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JRR on Bigotry
Jun. 27th, 2005 11:46 pmThis weekend the Neo-Nazis held a gathering at Yorktown battlegrounds, just up the way from my home. It gave me reason to think (again) about bigotry and the smallness of humankind. Well – the smallness of some humans, anyway. I had turned the news off in disgust and went back to the book I was reading: “Beowulf and the Critics” by J.R.R. Tolkien, an early study he’d done on the poem and it’s place in English language study. In the introduction, Michael Drout, the editor of this work, included an excerpt from a letter written by Tolkien to the German publishers of “the Hobbit” who’d written to ask JRR if he was ‘aryan”. Ironic, isn’t it, how a theme can pervade one’s day. Still, his response to that question made me smile so I quote Drout's words here:
“Tolkien replied with insulting philological precision that since he was not aware that any of his “ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects,” he could not claim to be Aryan. He adds, “but if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether or not I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.” He then continues with an explanation of his German name (Tolkien’s ancestors had immigrated to England in the 18th century), and closes with the following:
“ I have been accustomed… to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war . . . I cannot, however forbear to comment that if impertinent 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.”
I knew that I honored the man’s intellect as well as his word-crafting but it’s heartening to learn so late that there was another reason to like him. I wonder what those neo-Nazis, who probably through an ignorant misunderstanding of history think that they have something in common with Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, would think should someone read to them Professor Tolkien’s letter – and the essay that he later wrote about “that ‘Nordic nonsense’ promulgated by the Nazi party”?
“Tolkien replied with insulting philological precision that since he was not aware that any of his “ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects,” he could not claim to be Aryan. He adds, “but if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether or not I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.” He then continues with an explanation of his German name (Tolkien’s ancestors had immigrated to England in the 18th century), and closes with the following:
“ I have been accustomed… to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war . . . I cannot, however forbear to comment that if impertinent 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.”
I knew that I honored the man’s intellect as well as his word-crafting but it’s heartening to learn so late that there was another reason to like him. I wonder what those neo-Nazis, who probably through an ignorant misunderstanding of history think that they have something in common with Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, would think should someone read to them Professor Tolkien’s letter – and the essay that he later wrote about “that ‘Nordic nonsense’ promulgated by the Nazi party”?
