Tolkiens Arda – Sveriges stora Tolkienforum

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

För att bara ta ett banalt men slående exempel så förgörs ringen (being "unmade") den 25 mars.

Att avvisa Kristi födelse, enligt Tolkien den största tilldragelsen i människans historia, leder med hans ord "antingen till sorg eller till vrede". (Om sagor) Men tron är en bräcklig sak, frestelserna är starka - tänk på Boromir (eller för den delen Anakin Skywalker) och Tolkiens inställning till människornas frälsning verkar snarare vara ett hopp "trots allt" - hårda prövningar är nödvändiga, var och en måste igenom sin skärseld (som tydligast förkroppsligas i Sméagols inre strid).

Tolkiens religiositet handlar inte heller om något slags blind tro, utan om ett "hjärtats vishet", om vad det innebär att vara människa. Här vänder sig Tolkien mot det moderna tänkandet som reducerar människan till en Gudsfrånvänd rationell, egennyttig och förtingsligad individ nedsänkt i den materiella, avförtrollade världen som sagornas land är botemedlet mot.

Drakarna samlar skatter på hög inkrökta i sig själva, medan Aragorn insett att "Fjättrad är den som inte kan kasta bort en värdesak när han måste". För att komma över havet måste man vara fri, ha tron i sitt hjärta. Därför kallas människorna för "gästerna eller främlingarna" (Silmarillion). Guds rike är inte av denna världen. (I detta liknar Bibeln för övrigt Koranen nästan till förväxling.)

Banalt var ordet. Detta har ju absolut ingen som helst betydelse för historien, jag har aldrig ens lagt det datumet på minnet öht.

Aman är alltså precis som Asgård kopplat till vår värld, som för övrigt i båda mytologier heter Midgård(!) Detta är bara några exempel på hur uppenbara likheterna mellan dessa två mytologier är, och att räkna upp de alla skulle bli oerhört omfattande.

Jag kan ju dock räkna upp den (som jag ser det) mest betydelsefulla kopplingen mellan "Tolkiens religion" och hednisk. Det är uppenbart att Tolkien ansåg att naturen var enormt viktig, så till den grad att han såg träden som levande varelser som kunde tänka, tala, känna och röra sig. De onda i böckerna däremot bryr sig inte om naturen alls, utan skövlar den så fort den kommer i deras väg. Betydelsefullheten av naturen är i princip den viktigaste tanken i hednisk religion, där naturen ses som helig. Att skada träd utan anledning ses som ett allvarligt brott (och bestraffades hårt), och många ceremonier var kopplade att dyrka, ära och bevara naturen. I Tolkiens värld är det alltså alver som är de mest troende, då de lever i harmoni med naturen.

Betydelsefullheten av naturen är i princip den viktigaste tanken i hednisk religion, där naturen ses som helig.

It is, I should say, a 'monotheistic but 'sub-creational' mythology.' There is no embodiment of the One, of God, who indeed remains remote, outside the World, and only directly accessible to the Valar or Rulers. These take the place of the 'gods', but are created spirits.... (The Letters, page 235)

In Christianity, he concluded, the hints and suggestions in pagan thought were fulfilled.... For the rest of his life, and throughout his writings, Lewis would assert that non-Christian faiths could be the entré to Christianity. (They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963))

Detta ser jag som din starkaste bevisning då Bibeln väl förespråkar människans överhet över jorden väldigt tydligt?

If the Lord of the Rings should approach too close to 'Gospel-truth', to the Christian myth in which Tolkien himself believed, it might forfeit its status as a story and become at worst a blasphemy, an 'Apocryphal gospel', at best a dull allegory rehearsing in admittedly novel form what everyone ought to know already.

[…]

Tolkien did not believe in 'old religions' or 'witch-cults'; C. S. Lewis wrote a paper called ‘The Anthropological Approach’ which damned the learned variety of that error beyond redemption. Probably a major cause for their intolerance was that both, but especially Tolkien, had some idea of what genuine old paganism was like. The earliest account of the English (Tacitus's Germania, AD 97-8 ) remarks on their habit of drowning sacrificial victims in bogs.

[…]

Virtuous pagans, however, were quite another matter. Indeed it is not too much to say that the Inklings were preoccupied with them.

[…]

The Lord of the Rings is quite clearly, then, a story of virtuous pagans in the darkest of dark pasts, before all but the faintest premonitions of dawn and revelation.

Yet there is at least one moment at which Revelation seems very close and allegory does all but break through – naturally enough, a moment of 'eucatastrophe', to use Tolkien's term for sudden moments of fairy-tale salvation, This appears to different characters in different ways. As has been said, Sam and Frodo experience it as thinking for a moment they have died and gone to heaven, when they wake up on the field of Cormallen.

[…]

Approach to the edge of Christian reference was here deliberate, as one can tell from the date Gandalf so carefully gives for the fall of Sauron (III, 230), 'the twenty-fifth of March'. In Anglo-Saxon belief, and in European popular tradition both before and after that, 25 March is the date of the Crucifixion; also of the Annunciation (nine months before Christmas); also of the last day of Creation. By mentioning the date Tolkien was presenting his 'eucatastrophe' as a forerunner or 'type' of the greater one of Christian myth. It is possible to doubt whether this was a good idea. Almost no one notices the significance of 25 March; the high style of the eagle’s song has not had much appeal; though Tolkien himself wept over the grandeur of the Field of Cormallen (Letters, p. 321), many other readers have found the delight, tears and laughter (of Sam especially) unconvincing. Tolkien did right normally to avoid such allusions, to keep like the author of Beowulf to a middle path between Ingeld and Christ, between the Bible and pagan myth. The care with which he maintained this position (highly artificial, though usually passed over without mention) is evident, with hindsight, on practically every page of The Lord of the Rings.

[…]

Tolkien took different views of his own work's religious content at different times. In 1953 he wrote to a Jesuit friend:

''The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconcious so at first, but conciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."(Letters, p. 172))

Tolkien perhaps found difficulty in explaning to a Jesuit why a 'fundamentally' Catholic work should cut out references to religion, but the reason is clear: he thought, or hoped, that God had a plan for pre-Catholics too. Later in life Tolkien may have become more uncertain about his own originality, and wrote that the elvish song of Rivendell was a 'hymn', that 'these [invocations of Elbereth] and other references to religion in The Lord of the Rings are frequently overlooked' (Road, p.65). On the whole the earlier statement that references have been cut out seems truer than the later one that they are in but 'overlooked'.