do what he liked with it’ (p. 396). He desired to dominate the ‘minds and wills’ of the ‘creatures of earth’ (p. 395). Sauron’s corruption of the Númenóreans, which led to the destruction of *Númenor, was ‘a particular matter of revenge upon Ar-Pharazôn’, for his humiliation of Sauron. But ‘Sauron (unlike Morgoth) would have been content for the Númenóreans to exist, as his own subjects, and indeed he used a great many of them that he corrupted to his allegiance’ (p. 398).
In Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon (2003) Brian Rosebury comments, regarding the despotism of both Saruman and Sauron, that the ‘keynote’ of evil is ‘aggrandisement of self and negation of not-self’, achieved
through the enslavement and torture of other persons and the destruction of growing things. There is only one form of political order, a military despotism which terrorises its own soldiery as well as its enemies; sexuality is loveless, either diverted into sadism or confined to the organised breeding of warriors; economic life is based on slavery, and is devoted not to the cultivation, but to the exploitation, and ultimately the destruction of resources. Industrial processes are developed solely for the purposes of warfare and deliberate pollution. [p. 45]
Katharyn W. Crabbe comments in J.R.R. Tolkien (rev. and expanded edn. 1988) on the power shown by Sauron that it
goes beyond the simple acquisitiveness of The Hobbit to include the ultimate control – control over being. Sauron’s power, or the power he seeks, is a power that parodies the power of the creator. Rather than create, Sauron will destroy; rather than set free, he will enslave; rather than heal, he will harm. The desire of Sauron to make everything in Middle-earth less than it is capable of being is clear in his repeated threats to ‘break’ captives, in the ruined and desolate lands that were once fertile and productive …. [p. 86]
Meredith Veldman points out in Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: Romantic Protest 1945–1980 (1994) that
Saruman’s faith in ‘a lot of slaves and machines and things’ reflects his failure to see other beings in their wholeness and individuality. The Mordor spirit reduces individuals to an undifferentiated mass in need of regimentation. Saruman’s fall begins with his desire for power in order to do good, but he demands to be able to dictate to others the timing, scope, and scale of this goodness …. Such a desire to dictate, even for the good, stems from the urge to dominate, the ‘will to mere power’ embodied in the Ring and triumphant in Mordor ….
Because it regards other creatures as slaves rather than allies, the ‘will to mere power’ incarnate in Sauron annihilates individual freedom and choice. Sauron reduces those in his power to mere pawns to satisfy his own insatiable hunger for total domination. In contrast, the good achieve victory by recognizing the importance of individual choice and action. The corrupted Saruman would have ‘the Wise’ determine the course of events, but the unfolding of The Lord of the Rings reveals the significance of the actions of small and weak individuals. [pp. 83–4]
Anne C. Petty discusses use of innate and external power at length in the chapter ‘The Use and Abuse of Power’ in her Tolkien in the Land of Heroes: Discovering the Human Spirit (2003). She notes that ‘as a talisman of power, the Ring is both actual and symbolic. It represents what happens when concentrated power (especially in a technological sense) takes our imaginations in frightening directions. The inference to weapons and industries of war in our technological age is applicable, although not allegorical. For Tolkien, the Ring served as a symbol of desire for pure power, wielded through deception … and technology …’ (p. 155).
‘Pre-Fëanorian Alphabets’ see Writing systems
Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’. Essay, first published by George Allen & Unwin, London, in July 1940 in Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment, a new edition of Modern English translations by John R. Clark Hall of the Old English poems *Beowulf and the ‘Finnesburg [or Finnsburg] Fragment’. These translations had been published originally in 1901, revised 1911; for 1940 they were revised again, with notes and introduction, by *C.L. Wrenn and newly prefaced by Tolkien’s essay. In 1983 the Prefatory Remarks were printed also as On Translating ‘Beowulf’ in *The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, pp. 49–71. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B17, A19.
SYNOPSIS
In the first of the essay’s two parts, ‘On Translation and Words’, Tolkien comments that although Clark Hall’s text is a ‘competent translation’ of Beowulf it is no substitute for reading the poem itself – a great poem whose ‘specially poetic qualities’ cannot be caught in prose, and which in Modern English may lose the shades of meaning present in the original Old English. ‘For many Old English poetical words there are (naturally) no precise modern equivalents of the same scope and tone: they come down to us bearing echoes of ancient days beyond the shadowy borders of Northern history.’ Thus, for instance, Old English eacen, rendered by Clark Hall variously as ‘stalwart’, ‘broad’, ‘huge’, and ‘mighty’, originally meant ‘not “large” but “enlarged”, an addition of power, beyond the natural, whether it is applied to the superhuman thirtyfold strength possessed by Beowulf … or to the mysterious magical powers of the giant’s sword and the dragon’s hoard imposed by runes and curses’ (pp. 49, 50). Another difficulty for the translator is Old English descriptive compounds such as sundwudu ‘flood-timber’ (i.e. ‘ship’) and swan-rad ‘swan’s-road’ (‘sea’), which are ‘generally foreign to our present literary and linguistic habits’ (p. 51).
Tolkien warns the translator against ‘colloquialism and false modernity’. ‘If you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient; but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic, artificial (if you will), in the day that the poem was made.’ But ‘words should not be used merely because they are “old” or obsolete’ (p. 54). (For a related discussion by Tolkien of deliberate ‘archaism’ in *The Lord of the Rings, see his letter to *Hugh Brogan, September 1955, Letters, pp. 225–6.)
In the second part of the essay, ‘On Metre’, Tolkien discusses metre and alliteration in Old English poetry.
HISTORY
Probably in 1935 Tolkien’s B.Litt. student *M.E. Griffiths suggested to George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) that they issue a new edition of Clark Hall’s translation of Beowulf, last revised in 1911, and also suggested Tolkien as its editor. Allen & Unwin contacted Tolkien about this early in 1936, or possibly late in 1935: the earliest surviving letter on the subject, from C.A. Furth on 30 March 1936, states that Allen & Unwin were writing to Tolkien about the matter ‘again’. Feeling that he did not have the time to spare to undertake the work himself, Tolkien suggested in turn that it be given to Miss Griffiths. He, however, would read what she produced, and write a preface or introduction to the book. In the event, Griffiths could not complete the revision, and at the end of June 1938 asked to be released from her contract.
By then Tolkien had not yet written his contribution. ‘I would quickly write my brief introductory note, if I saw the book complete,’ he told *Stanley Unwin on 4 June 1938. ‘It would be brief for I do not wish to anticipate the things I should say in a preface to a new [Modern English] translation [by himself]’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). He had completed a prose translation already by the end of April 1926, and had begun an alliterative verse translation, but never finished either to his satisfaction. A few lines from the verse translation, however, are in the Prefatory Remarks.
On Griffiths’ withdrawal Tolkien still
