NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/fan/tolkien/1999

Text File | 1993-01-23 | 6.0 KB | 108 lines

Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien
Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!nntp.Stanford.EDU!jchokey
From: [e-mail] (James Alexander Chokey)
Subject: Re: Dwarves & Jews, Language origins
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Keywords: Dwarves, Jews, Languages
Sender: [e-mail] (Mr News)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 19:11:55 GMT
Lines: 95

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

>    In letter 297, discussing the word 'Moria' he says:
>
>    As for the land of 'Moriah,' (note stress): that has
>no connexion (even 'externally') whatsoever.  Internally there
>is no conceivable connexion between the mining of the Dwarves,
>and the story of Abraham.  My mind does not work that way; and
>(in my view) you are led astray by a purely fortuitous similarity,
>more obvious in spelling than speech, which cannot be justified
>from the real intended significance of my story.
>
>    In this same letter, Tolkien denies that various words
>in his invented languages are related to words in real ones.  The
>only deliberate exception is Earendil, which is chosen to echo a
>name found in Anglo-Saxon and Eddic sources (see 'Aurvandil,' a
>minor character in the story of Thor's duel with Hrungnir, and also
>the Anglo-Saxon poem "Crist" (the most important source)).
>

    And the entire language of the Mark, which is basically Anglo-Saxon/
Old English, and everything relating to hobbit-speech, which is basically
modern English.  Tolkien, we know, dismisses all these relations as a mere
"convention of translation," but that's just him being coy (as he so often
is when discussing his work)!

    I think it's clear that many of the words in Tolkien's more obviously
invented languages _are_ in fact related to words in real ones.  This relation,
I would contend, operates more on the level of the "sound" and "look" of the
words than on the level of their "meaning."  (To put it in Saussurian terms,
the similarity operates more on the level of the signifier rather than on the
level of the signified.) Tolkien was well aware of the "sounds" and the "feel"
of words and languages and knew that certain sounds would, in fact, call to
mind certain feelings and reactions in his audience.

    Let me give a couple of examples.  Tolkien, in the letter you cite
above, also denies that the name "Sauron" is in any way related in therms
of etymology or in terms of meaning to the Greek "saura" (lizard) or "thaura"
or "thaurond" (detestable).  He would also deny, no doubt, that it had any
connection to the modern English words "sore" or "sour"--  but that is only
because he is speaking as Tolkien the philologist when he says this, not as
Tolkien the poet.  Would he deny that he expected the name "Sauron" to
conjure up a whole host of unpleasant connotations in his readers, if only
because the name happened to sound and to look like a lot of other words
which have unpleasant connotations?

    Similarly, there is  Khazad-dum.  I'm sure that Tolkien would deny
that there was any connection between the Dwarvish "du^m" and the English word
"doom," but once again, that would only be him speaking as philogist, not as
poet.  Tolkien the poet knows all too well that "du^m" is going to remind an
English- speaking reader of the word "doom"--  and he even has the minions of
the Balrog beating the sound "Doom. Doom" on drums to drive the point home.
The fact, furthermore, that parts of the Khazad-dum episode (such as a fight
taking place next to a great flaming chasm in an undergound champer that was
once a forge) resemble those that are to occur later in Mount _Doom_, really
leaves no question in my mind that Tolkien did expect readers to connect "du^m"
and "doom" on at least one level.


    To bring this back to the question of "Moria" and "Moriah," I think
it's true that there is no etymological connection between the two.  I'm not
so certain, however, that we can immediately conclude that there's not
supposed to be a certain "sonorous" connection between them. Another poster
has pointed out that the structure of Dwarvish is quite similar to the
structure of Semitic languages, of which Hebrew is probably the most familiar
to most English speakers.  You, of course, reproduced above the passage in
which Tolkien said that he did think of the Dwarves as Jews, if only in the
sense that their relationship to their language was comparable to the relation-
ship of European Jews to Hebrew.  (I wish I hadn't already deleted that
passage part of your post--  sigh).  And, I still stand by my earlier assertion
that, within Middle-earth, Dwarves do suffer from a negative sterotype that
is in many ways, similar to the negative stereotypes that are often applied
to Jews--  that they are greedy, obsessed with wealth, etc.  (As I said before,
however, Tolkien takes great efforts through the character of Gimli to show
that Dwarves can and do have a great nobility of spirit and that their bad
reputation is undeserved.)

    If only one or two of these things were present, it would be easy
to disregard them as a mere coincidence.  But the existence of all of them
makes me a little more skeptical if we aren't, like Tolkien, also supposed
to think of the Dwarves as Jews. There was in Nazi Germany at this time, a
body of offical anti-Semitic interpretations of Wagner's _Ring_ cycle, in
which the evil Dwarf in _Das Rheingold_ was said to represent the evils of the
Jews.  I really can't help but wonder whether or not Tolkien might be trying
to "answer" such Nazi propoganda in LOTR by investing in the Dwarves certain
characteristics that might cause people to associate them with Jews, including
having a sterotype of greediness placed on them, but actually portraying them
as a great and noble people whose bad reputation is really undeserved.

    As I said before, I'm not entirely convinced by this suggestion, but
I do think it's not entirely without some basis in historical and textual
reality.


    --  Jim C. <[e-mail]>