#john garth

[gasparodasalo]

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John Garth (1721-1810) - Concerto for Cello, Strings and Basso continuo in D-Major, Op. 1 No. 1, III. Giga. Performed by Richard Tunnicliffe, cello, and The Avison Ensemble on period instruments.

[arda-marred]

Is there truly no one else in the Tolkien fandom who is interested in Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth? I’ve been running this blog for over five years in the hope of connecting with others on this topic…with very limited success.

[thebookwormunderground]

There are many grand and awe-inspiring sights [in war]. Guns firing at night are beautiful--if they were not so terrible. They have the grandeur of thunderstorms."

Rob Gilson, taken from John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

No to War

[hell and earth]

* * * * *

“Neither Blake nor Milton saw battle itself. That Tolkien did may explain the central or climactic role of battles in his stories. The tank-like ‘dragons’ in the assault on Gondolin strongly imply that this is the case. So does the strategic importance of timing in many of Tolkien’s fictional clashes. The failure of units to coordinate their attacks, a disastrous feature of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears as developed in the ‘Silmarillion’, parallels a fatal problem in the Somme offensive. The last-minute intervention of a fresh force to save the day, a staple of military engagements in Middle-earth, may seem less realistic and more ‘escapist’, but this was the part his own battalion played in the taking of Ovillers and the rescue of the Warwickshires, when he was present as a signaller.” — John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth

[alive on all channels]

[ratatoskryggdrasil]

John Garth, Ironworkers

[atariince]

I'm sorry I haven't been active here for a while... but I do plan to come back eventually! Life has been very busy lately, and I've met a lot of admirable people lately (as you can see). Things are coming together, slowly indeed, but I'm patient... and determined ;)

And yes, John Garth is not only a great author, but also a very kind person (and the presentation he did today was breathtaking!)

Take care, guys ♡

[heartofoshun]

I’ve used the John Garth book as a reference in a few of my Silmarillion Writers Guild monthly character bios. It’s a good read for anyone interested in Tolkien and/or WWI.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote in 1973: “Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.”

[arda-marred]

Sam Gamgee and Tolkien’s batmen

Tolkien, like a good poker player, kept his cards close to his chest, and gave very little away about the impact of experience upon his fict

Regarding the fictional Sam Gamgee’s link to the First World War, Carpenter’s Biography quotes Tolkien as saying, “My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” A batman, in military parlance, was a soldier who (as well as being required to fight) was tasked with looking after an officer’s kit, cooking, and cleaning. Tolkien’s phrasing in the letter sent to Minchin is different, and very interesting too: “My ‘Samwise’ is indeed (as you note) largely a reflexion of the English soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” It gives the extra dimension that in portraying Sam, Tolkien had also drawn on memories of lads from the rural outskirts of Birmingham, where he had lived between the ages of three and eight. This dovetails well with his statement elsewhere that the society of the Shire is “more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee” (Letters p. 230)—that is, a village like Sarehole in 1897, Queen Victoria’s 60th year on the throne and Tolkien’s fifth on earth. Amid all Tolkien’s astonishing inventiveness, and alongside the vast knowledge of matters mythological and medieval that he poured into his legendarium, this is a point too easily overlooked: contemporary life, especially the life he knew in his formative years, was a powerful well-spring of creativity in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s comment to Minchin also provides support for a point I have made in various talks on how the Great War shaped The Lord of the Rings. By silently linking his hobbits with the boys of 1901, who had grown into the young men of 1914, Tolkien was able to draw directly upon the war into which he and those men were then hurled. He had seen, and felt, how war could change those who went through it. Many of the dangers he describes in The Lord of the Rings may be fantastical, though many are not and others are only symbolically so. But the fear, the resourcefulness, the demoralisation, the courage, the sorrow, the innocent laughter in the face of dreadful odds: all these things he had known, and he infused his fiction with them. This, and memories of those rural roots, bring the hobbits vividly to life.