so apparently when jrr tolkien was a professor on the first day of class he’d wait until his students were in the lecture hall and seated and starting to wonder whether they were all in the wrong room before throwing open the doors at the back of the hall and striding down the aisle reciting the first 50 lines of beowulf in old english so moral of the story if you don’t know anything about jrr tolkien aside from lotr you are missing out my friend
Add to that a lack of patience for anti-semitic BS (x):
His first novel The Hobbit, predecessor to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, first appeared in 1937, a time when the situation in Europe had turned ominous indeed, and would get far uglier still. It didn’t take long after the book’s initial success for Berlin publisher Rütten & Loening to express their interest in putting out a German edition, but first — in observance, no doubt, of the Third Reich’s dictates — they asked for proof of Tolkien’s “Aryan descent.” The author drafted two replies, the less civil of which reads as follows:
25 July 1938 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford Dear Sirs, Thank you for your letter. I regret that 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. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride. Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung. I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully, J. R. R. Tolkien
Also please note that while the word he used is now considered offensive (not necessarily so at the time), his reference to the Romani is polite and factual: “Hindustani, Persian, [Romany], or any related dialects.” This is completely true. The Romani, if you trace them all the way back, are from India, and they do have their own language (technically it’s a language tree) that has distinct cultural and historical roots.
A lot of people even today can’t manage that. He did it even as their genocide loomed on the horizon, rather than as someone with the benefit of hindsight.
