Talk about Xudong
Aragon charge against immigrants?
Not long ago, Viggo Mortensen, the actor of Aragon in the movie "The Lord of the Rings", gave an online interview about xenophobia in Europe and the United States. He said that republican parties such as the Republican Party in Arizona and the neo-Nazi party Vox in Spain borrowed stills from the movie "The Lord of the Rings 3: The Return of the King" in which the human emperor Aragon led his army to charge heroically at the enemy, and wrote anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic slogans such as "Kill thieves and traitors" in the background. This, he said, completely distorted the thrust of The Lord of the Rings, much less the actions of Aragon, who had been forging "Fellowships" with the various races. What Tolkien resents, Vigo says, is that there are always people trying to find "metaphors" from The Lord of the Rings that allude to reality, and this labeling is dangerous, but it has always been done.
Eventually, they learned, Tolkien had famously written a letter to the Third Reich stating his position against Nazi acts.
Tolkien's writing to the Third Reich is interesting and makes one wonder: How did a novelist who conceived of an alternate world in the Oxford Study be linked to realpolitik? Why did a professor with a penchant for Germanic culture react so violently to the Third Reich, who also admired ancient Germanism?
Go back in time to more than eighty years ago.
"Look at this neurotic law, let the German version of The Hobbit be shelved!"
On September 21, 1937, Tolkien's novel The Hobbit was officially published. This was originally just an interesting story he told to the children, and it was only printed as a teen book. But at a time when the Third Reich was in full swing and the political situation in Europe was in turmoil, Tolkien, like Bilbo in The Hobbit, was forced into a treacherous and dangerous world— less than a year after publication, Rütten & Loening, a third-reich publisher, came to the door. They contacted Tolkien's British publishers, Allen & Unwin, to discuss whether they could publish a German version of The Hobbit, with a strange condition that Tolkien be of "Aryan" descent.
Tolkien was furious at the first moment. In his slightly tongued "Tolkien" tone, he taunted in a letter to the publisher (Letter No. 29): "Does their neurotic law require that all men in all nations have 'Aryan' blood?" ...... I deeply regret that I am mistaken for endorsing this extremely vicious and anti-scientific doctrine of race. So, "Let the German version just leave it on hold!" ”
With the style and sense of humor of an English gentleman, he offered publishers two letters of repercussions: one that completely avoided the "Aryan" issue and one that explored it very formally. Ironically, the publisher sent the former out and lost it in the war, and we can see the spicy latter (Letter No. 30).
In this reply, Tolkien expressed three meanings: first, that "Aryan" was just a etymological term and very different from your understanding; second, that the Jews were talented; and third, that your approach was completely unjustified.
At the root of the matter, Tolkien's reply is far from being angry, and he has been thinking about these issues for a long time.
"If this were your literary policy, I would not be proud of my German surname."
First of all, to answer the question, why would a German publishing house take the liberty of asking about the pedigree of a foreign writer? This demand had its origins, the "Aryanization"," a policy of the Third Reich, in a word, the complete expulsion of the "Jewish component" of the German economy and culture and the realization of the so-called Germanic racial purification.
As early as 1900, the German anthropologist Ludwig Woltmann proposed that the Aryan or Germanic race represented the height of human evolution, superior to all other races, and was "destined to rule the earth." If the Aryans want to expand their living space, it is not that Germany is really overcrowded, but from the perspective of social Darwinism, they are destined to win the battle for dominance between races and expel Jews, Slavs and other "inferior races". This idea had been popular among the German elite long before World War I, and after the Nazis came to power in 1933, it became a national policy of german conspiracy. Hitler vigorously preached that "the government will launch a planned and systematic movement to restore the physical and mental health of the people", that is, to control education, literature, the press, and radio, in the service of permanently preserving the racial nature of the Aryans.
But Tolkien's reply began by pointing out that this idea simply did not hold water.
Tolkien said, "I don't have any Aryan origins, and the word Aryan is just referring to the Indian-Iranian language family, and I don't know that I have ancestors who spoke Hindi, Persian, Gypsy and other languages." In fact, in the nineteenth century Aryan was a term in linguistics, referring specifically to Proto-Indo-European, and the consensus in linguistics was that the word Aryan was in reality only applicable to the Indian-Iranian language family, and a few scholars believed that the names of other Indo-European language families such as Eiru (Ireland) were related to it. After all, the so-called "Aryan" is a linguistic and cultural term, and there has never been any evidence that any ethnic/ethnic group previously considered itself "Aryan", let alone any "Aryan origin". And I don't know if it was intentional, Tolkien also specifically mentioned the Gypsies, who lived in Germany in the 1930s with about 26,000 Gypsies, who were regarded by the Nazis as a threat and inferiority as the Jews— and Tolkien seemed to be questioning that the Oriental peoples you despised, such as the Gypsies, had a much higher "Aryan" gold content than you did.
As a linguist who loved ancient Germanic culture, Tolkien had long noticed the word "Aryan". As early as 1914, he painstakingly traced in his notebook the history of the invasion of the British Isles by Germanic tribes and led to the integration of nationalities. In 1915, he composed the poem "A Song of Aryador", which sings about the lost elves of Aryador in the shadow land of Aryador. Aryador is a word in the Elvish language invented by Tolkien, "-dor" stands for "so-and-so", and the root of the word "Arya-", although given a complex etymological explanation in the Quenya Lexicon dictionary, is difficult to ignore its actual corresponding word, Aryan. Even though by 1941 the Germanic spirit had been used by Hitler as a propaganda slogan, he still considered "the Germanic spirit to be a noble northern spirit that made an important contribution to Europe" But for this reason, he hated the Nazis even more for "raising the banner and making a tiger's skin", "I know better than most people what the truth is behind the Germanic racial fallacy [propagated by the Nazis]" (Letter No. 45). He knows what academic issues, which were once full of controversy and gray areas, will become distorted by prejudice and political manipulation, and he abhors them.
Kunya Dictionary
Not only that, as a prudent scholar, Tolkien knew exactly where the boundaries of his love of Germanic culture lay. By November 1914, Europe had been pushed into the quagmire of World War I by nationalism, and Tolkien defended nationalism in debates at Exeter College in Oxford. But Tolkien's understanding of nationalism is not bullying other peoples, but the self-realization of a national culture. In a letter to his friend Wiseman, he said: "I am not going to defend 'Germany above all', but I will certainly defend the Norwegians 'everything for Norway'." ”
Ultimately, the reason why German publishers asked Tolkien if he had "Aryan" ancestry was probably related to his German name. Tolkien also has a very clear understanding of this. In a later letter (Letter No. 165), he explained that his name was a Germanic name derived from the Saxons, an Anglo-esque of Tollkiehn/Tollkühn, which only helped with spelling and was prone to misunderstanding, when in fact he himself had nothing to do with the Germans. In a reply to the Third Reich press, Tolkien said more directly and playfully, "I have always been proud of my German name,...... But if this disrespectful and irrelevant demand (i.e., to ask about someone else's Aryan ancestry) becomes your literary policy, then german names can no longer be proud."
However, this kind of literary and artistic policy is already being fully implemented.
"I regret that my ancestors didn't have Jewish ancestry, they were all talented."
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Propaganda Department led by Goebbels and the young people in Germany jointly became the vanguard of the implementation of the "Aryanization" policy. On May 10, 1933, German students organized an "action to overthrow the non-Germanic spirit" in nineteen university towns across the country, and based on their own list of "non-Germanic" books, they were collected from the library and piled on fire in public squares. Not only German-language books were affected, but foreign works such as Dickens's Orphans of the Mist and Scott's Ivanhet were also banned. By December 1933, more than a thousand publications had been banned.
Of course, the Third Reich would not reject all publications one-size-fits-all, in fact, Goebbels knew well the importance of entertainment to people, and popular novels with less political connotations occupied the book bestseller list after 1936. Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, one of the best-selling novels of the Third Reich, was purchased by 300,000 Germans in the first four years of its publication. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" is both a harmless young adult book and a bestseller, and it is not surprising that the publishers of the Third Reich are favored. But on the other hand of the coin, at the heart of the "Aryanization" policy, the Jews and their works were completely blocked. Only two years after the Nazis came to power, the works of Jewish writers had completely disappeared from public bookshelves throughout Germany.
But in his reply, Tolkien said very bluntly: "I understand that you are asking me if I have Jewish ancestors. All I can answer is that I regret that my ancestors were not related to this talented group. ”
We can't take it for granted that Tolkien would support the Jews and oppose the Nazis with our hindsight, and that's all logical and easy. No, anti-Semitism was deeply entrenched in European history, and in the nineteenth century, eugenics and social Darwinism fueled the perception that the Jews were a lower people. Tolkien's Then England (which is now resurgent) was at the center of an anti-Semitic storm.
Britain has a long tradition of anti-Semitism (you know, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is a very popular literary work of the Nazis), and there is no shortage of anti-Semitic theoretical advocates, and it is the British Houston Stewart Chamberlain's "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century", published as early as 1900, to compete for dominance between the Germanic race and the Jewish race. As a historical context, it integrates anti-Semitism and social Darwinism into one, becoming the most influential anti-Semitic book. Since the First World War, waves of Jewish refugees in Eastern Europe have struck, the labor market has suffered a huge impact, and Jews have become the thorns and scapegoats in the eyes of the British, especially the middle and lower classes. The British government's Introduction of the Compulsory Conscription System exempted Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe from the obligation to perform military service, which instead provoked civil anti-Semitic insurrection. Tolkien came to Leeds as a professor in 1920, a colony of Immigrants in Eastern Europe, where three years ago there had been serious anti-Semitic violence, when more than a thousand local residents went out to destroy Jewish houses and threaten the personal and property safety of Jews, and not a single Jewish shop survived. Throughout the 1930s, sporadic anti-Semitic actions occurred. It is impossible for Tolkien not to know anything about this.
Chamberlain
But he spoke for the Jews anyway, for the reason, as he told Unwin, "I have a lot of Jewish friends." Of these, Cecil Roth is the most prominent one.
Cecil was An Oxford alumnus and colleague of Tolkien and a very famous historian, and his concise history of the Jewish people was the foundation of Jewish history. He has been committed to justifying the contribution of the Jewish people to The history of Britain and the history of mankind in the harsh environment of public opinion, and finally settled and buried in Jerusalem. He was fluent in several Romance languages, such as Latin and Italian, and had more common languages with Tolkien. It's hard to know exactly when the two met, but they were good friends (For example, Tolkien and Cecil discussed the lingua franca of medieval Jews). And a small thing Cecil did later left an indelible impression on Tolkien.
Cecil Ross caricature
In the late part of World War II, Oxford professors like Tolkien had to be on duty at the air defense siren, which was a cold, damp little room. It was january 1944, and he and his unfortunate partner Cecil were on duty here, and the two talked until midnight. Tolkien found Cecil very charismatic and gentlemanly in every way. Cecil saw that there was no wall clock in the room and lent his watch to Tolkien. He even thoughtfully considered that Tolkien was going to attend the communion at seven o'clock in the morning, so he took the initiative to come in at six fifty o'clock and wake him up. Tolkien was so moved that he "suddenly seemed to be back in the world that had not yet fallen" (letter No. 55).
For Tolkien, "anti-Semitism" was like a spell in his fantasy world, gritting one's teeth and hating a group of people he might not have known or even met. But the individuals in the real living group appear in front of you, let you feel the warmth of humanity, and this spell disappears in an instant.
"Your demands cannot be improper in my country."
This quote comes from the last paragraph of Tolkien's reply. This is also the question to be answered in the end: How did Tolkien view realpolitik issues? What is the "improper" in his mind?
Perhaps there is a point that Tolkien, as a conservative old-school gentleman, was naturally wary and skeptical of grand narratives, and paid more attention to the individuals around him. Just as he conceives of the Middle-earth world and likes to start with the details of the matter, he is more accustomed to looking at problems from an individual point of view.
The experience of joining the army in World War I further deepened his concept.
In 1915, Tolkien officially reported to the troops for training. He had few fond memories of his military career, but was all an extreme dislike of bureaucracy in the army. Years later, his son Christopher Tolkien, who was also conscripted into the Army in World War II, wrote to his son: "Life in the barracks never seems to have changed, and it is an outrage that all those bad qualities of the barracks are unnecessary, and in the Organization the stupidity of human beings is infinitely magnified!" (Letter No. 66)
The following year, as a signal soldier, as soon as he arrived in France, he encountered the most tragic positional battle of the First World War, the Battle of the Somme. He witnessed the first modern war in human history and witnessed how destructive the tank, the creation of industrial civilization, is, and he is still full of disgust for these. Organizations, weapons, industrial creations, and even the racism that spread around the world were all a class of things in his eyes—"machines." After the world war, Tolkien said, "everyone was a victim, thousands of people were dead or crippled, and only one thing won: 'Machine.'"
Many people simply understand "Machine" as industrial civilization and its achievements, so that Sajuman in "The Lord of the Rings" represents the destruction of nature by industrial civilization and other interpretations. Although Tolkien was old-fashioned, he did not reject industrial civilization completely. The "Machine" in his mind, as his son Christopher later pointed out:
My father mentioned more than once that one of the underlying themes of The Lord of the Rings is "Machine." But what is meant here is not the intuitive meaning of the word, not a train, a car or an airplane, but a means of replacing the development of human beings' own talents. "Machine" is a wrong means, it means coercion, domination, especially for my father, the biggest enemy is the coercion of different ideas, wills. He found that this is the essential feature of the modern world.
It is true that The Lord of the Rings does not directly allude to anything specific, but it does depict the horror of "Machine", the ambition of the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the minds of others and control the world, the desire for power of the fallen wizard Saruman, and the desolation and desolation left behind by the destruction and transformation of exquisite cities and buildings.
What else can resist these menacing "Machine" monsters? In the ruins of two world wars, where is the hope? Perhaps also in the experience of the First World War, in the people around him, Tolkien found the answer himself.
The people around me should not be those senior officers. He complained to his wife, "There is no gentlemanly demeanor among senior officers, and in my opinion, at least humanity is rare." Instead, it was the inferior soldiers who allowed him to see the most shining qualities in human beings. He said the military experience had given him deep sympathy and affection for Tommy (a British soldier), especially a modest soldier from the countryside.
They look up at the stars. Tolkien recalled that during a boring military class, everyone was crowded in a dirty tent, and there was a smell of sheep urine, when a soldier next to him muttered quietly: "Yes, I think I should use the prefix to indicate Binge!" Tolkien wanted to talk to the soldier about his self-created grammatical structure, but was ashamed to open his mouth.
- They have courage and strategy. Especially the service soldiers, Tolkien sincerely admired them. The service must deal with the officer's chores, but at the same time complete the military tasks. Even if it is the seemingly simple task of running errands for officers, they must be both loyal and flexible in order to fully understand the officer's intentions and ensure that they are carried out in place. Of course, the casualties of the service soldiers are also very large. One of the service men of Company A, Thomas Gaskin, was originally a manchester worker who later died at the Battle of Overwellus. His mother wrote a letter inquiring about her son's whereabouts, which Tolkien had treasured.
Tolkien in a military uniform
I have to say that sam wise gamji, a hobbit who accompanies the protagonist and shows a strong and brave quality at key moments in "The Lord of the Rings", is based on the service soldiers around Tolkien. This is also the main theme of "The Lord of the Rings": ordinary people who seem to be inconspicuous are the protagonists who resist the darkness and promote history. Tolkien praised their bravery with the help of the water god Uoumu: "In the years of annihilation, the elves should always remember the heroism of the Eden (that is, human beings), marvel at how short their lifespan is in the world, and how indignant they are at sacrificing their lives." ”
This is Tolkien's conception of realpolitik, this is his answer to the Third Reich, to "Machine." Hannah Arendt, after lamenting the origins of anti-Semitism, gives the same prescription: "Every end of history necessarily contains a new beginning ... and this beginning is guaranteed by every new birth; this beginning is indeed everyone." "Tolkien, through the fog of war, sees not such grand and extreme words as national revenge and racial purification, but every good person.
Editor-in-Charge: Zheng Shiliang
Proofreader: Liu Wei