This week, I decided it would be interesting to provide two rather short quotes from J.R.R. Tolkien. Both of them indicate aspects of his thought and character which might surprise many of his American readers.
The first comes from Tolkien’s minutes of the December 1, 1913 meeting of the Stapeldon Society. :
At the 791st meeting.. one of the world’s great battles between democracy and autocracy was fought and won, and as usual in such conflicts the weapons of democracy were hooliganism and uproar, and an unyielding pertinacity only excelled by that of the chair…
— quoted in, Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 47.
The second is from Letter 53 to Christopher Tolkien, December 9, 1943:
But seriously: I do find this Americo-cosmopolitanism very terrifying. Qua mind and spirit, and neglecting the piddling fears of timid flesh which does not want to be shot or chopped by brutal and licentious soldiery (German or others), I am not really sure that its victory is going to be so much the better for the world as a whole and in the long run than the victory of _____. I don’t suppose letters in are censored. But if they are, or not, I need to you hardly add that them’s the sentiments of a good many folk — and no indication of lack of patriotism.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 65.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In