It's really hard to describe the genius and like 'decades before it's time' nature of Charles Mills' 'The Wretched of Middle-earth' essay, (and how infuriating it is to see critiques like 'um but elves CAN be evil, checkmate' as if that is either a pertinent critique or relates to his main argument at all) without just saying 'go read the essay'. since it is the most concise and revealing version of itself that could possibly exist.
But still, to try and put into perspective how precisely he nails Tolkien's influences and racial politics; Charles Mills' essay tacitely predicts aspects of the Tal-Elmar story without him even having read it, likely before it was even published.
In one section Mills compares Tolkien's use of language to the early-modern 'Aryan model' influenced Philologists and their hunt for the origins of language, implicitely connected to trying to discover 'the roots of race'.
The central claim of the Aryan Model was that Greek was a “pure” language and that the (Japhetic) Indo-European language family generally was connected by blood to the hypothetical Sanskrit-speaking Aryan race, and thus sharply distinguished both in genesis and subsequent development from the (Hamito-Semitic) Afro-Asiatic language family.
So, simply, 'pure blood' and 'pure language' are intimately connected within the Aryan-myth-applying intellectual understanding of the time, which was extremely contemporary to Tolkien long before it came to it's natural conclusion in nazi germany. Where it followed that; Teutonic languages and peoples were superior to the (Mediterranean-contaminated) Romance languages and peoples, that German was a “pure” language similar to Greek and thus the real descendant of Sanskrit, that Indo-European should really be called Indo-Germanisch, and that the Germans themselves were the true heirs of the Aryans.
Mills compares this very aptly to the elven development and possession of Quenya in Tolkien, a pure and superior language that is brought to middle earth and confers both divine and racial status to those who can speak it.
However, when I read these passages, I am jarringly reminded of Tal-Elmar, a story which disposes of any pretense at subtext within the connection between blood and language and makes it crudely blunt.
Tal-Elmar is an unfinished story by Tolkien about a young man (Tal-Elmar) raised amongst the indigenous 'dark men' of middle-earth, but whose grandmother was a numenorean. Her curse, fueled by her anger at being kidnapped, raped and forcibly married, conferred upon Tal-Elmar absolute racial purity. This vengeance I will have, […] in thy kin one shall arise who is mine alone. And with his arising shall come the end of thy people and the downfall of your king.
And in this narrative, when Tal-Elmar meets with men from Numenor, this is what happens;
[Tal-Elmar] said when he heard the [Numenoreans] speak to one another: 'This is strange for you speak the language of my long dreams. Yet surely now I stand in my own land and do not sleep?' Then they were astonished and said: 'Why did you not speak so to us before? You spoke like the people of the Dark who are our enemies, being servants of our Enemy.' And Tal-Elmar answered: 'Because this tongue has only returned to my mind hearing you speak it; and because how should I have known that you would understand the language of my dreams?'
Quite literally Tal-Elmar's pure blood is so pure that speaking the 'pure language' is innate to him, conferred by right of race alone. Like this is not even in the top ten of 'most racist things that happen in Tal-Elmar' it's a mile a minute with this one but in specific reference with Charles Mills, it's endlessly impressive to me that even work published within the Tolkien legendarium after Mills wrote the essay adds MORE credence to his already extremely compelling argument, not less. God Charles I wish I could talk to you about LOTRO's main story questline in Harad, it's dire out here.
