J. R. R. Tolkien (full name- John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) - English writer. The books The Hobbit or There and Back Again and The Lord of the Rings brought him fame, although he published many other works. After his death, the book The Silmarillion was published on the basis of the surviving records; Subsequently, other of his texts were published, they continue to be published at the present time.
The name John was traditionally given in the Tolkien family to the eldest son of the eldest son. His mother named him Ronald - instead of Rosalind (she thought that a girl would be born). Close relatives usually called him Ronald, and friends and colleagues - John or John Ronald. Ruel is the surname of a friend of Tolkien's grandfather. This name was borne by Tolkien's father, Tolkien's brother, Tolkien himself, as well as all his children and grandchildren. Tolkien himself noted that this name is found in the Old Testament (in the Russian tradition - Raguel). Often Tolkien was referred to by his initials JRRT, especially in his later years. He liked to sign with a monogram of these four letters.
1891 March Mabel Suffield, Tolkien's mother-to-be, sails from England to South Africa. April 16 Mabel Suffield and Arthur Tolkien get married in Cape Town. They go to live in Bloemfontein, the capital of the Boer Orange Republic (now part of South Africa).
1894 February 17 Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, second son of Mabel and Arthur, is born in Bloemfontein.
1896 February 15 In Africa, Arthur Tolkien dies unexpectedly of illness. Mabel Tolkien and the children stay with their parents. In the summer, Mabel Tolkien rents an apartment with her children and lives separately with her children.
1900 spring Mabel Tolkien converts to the Catholic faith (along with children), as a result of which she quarrels with most of her relatives. Tolkien goes to school in the fall.
1902 Father Francis Xavier Morgan, Tolkien's future guardian, becomes Mabel Tolkien's confessor.
1904 November 14 Mabel Tolkien dies of diabetes, father Francis, according to her will, becomes the guardian of her children.
1908 Tolkien, aged sixteen, meets nineteen-year-old Edith Bratt, his future wife.
1909 Upon learning of Tolkien's affair, Father Francis forbids him to associate with Edith until he comes of age (twenty-one).
Tolkien achieves considerable success in the school rugby team.
1913 January 3 Tolkien comes of age and proposes to Edith Bratt. Edith breaks off her engagement to another and accepts Tolkien's proposal.
1914 January 8 Edith Bratt converts to the Catholic faith for Tolkien. Soon there is an engagement. On September 24, Tolkien writes the poem "Eärendel's Journey", which is considered the beginning of mythology, the development of which he later devoted his whole life to.
1915 July Tolkien receives a bachelor's degree from Oxford and joins the army as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers.
1916 Tolkien trains as a signalman. He is assigned as a battalion signalman. March 22 Tolkien and Edith Bratt are married in Warwick.
June 4 Tolkien leaves for London and from there to the war in France. July 15 Tolkien (as a signalman) first participates in battle. October 27 Tolkien falls ill with "trench fever" and is returned to England. He himself never fought again.
1917 January-February Tolkien, recovering, begins to write the "Book of Lost Tales" - the future "Silmarillion". November 16 Tolkien's eldest son, John Francis Reuel, is born.
1920 autumn Tolkien takes a position as an English teacher at the University of Leeds and moves to Leeds. In October Tolkien's second son, Michael Hilary Reuel, is born.
1924 Tolkien becomes professor of English language in Leeds. November 21 Tolkien's third, youngest son, Christopher John Reuel, is born.
1925 Tolkien is elected Professor of Old English at Oxford and moves there with his family early the following year.
1926 Tolkien meets and becomes friends with Clive Lewis (future famous writer).
1929 end of the year Tolkien's only daughter, Priscilla Mary Ruel, is born.
1930-33 Tolkien writes The Hobbit.
In the early 30s. an informal literary club, the Inklings, gathers around Lewis, which includes Tolkien and other people who later became famous writers.
1936 The Hobbit is accepted for publication.
1937 September 21 The Hobbit is out of print by Allen & Unwin. The book is a success and the publishers are asking for a sequel. Tolkien offers them The Silmarillion, but the publishers want a book about hobbits. By December 19, Tolkien is writing the first chapter of The Hobbit sequel - the future Lord of the Rings.
1949 autumn Tolkien completes the main text of The Lord of the Rings. He does not want to give it to Allen & Unwin, because they refused to publish The Silmarillion and in 1950-52 he tries to give The Lord of the Rings, along with The Silmarillion, to Collins, which at first shows interest.
1952 Collins refuses to publish The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien arranges to give it to Allen & Unwin.
1954 July 29 The first volume of The Lord of the Rings is published in England. November 11 The second volume of The Lord of the Rings is released in England. Tolkien is urgently required to complete the appendices, which are to be published in the third volume.
1955 October 20 The third volume of The Lord of the Rings comes out of print in England, with appendices but no alphabetical index.
1959 summer Tolkien retires.
J. R. R. Tolkien(full name - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien / John Ronald Reuel Tolkien) (1892-1973) - English writer. The books The Hobbit or There and Back Again and The Lord of the Rings brought him fame, although he published many other works. After his death, the book The Silmarillion was published on the basis of the surviving records; Subsequently, other of his texts were published, they continue to be published at the present time.
The name John was traditionally given in the Tolkien family to the eldest son of the eldest son. His mother named him Ronald - instead of Rosalind (she thought that a girl would be born). Close relatives usually called him Ronald, and friends and colleagues - John or John Ronald. Ruel is the surname of a friend of Tolkien's grandfather. This name was borne by Tolkien's father, Tolkien's brother, Tolkien himself, as well as all his children and grandchildren. Tolkien himself noted that this name is found in the Old Testament (in the Russian tradition - Raguel). Often Tolkien was referred to by his initials JRRT, especially in his later years. He liked to sign with a monogram of these four letters.
1891 March Mabel Suffield, Tolkien's mother-to-be, sails from England to South Africa. April 16 Mabel Suffield and Arthur Tolkien get married in Cape Town. They go to live in Bloemfontein, the capital of the Boer Orange Republic (now part of South Africa).
1894 February 17 Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, second son of Mabel and Arthur, is born in Bloemfontein.
1896 February 15 In Africa, Arthur Tolkien dies unexpectedly of illness. Mabel Tolkien and the children stay with their parents. In the summer, Mabel Tolkien rents an apartment with her children and lives separately with her children.
1900 spring Mabel Tolkien converts to the Catholic faith (together with children), as a result of which she quarrels with most of her relatives. Tolkien goes to school in the fall.
1902 Father Francis Xavier Morgan, Tolkien's future guardian, becomes Mabel Tolkien's confessor.
1904 November 14 Mabel Tolkien dies of diabetes, father Francis, according to her will, becomes the guardian of her children.
1908 Tolkien, aged sixteen, meets nineteen-year-old Edith Bratt, his future wife.
1909 Upon learning of Tolkien's affair, Father Francis forbids him to associate with Edith until he comes of age (twenty-one).
Tolkien achieves considerable success in the school rugby team.
1913 January 3 Tolkien comes of age and proposes to Edith Bratt. Edith breaks off her engagement to another and accepts Tolkien's proposal.
1914 January 8 Edith Bratt converts to the Catholic faith for Tolkien. Soon there is an engagement. On September 24, Tolkien writes the poem "Earendel's Journey", which is considered the beginning of mythology, the development of which he later devoted his whole life to.
1915 July Tolkien receives a bachelor's degree from Oxford and joins the army as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers.
1916 Tolkien trains as a signalman. He is assigned as a battalion signalman. March 22 Tolkien and Edith Bratt are married in Warwick.
June 4 Tolkien leaves for London and from there to the war in France. July 15 Tolkien (as a signalman) first participates in battle. October 27 Tolkien falls ill with "trench fever" and is returned to England. He himself never fought again.
1917 January-February Tolkien, recovering, begins to write the "Book of Lost Tales" - the future "Silmarillion". November 16 Tolkien's eldest son, John Francis Reuel, is born.
1920 autumn Tolkien takes a position as an English teacher at the University of Leeds and moves to Leeds. In October Tolkien's second son, Michael Hilary Reuel, is born.
1924 Tolkien becomes professor of English at Leeds. November 21 Tolkien's third, youngest son, Christopher John Reuel, is born.
1925 Tolkien is elected Professor of Old English at Oxford and moves there with his family early the following year.
1926 Tolkien meets and becomes friends with Clive Lewis (future famous writer).
1929 end of the year Tolkien's only daughter, Priscilla Mary Ruel, is born.
1930-33 Tolkien writes The Hobbit.
In the early 30s. an informal literary club, the Inklings, gathers around Lewis, which includes Tolkien and other people who later became famous writers.
1936 The Hobbit is accepted for publication.
1937 September 21 The Hobbit is out of print by Allen & Unwin. The book is a success and the publishers are asking for a sequel. Tolkien offers them The Silmarillion, but the publishers want a book about hobbits. By December 19, Tolkien is writing the first chapter of The Hobbit sequel - the future Lord of the Rings.
1949 autumn Tolkien completes the main text of The Lord of the Rings. He does not want to give it to Allen & Unwin, as they refused to print The Silmarillion and in 1950-52 he tries to give The Lord of the Rings, along with The Silmarillion, to Collins, which at first shows interest.
1952 Collins refuses to publish The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien arranges to give it to Allen & Unwin.
1954 July 29 The first volume of The Lord of the Rings is published in England. November 11 The second volume of The Lord of the Rings is released in England. Tolkien is urgently required to complete the appendices, which are to be published in the third volume.
1955 October 20 The third volume of The Lord of the Rings comes out of print in England, with appendices but no alphabetical index.
1959 summer Tolkien retires.
Later a short time Mabel converted to Catholicism and transferred her children to it, which had a bad effect on her relations with relatives who professed Anglicanism. Despite the difficult financial situation, Mabel was determined to give her children a good liberal arts education. She herself taught Ronald Latin, French, German and Greek, as well as drawing and botany. Languages, as well as painting, were given to Ronald unusually easily, and when the boy was seven years old, she sent him to school. There he began to show simply fantastic successes. During the years spent at school, Ronald learned Anglo-Saxon, then medieval English, Gothic, Spanish, Old Norse, Finnish. He originally read "Beowulf", medieval English poems, the Finnish epic "Kalevala", led school discussions in Gothic. Dead languages were the main interest of the young Tolkien. Together with them he studied ancient mythology, epics and legends that captured his imagination. He did not just learn languages - he thought them up, inventing expressions that could be used in colloquial speech the people who spoke them. At the same time, Ronald, using the grammar of ancient languages, began to invent his own languages and write poetry in them.
In 1904, a tragedy occurred - Mabel died of diabetes. Mabel's confessor, Father Francis Morgan, took care of Ronald and his brother. Tolkien decided to devote himself to a church career, but soon changed his mind and fell in love instead, also with an orphan. The girl's name was Edith Brett, and she was three years older than Ronald, who had just turned sixteen. The age difference did not prevent him from establishing a close (in terms of the Victorian era) relationship with the girl. Upon learning of Ronald's hobby, Father Morgan forbids Ronald from seeing her until the age of majority, that is, until the age of 21. Ronald stops dating Edith, but sublimation is only good for him - he and three of his friends create the "Tea Club", the first club in his life. In the future, he constantly organized groups of like-minded people around him, with whom he could discuss his work and creativity. In 1911, Ronald entered Oxford, where at first he studied carelessly, since the knowledge accumulated by that time was more than enough. Soon, however, he became seriously interested in learning new languages for him - they were the languages \u200b\u200bof the Germanic group, Old Norse and Welsh, he also studied hieroglyphs ancient egypt. In 1913, Tolkien becomes an adult - he turns 21 years old. In the three years that he did not see Edith, his feelings did not cool down, but even got stronger. On the night of his coming of age, he writes to his beloved. Soon their engagement took place (Edith, as it turned out, was engaged to another by this time, but she canceled the first engagement for the sake of Ronald). The year 1914 is coming, and with it the war in Europe. Tolkien enters the courses of communications officers, while continuing to study. At the same time he wrote the poem "Journey of Eärendil - the Evening Star". The poem about the voyage of a sailor-star through the heavens was the first stone that formed the basis of Tolkien's new magical world.
In 1916, having passed all the exams, he finally marries his first and only chosen one and goes to the front, to France. In bloody battles, his friends die, including two of the four founders of the Tea Club. In the trenches, he catches "trench fever" (as typhus was then called). Rushing about in the heat, Ronald speaks in an incomprehensible language to those around him. The disease cannot be overcome in any way, relapses constantly occur. Tolkien was never able to return to the front, but he got enough time to work on the language, which became his obsession. It was elvish. The Elvish language was inevitably followed by native speakers... Tolkien is writing The Book of Lost Tales, a book that he will write and rewrite all his life, and which will be published by his son years after the death of the writer under the title The Silmarillion.
After the end of the war, Tolkien and his family moved to Oxford and found work as a compiler for the new Oxford English Dictionary. He is working on the letter W. I must say that there are not many words for this letter in the English language (and, accordingly, in the Oxford dictionary on my shelf). Nevertheless, there are words for this letter such as "world" and "word", as well as the famous "four Ws" that define the coordinate system of our world: "who", "what", "when" and "where". Soon he becomes a teacher at Oxford. From 1925 until his death, Tolkien lived and worked in his alma mater. In Oxford, Ronald, together with his friend Clive Lewis, organized the "Inklings" club, in which Tolkien and Lewis read their unpublished works. The members of this circle were destined to be the first to hear from the lips of the author of a chapter from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In 1937, the book "The Hobbit" was published, written by Tolkien based on a story written for his children (by this time there were already four of them - 3 sons and a daughter). The book is a success, and the author is ordered to continue. But the creation of the world is a matter that is harmed by haste. In addition, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien lectures - and there is very little time left for a book. He writes slowly at night. The creation of the epic "Lord of the Rings" took Tolkien 17 years. The first two volumes of the trilogy were published in 1954, the last volume in 1955. From that moment on, the world of Middle-earth acquired an independent force and began to live according to its own laws. Tolkien died in Oxford in 1973, two years after the death of his wife. At the end of his life, he managed to catch fame and respect, but the real boom around his work began a few years after the death of the writer
Parents did not agree on how to name the first child. The mother, resigned to the need to give the boy the middle name Ruel (as in the Tolkien family from time immemorial all eldest sons were recorded), chose “Ronald” as the first name. Father liked "John" better. So they called the boy - each in his own way. Later, classmates nicknamed him the Zvonar, for his love of lengthy reasoning. Colleagues called him J.R.R.T, students called him the Mad Hatter, close friends called him an Oxymoron. This word in philology denotes paradoxical phrases, such as “foolishly smart” - and this is how you can translate the German “Toll-kuhn”, consonant with the name of John Ruel Ronald. “It all worked out for me somehow stupidly, not like the others,” Tolkien argued. “The English are like hobbits, after all. The less something happens to them, the more honorable they are. And Oxford is certainly not a hotbed of people with fascinating biographies. My own life story would be more suitable not for an armchair scientist, but for some literary hero ”...
The beginning of his biography seems to be taken from Kipling. Ronald was born in the Orange Republic - much later this state will be called South Africa. His father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, ran a branch of Lloyd Bank in the town of Bloemfontein: only two hundred dilapidated houses, blown through by dust storms from the veld (the bare African steppe, where nothing grows but withered grass). At night, the howl of a jackal freezes the heart, rifle shots interfere with sleep - Bloommfontein men take turns keeping a night watch, driving the lions away from the city. But you can’t scare monkeys with any shots - they jump over fences, climb into houses, drag everything that lies badly. The Tolkiens' barn is full of poisonous snakes. In the first year of his life, John Reuel Ronald scares his parents by disappearing from home - it turns out that a local servant boy simply took the baby to the veld, to his village, to show his relatives. In the second year of his life, Tolkien was bitten by a tarantula - fortunately, the nanny quickly discovered the wound and sucked out the poison.
Then life took a sharp turn in the direction of the Dickensian plot. When the boy was four years old, his father died of a tropical fever. In the orange republic, the family no longer held anything, and the mother, Mabel, along with her sons Ronald and Hilary settled in England - they lived almost starving, having only 30 shillings a week. At the age of ten, Ronald was completely orphaned - Mabel brought to the grave diabetes, which they did not know how to treat at the beginning of the twentieth century. The little Tolkiens were assigned to live with a malicious distant relative, Aunt Beatrice, in Birmingham. First of all, in front of the orphans, she burned the letters and portraits of their deceased mother. The fact is that Mabel, shortly before her death, converted to Catholicism, and instructed the children in the same spirit. Now Aunt Beatrice sought, by banishing the memories of their mother from their memory, to return the boys to the bosom of the Anglican Church. In fairness, it must be said that this was done with the best intentions: it is known, after all, that a Catholic in Protestant England cannot see an easy life ... But only the little Tolkiens persisted. Hilary paid dearly for his stubbornness: he was not taken to any Birmingham school. But Ronald was lucky - in the most prestigious school of King Edward, where they accepted either rich or very gifted children, they looked at these things through their fingers. And Ronald was so gifted that he was given a scholarship.
It was not a school, but a treasure trove for a boy like the young Tolkien. In addition to the obligatory French and German, he studied there Greek and Middle English of the 7th-11th centuries. There were four such lovers of linguistics at the school, and they founded their own club - CHBKO, "Tea Club of the Barrovian Society." After all, they were going to five-o-clock in a small cafe at Barrow's department store on Corporation Street, in the center of Birmingham. Aunt Beatrice tried to forbid Ronald and this innocent entertainment. She believed that a boy without a livelihood should not imagine too much about himself, because in the future he can only count on the place of a street vendor of disinfectants (this, by the way, was Tolkien's grandfather). Fortunately, in addition to the old fury, the boys also had a guardian - the confessor of the late Mabel, fatherFrancis. Once, taking pity, he took the little Tolkiens from Aunt Beatrice and placed them in Mrs. Faulkner's boarding house, all in the same Birmingham. It was in 1908, Ronald was sixteen years old. And then there was a plot of a new "literary" plot - this time a love one.
Edith Bratt occupied a room directly below the one where the Tolkien brothers settled, so that they could talk while sitting on the windowsills. Very pretty, grey-eyed, with a fashionable short haircut. She was almost 3 years older than Ronald, and seemed seductively mature to him. Young people went on bike rides outside the city, sat by the stream for hours, and when it rained, they hid in cafes.
The cafe owner reported these meetings to Mrs. Faulkner: “Just think, my dear! A young man with a girl, secretly, without the accompaniment of elders ... This is a scandal! Father Francis, having learned about everything, was angry: “Edith is a Protestant, besides, you should now only be interested in preparing for Oxford! In general, I forbid you to see, as well as correspond with this girl. At least for the next three years.”
Ronald did not dare to disobey. She and Edith said goodbye at the station - the girl's guardian, her own uncle, ordered her to go to him in Cheltenham. “In three years we will definitely see each other!” Tolkien repeated, like a spell. Edith shook her head hopelessly.
Three years is a long time. Once at Oxford Exeter College, Tolkien seemed to have completely forgotten about the past. He enthusiastically studied languages: Latin, Old English, Welsh, Old Finnish, Old Norse - as well as the art of drinking beer without getting drunk, talking without letting go of his pipe from his mouth, and in the morning looking like a pickle after a night of feasting. However, in January 1913, when the ban expired, the young man wrote a letter to Edith asking for her hand in marriage. The answer stunned Tolkien: it turns out that Edith did not hope for a new meeting with him and had long ago become engaged to a certain George Field, the brother of her school friend.
“Coming to you in Cheltenham,” Ronald sent a telegram. Edith met him on the platform ... Poor George Field was left with a nose: Miss Bratt agreed to marry Tolkien. “You only need one thing for this,” Ronald urged. - Convert to Catholicism!
At first, Edith thought it was a trifling condition. Yes, but her uncle, who was considered one of the pillars of the Anglican community of Cheltenham, immediately kicked her out of the house. Good thing, her cousin, hunchbacked and elderly Jenny Grove, let Edith live with her in Warwick. Ronald rarely came, but he sent letters from Oxford about merry parties, punting and playing tennis, as well as about the most entertaining debates at meetings of the debating club. And also about financial difficulties. There was no talk of a wedding date - it was assumed that Ronald would first get a little rich.
To this end, he was hired as a tutor to two Mexican boys in France. When he returned, Tolkien did not talk about the wedding. He spent everything he earned on old Japanese prints, and looked at them for hours in silence, and was depressed. It turned out that the boys' aunt, a young and lovely signora, was hit to death by a car in Paris.Fortunately, Edith was wise enough not to annoy Ronald too much with her claims. And, grieving for the dead Mexican, he again remembered the bride.
This time the wedding was interrupted by the war. Tolkien was drafted into the army as a lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. In anticipation of being sent to the front line, he grew a mustache, studied connected business (Morse code and the language of signal flags), and scribbled letters to Edith about how he missed ... the university library and a glass of good port wine in friendly company.
In March 1916, they nevertheless got married - very casually and as if by chance - as if there were no six years of waiting. It's just that Tolkien was given a day's leave, and a friend had a free motorcycle on which he could get to Warwick ... Two days later, their regiment went to fight in France. The Times just published statistics: the life of a recruit at the front, on average, does not exceed a few weeks ...
The Battle of the Somme - the first and last in which Tolkien had a chance to participate - went down in history as the most incompetent and bloodiest in the history of England. Nineteen thousand Englishmen died under German machine guns, sixty were wounded. For two days Ronald commanded his company without change. Then - a short respite, and again into battle. Two former members of the BWTO died in this massacre. Tolkien was lucky - he caught trench fever. For many years, he then blessed the louse that had bitten him so successfully, infecting him with a saving infection. Ronald was sent to Birmingham for treatment, and his wife immediately arrived there.
This was their honeymoon: Ronald had just left the hospital - pale, emaciated, all kind of transparent, staggering from weakness. It was cold, there was not enough food and fuel. And yet it was the happiest time in the life of the Tolkiens. Once in the forest, on a walk, Edith got naughty and began to dance, singing to herself. After Tolkien claimed: looking at this dance, he came up with his Beren and Luthien - the main characters of the "Legendarium" and the secondary "Lord of the Rings" (the Strider will sing about them).
In February 1917, the military authorities remembered Tolkien. I had to go to Yorkshire for retraining. But Ronald never reached the front line - the disease relapsed, and he again ended up in the hospital. This went on for another year and a half: a short remission, and a new attack of the disease. A camp at Ruse, a hospital in Yorkshire, a sanatorium in Birmingham. A camp at Birmingham, a hospital at Ruse, a sanatorium in Yorkshire. Edith, tired of following her husband from city to city, returned to Cheltenham to give birth to her first child, John Francis Reyel. It was not clear where and what to live. Ronald is of little use. In letters, Edith broke down, reproached her husband: “For recent times you spent so much time in bed that you rested for the rest of your life. And here I am…”, etc., etc. But everything eventually ends. The war ended, and with it Ronald's illness (the doctors said: "A miracle!"). It was time to return to Oxford - to establish both scientific and family life ...
... 1929. The Tolkiens already have four children: John, Michael, Christopher and newborn Priscilla. The family lives in a cozy, briar-covered house on Normouth Rose. To work - to teach English philology at Exeter College - Ronald rides a bicycle. On the way, he always mutters something in an unknown language.
Composing new languages was his passion! For example, the Quenya language spoken by the elves in The Lord of the Rings was created by Ronald by mixing Old English and Welsh based on Finnish. But even when Professor Tolkien spoke in normal, English, it was sometimes difficult to understand him. His speech, somewhat indistinct from childhood, became completely illegible after his illness: he whispered, whistled, and, most importantly, always did not keep up with his own thoughts, talked about elves and dwarves, got excited, laughed ... In a word, John Reyel Ronald the longer he lived, the more he became an eccentric.
Costume parties were sometimes held in Oxford - Professor Tolkien invariably appeared in the attire of an ancient Viking with an ax in his hands. He was very fond of the old Celtic epics. And he lamented that England did not have its own mythology, only Scandinavian borrowings. Secretly, he dreamed of creating British mythology himself, and he talked a lot about this at a meeting of the Coalbiters Club - on winter evenings, pundits, discussing philological problems, huddled up to the fireplace so much that it seemed they were about to bury their faces in hot coal. At the same time, they laughed wildly, so that those around them thought: they are carrying obscene things.
For some time now, Tolkien's life has ceased to follow the laws of literature, and has become like that that thousands of respectable Englishmen lead: in the morning, work, dine at home, with his wife and children, then to the club, then - work again ... That's what Tolkien hated - it was, returning from the "Charberbiters" to get back to the tedious work like checking exam papers. But one day, in the late spring evening of 1936, while checking examination essays, a fateful incident happened to Professor Tolkien. He himself said: “One of the applicants became generous and handed over a whole blank page without writing anything on it - this is the best thing that can happen to an examiner! And I wrote on it "In a hole, deep in the earth lived a hobbit." Actually, I wanted to write “rabbit” (in English - “rabbit”, author's note), but it turned out “hobbit”. Taking into account the Latin “hommo”, that is, “man”, it turns out something like a rabbit-man. Nouns are always overgrown in my mind with stories. And I thought it wouldn't hurt to find out who this hobbit was, and what kind of hole it was. Over time, my accidental slip of the tongue was overgrown with the whole world of Middle-earth”...
In fact, Tolkien had written a little before. His eldest son, John, fell asleep very badly, and had to sit at his head for hours, continuing the “series” about Carrot, a red-haired boy who lives in wall clock. The middle one, Michael, who suffered from nightmares, demanded stories about an inveterate villain named Bill Stackers (this name Tolkien remembered from the day he saw a sign on the Oxford gate with a strange inscription: “Bill Stackers will be prosecuted”) . The youngest, Christopher, most of all liked to hear about the adventures of the good wizard Tom Bombadil - the one who will save the Hobbits in the Eternal Forest in The Lord of the Rings. Well, now all three began to hear about the Hobbit.
The book publisher Stanley Unwin, who was asked to publish The Hobbit or There and Back Again, first slipped it to his own ten-year-old son Rayner. For one shilling, the boy wrote a review: “This book, thanks to the cards, does not need any illustrations, it is good and will appeal to all children from 5 to 9 years old.” A year later, Unwin, convinced of the success of The Hobbit, invited Tolkien to write a sequel. So Ronald sat down for The Lord of the Rings.
From 1937 until the outbreak of the Second World War, Tolkien managed to bring the hobbits only to the River (the third chapter of the first book). It took four whole years to get to Balin's tomb (fourth chapter of the second book). The work was difficult. There was not enough paper and ink. Food, by the way, was also lacking. Not to mention peace and confidence in the future. True, Tolkien hardly heard the bombings - Great Britain agreed with Germany to protect large university centers: Oxford with Cambridge and Heidelberg with Göttingen. But you can’t hide from the war at all! Several refugees were placed in the house of the Tolkiens, two younger sons were taken into the army. The eldest - John - escaped this fate only because he was preparing to take the priesthood in Rome. In January 1941, Michael Tolkien was seriously wounded, and his father was not at all up to work. In a word, Tolkien finished the last, sixth book only in 1947 - exactly 10 years after the start of work on The Lord of the Rings. It took another 5 years to negotiate with publishers. Now, after the war, the world had changed, and no one knew if they would buy a sequel to The Hobbit. They decided to release a small circulation - three and a half thousand copies. The selling price was determined almost the minimum - 21 shillings. Still, the publishers were preparing to lose up to £1,000 on this business. Instead, they became millionaires.
“We do any surgery except for lengthening and sharpening of the ears” - brass plates with this text appeared on the doors of clinics plastic surgery since the late 50s. It was then that young people of both sexes began to turn to surgeons with a request to change their appearance “under the elves” - and all because of the epic “The Lord of the Rings”, which is called the “book of the twentieth century” ...
“Hello, please invite Professor Tolkien to the phone,” a sonorous voice sang out in an American manner.
— Tolkien is on the phone. What happened? the professor was frightened awake.
“Nothing happened,” they were surprised at the other end of the wire. “It's just that I'm the head of the Los Angeles Tolkienist Association. We are preparing for the big Lord of the Rings game, we are sewing costumes. Please resolve our dispute. Does the Balrog monster from the first volume have wings?
- Wings? At the Balrog? Tolkien asked dumbfounded. He finally managed to light the lamp and examine the dial wrist watch“That’s right, three after midnight!” Well, of course, in this damn California it's seven in the evening ...
From the bed, an angry Edith spoke up: “What do they allow themselves to do?! Call a respectable family, night-midnight! Tolkien glanced guiltily at his wife. Poor thing! It was always difficult for her with him, and now doubly ... Glory is not an easy burden. Journalists besiege the house, unfamiliar women telegraph about passionate love for Aragorn, a tent camp is set up under the windows, and wild-looking youths, shaggy, with crazy eyes, chant: “Tolkien is a god! Tolkien is a guru!”. They say they swallow the "Lord of the Rings" half and half with LSD ... How, I mean, them? Hippie, right? Or take, at least, such nightly calls. The last time he received a call from Tokyo - they were interested in how the verb “lantar” from the language of elves sounds in the past tense. Such a life fits a movie star, not a quiet Oxford professor.
Tolkien earned much less publishers - only about 5 thousand pounds - but at that time this ensured a comfortable life until the end of his days. And Ronald decided to retire and move away from the fans - to some quiet, old man's place. A pool on the south coast of England turned out to be just that. The only pity is that Tolkien had absolutely no one to talk to here. The spouses suddenly changed places: he was locked up at home, and she, quickly making friends with the locals, walked around the guests and played bridge ... Tolkien was not offended and did not grumble - he was glad that his wife would at least now receive “compensation” for long years loneliness and loneliness. It just so happened that only in old age did the couple finally get used to and became attached to each other.
In 1971, eighty-two-year-old Edith died, and without her, Ronald began to fail. At the end of August 1972, at a friend's birthday party, he drank some champagne, and at night he experienced such pain that he had to call an ambulance. Three days later, Tolkien died in the hospital from an ulcer.
She and Edith are buried together in a suburb of Oxford. The inscription on the stone, according to Tolkien's will, reads: "Edith Mary Tolkien, Luthien, 1889-1971, John Reyel Ronald Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1972."
Although, to be honest, the modest Oxford professor looked a little like the heroic Beren. “Actually, I am a hobbit, only a big one,” he said in one of his last interviews. — I love gardens, trees, I smoke a pipe, and I like healthy unsalted and unfrozen food. I love and even dare to wear vests decorated with ornaments in our boring time. I really love mushrooms, I have a simple sense of humor, which many critics find boring and uninteresting. I go to bed late and wake up late whenever possible.”
... The Tolkienist movement is alive to this day. Every now and then, somewhere far away from civilization, they arrange costumed games of hobbits, elves, orcs and trolls, with battles with wooden swords, with sieges of fortresses, funerals and weddings. Numerous Tolkien encyclopedias, reference books and atlases are published every year, in which everything looks like Middle-earth really exists. It can be seen that Clive Staples Lewis (also a famous writer and friend of Tolkien in the Coalbiters club) was right when he wrote an annotation for the first edition of The Lord of the Rings: “we are not afraid to say that the world has not yet seen such a book.”
Irina LYKOVA
Afterword…
In Russia, they learned about Tolkien late. Although the trilogy was published in England just two years after Stalin's death - in 1955 - and soon translated into many languages, including Japanese, Hebrew and Serbo-Croatian - everything but Russian and Chinese.
Tolkien always remained within the framework of reality and did not give his dreams and feelings the status of an indisputable truth. The language he invented was spoken in Atlantis. Atlantis - under a different name - is also found in Tolkien's epic "The Silmarillion". All his life Tolkien was haunted by a dream about a black wave that swallows green fields and villages, and then this dream was inherited by one of his sons...
"The Silmarillion" Tolkien began to write almost immediately after graduating from university (and, we note in brackets, enlisting in the ranks of the army in the field) - in his own words, invented languages \u200b\u200bdemanded for themselves a universe where they could freely develop and function, and Tolkien set out to create such a universe.
In 1926, Tolkien met C. S. Lewis. Around Tolkien and Lewis soon formed a small circle of writers, students and teachers, passionate about ancient languages and myths - the Inklings. Tolkien does extensive scientific work, translates Anglo-Saxon poetry, works hard to provide for a family that has grown from two to six people, and in his spare time tells fairy tales to children and draws (these drawings in England withstood more than one edition). In 1936, after the publication of one of these "home" fairy tales - "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" - literary success comes to Tolkien, the publishing house orders a sequel ... Since then, scientific activity has faded into the background and at night Tolkien writes "Lord of the Rings".
The Silmarillion was not forgotten either. By that time, the epic included the history of the creation of the world and the fall of Atlantis, the history of the gods (Valars) and the races that inhabit the Earth together with man - the noble immortal elves (creating his elves, Tolkien largely relied on the Old English Christian tradition, where the discussion about the existence elves and their nature was considered quite justified), dwarfs, treemen ... The Silmarillion unfolds into a tragic and majestic picture - and this is not about any other planet, but about our Earth: Tolkien, as it were, "restores" the forgotten links her stories, brings to light lost tales, "clarifies" the origin of children's rhymes, which, in his opinion, are often fragments of beautiful, but lost legends of the past ... Tolkien's plan is ambitious and grandiose - he intends to create nothing more and nothing less than " mythology for England". At the same time, he does not pretend for a second that his fantasy is anything more than a fantasy. Man is made in the image and likeness of God, says Tolkien in his essay "On Fairy Tales"; hence man is capable of creating worlds.
It is worth remembering, however, that The Silmarillion could have remained an unknown eccentricity of an Oxford professor, if not out of the pen of the same professor, The Lord of the Rings, conceived as a continuation of a children's book, but, word for word, unexpectedly for the author himself turned into a book for all ages. The Lord of the Rings breathed life and soul into the Silmarillion, which it lacked. Against a majestic background, heroes close to everyone appeared, and with their help the reader was able to be transported into the world of Tolkien on an equal footing with the heroes of the epic, and Tolkien's world, in addition to the "heroic" and "elven", gained a "human" dimension.
"The Lord of the Rings" is passed by the author through the experience of the Second World War. Tolkien never had any illusions about the "leftists", especially about Stalin - he assessed him quite soberly, and the aura of the winner could not overshadow this truth with its brilliance that blinded many. He foresaw the war - and was very upset by the mistakes of English politicians before it began; Nor was he fascinated by the romance of the Spanish Civil War, although even Lewis had succumbed to it. But, apparently, John Ronald possessed a truly adamantite firmness of conviction and sobriety of thought. The delight of merging with the crowd was absent from the formula of his spirit.
In 1949, The Lord of the Rings was finished ("I gave birth to a monster," Tolkien scared the publishers) and in 1955 was published.
By the age of sixty, when Tolkien suddenly became famous - he was flattered and surprised. In letters to friends, he admitted that, "like all dragons, he is not indifferent to flattery." The success of the book brightened up last years writer material wealth. A new, voluntary obligation appeared - to answer letters from fans, to receive visitors ... In addition, anxiety joined the joys of success - in many places on the globe the book was taken so seriously that it almost replaced some enthusiastic personalities Holy Bible became their life and faith. It is easy to guess how this burdened the conscience of the Christian author.
The first translation of The Hobbit into Russian took place only in 1976. And in 1982 - translation into Russian of the first volume of "The Lord of the Rings" under the title "Keepers".
In the last years of his life, Tolkien was preparing The Silmarillion for publication, but he never finished this work.
Based on the materials of the portal ENROF.net
English literature
John Roland Reuel Tolkien
Biography
TOlkien, JOHN RONALD REWEL (Tolkien) (1892−1973), English writer, doctor of literature, artist, professor, philologist-linguist. One of the founders of the Oxford English Dictionary. Author of the fairy tale The Hobbit (1937), the novel The Lord of the Rings (1954), the mythological epic The Silmarillion (1977).
Father - Arthur Reuel Tolkien, a bank clerk from Birmingham, moved in search of happiness to South Africa. Mother - Mabel Suffield. In January 1892 they had a boy.
Tolkien created hobbits - "low clicks" - charming, captivatingly reliable creatures that look like children. Combining steadfastness and frivolity, curiosity and childish laziness, incredible ingenuity with innocence, cunning and gullibility, courage and courage with the ability to avoid trouble.
First of all, it is the hobbits that give such credibility to Tolkien's world.
February 17, 1894 Mabel Suffield gave birth to their second son. The local heat had a bad effect on the health of children. Therefore, in November 1894, Mabel takes her sons to England.
By the age of four, thanks to the efforts of his mother, little John already knew how to read and even wrote the first letters.
In February 1896, Tolkien's father began to bleed heavily and died suddenly. Mabel Suffield took care of all the children. She received a good education. She spoke French and German, knew Latin, drew excellently, and played the piano professionally. She passed on all her knowledge and skills to her children.
A great influence on the initial formation of John's personality was also made by his grandfather John Suffield, who was proud of his pedigree of craftsmen-engravers. His mother and grandfather strongly supported John's early interest in Latin and Greek.
In 1896, Mabel and his children moved from Birmingham to the village of Sarhole. It was in the vicinity of Sarhole that Tolkien became interested in the world of trees, seeking to recognize their secrets. It is no coincidence that unforgettable, most interesting trees appear in Tolkien's creations. And the mighty giants of Listven amaze readers in his trilogy - The Lord of the Rings.
No less passionately fond of Tolkien elves and dragons. Dragons and elves will become the main characters of the first fairy tale composed by Ronald at the age of seven.
In 1904, as soon as John was twelve years old, his mother died of diabetes. The children's guardian is their distant relative, the priest, Father Francis. The brothers again move to Birmingham. Feeling longing for free hills, fields and favorite trees, John is looking for new attachments and spiritual support. More and more fond of drawing, revealing extraordinary abilities. By the age of fifteen, he amazes school teachers with an obsession with philology. He reads the Old English poem Beowulf, returns to medieval legends about the knights of the Round Table (see ARTHURAN LEGENDS). Soon he independently begins to study the Old Norse language, then gets to German books in philology. The joy of learning ancient languages captivates him so much that he even invents his own language "Nevbosh", that is, "new nonsense", which he creates in collaboration with his cousin Mary. The writing of funny limericks becomes for young people fascinating fun and at the same time acquaintance with such pioneers of English absurdism as Edward Lear, Hilaire Belok and Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Continuing to study Old English, Old Germanic, and a little later Old Finnish, Icelandic and Gothic, John "absorbs an immense amount" of their fairy tales and legends. At sixteen, John met Edith Bratt, his first and last love. Five years later they got married and lived a long life, having given birth to three sons and a daughter. But first, five years of hard trials fell to their lot: John's unsuccessful attempt to enter Oxford University, categorical rejection of Edith by his father Francis, the horrors of the First World War, typhus, which John Ronald had twice been ill with. In April 1910, Tolkien saw a performance of Peter Pan based on the play by James Barry at the Birmingham Theatre. "It's indescribable, but I won't forget it as long as I live," John wrote. Still, luck smiled at John. After a second attempt at Oxford in 1910, Tolkien learned that he had been given a scholarship to Exeter College. And thanks to an exit scholarship from King Edward's School and additional funds provided by Father Francis, Ronald could already afford to go to Oxford. During his last summer vacation, John visited Switzerland. He writes in his diary. “Once we went on a long hike with guides to the Aletsch glacier, and there I almost died…”. Before returning to England, Tolkien bought some postcards. One of them depicted an old man with a white beard, wearing a round wide-brimmed hat and a long cloak. The old man was talking to a white deer. Many years later, upon discovering a postcard in the bottom of one of the drawers of his desk, Tolkien wrote: "Gandalf's prototype." So in the imagination of John appeared for the first time one of the most famous heroes of the Lord of the Rings. Entering Oxford, Tolkien meets with the famous self-taught professor Joe Wright. He strongly advises the novice linguist to "take up the Celtic language seriously." The passion for Ronald and the theater is growing. He plays the role of Mrs. Malaprop in R. Sheridan's play Rivals. By his coming of age, he wrote a play - Detective, cook and suffragette for home theater. Tolkien's theatrical experiences turned out to be not only useful for him, but also necessary. In 1914, as World War I broke out, Tolkien hurried to get his degree from Oxford so he could volunteer for the army. At the same time he enters the courses of radio operators-communicators. In July 1915, he takes an early exam in English language and literature for a bachelor's degree and receives a first class honors. After military training in Bedford, he was awarded the rank of second lieutenant and assigned to serve in the Lancashire Rifles. In March 1916 Tolkien marries, and already on July 14, 1916 he goes into the first battle. He was destined to be in the center of a meat grinder on the Somme, where tens of thousands of his compatriots died. Having known all the "horrors and abominations of the monstrous massacre", John hated both the war and the "inspirers of terrible battles ...". However, he retained admiration for his comrades in arms. Later he would write in his diary: “perhaps without the soldiers with whom I fought, the country of Hobbitania would not exist. And without the Hobbitania and the Hobbits, there would be no Lord of the Rings." Death bypassed John, but he was overtaken by another terrible misfortune - "trench fever" - typhus, which carried him to the First world war more lives than bullets and shells. Tolkien hurt him twice. From the hospital at Le Touquet he was sent by ship to England. In rare hours, when a terrible illness let go of John, he conceived and began to write the first drafts of his fantastic epic - The Silmarillion, a story about the three magic rings of omnipotent power. November 16, 1917 his first son is born, and Tolkien is awarded the rank of lieutenant. The war ends in 1918. John and his family move to Oxford. He is admitted to compiling the General Dictionary of the New English Language. Here is a review from a friend of the writer, linguist Clive Stiles Lewis: “He (Tolkien) went inside the language. For he possessed a unique ability to feel both the language of poetry and the poetry of language at the same time. In 1924 he was approved as a professor, and in 1925 he was awarded the chair of the Anglo-Saxon language at Oxford. At the same time, he continues to work on The Silmarillion, creating a new incredible world. A kind of another dimension with its own history and geography, phenomenal animals and plants, real and unreal beings. While working on the dictionary, Tolkien had the opportunity to think about the composition and appearance of tens of thousands of words that absorbed the Celtic beginning, Latin, Scandinavian, Old German and Old French influences. This work further stimulated his gift as an artist, helped to unite different categories of living beings and different times and spaces into his Tolkien world. At the same time, Tolkien did not lose his "literary soul". His scientific work were imbued with the imagery of writer's thinking. He also illustrated many of his fairy tales, especially liked to depict humanized trees. A special place is occupied by the letters of Santa Claus illustrated by him to children. The letter was specially written in the "trembling" handwriting of Santa Claus, "who had just escaped from a terrible blizzard." Tolkien's most famous books are inextricably linked. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were written between 1925 and 1949 in total. Main character The first story of The Hobbit Bilbo Baggins has the same opportunities for self-expression in a vast and complex world as a child discoverer. Bilbo is constantly taking risks to get out of threatening adventures, he must be resourceful and courageous all the time. And one more circumstance. Hobbits are a free people, there are no leaders in Hobbitania, and Hobbits get along just fine without them. But the Hobbit was just a prelude to Tolkien's great otherworld. The key to looking into other dimensions and a warning. Serious food for thought. The action-packed tale repeatedly hints at a world of much more significant improbability lurking behind it. Bridges to the infinite future are two of the Hobbit's most enigmatic characters - the magician Gandalf and a creature called Gollum. The Hobbit was published on September 21, 1937. The first edition was sold out by Christmas. The tale wins the New York Herald Tribune's Best Book of the Year Award. The Hobbit becomes a bestseller. Then came The Lord of the Rings. This epic novel has become an elixir of love of life for tens of millions of people, a road to the unknowable, a paradoxical proof that it is the thirst for knowledge of miracles that moves the worlds. Nothing in Tolkien's novel is accidental. Whether it's the snarling faces that once flickered on the canvases of Bosch and Salvador Dali or in the works of Hoffmann and Gogol. So the names of the elves came from the language of the former Celtic population of the Wales Peninsula. Dwarves and magicians are named, as the Scandinavian saga suggested, people are called names from the Irish heroic epic. Tolkien's own inventions of fantastic creatures have the basis of "folk poetic imagination". The time of work on the Lord of the Rings coincided with the Second World War. Undoubtedly, all the experiences and hopes of that time, doubts and aspirations of the author could not but be reflected in the life of even his other being. One of the main virtues of his novel is a prophetic warning about the mortal danger lurking in the boundless Power. Only the unity of the most courageous and wise champions of goodness and reason, capable of stopping the grave-diggers of the joy of being, is capable of resisting this. The first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings appeared in 1954. In 1955, the third volume was published. “This book is like a bolt from the blue,” exclaimed the famous writer C. S. Lewis. “For the very history of the novel-history, dating back to the time of Odysseus, this is not a return, but progress, moreover, a revolution, the conquest of new territory.” The novel was translated into many languages of the world and was sold at first in a million copies, and today it has surpassed the bar of twenty million. The book has become a cult among the youth of many countries. Tolkienist detachments, dressed in knightly armor, still organize games, tournaments and “campaigns of honor and valor” in the USA, England, Canada, and New Zealand. Tolkien's creations first began to appear in Russia in the mid-1970s. Today, the number of Russian fans of his work is not inferior to the number of adherents of Tolkien's world in other countries. The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers directed by Peter Jackson (filmed in New Zealand) hit the screens of the world, and a new wave of interest in the Lord of the Rings novel arose among young and very young. The last story Tolkien wrote in 1965 is called The Blacksmith of Wootton Great. In his last years, Tolkien is surrounded by universal recognition. In June 1972 he received his Doctor of Letters from Oxford University, and in 1973 at Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth presented the writer with the Order of the British Empire, second degree. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973, at Bornemouth, at the age of eighty-one. In 1977, the final version of The Silmarillion was published by the writer's son Christopher Tolkien.
John Roland Reuel, Tolkien (Tolkien) was born on January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
His father was a bank clerk from Birmingham. Looking for a better life the family moved to South Africa. In the same year, their son, John, was born.
Two years later, on February 17, 1894, the mother of the future writer gave birth to another boy. Due to the fact that the local climate had a bad effect on the children, the mother takes them back to England. Thanks to the efforts of his mother, young John could read and write some letters at the age of four.
In February 1896, Tolkien's father dies from severe bleeding. The mother, Mabel Suffield, took care of the family. Due to the fact that she had a good education and was fluent in several languages, the children grew up as educated and well-mannered people.
Tolkien's grandfather had a pretty big influence on the formation of the personality of a teenager. Mom and grandfather in every possible way contributed to John's early passion for Latin and Greek.
In 1896, the mother and children moved to Sarhole Village. It is here that the future writer discovers the talent of a popular novelist. In the vicinity of the village, he became seriously interested in the natural world, trying to learn all the secrets of creation.
In his last years, Tolkien was recognized by the whole world, and in June 1972 he received the title of Doctor of Literature from Oxford University. In 1973, Tolkien was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
John Tolkien died on September 2, 1973 in Bornemouth (UK). At that time he was 81 years old.
