A Talk about Tolkien

"Have you heard that Tollers has published the Lord of the Rings, Audo?" This was the first time Su called Audoin Audo. And since that was the kind of familiarity she took, Audo would be sticking with that - he did not seem to mind.

"Of course. He started writing about that Sauron character and his pious adversaries in Numenor after hearing my story. Then after I had made a few abjurations in Church, he felt it was unconsiderate of him to use my story as such since it might land me into trouble with the Church."

"So then he wrote something else about that ... "

"Yes, about the horror who started out as a 'Lord of gifts', about the man or god like creature with technical solutions for everything - who contested the orthodox religion, who instituted depraved mystery cults, who finally after getting authorisation from the King started burning people to death as a sacrifice to ... another horror, as whose incarnation he posed."

"So, do you think what's in those books really happened?"

"Of course not. I am not really sure what I and pa experienced really happened, and there are some ways it theoretically could have happened according to some people which I have sworn on the Gospel not to believe. For instance, I do not believe that pa and I were Elendil and Herendil in a previous life. I do not believe we have lived previous lifetimes."

"So where did Tolkien get this story from?"

"He invented it. Just because Jack got the Narnia books so far published from Professor Kirke and much of it from you and your siblings, it does not mean every author gets every story from a true witness source."

"So, Numenor was part of your and your father's dream experience, it contained a kind of warning against the Antichrist, especially against how seductive he could be and how manipulative of people who refuse to be considered stupid because they are faithful ..." Susan paused, and resumed: "and since Tollers could not use that dream without hurting your standing with the Church ..."

"He wrote another story about it, with Numenor already sunken like the great Babylon was already fallen, and it ends in a kind of prehistoric Harmageddon, but only because he liked the morality of my dream or whatever it was, and wanted to write something on that moral theme."

"Could you read Namarië? I mean you did know Quenya 'back in Númenor'?"

"Some of it, but Tollers, once having decided not to use my story as such, started changing whatever he took from it according to his taste in either morality or - in this case - linguistics."

"So reading the Quenya of Lord of the Rings is like ..."

"Reading Braid Scots, or for a Portuguese to read Spanish or for a Dane to read Swedish."

"Don't you resent that?"

"Why? It means it is no more my story, it is as such not a story gotten through any esoteric experience, and it means I am again free to enjoy it as if I had never been upbraided by the Church for it. I did ask my confessor as soon as the Fellowship was published."

"Has he falsified your history?"

"Since I have been suspect of having received as a live experience it through demons, I would rather say he has rescued it from Hell. A made up story is better than one gotten from demons, any day."

[This author here - Hans-Georg Lundahl by the way - might like to make clear that he is in a position like John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's when writing, not in a position like Audoin Errol's if he had written the story. Still less in the position of that evil sham "lord of gifts" who poisoned every gift he gave with devil worship.]