I haven't written about Lord of the Rings in a while. I think I'll do so today. I'm going to file this in the Reflections community, because although many of the thoughts in here will be literary, this was provoked by reading to my son at night and my reflecting on that.

Those of you who keep up may recall that I started reading LotR to my oldest son at night about 3 years ago. He was 8 at the time. A little too young to understand all of Tolkien's prose, but he understood the overall idea and enjoyed it. It's good to expose kids to reading content that is too hard for them, not only vocab, but grammatical structures and ways of speaking that are different.

Tolkien's style of writing is much different from the modern way of writing, which is much more staccato, short, clipped, choppy, and above all simple: with most people following the rule that one must never write above the reading level of a 12 year old because that is about all the common reader today can understand. His is much more complex, with long sentences that can go on for many lines, meandering here and there like a gentle stream as he slowly makes his point; it is a language that is much more cognizant of how words flow together and their sound: it is not poetry, but it does share something of the idea; it ultimately does say more or less the same thing as a modern writer would do in a single sentence of a few words, but in a much more pleasant way.

Consider this single sentence:

In his time the City was made more fair than it had ever been, even in the days of its first glory; and it was filled with trees and with fountains, and its gates were wrought of mithril and steel, and its streets were paved with white marble; and the Folk of the Mountain laboured in it, and the Folk of the Wood rejoiced to come there; and all was healed and made good, and the houses were filled with men and women and the laughter of children, and no window was blind nor any courtyard empty; and after the ending of the Third Age of the world into the new age it preserved the memory and the glory of the years that were gone.

Ultimately it's pretty simple and straightforward, essentially just giving us a list, using some very basic words mixed with some more archaic constructions. It's not complex, but there is music in that structure. It is full of pairs and triplets of stressed terms, like an old Anglo-Saxon poem, with complex and rich alliteration all over the place, which, even if you don't notice it, give a cadence to the passage and makes it easier to read, if not recite. The repetition of and gives a rhythm and a kind of elevated form. It calls to mind this famous line from MacBeth:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

which uses a similar repetition to emphasize the speech, which in Macbeth's case is a weariness and despair as opposed to the feeling of grandeur that Tolkien is painting. Of course Tolkien is not writing in iambic pentameter, but he is imparting a kind of rhythm in a similar way.

Or consider this fantastic passage:

Then Fingolfin beheld (as it seemed to him) the utter ruin of the Noldor, and the defeat beyond redress of all their houses; and filled with wrath and despair he mounted upon Rochallor his great horse and rode forth alone, and none might restrain him. He passed over Dor-nu-Fauglith like a wind amid the dust, and all that beheld his onset fled in amaze, thinking that Oromë himself was come: for a great madness of rage was upon him, so that his eyes shone like the eyes of the Valar. Thus he came alone to Angband’s gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth to single combat. And Morgoth came.

The short and pointed line at the end is more effective for the longer ones in front of it.

[In the passage, by the way, Oromë is one of the Valar, the gods, and Morgoth is Sauron's boss, about nine thousand or so times more powerful than Sauron, the big baddie of the Lord of the Rings films. Fingolfin is an elf of the same race as Galadriel (he's her grandfather), who you may remember from the films.]

One reason I thought to expose my son to this book at so young an age was to give my son a familiarity with more diverse English, especially with this slower form. In today's world, where brevity often takes precedence, Tolkien's work stands as a testament to the beauty of a slower, more contemplative narrative. I thought maybe from here we can step into other epics or maybe even some of the Great Books. Since this time I have read him snippets of Fagles' translation of The Odyssey and he's enjoyed it. (I don't think he really understands much of that one, but he tells me he likes the sound of it, which I tell him is half the point of the epic form).

Anyway, I first read Lord of the Rings when he was eight. Recently he asked to hear it again, so I've been rereading it to him. This time, his brother is listening. His brother is eight, just as he was the first time he heard it. He's understanding it much more this time and is interrupting me often to (correctly) explain it to his brother. I'm happy that he's enjoying it more this time, and it's cute to watch as he tries to help his brother understand.

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.