I think in the behind the scenes of the fellowship of the ring they say that Ian McKellen impersonated Tolkien when playing Gandalf. So in some way you are correct!
@john m Of course. I was born, and have lived in, Cambridge for all of my life. Many consider Cambridgeshire to be part of the "home counties", but I have to say that Tolkien is barely comprehensible here, and I suspect that a heavy drinking habit and being more at-home writing rather than speaking are part of that.
@fynes leigh I'm British (born and raised in Cambridge), but I do not consider my self "English" (half Scottish, half Polish). One can speak English in a very British way, without having English heritage.
Tolkien is the greatest fantasy writer who ever lived.He delighted so many readers,created so many beautiful characters and places in his imaginary universe, and inspired many other writers who would walk in his footsteps.
Ryan Lbronze are you fucking stupid? George rr maritn is nothing compared to Tolkien without Tolkien game of thrones, twilight, Harry Potter wouldn't even exist Tolkien basically invented the fantasy genre even George Lucas took inspiration from lord of the rings to create Star Wars and Martin is good but he isn't that good comparing Martin to Tolkien is like comparing a drawing of a dick on a toilet wall to the Mona Lisa
TRANSCRIPTION: (THIS BEGINS AROUND 2:00) D. Gerrolt: Where is God in The Lord of the Rings? J.R.R. Tolkien: He's mentioned once or twice. D. Gerrolt: Is he the One above the Eldar? J.R.R. Tolkien: The One, yes. D. Gerrolt: Despite the continuous war between evil (personified in Sauron) and good you never personalize or personify goodness. Good is there but it's totally abstract, you don't attempt to ascribe any Godship to it particularly J.R.R. Tolkien: No, no, this isn't a dualistic mythology it's based on, no. D. Gerrolt: But I mean the whole book is never the less nothing but the battle between good and evil. J.R.R. Tolkien: Well that's, I suppose, actually, a conscious reaction of the war from the stuff [that I was brought up on] was "The War to end all wars" I couldn’t.. Uh which I didn't believe in at the time and I believe in less now. D. Gerrolt: If I can take this a bit further I may make my point clearer. In battle Frodo and Sam call on Galadriel or their native country, Gimli calls on his ancestor's axe (if I read your appendices correctly) and the Men call ONLY on their swords by name or on their kings or lords. I would expect them to call on their gods. Yet amid thousands of names you don't name the deities of any the races you've invented, why? Have they no gods themselves? J.R.R. Tolkien: There aren't any. D. Gerrolt: I would've thought a story of this sort was almost dependent upon an intense believe in some theocratic division, some hierarchy. J.R.R. Tolkien: There is indeed. That's where the theocratic hierarchy comes in. A man of the 20th century must of course see that you must have (whether he believes in them or not) you must have gods in a story of this kind. But he can't make himself believe in gods like Thor and Odin, Aphrodite, Zeus, and that kind of thing. D. Gerrolt: You can't believe the men in your story would have called on Odin? J.R.R. Tolkien: I couldn't possibly construct a mythology which had Olympus or Asgard in it on the terms in which the people who'd worshiped those gods believed in. God is Supreme, the creator, outside, transcendent. The place of the "gods" is taken. So well taken that I think it makes no difference to the ordinary reader, is taken by the angelic spirits created by God, created before the particular time sequence which we call The World which is called in their language "Ea", "That which Is", Which now exists. THOSE are the Valar: the Powers. It's a construction of geo-mythology which allows part of the demiurgic of a thing as being handed over to powers which are created therein under The One. It's a bit like, but much more elaborate and thought out, than CS Lewis' business with his 'Out of the Silent Planet' where we have a demiurgus who is actually in command of the planet Mars and the idea that Lucifer was originally the one in command of the world but he fell so it was a "silent planet". That was the idea. Well this is not the same with me. D. Gerrolt: Yes yes, so then you have in your theocracy you have an Ultimate One, whom you call- J.R.R. Tolkien: He's called The One only D. Gerrolt: and then the Valar who are considered as living in Valinor. J.R.R. Tolkien: This particular little group of them who moved from other parts to this part because they became interested in it. D. Gerrolt: In the book I get the impression you always see power as being physically in a high place. You have a high seat, Orthanc, Meduseld, Barad Dur, the towers of Minas Tirith, Morgul, and Cirith Ungol, they are always high, physically up. Is power for you always, so to speak, at the top of the mountain or the top of a- J.R.R. Tolkien: Well that's just a symbol, isn't it ordinarily as a matter of fact it's just the story telling anything you want: towers and so on. You could have them down in the dungeon or underneath. There are as a matter of fact Morgoth: the Prime Mover of evil, of whom Sauron was only a petty lieutenant, lives in a dungeon that must be in a fortress of some kind; not that Valinor has any high towers. D. Gerrolt: Well that is almost without the world that you describe, isn’t it? J.R.R. Tolkien: It's in the physical world according to the myth. D. Gerrolt: Ahhh J.R.R. Tolkien: ..until the downfall of Atlantis. I've had an Atlantis complex in addition to all these other things and quite admitted that I've a permanent dream that I had let's say that the ineluctable wave has been one of my nightmares; sometimes coming in over the open country. It always ends by one surrendering themselves when we accept it. It comes in at all kinds of points. Whenever I used to doodle and draw nearly always a lone fatally vast oceanic wave coming in. So of course I had to write quite an appendix of this Atlantis story in which I call Numenor which means the land of the extreme West, West of Men. Well this is the fable, you see. The whole question of the Human fall is left off the stage, nicely. It occurred but it is not known since the retrace of these people. They were given this great island. The fairest of all West, not in the divine world, not on the immortal world, to live on. Then, of course, will always come a seemingly meaningless ban. Like the fruit of the tree of evil; Lewis uses the same thing in his 'Perelandra'. Their ban was they mustn't sail West. They did. D. Gerrolt: Hence the ultimate downfall. J.R.R. Tolkien: Then became only intellectual. It lived then only in memory, it lived in time but not present time. And of course if Numenor was drowned then the earthly paradise was moved so then you could then get to South America! (laughing) Then the world became round. You see it always had been a vast globe but people can now sail around it; discovered it's round. That was my solution to the- I wanted to give a form of Atlantis some universal application. The point is really: as they get to it you suddenly see the real colors of the world being now like a bridge. All lines leads to what was. Of course, I don't know what your theory of Time is but: what was, what is, what ever had an existence must- still has that same existence but it's a- We won't go, you can't go too deeply into those things but they really are sailing back to a world of memory. D. Gerrolt: In this world which you might have created had you been given the power to do so had you been one of the Valar had you been, say, the mock God: would you have created a world that was so solidly feudal as the Lord of the Rings? J.R.R. Tolkien: Oh yes, very much so yes, I think the feudal. Well you mean Feudal in the French sense. Not in the strict way for land owning..? D. Gerrolt: Oh no no no, in the wider sense J.R.R. Tolkien: Hierarchical, rather. D. Gerrolt: Hierarchical, exactly, yes. J.R.R. Tolkien: Hierarchical, yes D. Gerrolt: I mean that power should descend by a line of kings to their sons. J.R.R. Tolkien: Oh! The heredity yes yes yes. I don't know about that. No. It’s a very potent story making motive thing but half I would say- is it really worth putting the other system in and looking at these through the world, one doubts very much. It's never been worse, at any rate, than the struggle for power that always ensues when you haven’t got some line of decent that can't be questioned. D. Gerrolt: You're wedded to the feudal system, in a sense? I don't mean the medieval feudal system but the idea of power descending through blood or through marriage. J.R.R. Tolkien: Yes, I am wedded to those kind of loyalties because I think, contrary to most people, I think that touching your cap to the Squire may be damned bad for the Squire but it's damned good for you. D. Gerrolt: Do you find continuing interest in Lord of the Rings by people? Do people still write to you despite that the book's been out for 10 years? J.R.R. Tolkien: Dozens of letters of week, yeah. All I can do is keep a secretary to answer them, yes. D. Gerrolt: Were you surprise at its success? J.R.R. Tolkien: Nobody'd been more staggered unless it's possibly Stanley Unwin. I was up at Stanley Unwin's birthday celebration and a bookseller came up to me. I don't usually get greeted with such gravity he was so delighted. While he got a copy it'd sell so well it practically kept him going. (laughs) Well he gets his Guinea off the cent, you see? D. Gerrolt: Almost the last question: Do you in fact believe, yourself, not in the context of of this book, believe in the sense of straightforward strict belief, in the Eldar or in some form of governing spirits? J.R.R. Tolkien: Well the Eldar must be distinguished from the Valar only by... D. Gerrolt: The Valar I mean, I'm sorry. J.R.R. Tolkien: Yes... Umm (Pause) D. Gerrolt: Are you in fact a Theist? J.R.R. Tolkien: Oh, I'm a Roman Catholic: a devout Roman Catholic yes, but uh, I don’t know about Angelology but yes I should've thought almost certainly: Yes. Certainly. D. Gerrolt: well they seem to me to be the Saints or the equivalent of the Saints. J.R.R. Tolkien: They are, in some ways, yes, aren't they? [LIGHTING MATCH] they take the place, in this book of the year things in which the medieval and old religions you have the gods in the invocation of the saints which are lesser angels, yes they do. Well obviously many people have notions that praying to the Lady or the Queen of the Stars are, you know, it's like Roman Catholics in the invocation of Our Lady. (This is the first I've seen of this "extended version" interview.. I've seen, what seems to be, a few edited versions.. but this one seems to have a bunch that is left out.. even in transcription.. so I've just transcribed here was is missing from the other transcriptions. )[I'm sure there are some mistakes but I think Professor Tolkien would forgive me!] (There are a few more lines already transcribed elsewhere) www.tolkien.ru/audio/int_view.php
Even in his works Easterling was described as the evil tribe or barbaric, i believe Sir Tolkien only describe their government and their rulers. He doesn't describe all Easterling, Swarthy-Men, and Southron as evil. They become enemies of Free People because they are subject to the power of Morgorth & Sauron. Moreover Utumno & Angband is in North Middle-Earth, so it's not right to say that only East & South are enemies of Free People. The Hobbits are written in the Hobbits view, The Lord of the Rings are written in the Men of the West & Hobbits view, and The Silmarillion are written in the Elves (Noldor / Sindar) view. I'm from Indonesia, my skin color is Swarthy, and my country located in the Southeast. But I didn't consider Sir Tolkien's works refer to discrimination against other races which is not Caucasian People (White People).
@FREEDOM LIGHTRIDER You dont seem to understand the difference between allegory, applicability and themes. Its even explained in the foreword to Fellowship of the Ring. You can apply your own interpretation since Tolkien never wrote any allegories, thus applicability. He wrote themes, inspired by his time in WW1 and his work studying Anglo Saxon and Norse mythology. This is what makes it a timeless classic.
What I find VERY interesting is that I always wondered: In the Silmarillion it talks about how Tulkas came down from presumably the Timeless Halls to help the Valar. Does that mean that there are more valar-like spirits in the timeless halls that simply didn't come down to Eä? And this interview FINALLY answered that question! I'm so happy
@@TheOnlyGamerX the Ainur were given the choice to go into Arda after the Ainulindalë. The downside was that their soul would be bound to the world forever. Some decided to stay with Eru, others decided to go down into the world. Tulkas came down after the other valar had.
@@TheOnlyGamerX Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that's where Morgoth gets cast to and where Human or Edain souls go after death, whereas the Eldar are also bound to Ea like the Valar. I imagine it as Heaven's Heaven.
"Do people still write to you, despite the fact that the book has been out for 10 years?".... And here we are talking about it, 66 years after it has been out. And people will be talking about it 66 years from now, if we don't blow ourselves up by then.
It's brilliant how he created one of the best fantasy world ever, which has everything- different races, their own language and grammar structures, vast and complex history... EVERYTHING.
This interview is particularly fascinating because it predates the publication of The Silmarillion, so Tolkien has to explain many of the background concepts of the mythology and events of the First and Second Age. This interview might have been one of the first opportunities ever for the public to hear more about the basic background of his entire secondary world.
Much of what he is saying is very clear to the modern reader of Tolkien, but must have sounded like so much gibberish to most of the hearers of the interview who couldn't have possibly fathomed what he was talking about.
I've never been so sad about an authors/famous persons death, J.R.R Tolkien is such a good storyteller with a lot of ideas on his mind and he didn't get to finish a lot of them. A true legend, living through his work.
I'm glad Christopher Tolkien was so close with his father and had such a strong memory for his father's stories and works. Otherwise, the literature would've stopped with his death.
I'm actually very impressed with this interview. For the time it was made, I would have expected a snobbish dismissal of fantasy on the part of the interviewer (which is where it seemed like the interview was going, at the start). Instead, the interviewer is clearly not only familiar with Tolkien's work, but is clearly aware of its deep philosophical and theological underpinnings, and asks intelligent question about them. And neither Tolkien nor the interviewer seems to feel the need to dumb down the level of the conversation for the benefit of the audience.
@Chris Obviously you weren't reading... I said at the start of my comment that it seemed at first as if the interviewer was taking that line. He clearly had familiarity with the books, and by asking the questions which he asked, he was taking the work seriously as a piece of literature. Its perfectly legitimate to be more interested in the theological and philosophical underpinnings than the world-building element, focusing on those aspects doesn't imply that the the interviewer is any less appreciative of the work.
@@monkeymox2544 Yes, I'm pretty impressed too, I was expecting the interviewer to be far more dismissive of Tolkien's work (which as you pointed out, it did seem like it was going to be the case at first). Instead, he showed knowledge and interest, which surprised me considering it was long before the movies were made, which are essentially what allowed most people to get to know about the Lord of the Rings. Hearing an interviewer asking questions about the Eldar, the Valar and in a broader way the mythology of Tolkien (and this, even before the Silmarillion I believe) is quite fascinating. I feel like nowadays, such an interview would have been far less interesting, focusing on more superficial aspects (due to the fact that, let's be honest, interviewers most of the time now sound like they don't know what they are talking about in the slightest). So in short, I came purely to hear Tolkien's voice, but was instead given the opportunity to follow a conversation of a kind I'm pretty unused to.
@Aaron That's not true at all. Tolkien was a devout Catholic. He wrote in a letter that it is a "fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision"
@@jerrycornelius2261 To be fair that's not just the BBC, its pervasive throughout all media, even with a great deal of independent content created on YT. I'm personally a fan of the BBC in principle, but if I have one main problem with them its their failure to maintain a certain standard of broadcasting which might have actually kept the bar high for the commercial channels to compete against. Instead it started competing with the commercial channels, dumbing itself down in the process. I suppose they can't really win though, since if they had maintained their old standards they'd be accused on being elitist and out-of-touch.
Me too! But hearing him speak is disheartening because I hardly understand a word, and then even when I do I don't know what he meant to say 😆 One should have to be British in order to have a remotely decent conversation I think.
I like that if you ask Tolkien a straight question, he will give you a simple handful of words in response, but if you keep poking him on it he just bursts out with this wave of intellectualism that is almost incoherently quick.
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The man was insanely sharp. One can only imagine the awesome mindf*ck that were his conversations with CS Lewis when the latter was still an atheist.
Tolkien clearly is thinking much faster than he can possibly keep up with his mouth. A mind too great and imagination too vast to be contained with regular paste of words. This man spoke 30 languages fluently, had a big, happy family, had a full time immensly consuming university job, a handful of personal hobby's that included pointless strolling across the fields for hours and he still managed to fit somewhere into that full life, a creation of the most complex, completed and vast fantasy universe in existance, complete with their own languages, mythos, personal stories and adventures. This man was nothing short of an era defining genius. Newton and Einstein would find it hard to keep up with this guy.
@@abefroman8202 He most certainly spoke at least 27 languages used today, and a handful of unused languages like latin and ancient varieties of english. As for his kids, and broader family - obviously each family has them bad apples and conflicts. What's new. That doesn't take away anything from what I said about him specifically, having a full, family, career and hobby oriented life on top of being the biggest fantasy creator of all times and one of the top geniuses of an era.
@@abefroman8202 Okay bro, let’s make something straight. I only came here to praise Tolkien for his genius, I couldn’t care less about his kids, some kids turn bad no matter what you do. World is a twisted place. But since you insist, let’s briefly speak about his kid, priest John. Let me first say that I believe that every pedophile who abuses a child against its will should be castrated or sent straight to electric chair, no matter who he is, a priest, a pope or a president himself. With that said… No. Priest John Tolkien was NOT a pedophile. At least to our „public” knowledge and quoting 20 year old articles will not change that. Yes, there was a case against him, hence the articles. He won the case, and was found Innocent. Now, let’s examine some facts about the case: 1. The supposed abuse happened in 1950. The report was filed by the guy over 50 years later. He waited 50 years to file a report. „Accidentally” at the very same time, Lord of the Rings trilogy hit the Cinema, and Tolkien got famous again. Convenient timing to file a report against his son, huh? 2. At that time, the only possible authority witness who would have knowledge on the event, archbishop of the diocese, was long dead, and the priest John himself was over 85 years old, and was so old and ill, he couldn’t be properly investigated, especially about the events that happened half a century ago. Again, pretty convenient timing, huh? 3. The report filed accused priest John of molesting the guy as a child and saying him and other alter boys to „strip naked”. No proof of that was ever delivered. The whole case was based on the fact, that a NOTE of archbishop sending priest John to a therapy of some kind supposedly existed. But the fact was, that the note was never found or presented to the jury, and again, bishop was dead. Nobody could ever see that supposed proof or confirm it’s existence. No other „alter boys” he could’ve been there came forward. No other witnesses came forward. This was all hearsay and accusations. 4. Priest John denied all claims. He never said „I did it, I’m sorry” or anything like that. Neither did any other priest, bishop or any witness who could come forward at any time to confirm the story of the accuser. 5. The accuser went silent and stopped pursuing the case when parish payed him 15000 pounds of compensation, to avoid ill fame he was spreading about it. He wasn’t there for the truth or apology from priest John. He was there for the money. He had no evidence. He went to the media, because he knew that Tolkien is a hot topic and that media will gladly trash a supposed pedophile to get more attention from the readers. 6. Priest John was found Innocent of all charges in the courts. No testimony, proof or witnesses were put from the side of the accuser that would validate his side. Does this look like an actual pedophile case to you? No witnesses? A case long overdue, by over 50 years, by which point it’s impossible to properly prove or deny almost anything that’s brought up? A guy conveniently bringing up a case against a dying priest, with no real evidence and only backup from the media, ready to trash another church pedophile, let alone a famous one? I personally don’t want to judge what really happened. But this does not look like a honest case to me. It looks like a guy in his 60’s wanted to get some money, and saw an opportunity, because he could use media’s backup regarding a hot topic like Tolkien’s son to force a parish to pay him for silence. He filed a fake report to get a case going and validate his standing in media’s eyes, and put charges against a dying priest and a dead bishop, based on hearsay and non existing evidence, without any witnesses. And who in the world could ever prove if he is right or wrong, if the case waited 50 years to be examined. So pretty please, stop spreading that kind of fake news around the internet. The official info is - John Tolkien was Innocent. So we can at best say that we don’t really know what happened. But saying he definitely was a piece of sh*t pedophile and stuff like that is ridiculous. Plain and simple.
Interviewers and critics tend to forget Tolkein was a young adult when WW1 began. By the time of this interview, the pre-WW1 era was largely forgotten or had been shaped by books, films, and comedy made later by people who weren't there or shaped by it before horrors of WW1. But he also had a false memory that shaped his idyls. He started in a lovely Black Country area with what he remembered as an idyllic mill. Then he moved, as a child to a more central area of Birmingham. In fact rural life for the labouring classes was backbreakingly hard, often involved selling your labour for a season (see Melvin Bragg's, The Hired Man, about his grandfather), you were only an injury away from destitution for your family. The mill was not a lovely flour mill but an early industrial power source of the sort he did not like. My own grandfather came from such a pre-WW1 labouring family on the Cheshire-Stafford border so not unlike his rural-industry roots. The youngest of 13, three brothers died in WW1 while he survived the full 4 years. For the survivors, new opportunities arose due to labour shortages and he became a policeman in Liverpool, married a girl from his village, and my mother was born in 1921. I wish I'd known my grandfather beyond a few meetings. He died, along with Granny, in his mid 60s in early 1961. They looked like people aged well over 80 do nowadays. He was three or four years younger than Tolkein.
I met Tolkien twice (once public, once private) and knew Lewis. Both were very pleasant men and kind to a 17-year-old like me! This was before both men became icons, deified by crazed fans who would phone from America at 3 in the morning to ask what colour Frodo's hat was. They were academics, leading a quiet life in Oxford, no longer able to have a comfortable pint and pipe and their local. Imagine how astonished and discomforting it was for them to be mobbed (as they saw it) by thousands of young Americans. Tolkien in particular was uncomfortable with this sort of adulation and hardly knew what to make of it. Tolkien talked about it in his first magazine interview with NEW WORLDS around the time of that BBC interview.
Tolkien post-publication: talks about the theological structure in his world among the different races, the effects of feudalism and the balance of power, including how it concerns good and evil as abstract ideas and more. Martin post-publication: talks about the origin of names, the conflicts between men and how they relate to real life, the greyness of morality and more. Rowling: witches and wizards used to shit in the hallways and then use a spell to vanish the excrement.
This man fought in one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War... and lost all of his closest friends in that war. A brilliant man who never lost his appreciation for the beautiful things, the magical things.
The most information about his mythology from Tolkien in an interview. He gives foundation ideas about good, evil, God, angels/Powers/Valar, pagan/personal religion, symbols of power, Atlantis, aristocracy. Tolkien's mind works so fast that he rushes to get his words out.
Valar are Angelic like but also semi Divines too Like demi gods the higher Valar are and the angelic lower Valar are are angels/blessed ancestors. God/s Actual Ones are Ainur-Eru with Ainur are Minor Deities who are and work as the underlings and Eru the daddy who's the Major Deity Who starts the creation while his direct offspring and kind Ainur they do the rest interact with the World. All the beleifs and Spirituality and Theology and acclaimed "acclaimed" is Holy Pagan and far from Judeochrostian hebraic things which is extremely Good. And pious for this genre aka fantasy very pious even if Tolkien didn't see that.
@Caesar Australis True Gods Pagan Ones the Creators and Enders of All prove so abd you see. But you did in fact use extreme out of pagan Hellenic Norse and even Egyptian themes mainly European
@Caesar Australis they don't worship the judeo-christian god either. But Eru and Ainur have influence from The Gods Of Pagans. So, that's irrelevant. Bro don't worry.
We remember good tales better than we remember some parts of our life. His tales are in my memory since 10 and it has helped make my life an adventure!!
Interviewer: Why do the men never call upon their GAWDS in your story Tolkein: *Begins feverishly brainstorming out loud about men and the characteristics of their gods, angelic beings, and dichotomy of good and evil within the world of men after the 3rd age*
“I have an Atlantis complex in addition to all these other things… A permanent dream that I had… The ineluctable wave has been one of my nightmares, sometimes coming in over the open country. It always ends by one surrendering oneself.”
Wow I needed this interview so much. This interviewer is asking Tolkien all the questions I've been dying to ask him as I reread the novels. I must thank this interviewer almost as much as I thank Tolkien himself
If you wanted to know these answers, Tolkien gives much fuller and complete answers in his notes. I would suggest reading "The Longest Road" and "Morgoth's Ring" from the published history of Middle Earth, if you want insight into the philosophy and conception of the stories.
Everything changed when the Silmarillion was released. It was the singlest most interesting book I ever read. It made everything so clear, and you truly realized how much thought was put into the world of Arda.
I’m so thankful to sir JRR Tolkien for creating a whole language and then write the Lord of the rings, what an incredible man, thank you for all the amazing memories
This makes me cry not because I like his books that much, or his contribution to linguistics, but because it reminds me of my late grandfather. He was a good man and he is gone forever from this realm.
This interviewer is fantastic.. highly educated, able to pick up abstract themes and real word parallels. He challenges Tolkien a lot but you can clearly tell he's an admirer.... infinitely better than the dim witted interviewers of today
@@ToAFinish Not to be a showoff, not a complete know it all (I don't), scholars have traced the genre fantasy to Edmund Spencer. Sorry, I don't recall their argument(s) or proofs. Also, a fun fact, JRRT, in letters published in the first of the books to contain such, over and over calls LORT, a "Romance" or "an epic Romance", FWIW.
Fiction?! Everyone knows this really happened. Tolkien just happened to come into possession of the stories that Bilbo and Frodo originally wrote and transcribed them for us. Duh ;)
@@TheErockaustin Don't say that. Otherwise there will be people trying to force the truth out of his children because they may know something about it. :)
Well, to be fair. Tolkien didn't just "create a work of fiction." The question pertains to the fact that as a Philologist, Tolkien used his knowledge of historical languages to synthesize new ones, which is a much more technical and specialized task than writing fiction. The interviewer isn't asking whether fiction is a suitable pursuit, he's asking whether Tolkien has any particular regret that his most dazzling contribution as a trained philologist was not related to academic research, but in his unorthodox application of his learning in a practical and playful way. I don't really know, but I would guess not many before him had ever seriously attempted to create languages this way, let alone as an expert. It would have seemed peculiar. Not unimpressive, just peculiar and hard to pin down in the terms of how it fits in the scope of professional accomplishments. Sorry for the rambling comment, but I hope it gives some context!
Watching this in 2020. J.R.R. Tolkien was a genius and a master of the fantasy genre. There's no one better or ever will be. As a dabbler in fantasy writing I wish I had a modicum of his imagination and talent that he put into the writing of The Hobbit, the Ring Trilogy and The Silmarillion. The road goes ever ever on sir. Thank you for what you gave the world of fantasy.
This is a great interview, we simply dont have media interviewers of this calibre. Nor will we ever have them again And the likes of Tolkien and Lewis are gone ,never coming back. God gave us these gifted men, we are now left with pigmies and scribblers arent we?
"Courage is not knowing when to take a life, but when to spare one." --Gandalf how I wish I could meet Tolkien just once and thank him for giving us this beautiful world with beautiful characters.
From Letter 131, which J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his friend Milton Waldon, as included at the start of the Silmarillion, "But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story; the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama." Few people can claim to have single-handedly created multiple languages and an entire mythology to tie them together and have done so to provide a unique mythology for his ethnicity to call its own. We Anglo-Saxons mostly inherited the myth-making of the Germans and the Norse, and Tolkien's works have many parallels with but also stand apart from the mythology of the Norse, Germans, and Celts.
Being a hillbilly American from Indiana, really quite surprised I could understand what he said. So thankful he "wasted" 14 years creating a story that inspires such imagination. God bless you sir!
The pride in and love for our european heritage and nature that his fictional work has given us are real, sir interviewer. They're much more valuable than most products of real life work too.
@@Hero_Of_Old Agreed, European culture and heritage is dying out. It's all very sad, but at the least I hope I can have a large white family of my own, despite massive decline in fertility rates across Europe and the US.
Hearing him speak about his vision I remember now the passion and craziness you put into any kind of story and not because it's needs to be fancy but because it needs to make sense everything else will fall into place after ....and what makes it better is this is not a a man of prequels that made him famous but a continuity writer that takes the story forward and leaves you wondering
Wow he speaks so fast and precise, I like it. I like how he questioned God in his fantasy writings, It revels a lot of what was going through his head in drawing out these awesome concepts of the narrative behind LOTR.
His reply to the remarks about including gods in the story... Who is genius, if Tolkien was not? These are the kinds of thinkers we will need in the future. More importantly, we need them now.
@Mr. Al The vast majority of lgbt people have no problem with tolkien. And are you saying that people that aren't white automatically have a problem with him?
If you're a progressive and don't hate Tolkien, you haven't read him--and you definitely haven't understood him. Tolkien was a deeply reactionary Catholic conservatism--his entire philosophy was in direct opposition to your false so-called "progress", and he despised the debased, vile orcminded brutes like you, who hate the good, the true, and the beautiful just as goblins hate the light, who scorn the wisdom of our forefathers and descrate the heritage of White civilisation which he so loved. His philosophy suffuses his entire work, and as he stated in the interview, he's both a devout Roman Catholic and a traditionalist royalist.
I just want to congratulate the interviewer. You can really tell he researched the book cover to cover before hand. Really good questions as well. Shame modern interviews aren’t as good as this. It’s also interesting to hear some things on middle earth, like the religion aspect. Good stuff
I love the closed captioning on this video. Evidently Morgoth was an Amazonian Peggy Lipton. A very revealing interview from a lore perspective I think.
This interview fits perfectly with Christopher Tolkien's description of his father as a man with his head in the clouds, always having 20 thoughts in his head at the same time. I think you need to be this kind of distracted genius to create something as compelling as LotR
I am so glad they touched on the godship issue, I always loved how there is no real religion in LOTR (despite the worship of evil more as an entity than a real religious cult). Even though the narrative is strongly about the battle between good and evil, good is presented as something fair, abstract and yet so clear and very much alive in the hearts of the members of the Fellowship despite the absence of actual deities and cults, which makes it absolutely beautiful. Tolkien's Evil is revealed as something mysterious, twisted, ancient and connected to the very creation of the universe, and the way you feel its presence throughout the book has always fascinated me. The right alchemy of elements of christian mythology, medieval narrative, the collective subconscious...a simple formula perhaps but exquisitly put together. Sauron is the perfect archetipe of Evil, and that's I think the reason LOTR works brilliantly. Hope I made myself clear...😖
Sixty years later, nobody remembers those who said he wasted his time for forty years and should 'get back to work'. Most likely, any books that these critics produced are long out of print, and any papers published were archived long ago.
Good to hear the words of such a great writer, though have to admit it really does need a lot of focus to follow the thread and understand him at times.
Thank you for this interview audio. College education and extended studies allow for this kind of creativity and imagination by a person. Amazing and loved!
I like the questions.... A modern jurnalist would ask some thing like ,, how do you feel about this or that...how did you react when...." I like this much more
I lived for a while just west of Oxford a few miles, in and around Eynsham, a town where one of Tolkiens sons had been a rector or something at a Catholic Church. When I would ask about J.R.R. Tolkien, the locals would laugh and tell me "his name was John" or "we called him John". John Tolkien. I've had a few pints at the "Eagle and Child" in Oxford, or as they call it "the bird and the babe". Which is where the inklings met, several fiction writers from among the professors of Oxford, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are known to many. The names of rivers and towns sound like they could be in the LOTR or the Hobbit. Names like "The Evenlode" or "the Windrush" a river that runs through Witney, or Burford, Swinford, Oxford, all places for fording a river. It is a lovely landscape, lovely people, a magical place and one I still miss.
"And I must admit that I was very... very........ drunk". - The Fast Show fans will get it haha... Tolkien is a legend, but almost incomprehensible here.
I was once with my friend afdsfsdgfshfsh... with two tiny teeth. ..ssfdgsfsfggfsgf... absolutely marvelous ...dsdfkgjhsdgfjgsjdfgjdsjfgf... Bilbo Baggins! ...dsfhkgjhsdgfjhgsdjfgfd... and I must admit that I was very... very drunk
The interviewer continues to ask Tolkien about the relation between Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's own theology because he understands the man he is interviewing. Tolkien's deeply held Roman Catholic faith was a distinctive trait of this great writer. To fail to recognize this, or neglect the manner in which it infused his writings, is to miss what he and his closest companions (i.e. Lewis, Williams, Barfield, and the other Inklings) ultimately stood for.
My favorite part of this is when the guy mixes up the Eldar and the Valar and Tolkien started to have an eruption of nerd-rage until the guy corrects himself :p hahah
"Dozens of letters a week..." Imagine how many he'd get now. Great conversation this and apparent how hard the interviewer wants to link this to religion rather than just be a great adventure to go on.
An interview which asks many questions which many likely would like to ask, and the answers are rewarding and very lucid (although I acknowledge that the microphones may not have been set to correctly pick up Mr. Tolkien's answers).
@@dan5020 Indeed. "The guy who played Slughorn" That's how he's recognised by a generation, and I suppose it's a generation younger than I am, but still: "the guy" 😢
@fynes leigh Even though he was inspired by stuff,He still created the books. George Lucas was inspired by stuff and he still created the original trilogy(the prequels were not really that much inspired from other stuff). He created the characters. Yeah, they are inspired and are similar to other characters in fiction/history but he still created them.
Well, no. God came to Earth as Jesus of Nazareth, a first century Jew. But the Holy Spirit came with power over Tolkien's works and blessed them, and inspired them. In the Silmarillion, there is a chapter about the creation of the dwarves by the archangel Aule. And in the story, Aule grows impatient waiting for the coming of the Children of Illuvatar (that is, God) and so he makes his own model that he, like this over grown child, hides in his bed room and furtively begins playing with like dolls, pretending to teach them and instruct them as he knows Illuvatar intends that he do when the real Children of Illuvatar arrive. And of course, Illuvatar "catches" him playing this game, and Aule acts like a naughty but repentant child caught by a parent doing something he knows he shouldn't be doing. And Aule tries to explain himself to God, and he says this: "I did not desire such lordship. I desired things other than I am, to love and to teach them, so that they too might perceive the beauty of Ea, which thou has caused to be… And in my impatience I have fallen into folly. Yet the making of things is in my heart from my own making by thee; and the child of little understanding that makes a paly of the deeds of his father may do so without thought of mockery, but because he is the son of his father. But what shall I do now, so that thou not be angry with me for ever? As a child to his father, I offer to thee these things, the work of the hands which thou hast made. Do with them what thou wilt. But I should not rather destroy the work of my presumption?” Since this petition is addressed directly to God, it's a prayer. And, when I read that passage enough I realized it was Tolkien's prayer - his petition to God over his presumptuous act of sub-creation. And when you realize that, you realize that this is one of the most beautiful heartfelt prayers in the English language. Illuvatar answer's Aule's prayer favorably, telling Aule that even before Aule made the prayer, he had breathed his life into the dwarves and made them real people. And Tolkien's was answered, I think even more beautifully and graciously.
I love Tolkien and so appreciate being able to hear him talk about his creative work, however, his speech is difficult to understand! I have been living in England for over 16 years now and I still have to concentrate very hard to pick it all up.
"Where is God in The Lord of the Rings?""...Mentioned once or twice."HAH, that's where that line of reasoning should have logically concluded. My man Tolkien.
I think upon reading the Silmarillion and about the music of the Ainur you can see that Eru inspired to give creative power to the Ainur and then gave them a glimpse of what the music created (when I say glimpse this is obviously an understatement). It was like he projected himself into numerous individual beings so that each could provide many hands to make the physical world. A bit like how complex the human brain is and what it would be like to give impetus to all aspects of it and create something majestic. Eru has ultimate power to create good and evil yet desires harmony and this process of creating the powers allowed him to manifest an evolving planet whilst resulting in the delegation of responsibility to the powers.
Holybutternutssquash, It was a known fact that God(higher spirit) existed in middle earth as the wizards were direct evidence as well as Numenor. Tolkien also probably hated the notion of having to create false gods (by which I mean ones not tied directly to the world but just made up). The gods in Game of Thrones are false and useless for example. Being a Catholic he saw them as unnecessary hasle that undermined his faith.
Still, it is a great observation on part of the interviewer that nobody invokes God as they march to battle. This gives gives me reason to doubt that professor Tolkien was such a believer as everybody makes him out to be. Maybe in the cold trenches of the Great War he discovered that God will not help you in battle - Only what you hold in your arms will.
Can you imagine if Joseph Campbell had interviewed Tolkien about this time (1960.) Campbell was just writing his opus and consolidating his ideas on Mythology.
It's interesting listening to him talk. Had a distinctive, slurred and rapid way of talking yet still sounded pretty upper class to my ears, without any specific regional dialect or accent. I don't feel the gentleman that portrayed him in the recent film biopic captured his speech patterns in the least bit.
His speaking was difficult even for some other English people in his day to understand from what I've heard. You had to get used to it. Even his biographer, an Englishman, said he also had trouble understanding everything at first.
He sounds and says things like I imagine Gandalf would say.
I think in the behind the scenes of the fellowship of the ring they say that Ian McKellen impersonated Tolkien when playing Gandalf. So in some way you are correct!
Indeed, I wonder where Gandalf got it from? (giggle)
I am sure Tolkien put his characteristics and interests in his character's.
I think this was a real event and he was Gandalf himself.
R2-D2 Absolutely
This is one of the most British things I have ever heard
@fynes leigh ironic
British is not an accent
@@joefitzgerald7660 No one mentioned an accent.
@john m Of course. I was born, and have lived in, Cambridge for all of my life. Many consider Cambridgeshire to be part of the "home counties", but I have to say that Tolkien is barely comprehensible here, and I suspect that a heavy drinking habit and being more at-home writing rather than speaking are part of that.
@fynes leigh I'm British (born and raised in Cambridge), but I do not consider my self "English" (half Scottish, half Polish). One can speak English in a very British way, without having English heritage.
_"A true genius never trails-off his sentences ... he ends them _*_PRECISELY_*_ where he means to..."_
I see what you did there. Nice
Perfectly said
Cute!
lol. yeh he is the trail off master.
Make me cry why
I swear to God i cant help but imagine Bilbo every time Tolkien opens his mouth. His voice and way of speaking is so brilliant!
I thought the same!
Tolkien is no hobbit. He is actually quite tall. His height is 5'9''
He speaks so fast that I can't understand him
he secretly thought himself Tom
Well I have to admit that Tolkien' genius was in the written word. His speech doesn't seem to reflect the immense intellect behind his works.
"The world which I grew up in as a small child was definitely closer to the world of Shakespeare than here." That's pretty mind blowing.
They were both INFPs
Tolkien is the greatest fantasy writer who ever lived.He delighted so many readers,created so many beautiful characters and places in his imaginary universe, and inspired many other writers who would walk in his footsteps.
Joaquin Mejia George RR Martin bitch!!
Ryan Lbronze Nah George is really good and probably inspired by Tolkien but Tolkien was and still is the ultimate fantasy writer
Ryan Lbronze are you fucking stupid? George rr maritn is nothing compared to Tolkien without Tolkien game of thrones, twilight, Harry Potter wouldn't even exist Tolkien basically invented the fantasy genre even George Lucas took inspiration from lord of the rings to create Star Wars and Martin is good but he isn't that good comparing Martin to Tolkien is like comparing a drawing of a dick on a toilet wall to the Mona Lisa
He was a heathen.
Matthew W how stupid are you?
Tolkien was a genius, nothing more to say.
What a stupid thing to say. How else can you define one persons talent over another?
@fynes leigh In Medieval times, "genius" meant the smartest person in the room. One scholar on JRRT said that we'd use the phrase "Renaissance Man".
C S Lewis also, they were contemporaries of course. One can establish from their works, their Catholic Tolkien and Anglican Lewis' upbringing.
@fynes leigh Be quiet.
@fynes leigh clearly you misunderstand what a genius is.
TRANSCRIPTION:
(THIS BEGINS AROUND 2:00)
D. Gerrolt: Where is God in The Lord of the Rings?
J.R.R. Tolkien: He's mentioned once or twice.
D. Gerrolt: Is he the One above the Eldar?
J.R.R. Tolkien: The One, yes.
D. Gerrolt: Despite the continuous war between evil (personified in Sauron) and good you never personalize or personify goodness. Good is there but it's totally abstract, you don't attempt to ascribe any Godship to it particularly
J.R.R. Tolkien: No, no, this isn't a dualistic mythology it's based on, no.
D. Gerrolt: But I mean the whole book is never the less nothing but the battle between good and evil.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Well that's, I suppose, actually, a conscious reaction of the war from the stuff [that I was brought up on] was "The War to end all wars" I couldn’t.. Uh which I didn't believe in at the time and I believe in less now.
D. Gerrolt: If I can take this a bit further I may make my point clearer. In battle Frodo and Sam call on Galadriel or their native country, Gimli calls on his ancestor's axe (if I read your appendices correctly) and the Men call ONLY on their swords by name or on their kings or lords. I would expect them to call on their gods. Yet amid thousands of names you don't name the deities of any the races you've invented, why? Have they no gods themselves?
J.R.R. Tolkien: There aren't any.
D. Gerrolt: I would've thought a story of this sort was almost dependent upon an intense believe in some theocratic division, some hierarchy.
J.R.R. Tolkien: There is indeed. That's where the theocratic hierarchy comes in. A man of the 20th century must of course see that you must have (whether he believes in them or not) you must have gods in a story of this kind. But he can't make himself believe in gods like Thor and Odin, Aphrodite, Zeus, and that kind of thing.
D. Gerrolt: You can't believe the men in your story would have called on Odin?
J.R.R. Tolkien: I couldn't possibly construct a mythology which had Olympus or Asgard in it on the terms in which the people who'd worshiped those gods believed in. God is Supreme, the creator, outside, transcendent. The place of the "gods" is taken. So well taken that I think it makes no difference to the ordinary reader, is taken by the angelic spirits created by God, created before the particular time sequence which we call The World which is called in their language "Ea", "That which Is", Which now exists. THOSE are the Valar: the Powers. It's a construction of geo-mythology which allows part of the demiurgic of a thing as being handed over to powers which are created therein under The One. It's a bit like, but much more elaborate and thought out, than CS Lewis' business with his 'Out of the Silent Planet' where we have a demiurgus who is actually in command of the planet Mars and the idea that Lucifer was originally the one in command of the world but he fell so it was a "silent planet". That was the idea. Well this is not the same with me.
D. Gerrolt: Yes yes, so then you have in your theocracy you have an Ultimate One, whom you call-
J.R.R. Tolkien: He's called The One only
D. Gerrolt: and then the Valar who are considered as living in Valinor.
J.R.R. Tolkien: This particular little group of them who moved from other parts to this part because they became interested in it.
D. Gerrolt: In the book I get the impression you always see power as being physically in a high place. You have a high seat, Orthanc, Meduseld, Barad Dur, the towers of Minas Tirith, Morgul, and Cirith Ungol, they are always high, physically up. Is power for you always, so to speak, at the top of the mountain or the top of a-
J.R.R. Tolkien: Well that's just a symbol, isn't it ordinarily as a matter of fact it's just the story telling anything you want: towers and so on. You could have them down in the dungeon or underneath. There are as a matter of fact Morgoth: the Prime Mover of evil, of whom Sauron was only a petty lieutenant, lives in a dungeon that must be in a fortress of some kind; not that Valinor has any high towers.
D. Gerrolt: Well that is almost without the world that you describe, isn’t it?
J.R.R. Tolkien: It's in the physical world according to the myth.
D. Gerrolt: Ahhh
J.R.R. Tolkien: ..until the downfall of Atlantis. I've had an Atlantis complex in addition to all these other things and quite admitted that I've a permanent dream that I had let's say that the ineluctable wave has been one of my nightmares; sometimes coming in over the open country. It always ends by one surrendering themselves when we accept it. It comes in at all kinds of points. Whenever I used to doodle and draw nearly always a lone fatally vast oceanic wave coming in. So of course I had to write quite an appendix of this Atlantis story in which I call Numenor which means the land of the extreme West, West of Men. Well this is the fable, you see. The whole question of the Human fall is left off the stage, nicely. It occurred but it is not known since the retrace of these people. They were given this great island. The fairest of all West, not in the divine world, not on the immortal world, to live on. Then, of course, will always come a seemingly meaningless ban. Like the fruit of the tree of evil; Lewis uses the same thing in his 'Perelandra'. Their ban was they mustn't sail West. They did.
D. Gerrolt: Hence the ultimate downfall.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Then became only intellectual. It lived then only in memory, it lived in time but not present time. And of course if Numenor was drowned then the earthly paradise was moved so then you could then get to South America!
(laughing)
Then the world became round. You see it always had been a vast globe but people can now sail around it; discovered it's round. That was my solution to the- I wanted to give a form of Atlantis some universal application. The point is really: as they get to it you suddenly see the real colors of the world being now like a bridge. All lines leads to what was. Of course, I don't know what your theory of Time is but: what was, what is, what ever had an existence must- still has that same existence but it's a- We won't go, you can't go too deeply into those things but they really are sailing back to a world of memory.
D. Gerrolt: In this world which you might have created had you been given the power to do so had you been one of the Valar had you been, say, the mock God: would you have created a world that was so solidly feudal as the Lord of the Rings?
J.R.R. Tolkien: Oh yes, very much so yes, I think the feudal. Well you mean Feudal in the French sense. Not in the strict way for land owning..?
D. Gerrolt: Oh no no no, in the wider sense
J.R.R. Tolkien: Hierarchical, rather.
D. Gerrolt: Hierarchical, exactly, yes.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Hierarchical, yes
D. Gerrolt: I mean that power should descend by a line of kings to their sons.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Oh! The heredity yes yes yes. I don't know about that. No. It’s a very potent story making motive thing but half I would say- is it really worth putting the other system in and looking at these through the world, one doubts very much. It's never been worse, at any rate, than the struggle for power that always ensues when you haven’t got some line of decent that can't be questioned.
D. Gerrolt: You're wedded to the feudal system, in a sense? I don't mean the medieval feudal system but the idea of power descending through blood or through marriage.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Yes, I am wedded to those kind of loyalties because I think, contrary to most people, I think that touching your cap to the Squire may be damned bad for the Squire but it's damned good for you.
D. Gerrolt: Do you find continuing interest in Lord of the Rings by people? Do people still write to you despite that the book's been out for 10 years?
J.R.R. Tolkien: Dozens of letters of week, yeah. All I can do is keep a secretary to answer them, yes.
D. Gerrolt: Were you surprise at its success?
J.R.R. Tolkien: Nobody'd been more staggered unless it's possibly Stanley Unwin. I was up at Stanley Unwin's birthday celebration and a bookseller came up to me. I don't usually get greeted with such gravity he was so delighted. While he got a copy it'd sell so well it practically kept him going. (laughs) Well he gets his Guinea off the cent, you see?
D. Gerrolt: Almost the last question:
Do you in fact believe, yourself, not in the context of of this book, believe in the sense of straightforward strict belief, in the Eldar or in some form of governing spirits?
J.R.R. Tolkien: Well the Eldar must be distinguished from the Valar only by...
D. Gerrolt: The Valar I mean, I'm sorry.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Yes... Umm (Pause)
D. Gerrolt: Are you in fact a Theist?
J.R.R. Tolkien: Oh, I'm a Roman Catholic: a devout Roman Catholic yes, but uh, I don’t know about Angelology but yes I should've thought almost certainly: Yes. Certainly.
D. Gerrolt: well they seem to me to be the Saints or the equivalent of the Saints.
J.R.R. Tolkien: They are, in some ways, yes, aren't they? [LIGHTING MATCH] they take the place, in this book of the year things in which the medieval and old religions you have the gods in the invocation of the saints which are lesser angels, yes they do. Well obviously many people have notions that praying to the Lady or the Queen of the Stars are, you know, it's like Roman Catholics in the invocation of Our Lady.
(This is the first I've seen of this "extended version" interview.. I've seen, what seems to be, a few edited versions.. but this one seems to have a bunch that is left out.. even in transcription.. so I've just transcribed here was is missing from the other transcriptions. )[I'm sure there are some mistakes but I think Professor Tolkien would forgive me!]
(There are a few more lines already transcribed elsewhere) www.tolkien.ru/audio/int_view.php
Great job! I'm amazed. Thanks for your efforts.
Roman Styran Audio Recording Collection
It was certainly my pleasure! Thanks for providing this video!
+kelvyquayo - Hear hear. Thanks to you both for the upload and the transcript.
kelvyquayo thank you for this.
Thank you!
"I dislike allegory, whenever I smell it." MY man
@Paul Right!? It was a manifestation of his love of language, nature, life and love.
Even in his works Easterling was described as the evil tribe or barbaric, i believe Sir Tolkien only describe their government and their rulers. He doesn't describe all Easterling, Swarthy-Men, and Southron as evil. They become enemies of Free People because they are subject to the power of Morgorth & Sauron. Moreover Utumno & Angband is in North Middle-Earth, so it's not right to say that only East & South are enemies of Free People. The Hobbits are written in the Hobbits view, The Lord of the Rings are written in the Men of the West & Hobbits view, and The Silmarillion are written in the Elves (Noldor / Sindar) view. I'm from Indonesia, my skin color is Swarthy, and my country located in the Southeast. But I didn't consider Sir Tolkien's works refer to discrimination against other races which is not Caucasian People (White People).
@FREEDOM LIGHTRIDER Agreed, so much.
@FREEDOM LIGHTRIDER muh patriarchy
@FREEDOM LIGHTRIDER You dont seem to understand the difference between allegory, applicability and themes. Its even explained in the foreword to Fellowship of the Ring. You can apply your own interpretation since Tolkien never wrote any allegories, thus applicability. He wrote themes, inspired by his time in WW1 and his work studying Anglo Saxon and Norse mythology. This is what makes it a timeless classic.
This interviewer couldnt wait for The Silmarillion
Thank god he was at least prepped
I'm reading it now. A friend gave me the book. They have excellent taste, evidently. It's fantastic so far.
What I find VERY interesting is that I always wondered: In the Silmarillion it talks about how Tulkas came down from presumably the Timeless Halls to help the Valar. Does that mean that there are more valar-like spirits in the timeless halls that simply didn't come down to Eä? And this interview FINALLY answered that question! I'm so happy
@@TheOnlyGamerX the Ainur were given the choice to go into Arda after the Ainulindalë. The downside was that their soul would be bound to the world forever. Some decided to stay with Eru, others decided to go down into the world. Tulkas came down after the other valar had.
@@TheOnlyGamerX Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that's where Morgoth gets cast to and where Human or Edain souls go after death, whereas the Eldar are also bound to Ea like the Valar. I imagine it as Heaven's Heaven.
I can hear the interviewer’s glasses
I love that comment so much.
Ha ha ha ha ha brilliant
"Do people still write to you, despite the fact that the book has been out for 10 years?"....
And here we are talking about it, 66 years after it has been out. And people will be talking about it 66 years from now, if we don't blow ourselves up by then.
Well we’ve made it 4 weeks so it’s a good start.
@@whatisdan Hopefully this comment ages well!
It's brilliant how he created one of the best fantasy world ever, which has everything- different races, their own language and grammar structures, vast and complex history... EVERYTHING.
This interview is particularly fascinating because it predates the publication of The Silmarillion, so Tolkien has to explain many of the background concepts of the mythology and events of the First and Second Age. This interview might have been one of the first opportunities ever for the public to hear more about the basic background of his entire secondary world.
Much of what he is saying is very clear to the modern reader of Tolkien, but must have sounded like so much gibberish to most of the hearers of the interview who couldn't have possibly fathomed what he was talking about.
It's quite fascinating since he also mentions Morgoth
I've never been so sad about an authors/famous persons death, J.R.R Tolkien is such a good storyteller with a lot of ideas on his mind and he didn't get to finish a lot of them. A true legend, living through his work.
I'm glad Christopher Tolkien was so close with his father and had such a strong memory for his father's stories and works. Otherwise, the literature would've stopped with his death.
@@OccasionalHaHa and now Christopher has passed
I'm actually very impressed with this interview. For the time it was made, I would have expected a snobbish dismissal of fantasy on the part of the interviewer (which is where it seemed like the interview was going, at the start). Instead, the interviewer is clearly not only familiar with Tolkien's work, but is clearly aware of its deep philosophical and theological underpinnings, and asks intelligent question about them. And neither Tolkien nor the interviewer seems to feel the need to dumb down the level of the conversation for the benefit of the audience.
@Chris Obviously you weren't reading... I said at the start of my comment that it seemed at first as if the interviewer was taking that line. He clearly had familiarity with the books, and by asking the questions which he asked, he was taking the work seriously as a piece of literature. Its perfectly legitimate to be more interested in the theological and philosophical underpinnings than the world-building element, focusing on those aspects doesn't imply that the the interviewer is any less appreciative of the work.
@@monkeymox2544 Yes, I'm pretty impressed too, I was expecting the interviewer to be far more dismissive of Tolkien's work (which as you pointed out, it did seem like it was going to be the case at first). Instead, he showed knowledge and interest, which surprised me considering it was long before the movies were made, which are essentially what allowed most people to get to know about the Lord of the Rings. Hearing an interviewer asking questions about the Eldar, the Valar and in a broader way the mythology of Tolkien (and this, even before the Silmarillion I believe) is quite fascinating. I feel like nowadays, such an interview would have been far less interesting, focusing on more superficial aspects (due to the fact that, let's be honest, interviewers most of the time now sound like they don't know what they are talking about in the slightest). So in short, I came purely to hear Tolkien's voice, but was instead given the opportunity to follow a conversation of a kind I'm pretty unused to.
@Aaron That's not true at all. Tolkien was a devout Catholic. He wrote in a letter that it is a "fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision"
That's when the BBC didn't assume it's audience to be illiterate and dumb. Standards in the media have slipped lower and lower in my lifetime.
@@jerrycornelius2261 To be fair that's not just the BBC, its pervasive throughout all media, even with a great deal of independent content created on YT. I'm personally a fan of the BBC in principle, but if I have one main problem with them its their failure to maintain a certain standard of broadcasting which might have actually kept the bar high for the commercial channels to compete against. Instead it started competing with the commercial channels, dumbing itself down in the process. I suppose they can't really win though, since if they had maintained their old standards they'd be accused on being elitist and out-of-touch.
Man, what I would give to have just an hour to talk to him about anything.
Anything? Like ...pubic lice? Irritable bowel syndrome? Bacterial vaginosis? Explosive/projectile diarrhea?
@@Bhatt_Hole what
Even the migratory cycle of the coconut?
Me too! But hearing him speak is disheartening because I hardly understand a word, and then even when I do I don't know what he meant to say 😆 One should have to be British in order to have a remotely decent conversation I think.
@@silverdragon710 British here, I can only understand about 60% of it
Lifelong fan, and this is the first time I've heard Tolkien's voice. Fascinating interview.
Yep
I like that if you ask Tolkien a straight question, he will give you a simple handful of words in response, but if you keep poking him on it he just bursts out with this wave of intellectualism that is almost incoherently quick.
The man was insanely sharp. One can only imagine the awesome mindf*ck that were his conversations with CS Lewis when the latter was still an atheist.
Tolkien clearly is thinking much faster than he can possibly keep up with his mouth. A mind too great and imagination too vast to be contained with regular paste of words. This man spoke 30 languages fluently, had a big, happy family, had a full time immensly consuming university job, a handful of personal hobby's that included pointless strolling across the fields for hours and he still managed to fit somewhere into that full life, a creation of the most complex, completed and vast fantasy universe in existance, complete with their own languages, mythos, personal stories and adventures. This man was nothing short of an era defining genius. Newton and Einstein would find it hard to keep up with this guy.
@@abefroman8202 He most certainly spoke at least 27 languages used today, and a handful of unused languages like latin and ancient varieties of english. As for his kids, and broader family - obviously each family has them bad apples and conflicts. What's new. That doesn't take away anything from what I said about him specifically, having a full, family, career and hobby oriented life on top of being the biggest fantasy creator of all times and one of the top geniuses of an era.
@@abefroman8202 FrancisTolkien was not a pedophile. The allegations against him were false, thats why he was acquitted of all charges.
Mateo. Gone quiet now, haven’t you!
@@abefroman8202 Okay bro, let’s make something straight. I only came here to praise Tolkien for his genius, I couldn’t care less about his kids, some kids turn bad no matter what you do. World is a twisted place. But since you insist, let’s briefly speak about his kid, priest John.
Let me first say that I believe that every pedophile who abuses a child against its will should be castrated or sent straight to electric chair, no matter who he is, a priest, a pope or a president himself. With that said…
No. Priest John Tolkien was NOT a pedophile. At least to our „public” knowledge and quoting 20 year old articles will not change that. Yes, there was a case against him, hence the articles. He won the case, and was found Innocent. Now, let’s examine some facts about the case:
1. The supposed abuse happened in 1950. The report was filed by the guy over 50 years later. He waited 50 years to file a report. „Accidentally” at the very same time, Lord of the Rings trilogy hit the Cinema, and Tolkien got famous again. Convenient timing to file a report against his son, huh?
2. At that time, the only possible authority witness who would have knowledge on the event, archbishop of the diocese, was long dead, and the priest John himself was over 85 years old, and was so old and ill, he couldn’t be properly investigated, especially about the events that happened half a century ago. Again, pretty convenient timing, huh?
3. The report filed accused priest John of molesting the guy as a child and saying him and other alter boys to „strip naked”. No proof of that was ever delivered. The whole case was based on the fact, that a NOTE of archbishop sending priest John to a therapy of some kind supposedly existed. But the fact was, that the note was never found or presented to the jury, and again, bishop was dead. Nobody could ever see that supposed proof or confirm it’s existence. No other „alter boys” he could’ve been there came forward. No other witnesses came forward. This was all hearsay and accusations.
4. Priest John denied all claims. He never said „I did it, I’m sorry” or anything like that. Neither did any other priest, bishop or any witness who could come forward at any time to confirm the story of the accuser.
5. The accuser went silent and stopped pursuing the case when parish payed him 15000 pounds of compensation, to avoid ill fame he was spreading about it. He wasn’t there for the truth or apology from priest John. He was there for the money. He had no evidence. He went to the media, because he knew that Tolkien is a hot topic and that media will gladly trash a supposed pedophile to get more attention from the readers.
6. Priest John was found Innocent of all charges in the courts. No testimony, proof or witnesses were put from the side of the accuser that would validate his side.
Does this look like an actual pedophile case to you? No witnesses? A case long overdue, by over 50 years, by which point it’s impossible to properly prove or deny almost anything that’s brought up? A guy conveniently bringing up a case against a dying priest, with no real evidence and only backup from the media, ready to trash another church pedophile, let alone a famous one? I personally don’t want to judge what really happened. But this does not look like a honest case to me. It looks like a guy in his 60’s wanted to get some money, and saw an opportunity, because he could use media’s backup regarding a hot topic like Tolkien’s son to force a parish to pay him for silence. He filed a fake report to get a case going and validate his standing in media’s eyes, and put charges against a dying priest and a dead bishop, based on hearsay and non existing evidence, without any witnesses. And who in the world could ever prove if he is right or wrong, if the case waited 50 years to be examined.
So pretty please, stop spreading that kind of fake news around the internet. The official info is - John Tolkien was Innocent. So we can at best say that we don’t really know what happened. But saying he definitely was a piece of sh*t pedophile and stuff like that is ridiculous. Plain and simple.
Adam Adamowicz. I couldn’t be bothered reading that diatribe. You have issues writing such piffle.
Interviewers and critics tend to forget Tolkein was a young adult when WW1 began. By the time of this interview, the pre-WW1 era was largely forgotten or had been shaped by books, films, and comedy made later by people who weren't there or shaped by it before horrors of WW1.
But he also had a false memory that shaped his idyls. He started in a lovely Black Country area with what he remembered as an idyllic mill. Then he moved, as a child to a more central area of Birmingham. In fact rural life for the labouring classes was backbreakingly hard, often involved selling your labour for a season (see Melvin Bragg's, The Hired Man, about his grandfather), you were only an injury away from destitution for your family. The mill was not a lovely flour mill but an early industrial power source of the sort he did not like.
My own grandfather came from such a pre-WW1 labouring family on the Cheshire-Stafford border so not unlike his rural-industry roots. The youngest of 13, three brothers died in WW1 while he survived the full 4 years. For the survivors, new opportunities arose due to labour shortages and he became a policeman in Liverpool, married a girl from his village, and my mother was born in 1921. I wish I'd known my grandfather beyond a few meetings. He died, along with Granny, in his mid 60s in early 1961. They looked like people aged well over 80 do nowadays. He was three or four years younger than Tolkein.
Wonderful to read. Thank you.
Amazing how the books or lifestyles have influenced people in many ways.
Fun fact: Ian McKellan who played Gandalf based the way that he talked in the movie of the way that Tolkien had talked
@Stella Hohenheim Huh? He's not dead yet. As of now, Christopher Lee is the one who's already dead.
Semi true
I find it hard to believe that Tolkien got turned down so many times. He was a genius. Wish I could’ve met him, and C.S. Lewis. Love them both. ❤️❤️
Was the book rejected ? I never heard that. Unwins was mainly an academic publisher.
If you are referring to the Nobel prize amongst others, the same year Robert Frost was also overlooked :-))
I met Tolkien twice (once public, once private) and knew Lewis. Both were very pleasant men and kind to a 17-year-old like me! This was before both men became icons, deified by crazed fans who would phone from America at 3 in the morning to ask what colour Frodo's hat was. They were academics, leading a quiet life in Oxford, no longer able to have a comfortable pint and pipe and their local. Imagine how astonished and discomforting it was for them to be mobbed (as they saw it) by thousands of young Americans. Tolkien in particular was uncomfortable with this sort of adulation and hardly knew what to make of it. Tolkien talked about it in his first magazine interview with NEW WORLDS around the time of that BBC interview.
I am. I knew a world before JRRT was deified...
@I am tired of humanity Well, some of us old guys did develop personal computers and the internet! :)
Tolkien post-publication: talks about the theological structure in his world among the different races, the effects of feudalism and the balance of power, including how it concerns good and evil as abstract ideas and more.
Martin post-publication: talks about the origin of names, the conflicts between men and how they relate to real life, the greyness of morality and more.
Rowling: witches and wizards used to shit in the hallways and then use a spell to vanish the excrement.
2 were actually not braindead while 1 manage to capitalized on a story about 7 items which need to be destroyed to eliminate evil.
The interviewer is remarkably respectable and actually seems interested in the answers to the questions he's asking. Shame this is so rare these days.
This was NORMAL for the BBC for years. However, it has dumbed down in recent years. though it's still better than most broadcasting companies.
This man fought in one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War... and lost all of his closest friends in that war. A brilliant man who never lost his appreciation for the beautiful things, the magical things.
You are so correct. Your comment is both true and beautiful. I want to slap the interviewer as he attempts to constantly bait Tolkien!
The War of Unnumbered Tears 😢
@@seanmoran2743 The Nirnaeth Arnoediad. That is a mouthful LOL!
Mckellen based his Gandalf voice on Tolkien.
Yuhuffuhuffindeed.
i based my gandalf voice on him too!
Cool! I never knew this.
Mckellen is a hack, worst Gandalf ever
@@mkeysou812 He's the only gandalf, therefore the worst and the best one.
The most information about his mythology from Tolkien in an interview. He gives foundation ideas about good, evil, God, angels/Powers/Valar, pagan/personal religion, symbols of power, Atlantis, aristocracy.
Tolkien's mind works so fast that he rushes to get his words out.
And so much of these details wouldn't get published until after his death.
Valar are Angelic like but also semi Divines too Like demi gods the higher Valar are and the angelic lower Valar are are angels/blessed ancestors.
God/s Actual Ones are Ainur-Eru with Ainur are Minor Deities who are and work as the underlings and Eru the daddy who's the Major Deity Who starts the creation while his direct offspring and kind Ainur they do the rest interact with the World.
All the beleifs and Spirituality and Theology and acclaimed "acclaimed" is Holy Pagan and far from Judeochrostian hebraic things which is extremely Good. And pious for this genre aka fantasy very pious even if Tolkien didn't see that.
@Caesar Australis maybe in your little fantasy but that doesn't mean it's reality
@Caesar Australis True Gods Pagan Ones the Creators and Enders of All prove so abd you see. But you did in fact use extreme out of pagan Hellenic Norse and even Egyptian themes mainly European
@Caesar Australis they don't worship the judeo-christian god either. But Eru and Ainur have influence from The Gods Of Pagans. So, that's irrelevant. Bro don't worry.
Even in ancient history, ART has never been regarded as a wasted resource. It has created civilization
Love this comment. What would civilization be without art?
Art is what defines your legacy.
Thrawn likes this comment
To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, the things witch sustain life shouldn't be valued more than the things that make life worth living.
I like how he just directly calls Numenor Atlantis.
At the end of every sentence I just expect him to say "but of course I was very, very drunk..."
And C. S. Lewis would say, "I'll drink to that."
That would be Stephen King.
Lol
I wonder if paul Whitehouse based that character on tolkein
@@TyrannosaurusCHEX 'Whoosh' [inaudible muttering] 'fiery whip' [inaudible muttering] 'crack!' [inaudible muttering] 'Secret Fire' [inaudible muttering] 'smote his ruin' [inaudible muttering] 'sent back, at the turn of the tide' [inaudible muttering] 'of course, I was very, very, drunk'.
This interviewer was utterly fantastic. Illuminating and knowledgable questions that got a deeper level of answers. Bravo!
This man's mind is incredible. All his wisdom and humor shimmers on in the Lord of the Rings. What an incredibly epic trilogy.
We remember good tales better than we remember some parts of our life. His tales are in my memory since 10 and it has helped make my life an adventure!!
Interviewer: Why do the men never call upon their GAWDS in your story
Tolkein: *Begins feverishly brainstorming out loud about men and the characteristics of their gods, angelic beings, and dichotomy of good and evil within the world of men after the 3rd age*
You actually understood all of that?
Good for you.
I picked up a few pieces of it.
LOL
@@exnihilo2601 i heard something about mars
@@themagickalmagickman he was talking about C.S. Lewis' "Out of the Silent Planet".
“I have an Atlantis complex in addition to all these other things… A permanent dream that I had… The ineluctable wave has been one of my nightmares, sometimes coming in over the open country. It always ends by one surrendering oneself.”
its amazing..and ultimately how civilizations end.
the wave of book faramir's nightmare; the wave that movie eowyn describes to aragorn before pippin grabs the palantir.
I was reading your comment, right before Tolkien stated that.
Wow I needed this interview so much. This interviewer is asking Tolkien all the questions I've been dying to ask him as I reread the novels. I must thank this interviewer almost as much as I thank Tolkien himself
If you wanted to know these answers, Tolkien gives much fuller and complete answers in his notes. I would suggest reading "The Longest Road" and "Morgoth's Ring" from the published history of Middle Earth, if you want insight into the philosophy and conception of the stories.
Everything changed when the Silmarillion was released. It was the singlest most interesting book I ever read.
It made everything so clear, and you truly realized how much thought was put into the world of Arda.
I'm going to read tlotr.. would you recommend reading the silmarillion afterwards?
@@jakecharlie9574 The order doesn't really matter. Reading it second might be better since you'll have more context.
He didnt waste his time, he died doing what he loved, and left an amazing story for everyone to read through generations
I’m so thankful to sir JRR Tolkien for creating a whole language and then write the Lord of the rings, what an incredible man, thank you for all the amazing memories
This makes me cry not because I like his books that much, or his contribution to linguistics, but because it reminds me of my late grandfather. He was a good man and he is gone forever from this realm.
We have a Hope that exists beyond the veil, that we unlike the elves are not fettered to the realm but when departing from it pass into another one.
This interviewer is fantastic.. highly educated, able to pick up abstract themes and real word parallels. He challenges Tolkien a lot but you can clearly tell he's an admirer.... infinitely better than the dim witted interviewers of today
yeah, why do interviewers nowadays only asked questions about lovelife, plans, who is their favorite character..this interviewer is very good indeed
I think the interview talks too much. It is not about him. It is about the great author.
The guy who invented the fantasy genre, perfected it, and to this day has not been surpassed within it
Well not the fantasy genre as a whole, but certainly epic fantasy.
Yes.
The genre is usually taken to have been invented by George MacDonald in his Phantastes book. Tolkien as well as Lewis took a lot from MacDonald.
@@ToAFinish Not to be a showoff, not a complete know it all (I don't), scholars have traced the genre fantasy to Edmund Spencer. Sorry, I don't recall their argument(s) or proofs. Also, a fun fact, JRRT, in letters published in the first of the books to contain such, over and over calls LORT, a "Romance" or "an epic Romance", FWIW.
And the very first question, right off the bat, is whether he feels guilty for creating a work of fiction.
*shakes head(
Fiction?! Everyone knows this really happened. Tolkien just happened to come into possession of the stories that Bilbo and Frodo originally wrote and transcribed them for us. Duh ;)
@@TheErockaustin Don't say that. Otherwise there will be people trying to force the truth out of his children because they may know something about it. :)
What a stupid question.
It feels like the interviewer is trying to politely antagonize him (a uniquely British skill) in order to get a really juicy interview.
Well, to be fair. Tolkien didn't just "create a work of fiction." The question pertains to the fact that as a Philologist, Tolkien used his knowledge of historical languages to synthesize new ones, which is a much more technical and specialized task than writing fiction. The interviewer isn't asking whether fiction is a suitable pursuit, he's asking whether Tolkien has any particular regret that his most dazzling contribution as a trained philologist was not related to academic research, but in his unorthodox application of his learning in a practical and playful way. I don't really know, but I would guess not many before him had ever seriously attempted to create languages this way, let alone as an expert. It would have seemed peculiar. Not unimpressive, just peculiar and hard to pin down in the terms of how it fits in the scope of professional accomplishments. Sorry for the rambling comment, but I hope it gives some context!
Watching this in 2020. J.R.R. Tolkien was a genius and a master of the fantasy genre. There's no one better or ever will be. As a dabbler in fantasy writing I wish I had a modicum of his imagination and talent that he put into the writing of The Hobbit, the Ring Trilogy and The Silmarillion. The road goes ever ever on sir. Thank you for what you gave the world of fantasy.
Humble, Warm & Genuine - Tolkien a legend in literature - This was a great watch.
This is a great interview, we simply dont have media interviewers of this calibre. Nor will we ever have them again
And the likes of Tolkien and Lewis are gone ,never coming back.
God gave us these gifted men, we are now left with pigmies and scribblers arent we?
Where did the uploader find this gem? A piece of literary history.
I do believe that most of the interview recordings with Tolkien are stored at the London Library.
"Courage is not knowing when to take a life, but when to spare one."
--Gandalf
how I wish I could meet Tolkien just once and thank him for giving us this beautiful world with beautiful characters.
My inspiration of why I chose to become a writer. I'll never be as good as him but at least I'll try.
From Letter 131, which J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his friend Milton Waldon, as included at the start of the Silmarillion, "But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story; the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama."
Few people can claim to have single-handedly created multiple languages and an entire mythology to tie them together and have done so to provide a unique mythology for his ethnicity to call its own. We Anglo-Saxons mostly inherited the myth-making of the Germans and the Norse, and Tolkien's works have many parallels with but also stand apart from the mythology of the Norse, Germans, and Celts.
More people speak Klingon than Elvish... :)
I love how Tolkien was absolutely brilliant, but nearly incomprehensible 😂
I put the video on .75 to better catch what he was saying because he slurred his speech somewhat in this interview. Age related slurring?
Being a hillbilly American from Indiana, really quite surprised I could understand what he said. So thankful he "wasted" 14 years creating a story that inspires such imagination. God bless you sir!
The pride in and love for our european heritage and nature that his fictional work has given us are real, sir interviewer. They're much more valuable than most products of real life work too.
Its sad that, that same heritage and culture is being underminded today
@@Hero_Of_Old Agreed, European culture and heritage is dying out. It's all very sad, but at the least I hope I can have a large white family of my own, despite massive decline in fertility rates across Europe and the US.
Hearing him speak about his vision I remember now the passion and craziness you put into any kind of story and not because it's needs to be fancy but because it needs to make sense everything else will fall into place after ....and what makes it better is this is not a a man of prequels that made him famous but a continuity writer that takes the story forward and leaves you wondering
"God is supreme... the Creator... outside... transcendent." Well said, Mr. Tolkien!
Why there is always people to circlejerk on the most meaningless of things
@@MrRenanHappy Why are you so cringe
Wow he speaks so fast and precise, I like it. I like how he questioned God in his fantasy writings, It revels a lot of what was going through his head in drawing out these awesome concepts of the narrative behind LOTR.
He's used to exchanging ideas with other academics, so it's all a kind of shorthand.
His reply to the remarks about including gods in the story...
Who is genius, if Tolkien was not?
These are the kinds of thinkers we will need in the future. More importantly, we need them now.
@Mr. Al 😥😔
@Mr. Al The vast majority of lgbt people have no problem with tolkien. And are you saying that people that aren't white automatically have a problem with him?
@Mr. Al Yeah, Demonize and generalize the opposition. That makes it easy to justify your thoughts.
If you're a progressive and don't hate Tolkien, you haven't read him--and you definitely haven't understood him. Tolkien was a deeply reactionary Catholic conservatism--his entire philosophy was in direct opposition to your false so-called "progress", and he despised the debased, vile orcminded
brutes like you, who hate the good, the true, and the beautiful just as goblins hate the light, who scorn the wisdom of our forefathers and descrate the heritage of White civilisation which he so loved. His philosophy suffuses his entire work, and as he stated in the interview, he's both a devout Roman Catholic and a traditionalist royalist.
@@TomorrowWeLive Perhaps I don't want to be part of your type of progressive anyway ;)
There's something about the way he speaks that's amazing to listen to.
Nothing but respect for this great man.
I just want to congratulate the interviewer. You can really tell he researched the book cover to cover before hand. Really good questions as well. Shame modern interviews aren’t as good as this. It’s also interesting to hear some things on middle earth, like the religion aspect. Good stuff
I love the closed captioning on this video. Evidently Morgoth was an Amazonian Peggy Lipton. A very revealing interview from a lore perspective I think.
“[God] is mentioned once or twice. The One, yeah.”
He says it with such reverence and then hurries on in reverence. Astonishing.
I neeeeeed subtitles, he's harder to understand than Churchill!
+theDubandTrance2 Possibly this might be helpful: www.tolkien.ru/audio/int_view.php
+Roman Styran Thanks :)
lol
What country are you from?
Do you really find him hard to understand? Seriously?
That voice that smile that face.
Beautiful beautiful mind
This interview fits perfectly with Christopher Tolkien's description of his father as a man with his head in the clouds, always having 20 thoughts in his head at the same time. I think you need to be this kind of distracted genius to create something as compelling as LotR
You can usually only live such a life if you are rich or a professor at a great university. Almost ALL good writers are like that if given the chance!
J. R. R. Tolkien, what an imagination and brilliant way of expressing things.
I am so glad they touched on the godship issue, I always loved how there is no real religion in LOTR (despite the worship of evil more as an entity than a real religious cult).
Even though the narrative is strongly about the battle between good and evil, good is presented as something fair, abstract and yet so clear and very much alive in the hearts of the members of the Fellowship despite the absence of actual deities and cults, which makes it absolutely beautiful.
Tolkien's Evil is revealed as something mysterious, twisted, ancient and connected to the very creation of the universe, and the way you feel its presence throughout the book has always fascinated me.
The right alchemy of elements of christian mythology, medieval narrative, the collective subconscious...a simple formula perhaps but exquisitly put together.
Sauron is the perfect archetipe of Evil, and that's I think the reason LOTR works brilliantly.
Hope I made myself clear...😖
Sixty years later, nobody remembers those who said he wasted his time for forty years and should 'get back to work'. Most likely, any books that these critics produced are long out of print, and any papers published were archived long ago.
Yep fuck those rigid and basic fuckers
Good to hear the words of such a great writer, though have to admit it really does need a lot of focus to follow the thread and understand him at times.
Thank you for this interview audio. College education and extended studies allow for this kind of creativity and imagination by a person. Amazing and loved!
I have been spending time on the internet during our time of covid19. I love finding these types of channels. Thank you for it.
I only watched the movies, but the Lord of the Rings, to me, is the best Fantasy story ever told.
Captivating, I don't think I have ever come across this interview before, what a wonderful treat 👍
Koji G you’re hot :3
I like the questions....
A modern jurnalist would ask some thing like ,, how do you feel about this or that...how did you react when...."
I like this much more
I lived for a while just west of Oxford a few miles, in and around Eynsham, a town where one of Tolkiens sons had been a rector or something at a Catholic Church. When I would ask about J.R.R. Tolkien, the locals would laugh and tell me "his name was John" or "we called him John". John Tolkien. I've had a few pints at the "Eagle and Child" in Oxford, or as they call it "the bird and the babe". Which is where the inklings met, several fiction writers from among the professors of Oxford, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are known to many. The names of rivers and towns sound like they could be in the LOTR or the Hobbit. Names like "The Evenlode" or "the Windrush" a river that runs through Witney, or Burford, Swinford, Oxford, all places for fording a river. It is a lovely landscape, lovely people, a magical place and one I still miss.
"And I must admit that I was very... very........ drunk". - The Fast Show fans will get it haha... Tolkien is a legend, but almost incomprehensible here.
AH at last ! I’ve been thinking this for years!
I was once with my friend afdsfsdgfshfsh... with two tiny teeth. ..ssfdgsfsfggfsgf... absolutely marvelous ...dsdfkgjhsdgfjgsjdfgjdsjfgf... Bilbo Baggins! ...dsfhkgjhsdgfjhgsdjfgfd... and I must admit that I was very... very drunk
@@mmestari Haha nice one.
Literary genius, this man. Lovely to hear his voice
I cannot wait to talk with Tolkien in Heaven!!
offbeatartistry same here though he will have a new body and mind so idk how we or he will remember miniscule lotr info then. :)
I'll meet you guys after I stop by C.S. Lewis's Place.
Zach Stevens lop there's no god
You should get in line then
broken beauty is so smart, he's figured it out! no god! what an enlightened being, pinnacle of spiritual progression :)
He was such a great guy. I say. Thank you Mr. Tolkein.😊
RIP!!!! and thank u for great stories
Omg his voice is exactly what I’ve always expected Gandalf to sound like!
it's fascinating to hear Tolkien, this dates back long ago now.. it must be from a rare old archive somewhere.
thanks for your information!
I close my eyes and I hear what sounds like Lemmy Kilmister's grandpa. Bless both of them.
The interviewer continues to ask Tolkien about the relation between Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's own theology because he understands the man he is interviewing. Tolkien's deeply held Roman Catholic faith was a distinctive trait of this great writer. To fail to recognize this, or neglect the manner in which it infused his writings, is to miss what he and his closest companions (i.e. Lewis, Williams, Barfield, and the other Inklings) ultimately stood for.
Except that his closest companions weren't Roman Catholics at all, so they don't stand for the same he stood for.
@@fermintenava5911 They all stood for God and Christ - Christianity in general ( Catholic, Protestant, non denominational etc)
Excellently put!
@@fermintenava5911 We serve the same Lord.
This is just delightful to listen to.
My favorite part of this is when the guy mixes up the Eldar and the Valar and Tolkien started to have an eruption of nerd-rage until the guy corrects himself :p hahah
The interviewer asked sharp questions without being annoying or pushy
"Dozens of letters a week..." Imagine how many he'd get now.
Great conversation this and apparent how hard the interviewer wants to link this to religion rather than just be a great adventure to go on.
An interview which asks many questions which many likely would like to ask, and the answers are rewarding and very lucid (although I acknowledge that the microphones may not have been set to correctly pick up Mr. Tolkien's answers).
He sounds like the guy who played horace slughorn in Harry Potter
The great Jim Broadbent!
@@dan5020 Indeed. "The guy who played Slughorn" That's how he's recognised by a generation, and I suppose it's a generation younger than I am, but still: "the guy" 😢
Tolkien reminds me of my step-grandfather. I find it hard to understand him sometimes but I just love listening to his voice.
fascinating find on youtube. jrr tolkien is forever legendary
Tolkien was a great man. Thank you for the story you gave us
ithink god came to earth as tolkien. what a man. he created so much and everything is perfect.
@fynes leigh Even though he was inspired by stuff,He still created the books. George Lucas was inspired by stuff and he still created the original trilogy(the prequels were not really that much inspired from other stuff).
He created the characters. Yeah, they are inspired and are similar to other characters in fiction/history but he still created them.
@fynes leigh What are you, if not man's creation?
Well, no. God came to Earth as Jesus of Nazareth, a first century Jew. But the Holy Spirit came with power over Tolkien's works and blessed them, and inspired them.
In the Silmarillion, there is a chapter about the creation of the dwarves by the archangel Aule. And in the story, Aule grows impatient waiting for the coming of the Children of Illuvatar (that is, God) and so he makes his own model that he, like this over grown child, hides in his bed room and furtively begins playing with like dolls, pretending to teach them and instruct them as he knows Illuvatar intends that he do when the real Children of Illuvatar arrive. And of course, Illuvatar "catches" him playing this game, and Aule acts like a naughty but repentant child caught by a parent doing something he knows he shouldn't be doing.
And Aule tries to explain himself to God, and he says this:
"I did not desire such lordship. I desired things other than I am, to love and to teach them, so that they too might perceive the beauty of Ea, which thou has caused to be… And in my impatience I have fallen into folly. Yet the making of things is in my heart from my own making by thee; and the child of little understanding that makes a paly of the deeds of his father may do so without thought of mockery, but because he is the son of his father. But what shall I do now, so that thou not be angry with me for ever? As a child to his father, I offer to thee these things, the work of the hands which thou hast made. Do with them what thou wilt. But I should not rather destroy the work of my presumption?”
Since this petition is addressed directly to God, it's a prayer. And, when I read that passage enough I realized it was Tolkien's prayer - his petition to God over his presumptuous act of sub-creation. And when you realize that, you realize that this is one of the most beautiful heartfelt prayers in the English language. Illuvatar answer's Aule's prayer favorably, telling Aule that even before Aule made the prayer, he had breathed his life into the dwarves and made them real people.
And Tolkien's was answered, I think even more beautifully and graciously.
I love Tolkien and so appreciate being able to hear him talk about his creative work, however, his speech is difficult to understand! I have been living in England for over 16 years now and I still have to concentrate very hard to pick it all up.
"Where is God in The Lord of the Rings?""...Mentioned once or twice."HAH, that's where that line of reasoning should have logically concluded. My man Tolkien.
He believed in God :)
I think upon reading the Silmarillion and about the music of the Ainur you can see that Eru inspired to give creative power to the Ainur and then gave them a glimpse of what the music created (when I say glimpse this is obviously an understatement). It was like he projected himself into numerous individual beings so that each could provide many hands to make the physical world. A bit like how complex the human brain is and what it would be like to give impetus to all aspects of it and create something majestic. Eru has ultimate power to create good and evil yet desires harmony and this process of creating the powers allowed him to manifest an evolving planet whilst resulting in the delegation of responsibility to the powers.
Holybutternutssquash, It was a known fact that God(higher spirit) existed in middle earth as the wizards were direct evidence as well as Numenor. Tolkien also probably hated the notion of having to create false gods (by which I mean ones not tied directly to the world but just made up). The gods in Game of Thrones are false and useless for example. Being a Catholic he saw them as unnecessary hasle that undermined his faith.
Still, it is a great observation on part of the interviewer that nobody invokes God as they march to battle. This gives gives me reason to doubt that professor Tolkien was such a believer as everybody makes him out to be. Maybe in the cold trenches of the Great War he discovered that God will not help you in battle - Only what you hold in your arms will.
Eru ilvatar
I'm in awe. Never heard the sound of his voice before.... I'm in awe...
Can you imagine if Joseph Campbell had interviewed Tolkien about this time (1960.) Campbell was just writing his opus and consolidating his ideas on Mythology.
God what I wouldn't give to live in that alternate world.
It's interesting listening to him talk. Had a distinctive, slurred and rapid way of talking yet still sounded pretty upper class to my ears, without any specific regional dialect or accent. I don't feel the gentleman that portrayed him in the recent film biopic captured his speech patterns in the least bit.
Oxford Edwardian...
It’s rather difficult to comprehend him at times. As an American, I tend to speak slower and pronounce things much harder, I suppose.
His speaking was difficult even for some other English people in his day to understand from what I've heard. You had to get used to it. Even his biographer, an Englishman, said he also had trouble understanding everything at first.
A dream interview. Would have LOVED to have had a chance to sit and chat with Tolkein! Wow!