Chapter 11. "A Knife in the Dark" (I)

What a night for the hobbits, what a day for me! Well, the night has ended up well for the hobbits because they took Strider's advice and did not go back to their rooms, which the Black Riders had raided during the night. At Crickhollow, as well, Fatty Bolger raised the alarm the moment he saw tha black figures that were creeping around the house. The Enemy is powerful but for the moment, our hobbits are safe. Strider is a good companion, alert day and night, watching over the hobbits while they sleep, as Frodo has the opportunity to see when he wakes up in the night. Sadly, they cannot start as early as he had planned because they have to get at least one pony to carry their equipment, and they cannot leave Bree as secretly has he intended to. Merry, on his part, sees the glass half full: they may not be able to leave early and secretly, but at least they have time to enjoy a good breakfast! 
Guided by Strider, they leave Bree and make for Weathertop Hill, enjoying walking through the paths the Ranger chooses, even if the reason for their journey is not a pleasing one. They have been walking the whole day with "no sing and ... no sound of any other living thing all that day: neither two-footed, except birds; nor four-footed except one fox and a few squirrels".

As for me, I had a very intense but great day, starting with a magnificent, inspiring lecture-performace by Filipino-Australian writer Melinda Bobbis (I have just found a photograph which I will add below with one of the quotes that I love most of the ones she included in her talk), followed by lunch with Merlinda, her husband and my good friends and colleagues and then followed by the European Researchers' Night at the Paseo del Salón. What a day! What a great day! And what a finale! Listening and dancing to the music of Befunkbob with Eugenia and Gülüm. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

"Fog on the Barrow-Downs" (II), Chapter 9. "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony" & Chapter 10. "Strider"

Now Tolkien means business. I totally agree with my friend Carlos: if you make it to Bree, you cannot put the book down. I still remember the excitement at the change in the narrative pace the first time I read The Lord of the Rings; whenever I re-read it, I look forwart do arriving there.

But before that, the hobbits have to begin the last leg of their journey with Tom. They start the day having breakfast and receiving treasures that Tom has taken from the mound, not before putting a spell on them so that no Wight could try to take it. I love it particularly that Tom includes all sentiend beings in his incantation, provided they are kind, making the treasures "free to all finders, birds, beasts, Elves or Men, and all kindly creatures." As with Goldberry's song in the previous chapter, Tom's words have the power to conjure up images, and so, when he talks about the Men of Westernesse who forged the daggers he's given the hobbits, they "did not understand his words, but as he spoke they had a vision as it were of a great expanse of years behind them, like a vast shadowy plain over which there strode shapes of Men, tall and grim with bright swords, and last came one with a star on his brow. Then the vision faded, and they were bak in the sunlit word." Only when we go further into the narrative we'll realise that the hobbits are seeing not only the past, but also a moment in time yet to come. It is risky to say that they are seeing the future, but one can argue that they're seeing what is meant to be.

 While Tom rides with them, it is easy to share the hobbtis' feeling that nothing bad may happen to them; yet Tom cannot take the journey with them. Before leaving them, he expresses his hopes that the Riders won't follow them tonight and returns to Goldberry. They make for Bree where Sam expect to find some comfort at the sign of The Prancing Pony.

And we are finally in Bree and inside The Prancing Pony. These two episodes are certainly a tour de force in the narrative. The hobbits are in a completely alien territory, Barliman Butterbur may be a kind man, but he can do little to change the not-so-welcoming atmosphere. The hobbits feel watched... and they certainly are. Enter Strider who, according to Barliman, is not to be trusted: he's one of those Rangers, and he cannot keep his eye off the hobbits. I remember how I imagined Strider when I first read The Lord of the Rings: he had really long legs and he was not nearly as handsome as Viggo Mortensen. Hey! I'm not complaining! 

I don't know how many times the hobbits have been told to be careful, but they have not yet realised that they cannot be careful enough when carrying that treacherous Ring, which takes the first opportunity to slip into Frodo's finger while he's trying to divert everyone's attention from Merry and Pippin's careless conversation. That Strider knows that Mr Underhill is actually Mr Baggins causes uneasiness, but he seems to know what he's doing, and Gandalf's letter comes just in time to confirm the trust the hobbits are beginning to place on him. When Merry comes in bringing news of a Black Rider at the inn, Strider's presence becomes truly comforting. They have now gone to sleep.

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king

Chapter 8. "Fog on the Barrow-Downs" (I)

It is incredible how the way you imagine the sound of a voice can change the moment your expectations are thwarted! In the morning, the hobbits left Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, changing the welcoming nature of their home by the hostility of the Barrow-downs. Falling asleep without intending to, engulfed by the fog, Frodo finds himself separated from Merry, Pippin and Sam. To his angry and afraid "Where are you?" a voice responds with a "Here!" which, for a nanosecond, we take to be one of the hobbits' until it is described as "deep and cold," a voice "that seemed to come out of the ground". Its next "I am waiting for you!" sounds ominous. Honestly, it still gives me the creeps. Immediately afterwards, Frodo is trapped by a Barrow-wight and soon has the opportunity to experience how true Gildor's words are: "Courage is found in unlikely places." Merry, Pippin and Sam are laid out as if for a Germanic burial, and a big hand approaches the hilt of the sword that rests on their necks. Frodo feels tempted to use the Ring to run away from a certain death; even if he he knows he would mourn the death of his friends, at least he would be alive! But the courage he was so eager to find was within him all the time: he stabs at the approaching hand and his voice finds the strength to sing the song that calls Tom Bombadil to their rescue, liberating them from the Barrow-wight. For the sleeping hobbits all has been a bad dream, but Frodo has had the opportunity to find his courage and loyalty put to the test and he has passed with flying colours. Now, Bombadil will be riding with them part of their way, and that is truly comforting.

Certainly, this first part of The Lord of the Rings is a bit episodic, but let us not forget that Tolkien himself admitted to being a bit lost as to where to go as he was writing this part.

 


As for me... still enjoying my morning walks down from the forest of the Alhambra ... 

... even if some of the people I come across refuse to pose for me.

Cherchez le chat!

"In the House of Tom Bombadil" (II)

It's Goldberry's washing day, so the blessed rain prevents the hobbits from setting out and we are truly happy to spend another day under Tom and Goldberry's roof. Tolkien once again celebrates the simple pleasures of life: good food, good company, and a roof that provides shelter; indeed, simple pleasures that sadly are not available to everyone.

There is so much hinted at but ultimately indecipherable about this couple. Tom is old, older than everything that exists and the stories he tell to the hobbits go back eons ago; Tom, indeed, seems to he predates every single thing and being. His narrative is that of the history of the earth and its inhabitants. I find it interesting that he follows a chronological order, focusing on time and the events that come and go with it, while Goldberry's song is connected to place, to space. Time and space: the same thing according to quantum physics. I really must quote this part from the text, truly evocative and so revealing concerning how words in a song can create mental pictures:

"After they had eaten, Goldberry sang many songs for them, songs that began merrily in the hills and fell softly down into silence; and in the silences they saw in their minds pools and waters wider than any they had known, and looking into them they saw the sky below them and the stars like jewels in the depths. "

Tom's words also reveal how little the hobbits know about the world, even within the people in their own Shire. Farmer Maggot is more important than they had imagined:  'There's earth under his old feet, and clay on his fingers; wisdom in his bones, and both his eyes are open'. Knowledge coming not from books, but from experience, straight from the earth. Can we not read this as a celebration of matter?

We are also shocked to see that the Ring does not have any effect on Tom: he does not disappear when he wears it, and he can see Frodo when he uses it to check whether it is still his Ring. Can you imagine how much one could learn spending just a couple of evenings under Bombadil's roof? If only the hobbits could stay there, in that sheltering home, hiding the Ring forever from the clutches of the Enemy! But it cannot be. Tomorrow they will take to the road again. The quest goes on, but I want to stay here a little longer.


P.S. I have to teach a class in one minute, but I'll come back later, to post my morning encounter as I was going down the forest of the Alhambra. 
Here I am. While taking pictures of the forest...

... someone decided to cross my path.

Chapter 6. "The Old Forest" & Chapter 7. "In the House of Tom Bombadil" (I)

After the scare in the Old Forest, I am going to leave my dear hobbits sleeping peacefully in the house of Tom Bombadil. See you later.












Well, here goes the account of the day.
Merry, Pippin, Sam and Frodo have definitely left the Shire, entering the Old Forest and - to his relief - letting Fatty at Crickhollow in order to wait for Gandalf and keep up the illusion that Frodo is living there. Re-reading about the Hedge in the context of the too many borders that we continue building in order to keep away those we feel like a menace, I cannot help but remember the words that Gildor told the hobbits a couple of days ago: "The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out." It would be good for us to pay attention to Gildor. In the world in which we live, some of us have been fortunate enough not to have to leave our homeland in order to survive somewhere else. Others have not been so lucky and, desperate to have a chance to live, will jump any wall, no matter how dangerous. But the real thing is that those walls are illusory protection; no one is immune to the suffering, the pain existing in the world.

But I'm getting sidetracked. In this part of the journey, the hobbits are now beginning to taste the world outside their border. I particularly like the way nature behaves in the Old Forest, because Tolkien destroys any possible hint at pathetic fallacy and presents us a natural world that is agentive, trees that protect themselves from intruders, even if the hobbits have no intention of hurting them. The adjective that Merry uses to refer to the forest, to the trees, is queer, perfectly grasping nature's ultimate inscrutability. The trees may have grown distrustful after the great fire, but they already had their own personality before, irrespective of what humans or hobbits intended to do to them. Not only is other-than-human nature presented here as agentive, but also intentional; the trees appear to have both an individual and a collective consciousness, judging by Merry's words, who does not believe in the old stories of goblins and wolves, but, he admits, 

"the Forest is queer. Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on, so to speak, than things are in the Shire. And the trees do not like strangers. They watch you. They are usually content merely to watch you, as long as daylight lasts, and don't do much. Occasionally the most unfriendly ones may drop a branch, or stick a root out, or grasp at you with a long trailer. But at night things can be most alarming, or so I am told. I have only once or twice been in here after dark, and then only near the hedge. I thought all trees were whispering to each other, passing news and plots along in an unintelligible language; and the branches swayed and groped without any wind."

And so, they take the hobbits precisely to the place they were avoiding to go to, the Withywindle, and they almost succeed in getting rid of them - or at least give them a good scare. It is interesting how the hobbits' loss of agency is linguistically marked, by the progressive looseness in the construction of their sentences. Pippin does not even speak but falls forward on to his knees, while Frodo hears Merry saying "It's no good. ... Can't go another step without rest. Must have nap. It's cool under the willows. Less flies!" Later, Frodo stammers: 'Wait for me, Sam. ... Must bathe feet a minute." Sam is the only one who keeps alert and able to express himself in full sentences: 'There's more behind this than sun and warm air ... I don't like this great big tree. I don't trust it. Hark as it singing about sleep now! This won't do at all!' Maybe because of his closeness to the earth, Sam is the only one who can "read" the tree's intentions. He saves Frodo from drowning, but it will require the appearance of Tom Bombadil to save Merry and Pippin.

In Tom Bombadil we find the most enigmatic character in The Lord of the Rings. Who is he? According to Golberry, "He is," but what? Who?  I am not going to enter here into the debate concerning who is he or what Tom Bombadil stands for. I simply take Goldberry and Tom as two forces of nature, who have human form but are not human. Tom's songs are different from those of the hobbits and the Elves and, when entering his house and seeing Goldberry, we seem to be in a different world. Their food includes milk, cheese, butter, cream and honey, but no dead animals, which, at least to me, connects them strongly with vegetation and life, Life, LIFE. Nourishment without cruelty to other sentient beings. I do not want to leave this house; I think I could stay here forever, and I bet the hobbits would too. However, even in the peacefulness of Tom's house, of the three hobbits, only Sam can have a dreamless sleep; Frodo, Merry and Pippin wake up from their dreams. Yet, they are soon comforted back into sleep: 'Fear nothing! Have peace until the morning! Heed no nightly noises!' 'Nothing passes doors or windows save moonlight and starlight and the wind off the hilltop.'

Good night, good night. See you tomorrow, still in Tom Bombadil's house.

Chapter 4. "A Short Cut to Mushrooms" & Chapter 5. "A Conspiracy Unmasked"

Matthias's risotto with boletus and roasted peppers

Our road today has taken up two chapters, from the woods in which the Elves left the hobbits sleeping to Crickhollow, stopping on the way at Farmer Maggot's farm, much to Frodo's chagrin. Knowing that I was going to be reading about his famous mushrooms, I've been craving them since this morning, so Matthias has been kind enough to make a risotto with boletus, much better, undoubtedly, than the mushrooms with bacon that the hobbits have for supper, since no animal was harmed to cook ours. 



The Black Riders follow hard on the hobbits' heels; in fact, they almost crossed the one who had been asking Farmer Maggot about "Baggins". We know that they are servants of the Enemy because Gildor told Frodo so; their piercing cry may chill the air and the heart, but Farmer Maggot stands no nonsense and soon dismisses him. 

This illustration may be a bit juvenile, but I like the autumnal colours and, in any case, this part of The Lord of the Rings is still very juvenile in tone.

However, even the farmer sounds a bit afraid when, on the road to the Ferry, he hears the clip-clop of hooves that end up being those of Merry's pony. In this part of the narrative, any serious tension is soon over, the narrative strategies to build the plot are still very much those of The Hobbit, and there is a predominance of a mood of conviviality that takes the form of good food and drink, good company, songs, and warm baths.  

This is the life that Frodo is giving away, embracing instead an unknown road that will surely bring him too much suffering. As far as he knows, Sam will accompany him, but at Crickhollow, the conspiracy is unmasked and Merry and Pippin announce that they will join him, while Fatty will remain at Crickhollow, pretending for a time to be Frodo. Tolkien celebrates that kind of friendship in which those who partake of it know the others so well that they know how and what they're feeling even before they open their mouths. This is the type of company Gildor advised Frodo to take with him, and these are the friends he's taking without even asking. Frodo is grateful but afraid for his friends. Tonight he has the first of his visionary dreams: the smell of the sea, a white tower. 





Let me close the day by introducing you to Mía, whom you may know from another blog of mine (, since I take care of her when her human companions, my friends Nacho and Laura are away. She's grown a bit distrustful since returning from her two-year stay in Vienna, but I will gain her confidence again. 

"Three is Company" (III)

Still in the Shire, the hobbits are beginning to be aware that it may not be the safe place they thought it was. In this chapter, we already get glimpses of the wider world, but Tolkien does so timidly, as it should be, not hurrying the action, but allowing it to tiptoe into the narrative. On this occasion, darkness has taken the shape of the sniffing Black Rider, of whose identity the hobbits know absolutely nothing, even though instinct tells them to stay away from him. The Ring begins to show its power; Frodo has been carrying it for a little time and has not even worn it once, but the temptation to slip it on as the Rider approaches is already strong.


Light, on the other hand, saves the day with the appearance of the Elves, whose mere presence is enough to make the Black Rider hide away. The Elves bring not only light, but also song, food, merriment and, most importantly, hope. Yes, despite the hints that Gildor gives about the dangers behin, before, and at each side, the light that accompanies the Elves brightens the night and the heart of hobbits and readers alike.  'Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo may very well be the most beautiful greeting I know; I love the sound, I love the meaning: "a star shines on the hour of our meeting". Light, always the light, and the comfort that provides feeling that there is some higher power watching over us, as Gildor tells Frodo: "The Elves have their own labours and their own sorrows, and they are little concerned with the ways of hobbits, or of any other creatures upon earth. Our paths cross their seldom, by chance or purpose. In this meeting there may be more than chance; but the purpose is not clear to me, and I fear to say too much.'

Another great statement that proves to be truer the older one gets: 'Courage is found in unlikely places'. The hobbits are sleeping now, the Elves will be watching over; in the morning they will have left, but they'll also have left their light behind, and Sam will never find words to express what that meeting meant for him.