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Post by Andorinha on Apr 14, 2012 9:27:39 GMT -6
Hey, Vanye, any idea when Bilbo, finally, hits the road again? I think we have a fairly certain date of arrival in Rivendell, May 1, but is there any statement as to how long it took Bilbo and Gandalf to get there?
The outbound dwarves (plus Bilbo and Gandalf) left Rivendell on the 22nd of June, and got to Beorn's on the 20th of July (Fonstad, p. 100) so, if we keep to the same time scale and figure 4 weeks for the trek back west, then Bilbo must have left on the 2nd - 3rd of April?
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Post by Andorinha on Apr 16, 2012 6:38:14 GMT -6
I keep trying to put myself into Bilbo's place on this trek, hoping to see what he must have seen. He'll be traveling over much the same land, a "there and back again" situation, and for most of his return trip I imagine the scenery was generally the same, day after day of repetitive vision: rocks and trees, streams of running water, fields of flowers, short grasses and tall sedges, stormy skies and then blue; above all, the lifting peaks of the Misty Mountains forming a limit to one's sight on the west, the direction home. Despite the Battle of Five Armies, Bilbo and Gandalf must have traveled past the Goblin Gate with some anxious trepidation, though Tolkien reassures us: "The goblins of the Misty Mountains were now few and terrified, and hidden in the deepest holes they could find; and the Wargs had vanished from the woods..." (H. p The Return Journey, p. 307) In his brief, notational description of Bilbo's return, JRRT does pause a moment, just at the very spot of their capture by the goblins, and in that narrow pass he lets us look backward, east a ways for a farewell glimpse: But they came to that high point at morning, and looking backward they saw a white sun shining over the outstretched lands. There behind lay Mirkwood, blue in the distance, and darkly green at the nearer edge even in the spring. There, far away was the Lonely Mountain on the edge of eyesight. On its highest peak snow yet unmelted was gleaming pale.
"So comes snow after fire, and even dragon's have their ending!" said Bilbo, and he turned his back on his adventure. ... "I wish now only to be in my own arm-chair!" (H. The Return Journey, p. 307 About two weeks more, til Rivendell...
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Post by Andorinha on Apr 28, 2012 9:27:01 GMT -6
Lessee, a couple of days more and we have one of our few, solid dates for Bilbo's adventure, his Rivendell advent on "May the First."
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Post by Vanye on May 2, 2012 0:31:48 GMT -6
According to Fonstad & the Appendices Gandalf & Bilbo arrive back at Rivendell today on their homeward journey. Absolutely no other details are given. They will remain here for a few days befpre beginning the final leg of the adventure Bilbo call th 'There & Back Again! 8^) Vanye
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Post by Vanye on May 8, 2012 11:10:44 GMT -6
So, today is the day on which Gandalf & Bilbo set out for the Shire after their respite in Rivendell-tho twill be June afore their arrival. Of course we know what awaits Bilbo at Bagend in the form of his Greedy relatives auctioning off all of his worldly goods. This is exactly what makes some people avoid their relations like the plague. 8^)
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Post by Stormrider on May 10, 2012 6:36:04 GMT -6
How long was Bilbo gone from Bag End? a year?
I wonder if any other Hobbits saw Bilbo leaving The Shire with the Dwarves and Gandalf. They would have been a group of people that couldn't have been missed! Although Bilbo ran out on the spur of the moment after the Dwarves already had started riding out of town -- maybe other Hobbits did not see him with that group.
Anyway, Bilbo did not tell anyone he was going on a trip and if no one saw him with them, they would have been wondering where he was. Did Hobbits have missing person searches? Even if anyone had seen Bilbo leave with the Dwarves and Gandalf, they should have done more looking in to his long absence. Or at least waited another year before they held an auction.
But if no one had any idea where he was, I don't think it should have been that much of a shock to Bilbo to come home and see what was happening. Anyway, why were they auctioning it off? I would have thought the greedy relatives would have wanted to keep all of the possessions rather than auction them.
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Post by Andorinha on May 13, 2012 6:54:53 GMT -6
Hmmm, let's see, I guess April 27 was the actual starting date of Bilbo's trek, and text gives us the following: "There was a large notice in black and red hung on the gate, stating that on June the Twenty-second Messrs Grubb, Grubb, and Burrows would sell by auction the effects of the late Bilbo Baggins Esquire, of Bag-End, Underhill, Hobbiton." (The Hobbit, "The Last Stage," p 270) We are given almost the exact hour as well, "It was now nearly lunchtime..." (p. 270)
So the entire round trip is a month or so more than a year? 22nd June, that seems familiar, one of the solstice days? Don't know if that is mere coincidence here, or not...
Yeah, Bilbo must have been seen leaving, quite a strange cavalcade for the Shire, 13 dwarves and a Wizard with a "rag-tag" hobbit.
Bilbo did give his keys to Gandalf, and presumably Gandalf then gave them to some hobbit, and probably gave a bit of an explanation concerning Bilbo's precipitate journey?
For English Law, I think the "missing person" must be gone for seven years before he/ she can be declared legally dead, so a mere year seems a bit hasty. Maybe the hobbits were used to having their kinfolk disappear with Gandalf and never return? Wasn't there an uncle or two of Bilbo's who went "off into the blue," never to return? Though many other hobbits, possibly Bilbo's own mother, and another uncle seem to have survived trips with Gandalf, so maybe the auction was premature anyway?
I went to an estate auction a while back, the relatives were just interested in converting the estate to cash, getting rid of everything they could, and the remainder went to Goodwill...
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Post by Fredeghar Wayfarer on May 14, 2012 15:00:07 GMT -6
Hobbits rarely if ever leave the Shire. In their minds, if Bilbo was gone for a year, he must be dead. There'd be no other explanation. Who wouldn't want to come back to the comfort and safety and simple life of the Shire? If he went off with Gandalf and a bunch of dwarves (outsiders, not to be trusted), he must have gotten himself killed on a damn fool adventure.
In another society, I'm sure they would have waited longer for the auction or done a more thorough search for the missing person. I doubt the hobbits checked further than Bree, if they looked for Bilbo at all, and a year was all they needed to decide Mad Baggins was lost to them.
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Post by Andorinha on May 15, 2012 6:58:15 GMT -6
Yeah, Fredeghar, you've probably hit the correct "default mode" of hobbit thought --leave the Shire and you are likely never to come back... But I wonder here a bit, maybe more hobbits did come back? Bilbo hints at Gandalf's reputation for "disruption" when he first meets the wizard: "Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures? Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves -- or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores! Bless me, life used to be quite inter-- I mean, you used to upset things badly in these parts once upon a time." ( Hobbit, An unexpected Party, p. 7, emphasis mine) From Bilbo's reaction, it sounds to me as though Gandalf was once a more frequent visitor in the Shire, and I presume a goodly number of his "quiet lads and lasses" had returned to keep the tales alive. The hobbits, stuffy though they might be, should have had a pretty good idea of the survival rate of the adventurers? Bilbo's mom and uncle came back for sure, though one relative may have been eaten by wolves (see appendix LOTR). Of course, with the influential Sackville-Bagginses to speed the process, perhaps the barest-minimum legal period was all they waited until their attempt to takeover Bag-End? Once in possession, they'd be very hard to root out. Sigh, in many ways I wish Tolkien had first gone back to relate some of the earlier hobbit-ventures rather than work up the LOTR... and, just what was the survival rate of hobbits, gone venturing with Gandalf?
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Post by Andorinha on May 15, 2012 7:43:12 GMT -6
Hmmm, just looking at this quote again, wondering what " other shores" refers to... "Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures? Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves -- or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores! Bless me, life used to be quite inter-- I mean, you used to upset things badly in these parts once upon a time." ( The Hobbit, An unexpected Party, p. 7, emphasis mine) I am thinking here, that this may be a reference to Elvenhome across the Sea? Maybe the original, 1937 edition has some clarification here? Of course after LOTR, Tolkien would have to alter this, as "mortals" were not physically allowed into Valinor after the Second Age Numenorean invasion. But The Hobbit predates this exclusion, I think? So maybe, we have here one of the disjuncts between The Hobbit and LOTR? That would be exciting, a hobbit's travels to the "Other Side?"
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Post by Fredeghar Wayfarer on May 15, 2012 14:16:55 GMT -6
I doubt that. Even before LOTR, I find it hard to believe that Tolkien conceived of people sailing over to Valinor on holiday. In the early mythology (Book of Lost Tales), mortal children did visit Tol Eressea in their dreams but it was still a pretty rare occurrence for a mortal to arrive there in body.
The quote refers to climbing trees as an adventure. If something as mundane as that is an adventure in the hobbits' eyes, they were likely exaggerating the details of past Gandalf ventures. I could see Gandalf taking inquisitive hobbit children to Bree-land or the Tower Hills or sailing down the River Brandywine. Not especially far from the Shire but it might as well have been the exotic Orient to the homebody hobbits. If other hobbits had been on truly grand adventures to distant lands, Bilbo's story wouldn't have been as significant.
Granted, I'm going off of the established geography of Middle-earth for my examples. The Hobbit wasn't part of the same universe as Tolkien's other stories originally so "other shores" could have referred to any number of places that the author never fleshed out. But Elvenhome? It seems unlikely.
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Post by Andorinha on May 15, 2012 22:02:32 GMT -6
Hmmm, given Tolkien's early poetry, like the 1934 "Looney,"* later retitled "The Sea Bell," he was very much interested in finding Faerie himself. There is of course in the Irish fairy tale tradition, a whole genre of such expeditions into the West to find the Immortal Lands. Tolkien worked with some of this material between 1918 and the late 1930s, just about the time he was writing The Hobbit. We have two earlier editions of The Hobbit to use in explications of this matter: the 1937 version, and the 1956. In 1937, before the strictures of LOTR, this passage read: "mad adventures, anything from climbing trees to stowing away aboard the ships that sail to the Other Side..." (see The Annotated Hobbit, D.A. Anderson, p. 39 side note 17). The 1957 edition reads the same, but the general version available today, revised and published in 1966, has been altered to "... mad adventures? Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves -- or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores!" ( The Hobbit, 1966 and following editions, p. 7) The capitalization of "Other Side," makes it a proper noun, referring to a specific area, not of this world, but the Other Side, the mystical, spirt realm, the alien land of the immortals. Anderson takes this passage to mean that at the time The Hobbit was first published, it did indeed have little to do with the Middle-earth of LOTR: "The idea of hobbits sailing over 'to the Other Side' is incompatible with the [later, post 1956] conception in The Lord of the Rings that no mortal ships could sail over seas to the Undying Lands in the West." (D.A. Anderson, Annt. Hobbit, p. 39, note 17) As I interpret this passage, and try to account for its alteration between 1937 and 1966, I think this is another case where Tolkien decided to alter the universe of The Hobbit to more closely reflect his later set of rules governing the universe of LOTR. In 1937, in Tolkien's mind, hobbits could indeed "sneak" into the Other Side realm, the home of the Elves. After LOTR, Tolkien closed off this access, and Mortals could no longer journey to the hidden realms of the Other Side. Is that (I won't say "dratted, nope, nor even think it!) estimable Fanuidhol available for consultation on this matter? Maybe her History of the Hobbit volumes discusses this matter further than does D.A. Anderson? *see the TR discussion of "The Looney" at tolkiensring.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=study5&action=display&thread=747
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Post by Andorinha on May 15, 2012 23:13:09 GMT -6
Here is Paul Edmond Thomas' take on this issue in his article "Towards Quite Unforeseen Goals," in Hammond and Scull's The Lord of the Rings 1954 -2004, Scholarship in Honour of Richard E. Blackwelder : Tolkien Letter 1938: "Mr Baggins got dragged against my original will" into the world of "The Silmarillion." In 1964 Tolkien wrote " The Hobbit was not intended to have anything to do with [the matter of the Elder Days]. ... It had no necessary connexion with the 'mythology', but naturally became attracted towards this dominant construction in my mind, causing the tale to become larger and more heroic as it proceeded." Thomas points out that, although Tolkien originally intended The Hobbit as a "free floating" tale, set in its own universe, our author nonetheless (subconsciously?) introduced some themes that find their origin in the background Mythologies that were later subsumed in The Silmarillion, and that gradually The Hobbit became ever closer tied to the Middle-earth of the Mythology. But the Mythology -- as it stood in 1937-- did not yet have the prohibition against Mortals traveling to the "Other Side." "The Hobbit, composed by an author who must certainly be ranked among the most painstaking and careful writers of the 20th century, could surely have been set in a fictional world other than Middle-earth, as Farmer Giles of Ham was. And while it is true that The Hobbit becomes larger and more heroic in the final chapters, and the influence of 'The Silmarillion' grows towards the end of the book, Tolkien's first allusion to his mythology appears in the very first chapter of the original edition, when Bilbo first meets Gandalf and says: 'Dear me! ... Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures, anything from climbing trees to stowing away aboard the ships that sail to the Other Side.' When Tolkien revised the novel for the 1966 edition, he deleted this overt reference to ships departing from Middle-earth and sailing for Valinor because [after LOTR] such departures were generally reserved for Elves..." (Paul Edmond Thomas, "Towards Quite Unforeseen Goals," in The Lord of the Rings 1954 -2004, Scholarship in Honour of Richard E. Blackwelder, p.59 ) Apparently, the serious Tolkien scholarship does (at least Thomas does!) view this "Other Side" reference in the 1937 Hobbit, as referring to the Valinor of The Silmarillion, as that Mythology had been written before the changes in Middle-earth that come with LOTR. When the narrative of LOTR altered the conditions for Mortal entry into Valinor, the "Other Side," it was necessary for Tolkien to alter The Hobbit to conform with LOTR's post 1950s dictum that no Mortal could go to Eresea/ Valinor unless by special dispensation (Bilbo, Frodo, Sam and possibly Gimli).
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Post by Stormrider on May 16, 2012 11:40:47 GMT -6
Is that (I won't say "dratted, nope, nor even think it!) estimable Fanuidhol available for consultation on this matter? Maybe her History of the Hobbit volumes discusses this matter further than does D.A. Anderson? Hmmm...I've been going through Foster's Complete Guide of Middle-earth looking for Hobbits who may have taken a strange journey and disappeared. I was hoping for some actual names to see if they did return eventually or not! I'll be back if I find anything. In the meantime, I have been enjoying both of your comments and research. Anyway, I came upon the name FANUIDHOL and Foster says it is Sindarin meaning "Cloudy-Head" which is one of the three Mountains of Moria (called Bundushathur). I just don't think Fan has her head up in the clouds and wonder why she picked this name for herself?
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Post by Fredeghar Wayfarer on May 16, 2012 15:50:11 GMT -6
Hmm. As usual, Andorinha, you are better at researching this stuff and I stand corrected. It does sound like Tolkien meant that hobbits had sailed to the land of the Elves.
But as The Hobbit was originally in a different world than the early Elvish mythology, did the "Other Side" mean the same thing as Valinor at the time? Or was it a more general reference to Faerie as the realm of Elves, magic, and dreams? Were they synonymous in Tolkien's mind? If they were, how could the two stories be in separate universes? Would Faerie/Valinor exist outside reality and be accessible by multiple story worlds? (LOL, this is getting into metafictional Grant Morrison/Steven King's Dark Tower type territory.)
I guess my main question is whether Tolkien drew from his mythology simply to give The Hobbit atmosphere and didn't think about the implications of using the same "Other Side" realm for two stories.
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