So they escape into Moria, and there is a long underground trip, in which the underground becomes the real world, and Pippin gives the game away, and Gollum appears in the flesh, and they reach the part of Moria that makes it clear just how large a civilization the dwarves had and have, and they find that the attempt to reclaim it has failed: there is Balin’s tomb. Unusually, we end towards the beginning of a day; it is as if we have lost track of time, underground, and we are taking some time to re-orient ourselves to day and night, so we need the early morning to complete the work of yesterday.
Oh, I can’t resist noting this here. The stuff about Speak, friend, and enter? That may be an in-joke about Latin. If you look at a Latin dictionary, dicere is to say, to speak, and you figure out which from context -- either “speak, friend” or “say ‘friend’”. This isn’t a puzzle that only a wizard with knowledge of magic passwords can solve; it’s what might happen if we tried to enter a magically locked Roman building. Even in the smallest linguistic detail, Tolkien is more real-world than you might think.
I want to pause a moment and note something about Gollum. Remember I said that in The Hobbit, we switch from folk tale to complex fantasy? Gollum is the only purely folk tale main character in The Hobbit to be a main character in LOTR. Gandalf, remember, made the transition into complex fantasy in The Hobbit. Elrond was a brief cameo. The rest? Legolas for the Elven King, Frodo for Bilbo, Gloin’s son for Gloin, and Beorn, Bard, the rest of the Dwarves almost vanish. And Gollum isn’t just moved into complex and high fantasy; he also is moved into the “modern” world of the hobbits, so that, just for a moment, we almost feel empathy with him, as he sees the sleeping Frodo and Sam in the shadow of Mordor and desolation, and reaches out his hand, just once, tentatively, hoping …
I kind of suspect the reason for this is that the Ring dragged Gollum into the story. LOTR centers more and more around the Ring, and Gollum is sucked into the story as if by a vacuum cleaner. Because, in some undefinable way, they are unable to be separated. Gollum has lived with the Ring so long that when we talk about the Ring, when we want to understand the Ring, when we talk about all the psychology associated with the Ring, we just can’t leave Gollum out forever. Let’s leave it at that, for now.
So now, before we move on to Gandalf’s fall and then to the Elves, I want to go back and then reach ahead all the way to Mirrormere, and talk about the dwarves. And I want you to see them through Frodo’s eyes.
What Frodo knows about the dwarves is still mostly book learning. In fact, what we know about dwarf civilization is mostly book learning, because when we saw the inside of the Lonely Mountain it had been entirely corrupted by a dragon.
So now Frodo sees part of the dwarves’ world, and he starts with the Gate at Moria – but that’s easy to dismiss as Elven work. It’s done jointly; Frodo knows (from the Silmarillion about Feanor and maybe from seeing the Sword reforged) that Elves can do this type of work; the words are written in Elvish (then a common language between peoples, like Latin at some points) and in “Elvish” script. And then he gets into the Mines, and they reinforce the stereotype, that dwarves are burrowers beneath the Earth; on a really big scale.
And then he gets to this vast Hall, and he is told and realizes that this is not like what he has read of the goblin Hall, which is just a humongous raw cave. It’s a whole kingly hall, like Norman royal palaces, and it even has sunlight coming in, and Gimli says it was once chock-full of people and kingly crafts, like a royal hall or even a cathedral. And then Gimli tells him and us about Durin.
The central message of Gimli about Durin, for Frodo’s and our purposes, is that Durin was First. Yes, he’s one of seven Fathers of the Dwarves, but he’s the one that matters. Everything in Moria, and also everything dwarven from the beginning to right now starts with Durin. And what does Durin do? He starts looking around, and looking specifically for things that move him, and move dwarves from then on, deeply, in this new “fair world.” Remember what I said about the meaning of “fair”? Dwarves, we realize, see the world as “fair” too.
And now we move to the final insight, past the horror of Frodo’s loss of Gandalf. He goes to see Mirrormere. This is the place that Durin loved, probably loved most. This is the heart of Dwarvendom, as in some sense the mallorn is the heart of Elvendom. And it’s outside. It’s in the open air. The core of dwarves has nothing to do with being underground. It has to do with something else.
Now look back at my quote in the previous diary, and what do you and Frodo see in Mirrormere? You see mountains around you – and throughout the previous Chapters, you have been reminded that to dwarves, rocks are alive and are real creatures, just as, to Elves, trees are sentient beings. You see stars above you. You see a deep lake. You don’t see trees – that’s what Elves are more interested in. You see the other half of the complete Earth.
And now, if you’re Frodo, you realize that the clues have been laid ever since the beginning of The Hobbit. How do the Elves make music? They sing madrigal-like songs. They can sing a harmony of individual voices. The focus is on the voice. How did the Dwarves make music in Bilbo’s house, in a very meaningful time when they are setting off to return to and reclaim an ancestral home? They do chamber music. In chamber music, their focus is on their instruments. They can do a harmony of individual instruments. And those instruments are formed – not chopped, sculpted – out of the bones and sinews and veins and skin of the rock and its mineral blood and the stars and the water that rests and flows.
Oh, yes, they’re also formed out of wood. That’s the difficulty Dwarves have with Elves. One way of thinking about it is that maybe the Dwarves can’t help thinking of wood as part of earth and stone and water. Their first reaction is to integrate it with those, from which it is, to them, artificially separated. It’s not life in itself; in order to integrate it, Dwarves have to cut it down and then shape it together with the rock and minerals and water to bring out its full potential and meaning as part of a living whole. So those instruments are gold and silver and wood shaped to bring out their musical potential. But, boy, does the way Dwarves treat wood piss off the Elves and Ents. And the Dwarves are blind to this. What are you getting so mad about? The only good tree is one in my instrument.
I don’t want to overstate this. I think we all get the sense that, to Tolkien and to us, Elves are more important. And understanding the Dwarves’ part of the Earth is indeed part of Elves’ makeup; it’s just not their main focus. Gimli can reach across to Legolas and make him see the beauty of the Glittering Caves as a dwarf sees it – because an Elf sees it that way too. Can Legolas make Gimli see the beauty of Fangorn as an Elf sees it? We don’t know. What we do know is that Gimli finally opens up to Elves when he realizes that high Galadriel sees into his heart and understands him as a dwarf. And she’s in some ways a First; if she can do it, other Elves can. In a heartbeat, Gimli goes from Elves as “other” to at least part of Elves being understandable Dwarves. And, by the way, what Galadriel is showing is pity.
And so, before we leave dwarves for a good long time, let me say what I think is the bottom line for us. We are developing this wonderful new sense of all the rest of the Earth around us. We can guess that the Elves will give us a lot of it. But here are the Dwarves. Once you really, truly understand them in the way a “high” person would, you see through their eyes the other part of this rest of the Earth around us: the rocks, the pools, the gold, the silver, the true-silver, the stars, and the way it all comes together in stalactites and wind-sculpture and pools framed by mountains and sky and even through human necklaces and lamps – and crowns. There it is, all around us: Carlsbad Caverns. The Grand Canyon. The Alps. Crater Lake. Mirrormere.
When Frodo, in training to be high, leaves Mirrormere, Tolkien doesn’t say he is “deep in reverie” or “deep in a dream.” He is “deep in thought.”
Ya think?
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
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