[Deb]

And sometimes a cigar is just a smoke.

[Arkie2]

"Boorish and gruff as the new American Empire might seem, it is an anti-empire populated by reluctant heroes who want nothing more than to till their fields and mind their homes, much like Tolkien's Hobbits. Under pressure, though, it will respond with a fierceness and cohesion that will surprise its adversaries".

It's amazing how the rest of the world must constantly relearn this lesson. Yamamoto had it right when he said the attack on Pearl Harbor would awaken a sleeping giant. Well, the giant ( or Hobbit if you will ) is awake again.

[Alex Murphy]

Bump for later reading.

[Chi-townChief]

bttt

[CyberCowboy777]

Bump

[EternalVigilance]

I love this piece...appreciate you posting it.

As someone who has loved Tolkien since grade school (and that was quite a while ago), but knows next to nothing about Wagner, other than the fact that he greatly fueled the eventual nihilism of the Nazis, this article taught me alot. Thanks.

[Eala]

Thank you for posting this.

[AndyTheBear]

There are two types of people:

1) "Lord of the Rings" fans

2) Uncultured swine.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

One Bump to rule them all, One Bump to find them,
One Bump to bring them all and in analogy bind them.

[MattinNJ]

Obviously the movie rocked, but the part that stays with me is the non pc portrayal of the orc suicide bomber as evil incarnate with the champions of justice and virtue trying to kill him in vain before he accomplishes his mission.

[Miss Marple]

Thank you for posting this. This is the first I have heard of the comparisons, which escaped me because I am not very familiar with Wagner's story line. I only knew some of the orchestral themes, so the comparison between the two was not evident to me.

It is very interesting to me how the wr on terror is often referenced to literature and mythology. It is almost like people know that this is an epic struggle, but they are afraid to say it directly. I find it fortunate that the Ring movies have been released at this time.

[vbmoneyspender]

To be sure, The Lord of the Rings is not a great work of literature to be compared to Cervantes or Dostoyevsky.

These professor-types really have a problem with art that is popular. The two great novels of the 20th century are 1984 and The Lord of the Rings. They were both popular works and they both dealt with the central issue of the 20th century, which was the battle between people who would be free and the totalitarians who would enslave them.

[big'ol_freeper]

big'ol_bump

[DTA]

I beg to differ. The message of the movie is subversive, telling us that humans have no control over their own destiny.

One day, archeologists will stuggle to decypher the meaning of "Life,liberty and pursuit of happiness".

[headsonpikes]

Pretty high-falutin for such a damp squib.

(harrumph)

[drjimmy]

Consciously or not, the Oxford philologist who invented Hobbits has ruined Wagner before the popular audience. It recalls the terrible moment in Thomas Mann's great novel Doktor Faustus when the composer Adrian Leverkuhn, finishing his Faust cantata in the throes of syphilitic dementia, announces: "I want to take it back!" His amanuensis asks, "What do you want to take back?" "Beethoven's 9th Symphony!" cries Leverkuhn. Leverkuhn (on the strength of a bargain with the Devil) has written a work whose objective is to ruin the ability of musical audiences to hear Beethoven.
True, but what I like best is when the Orc gets his head chopped off.

[x]

Modesty, forbearance, and renunciation are the virtues that Tolkien sets against Wagner's existential act of despair.

Nietzsche thought Wagner's Parzifal set those values against Wagner's more heroic and apocalyptic Ring.

[Stultis]

Orcs of the world: Take note and beware.

Right! There were several times during the movies when I thought, "they sure could use a fuel-air bomb here, or a full stack from a B-52."

[happygrl]

What a delightful read ! Thank you.

[SamAdams76]

Tolkien himself despised Wagner (whom he knew thoroughly) and rejected comparisons between his Ring and Wagner's cycle ("Both rings are round," is the extent of his published comment).

It would be expected that Tolkien would feel this way being that LOTR was released shortly after WW2 and the horror of Nazism and anti-semitism was still fresh in everybody's minds. If Tolkien is this familiar with Wagner's work (Wagner died in 1883 so Tolkien could not have known him personally), it is likely that he was a fan of Wagner's work.

That is not to cast any aspersions upon Tolkien. I have no doubt that Tolkien despised the man himself and what he stood for. Wagner was a rabid anti-semite and his works were supposedly embraced by Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party - though the extent to which that association is valid is a matter of debate. Frankly, I don't think Hitler and his Brownshirts spent a lot of time going to opera. It could simply be that Hitler admired Wagner for his beliefs and his music was secondary.

The author of this article points out a whole slew of similarities between Tolkien's LOTR and Wagner's Ring Cycle (an opera that takes three very long nights to perform). Though familiar with both, I had never before realized how similar the two works were (I mainly listen to the music and don't pay much attention to the librettos of Wagner's operas).