A leetle break from All That

[malsperanza]

OK, so I have decided to spend the next couple of weeks with my hands over my ears going LALALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEEEAAAAR YOUUU really loudly whenever any of my friends sends me a political email or something similar pops up on my flist.

Because folks, it's gonna be a long long lonely winter, and I need a leetle break.

So, here goes. I am off to visit the Castle Perilous and the Tower Adamant and other high and puissant fortresses of words. You are all welcome to join me on my travels.

It's all about the style.

*clicks ruby slippers three times*



One of the best writers I've ever known, Norman Maclean (author of A River Runs Through It), used to talk about the importance of being specific in descriptions, and using the particular language of an activity to convey its reality and presence.

His example was fly-fishing, which has a very particular "gear and tackle and trim" (to use Gerard Manley Hopkins's phrase), and which he uses in his own work as a central metaphor. He says the same thing about descriptions of nature. A statement as bland as "the river was beautiful" conveys nothing. But this does, because it particularizes, and draws conclusions:

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. (from Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, 1976).

Hopkins, in the poem "Pied Beauty," is saying the same thing: that beauty in nature resides in its particularity, its minutiae, and its precision. The writer who can capture in one quick phrase the difference between how a gull flies and how a hawk flies can capture the reader's heart. It's a kind of haiku, or a calligraphy.

There's a fine line between using the technical language of a trade or activity (fly-fishing, ornithology) to make prose more vivid (and less generic) and using it in a pedantic way. Nothing is more boring for a reader than to trip over a passage where the author all too obviously did some tech research and felt compelled to flourish his or her newfound knowledge.

But nothing refreshes the ear and mind better than a pause, a moment of fine description that brings the world-as-it-is sharply into focus. Here is a passage from Dorothy Dunnett's historical novel, The Game of Kings, in which the hero, Lymond, is conducting a tricky and very oblique negotiation with a man who may be his enemy, Sir George Douglas:

‘It grieves me deeply to break up your manège,' said Sir George. ‘but I can't accept the alternative. If you want me to trace Harvey for you, you must sell me Will Scott.'

Lymond spoke idly. ‘It sounds as is you have been endearing yourself to the opposition. Can't you repair your relations in some other way? I have several keen bargains in political information: or is Grey no longer interested in our life, our lust, our Governor, our Queen?' His face expressed only mild inquiry.

Both men were in a stoutly furnished room in the East Tower of Tantallon. Beyond the window the North Sea crawled and roared at the bottom of hundred-foot cliffs; far out, the Bass Rock stood in a nest of white floss, with gannets plummeting like so many celestial lead lines into the jumping sea. Douglas turned impatiently from the sight.

‘If I could conduct this transaction simply by buying information from you, I would.'

Dunnett interrupts the scene of political intrigue with a description of gannets (a kind of seagull)--in the literary distance, so to speak--drawing the reader momentarily away from the conversation to an outer, distant neutral world. The natural world is evoked as a place of natural order, a moment of peace beyond or outside the human and political order. The pause both refreshes the reader and prolongs the tension of the scene. It is unclear at first which of the two men is looking at the birds; or whether this is pure authorial pov (rare in Dunnett). Thus the pov shifts very delicately from the reader to Sir George Douglas and back again, while the inscrutable Lymond remains as uninterpretable as sea-foam against rocks.

Description has a seductive power--a power to capture and hold the attention. One has to make a distinction between precision of language and purpleness--between a detailed description or evocation of, say, a bird in flight and an ornate or flowery (intrusive) one. A gannet plummets; a pigeon planes downward on extended wings, making ambiguous undulations that may or may not be readable signs of some larger idea. A hawk riding the thermals draws a slow cursive line in the sky that may or may not be calligraphic, a portent, before our attention turns back to the human issues closer at hand.

In the Wallace Stevens's line from the poem Sunday Morning I cited just now ("And in the evening / casual flocks of pigeons make / ambiguous undulations as they sink / downward to darkness on extended wings") the birds are in themselves beautiful, simple, and graceful--and unconscious of their grace. In their metaphoric role they are beautiful, complex, ambiguous, and filled with grace (in the religious sense)--and unconscious of their metaphoric role.

This makes an effective contrast with the men and women who populate novels such as Dunnett's and who move through the world always conscious of their place in it--burdened, sometimes, by their own consciousness.

Turning from birds and other features of landscape, I was thinking yesterday about Tolkien's descriptions, and the style he uses for them. Tolkien has several styles, some drawn from epic, others from poetic traditions, and others from the Victorian and Edwardian writers of his youth. Chief among these is the Tennyson of The Princess and Idylls of the King:

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

And behind Tennyson lies Malory, deep bedded in Norman courtly troubadour culture, with his Castles Perilous and Adamant, his Dame Lionesse, his Red Knight of the Red Launds. Tolkien may have been a scholar of Beowulf and the Saxon tradition, but he was no less in love with the French Middle Ages and the English Renaissance, for all that he claimed to scorn them. No writer of his place and generation and fine-tuned ear could write without Shakespeare leaning over one shoulder and the King James Bible on the other.

Look at how the master describes Minas Morgul or Barad-Dur. He uses a very self-conscious rhetorical rhythm, with ascending repetitions, to convey an air of menace, intimidation, and power: these are the indwelling places of unchallengeable might:

Frodo's pov (on Amon Hen):

"Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him."

And later:

"...and all its great stronghold, gate on gate, tower on tower, was wrapped in brooding gloom."

(BTW, Philip Pullman borrows this description in His Dark Materials for Lord Asriel's Adamant Tower, though in a more modest key:

"On the highest rampart of the fortress was a tower of adamant: just one flight of steps up to a set of rooms whose windows looked out north, south, east, and west. The largest room was furnished with a table and chairs and a map chest, another with a camp bed. A small bathroom completed the set." The Amber Spyglass, ch. 5.)

Here is a Frodo/Sam general pov description of Minas Morgul:

"...a long-tilted valley, a deep gulf of shadow, ran back far into the mountains. Upon the further side, some way within the valley's arms, high on a rocky seat upon the black knees of the Ephel Dúath, stood the walls and tower of Minas Morgul. All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with light. Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills. Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing. In the walls and tower windows showed, like countless black holes looking inward into emptiness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night."

And in Sam's pov:

"In that dreadful light Sam stood aghast, for now, looking to his left, he could see the Tower of Cirith Ungol in all its strength. The horn that he had seen from the other side was only its topmost turret. Its eastern face stood up in three great tiers from a shelf in the mountain-wall far below; its back was to a great cliff behind, from which it jutted out in pointed bastions, one above the other, diminishing as they rose, with sheer sides of cunning masonry that looked north-east and south-east. About the lowest tier, two hundred feet below where Sam now stood, there was a battlement wall enclosing a narrow court. Its gate, upon the near south-eastern side, opened on a broad road, the outer parapet of which ran upon the brink of a precipice, until it turned southward and went winding down into the darkness to join the road that came over the Morgul Pass."

What's striking in these descriptions of fortresses is Tolkien's use of scale--he is very clear about how big these places are--and a kind of specificity of vocabulary that is not directly linked to the European Middle Ages (there are no ravelins or lancets, no portcullises or palisades), but still is precise: tiers, pointed bastions, battlements and "sheer sides of cunning masonry"--this last implies a kind of living mind in the stones themselves, nd hence the presence of the supernatural.

Looking again at Tolkien's two Castles Perilous, we see that the immediate model is probably Arthurian romance (Malory, and even more directly, Tennyson's riffs on Malory). But the meter is borrowed from Shakespeare--iambs with spondees mixed in. Here is Shakespeare using that pattern:

"O lords, when I have said, cry ‘Woe!' The queen, the queen, the sweet'st, dear'st creature's dead; and vengeance for't not dropped down yet." (The Winter's Tale, act III.)

And the style of serial repetitions is King James biblical, as here:

"And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: on the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates."
(Revelation 1:16)

"...I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." (18:2)

That John of Patmos may have been mad as a March hare, but jeez, he had a way with words.

One must use such tools with care and restraint, or else they go over the top very quickly. Tennyson is a case in point, and Tolkien too has his moments of pure purple. The use of description in heightened, rhetorical prose is a little like the use of romance in a novel: restraint is good, and a little goes a long way.

The closing page of The Lord of the Rings is among Tolkien's finest bits of craftsmanship, blending fairytale with epic; Perrault and Grimm's Happily-ever-after with Wordsworth's Old unhappy far-off things / and battles long ago; Shakespeare with the Bible.

(Warning: spoiler here, if anyone is left on earth who has not read LOTR.)

"Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin and last of all Sam and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."

And ... and ... and

This is the classical anaphora with which a good rhetorician slows the pace of the narrative to a single, linear, sonorous voice.

Look, too, at the lovely meter, see how it shifts. Here are the prosodic terms:

Spondee: Stress Stress : "And vengeance not drop't down yet."

Dactyl: Stress nonstress nonstress : "Merrily, merrily, shall I live now / Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."

Iamb: nonstress Stress : "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?"

Anapest: nonstress nonstress Stress : "With a leap and a bound"

LJ won't do meter-marking symbols (or at least, I don't know how), so I'll use bold to mark stressed syllables in the Tolkien closure:

Spondees:

Frodo kissed

Dactyls:

Merry and Pippin and last of all Sam,
and went aboard;

Now the anapests:

and the sails
were drawn up
and the wind

Spondee [pause]

blew,

Followed by iamb (to fill out the spondee)

and slow-

Back to anapests:

ly the ship
slipped away
down the long

Spondee again:

grey firth; [and this long grey firth is repeated later in the parallel long grey road, below]

Back to anapests:

and the light
of the glass
of Galad-
riel that
Frodo bore

Break rhythm, switching to a dactyl:

glimmered and

Closing with a pure spondee:

was lost.


Then a lilting, rocking rhythm, iambs and anapests, like a ballad's, or like a ship that crosses the ocean's waves:

And the ship went out
into the High Sea
and passed on into the West
until at last
on a night of rain
Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance
on the air
and heard the sound of singing

Slowing again to single syllabic stresses:

that came over the water.

OK that's enough meterfooting. Now watch the seamless, rhythmic use of similes and prepositional clauses here (as in his dream/ in the house of Bombadil/ and beyond them/ under a swift sunrise) and the one extraordinary metaphor of the curtain of rain transformed into something wrought, but scarcely identifiable as a metaphor of anything we can know--something made of silver and glass and light:

And then it seemed to him
that as in his dream
in the house of Bombadil,
the grey rain-curtain
turned all to silver glass
and was rolled back,
and he beheld
white shores
and beyond them
a far green country
under a swift sunrise.

With just that small echo at the end of the grand drumbeat of Saxon alliterative poetry:

Under a swift sunrise.

But as Frodo meets his dawn in the East, it is deepening night on Middle-earth, night and shadow and lamenting whispers:

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow on the water that was soon lost in the West. There still he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-earth, and the sound of then sank deep into his heart. Beside him stood Merry and Pippin, and they were silent.


And then the drumroll of epic poetry again: and and but and but and and and:

At last the three companions turned away,
and never again looking back
they rode slowly homewards;
and they spoke no word to one another
until they came back to the Shire,
but each had a great comfort
in his friends
on the long grey road. [long grey road--three solid stresses again]

At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road,
and then Merry and Pippin rode to Buckland;
and already they were singing again as they went.
But Sam turned to Bywater,
and so came back up the Hill,
as day was ending once more.
And he went on,
there was yellow light,
and fire within;
and the evening meal was ready,
and he was expected.
And Rose drew him in,
and set him in his chair,
and put little Elanor upon his lap.

Here is where the song ends, and the final words are prose:

He drew a deep breath. "Well, I'm back," he said.

What Odysseus said, more or less:

"The heart of Ulysses was touched, and his nostrils quivered as he looked upon his father; then he sprang towards him, flung his arms about him and kissed him, saying, ‘I am he, father, about whom you are asking--I have returned ...' "



And that is what makes a writer.

Comments

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

Much as he would have hated to admit it, Tolkien is Milton's bitch (I think that's the more relevant precedent than Shakespeare, especially for epic descriptions with their classical rhetorical patterns, like the vision of Barad-dur).

and so, winkingly and knowingly, is Pullman.

I'd do a text search of PL for "tower of adamant" but I'm too lazy. :)

As to my LJ--avert thine eyes. Cuz I ain't done by a long shot.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Somewhere in his letters he singles out Shakespeare for dismissal, and in general, I think Shakespeare and the KJV are hardwired into English writers--and also probably the Book of Common Prayer. But for Tolkien Milton, yes: unquestionably a major source of his style. Not to mention the concept of the tragic Fall into the abyss.

RE LJ: of course--most of my flist is going to be venting for a while, and I suppose I'll get back to it too eventually. I'm just taking a brief vacation.

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, Shakespeare, Milton, the whole KJV gang--he despised them all, IIRC. Filthy moderns. And he's not just a modern he's a Modern.

Although he does stand just about alone, as far as I can see, in getting large numbers of really modern readers to be absorbed by large chunks of text that don't meet the standard modern idea of narrative. That is, long descriptions (mostly of terrain and places) presented sort of *in the place of* "action" (as opposed to say, nature writing, which isn't presented as Romance or history and seeks a different audience). There was a medievalist at Cal who influenced my thinking about this as a characteristic of modernity (where earlier writers think nothing of alternating between begats and nail-biting excitement, with each on a level.)

Huh. An idea about JRRT that I didn't know I had. At least I hadn't put it together that way before.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

...Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised
Above his fellows, with monarchal pride
Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus spake:—
"O Progeny of Heaven! Empyreal Thrones!
With reason hath deep silence and demur
Seized us, though undismayed. Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.
Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire,
Outrageous to devour, immures us round
Ninefold; and gates of burning adamant,
Barred over us, prohibit all egress."

Bk 2

Yay Google.

Mulciber's tower, though, seems not to be adamant.

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, thought it sounded kinda Book 2ish. I mean it's obviously indebted to hell, the fierce industriousness, the raising of Pandaemonium. But it did occur to me to wonder if there wasn't some adamant in Heaven as well.

And fast by, hanging on a golden chain,
This pendant world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude beside the moon.

(that's the whole created universe next to Heaven and Chaos. And from memory so pardons if errors.)

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

This is a lovely and useful essay. Thank you!

--a girl wandering by

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I hope you understand when I say this...it's like reading porn! In the best way! It all gives me shivers just reading this whole post. I've been wrestling with the demon of description this past week or so, and at the moment it's beating me. Now I'm reading to get up and struggle with it again. Thanks!

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Heh, all reading is erotic. ;-) This is the core premise of the Malsperanza Unified Field Theory of Rereading: Reader/Book OTP. Slashy, noncon, angsty, and definitely hurt/comfort.

[anjali-organna.livejournal.com]

This is a wonderfully informative essay. If only my English courses had been as interesting! Your analysis of Tolkien's last paragraphs was facinating. Just a question: how much of that do you think was written purposely, and how much was just simply his natural writing style, picked up along his years of study?

On another note, I think the most beautiful passage Dunnett has ever written is the farewell scene between Nicholas and Umar. I love how she contrasts the description of the caravan with the metaphor (and reality) of their singing. Makes me cry every time.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I love that passage too. My all-time favorite Dunnett passage is probably Nicholas outside the church in Trebizond, discovering music; but Nicholas and Umar singing in the desert is a close second.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Oh, as to the author's agency... well, that's probably unanswerable. Do I think Tolkien was a self-conscious author who knew exactly what he was doing? Absolutely. His letters mention deliberate decisions to get more epic and formal in his style in TTT, for example. At the same time, most authors do this stuff all the time without necessarily knowing exactly where the influences and echoes--or even direct citations--come from. There's a fine line between copying slavishly another writer's style and using and transforming it.

My favorite examples of Shakespeare at work in later writers are Keats and Conrad, neither of whom could have written a word without the Bard.

But Idlerat is right that in Tolkien's case, Milton was Da Man.

[mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com]

I've been a silent observer of your LJ for some time, but this post has forced me to come forward. Just lovely. I've memoried it and demanded my friends read it as well. Thank you very much.