then he rose, gathered himself up, and returned to his hall.

Above is an excerpt from The Bear-Wife, my novel set in 10th century Sweden.  I'll be posting updates as the book moves toward publication.  If you like you can also check out this post I wrote about the book a while back.