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00:10Ash-Naz-Tor-Batholuk
00:13Three rings for the elven kings under the sky
00:17Seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone
00:21Nine for mortal men doomed to die
00:25One for the dark lord on his dark throat in the land of Mordor
00:29Where the shadows lie
00:31One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
00:35One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
00:38In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie
01:02Humans have always enjoyed telling stories
01:05They celebrated the origins of their world and their people
01:08They gave life to their gods
01:10They invented heroes
01:14This is how we remember Rama's exploits or Ulysses' tricks
01:21In the 20th century, one of these stories found enormous success the world over
01:28Gandalf stood firm
01:29You cannot pass, he said
01:32The orc stood still and a dead silence fell
01:35I am a servant of the secret fire
01:37Gandalf, if you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him
01:41You would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale
01:45Tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place
01:48And she answered
01:49All your words are but to say
01:51You are a woman
01:52And your part is in the house
01:56But I am of the house of Eol
01:58And not a serving woman
01:59I can ride and will bade
02:01And I do not fear either pain or death
02:05Two books
02:06A story for children
02:08The Hobbit
02:09And an epic tale stretching over a thousand pages
02:12The Lord of the Rings
02:14Through these stories
02:16Successive generations of readers have followed in the footsteps of Bilbo the Hobbit
02:20His nephew Frodo
02:22And Gandalf the Wizard deep into the imaginary world of Middle-earth
02:26A parallel universe with its own history, geography, fantastical creatures and races of people
02:33Elves, dwarves, humans and orcs
02:36Each speaking their own entirely invented language
02:39Why has this work, perfectly unique in its time
02:43Resonated so strongly with the millions of readers who found themselves captivated by it?
02:48I believe that it is universal because it's human
02:51And it goes beyond a particular culture
02:54And it goes beyond any particular religion
02:58It's human, but it sets the human in a mythological background which is universal in its application
03:09Many people read the Lord of the Rings as if they were reading the Bible
03:16Many people find themselves weeping as they're reading it in the train
03:24Because it touches a spring in their emotions which is very deep
03:42In the early 21st century, these stories inspired a series of big-budget films
03:47Which in turn became worldwide hits
03:53The paradox is that this gigantic epic full of sound and fury was originally the work of a most quiet
04:00man
04:01John, Ronald, Royal, Tolkien
04:06A discreet British professor whose life seems to have been much less adventurous than those of his heroes
04:14To find out how the stories he created came to be
04:17To find out how the stories he created came to be
04:17One must go back to the beginning of the 1930s
04:20When an unexpected event disrupted his routine academic existence
04:27The actual beginning, though it's not really the beginning
04:29But the actual flash point was I remember very clearly
04:32I can even, I took, I can still see the corner in my house in 20 Northmore Road where it
04:37happened
04:37I got an enormous pile of exam papers there
04:41And, uh, marking school examinations in the summertime is a
04:47Is an enormous, um, very laborious
04:51And, unfortunately, also boring
04:54And I remember picking up a paper
04:55And actually, if I nearly gave an extra mark for it
04:58An extra five marks, actually
04:59One page on this particular paper was left blank, glorious
05:04Nothing to read
05:05So I scribbled on it
05:05I can't think why
05:06In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit
05:10In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit
05:13Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell
05:19Nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat
05:26It was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort
05:31Thus, from one simple word, invented out of thin air
05:35Professor Tolkien created an entire race of people
05:38The hobbits
05:39Small, peaceful folk with fur-covered toes
05:42Who live in comfortable, underground houses in the lush, green region of the Shire
05:49When Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe
05:56That reached nearly down to his woolly toes, neatly brushed
06:01Gandalf came by
06:04From then on, nothing would be the same for peaceful Bilbo
06:07The wise but formidable wizard Gandalf sends him on a mission with a group of quarrelsome dwarves
06:14Who are out to reclaim a fabulous treasure
06:19At first, Bilbo is quite reluctant about joining this hazardous quest
06:23Through which he will discover the vast world beyond the Shire
06:26With its fantastical creatures and innumerable dangers
06:32But the courage and cunning of our small, unlikely hero will slowly be revealed
06:37And at the end of the journey, having reached the lonely mountain
06:41He will not hesitate to confront the fearsome dragon Smaug
06:47Adventures make us grow up
06:49The children who read the Hobbit identify with more than just the hero's small size
06:55Adults too can easily see in the Hobbit the children they once were
06:59And in the character of the tranquil Bilbo
07:02We can also no doubt see much of Professor Tolkien himself
07:05Who freely admitted his appreciation for life's simple pleasures
07:10I am in fact a Hobbit in all but size
07:13I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands
07:18I smoke a pipe and like good plain food, unrefrigerated
07:24But detest French cooking
07:27I am fond of mushrooms out of a field
07:30I go to bed late and get up late
07:33I do not travel much
07:47In the botanical garden of the city of Oxford
07:50There is a tree
07:52A black pine
07:54A black pine
07:54Which was Professor Tolkien's favourite tree
08:01Trees are living beings, full of majesty
08:04Their ramified structure reminds me of the way language is built
08:08But also myths and fairy tales
08:12The noblest productions of the human spirit
08:19It was here in Merton College
08:21One of Oxford University's oldest institutions
08:24That Professor Tolkien taught Old English language and literature
08:41The professor liked to impress his students by reciting the opening of Beowulf
08:47The oldest known epic poem written in Old English
08:50Full of heroes, monsters and dragons
08:56He enjoyed poring over ancient lore
08:59And the old languages that were ancestors to his own
09:02And he delighted in the intrinsic beauty of the poetry and legends
09:06That were both an object of study and a source of inspiration to him
09:13And at night, in the large family home on Northmore Road
09:18Professor Tolkien lived a second, more secret life
09:21Where he could devote himself entirely to his elaborate fantasy world
09:26Deep down here over the dark water lived old Gollum
09:31I don't know where he came from
09:32Nor who or what he was
09:34He was Gollum
09:36As dark as darkness
09:38Except for two big round pale eyes
09:41He was watching Bilbo now from the distance with his pale eyes like telescopes
09:46Bilbo could not see him
09:47But he was wondering a lot about Bilbo
09:48For he could see that he was no goblin at all
09:51Bless us and splash us, my precious
09:54I guess it's a joyce feast
09:56At least the tasty marshall did it make us gollum
10:00And when he said gollum
10:01He made a horrible swallowing noise in his throat
10:05That is how he got his name
10:06Though he always called himself my precious
10:09In those days, in the 1930s
10:12Professor Tolkien's stories were primarily intended for his four children
10:16Thus, every year
10:18John, Michael, Christopher and little Priscilla
10:21Received letters from the North Pole
10:23Addressed to them personally by Father Christmas
10:25Or his assistant, Polar Bear
10:30Top of the world, North Pole
10:33Thursday, December 20th, 1928
10:35My dear boys
10:37Another Christmas and I'm another year older
10:40And so are you
10:41We were beginning to get the first lot of parcels down out of the storerooms
10:46Polar Bear would insist on taking an enormous pile on his head
10:49As well as lots in his arms
10:51Bang, rumble, chatter, crash
10:53Awful moanings and growlings
10:56Who left the soap on the stairs?
10:58Not me
11:0123rd of December, 1932
11:04Polar Bear himself was surprised when I lit up the place
11:07Because the walls of these caves are all covered with drawings
11:11Etched into the rock or painted in red, brown and black
11:14Polar Bear was very excited to see it
11:17These cavemen drew better than you, Father Christmas
11:20He said
11:24It seems that in the privacy of his home
11:26The very respectable Professor Tolkien
11:28Had found a way to preserve part of the innocence and magic
11:32Usually associated with childhood
11:35Indeed, The Hobbit was at first a bedtime story
11:39Invented episode by episode
11:41And illustrated by its author even before it was completely finished
11:46The Hobbit
11:47I did nothing about it for a long time
11:51And for some years I got no further than the production of Thor's Map
11:55But it became The Hobbit in the early 1930s
12:00And was eventually published
12:02And not because of my own children's enthusiasm
12:05Though they liked it well enough
12:06But because I lent it to the then reverend mother of Cherwell Edge
12:11When she had flu
12:12And it was seen by a former student
12:15Who was, at that time, in the office of Alan and Unwin
12:22Published in 1937, The Hobbit was an immediate success
12:28The publishers, Alan and Unwin
12:30Soon found themselves flooded with letters demanding a follow-up to the story
12:34Professor Tolkien thought it was the perfect opportunity to publish a project he'd been working on for 20 years
12:40An immense cycle of legends which would recount from its genesis the entire history of an imaginary world, Middle-earth
12:51Drafts, sketches, watercolours, as well as poems and stories
12:55Some unfinished, revised, rewritten
12:58The archives of this project reveal a work in constant evolution
13:02After Professor Tolkien's death, his third son, Christopher Tolkien
13:06Would undertake the task of exploring, organising and reshaping this mass of documents for publication
13:12This would in turn take many years, beginning with the astonishing Silmarillion, eventually published in 1977
13:19The Silmarillion was the primary, central work of my father's secondary world
13:28One of the chief things that people know about it, I think, is that it was unfinished
13:33But I think this is, in a way, misleading
13:38The real point is, is that there were several Silmarillion's
13:44When he was a very young man, he wrote a work called The Book of Lost Tales
13:49And this was the first Silmarillion, although he didn't then call it that
13:53But there already, often in very early, undeveloped forms, are the great stories, the great legends, which were an inspiration
14:02to him throughout his life
14:03Above all, the, er, the lay of Beren and Luthien, and the tragedy of Turin-Turambar
14:13Another Silmarillion was already in existence by about 1930
14:18The important thing is that that was finished
14:21The Book of Lost Tales, you could say, was finished
14:23The 1930 Silmarillion was finished
14:26It's complete, a completely enclosed myth
14:32In 1938, Professor Tolkien submitted the Silmarillion to his publishers
14:38But they'd been expecting a sequel to The Hobbit's adventures and politely declined
14:42One of the readers of the publishing house at the time said, it feels like reading the Old Testament
14:51In the beginning, Eru, the One, who in the Elvish tongue is named IlĂºvatar, made the Ainur of his thought
15:02And they made a great music before him
15:05In this music, the world was begun
15:08For IlĂºvatar made visible the Song of the Ainur, and they beheld it as a light in the darkness
15:14I now wanted
15:18To try my hand
15:22At writing a really stupendously long narrative
15:25And to see whether I had sufficient art, cunning, or material
15:29To make a really long narrative, which would hold the average reader right through
15:35So in 1938, in the house in Northmore Road
15:39Whenever Professor Tolkien could put aside his academic work
15:42He devoted himself to writing The Lord of the Rings
15:47Thirteenth of October 1938
15:49Dear Mr. Unwin
15:50I have worked very hard for a month on a sequel to The Hobbit
15:54It has reached Chapter 11
15:56I am now thoroughly engrossed in it and have the threads all in hand
16:01Nineteenth of December 1939
16:04Dear Mr. Unwin
16:05I have never quite ceased work on the sequel
16:08It has reached Chapter 16
16:10I fear it is growing too large
16:12Will there be any chance of publication if I can get it done before the spring?
16:24Seventh of December 1942
16:26Dear Mr. Unwin
16:27The sequel to The Hobbit is now approaching completion
16:31It has reached Chapter 31 and will require at least six more to finish
16:36It has had the approval of the original Hobbit audience, my sons, and Mr. C.S. Lewis
16:43In addition to his role as enthusiastic first reader
16:46The young Christopher assisted his father by drawing up the maps of Middle-earth
16:52In the summer of 1943, at the age of 18
16:55Christopher was drafted into the Royal Air Force and sent to fight in South Africa
17:0131st of May 1944
17:03Dearest Chris, by sitting up all hours I managed to bring the ring to a suitable pause
17:09The capture of Frodo by the Orcs in the passes of Mordor
17:13And I read the last two chapters to C.S. Lewis on Monday morning
17:18He approved with unusual fervour and was actually affected to tears by the last chapter
17:23So it seems to be keeping up
17:2612th of August 1944
17:29I am absolutely dry of any inspiration for the ring
17:32What a relief it would be to get it done
17:35I shall be very eager to know what you think of it
17:38The book has come to be more and more addressed to you
17:40So that your opinion matters more than anyone else's
17:4629th of November 1944
17:48My dearest
17:50Here's a little sample of the ring
17:52A large part of book 5 is already written or sketched
17:56It will probably work out very different from this plan when it really gets written
18:01As the thing seems to write itself once I get going
18:05Frodo sat silent and motionless
18:08Fear seemed to stretch out a vast hand
18:11Like a dark cloud rising in the east and looming up to engulf him
18:15This ring, he stammered
18:17How, how on earth did it come to me?
18:20Ah, said Gandalf
18:22That is a very long story
18:24The beginnings lie back in the black years
18:26Which only the Loremasters now remember
18:29If I were to tell you all that tale
18:31We would still be sitting here when spring had passed into winter
18:37At last the Lord of the Rings was published
18:40In three volumes
18:41In 1954 and 55
18:44The books were well received
18:45And the critics were mainly positive
18:47Even if some reproached the brilliant intellectual
18:50For wasting his precious time on such childish, archaic fantasies
18:54Completely out of touch with the realities of the modern world
18:57But readers were enthusiastic
18:59And ten years later
19:00The book's reputation grew by leaps and bounds
19:02When an American paperback edition was published
19:05The book found enormous success
19:07Particularly with the younger generation
19:19The book's history
19:19Hippies and other counter-cultural figures claimed the book as their own
19:23Seeing in it an echo of their fight for a better world
19:26Free from the dark forces threatening to stifle them
19:39There were now millions of readers across the globe
19:42Immersing themselves in the universe created by Tolkien
19:55As soon as he set foot upon the far bank of Silverload
19:58A strange feeling had come upon him
20:00And it deepened as he walked on into the night
20:05It seemed to him that he had stepped over a bridge of time
20:08Into a corner of the Elder Days
20:10And was now walking in a world that was no more
20:14In Rivendell there was memory of ancient things
20:18In Lorien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world
20:23Evil had been seen and heard there
20:25Sorrow had been known
20:27The elves feared and distrusted the world outside
20:32Wolves were howling on the woods' borders
20:34But on the land of Lorien no shadow lay
20:46The mere stories were the thing
20:50They arose in my mind as given things
20:52And as they came separately so too the links grew
20:56Yet always I had the sense of recording what was already there
21:00Somewhere, not of inventing
21:05During his years of research into ancient languages
21:08Professor Tolkien carefully studied Old Norse sagas
21:12Icelandic Edda, the Nibelungen legend, the Kalevala from Finland
21:16Memories of a time when Europe was still half pagan
21:19When the ancient myths had only just begun to fade
21:24To enjoy the Hobbit, to enjoy the Lord of the Rings
21:27Even the Silmarillion, which is a more difficult text
21:29You don't need to be a specialist in Old English
21:33You don't need to know anything about Germanic literature
21:36You don't need to read Beowulf
21:38And I'm sure that millions of people who enjoy Tolkien's novels
21:42Don't even realise, unless they do a little bit of study
21:45Perhaps if they read the notes
21:47But most people probably don't realise and don't care
21:50About the medieval background
21:54When one has studied Old English literature
21:57And the history of languages
22:00There is no doubt an added pleasure
22:02And speaking personally, since you ask me
22:04Yes, it does give me an extra pleasure
22:08When I recognise Old English words in the text
22:11And I see what Tolkien is doing with them
22:14I see that he has been inspired
22:18By a simple word
22:21To develop a character and to develop a story around that
22:29Born in 1892, in the midst of 19th century Europe's industrial and political transformation
22:34Tolkien inherited his country's renewed passion for the Middle Ages and regional folklore
22:42Like many English children of his time, the young John Ronald Tolkien discovered traditional stories and legends by reading the
22:50collections of folklorist Andrew Lang
22:54In the Red Fairy Book, amid its tales of fairies, witches and princesses, can be found the Old Norse legend
23:01of Sigurd and the dragon Fafnir
23:03Which was also the source of the German medieval Nibelungen saga, which Richard Wagner, in turn, used as the inspiration
23:10for his ring cycle
23:11In the 19th century, all of Europe had begun using medieval legends to forge new national identities
23:20England had recently rediscovered a passion for the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table
23:26In his work, The Idols of the King, Lord Alfred Tennyson reimagined the Arthurian myth as a glorification of the
23:33British monarchy and the values of Victorian society
23:36In contrast, utopian socialist William Morris, architect, designer and painter, sought to bring to life an idealized Middle Ages, far
23:48from the inequalities produced by the Industrial Revolution
23:51He was a close associate of the pre-Raphaelite painters, such as Edward Byrne Jones, who argued for a return
23:58to early Italian aesthetics
24:00William Morris also wrote novels inspired by the Middle Ages, which he illustrated himself, and which no doubt had a
24:06strong influence on the young Tolkien
24:09As a child, I had no desire to have either dreams or adventures like Alice, and the amount of them
24:15merely amused me
24:16I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool
24:24Red Indians were better, there were bows and arrows
24:31And strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and above all, forests in such stories
24:40But the land of Merlin and Arthur were better than these, and best of all, the nameless north of Sigurd
24:46and the Volsungs, and the prince of all dragons
24:49Such lands were pre-eminently desirable
24:53I desired dragons with a profound desire
24:57Of course I, in my timid body, did not wish to have them in the neighborhood
25:02But the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost the peril
25:15The Shire is very like the kind of world in which I first became aware of things
25:19Very like, which was perhaps more poignant to me, because I wasn't born in it
25:27I was born in Bloomsdale in South Africa
25:30I was very young when I got back, but at the same time, it bites into your memory and imagination
25:35Even if you don't think it has
25:58If your first Christmas tree is a wilting eucalyptus
26:01If your first Christmas tree is a wilting eucalyptus
26:01And if you're normally troubled by heat and sand
26:05Then, just at the age when imagination is opening out
26:09To suddenly find yourself in a quiet Warwickshire village
26:12I think it engenders a particular love of what you might call
26:17Central Midland English countryside
26:20Based on elm trees and small quiet rivers and so on
26:24And of course, a sort of rustic people about
26:31In 1896, Mabel Tolkien and her children, John Ronald, then three and a half
26:36And his little brother, Hillary, moved to a small house in the village of Serhole
26:42Their father, Arthur Tolkien, stayed behind in South Africa for business
26:47He would soon die there, without ever having seen England or his family again
26:53The boys did not go to school
26:55Their mother taught them to read and count, as well as French and Latin
27:09The rest of the time, they had the countryside and the surrounding forests as playground
27:14And setting for their adventures
28:02In 1900, Mabel Tolkien decided to convert to Catholicism
28:08Rejected by her scandalized family and faced with financial problems
28:13The young widow moved her children to the neighbouring town of Birmingham
28:17So it was farewell to the bucolic paradise of Serhole
28:44The streets of Birmingham were lined with modest houses
28:47But near the Catholic Oratory were such strange sights as the Waterworks Tower
28:52Or Perro's Folly
28:54A pseudo-medieval tower built in the 18th century by a rich local industrialist
28:59Sights more than likely to fuel an act of imagination
29:05Exploring this new universe, full of smoke and noise
29:08John Ronald began to notice strange names written on the sides of coal trucks and train wagons
29:14Names like Nantygla, Sengenhyd or Tredegar
29:20He had discovered the existence of Welsh
29:23More importantly, he realized that just a few miles away
29:26Other mysterious sounding languages were being spoken
29:30John Ronald passed the entrance exam for King Edward College in Birmingham
29:35It was there that he read the famous 10th century epic poem
29:40Beowulf for the first time
29:42Beowulf not only satisfied John Ronald's taste for dragons and heroic adventures
29:46But introduced him to Old English
29:48Soon he would start to create languages of his own
29:51Which would quickly become more and more complex
29:54I first began seriously to invent languages
29:58About when I was 13 or 14
30:00I've never stopped really
30:03What I'm doing now is to
30:05Try and write in Elvish
30:07My writing is very inferior to the Elves
30:10Their standard greeting when meeting
30:12Ellen, Sila, Lumen, Omenti Elvo
30:18A star shines upon our meeting
30:21Oh God
30:24I made a mistake, am I?
30:27As a linguist and a philologist
30:30Tolkien was capable of creating new languages
30:34But it wasn't gobbledygook
30:36It was based on genuine philological principles
30:41On grammatical structures
30:43On the way a real human language works
30:46As the creator or sub-creator of these languages
30:52He could take great delight in them
30:54Because he could make the sounds
30:56That were developed by the phonetic changes
30:58Attractive to his own air
31:03So that he could say that Quenya was the language
31:07That he really deeply desired
31:10Whereas none of the languages of the world
31:11Really came quite there
31:13He loved Anglo-Saxon
31:14But he didn't like it as much
31:16He loved Finnish
31:18Which was an important influence on Quenya
31:20But Quenya was the language of his heart
31:24It was the language that he wanted
31:27As we heard in Siemens
31:40In his voice, he was taught
31:43The French and Maganillimy
31:44The French and the French and the French
31:45But it was heard
31:45They really needed
31:50The French for the American
31:51The French and the French
31:52The French and the French
31:52Our French and French
31:53The French and French
31:53The French and French
31:56On the 9th of November 1904, Mabel Tolkien died at the age of 34 as a result of poorly treated
32:03diabetes.
32:05John Ronald was only 12 years old.
32:11Five years later, in 1909, in the boarding house where he was still living in Duchess Road,
32:16the young Tolkien met Edith Bratt, a young woman a little older than himself, who was also an orphan.
32:23John Ronald fell in love with Edith, who became his solace, his soulmate, and eventually his muse.
32:31She became the model for Luthien Tinuvio, the elven heroine of the Silmarillion.
32:39It is told in the lay of Laethion that Beren, wandering in the summer in the woods of Neldoreth,
32:45came upon Luthien, daughter of Thingol and Melian, at a time of evening, under moonrise,
32:52as she danced upon the unfading grass in the glades beside Escalduin.
32:58Then all memory of his pain departed from him, and he fell into an enchantment,
33:03for Luthien was the most beautiful of all the children of Iluvatar.
33:07Blue was her raiment as the unclouded heaven, but her eyes were grey as the starlit evening.
33:13Her mantle was sewn with golden flowers, but her hair was dark as the shadows of twilight.
33:19As the light upon the leaves of trees, as the voice of clear waters, as the stars above
33:25the mists of the world.
33:26Such was her glory and her loveliness, and in her face was a shining light.
33:35Tolkien was admitted to Oxford in 1910 to study classics.
33:39Bored by Latin and Greek, he immersed himself in ancient Germanic culture, and eventually
33:44switched to the school of Anglo-Saxon language and literature.
33:47It was around the same time that he began trying to write poetry in his invented languages.
33:58War broke out, the wholesale massacre later known as the First World War.
34:04In 1915, Tolkien joined a regiment as signals officer, and was sent to fight at the Battle
34:09of the Somme in France.
34:11In just a few days, Tolkien lost many old friends, mowed down by German machine guns.
34:22He would himself soon fall victim to trench fever.
34:27Sent back to England, he spent the rest of the war convalescing in various military hospitals,
34:32sometimes joined by Edith, whom he had recently married.
34:36Perhaps it was the traumatic horrors of war which prompted Tolkien to take deeper and deeper
34:41refuge in the imaginary world he was creating.
34:45Whatever the case, he used those months of inactive duty to write constantly, slowly increasing
34:51the volume of his Middle-Earth stories and legends.
34:57Languages are not born in a void.
35:00No human language was born in a void.
35:03Somebody had to begin speaking at some time.
35:07Having started to work on languages, and to develop new languages, which didn't exist,
35:15they were pure inventions on his part, even though he used roots from Finnish and Welsh.
35:21He then wanted to develop a history of who might have spoken those languages, where they
35:27might have come from.
35:29And as all human language goes through periods of development, even with English, we have
35:34Old-English, Middle-English, and Modern-English.
35:39In his own mind, he saw that Koenya and Sindarin must have gone through stages of development.
35:46So he began to develop his history of Middle-Earth as the story of the people who spoke those languages.
35:53Where they came from, how they arrived in Middle-Earth, how they fought among themselves,
36:01how they established themselves in Middle-Earth, how they came into contact with other peoples,
36:08in particular the Ents, and the Dwarves, and the Hobbits, and of course men, human beings.
36:18And for each of those peoples, Tolkien invented a new language.
36:26So I think we can say, with some degree of certainty, that language was at the root of his mythology,
36:33and the root of his desire to produce stories.
36:55Middle-Earth is not just a collection of stories.
36:59Well, in reality, yes, it is just a collection of stories.
37:04Except that Tolkien knew how to give them the sense that there was something deeper,
37:10an entire world that existed beyond the stories which describe it.
37:19So through a system of pseudo-documentary appendices, complete with chronology, languages, genealogies,
37:30he invented a vast and coherent secondary world, an alternative world which seemed as complete
37:39and dense as the real world, to the point where his readers feel like they are inside it,
37:49and want more than anything to go even deeper.
38:03This particular phenomenon of immersion in a parallel world would rapidly become the object
38:08of numerous reappropriations, and not only in literature. For those who dreamed of entering
38:15this type of world and experiencing their own adventures there, a new form of entertainment
38:19would soon be born. Beginning in the 1970s, legions of eager fans, armed with dice and pencils,
38:27threw themselves body and soul into the adventure of role-playing games, like the famous Dungeons & Dragons.
38:35Just as with literature, these games relied on the projection of the imagination. The Game Master
38:41created the ground rules for a fantasy universe where the other players could develop the characters of their choosing.
38:48Warriors, magicians, orcs, or thieves.
38:54If Tolkien's work was the catalyst for this type of playful escapism into imaginary worlds,
38:59it also served as a crucial model for these alternative realities. It was a shared vision
39:05that would only continue to expand and develop.
39:08At the beginning of the 21st century, the immersive possibilities that Tolkien's creation offered
39:14have invaded popular culture through persistent worlds, online virtual universes where role-playing
39:20games are played out in real time.
39:27Tolkien's work lives on, through various interpretative reader communities, through gamers and now through
39:36moviegoers. It has become a legend of its own, building on the myths from time immemorial to achieve mythic
39:44status itself. It has become the cultural foundation on which numerous communities are built.
39:54Communities of people who believe in it, who subscribe to it fully, and who want to prolong the form of
40:03escapeeism it provides.
40:36Do not laugh, but once upon a time, my crest has long since fallen, I had a mind to make
40:42a body
40:42of more or less connected legend, which I could dedicate simply to England, to my country.
40:51It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our air,
40:58the clime and soil of the northwest, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe, not Italy or the Aegean,
41:05still less the east.
41:09The profound love that Professor Tolkien expressed for his country, and his open desire to pay homage to
41:16the great Norse myths, have left his work open to multiple interpretations, including some distorted ones.
41:23Certain critics saw Tolkien as an extreme nationalist who adhered to the racist theories popular at the
41:28end of the 19th century. It's true that the people inhabiting Middle-earth are specifically described
41:33as separate, distinct races, with some being more noble than others, and, unfortunately, among the
41:39readers who have adopted Tolkien's work as their own are a number of neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups that
41:45see in it
41:46a glorification of the civilized white man's defense against the invading barbaric hordes.
41:55One of the strengths of this kind of modern myth is the opportunity, the possibility it offers,
42:03to be re-appropriated and re-interpreted in any direction. That is exactly what allows different
42:08political groups to easily slap on it any political message they choose, be it the right or the extreme
42:16left. But as it stands, it's usually the right that likes to play with this kind of heroic utopian myth.
42:27In the 20th century, there are clear examples of this kind of manipulation, where certain elements
42:34of a well-established popular tradition, elements deeply ingrained in our collective conscience,
42:42are used to assure the audience, the public, that it somehow knows the story being told,
42:49that it is somehow familiar. Nazi Germany was very skilled in promoting a cult of the Middle Ages,
42:59with the idea of recreating the old German Reich, while still offering the people all the advantages
43:05of a modern society, with an updated infrastructure, with highways, modern aviation, and, in particular,
43:14a state-of-the-art war machine, all the while claiming, and it was Himmler who was really a specialist
43:19at this,
43:19that they were somehow descendants of the Knights of the Round Table, or other famous figures of the Middle Ages.
43:27Tolkien didn't manipulate, he adapted, he used the material. But manipulation requires an agenda
43:34behind it, like the extreme right has, and in my opinion, that isn't the case with Tolkien.
43:41He's a writer, he has a taste for certain themes, and he reuses certain elements to construct his
43:48fantasy world. The ideology comes after, first from those who present or interpret the work,
43:58and perhaps also from those who watch.
44:06I absolutely do not subscribe to the theories surrounding Tolkien that he was some kind of
44:13chauvinist or racist. There's no question about it. He was, however, a man of his times, a man who grew
44:21up in England at the beginning of the 20th century, in a world where men naturally held one place and
44:27women another. It was a world where the people of the West were naturally considered superior,
44:33and other people, they exist in Tolkien's world, but it's true that they are less well-developed.
44:39They are left up to the imagination, to wonder about. The people of the South and the East are not
44:46the
44:47subjects of Tolkien's elaborate world-building, because that was not his project. That was not the project of Middle-earth.
44:57I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country. It had no stories of its
45:05own,
45:05bound up with its tongue and soil, not of the quality that I sought, and found in legends of other
45:12lands.
45:16The Norman conquest of 1066 almost completely destroyed the centuries of Anglo-Saxon tradition
45:22that preceded it. Through his legendary cycle, Tolkien dreamed of giving back to England a part of what
45:29had been lost. This profound feeling of great loss permeates his work.
45:37Tolkien was an ardent Catholic. He believed deeply in the idea of the fall of man, in the idea of
45:44a paradise lost.
46:06He believed in the idea of the world, and he believed in the nature of the world.
46:10Beyond the dismay that Tolkien felt at the transformation of the modern world,
46:15his work reveals a deep sadness, a persistent regret for all that had disappeared.
46:26Early on, writing became a refuge for John Ronald Tolkien, a spiritual place where he could escape
46:32from the pain of the real world by building himself a new one, through the evocative power of words.
46:46If a story says, he climbed a hill and saw a river in the valley below,
46:53every hearer of the words will have his own picture, and it will be made out of all the hills
46:58and rivers and dales he has ever seen, but especially out of the hill, the river, the valley, which were
47:05for him
47:06in the first embodiment of the word.
47:14ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS
47:19ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS
47:19ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS
47:48MUSIC CONTINUES
47:49It's often said he disliked the modern world.
47:53Of course, this is absolutely true.
47:55The modern world meant for him, essentially, the machine.
47:59The machine meant for him the wrong solution,
48:04the attempt to actualize our desires,
48:08like our desire to fly.
48:10It meant coercion, domination,
48:14for him the great enemy,
48:17coercion of other minds and other wills.
48:20This is tyranny.
48:22But in this very large sense of the word machine,
48:25the supreme machine, in the mythological terms,
48:28is the ring, is the one ring.
48:30This, of course, may seem extraordinary,
48:32because many people would feel like saying,
48:34surely the ring is the most magic thing of all.
48:37To which he would have said magic is very close to the machine.
48:41Magic is coercion, is the coercion of the world,
48:44the attempt by apparatus to transform the world.
49:02MUSIC CONTINUES
49:03Any large story interests people
49:05who can hold them their attention for a considerable time
49:08or make their...
49:09Stories, frankly, always,
49:11human stories,
49:12it's always about one thing, aren't they?
49:14Death.
49:17The inevitable death.
49:19There was a quotation from the nurse,
49:21Simon Beauvoir,
49:22that I read in the paper the other day,
49:25which seems to me put it in a nut jammy.
49:27I think I'll read it to him.
49:31There is no such thing as a natural death.
49:35Nothing that happens to man is ever natural,
49:38since his presence calls the whole world into question.
49:42All men must die,
49:43but for every man his death is an accident,
49:46and even if he knows it and consents to it,
49:49an unjustible violation.
49:51We may agree with the words or not,
49:54but those are the...
49:56are the key spring of the laws of the ring.
49:58I think that...
50:01in his later years,
50:03he became...
50:05he had become detached, in a way,
50:08from the old legends.
50:11Turin, Beren, and so on.
50:15And...
50:15they were immensely important to him,
50:18but they were things that...
50:19they were like the legends of the real world,
50:23which he could...
50:24which he could observe and study.
50:27And he became more and more interested,
50:30I think,
50:30in the...
50:32what you might call the metaphysical aspects
50:34of his secondary invention.
50:38Above all,
50:40with the nature of the elves.
50:43He became involved in profound attempts
50:48attempts to determine the nature of an immortal being
50:52who is nonetheless incarnate,
50:54and possesses a body.
50:56This would, in turn,
50:58was beginning to develop new stories within the Silmarillion.
51:03And I think the whole thing simply became too large,
51:09too complex,
51:11to have so precise,
51:14to attempt to impose so precise
51:16a metaphysical explanation on it.
51:19It was perhaps a task for a younger man.
51:21And the flame began to die down.
51:28Professor Tolkien never succeeded
51:31in completing a publishable version
51:33of the Silmarillion in his lifetime.
51:35His name was known the world over.
51:37He had legions of admirers,
51:39but his greatest legendary work remained unfinished.
51:42His wife, Edith, died in 1971,
51:45and he survived her by only two years.
51:50My dear Chris,
51:52Luthien says for me more than a multitude of words,
51:55for she was, and knew she was,
51:58my Luthien.
51:59I never called Edith Luthien,
52:02but she was the source of the story
52:04that in time became the chief part
52:06of the Silmarillion.
52:09It was first conceived in a small,
52:11wooden glade,
52:13filled with hemlocks,
52:14at Roos in Yorkshire,
52:16where I was, for a brief time,
52:18in command of an outpost
52:19of the Humber garrison in 1917,
52:22and she was able to live with me for a while.
52:25In those days,
52:27her hair was raven,
52:28her skin clear,
52:29her eyes brighter than you have seen them,
52:31and she could sing and dance.
52:37But the story has gone crooked,
52:39and I am left,
52:40and I cannot plead before
52:42the inexorable Mandos,
52:44I will say no more now.
53:00Who will tell our stories now?
53:20This is Melanin Nine,
53:22speaking on a J.R.R. Tolkien verse
53:25from Lord of the Rings.
53:28Through Rohan,
53:29over fen and field,
53:31where the long grass grows,
53:32the west wind comes walking,
53:34and about the walls it goes.
53:37What news from the west,
53:39O wandering wind,
53:40do you bring to me tonight?
53:42Have you seen Boromir at all,
53:44by moon or by starlight?
53:46I saw him ride over seven streams,
53:49over waters wide and grey.
53:51I saw him walk in empty lands,
53:53until he passed away,
53:55into the shadows of the north.
53:58I saw him then,
53:59no more.
54:01The north wind may have heard
54:03the horn of the son of Denethor.
54:05Oh Boromir,
54:07from the high walls westward
54:09I look too far,
54:10but you came not from the empty lands
54:13where no men are.
54:20No,
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