The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2. Christina Scull
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Tolkien about this early in 1936, or possibly late in 1935: the earliest surviving letter on the subject, from C.A. Furth on 30 March 1936, states that Allen & Unwin were writing to Tolkien about the matter ‘again’. Feeling that he did not have the time to spare to undertake the work himself, Tolkien suggested in turn that it be given to Miss Griffiths. He, however, would read what she produced, and write a preface or introduction to the book. In the event, Griffiths could not complete the revision, and at the end of June 1938 asked to be released from her contract.
By then Tolkien had not yet written his contribution. ‘I would quickly write my brief introductory note, if I saw the book complete,’ he told *Stanley Unwin on 4 June 1938. ‘It would be brief for I do not wish to anticipate the things I should say in a preface to a new [Modern English] translation [by himself]’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). He had completed a prose translation already by the end of April 1926, and had begun an alliterative verse translation, but never finished either to his satisfaction. A few lines from the verse translation, however, are in the Prefatory Remarks.
On Griffiths’ withdrawal Tolkien still did not wish to deal with the whole of the book, but on 24 July 1938, presumably feeling an obligation to Allen & Unwin, he offered to ‘put the thing into such order as is now possible, for such remuneration as seems good to you, with a title to be devised …. My concern would be primarily to put the text into reasonable working order, as far as can be contrived without too great or too costly cutting up of the version now in type’ (letter to C.A. Furth, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). His offer was accepted; but he soon found that other commitments, and problems of health, prevented him from doing the required work. He recommended that he relinquish the revision, therefore, to his Oxford colleague C.L. Wrenn, himself a formidable scholar of Old English, who was ready to complete the project in short order.
Indeed, Wrenn finished the revision months before Tolkien wrote his promised note. In a letter of 19 December 1939 to Stanley Unwin, having received several inquiries from his publisher, Tolkien apologized: ‘I will try and collect my weary wits and pen a sufficient foreword to the “Beowulf” translation, at once’ (Tolkien’s emphasis, Letters, p. 44). But ill health, the war, domestic troubles, and academic duties made writing difficult. In early 1940 he was again pressed for a note: ‘a word or two’ would be enough. He replied to Stanley Unwin on 30 March 1940:
I knew that a ‘word or two’ would suffice (though could not feel that any words under my name would have any particular value unless they said something worth saying – which takes space). But I believed that more was hoped for …. For a fairly considerable ‘preface’ is really required. The so-called ‘Introduction’ does not exist, being merely an argument [or summary, with ten lines concerning the Beowulf manuscript, much less than Clark Hall had included in the previous edition]: there is no reference whatever to either a translator’s or a critic’s problems. I advised originally against any attempt to bring the apparatus of the old book up to date – it can be got by students elsewhere. But I did not expect a reduction to 10 lines, while the ‘argument’ (the least useful part) was rewritten at length.
That being so I laboured long and hard to compress (and yet enliven) such remarks on translation as might both be useful to students and of interest to those using the book without reference to the original text. But the result ran to 17 of my [manuscript] pages (of some 300 words each) – not counting the metrical appendix, the most original part, which is as long again! [Letters, p. 45]
Tolkien now sent all that he had done to Stanley Unwin, suggesting that Unwin might care to consider it for inclusion later in a further edition, or that ‘it might make a suitable small booklet for students’ (p. 46); or certain passages might be removed for the sake of length. In the event, Unwin printed Tolkien’s manuscript in full, though it increased the length of the book. Tolkien corrected proofs of his Prefatory Notes in April 1940.
At his suggestion and with Wrenn’s approval, the spelling of ‘Finnsburg’, used in earlier editions of the book, was changed to ‘Finnesburg’. (On this poem, see *Finn and Hengest.)
Another edition of Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment was published by Allen & Unwin, and distributed in the United States by Barnes & Noble, New York, in 1950. In this the scholarship of the work proper was revised again, a new introduction was provided, the notes were greatly enlarged, and misprints were corrected in the translations and in Tolkien’s Prefatory Remarks, which were otherwise unchanged.
Prejudice and racism. The letters Tolkien wrote in 1938 to his publisher *Stanley Unwin and to Rütten & Loening, the proposed publisher of a German translation of *The Hobbit, in response to a request from the latter that he confirm his ‘arisch’ (Aryan) origin, clear him of any suggestion of anti-Semitism. He objected to the request, and wrote to Stanley Unwin on 25 July:
Personally I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung [confirmation] … and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine. [Letters, p. 37]
With this he sent two possible replies, leaving it to Stanley Unwin to decide which to send to Germany. Only one remains in the Allen & Unwin archive, presumably the one not sent, possibly the more strongly worded of the two. In this Tolkien displays his knowledge of the correct use of the word Aryan as opposed to the Nazi misuse: ‘I regret I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people’ (Letters, p. 37).
In 1944, in response to a comment made in a letter by his son *Christopher about apartheid in *South Africa, where he was training to be a pilot, Tolkien wrote on 18 April: ‘As for what you say or hint of “local” conditions: I knew of them. I don’t think they have much changed (even for the worse). I used to hear them discussed by my mother; and have ever since taken a special interest in that part of the world. The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately] not many retain that generous sentiment for long’ (Letters, p. 73).
During the Second World War Tolkien wrote to Christopher on 23–25 September 1944, objecting to racist propaganda about the enemy:
I cannot understand the line taken by BBC (and papers, and so, I suppose, emanating from M[inistry] O[f] I[nformation]) that the German troops are a motley collection of sutlers and broken men …. The English pride themselves, or used to, on ‘sportsmanship’ (which included ‘giving the devil his due’) …. But it is distressing to see the press grovelling in the gutter as low as Goebbels in his prime, shrieking that any German commander who holds out in a desperate situation … is a drunkard, and a besotted fanatic.
It is clear that he considered revilement of the enemy, just because he was the enemy, as much an exhibition of racism as segregation or anti-Semitism – that patriotism did not justify racism. He continued in his letter that a recent article had called for the extermination of the German people because ‘they are rattlesnakes, and don’t know the difference between good and evil’. If one were to accept that idea, said Tolkien, then ‘the Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and the Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done’ (Letters, p. 93).
Those who see evidence of racism in Tolkien’s works, whether conscious or unconscious, draw attention to descriptions which suggest that the various races of men that fought for Morgoth, Sauron, or Saruman (in *‘The Silmarillion’ or *The Lord of the Rings) are of Asian or African origin, while those on the ‘good’ side have European features. They also point to the existence of the race of Orcs, apparently