When I wrote the last piece, I fully intended to move on from the Chapter about the Dead Marshes to the Black Gate, forthwith. But reviewing the Passage of the Marshes again, I see there is one other enigma in the Chapter that seems worth examining. It’s this passage, in which Frodo describes the faces under the water: “grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead.”
A poetical cadence, the cadence of elegy, far from the rhythm of English folk song. But that is not its mystery to me. Rather, the mystery lies in the fact that it culminates in a list of horrors: foul, rotting, dead. “Dead” is the culmination of the list, the worst of horrors. Here’s the mystery: why is “death” the worst of those horrors? Why?
At first glance, reading this, I assumed that it was a reflection of Sauron’s grip on even the dead, as in the case of the Barrow-wight so long ago in the story. But that never satisfied me; the fact that Sauron haunted the dead did not seem to me to be worse than their foulness and corruption.
And then it occurred to me: the dead here are underwater.
In World War I, Tolkien served in Picardy, and Flanders. He must have seen innumerable dead bodies:
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row”
But the area where he served was probably near the sea-coast, flat, and low. The water table was high, and water easily filled the trenches, especially when it rained. Where would the dead bodies, German and English mixed, grim faces and evil, noble faces and sad, lie? In the water. Faces peering from the water.
And the faces were all fouled with the wet dirt of the trenches, and perhaps rotting from the inside from maggots. But worst of all, these were the faces of people he knew, or, in the case of the Germans, seemed in death to be just plain folks (Hardy’s The Man He Killed: “Had he and I but met/By some old ancient inn, /We should have sat us down to wet/Right many a nipperkin!”). Above all, most of them were his comrades in arms, his messmates, even his friends. A generation of his youth, lying like dogs in the gutter, weeds in their silver hair. Their eyes open, staring at him, even in his memory. The ultimate horror being not their foulness, nor their rot, but their universal death, their eyes perhaps haunting him forever from the other side of eternity.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
I believe that in this scene, the memories of Tolkien’s World War I combat service most likely protrude, unconsciously, into Lord of the Rings. I believe that he faces, that we face, not only the dead of World War I or past wars of Middle Earth, but the eyes of all dead of all wars, in Flanders fields.
Why can Sauron, why can Tolkien, why can we not let them rest in peace? Why? Why?
I conclude, in my foolish pride, with the words of a song I wrote in a dream awhile ago, a dream of combat and death in Middle Earth:
I heard the river mourning them,
Hrothgrim, son of Ingvar,
Bori, son of Thror Oakenshield,
Sad songs, sung from afar.
One was a swimmer and fleet of foot,
One looked up to the stars,
Bones and blood in a riverbed,
None knows whose they are. (refrain)
One had a sweetheart who died in bed,
In the village of Babi Yar,
One was too young to know love at all,
Both went off to war. (refrain)
The ghosts of their grandchildren never to be,
Wander through Kandahar:
Bori, son of Thror Oakenshield;
Hrothgrim, son of Ingvar.
I heard the river mourning them,
Hrothgrim, son of Ingvar,
Bori, son of Thror Oakenshield,
Sad songs, sung from afar.
None knows who they are.
I heard the river mourning them,
Mourning them,
Mourning them,
Mourning them from afar.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
- Part XIV. Valaraukar, the Third Touch of God
- Part XV. Memory, Nature, Passion
- Part XVI. The Gift of Enchantment
- Part XVII. Frontier Maturity
- Part XVIII. Pity, Decisions, Endings
- Part XIX. Into the Shadow, Kings, Names, Winds
- Part XX. People of the Morning, Child Soldiers
- Part XXI. Herdsmen and High Trees
- Part XXII. The Faith of God
- Part XXIII. Theoden’s Law
- Part XXIV. Helm’s Deep, Zangra, and A Life Worthy of Song
- Part XXV. Book of Marvels, Book of Friendship
- www.dailykos.com/…
- www.dailykos.com/…
- www.dailykos.com/…
- www.dailykos.com/…
- www.dailykos.com/...