Tolkien - the influences that could have shaped Middle Earth

I was rabbit holing through the web today, as I am often won't to do on a light and/or moody day. I first stumbled onto to this infographic (I was searching for a Lord of the Rings book cover for a little home project and google images threw up this result):

After promptly pinning it to my bookworm pin board, I happened to browse through the blog on which this infographic was posted.

I was pretty surprised to find J.R.R Tolkien (and C.S Lewis) being described as Christian authors on the blog. Now I'll admit I don't research authors much but Tolkien is one of my absolute favourites and I've read most of what he's written on Middle Earth. And it never struck me as particularly Christian. However, now that I think about it, there are similarities - the creation story, that of the elves being exiled from the home of the Valar in the western lands (the fall from the Garden of Eden), the battle between good and evil. I wonder though if Tolkien meant it to be Christian so to speak.

From what I've read Tolkien's intention was to create a British mythology but I'd definitely be interested to find out if there was a strong (and intended) Christian influence in Tolkien's writing. As a first step I plan to pick up this compilation of letters that Tolkien himself wrote once the Kindle version is out in November this year. If anyone out there has any other suggestions, do drop in a note.

I'd definitely love to delve deeper into the influences that shaped Tolkien's expansive and wonderfully imagined fictional world. I think it's one of the most completely imagined alternate universes ever written about!

Past Present

I was flipping through some of the earliest posts on this blog today morning and I note with sadness that most of them were better and more thoughtfully written than what I write here today.

One reason of course is that I was writing more, spending more time thinking about what I was writing here. I was also reading much more, because of my studies and otherwise as well. These days most of my time goes in thinking about the next excel sheet I need to fill and the next powerpoint presentation I need to write. And at the end of such days, while I read, I often don't have the mental energy to think deeply about what I read or to blog about it immediately

The other reason that I often consider for this possible shift is the fact when I started writing here, this blog was private, restricted access to a few people with whom I was very comfortable being 100% honest. A little more than a year down the line it became public. In the initial days days at least, this definitely impacted by writing. I became very careful about my choice of subjects... keeping them more generic, less personal. And I often wonder if that has affected the depth of what I write.

You see, I have never been comfortable with the thought of others reading my words. In fact, that's been my biggest stumbling block towards writing a story. I tie myself up in knots wondering what the reader may think when (s)he reads this or that line or what I may be inadvertently revealing about myself (I am intensely private and most people who know me complain that I don't get "up close and personal").

The combination of reasons 1 and 2 has not been good for my writing clearly. I have to start finding ways (maybe go back to a personal diary... from which I can post once I am ready to share something) to stem this deterioration in my writing before I become a completely hopeless and obnoxious writer.

The good, the gentle and the brave

Hemingway wrote that the world “breaks everyone,” and those “it does not break it kills.” “It kills the very good and very gentle and the very brave impartially,” he wrote. “If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” 

ᔥ  NYT - Hemingway's alternate endings to Farewell to Arms | International

You were all three.

Imagination

I imagined us at 30... plotting milestones, celebrating those of the decade past, pondering mistakes, vowing to be sillier.

I imagined us at 40... exchanging recipes, dragging a few brats around, watching them grow, borrowing books and reading lists from each other for them.

I imagined us at 50... with more time on our hands, more curious than ever, seeing the world, discovering it with all the years behind us.

I imagined us at 60... brimming with ideas, things we could still do, just for the love of doing

I imagined us at 70... sitting comfortably, talking over endless cups of tea, of the things we were still falling in love with, the ideas we were discovering, of the world changing around us.

But suddenly, there are only two left in the three that should have been us. You are gone and I realise how much your presence meant.

In my head, I'll carry you as the voice that always speaks when it matters most. As the voice that always read between the lines. As the voice that listened, completely, before it spoke. As the voice that always had a smile and a ray of sunshine in it.

On War

Moments like these absolve the needs dividing men.
Whatever caught and brought and kept them here
Is lost: and for a while they join a terrible equality,
Are virtuous, self-sacrificing, free:
And so insidious is this liberty 
That those surviving it will bear 
An even greater servitude to its root:
Believing they were whole, while they were brave;
That they were rich, because their loot was great;
That war was meaningful, because they lost their friends.


-- From War Music by Christopher Logue | International | India |