CRITICAL SUPREMACY ENCAPSULATED
Last winter, I grouped assembled excerpts of some of the most
shining examples of positive, enlightened critical remarks written about
The Lord of the Rings. Originally, I had posted them to one of the Tolkien-oriented Newsgroups....
"The discovery of that book and the world to which
it gave entrance was as profoundly exciting and as joyous an experience
as had been the discovery of the world of Alice." -- Dr. John Grassi (Oxford
don)
"Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn
like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart....It is good
beyond hope." (C.S. Lewis)
"Tolkien is a born story-teller.) (GUARDIAN)
"One of the best wonder-tales ever written -- and
one of the best-written." (BOSTON HERALD TRAVELLER)
"Tolkien succeeded more completely than any previous
writer in this genre in using the traditional properties of the Quest,
the heroic journey, the Numinous Object...satisfying our sense of historical
and social reality. In this aspect, Tolkien succeeded where Milton
failed." (W. H. AUDEN)
"A comprehensive countermyth to the story of the twentienth
century." (INDEPENDENT)
"Among the greatest workd of imaginative fiction of
the 20th century." (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)
"A compelling grandeur of vision, a searing inventiveness
and a depth of humanity give it a rare and rewarding greatness."
(SUNDAY TIMES)
"A story magnificently told with every kind of colour
and movement and greatness."(NEW STATESMAN)
"An extraordinary, a distinguished piece of work."
(NY HERALD TRIBUNE)
"No fiction I have read in the last five years has
given me more joy than Lord of the Rings. (Auden: NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW)
"It is an extraordinary work -- pure excitement, unencumbered
narrative, moral warmth, bare-faced rejoicing in Beauty, but excitement
most of all."(Donald Barr: NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW)
"At times rising to the greatness of true myth."
(FINANCIAL TIMES)
"The incredible imagination of Tolkien." (SUNDAY
TELEGRAPH)
"Mythic grandeur." (SUNDAY TIMES BOOK REVIEW)
"It deals with a stupendous theme....As the story
goes on, the world of the Ring grows more vast and mysterious and crowded
with curious figures horrible, delightful, or comic. The story itself
is superb." (THE OBSERVER)
"Tolkien's trilogy is fantasy, but it stems of course
from his own experiences and beliefs. He shuns satire as frivolous
and allegory as tendentious. His preparation is immersion in Welsh,
Norse, Gelic, Scandinavian, and German folklore....There are very few works
of genius in recent literature. This is one." (Michael Straight:
NEW REPUBLIC)
"How, given little over half a century, did one man
become the creative equivalent of a people?" (THE GUARDIAN)
"The English-speaking world is divided into those
who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and
those who are going to read them."(SUNDAY TIMES)
Here are some additional, high-impact responses excerpted from reviewers
of LotR, the work which Barr compared in stature to Beowulf, the
Anglo-Saxon epic about a legendary hero's struggles for humanity in a
savage world; C.S. Lewis to Orlando Furioso; Auden to The Thirty-Nine
Steps, and, in several aspects, to Paradise Lost. Lewis posited that
"no imaginary world has been projected which is at once so multifarious
and so true." (Professor Lewis's comprehension of myth, fable, and
legend, and their distintions from real historical narratives was
authoritative and profound in both academia and popular writings.)
"Everything that Prof. Tolkien writes is full of meat, worth reading and
re-reading, and beautifully written." (FOLKLORE)
"Most modern fantasy only rearranges the furniture in Tolkien's attic."
(Terry Pratchett)
"Almost no work of modern fantasy has been published that wasn't in some
way a dialogue with LotR. It's a template for the genre." (Robin Wayne
Bailey)
"A scrubbed morning world, and a ringing nightmare world...especially
sunlit, and shadowed by perils very fundamental, of a peculiarly
uncompounded darkness."
(Donald Barr)
"At once allegory, a heroic romance, a moral mythology, a fairy tale, a
repository of elf-lore, a fascinating language game, and, above all, an
engrossing adventure story." (Arthur Zeiger; City College, Univ. of NY)
"The sadness, bittersweetness, darkness, light, glory, mystery, and
grandeur appeal to me. Similarly, the breadth and depth, the
authenticity, the nobility, and overall, the wonder and 'northernness.'"
(Torontonian artist Ted Nasmith)
Tolkien succeeded in creating a world which exists beyond the scope of
his own narrative. By establishing such a powerfully imagined
landscape, and firm foundations of history and myth, he has mad
Middle-Earth available to all of us for our own imaginative
wanderings." [Alan Lee]
"Tolkien is the master of evocation -- his descriptions aer catalysts
for the reader, who summons his own personal pantheon of heroes and
demons to complete the picture." [John Howe]
"The secret of J.R.R. Tolkien's success is that his fantasies are
real....His world exists in our hearts and imaginations." [Michael
Hague]
"Middle-Earth is an amazing, beautiful, and mysterious place; but it is
also sometimes ugly, terrible, and dangerous. There are towering,
snow-capped mountains, beneath which run deep, dark, underground
passageways. There are tangled, airless forests, where strange
creatures lurk in the half-light; and there are woods where the grass
beneath the trees is sweet-smelling and studded with small golden
flowers, shaped like stars. There are high-towered citadels; black,
iron-gated strongholds; towns builts upon lakes, in trees and under
hills; and away in the east, a land of smoke, fire, and sinister
shadows." [Brian Sibley]
"Colours fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure."
[Edward Thorndike]
This perception of Calvin Trillin is stunningly descriptive of the vast bulk of literature
published since the release of the Rings in the mid-fifties: "The shelf
life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the
yoghurt."
