My Commonplace Book

Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: sententiae, notes, proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes. Entries are most often organized under subject headings. - Wikipedia.

I have been keeping a document on my computer for several years now that has served as my commonplace book. As the definition says, the better sorts of these things are organized by subject. Mine have just been copied down as they came my way.

I've decided to start transcribing it here, piece by piece. They are mainly longish quotations, poems, and the occasional observation that struck me as being noteworthy. Many I agree with; some are appalling. But all, I think, are worth considering.

I shall mark each entry in its title as CPB, and label it by subject and author (when known).  I hope readers will find it an amusing stroll through my mind and interests. 

The Ankh-Morpork Archives: Volume I

"A hardback guidebook to Ankh-Morpork's Guilds, institutions & environs containing an anthology of text & illustrations from previous Discworld diaries - revamped & redesigned for the new visitor to Discworld's premier city! Written by Terry Pratchett and produced by Stephen Briggs, with artwork by Paul Kidby!" - https://www.discworldemporium.com/

The second book I'm allowing myself this month. By the time I became aware that there were Discworld Diaries they were almost at the end of their run. I thought I would have to make do with what was revealed of them in "The Discworld Companion". There were copies available online of course, but they were already going for fairly high prices, certainly out of my limited range. But the publishing of these Archives remedies my lack. 

"Lavish coffee-table book" pretty much describes this volume and a good deal of its beauty is attributable to Paul Kidby, who has come to be my favorite artist when it comes to interpreting the Discworld. The art is second only (for me) to being able to read 'new' Pratchett on his fantasy world again. I can hardly wait for Volume II when it comes out in February 2022. 

The Nature of Middle-Earth: The Last Book of the Legendarium?

 

I ordered this book late on the evening of August the 31st and received it at 2 PM on September the 4th.  In the meantime I looked at several video reviews on YouTube in anticipation, trying to get a hint of what to expect and an idea of who Carl F. Hostetter (the editor) was. 

I found out plenty. Hostetter is a computer scientist employed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and has been involved with the study of Tolkien's languages and publication of articles on Tthat topic. In the course of his studies he became the "pen-friend" of Christopher Tolkien, who engaged him (and others) in the editing and publishing of his father's writing on the languages of Middle-Earth. In the study of Tolkien's papers Hostetter conceived the plan to order and publish various short (but interesting) bits of work that Tolkien had jotted down after LOTR was finished and when the author was considering getting "The Silmarillion" in order. Some Hostetter had already published in magazines dedicated to such matters; now he saw a way to draw these obscure pieces together along with previously unpublished material into one available volume. Christpher approved. He was able to show the nearly completed work to Christopher before he passed away last year.

His bona fides, thus far, are impeccable. But what won my eccentric approval and acceptance was that he had read "The Dark is Risng" at the age of 11 (just like me!) which led to his reading "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" (which is similar but the opposite to my experience). He is only about two years younger than I and thus I can see him as a sort of parallel life, a much more successful road not taken.

But to continue. Soon after I got the book and started devouring it in a rather piecemeal fashion, skipping around and flipping the pages to get the feel of it. The "Nature" of the title refers not only to the flora, fauna, and land of Middle-Earth, but also about its philosphy or essence. The book is divided into three sections. I settled down at 5 PM to do some serious reading until by 10 PM I had finished the first section of the book, "Part I: Time and Ageing". This is definitely the driest and most abstract section of the book, dealing mainly with Tolkien trying to match up the lifespan and development of the Elves with the age of the earth. There is much math (revealing a hitherto unsuspected aspect of Tolkien's creativity). I set the book down and tried to go to sleep.

I was up again by 6 AM and was soon back into it. "Part II: Body, Mind and Spirit" deals with descriptions of Elvish appearance, beauty, gender, fate, freewill, telepathy, spirit, reincarnation and death. We learn that male elves are not the androgynous figures popularized by modern media, that Aragorn (being of Numenorean descent) has no beard, that Elvish pregnancy lasted about 8 years (and was a joy to the mother, being unburdened by human pains)  and that Elvish children were unusually well-behaved and played finger games.

The third section, "Part III: The World, the Lands, and Its Inhabitants" deals with which most of us would consider "nature". Here is where for the first time I was sure that the talking Eagles were manifestations of embodied Maiar, that Elves eat meat, and contained the most detail about Numenor that I ever heard, including the men's special relationship with the bears of the island (I can't help but think this might somehow be connected to Priscilla's attachment to her teddy bears). 

There are two appendices, one a glossary and index of Quenya terms, but the other (more interesting to me) on metaphysical and religious themes, relating Catholic and philosophical ideas to their expression in Tolkien's work under guise of Elvish beliefs.

I finished the book at 5 PM today. I had taken breaks to do various duties and to rest; I did not particulary want to be finished. "The Nature of Middle-Earth" is almost solid 'lore' (much of it in tiny chapters of two or three pages) and little or no narrative. This book is touted to be the 'final' writings of Tolkien on Middle-Earth, not only being the last work he did on the legendarium but the last that there is to be published, and so the end of a long journey I started on in 1977 with "The Silmarillion", reading Tolkien's posthumous publications. There may be more of Tolkien's scholary philological work (I myself wouldn't mind an omnibus volume of Finn and Hengest, The Old English Exodus, and Ancrene Riwle) but no more of his Middle-Earth. There will be "no more shows like this show." 

Connections

J.R.R. Tolkien once said that he had written The Lord of the Rings to create a world ‘in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo, and that the phrase long antedated the book’.  - Tolkien Estate.com.

"A Secret Vice": Off the Wish List and Into the Library

Whatever has popped into your head, the 'secret vice' is making up languages.

   "A Secret Vice is the title of a talk written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1931, given to a literary society entitled 'A Hobby for the Home', in which he first publicly revealed his interest in invented languages. Some twenty years later, Tolkien revised the manuscript for a second presentation. It deals with constructed languages in general and the relation of a mythology to its language. He contrasts international auxiliary languages with artistic languages constructed for aesthetic pleasure. Tolkien further discusses phonaesthetics, citing Greek, Finnish and Welsh as examples of "languages which have a very characteristic and in their different ways beautiful word-form".

A Secret Vice was first published in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983), together with six other essays by Tolkien, edited by his son Christopher.

A new, extended critical edition was published by HarperCollins in 2016, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins. The new edition contains previously omitted passages from the original essay, Tolkien's drafts and notes, and a hitherto unpublished work by Tolkien, "Essay on Phonetic Symbolism".

-Wikipedia.

Thus far, the facts. But why did I wait so long (from 2016 to 2021) to get it, when I usually buy any new Tolkien that comes along right away? Well, I already had "The Monsters and the Critics and other Essays" and I wasn't sure this little book (apart from the Appendixes there's only about 130 pages of material) was worth the price; also I was desperately poor. Still poor, by the way, but not so desperate.

I finally got the book on Friday and read it right away. In it, Tolkien almost bashfully reveals his penchant for making up languages, from using the childish 'Animalic' of his cousins, to interest in Esperanto (an international auxiliary language), to his own various 'Elvish' creations. He hopes in the examination of the drives and the techniques of such activity to find deeper insights into philology and language itself.

The essays are fairly technical but not to the point of impenetrability. If you go into the book looking for a magical literary experience, you will not find it. But you will find a fascinating look into the personal and technical roots that flowered into Tolkien's whole Legendarium.

Robertson Davies: The Well-Tempered Critic

After having first received by mistake (the vendor's mistake, not mine) the similarly titled "The Well-Tempered Critic" by Canadian critic Northrop Frye (published in 1963, and thus my exact contemporary), today I finally got "The Well-Tempered Critic: One Man's View of Theatre and Letters in Canada", written by Robertson Davies (or Robertson Gravies, as my nephew hilariously refers to him) and edited by Judith Skelton Grant, who later went on to write his monumental biography. How's that a sentence for you?

This book came out in 1981 (and so the year I first heard about Davies, although I paid little attention to his work until years later); this is it's 40th anniversary. It is an ex-library book from California. It's also the last Davies' book I'm likely to buy unless another volume of his diaries comes out. There are more obscure, specialist books of his, but they are rare and priced out of my range. Even the 1964 reprint of his first book, "Shakespeare's Boy Actors" (1st edition 1939) is going for $1331.30.

I am only a few pages into it and I have already found this, from a 1949 entry of Davies writing in his persona of the crusty curmudgeon, Samuel Marchbanks:

"Saw The Glass Menagerie this evening, very well acted, but it did not move me to tears or laughter because, I think, I am temperamentally unsympathetic to such pieces. The plot was about a group of people who were in terrible fixes of one sort or another, with no hope of getting themselves straightened out. Now when I encounter such situations in real life my instinct is to run, for I know that if I remain among such people I shall not be able to help them, and they will only succeed in involving me in their troubles, and dragging me down to their own hopeless level. One of the bitterest realizations which life offers us is the knowledge that there are some people who are doomed, either through ill luck or their own unsatifactory character, to be always in trouble; it is necessary to be kind to such people, of course, but it is dangerous to try to straighten them out, for their genius for misfortune is far greater than my genius for assistance. When I see them on the stage I do not have to take a humane attitude towards them, and I reflect that it would have been far better if they had all committed suicide before the curtain went up."

Tolkien's Library: An Annotated Checklist

 

If you are like me, whenever you see a picture of someone in front of a bookcase (especially if it's your favorite author), you wonder "What are those books?" Well. Oronzo Cilli does too, and instead of just letting it go at that, he spent years researching what was in Tolkien's library, much of which was donated to and catalogued by various colleges, sold to booksellers, or inherited by his family. As a result, "we know more about J. R. R. Tolkien than about almost any other author, from any period" - and now, thanks to this book, more about his reading habits.

This is, of course, more of a reference book than a reader, and many of the volumes listed are very scholarly works related to Tolkien's pursuit of philology. But even that gives you an insight into his life and interests. There are fairy tales and 'popular literature'. Included are works by his fellow Inklings, presents from his family, and notes from his own letters and diaries about his opinions of what he's read. There are even, in separate sections, lists of his lectures, the student theses he examined, and interviews that he gave. It gives us a fascinating insight into the furnishings of his mind.

This is a beautiful book, of interesting and somehow (to me) appealing dimensions (6 3/4 x 9 3/4). It has a foreword by famed Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey and a cover by Jay Johnstone in his engaging medieval/Greek icon style. My copy is only slighly marred by a sort of pinch on the spine where I am convinced an Amazon robot gripped it from off a shelf in one of their cavernous warehouses.