Trees and Forests

This will be my last “Tolkienna” entry for a while, I think. I did finish The Return of the King nearly three weeks ago, and already have two-and-a-half SF paperbacks under my belt since. But I’d like to conclude with a contrast of my experiences with two readings of Tolkien separated by nearly thirty years.

The phrase that popped into my mind a few weeks back was that “tree-forest” analogy thingie. During my first reading of Tolkien, as a boy in the summer of 1981, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. This last, second reading over five weeks from December 2010 to January 2011, I couldn’t see the trees for the forest.

What does this mean?

Back in ’81 I was taken in and fascinated with the characters of The Lord of the Rings. The four hobbits, Gandalf, and Aragorn primarily, and very much so with the evil critters that abounded, Shelob and the individual orcs in particular. I would spend hours with those Tolkien dictionaries seeking out back-stories and individual histories. I had those Tolkien calendars with the illustrative art work. These characters were very real to me.

The vast tapestry of geography and history which these characters moved upon, that was foggy and beyond my adolescent mind. The scope just dwarfed me; I was content to be drawn into a very exciting, somewhat scary, big-stakes adventure.

Thirty years later, I have a much fuller appreciation of the world of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age. Kinda like having a college degree compared to a middle school education, I suppose, if I had to quantify it somehow. Those Tolkien dictionaries helped fill in a lot of blanks over the years, as did two full readings of The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin, read this past summer. Also, for better or worse, I saw all of the three Ring movies as each was released in the theaters.

So, in my second reading I was more interested in making sense of Tolkien’s geopolitical chessboard. It was reading at a much higher altitude. While I did enjoy returning to my beloved characters (especially, this time around, the Elves), my focus was more on how they influenced – and were influenced by – the great currents of History.

Two more differences, interrelated, of the two readings came to mind: speed and focus. The first time around, it took me three months to read the entirety of The Lord of the Rings. Of course my reading skills were not as developed as they are now. But I also had so much more free time, time to myself, time left alone, where I could afford a leisurely stroll through Middle-earth. This allowed me, I think, to drop fully into that world, to be immersed in this strange and appealing ocean, to actually walk the fields of the Shire, the tunnels of Moria, the paths of Lothlorien and Fangorn, the stinking and terrible crevasses leading to Shelob’s lair. The first reading was so much more vivid to me.

The second reading was quite different. More scholarly, I suppose, if you allow me the conceit of attaching the word “scholarly” as an adjective to my reading. This last effort took five frenzied weeks, reading whenever I could squeeze a half-hour or an hour alone and unbothered, else reading late at night battling my eyelids to keep them raised. I found myself unable to detach completely into Middle-earth. This is also a function of age, too, as I firmly believe age (as well as stress and other various life responsibilities) affects this imaginative transmigratory ability. Because I was unable to visualize so completely the minutiae of detail of the Rings as I was able to do at age 13, I got more out of the background than the foreground. For instance, this second reading gave me a much more complete understanding of Aragorn’s role as a uniter … as the King … a role which escaped me the first time round.

But this is not to imply a hard-and-fast dichotomy to my two readings. In both cases I did see both forest and individual tree; only the percentage of which flip-flopped in my readings. Another, and perhaps better, analogy I can think of is that of reading poetry. Jorge Luis Borges writes a lot about this, and this second reading of Tolkien cemented it for me. The first time you read a poem, there’s a certain delight you receive from the meter, the rhymes, the images the words convey, and the surprise at the ending. You don’t receive that same pleasure with a second reading. However, you receive something different: a better understanding of what the author was trying to convey. That in itself is a pleasure, if the work affected you from the very beginning.

The Lord of the Rings is still in my top handful of books I ever read, one of my desert island books. I will read it again, the question is only at what stage of my life I will next visit these lands.