Today marks the 50th anniversary of J. R. R. Tolkien's death, and I've been reading a few reflections on his legacy that sparked  thoughts and reminiscences of my own.

I read Lord of the Rings in high school, in the venerable Ballantine paperback edition (here are the covers, which I remember vividly). It was little enough known that I was actually able to recommend it to friends who'd never heard of it. I remember feeling, as I finished the third volume, that I never wanted the story to end.

I often think of the un-recoverability of one's first experience of a well-loved ritual or work of art. I love the Divine Liturgy, but the astonishment and joy I felt at my first visit to an Orthodox church are unique. (Different astonishments and different joys keep coming, though.)
In smaller ways, I can enjoy watching, say, The Matrix, but the the plot revelations will never again be completely new. Happily, any work of art that's worth re-visiting always offers new pleasures and insights, but the "first love" moment is gone forever.

This good consideration of Tolkien's legacy by Sebastian Milbank reminds me especially how unique Lord of the Rings was, and remains, as a work of literature. In its form, its style, its earnestness, and its moral foundation, it was wildly at odds with anything that was considered "literature" when it was first published in the 1950s. It was generally despised by the literary world; over the years, it's gained some appreciation, though it remains divisive, a love-it-or-hate-it work.

LOTR inspired a host of imitations, none of them nearly comparable in quality. Elves, dwarves and quests have become standard building blocks of fantasy novels, video games, and so on. Even the "trilogy" form has become a fantasy commonplace. This is amusing, since Tolkien didn't write LOTR as a trilogy: the publisher decided to issue it in three volumes for practical reasons. Even the now-canonical titles -- The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King -- were invented by the publisher. Tolkien especially disliked Return of the King as a title: he felt that it gave too much away.

Christian readers have been, I think, especially attracted to Lord of the Rings, though it is in no way a Christian allegory in the manner of the Narnia books. (One critic found Middle-earth hard to believe in because of the near-absence of women and religion.) Perhaps we feel at home in the book because of its picture of a moral world, one in which good and evil are real things that play out in history and individual lives.  A critic complained that "his good people are consistently good, his evil figures immovably evil”. I'd have to disagree. Major characters such as Saruman and Boromir (even Frodo eventually!) are shown as good but corrupted by the influence of evil, which, in Tolkien's book, almost always takes the form of the temptation to earthly power. In Tolkien's mythology, even the cartoonishly wicked Orcs have been bent from their original nature as Elves.  Some characters seem almost incorruptible: Sam and Faramir come to mind. As I write this I realize that
the moral vision of Lord of the Rings seems dominated by the downward pull of evil on the human soul: I've listed various good folk corrupted by evil, but at the moment I can't think of a single evil character who repents and turns decisively to the good.

Lord of the Rings has a permanent place on my bookshelf, though sadly the Ballantine paperbacks are long gone. I've read it through at least three times and, God willing, will do so again.

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IC XC NIKA