u/Immediate_Error2135

...this passage?

‘I remember that Boromir bore a horn,’ [Frodo] said at last.

‘You remember well, and as one who has in truth seen him,’ said Faramir. ‘Then maybe you can see it in your mind’s eye: a great horn of the wild ox of the East, bound with silver, and written with ancient characters.

So:

HAMLET My father, methinks I see my father.

HORATIO Where, my lord?

HAMLET In my mind's eye, Horatio.

I mean, both Faramir and Hamlet are here talking about dead people (brother and father: Boromir and Hamlet Sr.) and they are of course going through grief.

Tolkien, Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford (1959):

‘when I survey with eye or mind those who may be called my pupils (though rather in the sense “the apples of my eyes”)...'

We find that very pun in LOTR I think.

"[...]Nazgûl,’ said Grishnákh[...]Ah! All that they make out! One day you’ll wish that you had not said that. Ape!’ he snarled fiercely. ‘You ought to know that they’re the apple of the Great Eye."

Of course, it's not that Sauron taught those Nine Men Doomed To Die the same way Tolkien taught his students. But they learned nevertheless, and the (evil) 'teacher' was Sauron.

Presumably, Tolkien also knew pupil came from lat. 'pupus' meaning 'child'. Here's another 'apprentice':

But Saruman had slowly shaped [Isengard] to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived – for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child’s model or a slave’s flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength.

The Nazgul were 'pupils' but also slaves of course.

The same idea can be applied to Saruman's ring I suppose. Maybe those who say it was a lesser ring are right. Gandalf:

'The lesser rings were only essays in the craft before it was full-grown...'

Not Gandalf at least. Not Elrond. Galadriel must have known they would have rejected her. As for other elves, I suppose some of the Lothlorien elves would have maybe followed her - but not out of love/despair.

It seems as if by 'all' she meant the race of Men.

So her plan would have been to rule over the Dominion Of Men: Her Dominion of Men.

If that's the case, Tolkien maybe had The Faerie Queene in mind - in it King Arthur falls in love with her. In LOTR -the return of the king, the mythical sword- that would have been Aragorn. One can imagine Arwen dying of grief in that situation.

The Faerie Queene was an allegorical representation of Queen Elizabeth, sometimes called 'virgin queen' (remember how Tolkien had compared Galadriel to the Virgin Mary), and in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream we have her in the lines 'a fair vestal throned by the west'.

So maybe Queen Galadriel would have been the result of 'our' Galadriel being 'tainted with mere politics', as Tolkien said of Denethor. After all, that's what Queen Elizabeth was: not a fairy, but a politician.

There Boromir mentions Faramir, although not by name. Originally, of course, Faramir had not been a part of the chapter. Tolkien had not yet invented the character.

So it was a 'retcon'. When did that happened, at what precise point during the drafting process?

It couldn't have been before the drafting of the Ithilien chapter -where Faramir was at first called Fanborn, and wasn't even Boromir's brother- but it could have been at any point between Ithilien and before LOTR was published.

There Boromir mentions Faramir, although not by name. Originally, of course, Faramir had not been a part of the chapter. Tolkien had not yet invented the character.

So it was a retcon. When did that happened, at what precise point during the drafting process?

It couldn't have been before the drafting of the Ithilien chapter -where Faramir was at first called Fanborn, and wasn't even Boromir's brother- but it could have been at any point between Ithilien and before LOTR was published.

'The Black Gate Is Closed'. Frodo, to Gollum:

You will never get it back. But the desire of it may betray you to a bitter end. You will never get it back. In the last need, Sméagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or to cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command. So have a care, Sméagol!’

'Mount Doom':

"Frodo flung [Gollum] off and rose up quivering.

‘Down, down!’ he gasped, clutching his hand to his breast, so that beneath the cover of his leather shirt he clasped the Ring. ‘Down, you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot betray me or slay me now.’

Then suddenly, as before under the eaves of the Emyn Muil, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision. A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice.

‘Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.’

The crouching shape backed away, terror in its blinking eyes, and yet at the same time insatiable desire."

As we can see, in the second passage Frodo says nothing. But Sam perceived what was going on in a vision (maybe due to himself having used the ring after 'The Black Gate Is Closed' chapter) It's as if the Ring had absorbed Frodo's previous threat and made it its own.

Which was the Ring trying to absorb Frodo I suppose. As long as Frodo resisted, his power over Gollum was increased, but at the same time it got more and more difficult to resist because the very thing which allowed Frodo to resist was being eroded by the very object he had to resist. In other words, he was losing. 'I am almost in its power now', he says to Sam.

In Amon Hen, Frodo cannot say if he was himself saying 'never!' or 'verily I come to you'. Here we have another example of Frodo's voice being put under a burden. Probably Frodo could have wrestled himself off from Sauron's will in Amon Hen if he had possessed the strength he would have later, in Mount Doom. Or maybe not. What do you think?

(On the other hand, in Amon Hen he was under both Sauron and the Ring's influence. 'I come to you' sounds like kind of thing the Ring would say to Sauron, if it had had a voice, and it's maybe similar in this sense to Frodo feeling someone else using his little voice in The Council Of Elrond: 'I will take the Ring'. Maybe in that case there was also some other Power involved)

HoME, the Scouring of the shire. Saruman says:;

"But Mr. Baggins is a fool all the same. And can't even mind his own affairs, always minding other people's. To be expected of a pupil of Gandalf"

Now in the book we don't have the idea of Frodo as a pupil of Gandalf. We have the idea of Faramir as a pupil of Gandalf. Denethor calling him 'a wizard's pupil'. (The Pyre of Denethor)

So, either

1- the 'pupil of Gandalf' idea appeared during the writing of 'Pyre' and then again during the writing of 'Scouring', with only the former being preserved in the finished text.

Or:

2-The Scouring 'pupil' appeared first and then Tolkien thought the idea was better if spoken by Denethor about Faramir.

So which do you think to have been more probable? In HoME the pupil of Gandalf idea only appears in 'Scouring'; in LOTR it only appears in 'Pyre'.

HoME, the Scouring of the shire. Saruman says:;

"But Mr. Baggins is a fool all the same. And can't even mind his own affairs, always minding other people's. To be expected of a pupil of Gandalf"

Now in the book we don't have the idea of Frodo as a pupil of Gandalf. We have Denethor calling Faramir 'a wizard's pupil'. (The Pyre of Denethor)

So, either

1- the 'pupil of Gandalf' idea appeared during the writing of 'Pyre' and then again during the writing of 'Scouring', with only the former being preserved in the finished text.

Or:

2-The Scouring 'pupil' appeared first and then Tolkien thought the idea was better if spoken by Denethor about Faramir.

So which do you think to have been more probable? In HoME the pupil of Gandalf idea only appears in 'Scouring'; in LOTR it only appears in 'Pyre'.

Faramir: a wizard's '*pupil*', according to Denethor. He says that word twice to mean 'student'. ;

But this is Tolkien in his Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford (1959):

‘when I survey with eye or mind those who may be called my pupils (though rather in the sense “the apples of my eyes”)'

Remember his famous '[e]very part [of LotR] has been written many times. Hardly a word in its 600,000 or more has been unconsidered.'

The word pupil is used only three times in LOTR, and this is the third ('The Mirror of Galadriel'):

The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.

In the passage above Sauron's pupil is described as a 'window into nothing', and among Denethor's last words was 'naught'.

‘I would have things as they were in all the days of my life,’ answered Denethor, ‘and in the days of my longfathers before me: to be the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.’

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/naught#English

Naught=nothing. He had become himself a window into nothing. A pupil. Sauron's.

Faramir: a wizard's 'pupil', according to Denethor. He says that word twice to mean 'student'.

But this is Tolkien in his Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford (1959):

‘when I survey with eye or mind those who may be called my pupils (though rather in the sense “the apples of my eyes”)'

Remember his famous '[e]very part [of LotR] has been written many times. Hardly a word in its 600,000 or more has been unconsidered.'

The word pupil is used only three times in LOTR, and this is the third ('The Mirror of Galadriel'):

The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.

In the passage above Sauron's pupil is described as a 'window into nothing', and among Denethor's last words was 'naught'.

‘I would have things as they were in all the days of my life,’ answered Denethor, ‘and in the days of my longfathers before me: to be the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.’

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/naught#English

Naught=nothing. He had become himself a window into nothing. A pupil. Sauron's.

So we have the Necromancer (Sauron), and Tolkien addresses necromancy in 'Morgoth's Ring'. ;

But when was the first time Tolkien incorporated the idea in his drafts? Did it predate The Hobbit (which was finished in the early 30s I think)?

Maybe the same pun is at play in those tracks' titles. Because Platonia implies complexity, and that's also the meaning of 'compound'.

Both tracks are at the end of their respective albums, and the tracks next to them 'You retreat...' and 'Farewell Fire' are somewhat similar in texture and feeling, although in Inferno it is 'you retreat...' the one that sounds like a farewell, as a separation, with I Saw Through Platonia sounding maybe more ironic and more of a nihilistic commentary on what we have just heard: more like Semena (Seeds...of the Dead) in TH.

Also there seem to be defiance and an implicit You/I dialogue: you retreat (present tense) but I saw (past tense) through Platonia. The track Father and Son comes to mind, and 'you retreat but I saw' sounds like a son talking, not like a father.

Faramir says to Denethor: "It was the Lord of the City [Denethor] that gave the errand to [Boromir]"

Boromir: "the way was full of doubt and danger, I took the journey upon myself."

Faramir: "I should have been chosen by my father and the elders, but he put himself forward, as being the older and the hardier (both true), and he would not be stayed."

Gandalf: "Boromir claimed the errand and would not suffer any other to have it. He was a masterful man, and one to take what he desired."

Gandalf is in his quote adopting Boromir's POV. His words. We see Gandalf hearing them in the Council of Elrond.

And undoubtedly, and from Boromir's own POV, he claimed the errand. But Denethor, the Authority, gave the errand to Boromir.

Gandalf: "Denethor has given long thought to the rhyme and to the words Isildur’s Bane, since Boromir went away."

In the films we have something that's not in the book: Denethor telling Boromir about the Ring having been found.

But the idea of Denethor knowing Isildur's Bane=One Ring is compatible with the book I think. Him gaining knowledge through the Palantir and giving Boromir the errand maybe without telling him about the Ring and hoping Boromir's 'Gondorcentrism', similar to his own (and which Faramir lacked) did the rest. Boromir bringing the ring would have been good news for Sauron. Gandalf:

"As Aragorn has begun, so we must go on. We must push Sauron to his last throw. We must call out his hidden strength, so that he shall empty his land. We must march out to meet him at once. We must make ourselves the bait, though his jaws should close on us. He will take that bait, in hope and in greed, for he will think that in such rashness he sees the pride of the new Ringlord: and he will say: “So! he pushes out his neck too soon and too far. Let him come on, and behold I will have him in a trap from which he cannot escape. There I will crush him, and what he has taken in his insolence shall be mine again for ever.”

And before that:

"[Sauron] is not yet sure,’ said Gandalf, ‘and he has not built up his power by waiting until his enemies are secure, as we have done. Also we could not learn how to wield the full power all in a day. Indeed it can be used only by one master alone, not by many; and he will look for a time of strife, ere one of the great among us makes himself master and puts down the others. In that time the Ring might aid him, if he were sudden"

So showing Denethor the Ring would have served his 'policy' and also created division among his enemies, and also because Sauron must have known some of his enemies wanted it hidden.

Sauron knowing where the ring was had to be delayed until it was too late for him: what we have in the book. But Denethor wanted that thing in Minas Tirith.

Faramir: "It was the Lord of the City that gave the errand to [Boromir]". Maybe Denethor feared Faramir guessed sooner or later that he already knew about the Ring. His 'you found Boromir less apt to your hand, did you not?’ would have been actually true about himself: Faramir was less apt to his own hand than Boromir.

He had dreamed that dream before Boromir did, and often, and the decision of going to Imladris had been his originally.

It seems as if the Powers That Be had much preferred Faramir, with Boromir as a plan B so to speak. One of the two brothers had to go there and meet the Halfling and the Broken Sword: the future King Of Men.

We know what happened. But we also know Faramir was different from Boromir. He rejects the Ring in the book - he passes the test. Maybe he would have survived and gone to Gondor with Aragorn.

In that case maybe the focus would have shifted relative to what we have (Denethor) to Boromir: the older brother would have had to choose between Aragorn and his own father. Faramir knew a 'pinch' would come:

"If [Boromir] were satisfied of Aragorn's claim, as you say, he would greatly reverence him. But the pinch had not yet come. They had not yet reached Minas Tirith or become rivals in her wars"

Aragorn=Isildur. The Stewards of Gondor=Anárion. Siblings, like Boromir and Faramir. Maybe Tolkien would have explored that idea. In the book Denethor is crystal clear:

"But I say to thee, Gandalf Mithrandir, I will not be thy tool! I am Steward of the House of Anárion. I will not step down to be the dotard chamberlain of an upstart. Even were his claim proved to me, still he comes but of the line of Isildur. I will not bow to such a one, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity."

For those who like to link Sauron to the Tevildo, Prince of Cats guy, via the quote above (and via Sauron calling Shelob 'cat'), this quote from 'The Black Gate Opens':

"There was a long silence, and from wall and gate no cry or sound was heard in answer. But Sauron had already laid his plans, and he had a mind first to play these mice cruelly before he struck to kill."

It was sort of a late-life obsession insofar he tried to solve it again and again but he got stuck. As I understand, he came to prefer a round world model, but as Christopher Tolkien said in Morgoth's Ring about one of the texts (the 'Myths Revised' chapter):

"It may be, though I have no evidence on the question one way or the other, that he came to perceive from such experimental writing as this text that the old structure was too comprehensive, too interlocked in all its parts, indeed its roots too deep, to withstand such a devastating surgery."

Regardless of the reason, the fact is that Tolkien wanted to change this part of the Legendarium but was unable to.

So what do you think?

Denethor: ‘Do I not know thee, Mithrandir? Thy hope is to rule in my stead, to stand behind every throne, north, south, or west. I have read thy mind and its policies';

So Denethor thought Gandalf hoped to rule Middle Earth.

Gandalf, about Denethor: "He was too great to be subdued to the will of the Dark Power, he saw nonetheless only those things which that Power permitted him to see."

Obviously it was the angel (Maia) Sauron the one who hoped 'to stand behind every throne, north, south, or west', and not the angel (Maia) Gandalf, but Denethor saw things differently.

Had Sauron anything to do with this? The idea of Faramir=Wizard's pupil sounds like the twisting of this...

"we in the house of Denethor know much ancient lore by long tradition, and there are moreover in our treasuries many things preserved: books and tablets writ on withered parchments, yea, and on stone, and on leaves of silver and of gold, in divers characters. Some none can now read; and for the rest, few ever unlock them. I can read a little in them, for I have had teaching. It was these records that brought the Grey Pilgrim to us. I first saw him when I was a child, and he has been twice or thrice since then."

...into 'politics' ('I have read thy mind and its *policies*', says Denethor) Was Sauron involved in this too?

Denethor maybe distrusted Gandalf since before using the Palantir, and noticed how Faramir was being taught by Gandalf; but Sauron would have noticed this distrust and maybe apprehension about Faramir when Denethor used the stone and would have manipulated Denethor into seeing his own son as a wizard's pupil, the pupil of an usurper with an unbounded ambition.

In our world tyrants are cynically prone to do this thing. If you want to rule others by force you accuse them of wanting to rule you by force and then kill them in 'self-defense'. Months before invading Poland, in Jan.1939, Hitler famously prophesized:

"If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe"

He accused the jews of being Hitler, an inversion no different from the Gandalf=Sauron one.

Wizard's 'pupil', says Denethor. He says that word twice to mean 'student'. But this is Tolkien in his Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford (1959):

‘when I survey with eye or mind those who may be called my pupils (though rather in the sense “the apples of my eyes”)'

Remember his famous '[e]very part [of LotR] has been written many times. Hardly a word in its 600,000 or more has been unconsidered.'

The word pupil is used *three* times in LOTR, and this is the third ('The Mirror of Galadriel'):

The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.

Denethor: ‘Do I not know thee, Mithrandir? Thy hope is to rule in my stead, to stand behind every throne, north, south, or west. I have read thy mind and its policies'

So Denethor thought Gandalf hoped to rule Middle Earth.

Gandalf, about Denethor: "He was too great to be subdued to the will of the Dark Power, he saw nonetheless only those things which that Power permitted him to see."

Obviously it was the angel (Maia) Sauron the one who hoped 'to stand behind every throne, north, south, or west', and not the angel (Maia) Gandalf, but Denethor saw things differently.

Had Sauron anything to do with this? The idea of Faramir=Wizard's pupil sounds like the twisting of this...

"we in the house of Denethor know much ancient lore by long tradition, and there are moreover in our treasuries many things preserved: books and tablets writ on withered parchments, yea, and on stone, and on leaves of silver and of gold, in divers characters. Some none can now read; and for the rest, few ever unlock them. I can read a little in them, for I have had teaching. It was these records that brought the Grey Pilgrim to us. I first saw him when I was a child, and he has been twice or thrice since then."

...into 'politics' ('I have read thy mind and its policies', says Denethor) Was Sauron involved in this too?

Denethor maybe distrusted Gandalf since before using the Palantir, and noticed how Faramir was being taught by Gandalf; but Sauron would have noticed this distrust and maybe apprehension about Faramir when Denethor used the stone and would have manipulated Denethor into seeing his own son as a wizard's pupil, the pupil of an usurper with an unbounded ambition.

In our world tyrants are cynically prone to do this thing. If you want to rule others by force you accuse them of wanting to rule you by force and then kill them in 'self-defense'. Months before invading Poland, in Jan.1939, Hitler famously prophesized:

"If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe"

He accused the jews of being Hitler, an inversion no different from the Gandalf=Sauron one.