Post by Andorinha on Jan 20, 2005 1:57:39 GMT -6
Fanuidhol was interested in the dating of the Sea Bell, and I finally found one of my ancient posts that utilizes material from Tolkien's Letters , Biography, and his texts to give a background to this poem, including the dating sequence.
MSN TR -- 8/26/2002
I first read "The Sea Bell" a very long time ago. It baffled me then, and it still does now. I usually read it for the mood of high melancholy it provokes, but stopped trying to "understand" it in terms of deeper and internal meanings.
Reading Iarwain's and AnnieLT's treatments now has opened some new possibilities of assigning meaning to the various episodes of the poem. I can see that the mood of the thing has "applicability" for Frodo's wandering alienation at the close of LOTR, and its dream-dazed, or even nightmarish qualities would seem to fit well with MY idea of how a sensitive Hobbit mind would be confused and dismayed as it "faded" into the shadows.
But I am not convinced that Frodo is the protagonist and narrator of this poem, despite the prefatory statements on page 9 (1966 version "Tolkien Reader"). Tolkien himself seems unsure, though he mentions a pencilled scrawl -- "Frodos Dreme" -- as being appended to the manuscript. He also mentions in this preface that the "Sea Bell" COULD be about some other Hobbit who had chanced upon the Sea, that mysterious body of water that has so often been a metaphor for change, including the final great change of death.
Even so, my readings do NOT allow me to see anything in this poem that makes it especially a Hobbit poem. This bothered me enough that I paged through the works I have looking for some mention of this poem, hoping to discover that it was indeed written specifically as "back-story" material to supplement the LOTR or Silmarillion. What I found on page 268 of H. Carpenter's biography of JRRT leads me to feel almost certain now of my earlier suspicion that "The Sea Bell" has no real connection with the LOTR corpus, or even the Hobbit.
The poem was originally published in 1934 under the suggestive title "Looney," in the Oxford Magazine vol. LII, #9, p, 340. This predates the publication of "The Hobbit" by three years, and the creation of even the first draught of LOTR (and the character Bingo Baggins who later becomes our Frodo) by at least ten years.
Apparently, in 1961 Tolkien was asked for more of his work, and by this time almost any thing he had ever written was assumed to have some saleable value (though after 1965 that value would increase 10 fold!). At this late date, 1961 JRRT knew that his fame in popular literature came from The Hobbit and the LOTR, and he tried make his earlier works conformable to these two great books. At this point he obviously felt that "Looney," suitably re-titled, had some applicability to Frodo's plight in the LOTR, and hence sent this poem in for re-publication in 1962 as "The Sea Bell" within the new volume of "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil." The preface to this slim volume then tried to project an anachronistic fiction over the entire lot, implying that these poems were back story materials from the "Red Book of the West March" written by Hobbits and about Hobbits.
Consequently, trying to find "Frodo relevant" themes and inner meanings from a reading of "The Sea Bell" may be doomed from the start... what we can perhaps recover validly here, from this poem, is an understanding of just what elements in it JRRT deemed to be applicable to his later character Frodo.
In Letter 235 p. 312, To Pauline Baynes -- Tolkien discussed this poem and apologized for including "The Sea Bell" in this new 1962 anthology:
"If I dare say so, the things sent to you (except the Sea-bell, the poorest, and not one that I should really wish to include, at least not with the others) were conceived as a series of very definite, clear and precise, pictures -- fantastical, or nonsensical perhaps, but not dreamlike!"
In Letter 295: pp. 378 -379, To W.H. Auden -- Tolkien mentions that Auden had read the 1966 version of "The Sea Bell" in "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" and found this poem (the one Tolkien thought his "poorest") to be especially good, in fact "wonderful." At this point the poem, which originally had nothing to do with Frodo at all, is subtitled "Frodo's Dreme."
I think all this tells us a great deal about the way Tolkien worked, and underscores for me the fact that the publishing industry had a powerful effect upon shaping the final product of Tolkien's pen. The publishers demanded Hobbit stories and Hobbit poems, and Tolkien, not as fast in writing as he might wish to be, often picked up unrelated bits and pieces of early material, re-worked them, or simply (as in the case of "Looney" which becomes "Frodo's Dreme") re-titled them to sate his publishers' ever growing demands for more Hobbit related stuff. This brings up another point, "The Silmarillion" had to be largely re-written to accomodate the Hobbit and the LOTR, both of which were originally beyond its scope and alien to it.
But if approached, on its own merits as a fantasy-scene bit of poetry, I think Auden's view of "Looney" or the "Sea Bell" if you prefer, is more in tune with my own view of this poem, I too find it wonderful. But I do not try to make its episodes conform to Frodo Baggin's psycho-biological condition after the Quest of the Ring, however "applicable" such an interpretation may be!
MSN TR -- 8/26/2002
I first read "The Sea Bell" a very long time ago. It baffled me then, and it still does now. I usually read it for the mood of high melancholy it provokes, but stopped trying to "understand" it in terms of deeper and internal meanings.
Reading Iarwain's and AnnieLT's treatments now has opened some new possibilities of assigning meaning to the various episodes of the poem. I can see that the mood of the thing has "applicability" for Frodo's wandering alienation at the close of LOTR, and its dream-dazed, or even nightmarish qualities would seem to fit well with MY idea of how a sensitive Hobbit mind would be confused and dismayed as it "faded" into the shadows.
But I am not convinced that Frodo is the protagonist and narrator of this poem, despite the prefatory statements on page 9 (1966 version "Tolkien Reader"). Tolkien himself seems unsure, though he mentions a pencilled scrawl -- "Frodos Dreme" -- as being appended to the manuscript. He also mentions in this preface that the "Sea Bell" COULD be about some other Hobbit who had chanced upon the Sea, that mysterious body of water that has so often been a metaphor for change, including the final great change of death.
Even so, my readings do NOT allow me to see anything in this poem that makes it especially a Hobbit poem. This bothered me enough that I paged through the works I have looking for some mention of this poem, hoping to discover that it was indeed written specifically as "back-story" material to supplement the LOTR or Silmarillion. What I found on page 268 of H. Carpenter's biography of JRRT leads me to feel almost certain now of my earlier suspicion that "The Sea Bell" has no real connection with the LOTR corpus, or even the Hobbit.
The poem was originally published in 1934 under the suggestive title "Looney," in the Oxford Magazine vol. LII, #9, p, 340. This predates the publication of "The Hobbit" by three years, and the creation of even the first draught of LOTR (and the character Bingo Baggins who later becomes our Frodo) by at least ten years.
Apparently, in 1961 Tolkien was asked for more of his work, and by this time almost any thing he had ever written was assumed to have some saleable value (though after 1965 that value would increase 10 fold!). At this late date, 1961 JRRT knew that his fame in popular literature came from The Hobbit and the LOTR, and he tried make his earlier works conformable to these two great books. At this point he obviously felt that "Looney," suitably re-titled, had some applicability to Frodo's plight in the LOTR, and hence sent this poem in for re-publication in 1962 as "The Sea Bell" within the new volume of "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil." The preface to this slim volume then tried to project an anachronistic fiction over the entire lot, implying that these poems were back story materials from the "Red Book of the West March" written by Hobbits and about Hobbits.
Consequently, trying to find "Frodo relevant" themes and inner meanings from a reading of "The Sea Bell" may be doomed from the start... what we can perhaps recover validly here, from this poem, is an understanding of just what elements in it JRRT deemed to be applicable to his later character Frodo.
In Letter 235 p. 312, To Pauline Baynes -- Tolkien discussed this poem and apologized for including "The Sea Bell" in this new 1962 anthology:
"If I dare say so, the things sent to you (except the Sea-bell, the poorest, and not one that I should really wish to include, at least not with the others) were conceived as a series of very definite, clear and precise, pictures -- fantastical, or nonsensical perhaps, but not dreamlike!"
In Letter 295: pp. 378 -379, To W.H. Auden -- Tolkien mentions that Auden had read the 1966 version of "The Sea Bell" in "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" and found this poem (the one Tolkien thought his "poorest") to be especially good, in fact "wonderful." At this point the poem, which originally had nothing to do with Frodo at all, is subtitled "Frodo's Dreme."
I think all this tells us a great deal about the way Tolkien worked, and underscores for me the fact that the publishing industry had a powerful effect upon shaping the final product of Tolkien's pen. The publishers demanded Hobbit stories and Hobbit poems, and Tolkien, not as fast in writing as he might wish to be, often picked up unrelated bits and pieces of early material, re-worked them, or simply (as in the case of "Looney" which becomes "Frodo's Dreme") re-titled them to sate his publishers' ever growing demands for more Hobbit related stuff. This brings up another point, "The Silmarillion" had to be largely re-written to accomodate the Hobbit and the LOTR, both of which were originally beyond its scope and alien to it.
But if approached, on its own merits as a fantasy-scene bit of poetry, I think Auden's view of "Looney" or the "Sea Bell" if you prefer, is more in tune with my own view of this poem, I too find it wonderful. But I do not try to make its episodes conform to Frodo Baggin's psycho-biological condition after the Quest of the Ring, however "applicable" such an interpretation may be!