Friday, September 18, 2009

GKC - of Bag End?

Yes, well, he was rather LARGE for a Hobbit, but there are some points of similarity... something about having dinner twice a day makes me think of GKC. Hee hee.

Ah - yes - no, your calendar is not wrong. This is not Thursday. Nor even Tuesday.

Why do I mention Tuesday? See GKC's "A Picture of Tuesday" in CW14:60 et seq; also the first Harry Potter story begins on Tuesday. So, too, according to some commentators, was the miracle at the wedding in Cana. [Jn 2] It's a mystery. But then, some things remain mysterious even in plain sight: "The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid." [GKC Orthodoxy CW1:231] Ahem.

And so, to help Nancy out, here are two little cross-links I noted as I begin RE-reading JRRT's The Hobbit as I celebrate 31 autumns since the first time...

JRRT: Hobbits like cheerful colours, chiefly green and gold. [JRRT The Hobbit]
GKC: "There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself - there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold." [GKV TMWWT CW6:483]

JRRT: [Bilbo said] "Adventures - nasty uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner." [JRRT The Hobbit]
GKC: Adventures are to those to whom they are most unexpected - that is, most romantic. Adventures are to the shy: in this sense adventures are to the unadventurous. [GKC Heretics CW1:74]
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. [GKC ILN July 21 1906 CW27:242]

(note, I quote JRRT from memory.)

And I thought I spotted something else but forgot to note it. Like Bilbo, who forgot appointments unless he wrote them down: "Gandalf. Tea. Wednesday." which I recall as having made me laugh uproariously when I first read it, and gave me confidence that I had made a good decision!

Actually, though I have read it and LotR over 20 times, just today I noted - for the VERY FIRST TIME - a hilarious pun in the missive from "Thorin and Company" to Bilbo which was left on his mantel.

I refer, of course, to the "Yours deeply"... how else would dwarves sign a letter! Hee hee hee hee hee!

And since "thanks is the highest form of thought" [GKC, A Short History of England] I must not forget to express my sincere thanks to Mr. Tolkien for his very wonderful work, and to my friend "CJ" who urged me to explore it, and who gave me the three volumes of LotR.

3 comments:

  1. I have seen the similarities between Chesterton's I. Smith in Manalive with hobbits and that is why my screen name is dad 4 9 hobbits, but it will have to change to 10 next year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maolsheachlann O Ceallaigh, Dublin9/21/2009 4:48 PM

    Surely the biggest resemblance is not so much between Chesterton and hobbits as between Tolkien and Chesterton's mutual love of Little Engand, an idyll of Shire-like petty kingdoms...did Chesterton somewhere refer to it as the romance of the small?

    ReplyDelete
  3. If you live in Western New York (Buffalo/Niagara Falls area) we have started a Chesterton Chapter.

    Please visit
    http://www.orgsites.com/ny/chesterntonsociety/

    We hope to be inviting Mr. Ahlquist to the area next yeat in September or October. Please join up.
    Sincerely,Phil
    pviverito11@me.com

    ReplyDelete

Join our FaceBook fan page today!