The Lord of the Rings: The Road to Isengard (Part Four)

The Tale

Tolkien describes how Isengard was at the height of Saruman’s power. ‘Partly it was shaped in the making of the mountains, but mighty works the Men of Westernesse had wrought there of old; and Saruman had dwelt there long and had not been idle.’

A great ring-wall of stone, like towering cliffs, jutting out from the mountain and pierced with only one entrance, a long black tunnel hewn into the south side closed with doors of iron, encompasses a mile-wide, but shallow bowl of land. It used to be filled with trees but now there are long lines of pillars, joined by heavy chains. In the wall are hewn many chambers, halls, and passages, and the plain itself is delved with shafts to chambers underneath, treasuries, storehouses, smithies, and furnaces. The shafts are covered with mounds and domes of stone. Inside Isengard are housed workers, slaves, warriors, servants, and even wolves cared for in great stables underground. At night, colored vapors rose from these subterranean rooms.

In the center, where all the chained roads lead, rises the great tower of Orthanc, an isle of rock rearing five hundred feet above the plain.  It is black and gleaming, like four pinnacles of pointed stone, melded into one. Between the spires is a stone platform, ‘written with strange signs’ where wise men could watch the stars. This is Orthanc, whose name in Elvish means Mount Fang, but in the language of Rohan, the Cunning Mind. In the days when Saruman forsook his wisdom for ambition, the wizard imagined it was a rival to even Barad-dur, Sauron’s Dark Tower, though in comparison it was only ‘a little copy, a child’s model, or a slave’s flattery’.

‘This was the stronghold of Saruman, as fame reported it; for within living memory the men of Rohan had not passed its gates, save perhaps a few, such as Wormtongue, who came in secret and told no man what they saw.’

Bits and Bobs

Tolkien made at least five different sketches of Orthanc before he was satisfied with the final concept. He also changed the Elvish meaning of the word ’Orthanc’ several times before he arrived at ‘Mount Fang’. ‘Orthanc’ is of course an Anglo-Saxon word translating as roughly ‘cunning device or work’, or, as Tolkien expands it, ‘machine’.

In this passage we get an interesting insight into the relationship of Saruman and Sauron: into Saruman’s deluded pride into thinking himself a rival to the Dark Lord, and Sauron’s contempt of the wizard thinking he might equal his might.

In the Hildebrandt painting, their interpretation of the covered shafts reminds me of the 'Morlock holes' in George Pal's The Time Machine.